When I was a kid I would always play evil characters, especially remember in KOTOR playing full dark side and the dark side options in that are fully “steal the baby’s ice cream” “kick the hungry dog” kind of evil options. Now doing those things makes me feel guilty
DAE KRAEIA SO SMART TOTALLY BLOWS MY MIND GREY JEDIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!?!?!?
She's not though lol
KOTOR 2 spoiler
She was both Jedi and Sith in the past, and over time she came to despise the Force and the effect it has on people and pretty much everything else - her goal is to destroy the force and let people have free will (by proxy. She doesn't care, but that would be the effect, were the death of the force not mean the death of all living beings in the galaxy). Far from a "lol fuck the light side, fuck the dark side, balance is the best" viewpoint.
She's far from perfect; a peak Machiavellian with contradictory beliefs - and focused entirely on her feud with the force, completely uncaring of the lives of the people of the galaxy. She is, however, a very fascinating character and it's a shame the money people rushed Obsidian into an early release date.
KotOR 2 is still one of my favorite games of all time.
Amazing character with stellar writing (with some of the restored content it’s even better), who is absolutely wrong. I love that she can have complex layered motivations for her actions, can cause players to question why they make certain moral choices, and still be absolutely wrong in the end. It’s great, and I feel it’s missing from a lot of game media.
Except of course, she's right. Her goal of destroying the force is one of the noblest in the entire franchise. The force takes away people's free will on an individual level and hurls the galaxy into conflicts that cost billions of lives in a seemingly infinite loop.
That isn'tto say her ideas are particularly applicable to us. Chosen ones and those individuals worth billions can't exist in our reality, but do in star wars. We've got people who were positioned in critical junctions and could achieve what many others couldn't, yet Kissinger (rip bozo) wasn't Nihilus.
Nah I never got on board with the force as a willful entity that sentient beings like us could describe like such, like a puppet master pulling all the strings. Maybe I’m just crazy but the reading of the force as taking away the agency and willpower of beings doesn’t seem to hold up in the (good) text. The fascination with prophecy and destiny is what led many to destruction, not the force itself. The conflict between light and dark isn’t orchestrated by the force itself, at least, not beyond the conflicts that would arise around such a supernatural power. Balance in the force is the light and not the synthesis/conflict between it and dark. I never particularly liked a lot of George’s ideas but that’s one I can get behind.
The clone wars gods of the force Mortis arc and the canon obsession with “darkness rising to meet the light” & vice versa just seem overly simplistic and deterministic in the exact way you describe. I’m probably very dumb for wanting to interpret a space fantasy universe through a materialist perspective but the best works of star wars IMO treat the force in line with Yoda’s description of a link between all things that doesn’t determine how lives play out, but simply describes the link between all lives, and the echoes (to take it back to kotor) one’s actions inevitably cause (which has a fun metaphorical & literal meaning).
The force is a fact of the universe that, by its existence in the cosmology, influences things, but I liked the Qui-Gon school of thought that the “will of the force” wasn’t necessarily a hard deterministic prophecy type thing but the myriad infinitesimal interactions between all things that lead where they will, bringing one to unexpected but (narratively) significant destinations. Or something lol I’m tired
KOTOR isn't in the new canon anyway, so I feel it makes sense to pick and choose what from the current canon applies to KOTOR and vice versa. I don't think anyone outright suggested the force being sentient per se. I personally think of its influence more like gravity, both in the sense that it's a fact of existence and that the work in applies (in the physics sense, not labour) isn't absolute. This is reflected in the game mechanics, the force rewards the PC for "picking a side”, at neutral the player can't get prestige classes and max light/dark side points gives bonus attributes.
Even if we don't get into the light vs dark notion, the force is definitely pushing people in anti-human directions. In the prequels, every time Anakin asks for advice, he receives some pseudo-buddhist inhuman horseshit, and I don't think the point was that the jedi leadership were all imbeciles. Hell, even in the OT, it's clearly said that Luke cannot kill Vader, since he'd fall to the dark side if he indulged his anger in that way. The force is literally telling us killing space hitler bad. The balance (as described by Lucas, not that he was perfectly consistent) is supposed to be all light and no dark, but if human tendencies give rise to the dark side so easily, this balance isn't a real equilibrium. You can see this in almost all the post-ROTJ stories, the dark side rises back somehow.
I like Kreia's animosity towards the force for a very meta reason. All of the idealist idiocy in any of the SW stories, all the individuals that changed the fate of the galaxy had the power to move worlds, can be explained by the Force forcing an idealist reality on the SW galaxy, and that destroying the Force would restore materialism as a fact to the universe, and as a bonus will break the cycle of galaxy-wide conflict.
