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.

[DELTA]

Origineel geplaatst door WinterGale:

Origineel geplaatst door DELTA FORCE:

America
America

America, ♥♥♥♥ Yeah!
Comin' again to save the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥' day, Yeah

America, ♥♥♥♥ Yeah!
Freedom is the only way, Yeah

Terrorists, your game is through
'cause now you have ta answer to

America, ♥♥♥♥ yeah!
So lick my butt and suck on my balls

America, ♥♥♥♥ Yeah!
Whatcha' gonna do when we come for you now

It's the dream that we all share
It's the hope for tomorrow
(♥♥♥♥ Yeah!)

No offense meant, but are you anti-America?

no, im just quoting the song from Team America World Police because it sums up this game quite well

That said i can change it to an anti america one if you like

[dfunk2]

Haven't read every post, but you people realize this game was written and developed in France?

[WinterGale]

Origineel geplaatst door DELTA FORCE:

Origineel geplaatst door WinterGale:

No offense meant, but are you anti-America?

no, im just quoting the song from Team America World Police because it sums up this game quite well

That said i can change it to an anti america one if you like

But you're not anti-America? Or are you?

[DELTA]

Origineel geplaatst door WinterGale:

Origineel geplaatst door DELTA FORCE:

no, im just quoting the song from Team America World Police because it sums up this game quite well

That said i can change it to an anti america one if you like

But you're not anti-America? Or are you?

i wish to plead the fifth

[Malidictus]

Origineel geplaatst door LX-357:

What exactly makes you say the Cartel are a sympathetic organization? El Seuno just preaches non-stop in an attempt to sound like a big picture deep philosopher but he's just a coke king and a thug. That entire opening cinematic made me cringe uncontrollably at a man who puts far too much weight on his monologue and not enough on his actions. Also don't give me this "Sicarios don't have a choice" crap. There's always a choice, and sometimes that choice is dying for the Cartel or dying for Pac Katari and his rebels, but that's still a choice and the Sicarios made the damned wrong one.

Back-to-front: What you present as a choice really isn't. It's as much a choice as "your money or your life." Technically it counts as one, but in practice it really isn't. That's not to say I'm defending the actions of drug-dealing murderers, but the game itself brings this up on several occasions. A lot of effort is put into giving the varous bosses some humanising features and at least some amount of justification. They're not cartoon villains who pass the time kicking puppies and shooting up airports full of civilians like your average Call of Duty antagonist. The game's own narrative makes arguments in their defence over and over again. Not good arguments, mind you, but still an acknowledgement that an argument COULD be made.

Yes, Sueno is very cringeworthy and his true character as a hypocrite is revealed at the end. The man who spoke so much about honour and sin and doing the right thing, the man who prided himself at never lying? Yeah, he cuts a deal and becomes a rat. So much for all the high talk. But that's sort of the point - these aren't the one-dimensional characters I was expecting. There's a life's story behind them, and not all of it reads like a villain's backstory. Indeed, some of these people - like La Gringa (I forget her real name) feel like they got set up and forced into an unwilling life of crime.

Again, I'm not trying to argue humanitarian philosophy here. I'm just pointing out that the game does, and it's an interesting subject to explore. I actually really like El Sueno as a villain and an antagonist, because he's someone I'm interested to know more about. To me, a good villain is one you can have a civilised conversation with and at least somewhat see his point, even if you still want to take him down. A villain whose character begins and ends with "Is evil. Must die." Is boring and badly written. After so many modern military meathead shooters facing me against ♥♥♥♥ Dastardy, it's refreshing to play a game with a multi-dimensional villain. Yes, Sueno's ultimately a hypocrite and a monster, but he has more facets to his personality than that.

Origineel geplaatst door LX-357:

Also on what grounds do you say that the Ghosts are there to help Bolivia? They got called in to avenge a dead DEA agent. They know they aren't white knights there to save the people and liberate the country - because sending 4 men and a CIA operative to liberate an entire narco state would be insanity of an astronomical scale. They're being utilized as a glorified hit squad and everyone involved seems to know it.

