6 Hilariously Awful Lessons Hidden In Famous Video Games
Video games often have simple stories with simple morals, from Mario's "Kidnapping princesses is bad" to Final Fantasy's "Friendship will save the world" to Untitled Goose Game's "Geese are evil and you should fear them." And then you have games where the underlying message is so bizarre and absurd that it's like the whole thing was written and programmed by sociopaths. Or geese, maybe, who knows? For example ...
Red Dead Redemption 2 Teaches You That Money-Lending Is Worse Than Mass Murder
In Red Dead Redemption 2, your gang's leader forces you to do some questionable things in the name of money ... much like the game's developers, come to think of it. Player character Arthur Morgan commits murder, various types of robbery, and most heinous of all ... money-lending?
One of your comrades loans money to people, then gets Arthur to rough them up and/or rob their house when they default. Every person tells a sad sob story, and this slowly erodes Arthur's spirit. After seeing the misery he's causing, Arthur becomes so disillusioned that he kicks the money lender out of the camp. Character growth!
This happens regardless of whether you play as a bad cowboy (you commit crimes willingly) or a good cowboy (you commit the exact same crimes, but like, slightly complain about it). Even the most immoral version of Arthur will throw the money lender out of the camp. The message is obvious: Predatory loans are so bad that even a total psychopath knows it. It's a good lesson ... rendered totally worthless by the fact that your character is still surrounded by other thieves, killers, and a dude who likes to castrate people.
You and your buddies kill hundreds of people in this game, but there's no scene about their widows grieving by their graves. You never see the passengers on the trains you robbed explain they're having difficulty sleeping because of the trauma. The farmers whose sheep you rustled don't get a monologue about how you've ruined their livelihood. But the folks who borrowed money and couldn't pay it back? That's where the game draws the line.
As a final twist, Arthur ends up dying of tuberculosis ... which he contracted through a money-lending mission. Remember, kids, you can kill as many people and steal as many sheep as you want, but stay the hell away from investment banking.
Related: 5 Insanely Dark Messages In Classic Video Games (You Missed)
Breath Of The Wild Really Wants You To Read Women's Diaries
The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild sticks to the usual list of child-friendly morals: good prevails over evil, the most insignificant person can be a hero, and fish people really want to fuck you. Oh yeah, and you should read as many women's diaries as you can, even if they specifically tell you not to.
This happens three times -- a Triforce of violation, if you will. The first time involves Paya, a chronically shy woman who can barely form coherent sentences. She has a diary, and if you try to read it, she'll stop you, saying you shouldn't "trouble yourself over it."
So how do you get her backstory? By sneaking into her room at night and reading the diary anyway. What secrets do you learn? A new recipe? A legendary weapon that'll shatter after five hits? No, something even more pointless: Paya fancies Link. (Which must mean she's 1/16th fish.)
A short while later you meet Purah, a 100-year-old woman who looks (and speaks) like a small child. What is the mystery of her backward aging? Again, to learn the answer, you must read her private diary.
Purah will then question you about the diary, and if you admit you read it, she'll praise your honesty. There's no real punishment for breaking the trust of an elderly person / little kid (not sure which one's worse).
Then, at the end of the game, moments before taking on Ganon in the destroyed Hyrule Castle, you can pause your epic quest to ... peek at Zelda's diary.
While Zelda isn't around to object, the diary contains her private thoughts about Link, so it's safe to assume she wouldn't want him reading it. The game treats a major creep move as a harmless gag. The only upside is that 99% of players only read the first pages and then spammed "A" to skip through the rest.
Related: The 34 Most Infuriating Examples Of Video Game Logic
Skyrim's Racists Turn Out To Be Correct
In Skyrim, the country is caught in a civil war between the racist native Nords and the imperialist, uh, Imperials. That's fine, politics aren't black and white and all that. There's just one problem: Within this game's world, the Nords are absolutely right about the groups they're prejudiced against.
The cat-like Khajiits, for instance, are forced to wander the map as traders because the Nords see them all as drug dealers, addicts, and thieves. But pretty much every Khajiit you meet in the game is at least one of those things. The Khajiit who laments her poor existence as a frozen nomad because the Nords stereotype her as a drug dealer? Yeah, she's exactly that. There's a note elsewhere in the game that details her skooma operation (skooma is fantasy meth). Most of the Khajiit in the game are part of caravans that are banned from towns because people think they're thieves. Except that if you do the Thieves Guild quest, the Khajiit caravans form an alliance with the Thieves Guild ... meaning that the Nords were definitely onto something there.
What about J'Zargo, that nice Khajiit mage? A filthy thief.
Every named Khajiit is a thief or a murderer, and the ones who aren't named are generic thugs. There's exactly one Khajiit who isn't explicitly bad: the lighthouse keeper Ma'zaka. But he has a closet filled with children's clothes. He doesn't have a child. As such, the game imparts this moral: Judging an entire race on a negative stereotype is harmful ... but come on. They kinda have it coming.
Related: The 6 Most Politically Incorrect Video Game Moments
Lara Croft Commits Supernatural Genocide
Lara Croft from the original Tomb Raider games famously didn't give a crap who she killed. She would murder surrendering technicians, lure innocent clones into lava, poke people in the eyes with the cones on her chest, etc. But in the rebooted series, Lara is supposed to be a more altruistic, caring, and humane hero. And ironically, she's responsible for way more death.
Early in the third game of the new series, Lara (spoilers ahead) steals an artifact. She ignores a bunch of "DO NOT STEAL OR THE APOCALYPSE WILL HAPPEN" signs around it, because it's not like she has encountered supernatural stuff twice before. Unfortunately the artifact does indeed trigger a series of catastrophes, and an entire Mexican community ends up underwater because of what she did. Even the bad guys are like "Dude, what the hell." And while she does seem taken aback by the result of her actions ...
... that only lasts for about two seconds. Then she decides that the only way to make it all better is to go steal yet another dangerous magical artifact she knows nothing about. Of course, she ends up being proven right. She saves the rest of the world (at least from herself) and kills all of the bad guys, who weren't nearly as much of a threat in comparison. Serves them right for messing with the apex predator. The lesson: If you mess things up horribly, simply mess them up again in a slightly different way, and they'll cancel each other out.
Sonic Burns A Wish For A Passive-Aggressive Dig
In Sonic And The Secret Rings, Sonic travels to mythical Arabia (basically Disney's Aladdin) and is instantly pitted against an evil genie.
In the end, Sonic defeats the genie and traps him inside his lamp forever. Problem is, it turns out the bad guy was somehow a very close friend of the good genie who helps Sonic throughout the game. This means that his imprisonment is going to leave her sad and alone forever.
But wait! Sonic has a magic lamp and one wish left. This means he can wish for a happy ending, like a magical cure for her melancholy, or a new friend, or a way for her to accompany Sonic back to his world. So what does Sonic ask for? "A mountain of handkerchiefs." For her to cry into.
That is cold-blooded, Sonic.
Related: The 7 Most Horrifying Moments From Children's Video Games
Wolfenstein Confirms The Nazis' Most Ridiculous Jewish Stereotypes
The new Wolfenstein games take place after the Nazis have conquered the world so thoroughly that even the Beatles are German. How did history go so wrong? Because in this timeline, the Nazis have super-advanced robots that let them stomp across the globe virtually unopposed. But as The New Order advances, you find out that the Nazis didn't invent that technology by themselves. They stole all of it from Jewish people. Haha, isn't it funny that the "superior" race had to rely on something invented by a secret global Jewish conspira- oh nooooo ...
In case you're blissfully unaware, a common belief among antisemites is that there's a secret Jewish cabal that runs Hollywood, owns the banks, dominates politics, controls the weather, etc. It's up there with "vaccines are evil" as one of the stupidest, most harmful conspiracy theories out there ... but in these games, it's kind of true. The Da'at Yichud have a monopoly on tech that only the members of their global Jewish society are aware of. And they may not control the banks, but they do have enough gold to plate entire buildings, which is even more impressive.
The Da'at Yichud's tech is so advanced that it can cure decapitations, let the disabled walk, and colonize other planets, but they kept it all to themselves for centuries. (Supposedly they saw the act of building technology as a way to "commune with God," and that technology just happened to be shaped like giant mega-weapons and Iron Man suits.) So they've been letting illnesses go uncured and hoarding knowledge that could change the world, which sounds pretty "evil secret society" to us.
Like all fascist regimes, the Nazis believed their enemies were somehow both weak and incredibly powerful at the same time. That's exactly what the Da'at Yichud are. The Nazis manage to conquer the world with the contents of one of their vaults, but there are several more across the planet. What were they doing in the other ones? Did the entire Nazi world domination plan happen during Sabbath?
The Da'at Yichud do get off their asses and help fight the Nazis in the end ... after an Aryan-looking Adonis tells them to. These games' plots made more sense when it was one dude fighting Mecha-Hitler.
You are welcome to tell Tiagosvn not all of these games are sociopathic to his Twitter face.
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