this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2024
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Nah, that wasn't a "looks bad now" thing, it looked bad any time. Saying that people rising up against their oppressors are just as bad as the oppressors is bullshit in any era. One can claim that that was just Booker's point of view and the game wasn't saying he was right, but the narrative did nothing to imply that he was wrong in any way, especially considering you were encouraged to mow down the slaves who were revolting just like you did the slavers previously. And having them dress like this? What were they thinking?
The line from bookers perspective is entirely appropriate (he's an asshole), the narrative reinforcing it should have been handled better. That being said, the reason the "both sides bad" bullshit is such a prevalent fallacy is that there are instances where it's true. I already mentioned Stalin, but revolutionary France got pretty messed up as well. Thats why it short circuits the whole "is it true in this case" reasoning. You can absolutely find cycles of violence in every nation, and you can talk about them in a way that doesn't cheapen the suffering that brought them on. When talking about BLM and literal nazis saying "there's good people on both sides" is bullshit. Saying "robes Pierre was kind of an asshole" is not. The game did a pretty shit job of that.
I have to be honest, I always saw the costumes as just red and scary, but I see your point. Looking at them in isolation I get it, but knowing they were mostly black didn't make me think "klan". If anything I saw it as a red cap analogy. There's probably a bunch more I missed to. Thanks for pointing me to a re-look before I go mouthing off about it some more. I definitely need to take a better look.
I can understand why some might not see it as being as awful as I do - I don't think the creators intended to make it seems as enlightened centrist as it is (The wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: "There's actually zero difference between good and bad things. You imbecile. You fucking moron."), and it's probably more a case of being tone-deaf than anything else. But was a very poor attempt at the "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster" bit.
Yeah, and they cut soooo much from original concepts they had, I wonder if they would have handled it better if they didn't get to the "fuck it, we need to ship" stage of things.
Still, you can't just borrow from the real world when it's convenient for weight and impact, you owe it to the people that lived it to do it right.
Thanks for the conversation!