Identifying with Authority

[Paragon Fury]

Maybe I'm just overthinking it, but I've found it kind of interesting as how I've gotten older I find I identify less and agree less with the "FREEEEDOM!" and "Personal Rights" protagonists and groups in fiction and even the real world.

While I'll limit my examples to the purely fictional (to avoid over politicization of the topic), some example would be most recently in Gears of War 4 which I saw today;

Spoiler

In the first Act, in order to get past a barricade JD and his group take an alternate path through the maternity ward of a hospital. While inside the woman, Kait, makes several comments about how she hates the "A woman's most important job is have children" and the extreme importance that the COG places on having kids and taking care of them. Only Del attempts to weakly defend the practice and just drops it after a single line.

Meanwhile I'm sitting there all "YOU'RE KIDDING RIGHT? Like, sure, yeah. You have a personal opinion. Now be quiet with it because if you hadn't noticed your society and all of humanity was literally almost completely wiped out to the last person, so you're literally fucking around with the survival of your species because of your personal opinions and discomfort.

It's made doubly funny by the fact that complains about this while within the opening cutscene its' shown the COG still has female soldiers, female politicians and even the head of their government, First Minister Jinn, is female. So it's not like they're forced baby factories or anything - its' just really important that as many kids as possible are made.

Or the IMC in Titanfall for example - yes, they're heavy handed. But they're the effective government of the Frontier and Outer Colonies and live in a situation where thousands of people could die at any time if something goes wrong and the IMC is responsible for keeping dozens of worlds running. But the Militia is all "FREEDOM!" and "THIS IS OUR HOME!" and takes offense to this, and we're supposed to feel bad about what the IMC does, even though its' made clear the the Militia are clearly not above hiding in civilian populations, plain clothes bombings (which the IMC Grunts talk about in their idle chatter) or the fact that Militia was willing to potentially take down an IMC carrier and crash it into a major population center.

Or how I loved Red Faction: Guerrilla back in the day - but I look back and realize...holy shit. You were a major dickhead and terrorist who killed thousands of people, destroyed homes and cities all because the EDF killed your brother (who was actually a Red Faction terrorist) and took issue with you for being suspicious and being associated with a known terrorist. And that you fight for some BS cause (WE'RE MARTIANS AND DESERVE TO BE FREE BECAUSE WE'RE NOT EARTH! EVEN THOUGH WE'RE STILL HUMANS AND NEED EARTH TO SURVIVE!)

I mean, I still side with the "good guys" a lot, but I find it harder now unless it involves something obviously evil, wrong or something similar.

 

[shrekfan246]

I'm sorry, but I can't get on with anyone who would support a Trump presidency.

Spoiler

That's mostly a joke, at least within the context of this thread.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

...It'd suck for women not to be into dudes or dudes to not be into women in the CoG. Especially if they're told to shut up every time they have an opinion on the subject.

And that's all I'm going to say on the subject.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

I guess my problem with a lot of Authorities in games is they're written by writers, not people who've actually worked for the Government. They're comically inept or openly evil with no redeeming qualities and apparently no regard for the actually citizens of their nations and no legal accountability whatsoever.

Now IRL some people in Government are surely power hungry and mean, but ALL of them?! What, John Koskinen, IRS director, is a nefarious amoral villain totally willing to go along with an evil plan to nuke New York to cover up a secret Government experiment on...weasels or something? He's basically just a lvl100 accountant in a decent suit, not Lex Luthor.

Most Government employees are honest people who are just doing their job and want a foot massage at the end of the day. And most of them are deathly afraid of doing a bad job or PR nightmares and very very very few of them have the ability to pull off full-on-cover-ups of anything. Because all those cover-up documents? Yeah, those are written by low level clerks and assistants, and they can't all be 10000% evil, nefarious power hungry lizard people.

And its bullshit how readily willing the Army always is to declare marshal-law on a population and start gunning down a mother and her kid who tried to escape the fence. First off troop movements like that don't go unnoticed. And second lots of Generals have a moral code of their own, and would object to using armed force on their own country. From what I can see most military leaders want to protect their country, not openly oppress its people for an obviously corrupt government.

