There is currently a very funny, kind of sad dust-up over Helldivers 2, in which self-proclaimed “anti-woke” gamers have previously heralded it as a rare game where they believe “politics” does not play a factor. Their faith was been shaken by an Arrowhead community manager they believed they found to be (gasp) progressive who was then subsequently harassed, but their head-scratching reading of Helldivers 2 as a “non-political” game is worth examining.
The only thing that makes sense is that these players have the shallowest of surface-level readings of the game. You are a patriotic soldier serving Super Earth. You must kill bugs and evil robots trying to hurt your brothers-in-arms and innocent citizens. There are no storylines to insert progressive causes into, everyone wears helmets so no “forced diversity.” Therefore, no politics.
Of course, this is…wildly off the mark, as Helldivers 2 is about the most blatantly obvious satire of militaristic fascism since the film that inspired it, Starship Troopers.
If conservatives had any media literacy, they wouldn’t be conservatives anymore.
This is why the humanities are important
Really? I’m fed up with one humanity. Can’t think I can handle any more. 🫠
I think what a lot of people miss here is that when people say “keep politics out of x” what they mean is “keep blatant cringeworthy soapboxing out of x.”
Helldivers is tongue in cheek and doesn’t feel the need to bash you over the head with “But actually fascism bad” every five seconds, instead it has gag recruitment ads and an overall really funny presentation that works whether you get it or you don’t.
I guarantee you that no rightoid looks at a one world government “super earth” with fond eyes.
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If you’re an identitarian the fact that the Helldivers can be men or women is unacceptable, not to mention it’s not clear if they’re ethnically homogeneous
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If you’re a libertarian the de-individualization and constant surveillance/propaganda from a totalitarian state is unacceptable, double that if you’re an ancap
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Monarchists would probably like this if it were an explicit monarchy, but it’s not, so they would probably also not like it
The only faction who would like this game’s world is classical fascists, the kind Mussolini was, which ironically a lot of people seem to really really like on any side of the political spectrum, cause it’s literally just totalitarian ideological illiberal authority.
I think you are expecting a lot more subtlety in people’s interpretation than the people doing the interpretation deserve. Yes, super earth is clearly a military dictatorship to anyone who recognises that it is a political satire. But for those who don’t, and who don’t see beyond the surface veneer of “we’re defending Earth from invaders”… It looks a lot like AmericaWorld, where everyone is happy and free and kept safe from the nasty aliens.
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These are the same people that thought the machine RATM was raging against was a refrigerator or something.
I want to make a movie so painfully obvious in its satire that everyone who understands it lives in perpetual psychological torment inflicted on them by all the people who don’t.
Brutal. He did it too, he did it.
But he still toned it down from the book…
The first chapter is them taking a village of anthropomorphic insects over. They didn’t have any soldiers, it was just a random village and there’s a part where a mother and infant are hiding in a closest, get blasted by a flamethrower, and as the soldier jetbacks away he just shoots rockets everywhere because they get in trouble if they return with any unused ammo.
Just completely blasie about genocide.
Trimming it down to just the one 100% bug race really made it easier to write them off as monsters. But makes sense for a movie.
I mean wasn’t the author of the book saying that’s how things should be run? I had always heard the movie was basically mocking the premise of the book.
Nah, dude was a Naval officer that became disillusioned and wrote Stranger in a Strange Land. Hippies called that one “The Hippy Bible” because, well it basically was.
Then there’s his modern retelling if Job.
Like, if you read the Lazarus Long novels, there’s gonna be some sexism and toxic masculinity, along with some libertarianism shit. But we’re talking late 60s/early 70s pulp SciFi. It would be like judging current media because there’s always sex scenes and huge explosions.
Its rarely there because the creators want it there, it’s there to sell the media.
Starship Troopers is basically about what he feared the military could easily become if it took over the government.
That was kind of Heinleins whole style, you enjoy a book all the the way thru, but by the end everything is completely different and almost unrecognizable from chapter 1.
Those weren’t bugs, those were “Skinnies”, humanoid aliens.
They showed up in the animated series, but not the movie.
humanoid aliens.
I never watched the cartoon, and it’s been a while since I read the book, but for some reason I always pictured them like the aliens in Invincible where they’re humanoid aliens, but bug like.
I dunno. That’s the thing about books, our brains just fill in the gaps.
