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Followup to the game politics vetting thread: Esoteric Ebb. Loved 80%, last 20% left me feeling gross and kind of wishing I hadn’t even played it. (hexbear.net)
submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by CommunistCuddlefish@hexbear.net to c/games@hexbear.net
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I asked here about several games’ politics, particularly Esoteric Ebb:  https://hexbear.net/post/8877391.  Based on the answers I picked the game up on sale and played it.

“More lighthearted Disco Elysium written by a SocDem in a DND setting” sounds like it could be fun.  It really sucked me in.  The world was interesting, the mechanics were fun, there were very cute elements, and it overall felt charming and cozy even when it went into heavier territory.  “It was a bit lib, but not too bad”, I was warned.  My tolerance must be lower than other people’s, but I was grossed out by how the narrative handled conflict between communism and fascism, social democracy, genocide and conquest.  Overall I’d say It’s no DE.  It hits neither the lows nor the highs.  I loved some of the cute friends you can make in the game

To be fair: I picked a Red and Green cleric not knowing what those meant politically and not even knowing what a cleric is because I don’t play DND, but just generally appreciating both wisdom and physical strength, and went in blind, didn’t look things up til I was done with the game.  I don’t know if that dramatically changed the messaging I got in the narrative / quest structures.  Halfway through I was thinking I’d love to do a yellow-blue playthrough because it’d be funny to see the game satirize ancap freaks more, but after seeing the end I don’t know if I will return for a 2nd playthrough.  But keep in mind, I said the Azgalist line every time it came up and was leaning very clearly into the character of a disaffected urthguard member with strong Azgalist sympathies.

discussion of what I didn’t like with heavy spoilers

  • I was irritated that the very revolutionary seeming dwarves were just socdems and that was not more critically interrogated.  They’re out there claiming to represent dwarf-Marx, but it takes a human girl to present more radicalism.  In neither case are the positions really interrogated, I felt.  

  • The division between the fascist youth and the azgalian youth is presented as a boy/girl divide, a lover’s spat (Rollo is hinted as having a crush on Modissa).  Worse, when I tried to give the orange ledger to Modissa, I was forced to give it to Rollo first so he could give it to her.  This turned into essentially a red-brown alliance, and the game was very aware of Strasserism, as Rollo later talks about the in-game equivalent of national socialism (national azgalism.  Nazgalism).  Is this horseshoe theory?

  • The game is forgiving to and almost apologetic of the racist nationalists who are not racist, just unemployed and loveless young men upset about economics (and then say racist things).  Should their plight be ignored?  No.  Should it be centered so much?  Also no.

  • #Most upsetting to me: At the end, Snell gets to confront Urth about the humans genociding his people and doing forced assimilation to the survivors.  Urth’s defense was “Yes it was bad but I had to do it for my people’s survival.  They had no land, were fleeing certain death, and needed somewhere to live, so I took yours”.  Hm.  Doesn’t this sound like one of the foundational myths of a certain fake apartheid state that’s currently committing genocide on live TV?  And we don’t get to condemn it.  He even says that one of the goblin collaborators, Crann, told him that he was making the correct choice because if a single goblin was left alive, they would fight to kill humans forever.  Urth ends up being “merciful” by doing a sort of “gentler” genocide in the vein of what AmeriKKKa did to First Nations: residential schools and brutal forced assimilation.  This is also sugar-coated and a positive spin is put on it, that Snell is something new and different, ignoring that part of his complaint is that he feels like his people barely even get to be goblins anymore.  And we don’t get to condemn this.  Even as the game calls it a genocide, arguments softening horrific genocide are put forth and then not rebutted or interrogated.  Why can my Azgalist cleric with over 20 in wisdom and supposed love for all not tear these arguments apart?  The game calling it genocide but then not letting us condemn it feels like a land acknowledgement from a university.

  • We spend an entire game on an election and I don’t even get to know how the election turned out?  Come on!

I’ll end on a positive: shoutout to my dear friend Meek the Mimic.  Love the little guy and wish he would hop out of the game into this realm to be my cloak, so I could always be getting a hug from a friendly little guy.

To get ahead of critiques of my complaints:

  • Yes I know having a character say something fucked up is not an endorsement of the fucked up thing.  I’m critiquing the presentation and narrative framing of these things, not the existence of imperfect characters.  

  • No, I don’t need all my media to be squeaky clean or ideologically pure.  I enjoy plenty of art from problematic creators.  

  • I think handling difficult topics is great!  What I take issue with is taking on the task of handling these delicate topics badly.  Remember, Disco Elysium handled fascism and colonial atrocities much better.

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[–] SerialExperimentsGay@hexbear.net 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I did a letsplay with a friend of mine and we both had very similar criticisms of the game's politics. I ended up replaying it twice afterwards, first as an Arcanist to do an evil playthrough and then i did a completionist run where i used some guides to find stuff i had missed on my previous blind playthroughs. I got kind of carried away there.

Some minor details i'd like to correct as somebody who's obsessed over this game for a few weeks:

spoiler

  • the game does allow you to condemn Urth's genocide, we need to keep in mind that the MC is literally meeting the deity he's a priest of and you do have the option to tell your god, to his face, that he's a fascist and that you do not pray to him anymore. A cleric literally breaking up with his god is as far as denouncing something goes.

