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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   22545 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026

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More investment talk as the thread dies: I posted earlier about some short term funny money gambling I did on the US administration stepping on their own balls before falling into a ditch re. the Middle east because every Republican gets at least 1, I present to you another such case:

I keep a fairly large amount of money in foreign currency not as an investment but just to have available to use out country should I need it. My euros (tourist fun bucks) have been doing well as Trump weakens the US economy in relation to the world but not that well, more of a medium well. My other currency I keep a decent chunk of from the old country has been blowing the fuck up. I have made almost 100% gains on this bitch just for having it, I am up more than $70000 just on the currency, I don't even know how much the property has gone up.

Nowm the culture war angle, which I didn't understand when I was a brokie (Read: had a job the contributed to society positively in any way): I can see why people with huge amounts of liquid capital would want someone like trump, even if he was obviously going to shit up the economy he is in charge of.

If you are wrong and he doesn't shit it up, geat! You make money normal style! If he shits it up just a little, great! The proles get hungry and lose their bargaining power! If he fucks it up a TON, great! You can take advantage of the motion to get opportunities you would never receive in a well functioning system!

And on top of all that, he promises you spoils; you can just ignore anti trust if you bow a scrape, you can count on a reduced tax burden and a less well off population that is easier to exploit, you can count on him not actually fucking with the immigration that you REALLY need to keep the wheels turning.

All this is predicated on the Democrats being Republican lite Regans with little rainbow flag tie pins; that they aren't going to storm back into office like TR and bust the shit out of you, but that seems like a safe bet. The party machine is so outrageously cucked they can't even be properly anti-war or anti-elite, even though both those positions are wildly popular in both bases.

Most wealthy GOP donors didn’t want Trump. I think it had something to do with vulgarity but more to do with the fact that Trump was in an important business for a long time in a major market (commercial and to some extent residential real estate, casinos, hotels, TV, in and around NYC for 50+ years) and so encountered many rich people in many walks of life before becoming president. Many very rich people I know in NYC, which has by far the largest number of them in the country, had either met him or knew someone who had or had heard some kind of first/secondhand stories of him, and nobody liked doing business with him and he screwed over a lot of people.

Do markets love Trump? Traders love Trump because of volatility. Volatility is good for business because uncertainty widens spreads in every asset class. That is why trading floors on the sell side especially shrank so much after 2009 and have done so well since Covid, and especially over the last year and a half. As for other participants I don’t think Trump is responsible for the asset price boom of the last few years concentrated around tech and AI, which has been driven by a combination of earnings and hype but which also follows the general post-COVID boom that largely happened under Biden.

My guess is that if you look at actual Trump voting among rich people (in finance or generally), the demographics largely follow the overall pro-Trump vote in all classes.

My investment strategy so far has been "Shit's Fucked". It's been doing very well, although I have been outperformed by strategies I have termed "AI bull forever" (Nvidia, RAM companies) and "Shit Better Not Be Fucked" (FAANG, Palantir, weapons manufacturers) so far.

I see it reversing very hard in near future, but I'm not in options so I don't have time gating on my thesis. I'm long oil, oil services, offshore oil, energy, gold, uranium, gold mining companies, shipping and tanker companies. Considering getting into fertilizer stocks and old people care stocks. As far as degenerate portfolios go, I like "Poor Fat and Stupid", which is fast food companies, pharma companies, plus Klarna. I hear some guy has also been running an Evil portfolio - investing on the most evil companies he could find on the NYSE, I think he was doing pretty well.

That was me! I'm the evil guy!

I did that as soon as I saw trump was probably gonna win, and It did pretty good until I got out of it.

Other people must have had that idea though, it was too obvious to make real money.

We often see complaints and questions about the Iran War in regards to what the US's victory conditions and objectives there even are supposed to be. Despite the inconsistency on many given reasons, the US has stayed pretty consistent on one reason, Iran was working towards nukes and we gotta stop them.

But was Iran actually working towards nukes at the time? The "Former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent" (the guy who resigned in protest) has revealed that the intelligence community apparently believed otherwise.

One of the many tragedies of this war is that before the war began the U.S. Intel Community, including CIA, was in agreement that Iran wasn't developing a nuclear weapon & that Iran would target U.S. bases in the region & shut down the Strait of Hormuz if they were attacked by Israel & the U.S.," Kent wrote in a post on Thursday.

So this begs the question, what is the real reason? Kent says Israel, and everything seems to be pointing towards that as the true cause. Bibi has been pushing hard towards this goal of attacking Iran for at least three admins considering he's given the same pitch to Obama.

And as I've pointed out before, even the US's own official explanations are heavily pointing towards Israel as their main focus.

Literally, they say it themselves in this press release.

As the United States has explained in multiple letters to the U.N. Security Council, including most recently on March 10, the United States is engaged in this conflict at the request of and in the collective self-defense of its Israeli ally, as well as in the exercise of the United States’ own inherent right of self-defense.

Mike Johnson has said it. and Rubio has said it. Lindsey Graham is blatant about it. This war is for Israel. Rubio and Mike Johnson later denied their own words, and mayve it's true they both made a mistake. Interesting that two high ranking officials apparently both made the same mistake in saying Israel brought us into the war, and this same mistake was then repeated in the official press releases.

And they say it's not just Israel, and sure maybe it's not the only thing, but it is strange that it's both their first listed reason and most of the release is focused specifically on Israel and Israeli interests. And Israel being listed first happens quite a bit here.

Third, Iran’s extensive, long-term support of Hizballah, Hamas, the Houthis, and various Iran‑aligned militia groups in Iraq and Syria has enabled those terrorist organizations to carry out destabilizing attacks against Israel, the United States, Argentina, and others, including countries seeking to freely exercise transit rights through the Strait of Hormuz.

It's not in alphabetical order, so can't be that. Why is the focus quite consistently putting Israel before the US like this in the USG's own official justification press release?

So if we didn't actually get into this war over Iran building nukes, is there any other explanations actually left? That's the only thing the Admin seems to be actually consistent about, and it's apparently completely fabricated.

And the White House's response to Fox News about this seems to be really interesting in how they worded it. For example

"Joe Kent’s self-aggrandizing resignation letter and recent comments are riddled with lies. Most egregious are Kent’s false claims that the largest state sponsor of terrorism somehow did not pose a threat to the United States and that Israel forced the President into launching Operation Epic Fury.

You see, it didn't actually address what Kent said.

They took "Iran building nukes" and made it into "Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism and could pose a threat to the US". They took "Israel was the main reason for the operation" and made it into "Israel forced the president". Why did they dodge it like this?

As Commander-in-Chief, President Trump took decisive action based on strong evidence which showed that the terrorist Iranian regime posed an imminent threat and was preparing to strike Americans first. President Trump’s number one priority has always been ensuring the safety and security of the American people."

Likewise again, this doesn't address the claims about US intelligence! In fact, this statement is also perfectly in line with the "Israel was going to attack Iran and Trump felt they had to also do strikes beforehand then because of retaliation" story given before. But at least it wasn't literally forced so that's good news, despite no one claiming that.

“One of the many tragedies of this war is that before the war began the U.S. Intel Community, including CIA, was in agreement that Iran wasn't developing a nuclear weapon”

I find this type of claim infuriating, not just because I believe they're lying, but they don't even make an attempt to reconcile their claim with known facts, such as:

  • Iran has stockpiled around 440 kg of 60% enriched uranium.
  • It is extremely expensive to create such a stockpile (especially for a country with a developing economy like Iran).
  • Highly enriched urinanium (HEU) is useless for power plants, which need enrichment around 3% to 5%
  • Academic research, if it relies on HEU at all, certainly doesn't need large quantities of it.
  • The only known use for a large stockpile of HEU is to create nuclear weapons.

So we know that creating a HEU stockpile is expensive, and that literally the only use for such a stockpile is to create a nuclear weapon. Then the obvious conclusion is: Iran created the stockpile with the purpose of developing a nuclear weapon. Why else would they do it?

I would like to know how Joe Kent explain this away. Why did Iran invest so much into building a uranium stockpile, if not to ultimately build a nuclear weapon?

The most charitable explanation I can come up with is that Iran hopes to use it as a bargaining chip: it will give up its stockpile in exchange for America lifting sanctions against Iran. Maybe that's even the preferred outcome, over actually going through with building a nuclear warhead. But it only works as a bargaining chip if Iran is willing to go through with the threat, so that means they cannot be committed to not creating a nuclear weapon.

So this begs the question, what is the real reason?

No it doesn't. You're jumping the gun by assuming Joe Kent is speaking the truth, when there is plenty reason to assume he's in fact lying. Nothing we know is inconsistent with the following statements:

  • Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, as evidenced by their weapons grade uranium stockpiles.
  • Joe Kent is lying for political reasons (which happens all the time).
  • Stopping/delaying the development of nuclear weapons was one of the reasons for the Iran war.

The nukes might not be the only reason for the Iran war, or even the primary reason, but there is absolutely no reason to assume they weren't a reason for the war.

Somehow they misplayed the nuclear card. It was obviously to be a deterrent and some reason they thought it was always going to be better to be close than actually have them. The point of being close is to be able to finish them when you think American leader decides to significantly bomb you. But they didn’t get that done.

Iran had multiple contingencies to deal with a Bush or Trump invading. One was unleash Palestinian, militia, hezbollah hell on Israel and the region. The next was to close the Straight. And then you would have the bomb.

Oct 7 was dumb. It just United Israel to deal with shit. And then they actually did a really good job neutralizing various groups Iran was funding. Then shutting the straights ended up not being that big of deal for the economy. Especially the US. And then they didn’t build a lot of bombs before Israel and US started bombing them. I assume at this point they don’t have the equipment to finish them.

The real answer is, of course, that there's a coalition of groups inside Iran who for various differing reasons* want nuclear weapons, or the appearance of nuclear weapons, or just conflict with the west generally and Israel specifically. Allied to all sorts of social, class, scientific and business interests. What this has produced is a kabuki theater of nuclear escalation and leveraging of the nuclear program as a diplomatic/political tool, which everyone is pretty sick of at this point. Which is why the nations in the region aren't raising much of a fuss, and why Iran is bombing them all. There's not even a single Iranian military, they have parallel organizations which are so heavily partitioned and currently attrited all to shit.

*nationalists who for obvious reasons see nuclear weapons as the basic requirement for big-boy international status and realpolitik military clout, which they do not currently possess, for an example. Millenarian suicidal religious nutters for another.

The precedent is Saddams pugnacious ambiguity about WMD, where signaling WMD potential was meant to keep other actors off his back while he, I dunno, tried to beat brain cells into Uday. The utility of having a WMD program in the pocket seems to be too tempting an ace to keep from developing, even if it meaningfully changes the strategy of the table if people have to consider hidden cards.

The precedent is also that if you don't actually have the goods, the US will eventually get sick of your shit, and right or wrong, is going to end your tenure.

Yes, that did end up being the find out phase after fucking around. Maybe Iran believes it was either hiding its fucking around better by pretending to cooperate with the JCPOA and 'new number who dis' to their proxies when they themselves were finding out, but its certainly decided that riding out the finding out phase is relatively painless compared to what Saddam encountered.

60% uranium is basically weapons grade, it only takes a little further enrichment to reach 90%. Iran easily has the technical capacity to produce nuclear weapons, hypersonic missiles are a lot harder technically. This is 1950s technology.

So why haven't they? If they wanted nuclear weapons, with that stockpile of 60% uranium, they could simply acquire them.

Iran seems to want flexibility, they want some kind of deterrent capability without starting an arms race with Saudi Arabia or a disarming strike from Israel or America. But clearly the deterrent capacity of Iran's latent nuclear capability is insufficient to prevent a disarming strike.

This war is a massive own goal even in its backers own terms. It spurs nuclearization.

Iran has the capacity to complete nuclear weapons if they want to, and this has been true since the '90s at the very latest. What the Iranians want to do is sell their nuclear program multiple times, while maintaining the ability to quickly fabricate one if needed. Trump is trying to stop that cycle, which no other president has been able to do. Only time will tell if any of these projects will hold in the long term. It may have to be enough to set them back some period of time.

Either way, there's multiple win/loss conditions.

'sell' their nuclear weapons program?

Countries don't develop nuclear weapons (or latent nuclear capacity) as part of a commercial strategy, they develop them because they feel threatened or face some kind of strategic challenge.

Some Americans seem to have this idea that Iran was getting free money from Obama or various 'weak' administrations or that there's some kind of tension-raising economic routine going on. Not so! Obama returned some frozen Iranian funds, a pittance compared to past and future sanctions and the active subversion of the country by US and Israeli intelligence. Iran had to develop their own weapons industry, oil production facilities, car industry... they chose the hard road of sovereignty rather than beg for sanctions relief by capitulating to the US/Israeli camp. They didn't do those things because they were cheap or easy but because they felt they had no choice.

If Iran was principally motivated by avarice, they would act a lot more like the UAE or Saudi Arabia.

If the US is worried about money being taken for a ride by greedy and unscrupulous foreigners, look to sub-Saharan Africa, not Iran. Iran isn't a 'tricky negotiating' power but a 'directly extracts wealth forcefully' power, that's what they're doing in the straits of Hormuz and with the cables there.

The only known use for a large stockpile of HEU is to create nuclear weapons.

No, it is also needed for naval reactors. They have to use highly enriched uranium in order to be small enough to fit on a boat.

Sort of absurd to think about, but it sure would be a pain in the ass if the US navy had to worry about fast attack submarines sneaking up on their carrier groups.

The French have been operating nuclear submarines with LEU for decades, so it's not exactly a hard requirement

They don't have to, but the US submarines do. I believe the Russians and UK do, and therefore India as well. Not sure about France and China, though.

They'd be pretty useless to Iran, though, as they don't need boomers (sonce they don't have nuclear weapons, natch), and they don't need to transit significant distances at high speed. See also: why the Baltic/Nordic powers don't bother with nuclear.

That's all pretty much a moot point, though, since Iran hasn't even pretended that they were ever going to consider a nuclear propulsion program, so they can hardly use it as a fig leaf justification for enrichment.

Iran wasn't developing a nuclear weapon

Start with two simple facts:

  • Iran has some of the world’s largest petroleum reserves. Easily extracted, light crude, no fracking, no complex processes or tech required, almost (but not quite) Saudi level cheap to extract at well below $15 /bbl

  • Iran also has the world’s second largest natural gas reserves, huge solar capability which has been successfully tested, and plentiful hydroelectric power which also provides ~15% of supply.

So why is this a country that needs “peaceful nuclear power”? Even if you disregard all the extensive reporting, everything said by every western government or Israel, every leak, all of the scientific resources poured in, the underlying hostility of the Islamic Revolution towards Israel and some other countries and so on - Iran needs peaceful nuclear power less than almost any other country on earth. There is no domestic / energy supply problem in Iran that nuclear power could possibly solve. Even if Iran wanted a nuclear power station, they could import fuel rods wholesale rather than enrich themselves (like many nations with nuclear power but no nuclear programs).

You would have to be unfathomably credulous to believe that Iran has any reason to spend (waste) large amounts of money on enrichment for civilian nuclear power generation for no reason. It is obvious that the program is for weapons, and Joe Kent is a liar. There is no logical counterargument and there cannot be, the only reason for Iran to have a nuclear program is for weapon purposes.

I think that most civilian nuclear programs were subsidized by their government sponsors with more than a passing thought about the military implications. I am not a nuclear engineer, and it might be an urban legend, but I have heard the claim that nobody uses thorium reactors because they are less useful for weapon manufacturing.

It seems obvious that Iran wants to be in a situation where they can quickly switch from a civilian program to a weapons program.

And quite frankly, the Iranian regime would have to be foolish not to seek a nuclear weapon. At the moment, they are in a situation where Israel and the US bomb them whenever they feel like it, and they have little ability to retaliate and cause similar damage in Israel (though interdicting Hormuz is working very well for them). They would fare much better under cold war rules, where both sides will use proxy forces to fight the other and avoid a direct confrontation.

I think that for the most part, civilian nuclear programs are mostly unrelated to weapons programs.

I will say that the US order of things was kind of insane: nuclear bomb -> nuclear submarine reactor -> civilian reactor.

Like a lot of infrastructure, it's dual use. Iran is a sovereign nation and can spend money on whatever it believes is in its strategic interest, as long as it abides by its international commitments.

That begs the question though, if Iran has been trying to develop nuclear weapons for decades, why don't they have them already?

From Iran's perspective, they are next door to a hostile nuclear power with illegal nuclear weapons. Iran knows that they won't get the same special dispensation from the international community, so they have to try to ride the line of maintaining some form of deterrent without ending up as an international pariah like North Korea. Historically that has meant having a robust civilian nuclear program, and then using their degree of further enrichment as a bargaining chip. That was the whole point of JCPOA - Iran's breakout time would be regulated through limits on enriched uranium stockpiles and centrifuges in exchange for diplomatic normalization and sanctions relief. These sorts of negotiations have been going on for decades with no prospect of Iran actually producing nukes, despite Israel's constant claims to the contrary. That's my understanding of Joe Kent's statement about IC reporting - he was saying that there was no indication that Iran was planning to break this holding pattern and try to actually produce a nuclear weapon.

From a game theory perspective a way to think about this I suppose is that they are deliberately giving away the information that they are incapable of performing a first strike, but maintaining the potential capability for a delayed second strike. That adds significantly more risk to an Israeli first strike without incurring the full diplomatic consequences of having nuclear weapons. The issue is that the potential for nukes in weeks/months is not the same as having nukes ready to launch - I highly doubt they would have risked a decapitation strike on Iran's top leadership if there was the prospect of immediate nuclear retaliation.

From America's perspective the old status quo was fine - or arguably even beneficial because it discouraged Israel from doing anything too disruptive. The American interest here is essentially just "don't fuck with the oil supply" and by that metric, this conflict is a complete own-goal.

Like a lot of infrastructure, it's dual use. Iran is a sovereign nation and can spend money on whatever it believes is in its strategic interest, as long as it abides by its international commitments.

Sure, but everyone else can take notice and make their own reactions accordingly. America (current iteration) and Israel don't like the prospect of them having nukes, so bombing them into the stone age would be an equally valid exercise of those countries government power under the "strategic interest" theory of governance.

That was the whole point of JCPOA - Iran's breakout time would be regulated through limits on enriched uranium stockpiles and centrifuges in exchange for diplomatic normalization and sanctions relief. These sorts of negotiations have been going on for decades with no prospect of Iran actually producing nukes, despite Israel's constant claims to the contrary.

It wasn't and hasn't just been Israel. It was a consensus western position that they were seeking nukes until Europeans soured on GWB over Iraq. Was a consensus American position until the Obama bros decided Israel was a colonial state that needed to be eradicated, and remained a consensus opinion on the American right through Biden's presidency. It still largely is with only some super online folks deviating from it over the Israel question.

But like, objectively, they enrich uranium whenever they can, they have crazy leaders who are willing to, and have now been, blown up over enriching uranium. Iran having any uranium is objectively bad for the world, you only don't think that if you hate Israel or America more than you care about the prospect of a mushroom cloud in a major city sometime in the next 10 years.

Iran is a sovereign nation and can spend money on whatever it believes is in its strategic interest, as long as it abides by its international commitments.

From Iran's perspective, they are next door to a hostile nuclear power with illegal nuclear weapons.

Israel is also a sovereign nation, and NOT a member (unlike Iran) of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Okay, I'll be more precise - Israel is not a recognized nuclear weapon state ratifier or acceder under the NPT, but still possesses nuclear weapons. That puts them in the same category as North Korea, which followed the agreed-upon withdrawal procedure and is also not bound by the NPT.

Counter - They had a very real need for nuclear weapons. As a non-western nation in a western world having the can’t fuck with me card was viable.

Maybe they should have given up some other geopolitical aims that put them at odds with Israel but actually gotten nukes a long time ago.

Sure, you can argue about why they might want them. But the idea they don’t want them is laughable.

Can confim - Having nukes is great!

