Politics in Media - The Good, the Bad, and the Preachy

Uncharted has that as well. Don't get me wrong, Nathan Drake is very good looking, but he's good looking in a sort of 'normal way' if that makes sense. He feels like the sort of person you could meet on the street. The creators specifically made him to be an 'Everyman' (though one that still had a distinct personality) and they wanted the face to reflect that.

Edited by king15 on Apr 22nd 2024 at 2:24:14 PM

I want to talk about Horizon Zero Dawn, specifically it's backstory and the guy behind it. A "swell" fellow named Faro that created the mechanical monsters that ruined the biosphere and nearly destroyed all of history afterwards.

So what exactly is his deal and why does he seem like the logical apex of tech bros?

His deal isn't anything that special. Just another rich narcissist. The world's full of people like him.

And yes, that is a little terrifying when you think about it. As one of F9's baddies put it: "spoiled rich pricks run the world".

The sequel highlights this since the baddies in that game are another bunch of rich assholes. Though the fact Ted Faro wasn't given an invite on their escape craft suggests even they wanted nothing to do with him.

Edited by M84 on Apr 22nd 2024 at 11:39:26 PM

The nice thing about Horizon Zero Dawn is that it depicts the collapse of civilization that was not because of "the hubris of mankind" or something like that but entirely the hubris of a single idiot billionaire, all while nearly everyone else did their level best to ensure humanity could be revived in the future...only for the same narcissist billionaire to sabotage that too, resulting in untold amounts of lost history, culture and technology.

Even the other assholes like Far Zenith weren't as bad as Ted Faro. They were selfish too, but at least they settled for escaping Earth and leaving the rest of humanity to burn.

The irony is that Faro tried to erase history solely because he didn't want the new humanity to realize how badly he fucked up.

And he even failed at that.

Edited by M84 on Apr 23rd 2024 at 4:45:59 PM

Reminds me a bit of ARK Survival Evolved which has a similar theme of theme of devastation due to misuse of technology that was supposed to usher in a new golden age. The difference is that the guy who fucked up owns up to it and tries to fix things.

Well, "nearly everyone else" didn't even know that was the plan. Most people thought that, if they could hold the line long enough, the Horizon project would complete their secret super-weapon that would save them all. Frankly, not cool.

Edited by Kayeka on Apr 23rd 2024 at 6:14:56 PM

Human nature, not even once

Would it be considered unrealistic for the same result to be achieved with all parties, including those fighting in the front lines, were in the know. If all of humanity would fight to save the future even if they they knew they would never live to see it?

🤔

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Apr 23rd 2024 at 9:20:20 AM

What, you think everyone is a longtermist? For me personally, if far away enough, I don't give a singular fuck about hypothetical future humans. The border might be fuzzy, but "hundreds of years after everyone I know and care about is long dead" is quite beyond it.

In this particular scenario, I'd feel torn between spending my final days amongst friends and family in what remains of peace, and taking as many of the buggy bastards with me into the dark. I imagine many would feel similar.

Edited by Kayeka on Apr 23rd 2024 at 6:26:42 PM

i think you'd have a hard time getting everybody to agree on literally anything.

tho, I'm not familiar with the game— what was the actual goal they were fighting for? that they didn't know about?

Well, the world was doomed because some idiot unleashed a swarm of man-eating self-replicating killbots. Said killbots reproduced faster than the humans could destroy them, so the fight was essentially lost.

Project Horizon was sold to the public as a secret weapon that would save humanity, if the entire rest of the world could hold the line long enough, which I suppose was technically true. But it wouldn't do much for the currently living humans. Instead, it was basically a giant facility that would store human DNA, organic material, food and knowledge. When the threat of killerbots along with all humans was gone, the facilities would begin the process of cloning new humans, educate them, and release them to repopulate the world.

Or, put another way, everyone but a select group of scientists and engineers (plus some idiot) were unknowingly used as cannon fodder to save the concept of "humanity".

Edited by Kayeka on Apr 23rd 2024 at 8:47:34 PM

Said idiot tried to mess with this plan too. He erased nearly all of the information that was supposed to educate the new humans...because he didn't want them to know that he was the one who fucked things up.

Man no wonder Horizon fans talk so much shit about him.

I haven't even seen the game and I already hate him.

Yeah, the dude is a Hate Sink. They really played up the "peak techbro" nature of his character. Also, apologies for spoiling the game, these are supposed to be mid-to-late game revelations.

