Is this game supposed to be satire?

[Malidictus]

So, after nearly completing Ghost Recon: Wildlands, I'm starting to get progressively more angry at the game's writing. I don't know if this is a Tom Clancy thing, an UbiSoft thing or what, but the game is full of American jingoism so rampant as to be borderline offensive. I say "borderline" because the game seems to be well aware of this. The heroes (i.e. "you" and your supporting characters) are depicted as violent amoral meatheads who respond with "I love my job" at the tail end of a massive firefight where they just gunned down 50 Bolivians, respond with "Ho-rah!" when given orders and default to "That's above my pay grade." whenever the ruin lives and devastated infrastructure they leave in their wake is called into question. The villains, by contrast, are depicted much more even-handedly. Yes, they're cold-hearted murderers involved in some heinous acts (human trafficking, genocide, shocking levels of violence), but they're also shown to operate on a certain code of honour, typically defending their families and almost always working to build their own nation. They're definitely not good guys, but their leaders seem aware of the horrors they're committing, not really claiming to be good people.

I get the impression the writers were aware they're making horrible xenophobic crap, so they went all-out with it ala the Starship Troopers movie. It would just help if my own character weren't such a massive ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, if you'll pardon my language. So here I am conducting casual racketeering. A chemical company is involved with the Santa Blanca cartel, supplying them with chemicals for cocaine production. I show up, wearing my American boxer shorts on the outside and demand they stop. The owner explains that not only is the Cartel the only reason he's in business, but they're also going to kill him if he stops. My character's response is along the lines of "Nice oil pumps you have there. Shame if something were to happen to them." So I go around blowing up oil pumps, tanking a company and leaving hundreds if not thousands of people out of a job. The owner obviously relents. "Just know - when they come to kill me, my life will be on your head." My character's response? "I can live with that." MURICA, @#$%! YEAH!

And before you think I'm specifically bashing on the US, the game itself does it. After having killed literally thousands of people, murdered my way through cartel and police alike and singlehandedly reduced Bolivia's industry into a smouldering ruin, I end up saving the family of one of the Cartel lieutenants. The boss had them kidnapped to keep him in line. His son mouths off to my CIA handler, about how Americans are ruining Bolivia and only bring death and destruction, to which she replies "I'm sick of this anti-American ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥t!" That's a direct quote. Lady, YOU are the reason for those sentiments. The kid was absolutely right. But of course my character suffers from chronic rectal-cranial inversion, so she's also complaining. "Ungrateful punk! Doesn't he realise we just saved his life?" Well excuse me, princess! After YOU put his life in danger and YOU ruined his father and YOU carved a bloody path of destruction through his homeland with all the self-awareness of a child, I think the kid doesn't exactly have a lot to thank you for.

I just... Is this satire? Because I shudder to think who could actually take the presentation in this game at face value. I played through the entirety of Saints Row 3 and 4, and I never did anything even remotely as heinous as I've done in Wildlands, and that's with me randomly running over pedestrians for giggles. And yet, it seems deliberate. The game constantly - CONSTANTLY - brings the Americans' amoral behaviour and outright war crimes into focus and presents them with villains who actually make legitimate points and have plenty of redeeming traits of their own, for being genocidal human-trafficking scum. Moreover, the worst of the atrocities are back-loaded onto high-difficulty zones that the player will naturally visit towards the end of the game. As such, the player starts out seemingly fighting for truth, justice and the American way, opposing irredeemable monsters and stopping horrible crimes. As the game progresses, however, the player's actions grow worse and worse while the villains' plight grows more and more sympathetic. Which, frankly, is a little unfair to dump onto the player in a game with literally no moral choices anywhere in it. Maybe it wouldn't feel so unfair if my character offered some kind of contrast against the establishment, but nope! The player character is a caricature of everything "the rest of the world" hates about America, and seemingly deliberately so.

I don't know what to make of this game...

*edit*
For those joining late, I do actually know what to make of the game, having had a pretty significant discussion in this very thread. To try and make a long story short, I'm not sure the game is intentional satire, but it does offer a complex story, giving plenty of depth to all of its characters and striking a decidedly "grey morality" stance. It was refreshing to see a modern military story with some amount of depth and thought put into it - it made me think, at the very least, and that's more than I can say for most of its peers.