You reidentifying with your ancestral homeland (since I don’t think nukes have done much good for Britain) somehow reminds me of the fact that, perhaps moreso than anyone else (even the English! Even the Indians!) Pakistani elites really do have a deep, abiding contempt for their own domestic poor. I think the only time I encountered more was during a long conversation with an elderly Jamaican academic.

They have one negative. In Armageddon your country is basically guaranteed to get nuked.

Chile might get ignored.

Yeah, there's no way that strike on Iran's top leadership would have been approved if they had nuclear weapons. Blowing up the top layers of the chain of command is too risky when you don't know who's going to end up with the launch codes, and what they are going to do with them. Just the existence of nuclear weapons alone is a powerful deterrent to regime change attempts.

They could have done one or the other. Build the nuke to back off foreign intervention or play regional hegemon games. Doing both brings the US into the game.

Sure, but that's a concession that they're working on nuclear weapons, or at least breakout capacity, and this is a country with a hyper-antagonistic foreign policy, that meddles in neighbors constantly, funds terrorism, etc. It's very reasonable to be opposed to their nuclear ambitions.

This seems like it's not so much a counter as a concession?

Sure. But I also think a little different in implying that their nuke plans had valid reasons. The issue is they played regional hegemon games and always floated nukes. If they had not played games but had nukes for security while geopolitically playing more like N Korea it would be fine. The combo is very bad for other players.

But Iran had a promising nuclear medicine program that required enrichment. It exported radiopharmaceuticals to neighboring states. They need Mo-99/Tc-99m for cancer imagining. It is a top 3 producer of Tc-99m. They need to produce 90% of their domestic medicine because sanctions. They’ve been shouting about this since 2019 and the answer “sorry, all those kids with cancer have to die without treatment” is obviously not satisfactory.

Why did sanctions get put on Iran in the first place?

Succinctly: wealthy and disloyal pro-Israel Americans lobbied Trump to get rid of the Iran deal, because spending the blood and treasure of Americans for the safety of Israel is desirable to them, motivated by a mix of nationalism, racism, and religion. And you can hardly fault them! If I could pressure loads of Israelis to die and waste trillions of their own dollars to expand American hegemony, I would do the same. (Of course, they would respond to this by ensuring I have no influence.)

As a follow-up question when do you believe sanctions against Iran started to be imposed?

As I understand it, you can absolutely produce Tc-99m with LEU rather than HEU. Is it optimal? No. But any explanation for Iran's enrichment other than nuclear weapons requires them to be insanely unoptimal for zero reason, so at least this would be unoptimal for a good reason.

You're also introducing a weird chicken-and-egg situation. If the reason they have a sketchy nuclear program is for medicine production, which they ony need because they've been sanctioned for having a sketchy nuclear program...

Yeah, they went out of their way to signal their goodwill by keeping enrichment levels below 3.67% during the Iran Deal.

What is the point of having 60% enriched if not for weapons? I’m not arguing they don’t need them, or they shouldn’t be allowed to have them, or anything else, I’m just saying that they obviously want to retain the ability to create them very quickly if necessary at the least, and that counts as ‘wanting nuclear weapons’. Kent is saying they don’t want them, which is very different from admitting they do but justifying it. The unspoken ‘or else’ part of Obama’s Iran Deal (which I don’t think Trump should have broken) was implicitly an admission that the enrichment was ultimately for military purposes.

So you claim that they get to 60% in 10 years?

I think you can get to it in months from 3% if you have the capabilities of Iran, but this is a double moot point: DNI + five eyes says no desire to build one (no whistleblower has said otherwise), DNI says destroyed in Operation MC Hammer (sub-operation can’t touch this). Maybe even a triple moot point because of the fatwah, a quadruple moot point because it would be an irrational decision for them to ever aggressively launch a nuke, and a quintiple moot point because Israel is an aggressive power (increasingly religiously extremist at that) in the Middle East with nuclear weapons that aren’t inspected.

And when I buy couple of tonnes of peroxide and acetone it is because I really like to get my nails done and I am very clumsy and always have road rash on my knees.

I think the question could be delegated to the intelligence-gathering of the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK. They would make sure that the rumors of your nail-polishing habits aren’t being disseminated by a company that produces clip-on nails.

The number one fossil fuel producer in the world is the US which is also the number one nuclear producer.

Russia is the third largest fossil fuel producer in the world and has over the past decade been the number two country in building new nuclear.

UAE has fossil fuels as a main export yet has built a large nuclear power plant.

The number one fossil fuel producer in the world is the US which is also the number one nuclear producer.

Sure, and the US is also a nuclear weapons state. Anyway, the question is not the total fossil fuel production but rather what's produced versus what's needed.

I'm pretty sure that the argument being made is that (1) Iran has far far more fossil fuel reserves than what it needs for domestic energy consumption; and (2) Iran claims not to be developing nuclear weapons; therefore (3) Iran has no need to enrich Uranium.

Neither (1) nor (2) applies to the United States.

Both the US and Russia are nuclear powers.

The UAE is not enriching nuclear fuel domestically, but importing it from the US.

https://www.framatome.com/medias/framatome-and-enec-sign-nuclear-fuel-supply-agreement-to-diversify-and-strengthen-uae-clean-energy-security/

And why not refine it yourself if you can? Being dependent on imported fuel is a risk and a cost.

Both the US and Russia very much were initially developing nuclear weapons from the outset, so they kind of prove my point here (the civilian sector was in some ways a byproduct) and in any case in the early days of the atomic age there was a lot of uncertainty about capability and the US was much more reliant on imported oil and it was theorized that nuclear might become far cheaper than it did (see the “it won’t even be metered” quotes from the ‘60s). The UAE’s nuclear power is largely about domestic politics because they’re governed in many ways semi-independently and 5/7 Emirates actually have no oil (almost all of it is in Abu Dhabi).

Lastly, the key developmental measure here isn’t “owning a nuclear power station”, it’s “enriching uranium allegedly for civilian nuclear power purposes”. The UAE doesn’t enrich its own uranium. The whole fuel rods are shipped from South Korea and then installed. So the situation is very, very different. And again, Iran is very poor compared to the UAE; there is no reason for the huge investment in its enrichment program if not for weapons.

Lastly, the key developmental measure here isn’t “owning a nuclear power station”, it’s “enriching uranium allegedly for civilian nuclear power purposes”. The UAE doesn’t enrich its own uranium. The whole fuel rods are shipped from South Korea and then installed. So the situation is very, very different. And again, Iran is very poor compared to the UAE; there is no reason for the huge investment in its enrichment program if not for weapons.

Anyway, I am pretty confident that Iran could work out a deal where (1) it turns in all its enriched Uranium; (2) it destroys all of its enrichment facilities; (3) energy grade fuel rods are shipped in from South Korea or whatever; and (4) they are carefully monitored by international observers. If Iran has no interest in a weapons program, that would be a pretty good deal. But of course they wouldn't voluntarily agree to that, because they desperately want nuclear weapons.

As a side note, I'm also pretty confident that there is near 100% correlation between (1) people who deny that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons; and (2) people who hate Israel. Yes, this is bulverism, but I think it's worth keeping in mind the source of peoples' delusions.

I am pretty confident that Iran could work out a deal where (1) it turns in all its enriched Uranium; (2) it destroys all of its enrichment facilities; (3) energy grade fuel rods are shipped in from South Korea or whatever; and (4) they are carefully monitored by international observers. If Iran has no interest in a weapons program, that would be a pretty good deal.

I'd heard "however much free uranium you need to run your plants if you dismantle your enrichment facilities" was indeed an offer prior to the shooting (that was refused), but of course, it's nigh impossible to tell what anyone has actually put on the table, it seems.

I'd heard "however much free uranium you need to run your plants if you dismantle your enrichment facilities" was indeed an offer prior to the shooting (that was refused), but of course, it's nigh impossible to tell what anyone has actually put on the table, it seems.

I agree in the sense that in situations like this people have a tendency to lie about what was offered and what was refused. Each side wants to spin things so that it appears reasonable while the other side appears unreasonable.

That being said, Iran has a track record, as does Israel. For many years now, Israel has had uneasy peace with Egypt and Jordan and has refrained from military strikes against them even though Israel has more than enough military strength to do pretty much whatever it wants to either or both of those countries. At the same time, Iran has been aggressively and viciously attacking Israel (and Jewish people in general) by means of proxies for decades now. Its leadership regularly leads chants of "Death to Israel," etc. Even though it could easily have the same uneasy peace as is enjoyed by Egypt and Jordan.

With this context, I am reasonably confident that Iran was presented with reasonable offers and refused them. With "reasonable" meaning a deal along those lines.

Joe Kent is a clown who was grossly unqualified for his position and only obtained it because of an unsuccessful political career based on undying loyalty to Trump. In the time since his resignation he's latched on to the Tucker Carlson/Candice Owens/Alex Jones cadre of wackaloons to cash in on his brief fame and maybe prime himself for another failed crack at a congressional seat. His statements on Iran's nuclear program are indicative of this schtick in general where it's not enough to suggest that going to war with Iran was a bad policy decision, or that the threat of an Iranian nuclear program is overblown; no everything has to be a huge conspiracy knows that there is and never was an Iranian nuclear program and the whole thing was some kind of manufactured consent for a war that nobody is in favor of anyway, apart from the roughly 30% of Americans who comprise the Bush/Mendoza line, for whom if Trump shot their child they'd assume he had a good reason to do so.

This is all part of a larger storyline where Carlson et al. have to account for why they spent so many years singing the praises of Our Lord and Savior Donald J. Trump under the delusion that he was some kind of swamp-draining peacenik when anyone with half a brain could tell you that the only thing that ever concerned him was having the biggest dick in the room and that if anyone who didn't have nukes pissed him off he wouldn't pass up the opportunity to use the full force of the United States Military to make you bend to his whims. And that the cadre of morons who put poster board signs in their yard about how they shouldn't have to pay school taxes since they don't have kids and who regularly attend township supervisor meetings to complain about how their neighbor's retaining wall violates setback requirements actually gave a shit about the anti-war stuff even though they'll still tell you that Obama pulled out of Iraq too early.

Joe Kent went on 11 combat tours in the Middle East, his wife died in combat there, how can you call him a clown for not wanting to lose another war in the Middle East?

Plus he actually studied strategy at university, he's 10x the leader of someone like Hegseth or Laura Loomer or whatever neocon idiot Trump takes advice from.

It doesn't take a great strategist to realize that attacking Iran is moronic, or that the Israelis are just lying when they shriek and whine about nuclear weapons. They've been shrieking and whining for decades, far longer than it takes to acquire nuclear weapons. The clowns are the people who still listen to Netanyahu when he only brings them lies, costs, war and ignominy by association.

for not wanting to lose another war in the Middle East?

Are you confident that's his main motivation? And do you have the same level of confidence that you had for your claim that Israel bombed a girl's school in Iran?

It doesn't take a great strategist to realize that attacking Iran is moronic [if you hate Jewish people and want to see Israel destroyed]

Agreed.

or that the Israelis are just lying when they shriek and whine about nuclear weapons.

Looks to me like you are the one who is shrieking and whining and lying. Meanwhile, the Israelis have been actively sabotaging the Iranian nuclear weapons program, thank goodness.

Anyway, I have a question: Do you still hate Jewish people as much as you did when you falsely claimed that Israel had bombed a girl's school in Iran?

You go on incessantly about me mischaracterizing a US bomb dropped in an Israeli war as being Israeli as some kind of terrible, unforgettable error that shows the blackness of my heart... when it didn't even affect the main point I was making in the slightest. In my naivete at the time, I assumed the only reason anybody would be interested in the bombs origin is because of the insane Israeli propaganda that 'actually the Iranians blew up their own school to make the West look bad' as mentioned upthread. That would be a meaningful distinction as compared to US vs Israeli bombing, that was what I was most interested in refuting, which I did. So I said it was an Israeli bomb. Damn!

Meanwhile, your main point, that bombing Iran would not affect their likeliness to nuclearize since they already maximally hated Israel and thus Iran should be bombed more aggressively, remains wrong and bizarre and is 10x more bloodthirsty than mine. It is also causing a massive global crisis whose main redeeming feature is that people are going to trust and favour Israel much less in future.

So in conclusion, these kinds of gotchas are neither intelligent nor charismatic, nor particularly likely to make me or anyone else love Jews more.

You go on incessantly about me mischaracterizing a US bomb dropped in an Israeli war as being Israeli as some kind of terrible, unforgettable error that shows the blackness of my heart...

It certainly undermines your credibility - dramatically.

Meanwhile, your main point, that bombing Iran would not affect their likeliness to nuclearize since they already maximally hated Israel and thus Iran should be bombed more aggressively,

Please show me where I said that Iran "should be bombed more aggressively." Please quote me. TIA.

What I am trying to say is that the Iranian government's hatred of Israel and desire for nuclear weapons was pretty maximal before the latest attack, so I doubt that this will provoke the reaction you predict. At this point, the main thing for Israel (and the US) to do, to paraphrase the Untouchables, is the Chicago Way.

t. you

t. you

By "the Chicago Way," what I meant was respond very aggressively to each act of aggression on the part of Iran. Which of course can include bombing, but it doesn't mean to escalate from out of nowhere.

They've been shrieking and whining for decades, far longer than it takes to acquire nuclear weapons.

I take it you don't believe in the concept of holding a breakout time or "screwdriver ready"?

The US intelligence services said there was no imminent threat from Iran, so apparently they believe it.

Attacking and killing the guy with a fatwa against nuclear weapons doesn't seem like a smart idea. If you don't want the Iranians to break out, why not simply refrain from attacking them and incentivizing a breakout?

Electing Trump was a roll of the dice on whether we'd actually escape from the middle east. Electing establishment GOP or Dem would have basically been asking for even more adventures in the Middle East. I rolled the dice and lost. I'd rather have voted for Vance or someone even more vehemently anti-interventionists, but those choices weren't on offer. Instead my choices were "uniparty interventionist stooge #73829" and "Trump.". I don't think I'm alone in this calculation.

He’s still not made big mistakes of land wars. He’s kept his adventures limited. And Iran atleast has a fig leaf of geopolitically neutering China and not purely a let’s bring Democracy to the ME.

And still have hope that Trump pulls up a positive sum outcome with Iran that ends in diplomacy acceptable to both sides that benefits America by cutting China out of depending energy supplies.

Surely you are not suggesting a run-of-the-mill president or "uniparty interventionist stooge" would have had Middle Eastern adventures on the scale of Trump?

Iran happening and going how it has gone was not in my worst-case Trump scenario either so I don't blame you for rolling those dice, but you very much lost a lot more money than you would have lost betting on a "uniparty" candidate.

Trump 1 had very few Middle East adventures and started putting the kibosh on Afghanistan.

Biden helped Al Qaeda take over Syria.

Obama bombed Libya to the stone age, surged troops in Afghanistan, started the first Ukraine war and helped jihadists take half of Syria.

George Bush invaded Iraq and Afghanistan.

Trump's first term was relatively peaceful and Trump was the first candidate in a long time to be outspoken in his criticism of previous wars.

started the first Ukraine war

Alright, I'll bite: you can criticize him for inaction concerning Crimea, but how did he start it?

John McCain and Victoria Nuland were on Maidan square together and the US was actively funding groups in Ukraine and pushing for regime change. There was clear Ambition to expand NATO east and to cross Russia's red lines even though they were fully aware this would lead to a major war.

He paid hundreds of thousands of crisis actors to fake colossal pro-EU protests in Ukraine, forcing Russia to invade eastern Ukraine to... do something.

"Obama/the US caused the Russo-Ukrainian War" rests on the claim that the Maidan protests were an American op.

I think the paid opposition narrative needs to end. It seems very genuine at this point Ukraine has a lot of pro-EU people. They have spilt a lot of blood for it so it seems reasonable to believe they are genuinely pro-EU. And I despise the EU but it’s still a better path for them.

They like the EU because they have watched Poland go from poor to rich. When you see Polish people returning from London as maids and now Ukrainians are the polish maids.

"Caused" is a bit strong, but "failed to deter" is a plausible view if you point to non-reactions to Georgia (in fact, pulling out a "reset" button accepting it) and that "The 1980s called and want their foreign policy back" line at the debate when Romney claimed Russia was a potential adversary merely 2 years before Crimea. Frankly, the flip from that to Russia-gate makes me take the left's positions on international relations as deeply un-serious.

Although the other side seems to have never met a proposed intervention they didn't like, which is its own failure mode.

The problem I have with failure-to-deter and other sins of inaction is that unless you're withdrawing some active intervention they're overdetermined. Obama could have done more to oppose Russia post-2013/4, but so could most of Europe. The sheer indifference of most European allies colored the US' own response.

Specifically regarding failures of deterrence, it is not clear to me what critics of Obama expected him to have done other than something really outside like cooperate in suppressing the Maidan protests.

Frankly, the flip from that to Russia-gate makes me take the left's positions on international relations as deeply un-serious.

I don't think this follows. Obama's dismissiveness of Russia as a source of problems in 2012 has certainly aged poorly, but at the time the US was trying to switch focus from Europe and the Middle East to Asia-Pacific and China (it is still trying to do this) and the broad consensus was that Russia was a gas station with nukes. The flip on Russia was a direct response to Russia doing things. You should expect people to update

Although the other side seems to have never met a proposed intervention they didn't like, which is its own failure mode.

The reason why right-wing anti-interventionism will never have any legs is that the right-wing elite is full of people who fundamentally believe in the crude application of force to achieve positive results and the right-wing base is full of people who think you have a moral obligation to support the team no matter what. The result is that right-wing elites constantly try to fix problems with violence and their supporters always back them because it is practically unthinkable not to.

One of the many tragedies of this war is that before the war began the U.S. Intel Community, including CIA, was in agreement that Iran wasn't developing a nuclear weapon

I just would need to see a lot of evidence to believe this. Why is 2025-26 the only time in the last 40 years Iran was not developing a nuclear weapon? Is Trump's aura just that legendary that even the suicidal Ayatollah would give up his primary ambition of the last half century just because of the orange man mogging him?

Is Trump's aura just that legendary that even the suicidal Ayatollah would give up his primary ambition of the last half century just because of the orange man mogging him?

I think there is a semi-coherent argument that the Iranian revolution's ability to "mog", as you say, the Carter administration is a large part of how the regional relationships worked out the way they did. From allowing the Shah to get deposed, to the return of the Ayatollah in a sealed train car Air France charter plane, to the embassy hostage crisis (and Eagle Claw), much of the regime's legitimacy plausibly comes from American own-goals.

I think there is a semi-coherent argument that the Iranian revolution's ability to "mog", as you say, the Carter administration is a large part of how the regional relationships worked out the way they did.

Well yeah, a bean sprout could mog the Carter administration.

Why is 2025-26 the only time in the last 40 years Iran was not developing a nuclear weapon?

Maybe this implies they spent the last 40 years also not developing a nuclear weapon? Given that 1940s tech was sufficient to make a nuke, maybe they thought "almost having a nuke" was valuable enough and stopped enriching roughly around there and then just made lots of noise about how "they were totally gonna finish enriching any day now"

I think you're responding to the wrong comment

This is all part of a larger storyline where Carlson et al. have to account for why they spent so many years singing the praises of Our Lord and Savior Donald J. Trump under the delusion that he was some kind of swamp-draining peacenik

Trump kept saying he was! He even continued to claim it after the campaign where it didn't matter anymore, like he said this during the literal victory speech

“I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars”

And Vance was (and in some ways still is given that he seems to be dodging having to comment on the war now) anti interventionism so he kept saying he was against war and had people around him with known anti war track records.

Maybe people were stupid for trusting Trump and not thinking he doesn't change on a dime for personal benefits or whatever, but I don't think it's as delusional as you think to have expected us to fuck out of the middle east.

And you're just figuring out now that he's full of shit? Sure, he has Vance, but he also has Rubio and Hegseth, neither of whom have reputations for peacefulness. I can't say I would have predicted the war, but I'm not surprised by it, and I'm not surprised that most of his supporters are in favor of it.

He had John Bolton in his first term, and made him cry with edging and constant refusal to actually start any new wars.

I think "he had John Bolton his first term" says it all right there.

