78
What is the chud equivalent of Disco Elysium? What game most defines and comprehensively explores what it means to be a chud?
(hexbear.net)
Yes I know that fascism 
is a playable ideology in Disco Elysium, but presenting fascism as with its integral ugly reality, glaring contradictions, and unsustainable death drive is a pretty leftist (and correct) way of portraying it. 
Cyberpunk 2077. The setting is perfectly competent cyberpunk, with all the capitalist reality heightened to the point of absurdity, but V is the fucking ur-chud.
You're in an extreme late-capitalist hellworld; the climate and most of social order is collapsing beyond repair. Your character's reaction to this is to be a mercenary whose principle preoccupation is their own legend. Your connection with humanity at large is limited to a cobbled together network of a handful of people who morally vindicate your every action. Your story is mostly about the trail of bodies left behind by a quest to do nothing but save your own life. The most pure version of your final arc is to eschew entirely any form of collectivist solution in favor of dialing up the rugged individualist power fantasy to 11 with a on-person guns-blazing assault on a Japanese corporation (alternatively there's now an expansion where you can sell out and be offered to become a fed because of how cool you are).
All of this while maintaining a pretense of being a morally neutral person just driven by common sense and your second amendment-given right to self-defense from hordes on interchangeable sheeple.
There's a reason I chose the ending where
spoiler
V shoots himself in the head above Misty's tarot shopthis annoys the living shit out of me every playthrough i do. no matter what options you choose, its always about V's constant sense of self-importance and becoming a "legend" while casting the anti-corporate and anti-capitalist sentiments as crazy (you can lean into silverhand, but i feel like V's dialogue options always imply that silverhand is a little crazy for believing what he believes. and by no means is he a great person, but if i was in the cyberpunk universe i would be on the exact same page as him regarding action against the corporations.)
I mean the game is set in fucking hell, half the freaks you kill kidnap people (mostly women) off the street to chop up for parts on the black market. Also for VR snuff porn. Communism was pretty much snuffed out in Russia even though the Soviet Union exists. China is also kinda fucked, Maoism was never embraced it seems according to the wiki.
Shame about the new DLC ending.
I get that. Nihilistic grim dark shit is really overused in media. Personally I didn't buy into any message the game was or wasn't trying to push, because Cyberpunk 2177 would just be endless deserts, ruins and skeletons. I just find the established setting and lore interesting in a dark way.
Hell, you're not wrong. What kind of fiction do you enjoy? Like non-nihilistic stuff. A recent fave for me was Fionna and Cake.
I've always wanted to delve into Dune! I liked the recent movie but I heard it only taps the surface of the books.
That sounds so awesome. Added the first book to my wishlist.
If only. As you insinuate, it very readily becomes a story about not even saving your life but just glorifying yourself before you die.