Reading through this thread, I’m curious about how other people here think of the distinction between latent and overt connections to the real world.
Specifically, I enjoyed Mass Effect 1 and 2* but I really didn’t like how that series has you playing as a supercop (even before I learned ACAB) but also that it’s constantly leaning on the idea that the government is a joke that cannot make decisions. Only individual heroic actors like Shepherd can really get anything done.
I don’t think the games wanted to say that, but those are absolutely latent messages they conveyed.
With Astral Chain, it’s overtly showing cops and you are a cop protagonist apparently because that’s just a person of virtue. This is certainly a red flag to be aware of for me (as is the controlling of other sentient beings), but I don’t really know what the game is yet? I’m primed to be aware and critical of the messages this game puts out but it doesn’t feel like it’s already compromised (unlike Cyberpunk 2077).
I have some detachment from things because I’m privileged, and the cops in my country don’t get to carry guns just because. So I wouldn’t be surprised if the existence of cops in this game is just more affecting for other people, but I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop before I can learn whether the underlying politics in this game are bad or not.
Shephard is 100% bad cop. Even as a paragon she’s a dick. It’s the one thing I dislike most, which is the ends justifies the means version of justice. And how any politician who is like “Maybe don’t murder everyone on your path to glory” is bad. But I still have a soft spot for bioeware games even though I kinda hate all of them. I would’ve forgiven all of those games’ flaws if they had a BFF option where me and Legion and Tali could’ve posted up in an engine bay being weird about ships and machines.
So the thing about all cops being bad is that, for me being black, I cannot relax in the presence of any police. So even with ‘good cops’ if they are having a bad day or I look like someone that is sleeping with their mom or whatever they might just shoot me and all of society will rush for reasons why it is deserved. It’s not that any particular cop might do something, it is that they are all allowed to do whatever they want. And then cop media reinforces their ability to do whatever they want.
Even with good shows like the Wire, the police are almost always dealing with criminals. We are missing out on the aspect of policing where a non criminal is minding their own business and is in a life or death situation because the police have shown up. Like say, maybe a 13 year old girl getting punched in the face for no reason? You just cannot know which police are going to be the ones who want to kill you. And that isn’t something that is really addressed. Because in all of these shows the police are still dealing with people the audience knows are either criminals or people engaging in activities that border on crime. There aren’t the story lines about cops beating homeless people to within an inch of their life for fun and getting away with it then getting awards from the police union for being awesome. As long as the thin blue line exist, as long as blue lives matter is a thing then no police in America can be trusted. There cannot be a good officer. No amount of playing basketball with black kids will change this.
This game is being made outside of that context so it’s not necessarily awful, but this game is being released in America and it’s good to at least think about the difference in perception.
I will play astral chain when it’s $20 in a year. I hope a lot of people buy it. I love these AA studios. I’m sad there are so few of them left.
I really appreciate all the insights in this thread so far. I’d like to offer my critique on Brooklyn 99 as cop media, as it seems to have come up in this thread a lot. Brooklynn 99 is a funny comedy that generally does a pretty good job of offering diversity and representation, not only in casting, but also in the stories. Rosa coming out as bi was very genuine and touching, and the show treats most characters with respect.
However, it’s not perfect. One example of this has stuck with me, and I’d like to share it here. Jake, the main character, arrests a former foe for a crime that he’s not sure if he committed. Obviously his captain is frustrated, and they have 48 hours to get the detained man to confess to the crime. They hold him for nearly two days trying to get him to confess. Eventually they find out that he did the crime, and it all ends well for the B99 crew. the problem is that Jake arrested this man without pretense, and it all worked out in the end. That’s how the law works. Cops (in America) can do whatever they want and it always works out. There are 0 consequences.
I’m not saying people can’t enjoy Brooklyn 99, but it’s important to be critical of cop media. Maybe Astral Chain will be good, maybe it won’t, but until I hear otherwise I’m going to be wary of it.
cop with an “x-baton” that turns into a gun, and a mindslaved enemy combatant… cant wait for my image or opinion of the police to change as a result of playing the game…
The fact that this comment is getting flagged is very strange to me, because I don’t understand why it would qualify for such a thing. There is nothing wrong with using “cop story” as a genre, any more than there is using “mecha pilots who are teens” or “doctors workin’ at the hospital and prolly who fuck”. Genres are the trappings of story but not the story itself. The problems of real life policing are in fact frequently the topic of the best kinds of media about cops!
The whole pre-release hype cycle thing reminds me of something Austin said recently on the pod about how “the first version of the game you play is when you hear about the game.” Sometimes on The Discourse it seems like not only are folks playing the game as soon as they’re hearing about it, but they’re already writing viral Medium critique posts about it and it’s just… a lot
The Waypoint forums thrive on discussion and often deal with complicated, weighty, and crucial issues. That said, while many of these issues are important and their resultant threads have insightful discussion, they are also prone to losing focus or becoming heated.