I think that’s a fair interpretation - don’t necessarily agree with it but I get it! I did subscribe to the fan explanation for the Jedi order being absolutely no help to Anakin, basically saying the Order as a construct became ossified and unable to contend with the realities of life and human (or alien) emotions. There’s plenty of good SW media going into how the light doesn’t require to ignore emotions, love, or even killing when necessary, and the restrictions were the result of a millennia old stagnant order.
The Light would be the ideal state: beings living in harmony, valuing each other’s lives etc., but I like to think the Dark is “unnatural” in the way of conditions leading to humans making malicious or greedy choices. It’s all a bit metaphorical but the dark is almost always used to represent selfishness and disregard for empathy, patience, etc., but the Dark can be a descriptive term. It can represent the “darkness” and evil choices that humans (or aliens in fiction) are capable of, and the evil they perpetrate in their selfish pursuits creates the Dark. Basically the Dark is the use of the force for “evil”, selfish, or non-empathetic actions, and it acts as a force multiplier (haha), causing a literal cascading descent into evil and madness where it would be more metaphorical IRL. The corruption necessary to accrue billions, and the ease of abandoning human empathy when it is in one’s interest is pretty analogous IMO. I see the idealist nonsense of the dogmatic Jedi philosophy as just as problematic as Kreia does, but I’d be more willing to point to human (or alien) power structures causing it more than the mystical field itself.
As with all interpretations of vague and inconsistent media I think there’s no real answer, or at least one that’ll get us to agree 100%, ¯_(ツ)_/¯. All I know is that I used to spend far too much time thinking about fiction like this and this thread’s been a throwback so thanks, good discussion lol
I remember in KOTOR 2 your character has a dialog option that calls out the banality of the evil choices. I forget the exact words, but basically your character laments the opportunities they are provided beyond basic cruelties.
Found it cuz it was bothering me:
"These small acts of cruelty bore me - to take money from others, to insult them, to threaten their lives. " "I command the Force, and yet these small cruelties are all life presents me with. "
When I was a kid, I used to pick all the super outlandish dialogue options just to see how far the game would accommodate absolute incoherence.
But then they stopped making games like Fallout and started making games like Mass Effect.
Nowadays I don't really have time to do novelty runs and I don't find it fun to play as an asshole so yeah, it's communism time in Disco Elysium Baay-beeeee!
(And my Baldur's Gate 3 character is a goody-two-shoes so now Astarion won't bang me, THERE ABSOLUTELY ARE BLOODY CONSEQUENCES
)Counterpoint; The things you do, even in fiction, write physical changes in to your mind. Games are practice for life.
I always play Paladin because i can heal people and make them feel better and hit cops so hard THEY EXPLODE.
There was a DnD game I played a while back as a rogue with maxed charisma and smarts who focused more on white collar sorta crime and scams and stuff rather than pickpocketing and sneaking. By lugging around a suit of paladin armor that slowed me down and made me useless in combat, I tricked a village into starting a peasants crusade and went village to village building an army of religiously zealous followers and just kinda did a quest with several hundred peasants at my command.
If my character wasn't a con artist, yes. In this case I basically did the first crusade but for petty personal squabbles and to bleed every town dry of valuables. I was a rogue but I operated like the McKinsey Institute instead of your standard DnD sneakthief. My character was incredibly charming but an absolute opportunist and generally crappy person.
There are like 5 games ever that are morally complex. Most games that let you choose between two sides let you pick between a faction of fascists or ineffective cultish hippies. It's rare for games to present better ideology than those.
Off the top of my head, I can only think of a handful. Disco Elysium, Fallout: New Vegas, Planescape: Torment, Frostpunk, Caves of Qud, Vampire TMB. All of those have writing that allows the player to explore what good or bad are in the right situations. DE is probably the best I've ever seen in a game, an absolute masterpiece that shows you the consequences of the bad moral choices, and yet also explores why you might choose the good ones.
I haven't played Baldur's Gate 3 yet but I'm told the writing is actually pretty good, so I'll check that out.
BG3 doesn't really do politics, and the "evil" choices are late-2000s/2010s being a dick for no reason.
I would say there's a definite theme of refugees being scapegoated by bigots and xenophobes, and those bigots and xenophobes falling into evil. Kagha, Bahl cultists, the people of Baldur's Gate, etc. are all blaming everything on the tiefling refugees. There's a definite positive theme of inclusiveness and not being close-minded
I got a little sad when my character told a bigot to shut up, he told me some bs, and I called him out for being foreign too. (one of the better options given)
I then blow him up with a fireball after the crowd agrees with me and turns on him. Of course, the game sees it as murder, because they didn't code it to be different, but damn in my canon that guy is a pile of soot. It kinda sucks that only RPGs like BG3 are brave enough to take the stance of "Remove all bigots by force if needed", but only because killing Evil McMurderlord is fun. But I'm glad at least they let you say it.
