It's very strange, you can tell the writing for this game is all-timer level great because people can have wildly divergent interpretations of the game's ultimate tone. It's either one of the most depressing and defeatist games ever made, or one of the most optimistic and hopeful. And both interpretations are equally valid.
(I'm more in the optimism camp, for the record).
Thats kind of the point, they're so (deliberately) underfunded they have to farm out jobs to subcontractors which boil down to "vigilante goes to place, murders a bunch of people".
Yeah my first run (Reformist but lost the war) I funded Health and Education thinking I would get prompted for a new budget annually and initial investments there would pay off Keynesian-style.
But funding Law Enforcement is actually extremely important if you intend to
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root out the Sollist deep state root and branch.
Which I did to a maximalist extent in my second, successful run.
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You: I know I can get history back on the right track.
René: The "right track"? This is the right track! The only track. (he gets visibly annoyed) This is the world we shaped, a reflection of what we are: cowardly, ugly, and numb. And there are no second chances. We don't deserve them! You just can't go back and restart — that would make everything MEANINGLESS! (a shadow of pain comes over his face)
Empathy: There's something substantial moving in him, trying to get out.
Volition: He would sooner die than let it surface.
You: What is it?
Empathy: Regret.
You: Regret about what?
Pain Threshold: (as the camera zooms in on Gaston) Him.
You: Him?
Pain Threshold: There's tenderness in the carabineer's look. Tenderness that's curdled into pain or something darker.
You: Ex-love, ex-tenderness...
Pain Threshold: Even worse, a love aborted and smothered, stamped beneath his brilliant boot heel.
René: (you catch the old carabineer's gaze slowly leaving his opponent's wrinkled face as his dark eyes meet yours — whatever turmoil raged in him a moment ago is quelled for now)
Conceptualization: Like the last rays of the evening sun gently kissing the day goodbye, before giving way to unfathomable darkness.
Volition: Willed back into the darkest unexplored depths of his mind — never meant to be shared, seen or confronted.
Composure: A true master of his emotions.
Inland Empire: Hopelessly alone behind the unbreakable walls he spent a lifetime erecting. No one will ever know him.
No details but
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it's incredibly depressing. Because that's all it could ever really hope to be.
However it does genuinely have one of my favorite moments in the entire game.
It isn’t that nuanced in its portrayal of fascism (or for that matter hustlegrind Ultra mindset or pretentious ironic detachment cynicism for that matter) but in my personal subjective opinion that’s fairly accurate because those lines of thinking don’t require much thinking to maintain and analysis of those beliefs threatens them fundamentally, so it’s rarely done.
If you pursue the fascist path in dedicated fashion it actually does get quite nuanced. I won't elaborate more on what I mean by any of that.
As far as I know though Ultraliberal is only ever a caricature because that's exactly what it is and what it deserves.
Lmao you went Dictator, defunded the military, joined CSP, didnt promote Lucian, and didn't form the Anti-Corruption Police, didn't you?
I'm pretty sure thats the route you have to take to alienate literally everyone in the cabinet and have every possible bid to overthrow you go off.
You mean the police procedural, right?
Because classic mystery stories focus way more on what actually solves murders - detective grunt work like alibis, motives, timelines, etc
That that kind of game, with so much thematically and artistically bound up within it, could ever have come out at all, that was the real Insulindian Miracle
I came to terms with the inevitability that it was probably never going to get any follow-up, just like how I had to come to terms with the fact that the Song of Ice and Fire series will probably never be concluded. Its the definition of "Dont be sad its gone. Smile because it happened."
Picture after this was told to the Coal Mining Enjoyer:gigachad:
Literally no one here is arguing that Ukraine is good, but the actual leftists (as opposed to national chauvinists) here are arguing that this is unmistakably an inter-imperialist war and not some convoluted "the invasion of Ukraine is anti-imperialist because Russia is on the imperial periphery of a super-imperialist bloc" bullshit argument.
I'm someone who can absolutely advance arguments that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was caused by outside imperialist circumstances. But now that it has happened, and is actual fact? There is zero "critical support" of Russian aggression here. The only legitimate communist position in this scenario is for Ukrainian and Russian soldiers alike to turn their guns on their own generals. Will that happen? No. But that's the fucking position the Bolsheviks themselves took from the start, not some ridiculous stance about how actually the Kaiser was right to resist all along and criticizing the German war effort is bad.
:alex-aware: