Days Gone quietly has some of the most messed up political/moral elements in a video game (full spoilers)

I just finished Days Gone and while I like the game and even liked the story and characters, there's all kinds of horrible political and moral issues that are never addressed. Now I get that this is a kind of dumb game about the zombie apocalypse and not Serious Art, but it kind of stunned me how casually a lot of this stuff got tossed out there.

• The game does a decent job of humanizing the zombies themselves. During the missions where you spy on the Nero scientists they talk about how the zombies retain some of their humanity and continue to do things like adorn themselves with jewelry, take care of their clothes, and have some traces of their humanity. The game also has a bunch of adolescent zombies who cluster together and generally aren't a huge threat and who I felt bad about splattering. When you finally meet up with Deacon's wife, Sarah, she is working on a cure for the virus. She picks a subject, Deacon retrieves it, Sarah tries to cure it but it dies, Deacon tells her to keep trying to cure the disease and not give up...and the issue is completely dropped and never raised again. So they humanize the freakers, make you believe a cure might be possible, and then expect you to kill literally thousands of them by setting them on fire with napalm. It's a very weird juxtaposition between "these zombies still have some of their humanity left" and "exterminate them all anyway."
• One of the main NPCs is a conspiracy theorist who has a lot of radio time spouting conspiracy theorists. These directly reference real life conspiracy theories around organizations like the trilateral commission and the U.N. Not only is he proven correct about a lot of his nutty ideas but he's also one of the nicest and most honest characters in the game. Your character tends to rant in response to the radio broadcasts so the game is ostensibly not endorsing the conspiracy theorists, but the conspiracy theory guy is definitely a good guy.
• You can rescue survivors and sell them into slavery. There are no consequences to this. Except money.
• Deacon blows up a dam to drown a cult known for taking hostages and forcing people to join. He kills a ton of innocent people or people who are there under duress. This is never mentioned.
• The game does a decent job with some women, like Sarah and Rikki, but has serious issues with others. Lisa's storyline is...horrible. There's a side mission where you rescue a female soldier and it's assigned to the storyline "protecting the weak" even though that's not true when you rescue men, and she's a soldier.
• At one point a character asks the protagonist why people are acting so badly in the post-apocalyptic world. Deacon then goes on to explain that in the U.S. there were millions of criminals already, which means that it's surprising that this kind of chaos didn't happen even before the virus because so many people had no respect for the law. This is...totally insane. First of all there's a huge difference between being a criminal and a murderous cannibal. There are lots of people who would sell drugs or steal a stereo system who would not kidnap a random person and torture them to death. Criminal is not a binary category. Secondly, the reason the U.S. has so many criminals is not because it has so many bad people, it's because we criminalize so much and there are a lot of deprived people without opportunities. Third, Deacon himself was a criminal! He was a 1% in a motorcycle club! Why is he parroting hyper conservative talking points about these issues? Jack, the leader of Deacon's MC and a man he reveres, was in prison! He and Boozer talk about visiting him. What the hell?
• Iron Mike the pacifist character recants his pacifism on his deathbed and endorses killing as many people as necessary to keep yourself "safe." This seems to be viewed as his eyes being opened to the truth. What the hell? The game seems to outright endorse not just violence but proactive extreme violence.
• On the final mission when Deacon goes to rescue Sarah he is ranting about how he is going to kill everyone in the militia and how they are all evil. This is really weird. He lived there and had cordial relationships with lots of people like the merchants and other random NPCs. He knows that the Colonel is charismatic but has been driven mad and is manipulating people. Up until very recently his wife was a true believer. Why does he now hate all these people and want them to die? He knows they are mostly decent people who are scared and looking for leadership and have a bad leader, but he wants to slaughter all of them. Then after the battle is over he seems perfectly content for the ex-militia people to rebuild under saner leadership so...

I realize that a lot of this is just inconsistent lazy writing, but by the end of the game I was wondering whether Deacon's the bad guy, which is not something I think the game expects you to ask.

Sounds like fun, thanks duder!

In the quick look Vinny called the slave driver his “Spirit Animal” and sold a survivor into slavery because he liked her more than the radio guy. I guess he missed the subtext lol.

It's not subtext later in the game. Characters outright call her a slaver. They are very mad at Deacon for having sold survivors to her in the past. He even sets a woman he rescues free because she doesn't want to go back to the camp, and then he tells the slaver that he told her to go back to the camp and is surprised she isn't back there. You still get the option to sell her slaves if you rescue survivors after that though.

The game very much gives me the sense that it's trying to enable a very specific type of power fantasy. That fantasy being the hyper-macho "man's man" conservative post-apocalypse dream where you are the superpowered living wall that stands between "good folk" and "everyone else." Am I accusing the game of specifically being designed with that kind of neocon death cult in mind? No, of course not, but it's certainly not avoiding those tropes.

