I don't know if this thread is still active but I'll throw this in anyways.
Recently, a youtuber called Gunmetal Stug (Prior to this, he mostly focused on his abridged series for the anime Girls Und Panzer) released a video essay about Ready or Not. Low and behold its about wether RoN is "copoganda"
https://youtu.be/8-38sIVdv4k
The video is 37 mins of shit that could've been condensed down to less than 20.
- The first 15 or so mins start out ok, comparing the mechanics and settings of SWAT 4 and RoN. In this section he also mentions the "militarizatation of the police" which already told me how this was gonna go. He also goes over the environmental storytelling which he praises for its effectiveness with its subtlety. Speaking of subtlety, he ends this section by stating how RoN is a "subtle form of copoganda".
This is when everything starts to morph into "cop bad" territory. This entire section lasts to the end and is
very stretched out so I'll just give some highlights:
-
- States that RoN serves as a fantasy for ethical policing
- References to Spec Ops the Line. Im guessing it was to relate to his "power fantasy" point but it more shows his "US bad" left bias as the game more focused on the player themselves and not the American justice system.
- States that the game is, "a vehicle for fascists to live out their twisted fantasies" at around 17:10 right after saying that he didn't believe people were incapable for seeing subtely in games point to some theme or something.
- Right after this he then goes on to say that RoN and SWAT 4 subvert the narrative by penalizing you for killing civvies, etc. Then later at around 22 mins states that he sees RoN as still a fantasy as the police are doing their job to support a "fundamentally broken judgement system". Then states that, "the judgement system is not built to enforce laws or justice". The lefty bias and flip flopping was really starting to kill me at this point.
- This sperg goes on for another 4 mins.
- In the "advice to Void" section he wanted debriefs to be subtle yet almost immediately contradicting this by saying he wanted these debriefs to give "concrete evidence" about their impact or something.
- In the "advice" section another one of his points was to "face off against Christians" in the cult mission (30:40) and then goes off on Far Cry 5 for not directly criticizing Christians because of course he does.
- Comment section is either people calling him a reddit tard/ Kotaku Journalist and giving critiques or other lefities completely agreeing with him and parroting the MSM narrative. Guess which ones got liked by him.
TLDR:
Although he did have
some points about the state of police in the US. Its completely overshadowed by the "cop bad, white man bad," narrative he was going for from the contradictory statements to the doomer - lefty bias. He let his emotions and beliefs clog up whatever he was going for and it turned into a sperg.