Yeah, that's what I mean, it's basically the same morality as a Dragon Age or a Mass Effect. "Mean people and racists are evil". Which like, they are, but it's not particularly deep.
Morrowind as well, all the factions suck (except the anti slavers), and hate each other, but complex material systems of oppression and co dependence trap them in a decaying structure and have caused even the more noble institutions to be corrupted. And now that system is no longer capable of defending itself.
You may or may not be the Nerevarine, and even if you are it's unclear what that actually means and if it's prophecy or you taking it "by violence". But you can use the fact other people think you are to break the cycle.
Of course once you have there's no guarantee of anything better on the other side, you're just some guy, you know.
Broke: you are the Nerevarine, the chosen, the prophesised
Woke: you're just some guy
Bespoke: the Nerevarine was always just some guy and the Tribunal was always fated to pay for their crimes at the hand of the common man
Some of the Shin Megami Tensei games are really interesting in that regard, because even as they portray the ideologies in their super-dogmatic form and in some cases as everyone-sucks (including the status quo supporters), games like Devil Survivor 1 or Strange Journey actually have writing so good that they make choosing sides not obvious and feel like they actually have weight on the future of humanity in-universe.
Others either flop on their face (SMT IV), or have very clear biases (SMT I or II)
But hey,
SMT II
choosing the Chaos ending, allying with Lucifer and the Demons of the Abyss to destroy the Abrahamic God's flying Noah's Ark, to free the world's oppressed and left-to-their-own-misery subclasses from a theocratic, hierarchical dictatorship... leading to a world where both the mutated humans left on the surface after 1's events and the demons could co-exist in relative harmony - all while rejecting the title of the Messiah.
...is a great ending and it doesn't matter if the other two don't compare.
(I fucking love this game, I eagerly await the day when the translation of the PS1 port comes out)
Oh yeah! Strange Journey is an absolutely amazing game. Good writing. Fun rpg systems.
Since BG3 exists within the lore of Forgotten Realms, evil isn't nearly as complex as, say, Disco Elysium.
Like sure siding with the slavers is easier than siding with the slaves or X Y Z amoral choice may give you an otherwise unobtainable reward for doing strictly the good thing, but it's not that deep.
Still, great game
I mean, in a game with no consequences, why play the bad side?
All main quest endings suck ass
Did you just describe Skyrim? (Seriously, I can't get behind the major conflict being between Nord ethnostatists and the get of fucking Septim.)
In my opinion, the Dragonborn - a supernaturally powerful reincarnation of a god who has been given a task to avert Ragnarok - should be above the civil war conflict. What does it matter which group of nobility Skyrim's peasants pay taxes to for the next couple of decades? We're tryinng to stop the end of the world - I always told both Tulius and Ulfric to their faces that they're idiots.
I remember being disappointed there was no "strap me to a missile and launch me at the Summerset Isles" option.
I was disappointed there's no "no I am your prophet make me your High King and stop being racists" option.
Seriously, where was the option to stab the faction you helped in the back and take power for yourself? After you win the war for them you just go back to looting zombie burial sites like a loser.
What does it matter which group of nobility Skyrim's peasants pay taxes to for the next couple of decades?
The taxes don't matter, what does matter is putting forth a unified front next time the turbo-fascist Thalmor-controlled Aldmeri Dominion tries to invade. As the Thalmor themselves put it, it really doesn't much matter who wins the war, all that matters is that the war ends. Either side winning is bad for them.
They also should be above pickpocketing the literal clothes off of every back in Skyrim because it makes them giggle, but they aren't the Dragonborn Skyrim needs, they're the Dragonborn Skyrim deserves.
The major conflict is about killing Dragon Satan, the civil war is a side quest.
Nah I'm playing The Whispering Hillock in The Witcherino 3. Pls no spoilers
Critical support to the nationalist Nord regime in throwing off the imperialist yoke.
Death to Cyrodil!
Hmm, I dunno about this one, I think I'd take the mostly multi-ethnic Empire over the Nordic ethno-nationalist fascists who are set up to weaken the Empire by the other ethno-nationalist fascists, the Thalmor.
Critical support for the Empire?
Critical support for the Empire in their war to stop the Thalmor from dancing atop the tower and unmaking the Arena of Nirn.
We can do communism after we stop the mythopiec dream-engineers from ripping reality apart and throwing us all screaming in to the eye of Sithis.
The Empire is an extractive regime funnelling wealth into the imperial core of Cyrodil at the expense of the provinces. Not only that, but the provinces are extorted for the majority of the manpower of the imperial legions, with the officer core being made up of the Cyrodilian nobility.