Edited by Kayeka on Apr 24th 2024 at 5:39:04 PM

IIRC defeating the Faro swarm was attempted in the beginning. Unfortunately the super-adaptive robot swarm turned out to also be adaptive to attempts to shut it down. It also ran on biomass so it couldn't easily be starved of power.

Furthermore, I recall that Zero Dawn was a desperation attempt - the war was already lost when it was started, it was just a matter of playing out the inevitable.

Oh sure, but they very much lied to the whole Earth about its purpose, which I think is just not cool.

I mean, the story clearly agrees with you, with the general who commanded the effort confessing to it and clearly viewing it as a massive crime and betrayal, that was nevertheless necessary.

On the broader topic, I actually don't know if our long dead villain was trying to cover up his involvement, or if he actually believed in the end that it was the fault of knowledge/science that the world died.

Certainly that's a self-serving belief as it makes it not his fault...

Closer to the topic of the thread, I think Horizon would have been a lot more interesting if they could have resisted making our protagonist (for all intents and purposes) essentially a modern American person, who shares basically zero culture with the Nora...

Was it necessary, though?

The general notes that when the new humans find out what happened, he'll be condemned by posterity.

The other person however notes that this plan is also the only reason there will even be a posterity to condemn them.

i mean, i guess if that was the only way to ensure the survival of humanity, i can see why someone might do it and sincerely think they're correct. This exact scenario seems a bit contrived, but if i wanted to find a more widely applicable moral question i think you could say— the moral question in this case is basically "is it okay to lie to the public in order to get them to coordinate", yea?

like, its not an invalid question— large groups of people are notoriously terrible at doing things which require mass coordination, particularly on anything resembling an emergency timescale. There's a reason that most functional groups have people who can make immediate decisions and have to be obeyed, even if those people can be removed by a vote

in the case of this game, was it strictly necessary that every human participate? it couldn't be a volunteer sacrifice?

Edited by Tremmor19 on Apr 25th 2024 at 7:33:04 AM

There weren't that many humans left by that point. That's how bad the situation was.

And the idea that some humans aware of the real situation wouldn't just prioritize themselves wasn't hypothetical. The sequel confirmed that.

Edited by M84 on Apr 25th 2024 at 4:54:48 PM

...huh. Knowing the twist is selling me on Horizon more than any glowing reviews about it have.

The Horizon games are basically about a new generation inheriting a world their predecessors broke and trying to fix it without repeating their mistakes.

I am not familiar with the discussed game, but this scenario is as old as civilization.

"It is okay to sacrifice the life and happiness of the current generation against their own well for the survival or prosperity of hypothetical future ones?"

This is why we have forced conscription, drafting, forced labor and even slavery, and generally how many of the world's empires and monuments were built.

Tourists who come to visit the Pyramids or the Great Wall of China don't think or care about the human cost in building those things.

....................

This is what every authoritarian figure in fiction or Real Life ever claim "We (and by we I mean you) must sacrifice everything so that the future is a better place".

My take is "No, it is not okay". If those humans don't take the choice freely to save their race, then humanity doesn't deserve to survive, as simple as that.

.......................

Sacrifice is something to be chosen and performed freely, not forced upon the ignorant masses by an illuminated tyrant(s), whose superior knowledge makes him see the "big picture" and is willing and eager to sacrifice hundreds to save thousands, thousands to save millions, and millions to save billions.

..........................

But I have gotten annoyed by those types of characters lately, so I am probably biased here.

Edited by jawal on Apr 25th 2024 at 12:45:23 PM

I mean, the difference here is that the people who engineered the plan also had no expectation that they would survive either. It's still terrible they tricked the rest of humanity's survivors into being cannon fodder with no chance of victory, but at least they weren't trying to save themselves.

Unlike Ted Faro, the guy who broke the world, and and Far Zenith who abandoned it.

And they certainly weren't trying to hide what they had done from new humanity. Their whole plan was to share everything they knew so that the new humans wouldn't fuck up like they did.

But again, Ted Faro screwed that up too because he didn't want the new humans to know he's the reason old humanity was destroyed.

The people behind this plan fully expected to be judged and damned by the future generations their plan would create one day.

In real life by contrast, the tyrants who send people to die in their wars or build their monuments do everything in their power to be remembered gloriously. And of course they certainly don't intend to be one of the sacrifices either.

This was indeed Ted Faro's plan. He tried to make himself immortal so that he could set himself up as a god to new humanity. Fortunately, his attempts to make himself immortal backfired.

Edited by M84 on Apr 25th 2024 at 8:13:19 PM