LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
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User ID: 657
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3yr ago
Stuff like this really demonstrate the philosophical kinship feminism has with Marxism with this blatant utopianism. The argument being put forward is "if the entire world was in a permanent communist revolution feminist, there there would be no war and no problems in the first place, everything would be great! Problems only exist because patriarchy creates problems to then solve (for some reason)." Nirvana fallacy par excellence.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3yr ago
I'm not claiming Australian democracy is perfect, nor that there is nothing to criticise in the conduct of the Australian government in recent years (there is plenty to criticise in American democracy yet people still believe in the ideal). But I do think that Parliament House does reflect Australian political values that I value - including egalitarianism (in the general, not modern left sense), the 'fair go' for all.
I recently visited our nation's great capital, Canberra. While I was there, I did some the of typically touristy things. It's not the first time I have been Canberra, though it's hard to tell how much has changed with Canberra and how much has changed with myself and how I perceive things with culture war overtones being imbedded in my mind. But regardless, my perception was that broadly speaking left-wing politics dominates even in what is ostensibly non-partisan, politically neutral public institutions.
Firstly, there was the National Gallery of Australia. Frankly, I think the NGA is a pretty piss-poor gallery overall. It's international and pre-modern (pre-1800) collections is almost laughably bad for what is apparently Australia's highest public gallery. Outside of a couple of notable pieces, such as a couple of Monets and the infamous Blue Poles by Pollock, there is very little of interest. There were a lot of (post)modern pieces which I found atrocious (I probably don't have to go into a rant about why postmodern art sucks here), the worst offender being a piece that was literally just a square canvas planted black. That's it. The lack of a good international and historical collection is at least somewhat understandable because the NGA is a very young gallery by international standards, and (I imagine) it's pretty hard to build up a great collection especially with a relatively small budget. But even compared to other Australian galleries such as the National Gallery of Victoria and especially the American great galleries which I have had the pleasure of visiting- as unfair as the comparison to the Met or the National Gallery of Art might be - the National Gallery of Australia falls short.
The NGA's strength is naturally it's very large and extensive Australian art collection, including artists ranging from Arthur Streeton (and other Australian Impressionists) to Sidney Nolan to more contemporary artists that I or most people couldn't give two shits about. But the Australian collection is where some of the 'woke' influence was most apparent, on the descriptions of the works of art. Every single piece of Australian art had to have its 'indigenous' name of the location prefaced before the actual common name, regardless of how (ir)relevant it is to the actual artwork. So every piece of artwork created in Melbourne was labelled as 'Naarm/Melbourne'. In addition, there would often be huge non-sequiturs at the end of an artwork's description to insert some connection to Indigenous peoples. For example, it would describe the artist's personal history, how they ended up painting that specific painting, etc, only for the last sentences to abruptly talk mention the local Indigenous group and their connection to the area (bonus points if they mention how it was then taken over by English settlers). This also happened to a lesser extent in some of the other landmarks I visited. There is a lot of this general handwringing over Indigenous issues that has become pervasive in Australia and the Anglosphere more broadly. Now, one might argue that the NGA is simply catering to its dominant audience - the leftwing 'intelligentsia' who both dominate in the art world and the kind of person who would bother to visit an art gallery in the first place. But honestly this isn't good enough to me. The NGA is meant to be a national gallery for all Australians, and should be making a conscious effort to make themselves approachable for the general Australian public.
Next, we have Old Parliament House, now home to the Museum of Australian Democracy. It's honestly a pretty interesting museum, more than its name would suggest. However, there is a pretty stark contrast between the newer and rotating exhibits and the older, permanent exhibits. The older exhibits mainly aim to preserve and present Old Parliament House as it was in 1988 when the Australian government moved to (New) Parliament House (it's pretty awesome), and explain how Australian democracy works more generally. It's pretty politically impartial. The newer exhibits have an implicit left-liberal political ideology in their presentation that might be hard for the casual viewer to realise. It's not just being unabashedly pro-Australian democracy which it understandably is. The more charitable explanation is that the Museum is taking an implicitly teleological view of Australian democracy - all the historical events in Australia's political history led up to the political system we have today, and current Australian democracy is good (it's literally the point of the Museum) therefore all those events were necessary if not good (Gillard's 'misogyny speech', gay marriage plebiscite and and historical political protests generally so on are all presented positively and uncritically). This charitable interpretation really falls apart when you consider what is lacking in the exhibitions and what the counterfactual would be. There was no real rightwing political victories presented and definitely not presented positively, such as Abbott's 'Stop the Boats' campaign (Operation Sovereign Borders) which despite its poor reputation was quite popular with the general population and more-or-less remains the basis of both Labor and Liberal's policy towards asylum seekers/refugees/boat people to this day. It's also hard to imagine that if the gay marriage plebiscite had failed, there would be a exhibition celebrating this as a triumph of Australian democracy like there currently is one celebrating its success (ironic given that many pro-gay marriage advocates initially opposed the plebiscite before they got the results). it was occasionally less subtle with its bias, like an exhibit on Australian Prime Ministers ending with 'Who is Next' and showing a drawing a Muslim woman, an Asian woman and an Aboriginal man, and some shibboleths about 'all Australians from all cultural backgrounds'.
Lastly, I'll talk Parliament House itself. Of all the landmarks visited, Parliament House thankfully (and perhaps somewhat ironically) most apolitical (or politically neutral might be more accurate) presentation, other than the obvious stance of Westminster pro-liberal democracy. As an active political institution which contains Members of Parliament and Senators that may actively support or opposite any given political issue, greater care must have been places to present everything as politically neutral. This is probably aided by the fact that the number of public exhibits is relatively small, given that its primary role is actually a working institution and not a museum, and the main draw for the tourist or member of public is going to see the the House and Senate Chambers. Visiting Parliament House did make me realise an interesting statistic, however due to the obligatory 'Women in Parliament' mini-exhibit. Less than one-third of House of Representatives are women, yet over half of the Senate are women. A pretty notable discrepancy, which I would suggest may be caused by the fact Senators are usually selected by intraparty politics (and thus the agenda to promote female politicians) while seats in the House of Representatives are far more competitive.