And you're just figuring out now that he's full of shit? Sure, he has Vance, but he also has Rubio and Hegseth, neither of whom have reputations for peacefulness

Oh yeah certainly I'm not that surprised but I get why some people would be.

and I'm not surprised that most of his supporters are in favor of it.

This is the least surprising thing of all. Political parties have always had a bit of cult of personality going on where people shift their claimed views to the person they like but Trump is definitely next level. Either by changing their views themselves or just somehow being blind to it.

Like I remember all the comments expecting some sort of epic showdown between Mamdani and Trump, Capitalism vs Socialism and it's like you do realize that Trump is also an explicit anti market statist right?? Like wtf you mean capitalism vs socialism when he's literally having government take stocks in private enterprise, implementing tariffs, and doing the same "greedflation" rhetoric right down to price controls and blaming corporations for home prices being high instead of government meddling. No wonder they're buddies there.

Just because they have a lot of different views on other topics doesn't change their deep similarities on the market and economics.

I think looking at this from a meta perspective is interesting. It seems that to evaluate the wisdom Iran war comprehensively, we need three things:

  • What are the overall costs of the war.
  • What are the eventual benefits of the war.
  • What is the truth of the justificiations for the war that were initially given.

The first two are by definition not known not right now. The last one seems to be only factually resolvable by classified information, but since we don't have that we have to rely on the dual heuristics of 'What figures do we trust?' and 'Do we trust the structure of the arguments made for/against the war?'. The answers to the indirect questions seem to rely on tribalism, especially the first. You have officials with similar arguing for both sides of this war, and for other security issues like everything surrounding Russia, and which officials general you give credence too tends to rely on which officials either match general your 'tribe' or best match/flatter general your personal ideology.

I bet if you took each personal who isn't directly involved in this conflict, and you had a list of that person's ideology and personal 'tribal' affiliation, you could 99% guess what their take on this war is and who they consider credible. Once everyone states their priors, there really isn't that much discussion to be had about Iran right now.

I think that this is giving in to epistemic helplessness.

Sure, the people in the intelligence community might have a better idea of what is going on, but they are not an alien superintelligence way beyond what an ordinary thoughtful person might notice.

If I go to the zoo and see a giant striped big cat in an enclosure, I will call it a tiger, instead of saying "that is probably some kind of animal, certainly a life form, but as a layman I should not have an opinion on its species when there are experts with PhD's in zoology who are much more qualified, and we should await the verdict of an expert panel and not make any assumptions about what kind of cat it is -- perhaps the zoo has painted stripes on a pony."

GWB's wars have certainly taught the world that a successful invasion can still be a disaster in terms of grand strategy. The reverse is not true, so we can certainly place upper bounds on the success of Trump's adventure from his lack of strategic success despite tactical dominance. As another analogy, if I observe a chef preparing a meal and it seems to go well, that does not mean that the meal will be tasty. But if I observe a chef yelling at the dough to rise already and threatening to pour a pound of salt into it while also setting off the fire alarm, that will very probably not result in a great meal.

I think as a general rule I agree with you; people without intelligence clearance could tell Iraq was a Quagmire after a year for instance. At the same time, I think it's so early in Iran that it's hard to tell the long term impact. Especially since, lacking the intelligence our leaders have, we don't know how real or fake their nuclear accusations are.

This is where I think we have to fall back to our priors. I don't trust Trump, Neocons, or the Israeli right on having a foreign policy that benefits the US or the world so I'm naturally predisposed to dislike this war. I also don't trust their truthfulness regarding foreign policy facts, such as how advanced the nuclear program is, so I'm skeptical that Iran was aiming for building a bomb right now rather than aiming for the ability to build a bomb quickly. I also don't buy 'seriously not literally' as a communication strategy, so how this war has been communicated makes me skeptical of the enterprise as well. As a result of the above, the war seems like a bad idea to me and I don't trust any promises of victory. The epistemic uncertainty for me comes in that I don't know a lot of the relevant data, and I suppose it's possible in a year data could come out that shows this war was necessary and/or it actually worked out well for the world. I wouldn't bet on it though.,

Above sums of my opinion of the war. If you look at it, almost all of it is just flowing from my priors. It hasn't been updated in the past month; I don't think the events could've moved it. The flip side is if someone was predisposed to trusting the authorities I mentioned above, then their priors would make them like the war. My main point is that one's opinion of the war is more based on priors than anything else, so I think discussing priors is actually more fruitful than discussing the facts in this case.

The chef's spraying spittle could be flavoring the dough! Let him cook, he has a process, we don't have insight into his secret recipe as outsiders. The fire alarm gets the line chefs motivated, he has an unorthodox management style. I have every confidence that his pizza will be delicious and that he will be remembered as one of the greatest chefs of our country, up there with Guy Fieri and Bobby Flay. He took a long piss in the last pepperoni pizza I ordered and let me tell you, my extended family thought it elevated the whole experience.

In fact, I got together with some other enthusiasts and we booked a reservation to have him defecate directly into our mouths. It's a bit pricey but I'm pretty sure it's going to be worth it. My wife had some unkind words about it, paraphrased "emasculating", but I think it's actually very manly to receive man stuff from another man.

What is this contributing to the discussion?

Make your point without the performative snark.

Apologies.

The US is probably in a state of strategic failure on oil flow through Hormuz unless one of two undesirable options is chosen.

First is the complete surrender of the IRGC. Trump attempted this, but was not as successful as in Venezuela with the capture of Maduro. The Iranian state was more resilient and decentralized than anticipated. Iran is effectively 99% militarly crushed, but the threat of the 1% coming out of hiding is what keeps insurance rates high for oil tankers. These insurance rates and possible risk of loss of a tanker keep oil prices high, so Hormuz is de facto closed. If Iran can be 100% crushed, this is desirable, but unlikely without ground troop intervention.

The second option is massive concessions to Iran in return for peace. Allowing them to develop nuclear weapons and monetary reparations of some sort, like a toll. Trump is probably headed this way, unless he wants to preside over a defeat in midterms and a new oil price shock. The oil shock may be unavoidable, but the duration and severity can be mitigated if the oil starts flowing sooner rather than later.

Some of Trump's supporters believe that he has a plan for this situation, which cannot be disclosed to the public due to national security concerns. It is true that Trump has usually managed to extricate himself out of politically difficult situations. Other critics, like @quiet_NaN and myself, are a bit more skeptical that there is a good offramp with Hormuz that both prevents Iran from having further nuclear development, and also manages to open Hormuz in a way that shipping is mostly back to normal. Trump also has a time limit to resolve this situation - midterms and the end of his presidency. In less than 6 months, if gas prices stay elevated or push even higher, the republican party is likely going to suffer higher than expected congressional losses from typical midterm reversals. In 2.5 years at the end of Trump's term, if Hormuz is still closed, we might see the democratic socialists take power in the US.

The spice must flow!

What even is going on around Iran? Haven't seen anything crop up in my feed for the past 2-3 weeks, which I'm taking as a sign that things have died down even though there's no official end to the hostilities. Is it just a double blockade now, with both sides playing chicken?

There's a cycle where oil prices go up, Trump makes an announcement that they're "very close" to a deal and that there's a 10/14/9/12/23/746-point plan that's on the table, the details of which are never disclosed, oil prices go back down slightly, then something happens that makes it clear Iran is nowhere near ready to sign a deal, people start firing and blaming the other side, and oil prices start to go back up. Unfortunately for Trump, oil prices and gas prices are directly correlated, since the former are based on speculation about the supply in a month's time, and the latter are based on current supply and demand. So while oil prices have fluctuated gas prices have been steadily going up. In my neck of the woods, within the course of a week they jumped from $4.19/gallon to $4.99/gallon; they were a little over $3/gallon at the time the war started. Some of this may be a switch to the more expensive summer blend, but that happens every year and the price doesn't jump that much.

The only time Trump's actions had any effect on the actual price of gas was when the initial ceasefire was announced, when they dropped by about a dime before continuing their march upward. The reason I'm focused on gas prices here is because this is the only reason the war has any political salience. If gas prices stayed the same most people wouldn't give a shit about the war because it was something happening halfway around the world that didn't have any immediate effect on their lives. But keeping gas prices low is important here, because not only does everyone have to buy a lot of it but it's the only such product where there one is constantly bombarded with signs advertising the price.

Near me they dropped by $0.20/gallon over the past couple of days.

The short version is that the US has announced and then called off a program to send vessels through the strait, during which brief window they successfully transited both warships and civilian vessels through the strait. (There were rumors that at least one Gulf State was not a fan of the escorted transit plan and pulled or threatened to pull basing access, and that's why the US flip-flopped). The US also blew up a bunch of Iranian military assets that tried to attack them or were otherwise deemed a threat, and interdicted several Iranian tankers that were trying to run the blockade with Super Hornets. Despite this of course the ceasefire is still on, we're assured!

The cynical part of me wonders if all of this hasn't been a bigger part of the news cycle because despite the embarrassing rumors that the USA and its allies got crosswise on how to approach the situation, or the humorous claims that the US attacking a bunch of Iranian assets was "just a love tap" and not a resumption of the conflict it is more or less good news for the Trump administration militarily; it suggests that Iran actually does not have a good grip on Hormuz if the US can escort civilian shipping and handily fend off attacks.

I wouldn't call 2 ships in 2 days evidence that Iran doesn't have a good grip on Hormuz. The problem for Trump is that Iran's actual ability to block the strait doesn't matter because commercial ships won't transit it so long as they say it's closed. All Operation Project Freedom proved is that they won't be able to get the 1600 ships that remain stuck in the gulf out before Trump's term ends at this pace, which requires a non-negligible amount of mobilization, let alone get the strait open to normal commercial traffic. In other words, the only thing likely to get the strait open is an end to the war.

It was more like 4 or 5, wasn't it? 2 tankers, 2 or 3 destroyers?

All Operation Project Freedom proved is that they won't be able to get the 1600 ships that remain stuck in the gulf out before Trump's term ends at this pace

This does seem unlikely, but the incentive structure that seems to be forming (ships not participating in the scheme get hit) would work to Trump's favor, if Operation Project Freedom was something we were doing, which it isn't, unless of course it is (I dunno I haven't checked the news this afternoon).

In other words, the only thing likely to get the strait open is an end to the war.

Fundamentally I think this is correct. But it does appear that the US has a substantial military ability to protect tankers going through the strait. And there were, as I seem to recall on earlier Iran threads, strong suggestions otherwise. So I think it's interesting, both militarily and from the perspective that it theoretically allows the US to, however marginally, ease the constraints on them, while maintaining the constraints placed on Iran.

they successfully transited both warships and civilian vessels through the strait.

Apparently a South Korean owned ship had gotten hit.

Which highlights an issue here for any long term plan, the US basically has to succeed every single time they want to escort any ships in and they have to spend tons of resources for a relatively small amount of traffic. Iran would just have to get a good strike in once to up the danger again and make people skittish to cross even under escort.

Worth noting that the Namu, as I understand it, had been in the Gulf since the start of the war and was not attempting to transit the straight under US protection when it was hit. Apparently was instead anchored offshore when it was struck. It also doesn't seem clear that Iran actually hit it (at least intentionally – apparently they denied the claim they had attacked it.)

As far as I can tell from various third worldist twitter accounts who post about the conflict 24/7, the US has allegedly sent Iran a proposal to end the war, and Iran is yet to respond. I feel like I've read similar things 5 times in the past few weeks.

If someone has similar pro USA or pro Israel accounts, please link for comparison. I'm not engaged enough with the topic to see fact from cope anymore.

This is a fairly pro-Israel and USA account: https://x.com/Osint613

This is a summary from a Fox news person of this week: https://x.com/LucasFoxNews/status/2052661509642432875

I feel like I've read similar things 5 times in the past few weeks.

Most of the fake scoops have been from Barak Ravid of Axios. He is Israeli so one would expect his "scoops" to be for the purpose of advancing Israel's interests, but from my POV it looks like he's the Trump administration's mouthpiece for market manipulation leaks.

Which is odd, because his previous credibility with scoops has been impressive. Either one of his reputable sources is playing him, or he chose to cash in his credibility now for some reason.

Do you actually believe in anything? In the space of a couple posts we've gone from "trust Principled Conservative Erick Erickson" to "trust America First Joe Kent." The only common throughline in all your top-levels is that you want to pick an internet fight with themotte's Trump contingent, and are happy to dance between positions, arguments, and sets of facts in order to do so. Kudos to the guys who have the patience to fisk your posts, I guess.

If that's what he's doing, what's the problem? If anything I think it has been to the detriment of this place that arguments have come to be dominated by true believers of some cause, whose local feeling of success, identity and tribal interests are all tied up in "winning the argument" and not ceding any ground.

I can't help but notice that it's never people on the receiving end of these tactics that make these sort of arguments, only people like watching it being done to others. For the good of the forum, of course.

Of course it would look that way, because people who are "on the receiving end of these tactics" and don't mind it will not complain about it, and it is seemingly by design a type of "tactics" that is not apparent if nobody complains.

I guess you could counter that you would expect at least some scenarios where a "bad-faith" arguer argues against multiple people, one of them complains, and another says he is actually ok with it. There is a less universalist/more provocative explanation I could have reached for right away: the accusation is only ever levelled by our right-wing majority against presumed left-wing posters, and the right-wing majority broadly agrees that uppity left-wingers should not be welcome. There are right-wing posts that would seem to meet the same criteria of "bad faith" being applied here (switching allegiance between seemingly incompatible authorities, such as TERFs/Christians/old-school atheists, based on fit for a particular argument + an apparent expectation that the poster will look down on anyone who disagrees); it's just that nobody complains about them, so it never registers.

Maybe you think it makes a big difference that the left-wing "agitator" expects to see the people he will look down on in the responses, while the right-wing "agitator" expects responses of agreement and camaraderie and will only look down on abstract people far away and maybe one or two black sheep commenters. Making a criterion that essentially says the same sort of thing is only bad if people here disagree is a way to circlejerk reinforcement, though.

If that's what he's doing, what's the problem?

Tolerating bad faith actors inevitably ends in an equilibrium where bad faith is the norm.

That's also the case with people who are arguing in purely negative bad-faith, except that their local sense of identity is even more purely tied up in winning the argument. Darwin2500 arguing with MAGApede2016 is a failure mode, certainly, but so is this - the non-failure mode is when people bring sincere theses to their top-levels, after exploring and considering the evidence on their own, and then debate things with other users as individuals. Some people are too tribal to be psychologically capable of doing that, and some just don't find it fun enough, but it's possible.

That's also the case with people who are arguing in purely negative bad-faith, except that their local sense of identity is even more purely tied up in winning the argument.

It seems like youre defining this though through "person making arguments and points I don't like to see".

Like hell look at your actual complaint here

Do you actually believe in anything? In the space of a couple posts we've gone from "trust Principled Conservative Erick Erickson" to "trust America First Joe Kent.

What is bad faith exactly here? That I'm not blindly partisan and don't consider Erickson (who I disagree with on a lot of topics) as trash whose opinions and views are unusable? I think he can be a very stupid man sometimes, but I also recognize he is a guy who is rather principled and has interesting input sometimes. This is exactly what good faith should be like!

Likewise I think Joe Kent has a number of idiot views. I also recognize that he is a former top official who left his influential and powerful position over his principles, and acknowledge that he has some value when he talks about stuff he personally dealt with in his role. I do not dismiss Kent's input on counterterrorism and US intelligence because he's for example, an anti vaxxer. A stance I literally think is hurting and killing children!

You're complaining about tribalism, and yet seemingly mad that I'm not tribal enough.

And also what tribe am I supposedly loyal to anyway? I'm a Reagan stan who advocates for individualism, laissez-faire capitalism, small government. Does this sound like a "blue tribe"? No. But it's also not the "red tribe" either, at least not anymore.

To a partisan who can't comprehend the world beyond tribalism, of course I look bad faith, because they can't grasp a person who doesn't participate in tribal partisanship and doesn't radically change their views based off what Current Party Leader decides.

How do you define "bad faith"? If it's merely "doesn't truly believe the point he/she is arguing", then I think the term is loaded and the case that it's a bad thing has not been made, because trying to make the most convincing argument for something you don't actually believe is an interesting exercise, both for the person making the argument and for any bystanders. If it is more about the "bad-faith" arguer experiencing personal disdain for their interlocutors in the process of the exchange, I think it would capture a lot more posters here than just those who try on different positions for sport.

"Bad faith" covers a broad spectrum, from straw men and weak men to gish gallops and gotcha questions to outright trolling.

Since we're not mind readers, it's necessarily a judgment call and if we don't mod someone who people think is obviously posting in bad faith, it's because our threshold for pulling the trigger is higher than the threshold of people being triggered.

Defining bad faith is something like defining pornography, but when you spend enough time here you get a sense of what motivates whom. We've had an influx of low-quality, trollish posters doing the exact same schtick as MKC (AlexanderTurok is the last one I recall), though he's certainly the most literate of them so far. I suspect largely a meta-contrarian reaction to the 2024 Vibe Shift, as exemplified by Hanania/Karlin/Spencer/etc.; it'll pass like all the other motte fads ('member the civil war we were going to have in 2020? I 'member!)

because trying to make the most convincing argument for something you don't actually believe is an interesting exercise

When done as an exercise, that's entirely good-faith, and rationalists do that all the time. You should be able to do that! The key is as an exercise.

If it is more about the "bad-faith" arguer experiencing personal disdain for their interlocutors in the process of the exchange, I think it would capture a lot more posters here than just those who try on different positions for sport.

I think you're almost there. The key is that bad-faith posters are, psychologically, not posting to make arguments with some sneers attached. They're typing up arguments so that they are able to sneer. It's like the difference between someone who goes out to a bar and has a drink, and someone who goes out to a bar so that they can have a drink. Tribally-motivated sneering is pretty easy to spot because it's usually so ham-fisted, compared to a poster who puts real effort into his sneers.

I suspect largely a meta-contrarian reaction to the 2024 Vibe Shift, as exemplified by Hanania/Karlin/Spencer/etc.;

Yeah, this seems like confirmation your usage of bad faith is along the lines of "when they disagree with me". Why do you think these writers aren't being serious when they say things that are unpopular? They could be way more financially successful grifting the populist vibes only saying a bunch of low quality stuff that everyone wants.

When done as an exercise, that's entirely good-faith, and rationalists do that all the time. You should be able to do that! The key is as an exercise.

Or is it that possible perhaps that when people say things you don't like and don't agree with, maybe sometimes they believe those things? Maybe the world isn't filled with everyone secretly knowing that you're right and the only reason why someone like me or Hanania would have a different view is because we want to be contrarian.

You are welcome to pattern-match me to as many caricatures as you like. Apologies if I'm impugning any of your actual heroes, as opposed to Erick Erickson.

You are welcome to pattern-match me to as many caricatures as you like.

Ok for real, is this intentional trolling? This is a pretty big case of pot calling the kettle black if not, your whole thing here has been making up caricatures to assume about me.

Apologies if I'm impugning any of your actual heroes, as opposed to Erick Erickson.

Really, it's hard to see this as anything but trolling. You either don't grasp the concept of being able to take someone's ideas seriously without looking down on them or you're being intentionally daft. This is like Rationalist 101 shit. Scott Alexander, basically the guy of rationalist discourse illustrates this all the time and constantly references people who he disagrees with constantly like Freddie Deboer, Hanania or Tyler Cowen. That doesn't mean you view them as "heroes".

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What part of magicalkitty's posting history makes you think they are trying to make the most convincing argument they can as an exercise, as opposed to the best arguments-as-soldiers for their latest culture war stand or poke at others, to be abandoned as irrelevant when the topic passes?

I love me a good jawboning and devil's advocacy, but there is a difference between treating debate as a sport and using debate to make sport of others. Faith is as good a distinction as others- after all, if the other person has no faith to believe you're interested in the sport as opposed to making sport of them, there's not going to be a sport with them because it takes two to debate in good faith.

One of the ways to demonstrate good faith, in turn, is to hold to present and maintain sincere positions. Sincerity in turn can be demonstrated not just by elaboration upon request- as in someone who sincerely wants to be understood as opposed to someone deliberately trying to instigate misunderstandings and conflict- but also by maintaining consistency across iterations. You can absolutely provide devil's advocate / steelman positions distinct from your own position, but only if you actually have a position of your own.