[AUT-Cypher]

Since 2003 the US military sponsors games like ARMA3 (their soldiers train on this engine!!!), CoD, BF, Ghost Recon, Sniper etc etc...

So why are you surprised?

btw: i dont know from where u are but USA is hated since 16 years all over the world... they conquered a country for no reason a few years ago, so maybe the devs (they come from EU) dont like them too?

btw2: it's nothing about the americans in general just about your politicians! ;-)

[Scrapper]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Malidictus:

So here I am conducting casual racketeering. A chemical company is involved with the Santa Blanca cartel, supplying them with chemicals for cocaine production. I show up, wearing my American boxer shorts on the outside and demand they stop. The owner explains that not only is the Cartel the only reason he's in business, but they're also going to kill him if he stops. My character's response is along the lines of "Nice oil pumps you have there. Shame if something were to happen to them." So I go around blowing up oil pumps, tanking a company and leaving hundreds if not thousands of people out of a job. The owner obviously relents. "Just know - when they come to kill me, my life will be on your head." My character's response? "I can live with that." MURICA, @#$%! YEAH!

Had the exact same reaction to that sequence as you, and to be honest as a former military man I was more than a little offended by it. I don't expect your team should be suffering PTSD in the game but they should at least show some humanity, they don't and like you said it's either bad writing or they've been intentionally charicatured. I feel the same about the character of Bowman. Sure she's a CIA spook but I think she enjoys her job a bit too much at times.

[GRGLMYMRBLS]

The story explains it as if it were a war against the narco-state, not exactly Bolivia. War is more dispicable than you can imagine, so personally I don't mind the arcade version of it and actually like that it's made someone start talking about how things should be done in reality. I don't think anyone would be "ok" with being put in that position, it's a very dirty job. The aim I think was to immitate the cold humor that combat invites, but without those harrowing moments in such an watered-down scenario it doesn't really land well at all. I agree that it comes off as downright caustic and more than a little unbecoming of the sense of honor and magananomy that the US does strive to found in it's military personnel, but I think that's more because we're not seeing the bigger picture. We're seeing a kid's picture book with a few bad words in it, when the broader reality of why those bad things are in there is completely neglected. In war, being a perfect person is not a luxury that anyone can afford.

[LazyAmerican]

Even though I haven't beaten the game yet....what I have seen pretty much confirms everything the OP has said. It's almost oddly enjoyable the back and forth between orders, morality, and the grey zone of it all. The game practically screams in your face not to trust your "handler" right from the get go to be honest with the whole starting a war with the cartel because a friend died.

[↑↑↓↓←→←→BASelect]

Well since Mr. Clancy has passed away the storys will never be as good.

[LazyAmerican]

As if Clancy had any input at all on the video games to begin with lol.

[↑↑↓↓←→←→BASelect]

Thomas Leo "Tom" Clancy Jr. (April 12, 1947 – October 1, 2013) was an American novelist and video game designer best known for his technically detailed espionage and military-science story lines set during and after the Cold War. Seventeen of his novels were bestsellers, and more than 100 million copies of his books are in print.
Don't believe me look at the link or google it your self.

Tom Clancy[en.wikipedia.org]

[💞 lilmama 💞]

Opprinnelig skrevet av LazyAmerican:

As if Clancy had any input at all on the video games to begin with lol.

He is the one that designed the game series. Go look the info up unless you don't know how to google.

[LazyAmerican]

He didn't have any hands on participation with any of the games' development. Really at most....his name was licensed out. He was a writer, not a video game developer or movie producer.

[💞 lilmama 💞]

Opprinnelig skrevet av LazyAmerican:

He didn't have any hands on participation with any of the games' development. Really at most....his name was licensed out. He was a writer, not a video game developer or movie producer.

He designed the freaking game so therefore he had a hand in it.

[GRGLMYMRBLS]

He was a glorified military consultant to Ubisoft and lincensed his name to this and the SC series, that's all. He never wrote a plot, not a single word, for any one of the Tom Clancy games. He did not make a single decision in regard to the games either, and after the first one Ubi bought the rights to use his name as a marketing ploy only. He wrote books, good ones, not video game plots.