To end of a positive note, here is where I make declare my love for Australian democracy. Australian Parliament House represents the best of Australian democracy. The architectural design is fantastic, with lots of open space and big sweeping boomerang wings that feel inviting. It open and accessible to the public, and you can pretty wander around much the building (not counting offices) unescorted. It really does feel like there Parliament is there to serve the Australian public. Sorry to bash our American cousins, but in stark contrast when I visited Congress you had to book a tour, and had to be escorted around the entire time. I understand that security may be a bigger concern for you Americans, but the ability to more-or-less freely walk around the most important political body is the prime example of why I love and appreciate Australian democracy.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3yr ago
Almost certainly would have made for a more interesting film. But of course, this would never happen because you're injecting even the lightest bit of nuance into the film's social message which is 'colonalism bad, western/white countries bad'. Having Wakanda actually be the one colonising another culture would never be allowed, let alone the message of 'let bygones be bygones'.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3yr ago
The impression I got from playing Disco Elysium was that they are some kind of post-Marxists, or disillusioned Marxists. They are still support the Marxist project, but they see Marxism more like the lesser evil than a grand utopian vision. It's a begrudging kind of support for Marxism.
I always felt that that Disco Elysium was went easiest on its criticism of Marxism of all the ideologies the game critiques and satirises - I thought this even before I knew the background of the developers. Much of the criticism of Marxism within the game itself isn't actually levelled at the philosophy of Marxism, but rather how Marxism is (in)effectively implemented. The union boss is less a critique of Marxist or socialist organising, but more about how self-serving people will abuse the idea of Marxism/socialism to enrich or empower themselves. It occasionally veers dangerously close to 'Marxism doesn't fail people, people fail Marxism' territory. Not to say it the game doesn't have any substantial critique of Marxism, but I definitely felt it was less substantive than some of the other critiques.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3yr ago
Given that these disciplines are not new, surely there is a handbook of basic principles for crafting such messages? Do we have any practitioners of the dark arts that can provide such resources?
I'm not sure if it constitutes a 'handbook' but I strongly recommend Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion (1922), who quite literally wrote the book (haha), on public communication and how to manage/manipulate public opinion.
I would also recommend Edward Bernays's Propaganda (1928) or Public Relations (1945). Bernays was kind of Lippmann's protégé.
These two men are basically created the foundation for our understanding modern mass communication, mass media and mass culture. Now-ubiquitous terms like propaganda (in its modern meaning) and stereotype were coined or popularized by these men. Both of them made some highly topical political arguments to our present political environment. Lippmann basically advocated for a technocratic elite/agency that used propaganda benevolently to shape public opinion, believing that (simplifying here) that the informed member of the public/voter is oxymoron, no member of the public is effectively capable of making informed decisions on any number of issues. Bernays has broadly similar views to Lippmann, although where as Lippmann more saw propaganda as a tool to be used by a (benevolent) elite, Bernays more sees propaganda as the inevitable result of an mass liberal democratic society, the alternative is chaos. Bernays is also responsible for making bacon and eggs a stable breakfast food and partially responsible for all the bad shit United Fruit Company did in Central America.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3yr ago
They could at least set up an independent authority to run the elections. Here in Australia, both the Federal government and each of the State governments have their own Electoral Commission which is an independent agency that explicitly is meant to be non-partisan. In the US, as best as I can tell, elections are run by under a division by each State's Secretary of State, who is a partisan, elected official. A similar thing I always found silly in the US is that how judges are allowed to be members of political parties (even if they're appointed by governments they could at least give some effort to maintain non-partisanship). Same with most election redistricting.
Obviously, you're not going to be able to weed out every partisan or partisan influence from agencies, but the American approach seems to be 'well, we can't completely get rid of partisanship, so why even bother, just go full partisan and hope things balance out'. I have worked in elections in Australia in the past, and honestly when people describe how things are done in the US I am shocked about how mismanaged and partisan the whole thing is, my experience of Australian elections is extremely positive, non-partisanship seems to actually work at least to some extent.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3yr ago
I think the idea they might have been going for is that Patriarch's rule was beneficial at first but he's been losing his touch
This is mentioned a couple of times offhand by a few auxiliary characters (Gideon Reyes being the main one iirc), but that is definitely not the reason Angela Deth is overthrowing him, and seeming not why you the Player Rangers are overthrowing him (the available dialogue options against the Patriarch imply you're doing it because you think he's an unjust tyrant). In fact, the Patriarch's age and deteriorating health are completely irrelevant. The fact you can learn and comment on his condition leads nowhere, and it's not even a necessary condition to get the peaceful transition ending. The overthrowing of Patriarch is pretty much exclusively based on the belief he's an unjust tyrant.
find a lot of additional info etc., you get more data on bad stuff done by the Patriarch - selling his people as slaves to be murdered by the crazy kite people, killing his wives etc.
Yeah I'm aware, I briefly mentioned it but I didn't go into in my original post. Although iirc he only actually killed one of his wives, who tried to assassinate/overthrow him, at least it's implied from visiting all the graves after seeing the map after confronting Victory. Patriarch was giving prisoners to the gangs as slaves as part of his deal for them to leave Colorado Springs. Which yeah, is pretty shitty, but relative to all the shit going around him is understandable. If we were to judge the Patriarch against leaders throughout history, not just contemporary society (which the writers implicitly want you do to) Patriarch is actually really quite tame. If that's the price to keep Colorado Springs safe, the only island of stability in a world of post-apocalyptic chaos, it's probably justified. Specially in contrast to Deth's plan of overthrowing him (violently) and just hoping everything doesn't collapse on itself. Deth's own plan also involves freeing a slaver leader (Ironclad Cordite) to use him against the Patriarch, and when he eventually leaves to go to Kansas to go conquer and kill there, you can actually question Deth about her hypocrisy and the atrocities Cordite will certainly commit and she just handwaves it away as 'yeah he probably won't make it that far and will be betrayed by his own gang eventually, don't worry about it'. Yeah, real confidence inducing.