The Empire knowingly permits slavery amongst it's subjects, and it's history is one of a succession of revolts.The proto-fascist Stormcloaks are preferable to the extant fascism of the Thalmor and the mature imperial project of the Empire because it still has the potential to move in a less harmful direction, as the feudal regimes of the west and south of Skyrim do not share most of the exclusionary value of the northern holds.
Tamriel is not a capitalist country, the Empire is not characterized by a peculiar imperial extraction regime, just a continental system of legal suzerainty and tributaries ala the Ming or Tang. bethesda is very confused which vibes they wanted to evoke, so they're aesthetically romanesque, but the content of client kings and psuedo-feudalism is not Roman whatsoever. they're even on-paper against slavery, the most roman thing ever.
Tamriel is not a capitalist country, but imo it seems pretty clear the province of Cyrodiil is a province wherein the capitalist mode of circulation prevails and enjoys the patronage of a continent-spanning empire to extract various luxury/exotic goods from periphery areas for profit.
In Morrowind, this was ofc very, very clear (East Empire Company, monopoly on Ebony, paper contracts, co-opting local rulers, etcetc its all very British empire).
In Oblivion we see the imperial core which is suitably saccharine on its surface but horrifying just below (e.g. the murderous countess of Leyawiin, the feeding of prisoners to vampires in Skingrad, Bravil's general horribleness, beggars everywhere, etc.)
In Skyrim we see a part of the Imperial core (but not the core-core) 200 years after the Empire suffered its greatest crisis, defacto collapsed and 'returned' with a tiny portion of its territory (notably missing: the sugar plantations of Elweyr, the Ebony mines of Morrowind and Hammerfel; the tropical trees of Black Marsh i.e. the areas from which the majority of wealth would have likely been extracted).
Also I'd note that client-kings was very much characteristic of early Roman expansion (although definitely not so much the periods of higher imperial power). Pseudo-feudalism isn't really descriptive of what we see in any of the TES games imo; Oblivion uses titles such as 'count', but so did/does capitalist Britain.
You can extract resources without being capitalist. Unlike the historical Chinese dynasties, the imperial core territory is not self sufficient, they are entirely reliant on resources and manpower from the provinces to maintain control over their holdings.
You can extract resources without being capitalist
yeah like the Romans. but Oblivion, Skyrim, and Daggerfall offer basically no evidence for that besides an aesthetic affinity between the Empire and Romans. Morrowind has more of that character and a nativist resistance streak, but the Empire can't even implement the ban on slavery there, so it's clearly tenuous.
Unlike the historical Chinese dynasties, the imperial core territory is not self sufficient
after however many thousands of years of Lore there is for Tamriel, "core territory" surely expands. the "core" of the Huang He was good agricultural land in very remote times, but lacked mineral resources. once the agricultural produce of the valley state(s) grew enough to enforce influence over more expansive territory and bring those into the fold. after a really long time, huge swathes of land beyond the chief rivers of China are 'core' and we call them self-sufficient.
even if Cyrodiil itself is insufficient (which i kind of doubt on paper, cause they had to give them farms and mines, rivers and hills for gameplay variety) the whole continent is the integrated economic system we're talking about, and this is acknowledged even by the rebels in Skyrim with their "Talos made the empire" type shit. it's also supported with the games calling all the disparate 'countries' of Tamriel "provinces", the common language being spoken between the whole continent, and the long history of unification.
yeah like the Romans. but Oblivion, Skyrim, and Daggerfall offer basically no evidence for that besides an aesthetic affinity between the Empire and Romans.
I'd argue this is intentional; the Septim Empire consciously mimics the Reman empire's aesthetics to bolster its legitimacy.
after however many thousands of years of Lore there is for Tamriel, "core territory" surely expands
I wanna point out that Tamriel the continent has existed for thousands of years, but the Septim Empire of a United Tamriel lasted only around 400 years, and during a large part of that was consumed with internal conflicts, outright civil wars and failed Akaviri adventures.
Before the Septim empire, there was a thousand year interregnum of warlords under a nominal akaviri potentate. Before that, there was a Reman empire for a few hundred years which nominally controlled the entire continent except for morrowind, but the extent of its control on the Summerset Isles was getting tribute.