To my knowledge, magicalkitty has denied being darwin / guesswho/ whatever other alts that person had. But Darwin was a bad faith interlocuter par excellence, and he had his own history of defending or deflecting accusations of his bad faith arguments on the grounds of 'just trying to adopt a position he didn't believe.' That was the demonstration, not defense, of his sort of bad faith.

The counter to that Darwin-esque behavior, in turn, is pressing the person to make clear their sincere position, and seeing if / how they either directly answer it or try to wiggle out of that challenge.

I don't see a lot of object-level opinion overlap between darwin and magicalkittycat. One example: Darwin was constantly pushing idpol and I haven't seen that from magicalkittycat.

Hence the Darwin-esuqe, as opposed to Darwin-specific. It was always the style of argument, not merely the position, that made Darwin bad faith.

You can make whatever vague accusations you want, they're practically unable to be disputed because they're vague and meaningless.

But if you're going to claim I'm unreasonably inconsistent in my values, maybe you can show it. Should be easy to provide obvious and nondebateable examples if you aren't just making things in your head. There's plenty of deep principles I've said I support that you could look for me being hypocritical on too!

I say I believe in free trade, laissez-faire capitalism, individualism > collectivism, that people who complain about the modern world are typically just historically illiterate, that government should generally be small and stay out of people's lives (and that government oppression differs significantly in severity from "social oppression" which I don't care about as much because government claims the monopoly on violence), and that people should generally have near maximal freedom including doing things to themselves that others think is bad or unhealthy like drugs. Or whatever else.

Your choice, should be easy after all.

But Darwin was a bad faith interlocuter par excellence, and he had his own history of defending or deflecting accusations of his bad faith arguments on the grounds of 'just trying to adopt a position he didn't believe.' That was the demonstration, not defense, of his sort of bad faith.

Given the phrase "he had his own history", it seems you are implying that I also have some big history of "just trying to adopt a position I didn't believe". So again, a specific allegation against me that you should be easily able to show right?

Right??! It should super easy to show all the times I've said I don't have any belief in the things I've said and are just being a devil's advocate on things I don't think at all or see logic in.

Cause certainly I've done that, you wouldn't just make things up I hope. Would be really bad faith to just make shit up about someone like that.

There's nothing particularly vague about my view of you. I think you regularly exhibit many of the not-late Darwin's worse tropes in your posting style, regardless of whether you are another sockpuppet of his or not.

This includes his propensity to fight the culture war by fronting a position only to drop or even deny it when inconvenient for the current culture war. Darwin also had a habit to quibble that he never did such a change even when provided past evidence, invite people to engage on his framing of the issue, and then ignore their actual position (and, routinely, follow-up posts' positions).

Like, say, taking a post on ways to counter Darwin-esque evasiveness and demonstrating a difference from Darwin-esque tactics, and then claiming that it is a personal accusation. And then challenging that the reasonableness of such a personal accusation should be demonstrated reasonable through past history to be pulled and cited. A history review which has nothing to do with demonstrating the good faith in arguments provided as a way to distinguish good and bad.

That is very much the sort of implicit accusation and argument deflection Darwin liked to pull.

I'm not gonna lie dawg, I've read this entire exchange and I'm 1) incredibly confused and 2) completely unconvinced Magical is Darwin or adjacent to Darwin (also confused who that is, but assuming a troll)

You've accused them of being a bad faith argument shifter here to troll but produced 0 evidence of this despite claiming it exists...

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This includes his propensity to fight the culture war by fronting a position only to drop or even deny it when inconvenient for the current culture war

I invited you to provide some of this unexplainable hypocrisy I apparently do if it's so common. I invite you to do it again. Should be easy.

Like, say, taking a post on ways to counter Darwin-esque evasiveness and demonstrating a difference from Darwin-esque tactics, and then claiming that it is a personal accusation.

Wait was it not about me?

Then why did you say

What part of magicalkitty's posting history

Is there another person with a name like this you were actually referring to? It sure seems like your comment was about me first and foremost!

And then challenging that the reasonableness of such a personal accusation should be demonstrated reasonable through past history to be pulled and cited.

Now I don't know who you're talking about still, but you do realize "we couldn't provide any actual proof with this other guy either" is a very unconvincing argument to be making. But hey, I realize I'm actually just the completely unrelated third person because the "magical kitty" you were referring to was apparently someone else.

I don't normally report comments but I'm definitely going it here. This "I'm not talking about you, I just said your name multiple times" gimmick doesn't have a good explanation beyond actual bad faith. Extremely childish, reflect on yourself.

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My increasingly regular agreement with you on forum culture is starting to feel like the Franco-Ottoman Alliance of themotte. Allah Allah!

I'm not sure how I resemble that remark, but I feel like I should be offended by the comparison!

The joke was, specifically, that you and I have very different styles of thought but agree on something strategically key. I like the Turks and have been known, in unguarded moments, to give grudging praise to the French.

I trust different people in different contexts.

Believing that Erick Erickson is a principled guy is not the same as believing he is right about everything. I think he truly believes that it is for the best if the US meddles with Iran and follows Israel's lead into war. He probably truly believes the claims by the Israeli and US governments that Iran was building nukes any day now and we had to strike them. Erickson is not sitting in these classified intelligence meetings getting the details like Kent was, he just trusts the propaganda.

Same thing, do I trust Joe Kent on every single topic ever? Probably not, I don't think he would have say, great information on whether or not some local restaurant chain plans on expanding into North Dakota next month. But Joe Kent does (or at least did) have access to all classified information and discussions during his role as director of the National Counterterrorism Center. When he says something there, it's a lot more meaningful.

I have reason to believe the CEO of local restaurant chain on their expansion plans, but not on info regarding the Iran War. I have reason to believe the former head of counterterrorism on the Iran War, but not on the expansion plans of a local restaurant chain.

The direct impetus for the air strikes was obviously the Iranian protests and the slaughter of thousands of protestors weeks before. Having the government of Iran be replaced by protestors who owe the success of their revolution to U.S. airstrikes is presumably a best-case outcome for the U.S. (and for Iranians), but Trump has varied between explicitly calling for regime change and minimalist goals regarding further destroying their nuclear program, probably in large part so that he can declare victory regardless of how things turn out.

When the protests were still ongoing Trump was supposedly hours from ordering air strikes against Iranian police/etc. to support the protestors but was talked down, supposedly in part by Netanyahu fearing retaliation before Israel was prepared for it. There was a lot of talk at the time about how this was a betrayal of the protestors, who he urged to take over the institutions and implied U.S. support but then didn't deliver while they were slaughtered. Meanwhile U.S. assets were moved into the region to support a better-prepared attack. By the time U.S. assets were in place the protests had been suppressed but Trump went ahead with the attack anyway. Since the attack both Trump and Reza Pahlavi have been explicitly urging the protestors to wait and it is unclear if Trump believes revolution is now futile, if he wants to do more work to weaken the regime before calling for protests to resume, or if he wants to keep his options open between some sort of agreement and attempting regime change.

These protestors were armed by the US and Israel. It was an armed insurrection backed by an enemy state. Iran had every reason to shut if down and it is far better to shut it down than turn into Syria. The casualty numbers are sold to us by the same people who lied about every other regime change war.

Is there an example of an acceptable insurrection that a host country wouldn't have every reason to shut down?

What about the one in Korea recently?

My understanding is the US tried to arm the protestors, but the Kurds kept the weapons. The protestors were not armed.

It was an armed insurrection backed by an enemy state.

And Americans will be celebrating the 250th anniversary of their own this year.

These protestors were armed by the US and Israel. It was an armed insurrection backed by an enemy state.

I'm skeptical of this. Is there any source for this claim?

Iran had every reason to shut if down

From the perspective of regime survival, I would agree -- regardless of whether the protestors were backed by an enemy state. If you are trying to argue that Iran's actions -- gunning down and executing protestors -- were morally justified, then I would have to disagree.

As much as you would like to ignore the context, the reality is that Iran has been relentlessly and aggressively making proxy war on Israel, and to a lesser extent the US, for decades now. For example by bombing a Jewish community center in Argentina. I'm skeptical that the US and Israel have been arming protestors, but even if they had, it would certainly be morally justified based on Iran's behavior. And Iran's leadership has no moral basis to oppose it.

Probably the most important piece of context is that Iran has always had -- and still has -- the option of an uneasy peace, such as what exists between Israel and Egypt.

The US attacked Iran in 1941 and then overthrew the government in 1953. In the 1980s it paid Iraq to invade Iran which killed hundreds of thousands of Iranians. Since then the US has invaded a neighbouring country three times and launched to more wars in the past year against Iran. Israel helped jihadists take over Syria, a country that has friendly relations with Iran. The US and Israel has bombed Iranian embassies, flooded Iran with migrants and heroin, sanctioned Iran, shot down an Iranian airliner, assassinated plenty of Iranians and openly called for overthrowing the Iranian government.

This isn't Iran fighting a proxy war, this is Iran helping its neighbours in a justified way.

Iran wanted peace in 2001. The US refused it. The Iranians have tried to negotiate, and the US has murdered negotiators.

  • -11

The US attacked Iran in 1941 and then overthrew the government in 1953. In the 1980s it paid Iraq to invade Iran which killed hundreds of thousands of Iranians.

Iran wanted peace in 2001. The US refused it.

I'm skeptical of these claims as well.

Please provide backup for your claims that (1) the protestors in Iran were armed by the US and Israel; (2) the US attacked Iran in 1941 and overthrew the government in 1953; (3) the US paid Iraq to invade Iran; and (4) Iran wanted peace in 2001 and the US refused it.

This isn't Iran fighting a proxy war, this is Iran helping its neighbours in a justified way.

Ok, so in your view, when Iran bombed a Jewish community center in Argentina, killing and injuring hundreds of people that was "Iran helping its neighbors in a justified way." Do I understand you correctly?

  1. Israel sold the plan of instigating a revolution in Iran:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/22/us/politics/iran-israel-trump-netanyahu-mossad.html

Trump admitted he gave weapons to protestors:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/6/has-trump-confirmed-irans-claim-that-protesters-were-us-armed

the US attacked Iran in 1941 and overthrew the government in 1953

Admittedly the war was more of a British thing at first but the US was clearly involved in the subsequent occupation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Soviet_invasion_of_Iran

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

The US overthrew a democratically elected leader and installed a brutal dictator.

the US paid Iraq to invade Iran;

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2003/9/22/us-plans-to-attack-seven-muslim-states

Netanyahu and the neocons have been pushing hard for war against Iran. US politicians talk openly about overthrowing Iran.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93United_States_relations_during_the_George_W._Bush_administration#State_of_Iran-U.S._relations_in_January_2001

Iran was warming up to the west after 9/11

One bombing in the 80s fundamentally doesn't matter that much when millions have died in the middle east.

Trump admitted he gave weapons to protestors:

Assuming this is correct, I take it you are unable to support your claim that Israel armed the protestors?

Admittedly the war was more of a British thing at first

Ok, so you admit that you are unable to support your claim that the US attacked Iran in 1941?

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2003/9/22/us-plans-to-attack-seven-muslim-states

Umm, what's your evidence that the US paid Iraq to attack Iran? I don't even see any hearsay on that subject in the article you link to.

Iran was warming up to the west after 9/11

Ok, just to be clear, your evidence that "Iran wanted peace in 2001. The US refused it." is your own (unsupported) claim that "Iran was warming up to the west after 9/11"?

One bombing in the 80s fundamentally doesn't matter that much when millions have died in the middle east.

Maybe it matters a little, maybe it matters a lot. But part of your Gish Gallop included this claim:

This isn't Iran fighting a proxy war, this is Iran helping its neighbours in a justified way.

I'm just asking if this includes Iran's attack on the Jewish community center in Argentina. It's a very simple yes or no question. Why won't you answer it?

Ok, so you admit that you are unable to support your claim that the US attacked Iran in 1941?

I like how you completely glaze over the definitive evidence for the '53 coup, which is what actually matters here.

Ok, just to be clear, your evidence that "Iran wanted peace in 2001. The US refused it." is your own (unsupported) claim that "Iran was warming up to the west after 9/11"?

No, he posted the evidence right below. Are you blind?

Maybe it matters a little, maybe it matters a lot. But part of your Gish Gallop included this claim:

You're the one Gish Galloping by demanding infinite evidence and then refusing to budge an inch when said evidence is provided.

I'm just asking if this includes Iran's attack on the Jewish community center in Argentina. It's a very simple yes or no question. Why won't you answer it?

You need to prove that Iran did it, to start. But once again, he did answer it:

One bombing in the 80s fundamentally doesn't matter that much when millions have died in the middle east.

Again, do you have faulty vision? Do you suffer from severe brain damage? Is your IQ below the level of legal retardation? Are you suffering from severe inbreeding? Are you just trolling?

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The US attacked Iran in 1941

TIL Britain and the USSR are the US

Always has been.meme.jpeg

Only the Americans have agency. Anything done by the allies was because the Americans enabled them.

Based and america-pilled

Anything done by the allies was because the Americans enabled them.

And anything done by enemies was because the Americans provoked them.

This man Americanas.

Though not as hard as those bold Americans who invaded Iran before Pearl Harbor.

I'm skeptical of this. Is there any source for this claim?

You didn't address this question. It was their main point.

Can you support that claim?

Those protestors were not armed by the US, Israel, or anyone else.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/6/has-trump-confirmed-irans-claim-that-protesters-were-us-armed

Mossad and CIA have been backing all sorts of groups to create chaos in Iran.

Replace "Iran" with "North Korea," "China," or "Russia," and "Israel" with "South Korea," "Japan," and "Ukraine" and no-one (well, almost no-one; Ukraine is a bit more controversial) gets all that upset. Still leads me to believe the concern with Israel is overblown.

I think that Americans would absolutely lose their shit if we started bombing China at Japan's urging or North Korea at South Korea's urging.

I think Americans would also lose their shit and demand bombing if China did half the shit to Japan that Iran and the broader "Axis of Resistance" pulls in the Middle East. Moreso, if China was vaguely associated with significant local ethno-religious tensions and terrorism the way that Iran is associated with islamism (despite being Shia, rather than Sunni like the vast majority of the problematic refugees/terrorists).

Why do you think Americans care about the Middle East? Didn't Trump explicitly campaign on getting the fuck out of that region, or at least 'no further entanglements'?

They have a lot of oil and there's this thing that happened in early September of 2001.

A rogue Saudi aristocrat living among hill tribes in a failed state sent a terror attack under the aegis of Iran's greatest religious enemy that exploited fixable security issues in America?

That happened on 9/11. What was exposed is that there are about half a billion people who hold a sincere religious belief that killing Americans is good, and that they hold supermajorities in basically every country in this particular region. And that the only think preventing them from performing on said sincere religious belief is their own total incompetence.

this thing that happened in early September of 2001

"Sunni terrorists under the guidance of a rogue Saudi noble (and likely backed by Saudi money) murdered a couple of thousand Americans, so obviously 25 years later we have to support Saudi Arabia against their Shiite enemies, otherwise how would we ever learn if Shiites are better at killing Americans on their own soil than Sunnis?"

The minor liturgical spats between the various folks in the region chanting death to America are of less interest to us than the chanting and bonafide sincere desire they possess to enact that feeling.

Middle Easterners are much more interested in killing each other (and Israelis) than killing Americans, popular slogans notwithstanding. Just like Americans hate other Americans more than they do any foreigners: proximity breeds contempt.

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9/11 bought ~20 years of middle eastern misadventures before Americans got bored and/or jaded. Soldiers dying, bases getting bombed, allies getting blown up? Americans shrug. All Iran has to do to preserve American apathy is not attack American soil.

Despite the inconsistency on many given reasons, the US has stayed pretty consistent on one reason, Iran was working towards nukes and we gotta stop them.

Has it? I thought it was WMDs in general, rather than specifically nukes, and specifically that they hadn't fully thought through the possibility that Iran would be more concerned with maintaining regional status/deterrence via ambiguity about their programs/stockpiles than that they'd be concerned about foreign intervention.

What other WMDs could they be worried about? Did Iran make hantavirus?

Not hantavirus per se but biological weapons do exist, yes, along with chemical and radiological (the latter being distinct from a nuclear weapon). I believe Iraq had previously used chemical weapons during wars, at the very least.

There's some evidence that Iran developed a small chemical weapons program during the latter years of Iran-Iraq but found it ineffective. The US government, as part of its support for Iraq, blamed Iran when Saddam gassed the Kurds. Anyways, chemical weapons are a meme; the US wouldn't have destroyed its stockpiles if they were worth using for a serious military. And unless you think Iran has mega biolabs capable of creating another pandemic, biological weapons are no real threat either.

I think that you are oversimplifying things. The utility of chemical weapons depends a lot specific conditions. For example, they were used a lot on the Western Front in WW1 (though they did not lead to a military breakthrough), while they saw little to no combat use in WW2, not because Hitler was a nice guy who would never stoop so low, but because his blitzkrieg tactics did not require area denial.

So CW depend on doctrine, and doctrine is not something which you can just pick. The Reichswehr could not simply have invented the blitzkrieg, they lacked the vehicles to pull that off. The US military is very long on equipment and rather short on atrocities. They are highly mechanized (which means that CW for area denial are less useful to them), but any war they join is likely to be a voluntary overseas engagement, and they have an electorate back home which tends to get upset over atrocities. For Assad and his ilk, the calculation is different. He did not have the mobility to do blitzkrieg, but he also did not have to consider what his electorate could stomach.

If you are not trying to achieve a tactical objective, but the goal is to spread terror, then chemical weapons are probably 10x as effective per death than bombs are, and radiological weapons might be 100x as effective as plain old explosives. That Japanese cult could have achieved the same death toll of their infamous Sarin attack by throwing a few pipe bombs into a crowded subway car at a fraction of the operational complexity of synthesizing a nerve agent. But if they had done that, their attack might not even have made the top spot in international news, and would long have been forgotten outside Japan.

Chemical weapons are ineffective against actual militaries, the Reichswehr spent the latter half of the great war figuring that out. They're effective against mobs of unarmed protestors, which is who Assad actually gassed- but they're less effective than munitions(which Assad did not have enough of, he was filling barrels with oil and lighting fuses before pushing them out of helicopters). They're not great for targeting villagers, but Saddam didn't run a militarily optimal regime. People who can afford better(chemical weapons are cheap), do.

If you are not trying to achieve a tactical objective, but the goal is to spread terror, then chemical weapons are probably 10x as effective per death than bombs are, and radiological weapons might be 100x as effective as plain old explosives. That Japanese cult could have achieved the same death toll of their infamous Sarin attack by throwing a few pipe bombs into a crowded subway car at a fraction of the operational complexity of synthesizing a nerve agent. But if they had done that, their attack might not even have made the top spot in international news, and would long have been forgotten outside Japan.

It's the same as dirty bombs. The radioactivity from a dirty bomb will not, realistically, cause particularly many cancer cases. It will, however, cause an absolutely absurd amount of panic, and I mean that both in the literal sense and as an intensifier.

Because this is Israel's possible last chance to use America as a beatstick on Iran for at least a generation or two. I think Israelis call it mowing the lawn with Palestinians, this must be like getting a contractor to trim the trees. I also try to finish eating the old food in the fridge as it gets closer to the expiration date, Netanyahu's reasoning may be similar.

Democrats and younger Republicans are turning neutral to anti-Israel. Since pro-Israel US politics is increasingly associated with older Republicans, a Republican president right now is the best chance to cash in on all the AIPAC lobbying investments while there are still pro-Israel democrats in office. Now or never.

Netanyahu may have hoped for the IRGC to be fully wiped out and for Iran to be occupied by the US, but this is probably the minimum expected result. At least Israel will be relatively safer for a few years, at which point they will be stronger and possibly able to deal with Iran by themselves.

Always keep the expendable chaff on the front line to soften up the enemy before the real battle starts.

Democrats and younger Republicans are turning neutral to anti-Israel.