In the end, I think that one of the main problems is just there's also a tension with Fallout/Wasteland games how much grim apocalypse stuff and how much "leavening" goofy stuff you add in.
Somehow Fallout NV handled it perfectly fine, and yes, even I will begrudgingly admit the Bethesda Fallouts did a decent job of balancing this. I honestly just think it comes down to the Wasteland 3 writers just not being very good.
Story Continued
The major theme in Wasteland 3 is about compromising on values to achieve your goals. It is true of the Patriarch, ruling Colorado with an iron fist despite false promises of elections and appeals to pre-War America, signing a secret deal with raider gangs to leave Colorado Springs alone in exchange for giving them supplies and slaves. Angela Deth does this, she goes AWOL and commits treason against to the Rangers to bring down an unjust tyrant, to the point she is even willing to free and work with a leader of a slaver gang (betraying the Ranger good guy ethos), if indirectly, to bring down the Patriarch. You as the Player Rangers, have to make plenty of compromises which leaves no one happy to get (in my opinion) is the 'best' outcome.
The theme and the story WL3 is trying to tell doesn't work is because the Patriarch is unambiguously the good guy. Here I don't mean unambiguously to mean there's nothing to criticize him for, but rather he is obviously the correct choice, at least morally. The Patriarch basically built/formed Colorado Springs from scratch, the only beacon of real civilisation for anywhere in Colorado. He did defeat many of the raider gangs, but eventually he reached a stalemate and struggled to beat them. So eventually he reached an agreement with the gangs to pay them off to protect Colorado. As presented by the game, this was pretty much the only way to keep Colorado safe. Angela Deth doesn't seem to appreciate that that the Patriarch might actually be a just tyrant rather than an unjust tyrant and he had good reasons to do what he did. This is a (post-)post-apocalyptic world! The Patriarch actually seems like a decent guy otherwise and seems to genuinely care for the people of Colorado. While he obviously doesn't tell you the whole truth, he never actually lies to you and completely upholds honours his deal with you. Ironically, his biggest flaw is probably the fact he allowed his dangerous, crazy children to run free and didn't punish them earlier like he should have when he had the chance, the most human of the flaws, not wanting to punish his children out of fatherly love.
I'm really not sure what the developer intentions were here. I've seen some people try to explain Angela Deth's stupidity by saying that's the point, she's being a Ranger forever, she's become disillusioned and radicalized. I really don't think that was the intent, and I think the intent was really genuine attempt to portray some deep tale of grey morality that just falls flat. I think Angela Deth wasn't meant to be an disillusioned idiot is further evidenced by the "best" ending of the game, where you overthrow the Patriarch peacefully (rather than violently), which you do pretty unapologetically to the Patriarch (you get no choice), which seems to completely vindicate Deth. I think this is just a case of bad writing.
This is really compounded by the fact you are offered virtually zero opportunity to interrogate the Patriarch or Deth or any other major character about their beliefs and philosophy, you really have to try and just piece it together and justify it in your head. Even at the end of the game, where you meet Death and/or the Patriarch at the end of the game before you clash, there is no real examination of the characters and their beliefs. The conversation lasts five seconds and you even just pass a shitty speech check for them to stand down just because to skip the fight. To make a direct comparison with Fallout: NV, which Wasteland shares DNA with, you get multiple opportunities to talk in quite some detail with each of the major factions and their representatives and their justification. Even at the end of the game, where you can use a speech check to 'defeat' your enemies (e.g. Lanius), FNV doesn't just have some generic 'surrender please' dialogue, but puts serious effort into actually justifying how you convince the factions and it relates to their circumstance. The last section of WL3 does seem rushed and incomplete, and I wonder if it was their intention to flesh it out more.
I know it's perhaps unfair to WL3 to compare it to FNV, but WL3 is emblematic of what as I see as a growing negative trend in video game stories. The writers will raise some complex themes or ideas in their story, fail to or only superficially engage with those ideas, and then conclude like they've said something meaningful. It seems like they think that merely raising these ideas is good enough on its own. It's like the writers think they have to deconstruct their own story and characters (because they're overeducated hacks who were taught to do that in writing school), but don't actually have the writing chops or philosophical depth to anything interesting with it. The writers routinely fail to imagine living in post-apocalyptic society like Wasteland's would actually like. They're stuck in a presentist mindset where I think they just take things like 'Patriarch = despot, despot = bad' for granted because it appeals to modern sensibilities, even if such a moral judgement doesn't make sense in context of the world. I would rather they just stick to simple good vs evil stories rather that have the pretence of moral complexity without actually doing the work.
Another thing that I found really annoying was the portrayal of (true) AI/'synths' in Wasteland 3. As far as I know (mostly reading the wiki), prior to Wasteland 3, AI and synths were unambiguously evil, and the primary antagonists of the game. All the synths were created by the Cochise AI, an evil genocidal AI. Wasteland 3 I guess tried to change this I guess because there's numerous friendly AI/synth you come across in Wasteland 3. It feels incredibly jarring, because synths are meant to be the mortal enemy of the Rangers, and some dialogue reflects this, but they also seem to be going really hard on trying to get you to empathize with the synths. I've seen it suggested that this is deliberately done to try and create some moral ambiguity, or complexity. Maybe the synths are just pretending to be good to get the human's trust! Again, I don't buy it. In the endings where you help the synths/AI it's portrayed as unambiguously positive. It's just so jarring.
Other characters aren't really developed either, Liberty, who is presented as interesting character and antagonist, you only have two very brief conversations with which don't say much. All the companions are uninteresting or one-note except for Lucia Wesson, a daughter of an elite family who matures through the game (and her presentation is basically identical that of Mattie Ross in Coens' remake of True Grit), and Ironclad Cordite, the former leader of one of the gangs who has a grudge against the Patriarch and believes his destiny is to become the next Genghis Khan.
Other than that, the writing is just generally wacky, Fallout style dark comedy style of writing which can be pretty good in some parts and in the side quests.