I also think that the imperial core of the Septim and Reman empires is likely not just cyrodiil, but likely extends to High Rock and Skyrim (empire of (tamrielic) man after all). It should also be noted that not the entirety of Cyrodiil, High Rock or Skyrim benefits from being "imperial core" to equal extents (c.f. beggars) or at all (e.g. goblins, reachfolk, orcs). In historical imperial cores, the benefits of imperialism trickle down, so to speak, to the imperial core's relative poor rather than being spread to the imperialised so i would assume this to be the case here
400 years of Septim, 400 years of Reman-everything-but-morrowind is a really long time, and clearly stuck ideologically in the between period being called "interregnum" with the warring states attempting to recreate that same system. Morrowind being the latest Septim-addition, and being subject to EEC exploitation is a bit more like a core-periphery relationship, but we don't actually know the extent to which Septims or Remans actually exerted control over other provinces "just tribute"--->"slave sugar plantations"
the clumsy thing about doing world-systems analysis to Tamriel is that the exploitative core irl had new frontiers for a capitalistic expansion, but Tamriel doesn't have new anything new for many centuries besides Akavir which they don't successfully exploit. so people itt are postulating some sort of medieval neoliberal turnabout where a core territory of the Empire (Skyrim) is a peripheral subject. much simpler to just think of it as medieval China or Holy Roman Empire
The in between period is called the 'interregnum' because the Akaviri Potentate originally positioned itself as a temporary regency pending the discovery of a new dragonborn emperor, and because Tiber Septim leaned on the Reman empire for legitimacy, not because each warlord saw themselves as trying to become emperor.
The various warring states were not attempting to recreate the Reman empire; in general they were just returning to the status quo before Reman united most of the continent against the Akaviri invaders (who then swore fealty to him). When I wrote 'nominal' control I meant:
Reman troops on the coast of black marsh with most of the coastal argonians swearing some form of fealty on pain of having their hist trees burnt to the ground
Alinor officially being subservient, but even Reman diplomats not allowed outside the diplomatic district of the capital
Half or more of high rock, hammerfell and skyrim being de-facto independent (reachfolk, orcs, alikr)
An unknown portion of the jungles of cyrodiil filled by ayleids still
The Septims and Remans are entirely seperate entities with entirely separate organizational structures (as far as we know anyways; we have mostly just myth/song/legend for the Reman period).
Setting aside Reman empire bc there's a distinct lack of information on it, we have indication in Morrowind of the empire's relationship to the province it has the least official control over. So imo at least this tells us that the provinces outright conquered and forcefully integrated would have even more unequal trade relationships (and e.g. in Argonian account we hear of slavery in Black Marsh, of Argonians, by imperial immigrant-landlords).
exploitative core irl had new frontiers for a capitalistic expansion, but Tamriel doesn't have new anything new for many centuries besides Akavir which they don't successfully exploit. so people itt are postulating some sort of medieval neoliberal turnabout where a core territory of the Empire (Skyrim) is a peripheral subject. much simpler to just think of it as medieval China or Holy Roman Empire
I wanna re-iterate my position that Skyrim is part of the Septim/Mede Imperial Core; i have no interest in arguing about what others in the thread are arguing.
"Tamriel" is a continent. The Empire is based in the human core of Cyrodiil, 1/2 of High Rock and Skyrim. The Imperial Core of the Human Empire has tons of New Frontiers to expand into; Black Marsh, Morrowind (Temple preserve of Vvardenfel newly open for business and settlement in Morrowind), Valenwood, the Orc controlled territories of High Rock (eventually taken over through co-optation), the goblin controlled territories of Cyrodiil, any area considered 'wild' and therefore being "unproductive" (given time, this would likely see the empire drawn into conflict with the Bosmer bc green pact, but thats part of why the Septim empire pushes the cult of the 8 and 1 so much).
And you mention the HRE, but it should be noted there was a whole frontier (both for the feudal lords and for the bishops) to the East of it for the entirety of its existence. There was continual economic pressure put on them, German merchants (and bishops) and outright settlers throughout Hungary, Poland, the Baltic. When the HRE was created, like half of Germany wasn't even German or Christian and that would change within 300 years.
Pretty sure they abolished Slavery following the Red Year in Morrowind, as the Dres that were the biggest reserve of support for slavery were all eaten by the Argonians when they bulked up on Hiist sap so the Hlallu king had enough influence to end the practice without the possibility of a Dres-Redoran-Indoril uprising.
Also, Ulfrick is a huge dork and is not good enough at break-dancing to defeat the Thalmor in the one arena that truly matters. He's also presumably racist towards monkeys, and we're gonna need the Imga if we're going to pull this off. Even with Numidium Tiber Septim could only force a draw with the old Altmer. What chance do we have without a bunch of ballet-doing gorillas?