Well, it took me a while to realise that, is all. Again, I thought I was in for a modern military meathead shooter, so I didn't exactly pay a lot of attention to the game's writing until quite a bit later in when the persistently self-satirising narrative became very difficult to ignore. While I fully admit that all of the Cartel's justifications for why they had to murder hundreds of people and dissolve their bodies in lie, or why they had to traffic children but "we feel really bad about it" are full of crap. What's notable, though, is that the Ghosts' counter-arguments are equally full of crap. El Sueno invites them to a meeting, they respond with "We're just here to kill you, we had no intention of talking." That's not really a counter-argument, that's just being a thug.

There are ways to justify their actions up to a point. The thing is that the justifications they come up with are exceptionally hollow, patronising and selfish. That's where I think the game's story is quite brilliant - it could have made the Americans into flawless saints bringing "justice" and "freedom" to Bolivia, but it didn't. Time and again, it depicts them as cutthroats, thugs and literally just as bad as the Cartel. When forced to justify their actions, the Ghosts offer excuses which, upon examination, are no better than those of the Cartel's Buchons for why they did what they did. Why did you murder Ramon Feliz? He turned against us. Why did YOU murder Karl Bookhardt? Well... Because he turned against us.

---

You're right, I was wearing protagonist glasses for a long time in this game, up until the narrative shamed me for doing it enough times to make me take a much more critical eye to the proceedings. I consider the story to be a pretty good exercise in subversion. You cast the player as a US soldier fighting "crime and the forces of evil" and market the game to a Western audience, thus putting the player in massive cognitive bias towards one side. You then spend the rest of the game systematically dismantling the basis of that bias until the player has to stop and ask "Am I really the good guy here?" No, player, you really aren't. There are no good guys here. Not the Ghosts, not the Rebels, not the Cartel, not the Government. You aren't special. You're just one more group of murderers with your own agenda, cooperating with people whose agendas align with yours and murdering people whose agendas contradict yours. And I... Kind of like it.

You guys keep saying this is a B-grade plot, but I don't agree. There's too much subtlety and unusual storytelling to chalk the story up to being just ♥♥♥♥. Maybe it's not exactly satire, but it has enough depth to talk about, at least, which I can't say about any modern military meathead shooter I've played recently.

[pointemorte.]

Origineel geplaatst door WinterGale:

Origineel geplaatst door DELTA FORCE:

no, im just quoting the song from Team America World Police because it sums up this game quite well

That said i can change it to an anti america one if you like

But you're not anti-America? Or are you?

Hey boii,
I am an anit-american and a part of the Baader-Meinhof-Bande.
Whatcha gonna do about it?


♥♥♥ murica.

[WinterGale]

@Malidictus I agree with your latest post. The beauty of Wildland's narrative is in its subtlety, that is, if you decide to pay attention to the plot (which admittedly is very easy to get lost behind all the sneaking and shooting).

How the game plays with issues on moral high ground is evident in the player's transformation (at least for me). I started the game by making sure that I kill zero civilians. I even refused to take their cars at gunpoint and would always make sure to stow my weapons away when I'm in a crowd of civvies (I even helped clean up traffic after a fightfight resulted in a highway jammed with charred vehicles).

But as the game progressed, I found myself not caring anymore. I would deliberately shoot civilian car so I can create a roadblock against cartel or Unidad convoys. I no longer cared if I shot innocent bystanders or even rebels. I stopped caring. And the same can be said for the Ghosts.

Again, the devil is in the details. You just have to pay attention.

(BTW, I started despising Bowman during the La Gringa mission when she threatened to have La Gringa gangraped in prison when we all know it was Bowman's fault in the first place why Gringa got stuck in Bolivia).