I can not speak for the Republicans (or for the Americans at all, really), but while I was never a fan of Netanyahu, I was willing to give Israel a bit of slack to crush Hamas after Oct 7. Unfortunately, Netanyahu displayed a total indifference towards civilian lives. Personally, my attitude these days is that it is sad that the religious nutjobs in the ME want to murder each other, but we can't really prevent them from doing so and should just stay the hell away from them.

At least Israel will be relatively safer for a few years, at which point they will be stronger and possibly able to deal with Iran by themselves.

I think this is going to backfire badly for him. I would claim that the natural attitude of most Americans towards Israel and the ME in general is one of indifference. Sure, some might prefer Israel holding Jerusalem for end-time prophecy reasons, and others might really prefer a two-state solution (and even be in denial about what kind of murderous thugs Hamas are), but Israel has not been a dominant topic in US politics. This was a great environment for AIPAC to work in -- their support could certainly buy a candidate more votes than it cost him in die-hard Palestine supporters.

Trying to starve Gaza made a lot of people care more about Israel, but still not to the point of being unsalvagable. Trump's war on behalf of Israel will make Israel support a prime CW hotspot for the coming years.

Israel's strategic situation without Western support is not all that great. Sure, it is somewhat tolerated by the Sunni's because they have a common enemy, which is Shiite Iran, but my take is that most of the Sunni population does not like Israel very much, which for now does not matter because they can't really vote in another king. They have a population of 10M, e.g. roughly that of Cairo alone. Sure, they have by far the best tech in the ME, but even that depends on Western pipelines, they can hardly maintain a cutting edge weapons platform for anything from submarines to stealth bombers by themselves.

Sure, some might prefer Israel holding Jerusalem for end-time prophecy reasons

Ok, minor correction. The 'We need to support Israel to bring on the end times because the prophecy requires Israel hold Jerusalem' is not very common in the red tribe. These guys are seen as weirdos sorta like mormons, seventh day adventists, Christian scientists, etc.

The typical zionist church in the US- and this attitude is legitimately very common in the red tribe- teaches that God will carry out retribution against those who do not protect the Jews from persecution. This is a different position, one which doesn't care very much about Israeli territorial expansion and may even have sympathy for Gazan civilians- but also isn't willing to see Israel fall.

Hey, that's a interesting nuance I wasn't aware of, about protecting the Jews from persecution. What branch of Christianity did this develop from? Was it promoted by Zionists after WW2, or was it something older? Did it exist in Germany during Hitler's rise?

Knowing this, I'm mystified why Israel even attempts to court red tribe support if it's already a common attitude and religiously ordained. Israel should be courting the blue tribe to make sure they control both parties..

I feel like Israel has really squandered their position. They've had total dominance and Western support for 50 years and been unable to forge a lasting peace. Mostly based on the idea they could keep a subjected Palestinian population indefinitely.

Oct 7th must have triggered the policy of "never let a good crisis go to waste".

I think the worst that happens to Israel from the US is that some aid gets cut, so they have buy more weapons out of pocket. I don't think an arms embargo is on the table because there are too many senators still beholden to AIPAC, for now.

American public can still change their mind and become indifferent over Palestinians, especially if Islamic terrorism gets newsworthy again. In fact, I expect at least one sizable left-leaning media outlet to be bought to support Israel, like how Politico was purchased by Axel Springer. It would emphasize shared struggle against terrorism to try to divide the left flank of democrats.

Always keep the expendable chaff on the front line to soften up the enemy before the real battle starts.

In Chess the pawns go first.

I feel like this is more like a wild queen's gambit, if you were told by the referee at the start of the match your queen would be removed from the board after 20 total moves played. Might as well damage your opponent as much possible.

Got me missing the xmen movies though, might have to do a full rewatch.

The worst portrayal of magneto was in X-men 2,3. Just dreadful.

Opening repertoire’s were always my weakness originally and it was where my deficiencies showed, but in end games I was always rock solid and had near machine optimal moves. I always preferred the Ruy-Lopez. I also liked to emulate Dubov playing the Tarrasch but my calculation was never as complete or precise as his. Watching him play is beautiful, despite my style being wholly antithetical to his own.

I was curious to see if Yagiz Kaan could steal one from Magnus or at least draw him, since he’s now the youngest 2700 ever to play the game; but Magnus never loses endgames. It took balls to see such a young kid so eager to swim out to the deep end of the pool. You could tell he realized the single blunder he made where it was lost for him. My boy’s been taking our people to the Promised Land for nearly 20 years, #VikingPower. Chess belongs to the North, 💪 👊 ⛪️ 🇳🇴 🇸🇪.

But I’m proud of Yagiz. Kid’s got a bright future and I look forward to watching his games.

Ruy Lopez is the way my dad taught me to play. It's my opening as white far too much, to the point it's a crutch and probably weakens me severely playing black.

Never heard about Yagiz until now, but being so young there's no way he doesn't get better unless he has a mental breakdown or something.

In my post on Halo from last month I mentioned that Clint Hocking's work on the Far Cry franchise probably deserved its own essay. In the process of researching that essay I discovered that another YouTuber had already beaten me to the scoop, covering much of the same ground that I had planned to.

I'm going to link his video below, but I still want to get this out because I find the franchise's central theme of choice, consequence, and the role that we as individuals often play in our own destruction/salvation, are highly relevant to conversations that have been happening elsewhere on this forum.

For the uninitiated Far Cry is a series of single player first person shooters produced by Ubisoft. The series follows an anthology format with each new game introducing a new setting and set of characters.

The first Far Cry game released in 2004 was essentially a glorified tech demo for Cervat Yerli's scalable dynamic rendering engine which he had developed in partnership with Nvidia and would later market under the CryEngine name. This technology enabled highly detailed and expansive exterior scenes with functionally infinite draw distances to be rendered on the hardware of the day without the need to rely on pre-baked lighting/shaders and forced perspective tricks the way contemporary 3D games like Half-Life 2 did.

If the first Far Cry was essentially a tech demo, Far Cry 2 released in 2008 was a gameplay demo. What narrative there is, is paper thin, but what Far Cry 2 did was codify the genre of the "3D open-world action game with crafting and collectibles". Blazing the trail that games like Skyrim, the Assassin's Creed series, Batman Arkham City, Ghosts of Tsushima, and Cyberpunk 2077, would all follow. It may be one of the most low-key influential video games of the last two decades.

The third game is where everything clicked. Far Cry 3 released in 2012 was the first Far Cry to have a proper narrative with fully realized characters who were more than stock archetypes like "Generic Action Hero Guy", "Mad Scientist", and "Femme Fatale". A lot of effort went into facial animation and voice acting to the point that it still holds up surprisingly well for a game that is over a decade old. Which brings us to the thesis of this essay.

If the measure of a piece of "literature" or "art" is the ability to tackle a complex or challenging ideas and make them accessible to the masses, Far Cry 3 deserve to be regarded as high art for how deftly it uses its own medium to convey and amplify the themes of the story it is trying to tell. Or as DJ Peach Cobbler puts it Far Cry 3 tells a story that only a video game could tell

You play as Jason Brody, a pampered rich douche-bro on vacation in Ersatz-Indonesia who, along with his friends, is kidnapped and held for ransom by pirates after they stray too far from the relative safety of their beachfront resort. Jason, with the assistance of his older brother Grant, manages free himself and escape into the jungle but Grant gets shot and killed during the escape, leaving Jason to face the Jungle alone and unprepared.

This is our first hint that the game might be operating on a deeper level than your conventional shoot-em-up. Grant is presented to us as the quintessential hero protagonist, handsome, charismatic, capable, brave, and he dies an ugly gurgling death bleeding out in the mud while his little brother panics. This all happens in the first 10 minutes of the game and the message is clear. You, the limp wristed trust-fund kid, are going to have to level up if you are to have any hope of surviving the jungle much less freeing your friends from captivity. And with that the game releases you into its world.

As you progress through the game, discovering landmarks, hunting animals, crafting equipment, and completing quests, you unlock new abilities, new weapons, better stats. You become more and more capable, and more and more of a killer till by the end John Rambo 'aint got nothing on Jason Brody.

This where things get interesting because without getting into spoilers it is made abundantly clear throughout the narrative that all this killing and "leveling up" is taking a toll on Jason's mind, that it is damaging his relationships with his friends, his family, society, morality, and ultimately reality. At the same time Jason isn't the one doing the killing, we are. YOU, the player, not Jason, are the one positioning the crosshairs and pulling the trigger. You, the player, are the one who made the decision to complete that extra side-quest so that you could unlock that sweet triple knife take-down, and having unlocked it, by God we're going to use it, because dopamine's a hell of a drug. By playing the game we have been manipulated into being willing and enthusiastic participants in Jason's descent into violence and madness. The daemon on his shoulder whispering "Yah, we got this" as we pursue our own destruction.

...and this is why I believe that that the infamous "bad ending" is the canonically correct ending for Jason's story, and that the people who complain about how the game "punishes the player" for making the thematic choice by wanting to keep playing are missing the forest for the trees. The fact that game gives you one last chance to reject the path of violence is what makes the ending so impactful.

I have set before you life and death, blessing and curses. Therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live.

  • Deuteronomy 30:19

These themes of player agency and choice would be explored and expanded upon in Far Cry 4 and 5 (4's "Secret Ending" being a notable example of this) but if you are going to play just one of the Far Cry games please play Far Cry 3. It is worth your time.

Far Cry 2 released in 2008 was a gameplay demo. What narrative there is, is paper thin, but what Far Cry 2 did was codify the genre of the "3D open-world action game with crafting and collectibles". Blazing the trail that games like Skyrim, the Assassin's Creed series, Batman Arkham City, Ghosts of Tsushima, and Cyberpunk 2077, would all follow.

Um, no. Skyrim isn't copying Far Cry 2; it's copying Morrowind, which came out in 2002. Like, come on, I know Arena and Daggerfall are pretty obscure (and don't fit that description), but Morrowind is pretty well-known and Skyrim's literally a sequel to it.

This.

Some open-world-ish 1st and (close) 3rd person games:

  • GTA 3: 2001
  • Oblivion: 2006
  • Assassin's Creed: 2007
  • The Witcher: 2007
  • Far Cry 2: 2008
  • Fallout 3: 2008 (one week after FC2)

(Also, there were only four fricking years between Morrowind and Oblivion? Damn, video game progress was fast back then.)

Yeah video game development has slowed to a crawl. It's genuinely bad; I would much much rather have games that look 50% as good (still very good!) and take only a year or two to develop instead of the status quo where they take a decade.

I agree, but Elder Scrolls isn't actually a great example. The fact that they still haven't released a new mainline title seems to be largely down to the stupidity (or genius, depending on how you view the extra juice they squeezed from Skyrim) of their development choices. After Oblivion, it was 2 years to Fallout 3, 3 years to Skyrim, 4 years to Fallout 4, 3 years to Fallout 76, and 5 years to Starfield. Pretty consistent

Another thing is that Bethesda is tiny in comparison to most AAA devs. They have 450 employees in comparison to the 9000 at Blizzard that worked on Diablo 4 and Ubisoft has like 17000 thousand.

...and this is why I believe that that the infamous "bad ending" is the canonically correct ending for Jason's story, and that the people who complain about how the game "punishes the player" for making the thematic choice by wanting to keep playing are missing the forest for the trees. The fact that game gives you one last chance to reject the path of violence is what makes the ending so impactful.

Well darn. Now you make me want to dig out my own personal screed of a time when the game 'punishing the player' was actually the better writing. For me it's Mass Effect 3.

For those not familiar, ME3 was the divisive end for the Mass Effect trilogy which premised a meta-narrative of your choices mattering and having consequences over a trilogy of games with choice carry-over being designed from the start. Except many of the characters were a mix of woobie and sycophant, and the developers hadn't actually written out or designed a trilogy structure, or even figured out how they were going to overcome their own overpowering arch enemy. They were making up a series and key lore as they went along, and wrote themselves into a corner where the end-game solution to an unstoppable fleet was a macguffin from precursors that, if built, can kill them before they kill you. This culminated in ME3's controversial ending of the player basically choosing to nuke galactic civilization in one of three colors of techno-magic. And the only ending where survival was potentially implied was the one where galactic civilization couldn't be put back together again via an army of genocidal squid-machines or the involuntary organic-AI interfusion of everyone.

For a series that to date had basically no blow back to any of the moral highroad / 'damn the risks, I'm doing what's right' decisions that were the audience and writer's preferred Paragon playstyle, it was a sharp whiplash of tone. Mass Effect to date had rarely been about having to make hard decisions, because it had always let you avoid the hard parts if you just picked the golden route / nice thing, while the most common consequence of not doing the nice thing in a previous game was less content in the next. Hard consequences were the consequence of being a jerk, which is why surviving a suicide mission with no casualties was by far the most common import state between ME2 and ME3.

But if you were willing to take the less-than-golden route from the start...

To this day, I maintain Mass Effect 3 works best as a war story if you go into it with a lot of the fan-favorite characters dead from the previous games. Doing so denied players the opportunity for golden-path 'flawless' successes along the way, and so reframed the ME3 ending from being an out-of-place anamoly to tonally and thematically consistent.

A large part of this was the lack of trilogy design though put into the cast of characters introduced into ME2, a game built around recruiting and exploring a cast of characters for a suicide mission where Anyone Can Die. A lot of thought and care went into the character designs and their missions and such, but at a design level the mere fact that they could die meant that any sequel had to be designed around the possibility that they would not be there. No one could be entirely load-carrying for the plot, because the plot has to happen. So if they are to play a role in a later game, they need a substitute who can do it for them.

This can be done by using other characters already existing in the narrative. In Mass Effect 1, for example, one of the genuinely best choices of the series is when you can only save one of your two starting marine companions on a planet called Virmire, made juicier that one of them may be your primary love interest. There is no golden way to save both, and it can be gripping. However, post-Virmire the Virmire Survivors collapse into a single character in the narrative, and fulfill eachother's roles almost identically. So in ME2 they are a cameo character investigating the big bad and your mysterious post-death return, whether they are your former flame or not, in ME3 there's a generally identical reconciliation arc (or not), and so on.

But you can also fill the narrative hole by introducing new characters. For example, another ME1 character is Wrex, a jaded warlord of a species that's been genocided for warmongering by a bioweapon known as the genophage. It basically reduces the once hyper-fertility race that overwhelmed with numbers to such a degree that the race's own disregard for life is dooming it to extinction. Wrex has matured past the worst of the species hyper-aggressive warmongering ways, but in ME1 when he hears the antagonist has been working on a cure he sees the salvation of his species as too precious to lose. You can talk him down if you've invested enough in the persuasion / morality system, but if it's your first run you may have to put him down- or your marine companion may put him down. This is also on Virmire, so this is the mission that could kill two companions, and your Virmire survivor decision may be shaped by who puts Wrex down.

But if Wrex dies, he is replaced by his otherwise-never-referenced brother Wreave. And Wreave is as awesome a narrative foil as he is a terrible person. He is the sort of short-sighted, hyper-aggresive, civilizationally ruinous warlord that makes you understand why the genophage was employed in the first place. Where Wrex has mellowed out and likes a good brawl but will try things like 'diplomacy' and 'restraint,' Wreave is a vicious and brutal warlord with the sort of cunning to also rise in power, but makes it clear any good relations are transactional and probably temporary. Put another way- Wrex is a noble-savage king who might ally with a female clan in a deliberate breeding alliance that is barely breakinng above replacement rates by reigning in their worst impulses, and Wreave is a savage-savage who monopolizes the females with all that implies.

Which makes the ME3 core plot arc of 'build a galactic alliance against the Reapers' so much more juicy, since both Wrex and Wreave are basically holding out on alliance in exchange for the same bribe: a cure to the genophage. This is pure crisis bartering for both of them, a demand they know will only be given in an existential crisis. They'll be your army if you remove the shackles driving them to extinction, except the extinction is because they'd be able to survive regardless if they weren't so self-destructive. But while Wrex is a guy you can see has been trying to make a society that maybe you could trust to not rampage across the galaxy, Wreave makes no such pretensions- it's just that that is the next generation's problem if you can survive the current apocalypse.

Which is what makes the story arc's big decision- do you sabotage the genophage cure- such an interesting option. You have the option to secretly sabotage the genophage, but let the Krogan think it worked for a time. Eventually the evidence will be clear, but that is the next generation's problem if they can survive the current apocalypse.

Saving Wrex and delivering the genuine genophage clear is part of that paragon golden route, and it's not even subtle about it. Basically all the cultural drawbacks and survival-through-reform themes from before are thrown out and not mentioned again. The morally nuanced and internally conflicted alien doctor Mordin, from the species that made- and re-enforced- the genophage, goes from grappling with his conscience and competing ethical complications and responsibility to a moral certainty that this is the right thing. There's even a 2010s feminist Krogan female who's introduced, subtly named Eve, who is wise and virtuous and the key to saving the hyper-masculine testosterone-poisoned species. If you do this golden route, despite the genophage being about reigning in massive broods, the post-credits slide (after the 'improved' endings post-controversy) show a nuclear family of two parents and a single child. All is good, and nothing is implied to happen.

Have Wreave, though, and the context changes. He's clearly not interested in listening to the advice of the wonderful woman that is Eve. He fantasizes of the wars he's going to fight. He is a giant alarm bell of the future, and even the guilt-plagued genophage doctor Mordin can be convinced that, no, sabotaging the cure is for the best. This is treachery, no doubt about it, but it's for the best. It doesn't hurt that Wreave is an idiot. He won't know until it's well, well too late.

But Wrex isn't an idiot. And the best / most deliciously painful writing in the arc comes from if you betray him. Your friend. Your homeboy. And your other homeboy, Mordin.

See, Mordin's character arc has always been grappling with the genophage, something he felt was necessary because of how bad the Krogan had become, but regretted all the same. With the golden route of Wrex and Eve, he doesn't think it's necessary anymore. In the culmination of the genophage arc, if you try to sabotage the genophage, Mordin does something almost no companion character franchise does-

He defies you, and disregards your choice. Rather than submit to your take-as-long-as-you-need dialogue option to decide the fate of the species, Mordin goes 'no,' and moves to cure the genophage anyway. The actual choice to sabotage the golden path is if you literally shoot your companion in the back via a special in-cutscene decision. He dies, gasping, in the fires that consume his hopes for the krogan species. Your sacrifice for a bitter-sweet betrayal of the golden path.

And when Wrex puts the pieces together, he is furious, and tries to murder you in the middle of the galactic capital. No evasion, no dialogue checks. He even brings up how you talked your way out of that Virmire situation long ago. He's throw accusations, and you've really no choice (other than death) but to kill him. Two friends lost to the same narrative decision.

But what makes it best? The local police chief (who you know) who comes to assist asks what's going on. And accepts a lie because, well, everyone knows Krogan are irrationally aggressive. There was no helping it. Life goes on, despite the loss. This is the sort of narrative tone for the early and into mid-game that makes the ME3 ending feel in place, and not shoehorned in for 'forced tragedy.'

But the meta-mechanics of 'why' this tension worked- why Wrex was better than Wreave- apply elsewhere.

Go back to survivability design. If a character can die, future stories must exist without them. If the character is absent, another must fill in. Put another way, though, the future plots exist without the killable-character, and the returning character is just a cameo in their own episode plot.

But, Mass Effect was a franchise built around the characters. They are the central appeal in otherwise middling writing. Moreover, the characters from ME2 were introduced as 'the best of the best.' They are awesome, far more awesome than random replacements. But they've also generally arrived at the end of their character arcs, since most characters from ME2 had self-contained character arcs that were concluded by the suicide mission they could die in. Because, for narrative purposes, helping them find closure is the secret ingredient for them surviving the suicide mission.

So you have characters, who have already concluded their character arcs, who may or may not be coming back as cameos. How do you make those cameos the fan-servicey things they are?

In short, by making things turn out better when they are around. New sympathetic characters who have to be introduced in ME3 can survive if fan-favorite returns from ME2. Menacing threats can be dealt with just in time with returning champion. The AI who learned what it meant to have friends becomes the key to saving two species from an AI-vs-organic war. ME2 cameo characters, in other words, become the key to the golden path.

But the golden path leads to narrative dissonance with the ending. And often isn't better writing, as much as saccharine.