I really think our best chance is quickly putting down the Stormcloak revolt then using the death of Emperor Mede to steer a charismatic Bosmer leader on to the throne, then use mixed loyalties in Valendwood as a lever to break Elsweyr off from the Dominion. If the Empire can demonstrate that it's a credible challenger to the Dominion we can probably get the Hist on board purely through shared interest in maintaining the status quo of reality, then start constructing Battlespires in the northner parts of the Tamriel in preparation of eventually invading Summerset Isle from the one direction they're not expecting;
spaceOblivion!If we can figure out where Vivec fucked off to and assemble a strategic mythic alliance of Paarthunax, Vivec, the Mane, the Dragon Born, the Nerevarine if they're still around, and whatever other quasi-divine pro-existing legends are wandering around I think we have a good chance of yelling "TAMRIEL EXISTS" loud enough to deafen the Aldmeri high wizards to all other possibilities.
Right? It has been amazing. I have been wanting to jump in with some love for the actual heros who are the anprim trans argonians but I wouldn't really have contributed anything of value.
I got lost on the way to picking up my adventurer's gear. I know that's all of an entire room. Lotta lore went over my head.
The proto-fascist Stormcloaks are preferable to the extant fascism of the Thalmor and the mature imperial project of the Empire because it still has the potential to move in a less harmful direction
We're gonna push King Ulfric left, any day now he'll allow the Dunmer out of the ghettos of Windhelm and the Khaijit to trade inside the walls!
'ghettoes' lmao this is blatant imperial propaganda, they have like 1/3rd of the city, stone walls, doors, lights, everything. there are 3 streets in the city and they have an entire one of them, theres like the inn and the graveyard and the blacksmiths house and the castle as the entire rest of the city, there are literally more dark elf homes than nord buildings. all of the homeless are men, not elves. and this is during a civil war in their literal revolutionary military capital. any other political power would have treated the elves worse in the same situation. even other elves would probably not let dark elf refugees shelter in their military capitals during a war in which the dark elves loyalty was in question. Ulfric will personally recruit you no matter what race you are, he literally doesn't care as long as you fight the imperialist invaders. this 'stormcloaks are racist' narrative is the most baby-brained surface level read of the situation. literally 2 guys in the city are racist, one of them homeless and mentally unwell, not any of the leadership, and the person they are harassing literally turns out to be related to an imperial spy if you look into it.
The warcry "Skyrim belongs to the Nords!" Is in itself a racist warcry that erases native Snow Elves (and Falmer) existence, as well as the pagan Reachmen of the south west (who are A: native to the Reach and B: not Nords!)
literally no faction in skyrim is on the side of the reachmen so you might as well say every faction is fascist
Oh how generous of the Nords to allow them 1 whole alley in their city where they cannot tread otherwise, whereas in Solitude any Man or Mer may walk the streets unhindered! Indeed, that you hold parts of Skyrim to be more progressive than Windhelm is such that they retain some tradition and loyalty to the Empire! To suggest the Nords are not racist is to lay bare how the Empire, after losing to the Thalmor do not treat the Altmer in such contempt as the Nords do the Dunmer for no good reason at all save Nordic Supremacy!
'1 whole alley' its literally a third of the fucking city, they have more houses than the nords do! they can travel anywhere they want! they have thicker walls and bigger houses than the high street in whiterun! and every city in skyrim bars the khajiit traders, they are literally all fences. not all khajiit, just the ones that are travelling merchants. the fact that the empire just accept the altmer's fascist rule is not an argument in their favor, but the opposite - the altmer literally want to unmake reality. every single one of them believes in the necessity of this, it is their religion and the elder scrolls series is honestly written based on some weird racial/ethnic lines
the fact that the empire just accept the altmer's fascist rule is not an argument in their favor
They had two choices, accept a ceasefire with some concessions so that they can build strength for the next war (this is literally just a waiting game the Imperials will win--humans breed faster than elves) or die. The Stormcloaks are being ridiculous babies and the thing they're maddest about, the enforcement of the ban on Talos worship, is something they themselves brought about. It wasn't being enforced until they started protesting about it and brought undue attention to the matter. They're just fucking idiot fascists, they don't understand the situation they're in at all and everything they do makes everything worse.
but the opposite - the altmer literally want to unmake reality.
This is a fringe conspiracy theory even among lore nerds. No one in-universe believes this to be the case and even from our bird's eye view of the situation there is very little evidence of this. But even assuming you're right, the Stormcloaks are making their success in this endeavor significantly more likely.
Also I'd like to point out that saying "the altmer" want to do this is really cringe and racist. Altmer are a race, made up of individuals. They aren't a hivemind and don't have a shared set of beliefs lol It would be like saying "The asians" want to do xyz when you're talking about Vietnam or India or something.
literally, more dark elf housing with better construction than the nords have, in their own fucking city in the middle of a fucking civil war! What other nordic cities can say the same? which other nordic city accepted a third of their population to be foreign refugees? which other nords offered a third of their city to elf refugees? None of them!