 

[Fox12]

I guess my problem with a lot of Authorities in games is they're written by writers, not people who've actually worked for the Government. They're comically inept or openly evil with no redeeming qualities and apparently no regard for the actually citizens of their nations and no legal accountability whatsoever.

Now IRL some people in Government are surely power hungry and mean, but ALL of them?! What, John Koskinen, IRS director, is a nefarious amoral villain totally willing to go along with an evil plan to nuke New York to cover up a secret Government experiment on...weasels or something? He's basically just a lvl100 accountant in a decent suit, not Lex Luthor.

Most Government employees are honest people who are just doing their job and want a foot massage at the end of the day. And most of them are deathly afraid of doing a bad job or PR nightmares and very very very few of them have the ability to pull off full-on-cover-ups of anything. Because all those cover-up documents? Yeah, those are written by low level clerks and assistants, and they can't all be 10000% evil, nefarious power hungry lizard people.

And its bullshit how readily willing the Army always is to declare marshal-law on a population and start gunning down a mother and her kid who tried to escape the fence. First off troop movements like that don't go unnoticed. And second lots of Generals have a moral code of their own, and would object to using armed force on their own country. From what I can see most military leaders want to protect their country, not openly oppress its people for an obviously corrupt government.

To be fair, I don't think most people do cover ups because they're befarious super villains. I think most cover ups are the result of incompetent officials trying to avoid getting in trouble.

My issue is that most people are willingly to follow authority, without thinking critically about whether or not their qualified. Essentially, they want someone else to solve their problems. I hate that mindset. I also hate how people want to solve complex problems with simple solutions. AKA, blowing things up with the military. When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Look at Iraq, or Vietnam. What were the war goals going in? The commanders couldn't tell you, because they didn't even know.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I think this is a pretty natural thing to be honest.

When you're a kid/teenager you have almost no freedom and almost no rights. You're forced to go to school (child prison), forced to do homework, have very little free time, and are completely dependent on your parents. As such you value every shred of freedom that you are permitted, and you end up viewing freedom as incredibly important, because to you freedom is only a net gain, there is no possible loss to be had.

As an adult you have a lot more freedom. You can go where you want, do what you want, eat how you want, and spend your time on whatever you feel like. You also begin to build up material possessions. You begin to fear losing what you have, and as such you identify more with the authority which is most likely to protect you, your possessions, and your status in life.

Eventually you realize that there's only so much freedom that you really need to be happy, and you will trade your own freedom and the freedom of others in exchange for safety and security.

That's basically what it means to grow up. It's the reason that people get more conservative when they get older, and why liberals are for the most part young and poor, because they have the least to lose.

 

[Bobular]

Or the IMC in Titanfall for example - yes, they're heavy handed. But they're the effective government of the Frontier and Outer Colonies and live in a situation where thousands of people could die at any time if something goes wrong and the IMC is responsible for keeping dozens of worlds running. But the Militia is all "FREEDOM!" and "THIS IS OUR HOME!" and takes offense to this, and we're supposed to feel bad about what the IMC does, even though its' made clear the the Militia are clearly not above hiding in civilian populations, plain clothes bombings (which the IMC Grunts talk about in their idle chatter) or the fact that Militia was willing to potentially take down an IMC carrier and crash it into a major population center.

Wait? The Militia are supposed to be the good guys and the IMC the bad guys? I always thought it was the other way round. I always saw it as Space America vs Space Terrorists.

I've literally just gone to check who you play as in the single player in Titan Fall 2 and now I'm disappointed because you play as the Militia.

My understanding of the story was basically that the IMC is a corporation responsible for the colonies, the titans, the robots, the weapons, basically everything out there. Then a few of the colonists got pissed that their planets were being mined for the benefit of Earth and rebelled against the IMC. Both sides fought, using tactics that were as bad as each other, the Militia using terrorist bombings and the IMC using robots to suppress populations.

 

[Zhukov]

"Oh hey, a Paragon Fury thread about something other than... oh, no, wait, there it is. Shut up women, have babies."

...

I can't say I often identify with the evil authorities in game stories. Mostly on account of the evil thing. They're rarely written to be at all reasonable. Like the EDF in Red Faction Guerrilla were just cartoonishly dickish at every turn.

One exception was the Council in Mass Effect. Which was odd because the game's writers clearly wanted me to hate them as useless interfering bureaucrats. However to me they seemed very reasonable in their decisions.

First the player character accuses one of their best agents of a crime and they ask for proof. Fair enough, surely?

Then you find proof and promptly demand they start a war with Space Somalia to find the criminal agent. They're all, "Umm, no, that's a terrible idea, how about we give you the authority to go hunt him down yourself?" Once again, totally reasonable.

Then they're not convinced of impending galactic doom on the weight of one person getting weird visions from touching an old artifact. Because who the fuck would? Hell, for all you know you were tuning into an ancient alien movie.

In the second game they're supposed to be in denial when they don't believe the Reaper was, well... a Reaper. Thing is, they were attacked by said Reaper alongside a fleet of Geth. It's much more reasonable for them to assume it was some kind of new Geth ship than a giant sentient civlization-eating machine. (Granted, some of the circumstances preventing proof are a bit contrived.)

So yeah, Council, you're alright. Fuck the haters.

 

[Phasmal]

"Oh hey, a Paragon Fury thread about something other than... oh, no, wait, there it is. Shut up women, have babies."

...

Spoiler: My thoughts exactly

Not to mention, I've never been particularly impressed when a work of fiction's answer to where the women are is "Uh... they're all off... having babies. Because we NEED them to." (which is kind of how it came across in the early GoW games). What? All of them?
The population has been sufficiently decimated that the majority of women have to just churn out babies now but is also apparently stable enough to produce enough food for this hypothetical fuck-ton of babies?

Spoiler: Me

Just strikes me as lazy and kinda boring.

Granted, Gears did get a little bit better in that regard as games went on. (Though I must say I have little interest in 4 because the dude in the trailer just looks like chunky Nathan Drake).

Slightly more on-topic. I don't generally identify with the evil authorities in any fiction. They mostly just get in the way of the protagonist and usually it's for not very justifiable reasons (or just being straight-up evil), so I really can't get past that, for the most part.

 

[Zhukov]

(Though I must say I have little interest in 4 because the dude in the trailer just looks like chunky Nathan Drake)

The voice doesn't help either.

The chap voicing him doesn't do a bad job or anything, but he sounds like someone doing a very passable Drake impression.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

These games are terrible examples of story driven titles. I think you're focusing too much on areas the creators have nothing more than a vague obligated interest in. Maybe we can dissect the complicated relationships between Mario and Wario next? Perhaps Peach isn't doing her womanly duty to save her kingdom again.

 

[Level 7 Dragon]

Young adult audience..

Most games geared towards young adults and teenagers tend to have heavy-handed anti-authoriterian themes, mostly due to the societal effects of puberty and teenage moral-absolutism. After a while, it becomes You versus "Das Systema", until you grow older and begin to carry some of that burden yourself. You begin to care about the GDP, societal stability and relative safety of yourself and others that are closest to you, which causes most people to cozy up to authority figures once they get older.

One of the most interesting takes on Man versus Authority was in Fable 3. You spend most of the game fighting against an evil dictator that refuses to help the poor and keeps a massive military, once you userp him you assume his role. All along the King was trying to gather defences against an Eldritch abomination that is about to devour the nation, as a result you are forced to take the place of the character you were fighting against.

Maybe that's why once I got older my interest shifted from FPS's to management games like Dwarf Fortress or Rimworld. From destroying systems to maintaining control.

 

[Paragon Fury]

I feel like you guys on focusing a little too much on the specific part of the Gears 4 example and not the general part that relates to the topic in general.

Anyway, I never really thought of myself as being conservative...rather I just didn't really get on board with the whole "freedom no matter what" stuff and attitude.

 

[Redryhno]

Not to mention, I've never been particularly impressed when a work of fiction's answer to where the women are is "Uh... they're all off... having babies. Because we NEED them to." (which is kind of how it came across in the early GoW games). What? All of them?

To be fair, the first 3 GoW games have a stupidly tiny cast, you've got the four "mains", Mr.McGuffin, General Mcguffin, and JESUSFUCKWHATAREYOUANDWHYDOYOUKEEPTHOSEASPETS appearing as themselves. Not to mention 2 had a couple of women in it and I think since 1 had a woman model for multiplayer that was the third most broken behind one of the Carmines and Cole since their hitboxes were that much smaller.

Personally though, I always just chalked it up to the military outside of fringe cases largely being majority male, meaning that that the minority of women there survived E-Day since it did just sorta happen and take out all the major civilian areas on the planet were some of the only ones left and if you do want to survive as a species after the war you don't really put the ones that can do that at the frontlines. Doubly so since the Gears universe has sorta become a 40k-lite dystopia, which largely deems lives as resources more than people.

OT:

Yeah, as I've gotten older I've identified much more with the authority in games, at least to begin with. Then it often goes off the rails in typical fashion for a long stay in ChaoticStupidville.

I mean, I get the need for easy-to-identify villains, but it's gotten sorta boring when they set up these real world scenarios with all this intrigue and "plot" and it turns out all it is is to get like 2% more efficiency out of a Volvo. It just seems like a massively inefficient way of covering up something like being seen in the wrong place or sleeping with someone they shouldn't. And c'mon, since when have you remembered one of those easy villains?

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

If the writing is good than I can relate to authority, if not *cough*MankindDivided*cough* then it's painted so black and white the authority might as well eat babies.

My favorite example is The Last Of Us, the Fireflies are a bunch of raving idiots who's grand achievements is getting everybody in their "liberated" zones killed and are obsessed to finding a cure for a disease a decade too late, the army might be ruthless but this is because A) They have a good reason (a single case can kill multiple people). B) If they wouldn't need to waste time fighting the previously mentioned idiots then food would be far less scarce.

Not to mention how the fireflies are all about finding the cure, but are completely inept at the science part of finding said cure.

"Hey, we found someone who is immune, lets kill her and tinker with her brain." Guess what, that should literally be the LAST option you should be trying in order to develop a cure, not the first.

I felt pretty justified taking Ellie away from them because if they're humanity's last hope for a cure then humanity is just fucked, they couldn't find their asses with both hands and a map.

 

[WolfThomas]

So yeah, Council, you're alright. Fuck the haters.

Plus they let the humans on the council if you defend them. Like that's a real big deal.

 

[Phasmal]

Not to mention, I've never been particularly impressed when a work of fiction's answer to where the women are is "Uh... they're all off... having babies. Because we NEED them to." (which is kind of how it came across in the early GoW games). What? All of them?

To be fair, the first 3 GoW games have a stupidly tiny cast, you've got the four "mains", Mr.McGuffin, General Mcguffin, and JESUSFUCKWHATAREYOUANDWHYDOYOUKEEPTHOSEASPETS appearing as themselves. Not to mention 2 had a couple of women in it and I think since 1 had a woman model for multiplayer that was the third most broken behind one of the Carmines and Cole since their hitboxes were that much smaller.

Personally though, I always just chalked it up to the military outside of fringe cases largely being majority male, meaning that that the minority of women there survived E-Day since it did just sorta happen and take out all the major civilian areas on the planet were some of the only ones left and if you do want to survive as a species after the war you don't really put the ones that can do that at the frontlines. Doubly so since the Gears universe has sorta become a 40k-lite dystopia, which largely deems lives as resources more than people.

I don't think my quibble with that bit of writing is being particularly unfair to Gears. Like I said, it did get a bit better as it went on, but I still think that's kinda stupid. (Then again this is video game writing so really what do I expect).

 

[Tayh]

Wait? The Militia are supposed to be the good guys and the IMC the bad guys? I always thought it was the other way round. I always saw it as Space America vs Space Terrorists.

But then, who'd be the Good Guys?

I always find it interesting to check out the evil options in games. Provided they're not just of the, "oh, I'll save your baby, but it'll cost ya 100gp!"
This thread reminded me that I need to preorder Tyranny.