While many gamers react to critical analysis of video games with ‘it’s not that deep, bro’, I’ve always been a fan of social critique in the media I consume, and believe this heightens our engagement with the things we watch, read, and play. I’ve written about how the Knights of the Old Republic’s ground-breaki༒ng queer representation was formative for me, how HBO’s The Last of 𝕴Us being more political than 🐽the game is a net positive, and Everything Everywhere All at Once affected𝐆 me deeply as 𝓡a queer Asian person. It’s obvious t🤡hat I do, in fact, believe it is that deep.
These creators and artists are trying to tell us something, and as an audience, it does them and us a disservice when we try to reduce these things to their parts and disregard their messages. I think a lot about how the horror genre turns societal fears into metaphors. Zombies are often metaphors for conformity, representing the fear of the other. Godzilla represented fears of nuclear destruction. Vampires have often represented authority, power and selfishness – that’s what Arkane is doing with Redfall. Of course, players might choose to ignore this message and play the game as the vampire-slaying open-world shooter it is, but Harvey Smith, creator of Redfall, has been explicit in interviews about where the game comes from pol🎉itically.
At its core, Redfall is about a group of incredibly privileged elites who invade a small community in sleepy New England and warp it to their own needs, and the ordinary people who resist them - they gentrify it. The game’s vampires were created because of a biotech startup called Aevum, an evil Big Pharma corporation left unchecked to experiment at will. They were searching for immortality, and found it. To , Smith said, “They were vampires before they were vampires. They’re the 0.1 percent.” Smith even cites Therಞanos and Palantir as inspirations – Aevum fits right in with these biomedical, science-based startups. The members of the resistance, the player characters, all have their own motivations for fighting back. One, Layla, is a medical student in debt who volunteered for a medical trial with Aevum that went wrong, giving her powers.
That’s right, Redfall is about the evils of capitalism. The vampires are rich people who destroy communities for their own gain, and many of the enemies you meet are cultists who worship them, or people who have become vampires themselves. In a departure from ordinary vampire lore, in Redfall, you can’t accidentally turn into a vampire – you have to seek it out, even sacrifice for it. You have to beg to be turned into one, and they’ll probably want something from you in return; to , Smith said, “If you’re a vampire, and I want to be a vampire, I'm probably begging you. And you're probably like, 'Bring me your neighbour's kids'. And I bring you my neighbour's kid [in exchange].”
The way I see it, the cultists, the people who desperately want to be part of this upper class, are the hustle culture bros, the investors, the people who say you can stop being poor if you just work harder. But they’re also regular people who decided to throw in with the new masters, knowing it hurts the rest of their community. Smith was living in Europe finishing 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dishonored 2 when the UK voted for Brexit, right before Donald Trump won the US Presidential election. “And that’s when I felt it: ‘This signals the beginning of soꦰmething really wild,’” he said. “This is populism. This is like echoes of earlier times in history.”
“It’s on my ♔mind a lot,” he sa🙈id. “But I make video games. So what do I do?”
It’s motivations and themes like t🎐his that elevate wha🐼t would otherwise be an ordinary video game. Film criticism is often considered highbrow, but games criticism isn’t – many players of mainstream games are unwilling to engage with the deeper themes of what they consume, and think that doing so is reaching to find meaning that doesn’t exist - but it does. As a result, a lot of creators at major studios are unwilling to address the themes of their work publicly, as explicit as the game may be about them. Smith, thankfully, has a long track record of making games with strong political themes, and he’s not afraid to discuss them. It’s opened up a space for gamers and critics to discuss class, in a medium that encourages creators with larger platforms to shy away from frank discussions.
It’s particularly interesting that so much well-received modern media is revolving around the idea of the uber-rich, and widening class divides. Of course, people have been making art about class for centuries, but I can’t help but notice just how many have been lauded in the last few years – that may just be because class is now in the forefront of my mind. The Oscar-winning Korean film Parasite is an obvious example, with its gripping story about surviving poverty. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dishonored is about aristocrats profiting during the plague. The Menu, Triangle of Sadness, and The White Lotus all have class as a central theme. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Watch Dogs also touches on politics and inequality.
I’m also interested in how Redfall uses gentrification as a metaphorical premise for its plot. Gentrification has been a hot-button topic in the last few years – the influx of ♌higher-income workers into historically poorer neighbourhoods creates more demand for amenities, which when built then drive up property prices. This leads to residents of the neighbourhood being displaced because they can no longer afford rent. This disproportionately affects people of colour, which is why it’s been discussed so much – it’s not just a class issue, but it’s racially discriminatory.
Redfall represents this with its rich vampires displacing the town’s residents, and those residents having to take up arms and form their own resistance against these powerful creatures. You can tell from the game’s environmental storytelling what the town used to๊ be like and who lived there before these creatures came in and appropriated it for their own benefit. Nobody can say this is a stretch – it’s blatant and overtly political.
It’s important that we keep making and playing political games. Like Smith said to , “In a🌠ll media, there’s something a🌄bout the relationship to power in it. There’s something about people’s thoughts on their own mortality. There’s something about the relationship between people and the people they love. It’s built into everything, and it kills me that sometimes people are like, ‘What if we didn’t have any of that?’ What do you mean!? How do you talk about anything?”
Yes, Redfall is a shooter. It’s a co-op game. It’s meant to be fun. But it can be all those things, and still say something more about the world we live in. It can be tempting to play the game just for the game, but the games we play deserve our attention, and our sincere engagement. Redfall is ‘woke’, and games having a social message to put across should not detract from your enjoyment. Video games are powerful storytelling mediums, and games that embrace their ability to criticise modern culture are putting in the work to elevate the entire medium. Do not avert your e🀅yes – pay attention. This matters.