The text, explicitly: "These people are restricted to a ghetto and when they dare to venture out they are openly mistreated by the extremely racist local population. Look, here's an example literally right in front of your face the moment you enter the city. Look at it. This is an oppressed population."
You, somehow: "Wow, the dark elves really got it good here!"
the example 'right in your face' literally turns out to be an imperial spy lmao, literally 2 people harassing a spy does not = a racist movement. cite another specific example and you may have a point.
Do you have any more evidence that the Stormcloaks are racist? this is a truestl quality post, 10/10i have proven to my own satisfaction that the stormcloaks are significantly less racist than any other nord city in skyrim, and i have already shown that the single instance of harassment is literally against a literal imperial spy. if you don't understand how that proves me correct about the stormcloaks being the least racist faction of the civil war beside maybe the reachmen (who kill all foreigners indiscriminately but have an excuse in being the current target of indiscriminate genocide themselves) then theres no point in further engagement
The game explicitly states that they live in a ghetto and shows you many examples of them experiencing racist persecution. There's several quests and lines of dialogue that touches on this within the game, not to mention the other clear signs of racist bs we see the Nord's exhibiting (the reachmen and the khajit being treated as they are).
It's very clear that this is what they intended to convey.The fact that the game engine is limited to showing Extreme small cities and that the resources they had available at the time made it so they just copy-pasted houses for the dunmer rather than making a bespoke level design isn't evidence of the dunmer "actually being treated better" but instead just an example of how limitations of technology and production will at times interfere with the story one is trying to tell.
literally every faction in skyrim is racist against the khajiits, literally every khajiit merchant in the game is a fence and will buy stolen goods no questions asked. that is a kind of racism built into the game world by the writers, but the stormcloaks are not unique in that regard. every nord in skyrim basically hates elves anyway, most of them don't give them 1/3rd of their town
The Empire left Hammerfell out to dry, and the Stormcloaks want to ally with them to keep fighting the nazi elves. Like all the factions are vile monarchist shits, but a national liberation movement that's explicitly fighting for solidarity with other nations in their struggle against omnicidal elven fascist imperialism seems like the lesser evil compared to an imperial machine that is itself ruled by compradors collaborating with the omnicidal elves.
Protracted Peoples War against the Thalmor :cowabunga it is: (I could have swore we had the TMNT face as an emote)
Nah the nords are like the nazi hungarians in the 50's trying to start an ethnostate. The imperials are like the soviets rolling
in to quash the uprising. The imperials are also in a cold war conflict with a much greater enemy (The elven ethnostate)Also this is all a bit of course. All the countries are feudal at the most. I prefer the empire because they're the only "not-ethnostate" group in the conflict. I also think the Stormcloaks are shown to be hypocritical throughout the game by way of Markath having it's own ethnic minority wanting independence from Skyrim, but the nords - despite being these rugged freedom wanters, seeking to throw off the imperial yoke - instead choose to suppress this group.
It should very much be noted that the imperials, despite the facade of cosmopolitan diversity, do engage in a lotta the same colonialist policies both in of assimilation (they push the cult of the nine on basically everyone and demand they join the imperial economy), Cyrod-centrism and the like.
We should of course all be supporting the goblins and rieklings in their struggle against the genocidal elves, lizards, cats and hairless monkeys
Critical support to the empire in its struggle to break the hegemony of the aldmeri alliance. May the empire crumble immediately after.
The Imperials are not nearly cool enough to be the Soviets, they're a decadent Monarchy with an all-powerful aristocratic class.
Imperials are more bourgeois-ified than aristocrats afaik.
Late Septim empire was more 1500s/1600s but with magic than ancient roman (The ancient romans are the Remans).
This is most evident in Morrowind, but even in Oblivion there's stuff like printing presses, near daily papers, etc. This is also clear in Skyrim when one approaches locations associated with trade (e.g. Windhelm or Solitude) and meets bourgeois-aristocrats such as Vittoria Vicci owner of the East Empire Company.
Riften has a capitalist more powerful than the Jarl, wealth beginning to supplant hereditary title would fit that time frame comparison.
I mean yeah, thet're literally called The Imperials. I think it's pretty obvious we're doing a bit. The nords aren't some guerilla revolutionairies either, they're just another set of nobles wanting to oppress peasants while keeping a larger slice of a smaller cake.
Because the evil path is the one they write after writing the story and it's never dedicated enough resources and it honestly kinda sucks most of the time
I agree. The american storyline in Black ops: Cold war was incredibly boring.
Plus evil guys tend to not let you cooperate with them very much. They might begrudgingly be neutral to you but they don’t follow you from area to area with game long plot lines like the deep gnomes, tieflings, Halsin, etc. They are more like NPCs that just stand in the lair.
