Shepherd is an interstellar cop without accountability and unilateral authority to do whatever he wants as a member of the spectres. The media culture of the mid to late 2000s is unrecognizable to us, it was shit like the Wire and 24 and Mass Effect. Propaganda was insidious and everywhere (it still is) and the very few dissenters didn't have anywhere to link up unlike now.
It's more a testament to how much the culture has changed since the last 14 years that these things are causing actual friction that's catching on. It's also a testament to how much you've changed, too.
The part that stuck out the most to me even when it was getting released was the naked military worship.
The amount of handwringing about being held back by red tape, regulations and bureaucrats is very mid 2000s zeitgeist. We just need "men of action".
Hey, the Wire had some very solid anti-capitalism hidden under the cop apologia.
Hey! You linked me to a covid denial website yesterday! What the hell!
The article was good, and it had citations from Z magazine and some books that seemed interesting, so the article.itself was alright.
yeah my bad yu got a link 2 cmnt so i can edit w/ warning i post 2 much 2 find it in my histry lol
Hell, he's much closer to a spook. He only reports to the joint council that heads up the universe iirc, and is authorized to get the job done 'however necessary'.
The entire first chapter of the first game was spent trying to prove that one of the other space spooks, who was notorious for going by the letter of that mantra, was actually doing something illegal enough to justify pursuing him.
it was shit like the Wire and 24
24 was quite something. Torture and imperialism justification everywhere, interspersed with really on the nose cisco product placement.
When you do a Cowboy Bebop and put neoliberalism in space but forget about the critique part.
Just Mass Effect/Star Wars/Western Sci-Fi in general things
Star Wars is meant to be lighthearted and mostly for kids, but there definitely is some critique of empire, and like The Emperor manipulating war to gain power was partially inspired by George Bush during the Iraq war.
Mass Effect is kind of interesting because they do deal with some issues relevant to real world politics, particularly like the way the genocide of the Krogan is justified and carried out, but it also does silly shit like having species of aliens who are always bad guys.
The rebels in the original trilogy are modelled on the Viet-Cong IIRC
The prequels depict how democracies can slip into fascism a la Germany, but maybe George Bush too and the patriot act.
Bioware are pure libs. It’s why the 4channers don’t like them, they just see idpol where we see liberalism.
I really like the DLC where the only possible outcome is to do a genocide on the Batarians. You know, the only alien race (other than the Reapers) that's always depicted as villainous, and who are basically just a stand-in for black and Jewish stereotypes.
Just looked at the wiki and their explanation for this is that the Batarian government is paranoid so only the criminals are able to escape.
Real, NRA propaganda logic there.
I always saw the Batarians as the stand in for muslims. The entire mission is about trying to stop them from suicide bombing the station. The slaver and slave raid theme has pretty serious barbary corsairs vibes to me as well.
Terrorist was pretty much synonymous with muslim back in 07. They even refer to it as a crusade (I guess Jihad would have been too on the nose).
Always thought Firefly got it fairly right allthough that is basically just Cowboy Bebop anyways
Avina: The recorded histories of all hitherto existing sapient species is the history of class struggles
In this context, Shephard is commenting on why the Wards seem to be so beat down. And then Avina responds with this. No Paragon or Renegade score for this conversation.
Yeah, questions on the left and decisions on the right is how it is usually structured.
The picture is misleading. Avina's response is to the highlighted question. I only reselected it so that you can see what was asked.
Wait til you learn that SpaceX is specifically named in the codex as keeping Human space travel alive
They haven't retconned that shit into this remaster have they? I know they did it in that terrible Andromeda game.