Music
One of the best parts about the games is the music, it's utilized really effectively. During major boss fights or set battles, a really interesting and unusual song will usually play that relates to the circumstances of the battle. Usually this will different-genre cover of a song. For example, the final song of the final DLC plays a country western cover of a old sitcom theme song. The songs are surprising enjoyable, even if I don't really like all the genres that play. I wish more games tried something a bit unorthodox with their soundtrack.
DLC
Quick comment on the two DLC:
Battle for Steeltown - Help the leader of a super advanced factory that supplies all the advanced goods to Colorado resolve issues in her factory. Superficial anti-capitalist commentary with striking workers, and more synth-love. Some new gameplay mechanics. Alright, worth buying on sale.
The Holy Detonation - Help restore an experimental nuclear power plant to power Colorado, the power plant is being worshipped by two warring cults who deliberately radiate and mutate themselves. I guess this is meant to be some 'biting' satire of religious belief 20 years out of date? Has some interesting gameplay ideas, atrocious execution. Not worth buying.
Conclusion
I have criticised Wasteland 3 a lot, especially it's writing, but mostly because it's more enjoyable to criticise than it is to praise. I mostly enjoyed my experience with Wasteland 3, even if it was frustrating at times. It's a competent game that gets the basics right, but is otherwise pretty unremarkable. I would recommend it to anyone who likes tactical RPGs and is looking for some time to kill.
Wasteland 3 Review/Critique
I guess this is becoming somewhat of a series now, my previous reviews on the Motte are:
I finally got around to finishing Wasteland 3 after playing it off-and-on for months, some of you may have remembered that it inspired me to make this post when I first started playing it.
Overview
Wasteland 3 is a tactical (think modern XCOM) RPG set in the post-post-apocalyptic Colorado, where you control a group of Arizona Rangers, a kinda-military organization who arrive in Colorado from Arizona after making a deal with the 'Patriarch', the leader of Colorado Springs, the only really civilized and stable polity in Colorado to aid him in exchange for supplies. The Rangers are ambushed and nearly wiped out en route, which kickstarts the game.
Disclosure - I have never played either the ancient original Wasteland, or its modern prequel Wasteland 2, though I never felt I really needed to, the game is a bit of a fresh start.
Overall, I found Wasteland 3 to be solid, fairly competent game. It does have some notable issues, is surprisingly short and feels rushed at the end, but is enjoyable enough. The gameplay is decent, the writing and RPG-elements are passable. It's nothing remarkable. I would only recommend the game if you are a fan of tactical style, turn-based RPG.
Gameplay
The gameplay of Wasteland 3 is nothing revolutionary. The gameplay is most directly similar to the Shadowrun series. Like many CRPGs, you have a party of customized Rangers and/or companions who you run around the world with, completing missions, have skills to interact with the world (lockpicking, 'nerd stuff' (hacking) etc), or use for dialogue choices (speech checks). You find new weapons and armour as you progress. There is also an overworld map to travel between city/combat hubs. The combat is basically extremely similar to the Shadowrun games, or to XCOM:EU/XCOM2 if you haven't played it. Now to focus on the actual criticism:
I didn't like the progression system in this game. You get perk points every few level ups, but there are so little perk choices available that never used most of them because it never felt worth it, entered the endgame with most of my perk points unspent before finally just using most of them on minor perks I didn't care about. Similarly, I rarely used any special abilities (not counting the Strike Meter) outside of a couple that were pretty broken. It never really a reason to use anything than basic attack 90% of the time. But that might just be laziness on my part. I think I might have screwed myself over too, because I played the game without any melee characters which I think the game really wants you to have, as melee damage and health are tied to the same stat. I tried to make my heavy gunner my tank and it didn't quite work. The time to kill on my characters even with moderate health investment was extremely low. Enemies would often have anywhere from 4x-20x my characters HP, and my characters would die in one or two hits. As such, fights were usually feast or famine, as if more than one of your characters go down at once it's highly likely you will lose. I think they had to have this low time to kill on player characters because healing items are functionally unlimited. I wished they would have balanced it better, limit healing, lower damage have have slower, more deliberate and methodical fights.
One of the more fun parts of the combat/gameplay is amassing a large group of NPC followers (animals, robots and others) who will proceed to maul and absolutely destroy the enemy (they also usually have 3x-10x amount the HP of your characters). But this is pretty blatantly overpowered and gets boring pretty quickly. It also reduces the amount of actions you can take, because it becomes hard to use any kind of AoE weapon.
Choosing skills seem really superficial and isn't really a meaningful choice. Realistically, you want and can easily have at least one member of your team max out every skill, combat and non-combat. While the game has some pretense of the being able to play anyway you want, with any skill combination, it quickly becomes apparent that maxing out skills like lockpicking, explosives (defusing) etc becomes pretty much mandatory. There are a couple of exceptions like Toaster Repair and Survival, which just add additional funny content and reducing tedium respectively. The worst part of the skills is the armor modding and weapon modding (crafting) skills - you can just have a separate Ranger not in the main party who you just swap in and out whenever you want to craft something, making the whole crafting skill check redundant. Wasteland 3 suffers the extremely common issue in RPGs where speech checks are almost always strictly better than other options, meaning picking them is a no-brainer.
Equipment is also an issue. You find new equipment fairly quickly, and higher level gear quickly outclasses old gear. This means whenever you find a piece of equipment you really like, you might be tossing it away after a couple of levels, no way to upgrade its level. Wasteland 3 isn't the worst game in this regard, but it is annoying.
The game is deceptively short. The game honestly feels like it's missing the last quarter of the game, and was rushed to completion (I have no idea if this was actually the case). The game builds up to the final confrontation, finally a meeting of all the major characters... and it goes nowhere. It all resolves itself incredibly quickly, game ends. More on this later.
Story, Writing and Themes
MAJOR SPOILERS
I have a lot to say about the story, but I first have to briefly summarize the story to provide context to those who haven't played (but don't mind being spoiled!).