Minthara basically doesn’t have a plot line or story except “I’m a hot drow you can have sex with”. She should have some type of vengeance she’s after that is more compelling and goes through the game.
Evil is definitely underwritten, there’s no social evil route. You can go full mass murderer killing everything in sight, and you can act unpredictably and in a cruel way. But you cannot really be a villain in a way that intersects with the story except for the handful of major plot decisions where you can act wildly out of character and do something majorly dastardly for the whole world.
Wish there was more opportunities to be a thriving piece of shit sellout, a sniveling cowardly henchman, a manipulative mastermind amassing a huge army and fortune, etc. Why can’t I form a gang and take over a huge chunk of Baldur’s Gate territory to sell drugs, etc
You might like the Pathfinder CRPGs then. The chaotic evil choices are generally just murder, but it does lawful and neutral evil options really well.
It also has solid evil companions, with interesting motivations and stories.
Sonic Adventure 2: Battle (but it's not a morality choice)
I got a game recently where you play the begrudging assistant of the bad guys. It's one of the few games where going with the outright evil choices rewards you heavily. I can't bring myself to do it.
If you're not opposed to an adult game with some problematic elements, Seed of Chaos. I honestly got it for the obvious reasons, before realizing I like the story and gameplay loop more than the stuff I bought it for.
Seeds of Chaos is a dark fantasy eroge made in Ren’py, inspired by the worldbuilding of Berserk, Dark Souls, The Witcher and other epic fantasy series, as well as the adult games Corruption of Champions, Legend of Queen Opala, and Slavemaker.
Slavemaker
Line up gamers, you're going to the gulag
Tyrrany was a sleeper hit a while back with that same theme and no hentai a while ago. Also might be of interest
Every DND game I end up just trying to do comunism. Evil king needs to be replaced with a good king? Nah, hand out rings of free food/water to the peasants until the monarchy collapses.
creating a union of mages to pump out Power Word Kill scrolls and distributing them to the masses
Non PC humans have like 8hp tops. A wand of any centrip is enough to do then in. Gotta save money to run a revolution
Only the random peasants. Basic soldiers, knights, bandits, etc can all tank a few cantrips.
When I played Goldeneye 007 as a kid, I would massacre all the civillians and scientists, reset the map, then do it again.
I enjoy a good GTA all weapons killing spree and not saving after to this day.
I agree with the last commentor in this old tumblr screen. I don't enjoy being cruel to others, even just video game characters. I made myself once for Dragon Empire and just felt bad since I'm neither a sadist nor a massochist.
Yes, they are not real and I'm not judging those that do evil runs. My brain isn't wired that way, however, and is prone to feeling empathy, even towards the non-sentient, scripted bundles of pixels and data.
It turns out when the options are Comically Evil and Generally Decent, most people will choose the latter. The Mass Effect devs reported that 90% of people chose the "good" route in that game.
Yeah I think the choice stats trended towards the more moral options (when one is available) in the Telltale Walking Dead games as well.
The problem is they BARELY actually let you do self-interested evil. It's all just pointless cruelty, often with nothing but downsides. Doing bad shit should push you towards doing more bad shit because people stop trusting you
Yeah I noticed the path of least resistance option was to be heroic and good for the best rewards and friends. The actual min-maxed optimum route for XP and items is full clear mass slaughter of all that exists. There’s not an easy self-interested lawful evil route
BG3 just needed more time to cook unfortunately. The endings all suck, not because they are bad endings it's because they don't exist. It just ends suddenly. There's a massive hole of missing content right at the end and it's not hard to write, everyone knows what they want to happen with their party and maybe a bittersweet twist. Act 3 just really starts to break down part way through it, despite it being quite beautiful of an area. You can tell content was hacked out of it, there's weird missing chunks and it doesn't play like Acts 1 or 2 at all
Larian has a history of doing that, so I don't trust them to finish the game even if they were given more time. They probably would've made Act 1 and 2 even bigger instead.
Definitive Edition fixed all the holes in DoS2 so I think Larian will mostly patch it up eventually, maybe in a year after release.
Even with a weak act 3 the overall game rocks and just acts 1 + 2 are easily worth the sticker price
Classic Larian. Don't worry, the special edition or whatever it is called will fix that. The same thing happened with DOS2.
That's why I never finish my genocidal empire Stellaris playthroughs, it just feels bad, I'd rather implement full galactic communism.
I love abducting billions of people with that one ability though. You don’t even have to make them slaves, you can just give them full citizenship afterwards. You will join my space communist society whether you like it or not. Very T’au like.
But but but the psychic damage!
