MandaloreGaming

From Marathon to Halo, Infinity to Infinite. Marathon Infinity makes you question your destiny across time and dimensions, but it already knows who you are.

Well that got ...convoluted.

From the creators of the original Fallout games comes Arcanum. A fantasy RPG about the dynamics between technology and magic, and the endless despicability of gnomes.

It's really disappointing that this didn't get some kind of follow-up. Also, it's easy to see why that gnome at the beginning was really a disguised dwarf, because HOLY FUCK that side quest!

If this is the game I'm thinking of I know I've seen the intro at least once involving sabotaged airships

Jesus Christ, that part hit me completely unprepared. I never played the game myself and I only knew something was up with gnomes because I vaguely remembered SsethTzeentach ranting about his loathing for them.

Though I feel like there are some Unfortunate Implications regarding the whole thing.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Oct 14th 2022 at 12:28:12 PM

You're not the only one who thinks that.

Heck, just look at some of the comments under Mandalore's video - there's a number of people who aren't just aware of the implications, but cherish them. ^note I ran into at least one user outright suggesting you should be able to enact a gnome pogrom.

I'm honestly surprised Mandalore didn't pick up on that at all.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Oct 14th 2022 at 1:21:24 PM

its so weird seeing that in the game, considering the early example of "The Orcish Question" book directly showing the results of the exact same type of thinking.

Yeah, the rest of the game seems to pretty much condemn racism etc and then you suddenly get this sidequest that plays antisemitic conspiracy theories completely straight:

It's baffling.

Has anyone asked the devs why they included the quest? Admittedly this is the first time I've heard of it so it makes me wonder if its escaped people's notice for so long for a reason

Eeh. I get why people interpret it as playing an antisemitic propaganda straight, and it is problematic at least in the sense that it should be discussed and dissected, but I do also think that doing so is looking at the plot point from a limited angle. Sure, in this case the people behind the inhumane actions are gnomes. Yet they also represent another group. Rich capitalists, new oligarchs. So when I play trough that quest line, I see it more as an evil act committed by a bunch of rich people.

Sure, there's a race angle and it should be discussed, but there's also a class angle. Maybe it's just me, but I always saw the class angle as the one the game emphasized.

I thought the quest also studied the concept of a race from the size/power angle. It's an exploration of how a change in station can affect a group of previously marginalized people. The gnomes in the world of Arcanum are the smallest race and there's discussion of how they were bullied and taken advantage of because of that.

So there's a people who are always a bit afraid of everyone stronger than them. It's not hard to see how some of those people might fixate on the ones they see as a polar opposite of them, in this case Ogres. Then the world turns around, and suddenly some gnomes have the kind of money that moves nations. Yet they're still afraid they'll get bullied and their things taken from them yet again. So they seek the power of those they saw as powerful before and this leads them to some degenerate actions.

That's an interesting and valid exploration. Where the game does stumble, in the race aspect, is that this is pretty much the main way we end up seeing a whole race, the gnomes. It would be better if we were shown more classes of gnomes and various other aspects of gnomish culture, but we pretty much only seem them as the evil capitalists. The lack of wider gnome representation ends up making this one story about gnomes look like a racist caricature. A common problem in our real media still.

Edited by GabrieltheThird on Oct 15th 2022 at 10:24:30 PM

This doesn't help the game's case when "Jews are the Oligarchs controlling the world" is also a cornerstone of anti-Semitist rhetoric. Combined with the stuff others outlined it only makes the parallels even worse.

I don't disagree that the whole plot line has some unfortunate implications. I just think that people fixate on things like these and make a bigger deal than they are.

Because Arcanum is pretty good on racism. It has a solid grasp on it. It's a major theme. You see a number of different shades of it represented from subtle and unintentional to blatant and aggressive and a bunch of shades in between. It never portrays racism positively, but as an insidious systemic force. It doesn't do the thing many other games do with "We need to make clear this guy is a baddie you can kill with clean conscience, so lets make them a blatant racist." To me, that's enough to answer the question whether the writers of the game intentionally included a racist antisemitic stereotype. They did not.

Doesn't mean they didn't fail, if it does come across as such, and that this aspect shouldn't be talked about. But I do see "It's bad, actually!"^note I'm not saying people here are saying the game is bad because of this one quest, to be clear. People are validly criticising the quest. I'm more interested of the wider meta conversation. takes so often about otherwise good and well meaning media where those takes take over the whole discussion of it that I'm pretty critical of the practice. It's the old problem of picking a quote from a book and pointing it as problematic. It ignores the whole book around it, the context.

In the case of this quest, I feel the devs of Arcanum wanted to do something fun with a dark government conspiracy and thought they'd use it to explain the prevalence of these half races that have often have problematic implications in and of themselves in fantasy media and thus came up with the quest, without realizing how it might have problematic implications in a wider historical context. Or something similar, but equally benign. Worthy of comment, yes, but relatively safe to ignore when discussing the game in a wider context.

Edited by GabrieltheThird on Oct 15th 2022 at 10:55:05 PM

Which is why The Gnome Conspiracy stands out like a sore thumb - it basically takes antisemitic conspiracy theories and plays them 100 % straight.

The game also doesn't really do anything with it after revealing it. Sure, it's a part of the world-building, but it's so jarring like if someone toss My Little Ponies in the middle of a Warhammer game and not do anything else with it. Not to mention the problem can be easily solved just by making it a conspiracy of wealthy capitalists, not a race that secretly control the world from the shadows straight out of an anti-semitic propaganda.

Edited by SteamKnight on Oct 15th 2022 at 6:50:45 PM

I think the problem was that the dev want to create contrast without thinking about the implications. Like the quest is about a horrible thing, probably the most horrible thing that happened in the story and the villains are the Gnomes, the least threaten race in the setting. Of course they could pick human but it would be less shocking.

Ring: A Mind Melting Adventure Game

I expect terrible adventure games stuff. What I don't expect is how hilarious the entire thing is and some questionable choices like the narration going "incest is not that big of a deal". I also lament at the changes that are inflicted on Alberich in the sequel. A true tragedy that one.

Alien Isolation is an immersive survival horror game about avoiding both a xenomorph and the Amazon Basics version of people.

What I don't get is that it took YEARS for a proper horror game to emerge where you couldn't fight the alien and had to hide from it,it seems like such as obvious thing which was missed for years in favour of blasting the alien.

Yeah but...

Pulse rifle go brrrrrr

that's cruelty to xenomorphs!

One comment suggest the Gnome quest was their tribute to The X-Files which the game developers were fans of. It certainly fits the formula of an X-Files plot; a massive insane conspiracy is uncovered, only for all the evidence to disappear.

Some X-Files stories inadvertently ran up against Unfortunate Implications, as well, if I recall. Probably because those conspiracy's were decades old, so I guess it makes sense that the game would accidentally ape that.

Homeworld Deserts of Kharak takes the space strategy game to the ground in a move leaving many confused and covered in sand.