[Malidictus]

Hah! I was really worried this would turn out really badly, but major props to you fine folks for fostering real discussion. Thank you kindly :)

I think my primary issue here isn't so much the grey-and-grey morality. That sort of comes with the territory. I don't actually mind Karen Bowman being evil scum - it fits her character pretty well. I think what irritates me personally is the conduct of my own main character, the whole "I can live with getting you killed." and "I just shot 50 people. MAN I love my job!" I didn't create a tattoed-up gruff woman chewing on a cigar expecting a saint of virtue, but it would have have helped if she were at least a little less obviously callous. Frankly, I think a silent protagonist might have been the better option here.

I get that the game's attempting to be satire. The villains do terrible acts trying to be good people, we do even worse acts while trying to be good people, everyone's evil. I get that. But the game has a few moments of brilliance where the US soldiers are confronted with the destructive nature of their actions, but brush them off. Driving El Yayo's grandson to suicide and then remarking "No, he made a decision somewhere along the way!" is good writing. It shows that our characters understand the horror of their situation, but are rationalising, deflecting and rejecting it. If the narrative had stuck with that interpretation and avoided moments like "Yeah, I'm perfectly fine getting an innocent man killed to mildly inconvenience the cartel. Ho-rah!" then I feel it would have actually had more weight behind it.

Take, for instance, the murder of Karl Bookhart. Unlike all the other targets the team is sent to kill, this one upsets them, but not for issues of morality or anything like that. No, it's because "it's one of theirs" - an army ranger. Here, the Ghosts are confronted with the reality of the situation - that they aren't the good guys but are instead little better than Buchons for the US government, same as El Sueno's own. They brush it off, however. Bookhart gave up his US citizenship (something that didn't seem to help Boston Reed anyway) and his membership to the Rangers when he started training Cartel soldiers. It's not OK to kill a fellow ranger, but it's OK to kill THIS specific one, so their conscience is at least superficially clear.

I guess that's my overriding point here - the difference between soothing a guilty conscience via jingoist propaganda nad... Seemingly not having a conscience in the first place. That's what makes me feel this is satire aimed squarely at the US more so than a game of grey morality. The cartel Buchons have a conscience, it's just they've come up with a narrative which lets them be horrible murderers and still keep their conscience clean, at least in their own minds. My character seems to skip this step entirely and just doesn't bother having a consciousness in the first place, because nothing ever fazes her. Racketeering, murder, torture... Hell, even when drugs come up, her argument isn't "Don't, that's wrong and what we're fighting against!" so much as "Don't, you'll get caught when we come back."

I'm fine with Karen Bowman being an irredeemably evil, amoral woman with no consciousness. It just would have been nice if my own character weren't just a copy of Karen Bowman with a gun. I'm OK with my character doing horrible things, but it would have been nice to see her question those actions and offer justifications, rather than what amounts to "♥♥♥♥ you, got mine!" It would still have been satire, just a slightly less over-the-top kind. Conflicts like the one presented here aren't simple and don't have simple answers. If anything, I'd have criticised the game a lot more if it were painted as black-and-white, "American superheroes come to fix your country full of brown people" sort of story as that would have been tremendously patronising. I commend the game for going for a more even-handed tone, it's just I could do with my character not beaing quite so much of a slogan-spouting meathead.

I'm not playing as Duke Nukem! :)

[Ravagexe]

-Spoiler-

I also especially liked the fact that self-proclaimed badass CIA agent Bowman the ungrateful w*ore, threatening everyone from ghosts to Yayo for no reason at all. And in the end she ends up the one getting ra**ped in prisons.

[Malidictus]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Ravagex:

-Spoiler-

I also especially liked the fact that self-proclaimed badass CIA agent Bowman the ungrateful w*ore, threatening everyone from ghosts to Yayo for no reason at all. And in the end she ends up the one getting ra**ped in prisons.

Oh? Rape aside, learning that Bowman eventually pays for her actions actually does motivate me to see this game through to the end. She's as bad as El Sueno, if not worse, and was instrumental to bringing Bolivia to its knees. Seeing her eat her just deserts would be pretty satisfying. But that also makes me even angrier at my own character for being such an insufferable "♥♥♥♥ you, got mine" meathead. A more level-headed representation of the player character, one questioning the effects of their actions both good and bad, would have made that kind of ending feel more satisfying. Some amount of self-awareness would have helped.

I have a couple story-less zones left to finish (I presume those left open for DLC), but I look forward to that ending.

[Shrapnel]

wtf, someone is trying for book of year


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