The relationship between marginalized communities and the police is a very complicated subject and needs to be treated as such. Making blanket statements that disregard or minimize the harm that law enforcement do to these communities is not conductive to discussing the subject in good faith. We ask that when you engage in discussions on complicated topics such as these, you keep the rules of the forum in mind; particularly Goal D and Rule 3.
I’m still not, like, super thrilled by the dev’s response, but I’m far more comfortable playing this than any game that puts you in the shoes of a “realistic” American soldier and tells you that you’re a good guy.
So I’ve seen the talking point in a number of threads that people are just writing games off without playing them and I think . . .I don’t like the tenor of that discussion. I see this as a ting that happens with online discussions a lot, where talks go from being about specific instances to more far spread generalizations and the initial talking point is lost.
There are very few people writing off Cyberpunk. I’m not sure anyone is writing off Astral Chain. There are some people dubious or curious about the nature of policing in this game and how that is portrayed. This has become a larger discussion on policing in video games and media, but I don’t see it as a discussion of cancelling astral chain based on the first thing we saw.
The same goes for Cyberpunk. There are a small number of people who are very wary of CD project red because of their history of behavior. They have seen something indicative of negligence at best and intentionally harmful at worst and object to it and want CDPR to provide meaningful responses.
Austin is correct about media where we first experience the media in our heads before ever interacting with it. But I think it is a leap to say that someone deciding not to play Cyberpunk because they’ve really had enough of CDPR as a company and what they’ve shown at E3 did not fill them with hope are being too short sighted. If you’re a member of a marginalized group and the only time you’ve appeared in a game’s marketing is as a joke you might not be inclined to wait. And honestly, how many times has a creator shown something messed up and said “wait for the whole story” and that been worth it? I really can’t think of one.
With Astral Chain, there are some legitimate questions to be brought up based on what was shown. There are people who are out on Pokémon as a concept. They find the premise to be questionable at best. When sword and shield is announced I expect them to ask questions like “hey, is this game still about enslaving wild animals and making them fight for your entertainment?” and the developers will say “yeah, that’s about it” and that person won’t play the game. With Astral chain someone might look at this and say “hey, it looks like you’re playing a cop who has the ability to conscript sentient lifeforms into your service? Is that it?” and the answer they receive will dictate their desire to play the game. I think it would be discourteous to say that this hypothetical person cannot post this opinion online because they are judging the game before release.
When you show something in preview you are giving the audience something to chew on and think about. You cannot control how they view what you show them, but you can control what you show them. We were shown a future urban fantasy cop game and some people had questions. I think that’s okay. I think we have to be careful of deeming a conversation non helpful because it has grown larger in scope. It starts to border on strawnmanning people. Or it minimizes the original conversation in favor of finding an easier target to attack. “look how silly these people are for writing off an entire game based on one little image” is an easy rallying cry. That sounds silly out of context. But the context of the original discussion is quite a different thing.
You’re absolutely right here. I know I was one of the people who was talking about these kind of pre-release judgements. I don’t want anyone to think that I’m trying to control how they form or express their opinions of these games.
I think where I was coming from, in part, was a defensive place because I’ve been excited for both this game and (regrettably) Cyberpunk 2077. To add to the books analogy I used before… sometimes you can judge a book by its cover. Sometimes you know in advance that the author is a bad person.
But I hadn’t considered until you brought it up that a game can be dismissed on the face of it simply because an element is inherently objectionable to a person. Like with your Pokémon example. It was short sighted of me.
I do still think looking at a whole work is more useful than examining a single component of it, but then that’s the thing with games… they’re assembled and consumed differently than other media. So maybe I need to rethink that position. Not everyone is going to want or need to play an entire game to be critical of it.
This game makes me think of Silent Mobius, which is an OVA with overt sexual undertones about a girl becoming a woman through made contact with a matriarchal police dealing with supernatural creatures in a cyberpunk, Neo tokyo setting.
It’s all visual, all style and kinda bombastick. It’s demons against police light-force of something christian-like, but is it black and white for being so ?
I wouldn’t give much importance to the word of the director though. Japanese rarely give clue to the intricacy of their work in interview and often their answer are formulaic or elusive.
Things have to be experienced so wait and see. Personnaly, I enjoy to gaze at the world through another culture’s lense and the astute ways it can spin something on its head, or simply show it to me through a different angle. Makes for a relaxing charm.
All in all the game looks really cool. And a hint I gathered from the trailer is that there might be analogy between this beast we keep chained to do our biding and ourselves, “chained to destiny”.
I agree with everything @Blacksentai says and I’ll add that when I was asking about what this game was doing with this subject matter I was genuinely curious as to what the intent was, I wasn’t taking issue with the subject matter. There is a place for big schlocky futuristic super-cop media, and sometimes I am into it.
Police throwing people in chains is just such loaded imagery that I wanted to know going in if they were embracing it, subverting it or if it was just a way to contextualize a cool game mechanic they had. From the Polygon interview it seems like it’s mainly the last one? In Japan this imagery isn’t charged (according to the director, I know nothing about Japanese law enforcement) so they chose an easy shorthand. Cops and robbers makes sense of their leash game.