The Arizona Rangers are in desperate need of supplies after they had to blow up their own base to destroy the Cochise AI, the antagonist of Wasteland 2. The Patriarch of Colorado contacts the Rangers and promises them long-term supplies if they send a contingent to Colorado to help him find his wayward children who are destabilizing Colorado in various ways. Along the way the Rangers are ambushed and nearly wiped out by the Dorseys, one of the various wasteland raider gangs destabilizing Colorado. Despite this, the remaining Rangers establish themselves and proceed with their mission foil the Patriarch's kids and return them to him. The Patriarch's youngest son Valor is a snivelling insecure genius who is aiding a Ronald Reagan cult who want to overthrow the Patriarch, the oldest son Victory is a crazy, brutal psychopath who enjoy torturing and brutalizing his victims and is holding members of Colorado Spring's elite hostage in a skiing retreat. The whereabouts of the middle daughter Liberty, ostensibly the primary antagonist of the game, is unknown but you eventually find out she's uniting all the various raider tribes into one war party to overthrow her father, destroy Colorado Springs and theoretically set up a despotic raider empire in Colorado and beyond. Along the way you come across Angela Deth, one of the original Rangers (she was companion in WL1 and WL2), who was part of a forward part towards Colorado, who went AWOL after she learnt that the Patriarch isn't the exactly heroic saviour of Colorado he portrays himself as, refused to help him and is now trying to overthrow him. At the end of the game, the main endings are either to side with the Patriarch and fight Deth and some of your fellow Rangers, or to side with Deth and overthrow the Patriarch (either violently or peacefully if you got the support of some factions) and rule Colorado yourself. There's also an ending where you side with one of the raider gangs and help them raid and destroy/rule Colorado but I don't really consider it a 'real' ending, because it's so inconsistent with the whole ethos of the Rangers. It's the comically evil for evil's sake ending. Okay, now to the actual critique about the story:
Continued in below comment
Idiocracy: The Motte Post Adaptation
But seriously:
The main issue with your Tutsi and Hutu example, and the first part of your argument is you completely sidestep liberalism. If you're going to discuss this issue you really need to address liberalism directly at some point. Your argument is predicated on the primacy of the social group collectively. The classical liberal perspective have very little to say about groups or identity, and pretty much exclusively focused on the individual. So what if there are less Tutsis? Ethnic social categories like Tutsi and Hutu are (or rather, wishfully) obsolete under the liberal framework. There is merely the primacy of the individual. You need to rebut liberalism. Why, when we live in a liberal world, should we care about things 'cultural, behavioral, and genetic legacy'. They do nothing for me as an individual, except what utility they can provide me in the here and now, not when I'm dead. The future belongs to those who show up, and who shows up depends on who cares who shows up when you're gone.
Secondly, the people who 'did everything right' actually didn't do everything right. They forgot to have children. You're kind of using 'everything right' here to have two meanings. You're using it to be tongue-in-cheek by using the word 'right' to mean 'everything society told them was right'. Which fair enough, I think people have been deceived into an atomized, individualistic, hedonistic lifestyle that I think is both morally wrong and ultimately unfulfilling. But they also bear some personal responsibility in the path that they have chosen.
But you also seem to be unironically using 'right' to mean actually morally right, because you actually do seem to think they are right by evidence by your distain of those who actually do have children as lessers. They can't have it both ways. Either they're an atomized liberal individual who doesn't care about their 'legacy' or social units other than the self, making your whole point moot, or they do care about those things, so they should and probably will actually have children then. Your complaint seems to be that the educated, liberal, intelligent people aren't having enough kids. In that case your focus should be telling them them to go have kids rather than just complaining about 'fecund privilege' that the 'lessers' are actually doing the right thing by having kids.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3yr ago
If you could wave a magic wand to establish some collective norm to improve this situation, what would you do?
Unironically, as I say this as a pretty unobservant/lapsed Catholic, make everyone go to church. Alternatively, some substitute secular social club that theoretically fulfils a similar socializing role, but realistically this doesn't work, no matter how much atheists believe they can construct secular equivalents of the social role the religion plays.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3yr ago
Get “party members” into what, in this case? The contestants? The judges?
The production team and management. Obviously the Great British Bakeoff will need to hire one or a dozen DEI consultants to help ensure their show is inclusive and represents the diverse world we live in today, and such terrible racism and white supremacy doesn't seep into the show again.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3yr ago
Was the key to colonialism leaving the locals alone as long as they paid up ("otherwise keep local governance structures intact"), or actively trying to change their values ("bring this progress and civilisation to the unfortunate primitive peoples of Africa and Asia")?
As contradictory as it sounds, it was both. The Europeans, and particularly the British, were smart administrators and governors. They knew how to adapt to local political and cultural circumstances while promoting their own political and social goals in a way that contemporary Western states seem to be unable to do. The majority of the British Empire in Africa and Asia was administered via indirect rule. In 1947, even after centuries of British rule (both Company and Crown) and the gradual annexation of many of the Princely States (including the doctrine of lapse), the Princely States still consisted of ~40% of British India by land. But the Princely States weren't just some isolationist islands in the middle of British India, however. They had railways build through them, hospitals and Western schools etc. The difference is that the British worked with the local Rajas who still had a great deal of autonomy and authority. Over decades, many of the Rajas would actually give up significant autonomy and give more authority to the British because it was simply more convenient for them. This general approach was true of other parts of the British Empire, and the European colonisers more generally.
It was not the American approach of storming in to a country, creating a new Western-style liberal democratic government from nothing and expecting everyone to instantly to like it. To use another historical comparison, even when the British (under Company rule) did militarily conquer the Sikh Empire, which was their largest military expansion of the British Rule in India, they did not immediately put the whole region under direct rule, but rather restored many Rajas in the former territory of the Sikh Empire.
Are we saying the Right Way to do Afghanistan would have been to let 'em keep their women in burquas and girls' schools closed and other such things, just pay us some taxes and give up any international terrorists who particularly annoy us? I guess I could buy that, though I'm not sure it's what 19th century Britain would do.