It's the same kind of mindset you see in the preppers that fall into that "economic collapse end of days" niche. Buy up all the assault rifles you can, because when they turn savage, you'll need to stand up and fight to reinstate civilization. There are all kinds of uncomfortable themes that come along with that mindset, and almost all of them devolve into xenophobia or racism of some kind.

I'm not surprised that Days Gone ended up delving into weird conspiracy theories, misogyny, and casual attitudes toward slavery. When you build a story that is designed off the frame work of "Strong-willed white guy with a gun standing in the way of savage end-of-days chaos," everything else just tends to come along with it, whether intended or not.

And despite the potential hypocrisy of it, there is a pretty significant overlap between one pecenter biker types and confederate apologists, in my experience, even if it's only aesthetically.

@someoneproud: If your read of a piece of media about shooting your way through post-apoc America goes no deeper than "Bikes and zombies are cool," then I'm not surprised you consider my post to be "over analyzing." This is shallow stuff - if you really want to over-analyze this thing, I'll a lot more time and a lot more words.

It can be fun and fulfilling to think about media beyond the surface level. The ideas and cultural backgrounds that are behind a story's creation are just as critical to it's final form as any intentional creativity that went into it is.

Deacon is quite mad, It's not a great justification but so many of your points can be summed up with that. It doesnt excuse the shitty writing though.

It's funny how much Deacon hates Copeland (I think thats his name, its been awhile) outside of his goons fucking up his bike he didnt really do much wrong. I think his character is just a punching bag for people who hate real world conspiracy theorists (I dont listen to the radio so I cant name any) but it doesnt really work in a game where hes proven right most of the time. (as you said)

Also, Vinny came to the realization about that slaver in a podcast with Austin and felt quite ashamed about liking her. (she was a goofy character though, despite the bad shit she was doing)

I have no real knowledge of this game, and it is stupid for me to comment. But I might theorize and say this game casts with a wide net. A little something for everyone, with consistency not a real threat.

Also bikers in most established hardcore gangs tend to be very reactionary right. And racist. One example that sets the tone is say back in the 60's (that I have read about), many Hell's Angels were dropping acid and involved with the Haight Asbury scene. But when a big Vietnam war protest started, they (the Hell's Angels) 'somehow' found their way through the police cordon and assaulted the head of the march. The Oakland group also wrote, I do believe to Lyndon Johnson, wanting to be armed as a unit to fight. And it's been that way ever since. That, coupled with a penchant for speed (the snorting/geezing type) . That would lend itself to violent right wing values. Almost laughably, Putin in Russia now has a M.C. gang that very much fills the same function, dresses and does the same things.

But there are many clubs and independents who stay clear of all this, even if they don't identify as dirty liberals.

@boozak: Deacon is definitely insane, and everyone else has been...touched...by the things that have happened, but that doesn't really explain the wild inconsistencies or why he starts spouting conservative talking points about "criminals" at random at one point in the game.

I have a theory that the reason that Deacon responds so strongly to Copeland is that someone played the game and realized that there was a bunch of random right wing propaganda in it (probably intended as parody but not coming off as such) so they added Deacon's responses to make it clear the game wasn't endorsing Copeland's crazy broadcasts, but then you have something like Iron Mike's deathbed conversion, which has nothing to do with Deacon's sanity or lack thereof.

@siftypes and @bybeach who have not played the game have said they assume that it's kind of a macho right wing biker game in its politics but in general it's really not. Iron Mike the pacifist is clearly the best of the camp leaders you encounter, Rikki and Sarah (the two most significant female characters) are incredibly smart and competent women who don't need Deacon to solve their problems even if they do accept his help. The game deals with themes of disability and homosexuality pretty well, and in general seems to at least intend to be inclusive, and then it has this random stuff just thrown in seemingly out of nowhere. Maybe it's a clash between different writers on the game or maybe it's just sloppy and nobody thought it through (the game is sloppy in a lot of ways) but it was super jarring for me. If the game was actually generally right wing in its politics I would not have liked it but I would have understood it. Instead it's wildly inconsistent both in the 'game's' apparent perspective and Deacon's.

I didn.t say it's a essentially right wing biker game at all.

"I have no real knowledge of this game, and it is stupid for me to comment. But I might theorize and say this game casts with a wide net. A little something for everyone, with consistency not a real threat." sayeth bybeach" in post # 10

Big Socrates said- "Third, Deacon himself was a criminal! He was a 1% in a motorcycle club! Why is he parroting hyper conservative talking points about these issues?"

That little bit is what I was addressing. Also adding "But there are many clubs and independents who stay clear of all this, even if they don't identify as dirty liberals."

And I very much do agree with you about criminals (as defined by society) not being binary evil. Very much so.

Wish i could get into the game. Found it incredibly boring after a while and main character was just dull. Game felt slow and laborious without anything real exciting in it.