Firstly, it is barely a criticism of America or evangelicals. Eden's Gate are cartoon bad guys, they brainwash and kill basically everyone, but the game steers clear of being explicit about Eden's Gate being particularly Christian. They talk about God and go to church and draw on Christian iconography, but they don't talk about Jesus or quote the Bible or target other religions. They're a very vague cult ideologically, basically just saying "the modern world is bad. politicians are corrupt, people don't care about each other anymore". That's like entry-level cult stuff that is very easy to agree with - its the softball a cult would throw at you before hitting you with the real wack shit. But that's Eden Gate's entire philosophy, it doesn't go any deeper than that besides Joseph Seed supposedly being a prophet - and all that means is he says he's carrying out God's plan all the time. It doesn't examine at all why people would be lead into this cult in the first place, or how it would come to rise.

The game also thinks that America is really cool and the cult rising is just a random thing that happened for no reason. American flags replace the cult flags when you take over an outpost, and nobody ever questions why America is a good thing. The game has a fetish for uniting Republicans and Democrats across the aisle to fight this religious evil (sound familiar?), even if it doesn't use those words. The liberal characters range from well-meaning liberal politicians, a blue-haired woman, and at least two black women. One of the companions is a black woman who is a veteran, and her father died in an American war, making him an American hero. The Republicans are presented as lovable country hicks who say weird things but you can have a beer with them - they're the redneck stereotype of mad lads who like shooting guns and waving American flags and blowing things up. There's a guy who complains about libtards in a lovable grandad kind of way. But they all put aside their differences to defend the American ideal and defeat this cult - how wholesome and epic! America is truly awesome. Also, you play as a cop, and all the cops in the game are good. So the politics are horseshit, they're embarassing. Ubisoft clearly didn't want to rock the boat by making any real criticism of America.

The side characters were a very mixed bag. At the high end, you have Nick Rye, who is an enjoyable character every time he appears. He's a pilot and really useful in combat, he's nice, dependable, pretty chill. He also has a pregnant wife who goes into labour at one point in the game, and you have to drive her to a doctor. This was my favourite mission in the entire game, because I really like Nick and his wife Kim, and this was an enjoyable character moment for them. The mission ends with Nick telling you that they're making you the godfather of their child, which I really like and makes sense because I felt like the player character and Nick would really trust each other at that point.

There's a lot of low points with the side characters. A lot of them are wacky silly goofy characters with exactly one personality trait tuned way up, and the main character just kinda indulges them. There's the mad scientist who talks in scientific gibberish and calls you stupid, the stoner, the Republican uncle who moans about libtards, multiple of the aforementioned Redneck Stereotype who love to blow things up and drink and be American, and so on. This game does the exact same thing as Rockstar games do, where you'll talk to one of these stupid side characters, they'll say and do something stupid, then your character just kinda obliges them and goes "wow, how weird. its so funny how we made a Weird Character in our video game. laugh at this please."

The plot felt very predictable and honestly got in the way of my enjoyment of the game. You get kidnapped by each leader of each region three times each, they take you prisoner but refuse to kill you because I guess you're just soooo interesting, they get up in your face and talk softly and smugly, then you get away from them and can resume playing the open world game. The third and final region I did was the northern one, and I knew as soon as I started what was going to happen. Eli was a good leader and a reliable dude, and you get brainwashed into killing a load of anonymous people in a dream state, so it was really obvious that you would end up killing Eli. Its not tragic when you can see it coming from a mile away.

I knew when I started the game that it ends with Montana being nuked, but I still liked it when it happened. I like an unhappy ending to a story, and this game leaves the main character tied up in a bunker, with all of their friends dead, the world above them turned to a wasteland, while they watch the man who caused all the chaos walk away. That felt like the one poignant bit of social commentary in this game - the powerful can destroy the world and kill your friends and not suffer the consequences.

So yeah, overall, the writing wasn't great. It was serviceable, but honestly the story got in the way of the sandbox a lot of the time. I was gonna write about the world and the gameplay but honestly I can't be bothered. You've played a Ubisoft game before. Its decent. The shovel with the smiley face is fun. The end.