Yes and no. The Right Way to do things would certainly to have have more tacit, been less gung-ho about the whole thing and curb their excessive moralizing. Did you know that the 2004 Constitution of Afghanistan has a provision that 25% of the seats of the Afghan Parliament are to be reserved exclusively for women? Such a provision would be extremely controversial in many Western states, let alone extremely Islamic conservative Afghanistan. The Americans should at the very least not expect to remake Afghanistan overnight, which is seemingly exactly what they thought they could do. To emphasise the point from above, European colonialism in the 19th and 20th centuries was a gradual process that involved slow integration and change while using indirect rule and local institutions.
I could see Iraq as being a "Civilising Mission" thing - the word at the time was, we knock off Saddam and bring 'em Democracy, Whiskey, and Sexy and they'll just love us right away and it'll go great. Was the problem the lack of widespread and long-lasting zeal about that mission, or that it just plain didn't work?
A while back, I saw an interview that Condoleezza Rice gave to the Hoover Institution in which they discussed the Iraq War. In the interview, Rice basically just straight out admitted that the Bush administration and the US military has no idea what they were getting themselves into in terms of local politics. They had very little knowledge of local power dynamics, local tribal conflicts and alliances, or any kind of understanding of the local Iraqi political and social circumstances in general. The attitude of the Americans seem to literally have been more or less exactly what you describe - 'the Iraqis are just like Americans, crying out for American democracy, if we topple the Saddam and install a democratic government everything will just kind of work itself out'. I doubt the British even in the height of their power were ever so naive and arrogant. Again, you can't change a country and its culture overnight.
I'm going to try and synthesize a lot of points that others have brought up and also add my own analysis.
By 'colonialism' I assume you're referring to style of so-called 'exploitative colonialism' of Africa and Asia during the 19th century, I think a poor name that betrays the ideological perspective the dominates the analysis of colonialism today. I think the style of 'settler colonialism' of the Americas etc. are not possible today for more fairly obvious reasons.
I do think many of the below comments are correct that nationalism has played a significant role in making colonialism extremely difficult to enforce in the present day. In the past, there was not a huge amount of difference whether you paid taxes to or have allegiance to a 'local' lord or king, or a foreign lord or king. For example in India, for the Rajas who existed British rule, pragmatically there was not much difference between allegiance to a 'local' Islamic Persianised ruler (Mughals) or to the British. Indeed, many Rajas willingly switched allegiance to the British, which they saw as preferable. By and large, colonial rule was legitimate - the colonial powers couldn't have governed such large amounts of land with such little Western manpower otherwise. This changed with the development of a national identity in the colonial states, which ironically is a Western import. Anti-colonialism is ironically a Western invention. What you see consistently during the decolonisation period was Western educated local elites picking up Western political philosophy (liberalism and socialism too) often during their travels and education in the West, and using that as a basis for decolonisation and nationalism. It's the case for figures like Kwame Nkrumah, Obafemi Awolowo, even Gandhi. Once nationalism took hold in colonial regions, it became socially and politically untenable for a militant minority of the local population to be administered by a group deemed not part of the new national identity (anti-colonial movements usually did not have majority support), regardless of any material benefits. Indeed, many of these countries collapsed immediately after decolonisation. A matter of national pride as it were. This is really no different to the Springtime of Nations, where Italians, Czechs, Hungarians opposed Austrian rule (no matter how nominal), Poles under German rule etc.
Another major factor is that there is just no political will to do colonialism in modern societies. A major motivating factor behind the 19th Century colonialism was the Civilising Mission. While this is often the subject of contemporary revisionism like the term 'exploitative colonialism', there was a strong altruistic motivation to European colonialism. The 19th Century was a period of great intellectual and economic progress, and many Europeans strongly believed they had a moral, often religious imperative to bring this progress and civilisation to the unfortunate primitive peoples of Africa and Asia. Again, their motivations were primarily altruistic, whether you think those motivations have merit or where legitimate is up to the reader. The reality is that with a handful of exceptions, colonialism was actually incredibly expensive for European powers and largely was a net deficit for the coloniser, not a benefit, mostly motivated by colonial prestige and the moral imperative of civilising. Building infrastructure, schools, hospitals and a functioning bureaucracy all from scratch isn't exactly cheap. Otto von Bismark was famously anti-colonial, not out of any compassion for would-be colonised people, but rather he saw it as a significant waste of resources that could be spent on strengthening Germany. Germany would eventually reluctantly join the colonial race anyway due to international peer pressure and prestige. This ties into my own personal theory for why I think decolonisation took hold in not just the colonial states themselves, but also in the Western academia and elite in the mid-20th Century - postwar Europe had been devastated by WW2 and could not afford to maintain its colonies, but needed a moral justification to abandon the colonies, if at least to save face. The decolonial movement was that justification - Western elites had a genuine motivation to promote or at least passively accept decolonisation to absolve themselves of any responsibility they may have had to colonial states and people they governed. Though, this may have come back to bite them decades later, giving fuel to what would one day become the contemporary critical social justice movement and anti-Western sentiment in academia more generally. Kind of like the CIA funding the Mujahideen.
As other comments have also mentioned, contemporary Western states just don't do colonialism correctly, in large part caused by ideological and political concerns. To use the common America and Afghanistan (or Iraq) example, the 'correct' or functional way to do colonialism is to copy what the British did, ally with local elites, prop them up, arm them, and help them destroy their enemies, but otherwise keep local governance structures intact (the British were more than happy for local allied chiefs, shieks or rajas to govern their own territory as long as they kept to certain conditions. This is not what the Americans did or tried to do - instead, they tried to completely supplant local government structures by installing a completely foreign, Western style liberal democracy in those states that has no legitimacy and collapses under its own weight. Part of the reason for this is that America is so narcissistic that it thinks that remaking the world into America-style liberal democracies ("spreading democracy/freedom") is just the Greatest Thing Ever, but also because functional British style colonialism would never fly in the ideological waters the West is currently in - human rights, self determination, colonialism creating 'evil' hierarchies and so on. So the Americans have to try and do 'non-colonial colonialism' which obviously doesn't work.