The satirical nature of Helldivers 2 is obvious, but in Starship Troopers the bugs flung a meteor at Earth which destroyed a major city and killed millions. I would argue that Starship Troopers has a bit more of a serious vibe with subtle satire, aside from some of the commercials like the one of soldiers giving kids guns. In Helldivers 2 the intro video shows that bugs are killing civilians, which could be true or could be purely propaganda. But yea, anyone who doesn’t understand that Helldivers 2 is satirical is a fucking idiot. It all makes fun of militaristic imperialism, you can literally name your ship “King of Democracy”.
Are you sure it was the bugs that launched the meteor
As per the lore of Starship Troopers, yes I’m sure. There is no evidence even slightly that it was done by humans in that universe. On the other hand, in Helldivers 2 the intro video is clearly staged and prerecorded produced by the “Ministry of Truth” with the statement “scenes like these are happening all over the galaxy” making it clear that it was a staged video.
https://starshiptroopers.fandom.com/wiki/Bug_Meteor
The bugs in Starship Troopers even tried to send another one which was stopped:
"Later, at a certain point, the Arachnids launched a second meteor towards Earth. Fortunately for the Federation, it was destroyed by a Missile defence turret on Luna Base. The meteor would have slammed into southern Africa, possibly at Cape Town. "
So the thing is that it’s not just the movie and novels that should be taken as separate canons, it’s the first movie and everything else built off the movie that should be taken as separate, including the pre release materials.
The novel wasn’t a satire of fascism (and wasn’t fascist either, but that’s a whole other thing).
The movie was, but Verhoeven fairly famously didn’t read the book, and everyone around him knew what “due diligence” means so they did the bare minimum, so all the other material built off it has a different direction.
That said, Buenos Aires was definitely a false flag/accident in the movie.
I don’t know if you know much about space, but a small amount of energy applied to an object at a distant point can have significant implications for the trajectory of, say, an asteroid traveling through space.
We see the asteroid that hits Buenos Aires, and a Federation ship bumps into it in space.
It couldn’t possibly have been on a ballistic path to take out Buenos Aires, that bump would have made it miss.
But, okay, maybe it was just lobbed in Earth’s general direction, and that was just a tragic accident? (This is what the supplementary material goes with btw)
With what technology?
The bugs in the movie show absolutely zero technological use. Not one bit.
These are the questions Verhoeven wanted you asking. They’re also the ones every other bit of material ignores, despite the clear criticism (if not actually fair to source) laid out by the movie.
That said, Buenos Aires was definitely a false flag/accident in the movie.
Not true.
With what technology?
https://starshiptroopers.fandom.com/wiki/Plasma#Arachnids
Not replying after this as to not waste my time.
Well, I can’t say I’m surprised to find someone going to bat for the movie Federation despite everything in the gaming sub.
Got any opinions on how Caesar’s Legion is the only hope for New Vegas?
Got any opinions on how Caesar’s Legion is the only hope for New Vegas?
There was actually supposed to be lore backing that up, and making the decision more complicated that “NCR good, legion bad” but they ran out of development time
🤢
Also, btw, the game wasn’t “NCR good.”
They’re an openly genocidal republic beset with corruption and slavery with extra steps.
It’s almost like they were a deliberate mirror of America in the Westward Expansion/Pre Civil War era…
But they had the coolest uniform, and that’s ultimately what people care about.
Same thing happens with WH40k and GW has to put out memos telling Nazis to fuck off every few years.
Media literacy is apparently difficult
I don’t disagree with this synopsis, but I’m sadly unsurprised that your familiarity with the source material stops at the movie — which, in fact, was preceded (nearly 40 years) & inspired by a (far better) book of the same name from Heinlein. 😅😶 What’s more, Helldivers 2 seems to take more cues from the book than the movie, and it does the original more honor than the cult classic did in '97, too.
Lastly, who in their right mind ever expects alt-right fucknuts to parse irony? Isn’t that integral to their M.O., the consistent whoosh so frequent that it must be like white noise in their skulls 24/7? (Yes, there’s a supremacy joke in there, but I’m too tired to dig it up)
The main difference from the film being that the novel isn’t a satire–Heinlein was being sincere.
You’re not wrong. I have no idea why people are downvoting you
The same thing happened with Fallout: New Vegas when chuds realized Joshua Sawyer is a Socialist
Do you mean Joshua Graham?
No, Joshua Sawyer, the Project Lead. He wrote characters like Arcade Gannon, told Gonzales to add dialectics to the Legion, etc.
He has shown up on Communist podcasts and is vocally a Socialist on Twitter.
I’m gonna watch the opening video to restore my faith in managed democracy.