@DELTA FORCE Fair enough. ;)

[Malidictus]

I like that sort of progression of attitude, as well, and I think that too is deliberate. Wildlands is very quick to chastise your killing civilians verbally and your character does a token gesture of apologising to people for stealig their cars, but there's very little actual gameplay penalty for doing so. Yes, killing three civilians in rapid succession will fail your current mission, but you can kill hundreds of them if you just space out the murders. I'm sure most people start out trying to be careful and mindful of civilians, but it isn't too long before you realise... That's all talk. There are no actual consequences for running over pedestrians or ramming civilian cars off cliffs or even just gunning down heat signatures indiscriminitely as long as you don't do TOO much of it. That's the spoken idea, but without systems in place to enforce it, even otherwise good-natured people will eventually stop caring very much.

As to Bowman - yes, I hate her guts. She's part of why I found the game to be satirical. For being your "mission command," she's pure evil on a level I'd argue is even worse than the cartel. Sueno aside, at least some of the Cartel bosses can be said to be corrupted idealists. Karen Bowman is an absolute cynic who takes pleasure in the misfortues on others and will make sure to put anyone who stands in her way through hell. The constant allusions to prison rape, the repeated kidnappings, extortions and racketeering, the insidious manipulation - she actively made me sick by the end. And yes, her treatment of La Gringa is probably the most egregious. Yeah, the woman may not be a saint, but her situation isn't entirely her fault, yet all Bowman wants is to see her suffer for standing in the way. Karen Bowman is also a hypocrite, in one instance claiming that the consequences of her actions in Bolivia are "above her pay grade" yet in another instance holding Marcus Jansen responsible for his own.

As depicted in the game, Karen Bowman is just as much of a repugnant, hypocritical villain as El Sueno. Those two deserve each other, I say.

[Commancho]

Haha what a pathetic anti-american propaganda thread :D

So Ghosts are ruining Bolivia because they are taking down a drug cartel which is involved in drugs production & smuggling, human traffic, prostitution, corruption, genocide on the mass scale with trucks transporting a dead bodies of innocent for "utilisation" everyday, rapes, murders? Cartel which is taking over a country and is going to make it a private propertie?

What's next? Their own chemical and nuclear weapons? Death camps? Invasion on the other countries? Brainwashed by socialists or religions people from Europe and other regions should grow a pair of balls and stop being so f**** hypocrites. Problems will not solve themselfs when you gonna hide your head in the sand. Just because some of these problems don't concern you YET it doesn't mean that they won't reach you tommorow and you gonna need thousends of more soldiers and rescources to solve them because evil doesn't know a word "diplomacy".

[george47mathew]

Origineel geplaatst door Malidictus:

Origineel geplaatst door 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.

The CIA spook Bowman enjoys her power and her job gives that feeling of power, makes her feel like all knowing god...

As they say...power corrupts. When you are in too much power it corrupts. She is human and as such has flaws.

El Sueno was at the very least honest about himself.


I dont know why games these days got toxic characters....

Yeah a level head character would have been good...pondering his or her actions and not following the spook like a puppet.

[Democracy Officer 0311]

It's supposed to be a game. If it's getting to you to the point you have to complain about it in anger, i assure you the game is not your only problem.

[Malidictus]

Origineel geplaatst door george47mathew:

The CIA spook Bowman enjoys her power and her job gives that feeling of power, makes her feel like all knowing god... As they say...power corrupts. When you are in too much power it corrupts. She is human and as such has flaws.

I don't know if it even goes that far. The way she talks, she comes across like a bitter, angry woman working out personal issues by enacting dominant authority onto other people with power to back her up. The moment things start not going her way - specifically when Sueno cuts a deal - her too-cool-for-school facade breaks immediately into a tyrade of obscenities. In one of the endings, she even turns into an unrepentent murderer, though that's considered the "bad" ending in the game's structure. For what she is, though, Bowman is well-written.

Origineel geplaatst door george47mathew:

El Sueno was at the very least honest about himself.

That's the cool bit about his writing, along with the writing for some of his lieutenants. I mentioned this before, but I can't remember the last modern military shooter with a compelling antagonist. The "bad guy" is always painted as WW1 propaganda reel caricature with very little depth beyond being evil because "he a tururist!" The guy is still a sleezy, violent hypocrite, but at least he's a villain you can have a reasonable conversation with. And I don't just a preach monologue - an actual back-and-forth dialogue on a number of occasions. A game that's this soul-crushingly long and drawn-out really benefits from a compelling badguy whom I want to learn more about. It doesn't make me any less willing to go after him, but it helps flesh out the fictional world and the fictional characters in it in ways that most other games don't bother with.