Another thing to consider is that 21st century societies simply don't operate in the same way a 19th century society does, and we shouldn't expect contemporary colonialism to resemble previous colonialism. Obviously, this brings in the neo-colonialism debate. To simplify greatly, modern service economies and financial systems and multinational corporations may have made old boots-on-the-ground colonialism redundant. Why do you need to literally, physically control the governance of states in Africa when you can achieve the same effect from a distance with IMF loans? And it's not just the West - what China is doing could also be called neo-colonialism as well, least of all with the Belt and Road Initiative, where China will indebt half of Africa to China and basically have control of all their finances.
I'm not convinced by the (military) technology arguments put forward by many of the other commenters here. There are several reasons for this. First, the vast majority of European colonialism in the 19th century was not done through military conquest, but primarily through diplomatic means and gaining the allegiance of local elites. This is not to say there was no war, but there was very little compared to the scale we're talking about. You can perhaps make an argument that there was still a lot of indirect military conquest as Western powers would arm and fund elites favorable to them who would then conquer their rivals, but this is both indirect, and negates a lot of the apparent technological advantage by using an intermediary. Secondly, many of the colonised states weren't actually that far behind the Europeans in military technology. India in particular was home to the 'Gunpowder Empire' of the Mughals who were very familiar with advanced firearms long before Crown rule in India. The British defeat in the First Anglo-Afghan war is another good example of this. Third, even when the Europeans had a clear military technology advantage, it still wasn't a clearly decisive factor. The clearest example of this was the Anglo-Zulu War, where the Zulus nearly beat the British despite only having mostly iron-age technology. Fourth, it's not clear to me that the technological disparity between, for example, the British Empire and Iraq in 19th century is larger than it is between the USA and Iraq today. The Americans have a level of military sophistication that is miles ahead of anyone in the Global South. The Americans steamrolled Saddam's forces in 2003. But in my opinion, colonialism was never really a question of military might or technology, but of governance and legitimacy. This is not to say military technology provided no edge for the Europeans, but I think it is generally overstated. Which leads me to my next point:
I might be convinced that technological superiority might be a reason for 19th century colonial success if the technological superiority being described was social, political and economic technology, rather than military technology. Simply put, the Europeans were generally far better administrators, in many cases building a functioning, large-scale administrative system where previously there had only been anarchic tribal and ethnic conflict. The Europeans brought with them engineering, medicine, rule of law and so on, which did wonders for their legitimacy. This gap in social/economic technology between the Europeans and colonial states in the 19th century is still probably larger than the Europeans and even the most dysfunctional post-colonial state (e.g. Somalia) today, though I might be convinced otherwise.
To conclude, I want to link to the article the Case for Colonialism by Bruce Gilley, which I have previously posted on /r/theMotte, rebuts much of the anti-colonialist literature. While not explicitly about the topic at hand, its arguments are highly relevant.
they found themselves two large, urbanized, literate, complex, and populous states in the Triple Alliance and Inca.
To nitpick, the Inca were not literate and the Aztec were arguably not literate either. The Inca had no writing system, they were a pre-literate society. They did have the 'Quipu', a system of knots on cords for recordkeeping, but it is a real stretch to call this a writing system. The Aztec did have pictogram/ideogram 'writing' system, but it debated whether this represents a 'true' writing system. It doesn't have seemed to have reached the complexity of late Egyptian hieroglyphs or Chinese characters (becoming logographic) which also started off as pictograms, for example. It's not clear if there was any 'real' written literature or prose like epics or poems (colonial destruction is an issue), the writing was mostly used for record keeping, they seemed to have a primarily oral tradition. Mayan writing system was a bit more complex however, but does run into much of the same issues.
If you had asked me this question 6 years ago I would have been extremely excited for the (hypothetical) upcoming release of Victoria 3. Or any Paradox game for that matter. But nowadays I am completely disillusioned with Paradox games. The quality of their games have diminished significantly, and their pricing models have just gotten worse and worse. Victoria 3 in particular has some baffling design decisions that has only bolstered my belief that either the talent has all left, or are being hamstrung by management. 2016 marked a serious turning point for the company, the year they went public. Though, many of horrible decisions (from my player's perspective, not business perspective) started a few years before that, perhaps in preparation for going public.
A huge problem with Paradox is that they have a de facto monopoly on their small little niche of strategy games. There's no one else really trying to make the same style of games as them, outside of a few recent indie studios that remain to see how they do. It's a similar problem that was caused by EA (yes, Paradox is turning into strategy EA) having a de facto monopoly on Sims-style games and Sim City games. They could charge ridiculous prices and have extremely consumer-unfriendly business practices because they know that no one else is making similar games to them, the players have to come to them to get their fix. Of course, the Sim City franchise was eventually challenged by Cities: Skylines (ironically published by Paradox) who beat them so hard that Sim City is now effectively a dead franchise. People often say that games like Total War or others are similar to Paradox games, but in my opinion they're not the same experience.
The quality of Paradox games have become worse. Whereas as previous games really tried to have strong historical simulation elements, dynamic gameplay elements, etc. the more recent Paradox forgo this for increasingly gamified mechanics (e.g. the absence of population mechanics). I increasingly feel like I am playing a glorified boardgame than I am a historical simulation grand strategy game. But maybe that's what the people want. They do seems to be trying to appeal to a broader audience, dumbing down their games. Maybe it is a sensible business decision, but I am allowed to call their games shittier for it. Though, I have a strong suspicion that there's a lack of talent/creative vision in Paradox devs now, with all the old guard either becoming washed-up and promoted to management, or just simply left, and the new talent just being shit.
