The initial premise of the game is that people need to be reconnected. This game, on it's surface, advocates for "bridges not walls," with strong utopian overtones. The plot undermines this message as much as it supports it, showing that connectedness has good and bad sides. At the end, the entire premise of traveling west to reconnect America is revealed to be a ruse. Sam is being used by Amelie. She wants Sam to connect everyone so that she can commence the final extinction.
While it looks like on the surface, this game is saying, in simple fashion, that we all need to be connected, it's not that clear throughout the game. It shows that by being connected, we are able to acquire more resources, but that we are also more vulnerable. There is talk about the "price of progress" in some emails that push this further.
Sam never shows much interest interest in reconnecting America. Even at the very end, receiving accolades from the president, he walks away from that profession. Bridges and Amelie are misleading Sam to "work for the greater good" but really they have their own nefarious plans. Sam turns his back on this. What looks like a lofty goal "to make the world a better place" is really just the elites framing their success as good for everyone. "Make the world a better place" is a meme that big tech companies use. They push the idea that connecting everyone is a universally good thing, when really it's more complicated. I also see this game as questioning big institutions as a whole that act like good citizens. I can't help but to see this as a reaction to corporations being woke when really they don't care, which in light all this Hong Kong controversy, is timely.
Sam turns his back on the larger society to become a dad. This looks like a rejection of national or global connectedness in effort to regain interpersonal connections. The Cliff storyline supports this too. The elites in the government take away his child (and possibly kill his wife to create a BB, I don't remember if that's why happened or if she died naturally) in the name of progress. I see this as a statement that the desires of people in government and big business is antithetical to the people. Large institutions gain in tearing families apart, and what actually is heroic is pulling back from the culture and focusing on family.
This game makes a statement about people in power. It's funny that the president that wants to build bridges is as evil as the one that wants to build walls. There is some back story that there was a Trump like president that proceeded Bridget. Bridget seems more like a Clinton type of president. This game a massive rejection of neoliberalism.
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