  • the goblin genocide does bear more similarity with the genocides against indigenous peoples in the Americas than the genocide in Palestine - with entire tribes completely erased, most of the native population of Norvik killed off and the remainder being stripped off their culture through forced assimilation. We're talking about an already completed genocide in that case.

  • the ongoing, drawn-out, still publicly denied genocide in Palestine is mirrored more in the Clanlands Conflict between the celestials of the Golden Horde and the halflings of the Fordnip Commonwealth. Every halfling you meet in the game talks about it at some point if you approach the subject in the right way, with the Azgalist halfling side character only opening up about it when you meet her in the temple at night where she is waiting for a contact from the resistance. You can actually donate to the halfling cause there, you can also side with the other halflings and at least show some solidarity and most importantly, you can actually leverage concessions out of the Golden Horde's ambassador, and that is in fact made easier when you openly reject their deal and confront them about the halfling genocide.

The thing is, all of these are just options. Yes, this also goes for the political choices you make in DE, but underneath these choices, both games still clearly take a stance towards them that's implicitly shown through the writing. And DE feels clearly anti-fascist, anti-centrist, anti-capitalist and pro-communist in spite of the tongue in cheek jabs at communism it makes. Even the bitter, dogmatic and secretly opportunist Defector who is portrayed as the worst possible version of the dirty ushanka copypasta gets to relay some extremely powerful lines that drive home what a catastrophy the counterrevolution of the Moralintern against Revachol was. DE very clearly takes a side and EE is much more bothsidesy. It often feels like a cop-out.

I must also stress that all my criticisms of the game are about its politics. I adore the artwork, i love the characters, the writing, the architecture, how it resolves fights without actual fighting mechanics, it's generally a very well-made game. It is unfortunately stained by being a bit of a political compass meme.

[–] CommunistCuddlefish@hexbear.net 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Thank you! Do you think it may be worthwhile or more rewarding for me to do a Freestrider-Arcanist playthrough? Does that significantly change the things I complained about or unlock other quests that would highlight less its failings when it comes to the topics I mentioned?

I agree that the politics aside, the gameplay, problem-solving, art, music, and skill checks are delightful.

And I forgot to put in the post: after I was done, I tried looking up endings and found there wasn't a great wiki like Dark Souls has. There was some article claiming there are hidden secret endings such as

spoilera worker's revolution
But I think I did everything that would be required to trigger that and didn't get it

or

spoilerbecoming the evil wizard dictator by strangling democracy in its infancy

. I could find no corroboration. Is that just something an LLM hallucinated to write some game guide to get clicks?

[–] SerialExperimentsGay@hexbear.net 3 points 3 days ago

Yeah, there's very few good guides for this game so far. I also had the impression that much of it was just AI slop. The game does track a lot of your choices and adjusts the ending accordingly, but

spoilerit's almost always the same general scene where everybody is hanging out on election day. I've finished all questlines in my last playthrough and none of them do more than unlocking items and additional dialog options or adding nice little details like Izk-Urum showing up or the goblin musician playing dungeonsynth music on the arcane instrument you can gift her.

Things that matter here politically are if you have completed the orange ledger and printing press questlines and if you've accepted working for the ambassador. If you are on good terms with the freestrider orc and have foiled the plan to sell off the harbor, you can also clue her in on that you orchestrated the downfall of her boss.

If you've done the sidequest to date Moongore, the merchant prince will be lowkey scared of you and asks if you will punch him again (in case you missed it, you can punch that asshole, it would be worth it even if it wouldn't have the added benefit of Moongore agreeing to wrestle you after election day).

Oh, and if you've found all five rats and have given them to Kraiit (the alligator dude), they hang out as a little rat assembly and have another horrible struggle session. I love the rats.

Coinlord Darrow also reacts differently to you depending on what you did, you can choose if you snitch on Freydis to him or keep her cult involvement secret and if you know about the bloodtongue prophecy because you've talked to the tree outside his mansion, he drops a major loredump on you. Most of the choices here are, at this point, more a matter of Ragn's personal advancement than world-shaking events. But they do look as if they could grow into something much bigger. A lot of the unlocks feel like loose ends left for a sequel.

There is a bad ending that you can trigger by going along with Gorm's plan of murdering 27 people to bring back Urth. That leads to a massacre, it does work to sway public opinion, but it ultimately does not achieve anything because the whole thing was premature. Norvik is not (yet) at the point where a revolution could happen, no matter which kind. This ending drops the usual final scene and is entirely handled in text, similar to what happens when you reach the lowest point of the city, talk to the wall and get lost in the fray.

The confrontation with Gorm can also end in various other ways, if you are confrontational enough he will attack you and then you beat him to death after an intense, drawn out fight, but in the end it is mostly the same as if he dies by his own hand because you have convinced him his plan is nit what Urth would have wanted.

I'm also very certain there is no secret Arcanist ending. I managed to become as much of a powerful wizard as possible, with INT in the high 20s and all the spells, found the living library and whatnot, and told everybody i should become the god-wizard king, but all that does is that people (appropriately) treat you as a weird kind of fantasy fascist.