Put it this way - I remember El Sueno's name and the names of a lot of his subordinates off the top of my head. I don't remember any of the names of any of the characters - protagonist or antagonist - from any of the Call of Duty games. I do remember a Ramirez and a Soap just because they feature in the Shooter Guy song, but that's about it.

Origineel geplaatst door kordulus:

It's supposed to be a game. If it's getting to you to the point you have to complain about it in anger, i assure you the game is not your only problem.

On the contrary - a game which can get me to care about it and discuss it is the sign of a well-made, well-written game.

[Samad Al-Hyade]

Origineel geplaatst door LuftKorsar:

Origineel geplaatst door WinterGale:

But you're not anti-America? Or are you?

Hey boii,
I am an anit-american and a part of the Baader-Meinhof-Bande.
Whatcha gonna do about it?


♥♥♥ murica.

probably laugh at you for a while.

[george47mathew]

Origineel geplaatst door Malidictus:

Origineel geplaatst door george47mathew:

The CIA spook Bowman enjoys her power and her job gives that feeling of power, makes her feel like all knowing god... As they say...power corrupts. When you are in too much power it corrupts. She is human and as such has flaws.

I don't know if it even goes that far. The way she talks, she comes across like a bitter, angry woman working out personal issues by enacting dominant authority onto other people with power to back her up. The moment things start not going her way - specifically when Sueno cuts a deal - her too-cool-for-school facade breaks immediately into a tyrade of obscenities. In one of the endings, she even turns into an unrepentent murderer, though that's considered the "bad" ending in the game's structure. For what she is, though, Bowman is well-written.

Origineel geplaatst door george47mathew:

El Sueno was at the very least honest about himself.

That's the cool bit about his writing, along with the writing for some of his lieutenants. I mentioned this before, but I can't remember the last modern military shooter with a compelling antagonist. The "bad guy" is always painted as WW1 propaganda reel caricature with very little depth beyond being evil because "he a tururist!" The guy is still a sleezy, violent hypocrite, but at least he's a villain you can have a reasonable conversation with. And I don't just a preach monologue - an actual back-and-forth dialogue on a number of occasions. A game that's this soul-crushingly long and drawn-out really benefits from a compelling badguy whom I want to learn more about. It doesn't make me any less willing to go after him, but it helps flesh out the fictional world and the fictional characters in it in ways that most other games don't bother with.

Put it this way - I remember El Sueno's name and the names of a lot of his subordinates off the top of my head. I don't remember any of the names of any of the characters - protagonist or antagonist - from any of the Call of Duty games. I do remember a Ramirez and a Soap just because they feature in the Shooter Guy song, but that's about it.

Origineel geplaatst door kordulus:

It's supposed to be a game. If it's getting to you to the point you have to complain about it in anger, i assure you the game is not your only problem.

On the contrary - a game which can get me to care about it and discuss it is the sign of a well-made, well-written game.

There is an alternate ending??!

If there is; are there some criterias I need to fullfill? So far I have completed through all bosses and heard Ricky's confession....So do I just go straight for the bigboss or do I have to collect some kingslayer files to get alternate choice endings?


Personally I feel that the protogonist characters here are too bleak and self righteous....they see things in black and white only. They are also just pawns for Bowman.

Bowman seems to just enjoy power and she likes the feeling of manipulating others.

After Big boss is gone...some one will obviously have to control that cocaine. They wont like it its governed by Americans and in their control.

[george47mathew]

Origineel geplaatst door H1N1 DALLAS:

Most of people think propaganda works only during war, but since the end of world war 2, our world is filled with it. Hollywood and gaming industry are the proof of it!

America number 1, muslims = terrorists, drug is bad,.......

Funny thing is that the CIA is the biggest drug dealer since a long time know. Opium in vietnam and afghanistan, cocaine in south america... Just research it!

True that....media is more powerful.