If you think this game is just about player choice and not making a statement on the military idk what to tell you

Honestly if Walter just flexed into being a revolutionary instead of hoarding money that story could have been bad ass.

Using le epic TOUGH MAN making HARD DECISIONS^TM as a conduit for my wamen bad politics

They could have killed him in the movie length pilot, it woulda be fantastic, but noooo - fucking lib power fantasies "I went to school so obviously I'd be the best at crimes if I weren't so good"

I slightly bristle at all the "we could [insert hypothetical fascist culture con] so easy!" comments many, including myself, sometimes make as well, it's detritus from being converted liberals. We all were, handful of possible exceptions available, it's nothing to be ashamed of but it is something to notice and potentially change. That said it's probably more true than the true lib examples.

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And they're not trying to make any statement or impact to undercut the dominant narrative. They don't want players to question, they're reinforcing what the player already believes.

The game doesn't need to give you a way out. But for the moment to be impactful you do have to manipulate the player in to believing that they made a decision and are thus culpable for their actions. Players have to feel ownership of what they did to feel shame, remorse, and horror. If they had no choice except "press x to do warcrimes" or turning off the game they'll press x and grumble about being railroaded by the story.

Yeah, the only big unavoidable choice is the white phosphorus

pretty sure in most others you can either stand for a second and it proceeds or you shoot into the air instead of at someone and it proceeds

You should have an explicit option to refuse war crimes, but then it should turn into something like a Hugh Thompson simulator.

That's not at all accurate, to the point that I'm struggling to even place what you're referring to. I think it's about how if you help guerilla insurgents in the first Witcher game smuggle weapons they later assassinate someone? That was a big "wait, you're telling me the rebels fighting a war use violence to accomplish their goals and aren't just heckin wholesome peaceful YA novel protagonists who win by being ontologically good and having plot armor like in every other game, movie, and book that gets mainstream attention in the US?" shock moment for western gamers whose consumption of hollywood treats left them without a framework for understanding that sometimes the materially and morally correct side in a conflict can still be doing brutal and underhanded things as a matter of material necessity.

I never got into the second game, but by the third one the overall moral tone is pretty clearly on the side of mercy and conservation, with sparing and helping magical creatures that are intelligent non-human persons that are just trying to survive being the clearly correct choice to the point that later on when you get put on trial by a werewolf for being a monster hunter a bunch of them show up as character witnesses to your defense. That's also the game where the narrator all but says "the real monsters are cruel and intolerant men" over and over, every aristocrat you encounter is some flavor of monstrous or dangerously detached from reality, and most of the plot ultimately revolves around trying to stop an extradimensional settler colonialist invasion.

CDPR are still libs, but they overall have a much more materialist understanding of how things fit together instead of the sort of mishmash of hollywood tropes American lib writers throw together based on vibes.

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Why use that image of edgeworth to make your point? That’s edgeworth standing on the right side of the courtroom, where he’s always wrong.

The whole point of the ace attorney games is if you are on the left, you are good and correct. If you are on the right, you are evil and wrong. And if you are in the center, you are either a hopelessly confused idiot, or evil.

No one forced them to tell their story in a way that robbed the moment of it's impact and made the player feel annoyed and hoodwinked instead of horrified.

They'd best be prepared to offer you a full refund if they intend you not to actually use the product.

It's poor storytelling.

How dare a piece of media, I product I bought, challenge me by pointing out that the standard media of this type depicts horrific acts. Clearly it wants me to feel ashamed for playing, and not to reflect on why it's so uncomfortable when highlighted, but so banal it goes unacknowledged when not?

Could I use this moment to grow? To ask how we got here and whether we should stay here? Certainly not, because games are masturbatory toys of indulgence and nothing more. Unless of course I'm defending how I spend my time, then they're art.

Can you imagine the backlash though? From chuds and boomers alike.

I spend too much of my life in games (board, social, or video I play them all!) and I really do wish more people who enjoy them were interested in critical analysis of them. Outside of gamedev circles and weird youtube channels asking "why is this being presented the way it is?" is a technique for speedrunning slur%. Especially if a game is non, or non traditional, narrative. Like I dare you to try analyse the themes of slay the spire or whatever on the subreddit haha.

Sends them scurrying back to their reddit shithole to jack off to gore footage of surrendering Russian conscripts being blown up