For another example- take the character of Jack.

Jack is the ultimate woobie, destroyer of worlds. If you remember that scene from the first Deadpool movie where Deadpool and his love interest trade who has the worse childhood abuse backstory, that's Jack, except played striaght instead of laughs. Jack has the most powerful space-magic telekenitics in the galaxy because of how much she was abused as a child by inhuman experiments, which were done for the sake of giving her the most powerful space-magic telekenitcs in the galaxy. Don't ask how human child abuse by human specist-extremists makes a woman strong, it's symbolic and characteristic of that era of Bioware. Jack's ME2 character arc is about overcoming personal trauma and starting to heal. (Naturally, this progresses most explicitly comes out in the romance scene if you sleep with the traumatized girl.)

Jack's ME3 cameo is that she goes to a school for other space-telekinetics, and became the cool teacher. The school is attacked by the same human-extremist that kidnapped and traumatized her, and whose current style is to take people and make cybernentic slave-soldiers out of them. Its up to you and Jack to save the kids, but really this is Jack's epilogue story and you're just enabling her. With Jack on board, the mission is a triumph over past abusers, an unmitigated victory, and Jack basks in the adoration of her adoring students. Those students exist merely as background cheerleaders as she trounces the enemies, and at the very end one over-eager one has to be saved to give Jack her big goddamn hero moments. At the end, the moral decision is whether your conscript these young adult-age level telekinetics into the space army against the apocalypse, which Jack doesn't like the thought of but hey, she'll be there to make sure the worst doesn't happen.

If Jack is dead, the academy is still attacked, and those students have to save themselves, learning to fight for themselves or be enslaved to fight for others. A cathartic victory romp is instead becomes a harrowing school shooting / hostage rescue, as the students band together to try and resist an overpowering opponent systemically dismantling their defenses. The students are cracking, but under pressure from adversity the models that would have been caricatures of adoring fans in another timeline have to develop into actual characters in another. It's not the longest mission, but it's long enough for one of them to stand up and emerge as a potential leader, someone who can hold the team together and get them safe.

In another timeline, this is the student who Jack saves in her big goddamn hero moment. In this timeline, he still needs a big goddamn hero of his own, as he's being a hero to others. But Jack isn't here, and he is shot. The other students are saved, but traumatized all over again- the rising hero that was inspiring them cut down, as so many are in the greater apocalyptic war.

Now do you conscript these traumatized, but blooded, teens to be soldiers instead of students during the apocalypse?

As with the genophage, this is the sort of writing that makes a hail-mary play with no ideal outcomes feel tonally consistent.

In your golden route paths, nuking civilization galaxy-wide is so jarring because it feels it should be unnecessary. You basically roll from victory to victory, and if it's not enough that just means you should just keep playing and saving the day more. You've always taken the high road to date- why should it fail you now? It's only when it fails that the saccharine sweetness becomes apparent.

But in your 'inferior' routes, the routes you get by 'failing' to save people before, you are already steeped in losses. Your world is 'objectively worse' than the golden route, but also much more visceral and gripping. You get character drama and tragedy, as competing visions of greater goods leads to betrayal, and as the promising potential of the future dies and the survivors are scarred/corrupted just to keep fighting. Survival at a cost, at almost any cost, without losing your humanity even if human nature isn't as noble as you'd like.

But then, I'm also one of the minority of people who unironically enjoyed Mass Effect: Andromeda as a deliberately campy B-flick story of alien first contact and exploration, so what do I know.

I've never been much for the perfectionist completions. Mostly I just didn't want to spend so much time stuck in guides when I could be playing the game.

As a result I did not get a golden path completion in mass effect 2. I think I might have lost only one or two of them though. I'm not sure how many cuz I might have been looking to sacrifice two of them that I didn't like and just only managed to find a good sacrifice for one of them. Jack and Wrex were definitely on the chopping block. Jack was aesthetically annoying to me. It always seemed correct to genocide the krogans to me. The geth robot was cool, but he also seemed like he wouldn't mind getting sacrificed.

I never did buy mass effect 3. At that point I had started waiting for game reviews before purchasing, and the story was heavily panned.

Having not gotten the golden path in the game also gave me more of a sense of completion, or at least finality.

A similar thing happened when I played the Witcher 3. I got the bad ending where Ciri dies. I was too overprotective apparently. It meant I had no interest in going back and playing the DLC. Which was by review apparently really awesome.

My preferred example of this is Dragon Age 2, which deserves a longer post than I can make right now, but which I much prefer to read as a tragedy, and therefore is accentuated and heightened by 'bad' decisions.

I think DA2 is a tragedy even if you play it 'optimally', for the best outcomes. Even in the best possible version, DA2 is a story about Hawke, the protagonist, seeking his/her fortune in a new city, rising from a penniless refugee to the height of political power, and none of it being worth a damn. No matter how good your decisions, or how diligent you are about sidequests and doing all the content, the city of Kirkwall is doomed to descend into anarchy and civil war. It does not matter how good your judgement is, or how canny a political operator, or even how skilled you are with a sword. The forces of social division and entropy tearing this city apart were set long before you ever arrived. Moreover, no matter your choices, you are going to lose friends and loved ones. This city will chew up and destroy everyone you ever cared for.

In some ways I see the game summarised well in the character of Gamlen. Gamlen is the player character's uncle, someone you were hoping to make contact with and ask for help in your desperate flight at the start of the game. Instead you discover that he is a washed-up drunk and a gambler, who has lost the family's wealth and even sold their estate to cover his debts. It is easy to feel contempt for him as you set about rebuilding the fortune and reclaiming your estate.

Even so, by the conclusion of DA2, well, at least one of your siblings has been killed by monsters, the other has either been killed by monsters or has been lost to you by joining/being-conscripted-into an isolated organisation of fanatics, your dead father's legacy is in disgrace, your mother has been murdered by a serial killer, and your friends have mostly fallen apart as well. By the end of the game I wanted to head down to Lowtown and say to Gamlen, "...I get it now. Pass me a bottle."

If you try your hardest to make optimal choices you can take the edge off the tragedy a little, but to me that always feels like missing the point of the game. Both your siblings should die. Merrill should end up killing her entire clan. Isabela should end up fleeing the city, feeling guilty and abandoned, while the qunari burn the city searching for a book that isn't even there. Anders should die on a bloody block, killed by someone he thought was a friend. This is miserable, but the game is about misery.

DA2 is a game about losing what you love, about betrayal, and entropy, and being the last one standing, hands covered in blood, amid the burning wreckage of everything you were trying to defend. The more strongly that theme comes through, the better and more affecting the game is, and that means that I think the 'good' choices, which let you salvage small bits of success from amid the wreckage, make the game weaker as a whole. DA2 is, unavoidably, a game where you the player lose. Kirkwall defeats you. The game is better if it leans into that.

Another point of comparison might be Rannoch in ME3, which I notice you didn't mention. I think the Rannoch section works vastly better if, in the end, only one race can survive. I have my objections to the actual writing of the Rannoch segment, which is mostly bad, but I like the final choice. The quarians will survive or the geth will survive. Choose. It is a genuinely difficult and even heartbreaking choice. Unfortunately, BioWare are cowards and give you an option to just save everyone, which I think is frankly pretty pathetic.

To an extent I have the same objection to Tuchanka. Both Tuchanka and Rannoch have more-or-less the same premise. You have two very sympathetic characters, Wrex/Mordin and Tali/Legion, both of whom are fan favourites, both of whom the player has probably come to really care about in previous games, and who are on opposite sides of a contentious, morally complicated issue. Wrex wants to cure the genophage; Mordin wants to preserve it. Tali wants the quarians to survive and prosper; Legion wants the geth to survive and prosper. They cannot both get what they want. The case for each side has been made to you at length by a sympathetic, emotionally compelling character. Now choose.

Unfortunately in both cases ME3 wimps out. For Tuchanka it just has Mordin change his mind and become anti-genophage despite that being the opposite of his position in ME2; and for Rannoch it just lets you convince the geth and the quarians to put a history of genocide behind them and make up. You can argue Mordin changing his mind is justified if you pushed him in that direction in ME2, but he changes his mind even if in ME2 you encouraged him to believe that what he did was right and justified. It reminds me of how Garrus in ME2 is always a rogue who's quit C-Sec to become a vigilante, even though his entire character arc in ME1 was about choosing whether to go rogue or play it straight and stay in C-Sec, and both options were supported there. There are a lot of places where BioWare handles player choice very well, but that just makes these failures all the more jarring, especially when they go against the ME series' promise to give you genuinely hard choices. What is the point of promising hard decisions if the games are always going to back out and give you a third option? The golden routes are BioWare losing their nerve and failing their own games.

I have similar vibes on DA2, including empathy for Gamlen. Who- despite being the character encouraged to be viewed with contempt- is a bit of a tragic character in his own right who was the unfavored child who none the less shared what he had when his long-absconded sister showed up asking for aid.

For ME3, I think the Rannoch arc is one of those where it gets much, much better if you let a ME2 character die. Namely, Legion. With Legion, the Geth are cast as extremely sympathetic 'we didn't mean to do that / we don't want conflict.' Without Legion, the ME3 Geth are just as much the original victims, but far more menacing.

Dragon Age 2 really is BioWare’s best ever game. Even while playing recent highly rated RPGs like Baldur’s Gate 3 and Cyberpunk I come back to it as a far better written and interesting story, with better and more meaningful choices (the levels are copy-pasted, but the game is reactive in a way the others either aren’t or play for laughs). The decline in writing afterwards (and it really was many of the same people who wrote Inquisition and Veilguard, so it can’t be explained away by staffing changes) beggars belief. The final conversation with Gamlen in Act 3, where you’re both trying to somehow find a little meaning in this extraordinary tragedy (which I like to think ends, in Inquisition, with the final extinguishing of the Hawke line), and really in life itself, and it all feels so pathetic, is just extraordinary. I could probably quote half the game from memory. Other games have their moments; if you play Witcher 3 with the Yennefer relationship there is something of the world-weary love story of two people who have known each other for a long time that I love, and I think the epilogue in the DLC is sweet without being saccharine. But yeah, Dragon Age 2, man, makes me want to drop everything and play it again right now.

Personally I wouldn't go so far as saying that DA2 is a great game, or even a good game. It might be BioWare's most interesting game, but taken as a whole, I think it has to be judged a failure. It's a mess mechanically, its line-to-line writing is frequently bad, and its setting struggles for coherence. DA2 is not a game I can wholeheartedly recommend to anyone.

However, for those willing to sift through it, there is a lot there to like. Act two is easily the best part of it, with the qunari a fantastic depiction of the genuine appeal of fanatical religious asceticism. Sometimes I hear people wonder what drives people to support the Taliban, and the answer I want to give every time is, "play DA2". The Arishok and the qunari are deeply repulsive to liberal values. They preach strict conformity, obedience, and discipline. But they exist in a context where everything else is falling apart. In comparison to Kirkwall, they have solidarity with each other. They do not tear and bite at each other, as everyone else does. Each person works for the good of the whole, and each person is looked after. What hardship exists is shared, and when successes are achieved, they are also shared. The qunari have an aura of righteousness - they sit there above the strife, perhaps the only non-hypocritical faction in the city, issuing judgements of the degeneracy around them. They are an island of order in a sea of chaos and you can understand why people would choose them. You cannot choose them yourself, of course, but the Arishok's respect matters to me, and I care about winning it.

Unfortunately, most of the game does not reach that height. The mage/templar debate that dominates the third act is only engaged with on a surface level, and the game's final sequence feels unfinished (why do you fight Orsino if you side with the mages? it feels like it was intended that the final boss be either Orsino or Meredith depending on your choice, but instead they just both go insane?), and is too reliant on contrivances like the red lyrium idol.

And again a lot of the writing on a more immediate level is unimpressive. The doormat/jerk/clown dialogue options are unsatisfying, and Friendship/Rivalry, while an interesting idea, did not work in practice at all, never mind leading to inconsistent results by bundling together positions in unintuitive ways. (Suppose you're both anti-slavery and pro-mage - this leads to odd results with Fenris.)

I would not say that DA2 is a good game, but it's a bad game with enough good pieces that I wish it were better.

This is probably a better position to be in than Veilguard, which is bad and boring, but it is still, I think, a significant step down from the much superior Origins.

Origins to me struggled with dullness. I think the closest game to origins tonally is probably Pillars of Eternity, the first one, in part because it’s the only Obsidian game since Alpha Protocol to largely avoid the ‘zany Le CraZy 🤪’ “humor” that marred every other game they released from them onward. But like Pillars, I think Origins is flawed. The combat is MMO lite with limited strategic depth and very bad effects and animations, much of the dialogue is wooden and dull and feels more suited to a WoW quest text box than an interactive cutscene, and the voiceless protagonist (which I also felt fatally wounded BG3) works in a sandbox like Skyrim but not really in a BioWare game. I also thought the art style always came across as very cheap, like a “art assets pack - dark fantasy edition” you could pick up off the Unreal Store or something (I don’t know if it works like that, but I believe it does). The overall story, despite some good moments around Loghain, the excellent Deep Roads segment, and a couple of the companions, is also pretty generic and predictable.

2 really improves on every aspect of 1. The 10 (well, 7) year framing is grand and ambitious, and the game has a good sense of time passing given they didn’t even have the budget for different weather in each year. The story within a story bookend of Varric’s interrogation isn’t obtrusive but adds some intrigue. The companions are too the man and woman, with the possible exception of Fenris, great and have great stories and perspectives on the world in a way no other set of RPG companions in a AAA game have ever had. One might have more affection for the Normandy crew, but they’re not as interesting or multifaceted.

Kirkwall is magnificent. It’s a shame that putting the longtime franchise art director in charge of Veilguard allegedly ruined the creative direction of that game (according to Jason Schreier) because if he’d stuck to art he would have done great work. Byzantine-Brutalist Fantasy, heavy on the concrete and stone, hugely referential of 1840s gothic revival - you can see the Houses of Parliament and a solid part of Mayfair in the building design. It’s unlike anything else. The dull haze of the Wounded Coast, the brilliant mossy green of the mountain around the Dalish camp, the work in color alone is stunning, and each location is graded beautifully, such that the Deep Roads feel deeper and more mysterious in 2 than they do in any other game. Given the limitations of the age, I think a lot of the object work was also great, notably the Lyrium idol which of course became central to the franchise’s overall plot (and I love that, that ruining the world and causing the deaths of millions is arguably Hawke’s ultimate legacy). Hawke’s mansion is one of the coziest houses in RPGs, the hall, the decoration of the bedroom. With the exception of the “iconic” act 3 armor, the gear is dull but not mostly ugly, down to earth but not as unstylish as in Origins where you really have to mod to get anything not horrific.

The music in 2 is extraordinary. Inon Zur has a reputation as a workmanlike composer who churns out passable genre themes, but in 2 he’s at his most creative, he brings in new instruments, he’s inspired by Eastern Orthodox music, by middle eastern instruments. The sound of Kirkwall isn’t quite European but it’s not “Asiatic” or “African” or “Mayan” in the cringe way fantasy games are when they go to another biome. Rogue Heart, Mage Pride, the Wounded Coast theme (which had a brief play in Origins at the edge of the mage like), all timers.

I think 2’s dialogue is very good. There are cringe lines, but far fewer than anything by Larian or Obsidian in the last decade. And even widely praised Disco Elysium has mountains of unintentionally cringe dialogue where it’s like yes it’s nice you’ve read Baudrillard and yes it’s nice you’re commenting on what’s happened to European green parties since 1991 but also this just isn’t compelling or good writing. Anders is a really good depiction of an extremist, especially when you’re arguing with him (especially in a romance). Sebastian is an almost George W Bush type of figure tempered by a Presbyterian Scottishness and played magnificently. The regional accents are great. The acting is some of BioWare’s best across the board. The Qunari aren’t “reactionary” of course, they’re closer to communists. Unlike Disco Elysium they’re not a simple analogue for a faction at the second international or whatever. They’re not Islamists. They’re not China. They’re zealous egalitarians, central planners, ruled by a matriarchy, hate and afraid of magic, vaguely Buddhist maybe, but with a strong early church influence. They’re ideologically idiosyncratic in a fantastic way.

The gameplay is a mixed bag. I love 2’s combat and think returning to aspects of its rock-paper-scissors dynamic is one of the only good creative decisions Veilguard made. Chaining together combos, freezing, smashing, disorienting, it’s one of the best pure tab-targeting implementations ever. It might be the best RTwP combat of all time. The ability to chain together IFTT statements in the AI page for companions is also great, you can program relatively complex behaviors yourself.

You’re right about Friendship/Rivalry. I do think the whole game sets up mages/templars well - the Qunari are part of that, too, it’s central to their ongoing war with the northern humans; the game is pretty nuanced. The other Dragon Ages overwhelmingly sympathize with mages, 2 has tons of examples of psycho rapist murderer mages abusing their power and treating the muggle population awfully. 2 has a certain briskness, David Gaider has said most of the game was written and edited in one pass, essentially, no real review, you’d write a line of dialogue and production was so fast that nobody was really looking at it. I think that gives it a confidence that’s so rare in AAA games outside of Rockstar where they think they are (and are) above the critics. Made in a year, thoroughly compelling, and one of very few games made about politics by committed progressives that limits its preachiness to some extent and has a real ideological depth. We’ll never see anything else like it, although if and when AI generation gets good enough I’ll generate another 250 hours.

My main issue with DA2 is how it dropped the pretence, story-wise, of being anything else than a game with a strictly structured narrative.

Of course, games usually benefit from some kind of narrative structure, while real life typically doesn't have one, but good writing smoothes over the seams and makes the story still flow in a realistic way. Now Bioware, since their beginnings, have seen people enjoy when the writing in their games forces them to engage with difficult philosophical, ethical and moral questions with no obviously good answer. But up until ME2 and DA2, it still felt like those choices happened fairly organically. Sure, most storylines had them, but sometimes they were subtle, or the deeply held morality of the player made it so that the player would not even notice they were there. Up to that point, Bioware seemingly understood these moral questions were in the service of worldbuilding; it adds a layer of realism when the two sides of an issue are not saints vs comic book villains, when at least the comic book villains make a good point once in a while, or when perfect is the enemy of good.

ME2 and especially DA2 laid bare the narrative structure; the whole game world felt like a contrivance to push those toy moral puzzles rather than something that would have happened in a consistent, well-written world. It felt, to me at least, like the narrative equivalents of being told "You can defeat this asshole who is oppressing people, but it requires you to personally skin every puppy in Kirkwall with a potato peeler and roll them in salt, how do you feel about that, player? Huh?" or "You have a choice, do the right thing or not, but if you do all your family and friends will be raped, tortured and murdered". It feels like they created the story backwards from the dillema they wanted to push on the player, rather than build a coherent universe that has dillemas.

Would you say it happened organically in Knights of the Old Republic or Jade Empire?

I'd agree that it felt fairly organic in Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights, but those aren't really games about morality. BG is sort of about whether you choose to turn away from or embrace the power of Bhaal, but those games are so sidequest-heavy that you don't spend most of the game thinking about it, and for the most part you just make decisions based on what seems sensible at the time. Baldur's Gate does not even track your moral decisions systematically in any way - the closest it has is reputation, which is clearly more about how you are perceived. NWN does have alignment shift slightly in response in your choices, but in a very granular way (loot a house, +5 to Chaotic, etc.).

However, KotOR and JE both sell themselves as games about morality, and have a big moral choice system that their mechanics are structured around. I thought that both of them do present you with a series of contrived moral dilemmas just so you always have a Light Side/Dark Side or an Open Palm/Closed Fist choice. They were usually cartoonish and silly, but they were unmissable.

Perhaps it felt less jarring then because KotOR is a Star Wars game, and very blatant LS/DS choices are part of that franchise? But Jade Empire starts to give you the idea that OP is not good and CF is not evil, and while that was laughable as implemented in JE itself, it's clearly a prototype for Paragon/Renegade.

I suppose my perception is that BioWare sort of flanderised themselves over time. Baldur's Gate doesn't really have a morality system but it does have themes of the protagonist struggling with his/her evil nature. KotOR and JE externalise it, ME built the whole game around it, and...

So I think Dragon Age is an interesting comparison, because Dragon Age does not have a morality system as such. Dragon Age replaces morality with a more granular system of companion approval. There aren't objectively good or evil choices, just choices that different companions like or don't like. In theory this fits well with the early DA games' attempt to be dark fantasy, emphasising necessary evils, sacrifice, complicity, and murky situations where there are no good options. At times it even works well. Do you execute Loghain or not? There isn't a clear right or wrong answer to that question, but your choice will have consequences either way, especially for your companions.

However, you can tell that Dragon Age is written by people who have the KotOR/JE/ME script still in their heads, and they keep presenting you with contrived dilemmas that feel like they're from earlier games. There aren't little blue or red icons, but obviously sparing the mages is the LS/OP/Paragon/blue option, and the Rite of Annulment is the DS/CF/Renegade/red option. Saving the elves is blue and recruiting the werewolves is red. Destroying the Anvil is blue and making the golems is red. DA's promise of more interesting choices is usually not lived up to. Helping Caridin is the good choice and helping Branka is the evil choice. It's not subtle.

And the same in DA2, and then by Inquisition I think Dragon Age has more-or-less given up on being dark fantasy entirely. It is a pity, because while it was certainly imperfect, I did think Origins was on to something.

Would you say it happened organically in Knights of the Old Republic or Jade Empire?

The whole concept of the series is exploring this aspect of the Star Wars universe; how can normal, realistic human beings can become what appeared to be comic book villains, so it felt like the morality system and its difficult questions was in service of the world building. Yes, the Sith are comic book villains, but the comic book villains occasionally make a good point. And I'm reminded of that planet in KOTOR where a Republic officer is decidedly guilty of murder; this is the kind of realistic dillema that helps the world building. KOTOR2 also works a lot to knock the Jedi down a peg, not intervening against the mandalorians was a problematic decision that with the benefit of hindsight the Jedi love to act all superior about, nothing says that it needed to have happened that way, especially if the Jedi had been led into the war by wiser masters rather than hothead Revan. I don't remember much of Jade Empire, I remember the thesis of closed fist being not exactly evil made sense when it came up in the game, but as applied in the game it felt disconnected (it would have made sense if CF was about letting or empowering people to deal with their own problems, but in the game it felt more like inflicting additional cruelty for the lulz)

However, you can tell that Dragon Age is written by people who have the KotOR/JE/ME script still in their heads, and they keep presenting you with contrived dilemmas that feel like they're from earlier games.

Yeah, Bioware of that era was high on their own supply in that regard (and in the LGBT romances department) due to the praise they were getting. It's not the morality system I resent, but the contrivances made to force you to engage with the moral dilemmas. In the KOTOR murder case I mentioned, the murderer doesn't also randomly kidnaps your dog and forces you to chose between losing your dog or helping him off the hook; the reason why you would hesitate are utilitarian calculus (his condemnation could affect the balance of power on that planet), or perhaps an extremist belief that all Siths deserve death because the ideology they willingly embrace would spread it, etc... The story doesn't feel the need to twist itself to try and make the choice harder.

I agree about the fantastic aesthetics, and wish we'd seen a Tevinter more inspired by Kirkwall than whatever it was Veilguard was trying to do. The music is solid though I think Inon Zur did better work on Origins, a game I would like to defend at length but won't attempt to do so tonight.

I think my main disagreement with you is about the writing. I agree that it's better than Larian or Obsidian's recent output, like The Outer Worlds, but I feel that's a pretty low bar. I'll agree that it's better than Disco Elysium, but I hated Disco Elysium, so I would consider almost anything better than sitting through another page of Disco Elysium trying to be clever.

It is worse, I think, than Origins, or Obsidian games like Fallout: New Vegas or Knights of the Old Republic II. I think the combination of a dialogue wheel and the three colour-coded personalities for Hawke really hurt the writing. I suppose one of my spicier opinions might be that the Mass Effect dialogue wheel has been a disaster for game writing. The three options are just never enough to express a nuanced opinion on anything, especially because they are always locked to the blue, purple, and red options. No matter what's going on, my options are always limited to a polite yes, an angry yes, and a 'funny' non sequitur.

I'm not sure I agree about mages, and in fact I think the Dragon Age fandom has distorted and flanderised mage issues. Origins presents the issue as genuinely complicated - the templars serve a necessary but unpleasant role, justified by the obvious threat of magical crime, but their ruthlessness makes them hard to like. Greagoir and Irving are colleagues who mostly work together well, but with a subtext of threat - Greagoir knows that Irving and his mages might be possessed or turn into monsters at any point, and Irving knows that Greagoir and his templars are their jailers and legally empowered to kill them, so there can never be complete trust between them. I feel that DA2 was a step back from that in favour of making both sides almost cartoonishly evil. Almost every single mage who slips the Circle becomes a blood mage or abomination, and meanwhile the templars have gone from necessarily ruthless to just plain abusive. Fortunately Inquisition dialled it back and instead showed a world where the breaking of the Circles has left both mages and templars in crisis, to the detriment of each order. It is obvious that mages are people who should not be abused or imprisoned; it is also obvious that either the templars or something like the templars are necessary because of the immense risk posed by magic. Inquisition generally refuses to demonise either group, and I also give it some credit for, in a move that surprised me, the templar sidequest being vastly better than the mage sidequest.

Unfortunately, in my experience, the BioWare fanbase is extremely progressive, identify heavily with mages, and have a flattened, 'All Templars are Bastards' level of understanding of the issues that the games evoke.

DA2 disappointed me because, well, the actual issue with mages is fairly straightforward. Mages are innocent people who are not responsible for their own powers; it doesn't seem like they deserve to be brutally oppressed. However, intensive training is necessary in order for mages to not be a threat to everyone around them, and magic is incredibly dangerous and a threat to everyone. Even leaving aside the everyday risks of possession, or the maddening influence of blood magic, one can hardly forget that magic were the ones who tainted the Golden City and unleash the Blights. It is very reasonable for the people of this world to want to control and regulate magic. So the question is - how should those concerns be balanced? How can magic be regulated, mages taught to use their powers constructively and punished if they go wrong, without threatening the rest of society? Unfortunately DA2 mostly flattens it to "do you like mages or do you hate mages?", and that's just the wrong question.

or Obsidian games like Fallout: New Vegas or Knights of the Old Republic II. I think the combination of a dialogue wheel and the three colour-coded personalities for Hawke really hurt the writing. I suppose one of my spicier opinions might be that the Mass Effect dialogue wheel has been a disaster for game writing.

Interesting. I enjoy New Vegas but think it overrelies on zaniness and a certain kind of 1990s Mad Magazine humor, maybe almost Jim Goadesque, that has had its day and had had it long before that game was written. Knights 2 is good but so compromised by the development cycle, lack of voiced protagonist etc that it’s hard to evaluate. I like it as the most cogent criticism of Star Wars that is still, officially, Star Wars, but beyond that it’s more of a showcase that games Can Say Things than a great game, in my opinion. Maybe I just hate turn based games, which I do.

I like the dialogue wheel, or rather I like what the dialogue wheel enabled, which is a fully voiced protagonist. Here is the hidden subtext of the unvoiced protagonist - you too often play yourself. Commander Shepard, Hawke, Geralt, V, they have to sound like someone else for you to be ripped out of the isekai thing. If Mask of the Betrayer had had a voiced protagonist with a good backstory it would probably be one of the best RPGs of all time but of course it couldn’t - it was too tied to the ‘choose your own adventure’ format pioneered in the 70s that I find deeply uncompelling. Give me a woman, a man, a story, an identity. The Witcher and Cyberpunk lack a wheel, but I don’t think it makes those games better.

However, for those willing to sift through it, there is a lot there to like. Act two is easily the best part of it, with the qunari a fantastic depiction of the genuine appeal of fanatical religious asceticism. Sometimes I hear people wonder what drives people to support the Taliban, and the answer I want to give every time is, "play DA2". The Arishok and the qunari are deeply repulsive to liberal values. They preach strict conformity, obedience, and discipline. But they exist in a context where everything else is falling apart. In comparison to Kirkwall, they have solidarity with each other. They do not tear and bite at each other, as everyone else does. Each person works for the good of the whole, and each person is looked after. What hardship exists is shared, and when successes are achieved, they are also shared. The qunari have an aura of righteousness - they sit there above the strife, perhaps the only non-hypocritical faction in the city, issuing judgements of the degeneracy around them. They are an island of order in a sea of chaos and you can understand why people would choose them. You cannot choose them yourself, of course, but the Arishok's respect matters to me, and I care about winning it.

I appreciate that you made that emphasis of the appeal of ascetisim, because while I fully agree on how the Qunari present a coherent society that takes care of its own, the game also does a good job on letting you scratch a little deeper to see that, no, the Qunari are just as dysfunctional and failing a society as everyone else.'

The Qunari in DA2 are a shipwreck remnant because the supreme military authority of the state had to lead the pursuit for a relic-book, which in turn means the rest of the Qunari state is working without one of its three key leaders. The Qunari maintain a 100% non-defection rate by categorically re-categorizing all defectors as no-longer-Qunari, and thus not acknowledging or dealing with the issues driving the desertions. The Qunari, supposedly the most rational and scientific of all the peoples of the continent, are also the most primitive and superstitious when dealing with the subject of magic, indulging in superstitions such as cutting out the tongues of mages to prevent their words from spreading demonic possession, when everyone else inn the setting has known it doesn't work like that for millennia. Even in the penultimate act of Act 2, the takeover of the city, the Qunari variously are willing to walk away from the coup-that-could-cause-a-world-war if they get a book and a prisoner, or let their supreme leader fight a one-on-one duel to the death to decide.

The Qunari are interesting society, and they work well in part because they can point to how bad the rest of the setting is, but they're beyond fananticism and just stupid in their own right. But that contrast / pointing at the ills of the others really does demonstrate the appeal of ascetism, even if the proposed alternative is even worse.

Can I add a description of the type of gameplay a person will be subjected to while playing DA2? Here it is: you walk through a town street and you are ambushed by the enemies. No worries, you have all your abilities ready and quickly dispatch them, BUT WAIT, there is a second wave incoming, literally teleporting behind your backline. Okay, you didn't want to have your mage/archer involved in melee but you can deal with this wave even if some abilities are on cooldown, BUT WAIT, we have another wave of enemies incoming..... You might ask what is going on with the teleporting enemies in the city, but the only real question you are going to ask yourself repeatedly is "surely there won't be a 4th wave, right?".

Yep...

It sounds interesting when you talk about themes and character, but man, it is a tedious pain in the ass to play through. For everything that works, there's some baffling design decision adjacent to it that lets it all down.

One positive element I forgot to mention earlier was the setting. Kirkwall in premise is a really interesting place. This free city built on top of what used to be a slaving outpost of a cruel empire, the City of Chains where you sail in past statues of broken slaves, is a really evocative setting, and the eventual revelation that this was the site of the Magisters' great sacrifice in order to breach the Fade, thousands of slaves slaughtered on bloody altars in a crime that still echoes through the heavens, just feels natural. Of course it was here. Of course.

And from a game design perspective, the idea of zooming in on a single location and watching it develop over time is a good one. The city of Baldur's Gate was under-used in BG1, but Athkatla was easily the best part of the Baldur's Gate series, and it had similar themes, getting to know this wealthy city built on injustice, with a lively underworld, gang war, ruthless magic police, and so on. DA:O was famously a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate, and I wouldn't be surprised if Dragon Age 2 started with someone saying, "What if we made an entire game about Athkatla?" It's not identical, and Kirkwall has deeper shadows, putting the themes of slavery and oppression more centre-stage (which is itself compatible with DA:O's dark tone and fascination with corruption and moral compromise), but I can see the evolution.

Every time I talk about DA2 I end up frustrated because I can see the good game you could make out of these parts.

It's just that DA2 itself is not that game. DA2 is broken and annoying to play and un-fun. I am glad that I played it and I will never play it again.

Nothing much to say except awesome analysis. I quite liked DA2 despite the copy-paste, the scaling of it worked well and the characters were great. But your write-up is better.

Good post. But I think you're off base when it comes to why people don't like ME3. It isn't because the ending is a dire stakes, Hail Mary play which has a huge cost for the galaxy. No, it's because the ending a) is the culmination of a plot that existed only in ME3 and is retarded anyway, b) it gives you a decision that has nothing at all to do with what came before, and c) it makes no sense with the previous rules of the setting anyway.

First, the Crucible. This partly comes down to that you said about how the writers didn't have a plan for the trilogy (more accurately: they had a tentative plan, but the writer in charge left/got kicked off the project and his ideas got rejected so they threw out the plot threads they had built). But they don't get a pass for that. So the Crucible never gets mentioned until ME3, and players quite reasonably go "wait what" when the plan to stop the Reapers is something they've never heard of before. But even if the writers had brought it up sooner... it's retarded. There is no way in hell that you could have a tech project where every Reaper cycle progresses it a little bit further. The researchers of all these different species wouldn't even be able to understand what came before (remember: Shepard is literally the only one in the galaxy who can speak Prothean, no way a research team is going to be able to decipher Prothean blueprints), not to mention the fact that it's going to be nigh impossible to do tech development while in the midst of a galactic genocide, not to mention that it's going to be nigh impossible to keep it secret every single cycle so that the Reapers never discover it. So even if they had started to build up the Crucible earlier, it's a bad idea.

Then we have the continuity with what came before. Your previous choices don't matter to the Star Child. It's not the natural consequence of the rest of the game's narrative. It's this completely separate thing tacked onto the end which has no relation at all to your adventures with your space homies. People want the ending to come from somewhere, especially in a series which prides itself on being responsive to player choice, and this didn't.

But even if the ending had related to what came before, it would still suck because it disregards the rules of the setting. First of all, the supposed reason that the Reapers kill everyone is... because otherwise organic and inorganic life will kill each other and the Reapers would rather cull the universe every so often than have a dead universe. But that makes no sense. The game shows you, time and again, that organics and inorganics can learn to get along. It's not easy (as with any people who have tension), but it is possible. Legion and Tali learn to get along and respect each other. Joker is banging your ship. It's clearly possible for the two sides to get along, but the game contradicts itself and says "no it's not"without any evidence to support that. Then you have the mass relays blowing up. In the Arrival DLC for ME2, we are told that such an explosion is so violent that it would kill everyone in the system. And yet, at the end your people land on a planet which is pretty close to a mass relay, but they... somehow survive the cataclysmic explosion. The ending is simply not playing by the rules of the setting on multiple levels.

One very common criticism leveled at ME fans at the time ME3 came out was "you just want a happy ending". But that isn't what people really wanted. They wanted an ending that made some semblance of narrative sense, and which cohered with the things that came up to that point in the series. The ME3 ending did neither of those things, which was the real problem.

I just want to say I agree with you much more than I would quibble, and fully confess to moving past the ending specifically because I wanted to address the thematic alignment and how the 'punish the player' trope in earlier parts made the story thematically work better than the issues with the ending itself.

Which, as you demonstrated, is a load more text, lol.

That said, there were more than a small number of players who were more upset about the end of their power fantasy than the writing rigour. Mass Effect was always pretty squishy on the writing rigour, and this was well apparent even in ME2. For a lot of people, arguments like your above- which I agree with!- were excuses to justify/validate how they felt... when they were acting far more akin to scorned lovers. Hence how one of the 'fixes' of the post-ending fracas was the medical evac goodbye scene at the finish line.

Fair, I didn't encounter players who just wanted a feel good ending but I'm not surprised that some existed. And yeah it's a lot more text, but if there's one thing the Internet doesn't have enough of, it's nerds spewing words about Mass Effect. ;)

First I'm gonna go ahead and nitpick your summary of the Far Cry series.

I really don't agree that Far Cry 2 codified anything genre-wise. It was a really interesting game, to be sure, but ultimately an interesting failure, and it was 3 that defined all of those successors you name. The original Far Cry isn't worth mentioning here; its sequel was Crysis, and the only reason Far Cry 2 shares a name is because it was easier for Ubisoft to slap a recognized IP on an entirely new FPS (worth mentioning as well that Ubi made like 4 FarCry:Spinoff titles in between Far Cry and Far Cry 2. I really liked Far Cry:Instincts)

It's been a long time since I played Far Cry 2, but I don't think anyone would recognize it as being a game of "crafting and collectables". It was a really ambitious game, and I was super hyped leading up to the release. I think the closest parallel was probably GTA4. Both made big promises of being much more realistic, grounded games, with a strong emphasis on story and loads of interesting interactivity and AI. Both failed to deliver, with mediocre stories and gameplay that got so bogged down in realism it made them bad to actually play.

Second, I don't really agree that Far Cry 3 is particularly essential. There's a lot to recognize of 2 in Far Cry 3, but they are still quite different games. 3 used 2 as a base, but cut out a lot of fat, and a lot of good stuff, for something much more streamlined and 'gamified'. I remember an anecdote on a podcast once where someone was getting involved in this important, sombre cutscene. They get control back, and immediately the first thing they see is this big, jarring "Gun Vending machine" and it immediately throws them out. Far Cry 2 was at pains to craft a fully believable world for the player and would never have placed something like that. Which did mean a lot of irritation, but the storytelling was stronger for it.

My abiding memory of Far Cry 3 is rescuing Jason's girlfriend. You end up in this cave, and I can't remember why but the girlfriend ends up bursting into tears. You regain control with her quietly sobbing, and all you can do is leave to go back to killing. Except, except, there are also these optional flashbacks in the cave, which you can access by finding pills and going on a 'trip'. And it just so happened I found one, went on a drug-fuelled trip, and obviously passed out in the cave. But when my character came to, there was still the girlfriend, still sobbing away. And all I could think about was the hilarious juxtaposition of this traumatised girl crying her eyes out while her boyfriend is just trippin' balls 20 feet away, before he finally comes down and goes out to buy more guns from the gun vending machine.

Anyway, I do think it is a much better game than 2, but I don't think it's really interesting beyond the fact that it influenced so many other titles with the approach to open world crafting and collectables. Like other responses have mentioned, there are other titles like Spec Ops which did the whole player agency story a lot better.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Spec Ops: The Line but I also agree with much of @RobertLiguori's critique of it and that is why i would argue that Far Cry 3 is the superior execution.

I'm still desperate for a Far Cry 2 remake that adds more combat variety, and some of the quality of life upgrades from the subsequent entries, but keeps the core, raw immersive difficulty elements.

FC2 remains one of the few games I've ever played that balances out the "One Man Army" power fantasy with the "actually you can very easily die because you are all alone, in a hostile environment, with crappy weapons/tools and aggressively outnumbered by people who want you dead." Which is to say, it natively encouraged 'sensible' strategic and tactical approaches and punished you if you got too wild. At least, outside of explicit survival/horror games.

Also remains the best AI enemies ever had in the series... and in almost any other game I've ever played.

I have a distinct memory of aggroing a small group of enemies at an encampment by a river. I shelter in a small shack, firing out the windows. The enemies actually started flanking my position and then, to my absolute shock, lobbed a grenade right through the window practically into my lap. That was a tactic I would attribute to a human player. And I still rarely see that done by AI in even more modern games.

They were trying to flush me out of cover so they could mow me down.

Also the only game I know of where injuring an enemy and waiting for a comrade to come and rescue him so you can kill both was a viable tactic!

First, I absolutely agree with the 3 is best Far Cry; I feel like it has the cleanest gameplay and tries to tell its story as well as it can, and even though I disagreed with a lot of what I felt the devs were doing, I could recognize that they were including X bit to evoke Y theme and so on.

But I do have some plot quibbles. First, there are some significant clues that Jason Brody has a bit more to him than his first impression implies. You've got the voice hallucination of his brother telling him that he's a natural with a gun, and there is a club flashback sequence where you knock someone the fuck out.