Speaking of business decisions ruining Paradox games, I despise the monetization model they've adopted because I think it genuinely incentivizes them to make shit games. Like EA, the modus operandi is now to create a shell of a game, with bare bones mechanics and content - really putting the 'minimum' in 'minimum viable product' - and then slowly actually develop the game piecemeal and selling it to players over the next decade. This does not make for robust, interesting games. And that's even assuming they actually do attempt to develop robust and interesting mechanics for DLC. More often than not, it's lazy shit like just giving a few countries new mission trees, something that should be in the base game. Oh god I hate the mission system and 'focuses' that now have infected most of the Paradox games. I know some people like the mission system but I despise them, and embodies everything wrong with Paradox games. Rather than having dynamic mechanics that allows players to create their own story (history), we're going to rail road players (and the AI) into a couple of set paths. In its worse form the mission mechanics turn Paradox games in to interactive light novels (HOI4). This lazy, hollow development process did come to bite them in the ass with Imperator: Rome, which was released so barebones and lacking in content that even the biggest Paradox simps and fanboys admitted it was a pile of dogshit. I know that people always talk about the exorbitant cost of Paradox games, which is an issue, but to me the biggest failing of the monetization model is how it incentivizes them to make their games in the worst way possible. Also, people defending the price as 'but you'll spend hundreds of hours in' is a stupid argument, because literally nothing else is priced based on the hypothetical amount of use you will get out of it. No one would defend spending $300 on a copy of LotR because you'll read it many times. What about the person who buys a Paradox game and DLC and doesn't sink hundreds or thousands of hours into it? The reason they charge so much is simply because they have a monopoly on their genre and can get away with it.
Victoria 2 was unironically peak Paradox. Sure, Victoria 2 is extremely janky, and has some serious problems. But what makes it so good is its genuine ambition and dedication to historical simulation, such the economy and population mechanics, which allows for extreme depth and dynamic gameplay. CK2 is a close second for similar reasons, though it was the first game to embrace the Paradox DLC chain.
Will I buy Victoria 3? Definitely not on launch. Probably will some number of years from now when I can get it for next to nothing from Humble Bundle or whatever.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3yr ago
I'm not quite sure why people seem to think businesses having a profit motive makes them, or the people working within the business, completely immune to entryism and perverse incentives. But whenever this or similar topics comes up people seems to think this is the case.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3yr ago
But if we accept this conclusion then we can also argue that secular societies are incredibly evolutionarily fit in the landscape of the modern world.
I wouldn't get so ahead of ourselves. Societies have only been secular for the last 60 years or so - depending on how you define it, was 1950s American society (not just government) truly 'secular'? - while religious societies have been around since, well, since the dawn of history. The contemporary secular society is really a flash in the pan compared to the entirely of human history. Yes, I know that you could make some argument that the speed of history is accelerating or whatever, but it's still important to consider that the secular society is still in relative infancy. Any negative consequences of mass but societal changes will usually have some lag time. Maybe the broad decline we're seeing across the West is in part a consequence of the secularisation of society.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3yr ago
No, I'm saying that simply pointing out that people aren't the perfect paragons of the ideology they support isn't actually a rebuttal of that ideology or their arguments. It's the textbook definition of ad hominem.
Perhaps it is exactly because these 'New Right' live in a modern liberal society and have modern liberal lives they can articulate their dissatifaction with it. Someone like Meloni would probably agree that raising a child as a single mother is not ideal despite being one herself, and probably supports (and does to my knowledge) support traditional social institutions that would make it less common.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3yr ago
And Karl Marx was an bourgeois wannabe who lived on handouts from his parents and Engels and never worked a day of real labour in his life. And neither was he able to fully articulate what the ideal communist state would look like.
Just because their personal lives don't perfectly reflect their stated ideological preferences doesn't mean their preferences aren't real or don't resonate with a lot of people.
Addendum - The Static Nature of the World
Something I kind of touched on in the gameplay section but didn't really expand on is how static the world feels. The nations in the games don't actually do anything of their own accord, things only happen when the factions make things happen. There's not really any true dynamic systems. It doesn't feel like a lived in world.
Additionally, the game doesn't really illustrate how what human society looks likes in the aftermath of alien contact, invasion, and rapid technological advancement. At best, you're given of couple of snippets of text explaining what the technology does and how it might affect society when you unlock it. But you never feel it or have it materially impact the world. As far as we are concerned, the world and society at large remains mostly the same as it is now ~40 years into the future. We don't really get any changing game mechanics about how nations work or anything. This is despite the introduction of technologies like self-programming AI, quantum computing, virtually unlimited clean energy in the form of cheap mass fusion technology and so on. Game terms these things mostly just translate into like 5% bonuses to investment in economy and welfare. The lack of vision in how society might materially change due to the events of the game is pretty disappointing.
Climate Change
One of the biggest political issues I forgot to mention is climate change is modelled in the game, with is providing an ongoing drain on world GDP supposedly representing the costs of adapting to a changing climate. It is possible to invest points into 'Welfare' which includes removing a minor amount of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. However, and this is where the game becomes expressly political/ideological, is that the game doesn't want you (and doesn't let you) actually solve climate change, you can only slow it down. Even techs expressly designed to address climate change like designer organisms and carbon capture technology do very little to address the problem. This is a deliberate choice from the developers as I've seen it been discussed, because despite being set in an timeline where mass advanced AI, nuclear fusion and plasma weaponry are quickly invented and adopted, apparently we can't develop a similar solution for climate change. The developers, and many of the fans who have argued about it in the forums and discord, believe in some green radical social change is the only way to deal with climate change and have inserted that view into their advanced sci-fi setting.
I agree, and I would be more forgiving if it wasn't for the fact the game seems to be heavily drawing from Alpha Centauri in their faction design and presentation. It's pretty obvious. They set themselves up for unfavourable comparisons.
The sad part is that XCOM had a great lore justification for dynamic difficulty.
Terra Invicta also kinda has an explanation but it's not great. Just to do spoilers for the alien motivation, which you won't discover the entirety off in every faction's playthough. Spoiler:
Not the greatest example, because the reason Mayella comes onto Tom Robinson is because she's lonely, neglected and abused by her family, her father in particular. It's heavily implied that the reason she throws him under the bus is because of severe social pressure she's under, particularly from her abuse father. You're meant to have at least some sympathy for the position Mayella is in. At the end of the day, it's still meant to be her father Bob Ewell, as the major villain, thematically representing the evil patriarchal white supremacy that is being criticized in To Kill a Mockingbird.
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