I would argue it’s a bit more insidious than that. Have ever noticed that whenever some piece of fiction wants to hammer home the notion of “this here be evil”, they go for a mixture of Soviet/communist and Nazi style? Aforementioned half-life has Soviet style apartment buildings, apparently as an indication of “poor quality of life” the people have. It all serves to implant the idea of “communism = evil dictatorship, and also same as Nazis”, to the point of reflex, as knee jerk as you say. On the contrary, Nazi shit gets treated with much kinder gloves.
In half life 2 the Soviet style buildings were built before the alien invasion and is contradicted by the giant alien tech in the middle, city 17 tells a story of a place where people used to live but got collapsed and destroyed by a foreign invasion and the betrayel of one of their kind, I don’t really think it’s a communism = bad game story but if you have an entire review you can do of the lore do it, from my memory I guess city 17 is eastern bloc countries, combine is the introfuction of capitalism by the west and nato and that one guy in white hair and a green suit is Gorbachev. Idk I’d like to hear someone’s analysis of the game’s lore.
It’s not really an analysis of lore as such, but rather the conscious usage of Eastern European style to create the feeling of “depressing dystopia”. Iirc the lead visual designer was from Croatia and chose it specifically. I think we can guess what kind of “foreign occupation” they’d have in mind.
They fucking work like a religious group in the sense of “us vs them” propaganda, where no basic level of nuance is portrayed, only black and white thinking, echo chambers and strawmen about “them”, the “outsiders”, the “sinners and unbelievers”. This system fucking works like a cult.
Removed by mod
I would argue it’s a bit more insidious than that. Have ever noticed that whenever some piece of fiction wants to hammer home the notion of “this here be evil”, they go for a mixture of Soviet/communist and Nazi style? Aforementioned half-life has Soviet style apartment buildings, apparently as an indication of “poor quality of life” the people have. It all serves to implant the idea of “communism = evil dictatorship, and also same as Nazis”, to the point of reflex, as knee jerk as you say. On the contrary, Nazi shit gets treated with much kinder gloves.
In half life 2 the Soviet style buildings were built before the alien invasion and is contradicted by the giant alien tech in the middle, city 17 tells a story of a place where people used to live but got collapsed and destroyed by a foreign invasion and the betrayel of one of their kind, I don’t really think it’s a communism = bad game story but if you have an entire review you can do of the lore do it, from my memory I guess city 17 is eastern bloc countries, combine is the introfuction of capitalism by the west and nato and that one guy in white hair and a green suit is Gorbachev. Idk I’d like to hear someone’s analysis of the game’s lore.
It’s not really an analysis of lore as such, but rather the conscious usage of Eastern European style to create the feeling of “depressing dystopia”. Iirc the lead visual designer was from Croatia and chose it specifically. I think we can guess what kind of “foreign occupation” they’d have in mind.
They fucking work like a religious group in the sense of “us vs them” propaganda, where no basic level of nuance is portrayed, only black and white thinking, echo chambers and strawmen about “them”, the “outsiders”, the “sinners and unbelievers”. This system fucking works like a cult.