I also think that for games like Far Cry 3, there are really only two valid readings. First, everything the game shows happened. Yes, you killed literally hundreds of people. Yes, you got shot hundreds or thousands of times and walked it off with some very grim healing animations. Yes, the tatau representing your skill tree glows and redraws itself when you master a skill. Yes, the wildlife is absurdly hostile and yes, it does include extremely rare or outright-thought-to-be-extinct species. Yes, Buck is actually teleporting around. Yes, you did have crazy QTE murder-battles. And yes, if you do the Bad End, you don't just respawn to let you 100% the game, that actually happened, you just pop back up exactly like every other time you've died (both in gameplay and with Vaas), that is also entirely diagetic, and Citra is about very, very briefly have the Full Jason Brody Experience this time.

The other is to accept that there is enough weird drug and hallucination crap that you can't actually say what happened to anything, so it doesn't matter!

But the game is fun, and Blood Dragon by itself is worth the price of admission, so I also heartily endorse checking it out for yourselves.

While I enjoyed the Stone Age spinoff the most and I think 4 is the highest point of the franchise altogether, I agree that 3 was the game that codified and immortalized the series.

I still remember two moments from it. One is more player-centric, when you learn that Willis is not just a crazy guy pretending he's a CIA agent, he's a crazy CIA agent.

The other one is a moment of perfect ludonarrative unity, when you rescue one of the girls, force her to be the getaway driver and start mowing down the waves of pirates chasing you. It's an awesome action scene, Jason enthusiastically agrees with you, and the girl's completely horrified you find blowing up cars and killing people by the dozen elating.

Tend to agree that 4 was the one where everything they'd learned came together and had the fewest annoyances overall.

And it achieved strong variety of gameplay and challenges, and the open world and fetch quests didn't feel too tedious 90% of the time.

Indeed, can't think of any part of it I genuinely dislike, other than the radio host guy, and mostly because of how repetitive he was.

I see 4 as the Empire Strikes Back to 3's Star Wars, it is in many respects the superior Film/Game but much of its impact comes from having the core ideas and themes established beforehand.

The crab rangoon really is fantastic.

I still prefer Farcry 4, though. Even if the DLCs did kind of ruin Pagan Min. A little.

But, yes, Farcry 3 is definitely in it's own category for what can only be termed as unreliable narrator. There's a big, open question as to whether or not the game is one drug-fuled hallucination or there is actually some mystical bullshit going on. You can argue in both directions, and the game never really gives you a definite answer.

Count me among those that feels like the Bad Ending is severely lack-luster, though. A part of me can't help but wonder if the writers couldn't quite seal the deal on the type of story they wanted to show and just had to wuss out in demonstrating how much of a monster Jason had become, only to get backstabbed by Vaas' sister because... what, Jason was sniffing for a crumb of pussy? Come on. On top of this is the game literally screaming at you that Vaas' sister has done this shit before, and you'd think Jason would pick up on that. A better ending, albeit cliched, would have had Jason slowly devolving into Vaas himself, only to have a snap-cut-to-black to finish the game off when that realization hits home.

Yes a sane, rational, moral person should see the "bad end" coming from a mile away but niether Jason nor the player are sane, rational, or moral.

That's the point that I think people who complain about the ending are missing.

Well, that's the problem. See, Jason is acting very sane, rational, and moral for the circumstance he's currently enmeshed in. IMO.

People like to play up the entire 'Rambo in a sandbox' aspect of Farcry 3 while ignoring the big driving part of Jason's actions is to save his friends from horrible things. Now, it's been a while since I've played Farcry 3, and maybe you could argue that this shifts when Jason gets to the second island and they could have skedaddled after he killed Vaas, but there's the flipside of Jason being atleast a little bit grateful for all the help that the Islander's did for him to save his friends and he doesn't mind paying them back, just a little...?

There's this trend in video games as of recent that started with Bioshock. Writers have become far, far too enamoured with being clever and leaning heavily on video game mechanics and tropes in order to tell a story. It worked in Bioshock, but after that it always just kind of falls flat. People seem to really want to play up the idea that the 'charachter' or 'player' is just doing things because the pretty/cute/appealing/charismatic NPC is telling them to do it without any thought or reason beyond 'video game'. I even see this in relatively recent games; while playing Cyberpunk 2077 and dealing with the entire Songbird/President Meyer bullshit, I get an earful of Silverhand going on about how 'They're just using you!', and just once I'd love to have your charachter turn around and go 'No shit, sherlock, did you just now figure this out? Cause, guess what, I'm using them to get what I want! This is a mutally abusive relationship, if you haven't noticed, and thanks for fucking reminding me!'

Ahem.

The 'bad end' just feels like a scolding from the Game Devs with no real meat on it. If you want to paint the player character as a monster, go all the way, don't just pussy-foot around the matter and then have him get stabbed in the back by the group he's been helping all this time. That's not effective story-telling, that's just a bland cop-out.

Yeah, it seems like some game devs like to treat the player as a sucker for... playing the game that they bought. When the player is railroaded (as he basically always in video games, with varying degrees of success in hiding the rails), and you shove the player's face in "haha look how awful it is when you did the things we forced you to", the player is going to resent that.

go all the way, don't just pussy-foot around the matter

This is part of why I can't start playing FC4. I know that the correct way to play the game is the ending where you don't play the game, and I also know that there's no "well fuck you, I guess I'll just kill everyone and become Pagan Twin" ending like there should have been.

Counter point: as you yourself said... the game is literally screaming at you that Vaas' sister has done this shit before, and you'd think Jason would pick up on that.

A sane rational and moral person would have picked up on that and seen Citra's sudden but inevitable betrayal coming a mile away. But the person who chooses to abandon thier friends and stay on the island to "keep playing the game" is niether sane rational nor moral. That's the point.

The path of violence and self-destruction leading to violence and self-destruction? Who could've imagined?

Yes, that's all good and well, but how can I pass up an opportunity to direct others toward Blood Dragon?

If I ever replay any of the series it'll be that one and it's not even close.

Of the three Far Crys I've played (the first three), 3 was the best and it wasn't even close. Far Cry is a completely different beast to the franchise it spawned, being a relatively straightforward shooter with no pretensions to philosophical themes or complex characterisation. Far Cry 2 was trying to do the edgy confrontational you're-no-better-than-the-people-you're-fighting deconstructed power fantasy thing, and had one legitimately compelling character in the Jackal – but didn't quite pull it off, and the gameplay design is awfully lazy in ways that disrupt the immersion. Far Cry 3 is where everything came together, with satisfying gameplay and an engaging, thought-provoking story with fleshed-out and believeable characters.

Like I said the first was a glorified tech demo, the second had strong ludic elements but weak narrative, and the third is where everything "clicked". 3, 4, and 5 are all excellent IMO and kind of form a trilogy in their own right, exploring the themes of choice, consequence, and how "He who fights monsters must be careful lest he become one...", but the latter two are really just alternative takes on 3 which is why I hold up 3 as the one to play.

As for 6, as fun as it is to watch Gus Fring chew the scenery, Hocking and a bunch of the other developers who'd been involved in 2 - 5 had either retired or moved on to other projects and I feel like it shows in the quality of both the writing and the gameplay.

this is why I believe that that the infamous "bad ending" is the canonically correct ending for Jason's story, and that the people who complain about how the game "punishes the player" for making the thematic choice by wanting to keep playing are missing the forest for the trees.

To calibrate, how did you feel about Spec Ops: The Line, and the "bad"/high chaos ending of Dishonored?

Man, Spec Ops was bullshit. (Spoilers for Spec Ops and Dishonored below, spoiler tags seem to be wonky.)

I'm just going to bring up one particular moment. In the madness arc, Walker comes across two men, and is told to execute one of them for various crime reasons (one man stole, the other man killed someone else trying to stop him, don't really recall, the details don't matter.) Both men are being covered by snipers who will shoot you instead if you don't make the choice. I, like many people his this and of course opened up on the covering snipers, and was able to get past them eventually, albeit with one of the two men still getting shot in the process (but not by me), and so I called that good enough and moved on. Later in the game, you get flashbacks to show how crazy you have been, and when you get to that bridge scene, there are no snipers and both man are long dead, and as you are speaking, not to the voice on the radio, but the voice in your head, as your squadmates grow visibly concerned.

But if this was a hallucination, I couldn't have been shot by it, could I? The game does not actually commit to having a real-world underlying layer and recognizing through the lens of mechanics what is real and what isn't. So, my read on Spec Ops: the Line is also malicious naivety; the correct interpretation is that everything happened, that djinn and demons stalk Dubai and blatantly supernatural stuff happens, and that "Fuck off, evil spirit using Konrad's voice, I'm not crazy and you can't gaslight me into thinking I am with some obviously-fake visions.", followed by being picked up by your fellow soldiers, is the true and correct ending.

I will absolutely defend the High Chaos ending of Dishonored, though. Yes, when Satan, who is causing a zombie plague spread by magic human-devouring rats, appears to you in durance and offers you power and revenge on your enemies, skepticism is the order of the day. Plus, the people you are dealing with are mostly police and soldiers; you kind of want them to be alive and obedient to the ruler once you've de-usuruped your government. And given what Emily goes through, having her be a tyrant who believes murder and specifically you murdering is the answer to all governmental problems feels natural and correct with the game as given unless you are taking steps to not teach her that lesson.

For myself, I actually found the Low Chaos path more engaging, maybe because I really did enjoy the heck out of Thief back in the day, but also because I did it first, and so when I got to the High Chaos play-through, it was just too quick and simple. It definitely felt like there were more interesting toys to play with on the Low Chaos path. And the game itself was fairly forgiving for how much chaos it let you have; if you were generally trying to be stealthy and avoid feeding the rats, you could still have plenty of exceptions.

My tl;dr for why Spec Ops is bullshit:

The game is trying to make you, the player, feel bad about doing all of these horrible things, that you cannot advance the game without doing, and the smug retort whenever you point this out is that you could have actually chosen to quit the game.

Excuse me? I'm supposed to delete the game I paid for instead of experiencing it to its conclusion?

For me it worked, because I genuinely started to get carried away during the white phosphorous scene just like in the support mission in CoD: Modern Warfare, and when a big white blob appeared on the screen I enthusiastically went "Ha! Got you all!" before really thinking. So the reveal that I just killed a bunch of civilians felt like me and Walker were to blame. I guess you and @Dean have better fire control .

Nah, not at all. That scene is precisely where I think Spec Ops was strongest as a deconstruction of the COD formula, and as art in its own right. The getting caught up in the momentum is a key part of the moment, and not knowing the consequences has a merited sting. Walker and you being in alignment is what makes it work.

For me, the point where The Line approaches the line is the much-later twist, which recontextualizes Walker from understandable to deluded from the start. Here the alignment between the player and Walker turns into a jab at the player, because there's a sharp difference between 'kept pressing on a questionable mission' and 'was clearly deluded and having conversations with no one.'

Part of the drama/tension of going forth with a questionable mission is that there's an actual conflict over the decision. There are reasons to not go, but also reasons to go. A good deconstruction / reflection on the tragedies of war accepts responsibility for the decision- either decision- despite the sentiment (and flaws) leading to it. Walker can work perfectly fine getting his team risked / killed because he wants to be the hero, and the ending where he stops fighting and goes back home is a glorious defeat.

But that tension fails when the player-avatar is forced to be the unreasonable person in a reasonable-standard test. Then it's not a question of 'did he do the right thing for the wrong reasons' or 'did he do the wrong thing for the right reasons.' It's just a question of 'should this guy be in a sanitorium?'

That's a pretty direct question with a pretty boring answer. And when the subject in question is more or less explicitly a proxy for the player, it's an implied judgement on the player as well.

There's more than a nugget to this.

Commercial art as a message partly depends on people recognizing the message they'll be seeing in advance. Video game purchases aren't a random loot box dynamic where you know in advance that you don't know what is coming out. Player's money, and time, is limited, and so they're trying to select for their desires. If you want a horror game, you don't look for a highschool rom-com game, or vice versa. There's a reason even Doki Doki Literature Club has great big warning labels, just in case you are confused.

Subverting expectations is a delicate balance between surprising and delighting the audience with a twist they didn't see coming, and the writer being a pretentious twat. When people went to the Star Wars sequel trilogy, they wanted a sequel to a known property. And when they went back for episode 8 after the fanservice feel-good nostalgia baiting of episode 7, it's because they had an expectation of what they were going to get. However, Rian Johnson was a pretentious twat who thought subverting expectations was a pass to shit on the audience's interests, and low and behold interest in the Star Wars properties, and merchandise, and everything else promptly and sharply declined.

Spec Ops: The Line isn't Rian Johnson tier subverting expectations, but it very much is a product that does a bait-and-hook. Come for the modern warfare shooter gameplay, stay for the... warcrime simulator? Emotional masochism?

Don't get me wrong. On balance, I like Spec Ops: The Line. I think it has some artistic merit. But that artistic merit is when it's focused on the central character, not the player who doesn't know what's coming. The player is being carried along by pre-commitment bias, not agency of deliberate choice. They don't know what's coming, and that's not their fault when it's the artist doing the bait-and-hook.

I am extremely sympathetic to the people angered by the 'you could stop playing any time' after they paid. I am more sympathetic than I would be if, say, the developers got an attendance commission to go to a convention, and then got pissed on with the threat their attenndance commission being forfeit if they left rather than take it. At least the developers would have been led there with the prospect of something they wanted, money, if they put up with it. The Spec Ops players already got their money taken. Making them the subject of ridicule by proxy is just rubbing salt in a wound they weren't expecting and were misled into paying for.

Yes, when Satan, who is causing a zombie plague spread by magic human-devouring rats, appears to you in durance and offers you power and revenge on your enemies, skepticism is the order of the day.

Just to correct you, the Outsider didn't cause the plague, the Lord Regent did. The plague originates from Pandyssia which is an uncharted landamass with extremely hostile and deadly fauna and flora.

But yes, that's what Corvo could've have thought, since that's the point of view that the Abbey would use. And probably the one he would believe too at that point.

On Spec Ops, I think the game's story is good, but the issue is that the game presents the choices as mattering to the player, but they only matter to Walker. It's a story that really doesn't take advantage of being a game.

But also the media talking about also I think made a huge disservice to it because they tried to present it as some kind of commentary to shooters in general, when it really doesn't work like that, and if you look at it from that perspective the game becomes much worse.

Like the way Dishonored gives you all these cool toys and then gives you a bad ending if you misuse them works way better as a game narrative than the white phosphorus scene where you don't have a choice to do anything else. Walker chooses it. He's the protagonist of that game. Meanwhile in Dishonored the player's actions that shape the narrative instead.

The bad high chaos ending is the best one. Corvo in his lust for revenge abuses his new powers and slaughters his way through the city killing everyone in his path, in the end even letting Emily die, never knowing she was his daughter. The city burns and his revenge is sated. Mostly because this is the kind of story you will never see in a AAA game because of how dark it is, but if it's a side route it's fine.

I will never understand people who complain about the chaos mechanic in Dishonored when it was one of the best parts of the game, and the fact that they tone it down in the sequel and then just removed it in DotO is a travesty and a sign that Arkane was going downhill.

Since most people don't seem to even consider the idea that killing could have consequences. Like yeah, the guard in Dunwall is shit, but if you kill the one real force keeping what's left of the peace, it's not surprising that things will get even worse.

how did you feel about Spec Ops: The Line

I didn't like Spec Ops' ending anywhere as much, because in Dishonored, the player chooses to kill, while in Spec Ops Walker chooses it for you. The story is still good taken on its own terms, but overall it's not as good of a "game story" in the sense that it takes responsibility away from the player. Dishonored 1 is good precisely because you will have a tougher time if you choose to do the right thing.

The chaos mechanic is one of the biggest examples of ludonarrative dissonance in a video game for me. Dishonored gives you, a literal assassin, a massive array of cool abilities and toys to play with, makes most of them lethal and then goes, "ackshyually, using them was baaad, you should have played the game like it was Thief!"

I haven't played Dishonoured but from reading the description and other people's comments here I get the impression that this is not "Ludonarrative Dissonance" as much as it is simply the narrative.

Like i said in the op, Jason Brody didn't kill those people, YOU killed those people and if you're complaining that the game is punishing you for playing like a murder-hobo maybe that says more about you than it does the game.

(FC3 spoilers again, really don't know what's going on with the spoiler tags, they're showing up for me in the preview and everything.) The game doesn't punish you for being a murder-hobo. That being said, I'd be delighted if Far Cry 3 gave an honest Far Cry 4 secret ending in the beginning, and treated you to a "Congratulations! You did the reasonable thing and didn't engage in violence. Here's a fully-animated spread of Vaas raping and murdering you and all of your friends to death! Sure is a good thing you didn't try to fight back, right?"

If you as the game developer need to cheat and take away my agency when the mechanics you have given me up until that point say I can do X, because you need me to do not-X for your story to land, you are a bad game developer and/or a bad writer. The logical consequence of fully-engaging with murder-hobo gameplay is not "I decide to kill my friends for no reason and then the retarded Bad End happens", it's a cut to Citra's perspective as she is waiting for you to approach, is concerned that you are taking so long, turns to look a the captives, and when she turns back all of the Rakyat are dead and Jason is standing in front of her, machete out, with vacant stare and happy smile, because the fun isn't over and now he gets to do all the outpost liberations again. I buy that a drugged-out witch would delude herself into thinking "Aha, I am manipulating the American super-soldier into doing my bidding!" and not noticing that he's killing people he has reason to kill, and that this started before she met him, or even that the last three times her brother literally killed him and the hundreds of times he got maimed by bullets, fire, or crocodiles he just casually came back from the dead.

If the game disapproves of my choice to engage with it, then the game is dumb, and if the game is instead offering implicit approval of Vaas and Citra by saying that they weren't punished for their own murder-hoboism, then the game is just the authors engaging in contempt and sneering at their audience instead of trying to make a point, and said sneering says much more about them then it does about me.

Can't do spoiler tags multi-paragraph, I think. You need separate tags per paragraph. The preview operates on slightly different rules. Click 'view source' on my post.

(FC3 spoilers again, really don't know what's going on with the spoiler tags, they're showing up for me in the preview and everything.) The game doesn't punish you for being a murder-hobo. That being said, I'd be delighted if Far Cry 3 gave an honest Far Cry 4 secret ending in the beginning, and treated you to a "Congratulations! You did the reasonable thing and didn't engage in violence. Here's a fully-animated spread of Vaas raping and murdering you and all of your friends to death! Sure is a good thing you didn't try to fight back, right?"

If you as the game developer need to cheat and take away my agency when the mechanics you have given me up until that point say I can do X, because you need me to do not-X for your story to land, you are a bad game developer and/or a bad writer. The logical consequence of fully-engaging with murder-hobo gameplay is not "I decide to kill my friends for no reason and then the retarded Bad End happens", it's a cut to Citra's perspective as she is waiting for you to approach, is concerned that you are taking so long, turns to look a the captives, and when she turns back all of the Rakyat are dead and Jason is standing in front of her, machete out, with vacant stare and happy smile, because the fun isn't over and now he gets to do all the outpost liberations again. I buy that a drugged-out witch would delude herself into thinking "Aha, I am manipulating the American super-soldier into doing my bidding!" and not noticing that he's killing people he has reason to kill, and that this started before she met him, or even that the last three times her brother literally killed him and the hundreds of times he got maimed by bullets, fire, or crocodiles he just casually came back from the dead.

If the game disapproves of my choice to engage with it, then the game is dumb, and if the game is instead offering implicit approval of Vaas and Citra by saying that they weren't punished for their own murder-hoboism, then the game is just the authors engaging in contempt and sneering at their audience instead of trying to make a point, and said sneering says much more about them then it does about me.

Great, that fixed it. Thanks.

You’re welcome :)

Have to spoiler-tag each paragraph individually. Dunno why it's better-behaved in the preview than in post. Use escaped control characters or periods to keep the paragraphs separate after.

There was some dark humor in Dishonored in that the nonlethal ways to eliminate your targets were stuff like them being sold as slaves with their tongues cut out or getting locked in a rape dungeon for life, that quite possibly left them wishing you'd just killed them instead.

You don't have to play the game like Thief, you can kill up to 30% of all the enemies in each level. You can easily kill all the targets and their guards, but if you're killing every guard on the way, then yes, you do kind of deserve the bad ending.

I enjoyed Spec Ops: The Line and have not played Dishonored


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