A few years ago i play so much military game and often play with NATO/US side because the technology of the weapon is more advanced than the “Opfor” side. Since i’m becoming aware with the NATO/US atrocity, i always play with the Enemy side.
There is one simulator game i played a lot back then called Falcon BMS which is a simulator game to fly an F-16 in the Korean War against the Mig and Sukhoi, after understanding about what the NATO/US does, i dont want to play as their side anymore.
Right now i play Arma but always on the Opfor side against the NATO. Fuck NATO and their Capitalism.
No, it does not sound like you have played the game.
You do not fight from Turtle Island exclusively. You can choose any continent to base out of, and mechanically speaking? I’d argue Africa’s bonus is the best and North America’s is the worst.
I understand your comparison of the narrative, but the problem is that, as stated prior, the entire international community is at play here. Your team is often composed of nationalities spanning the globe. The commander, who you play, is nameless, faceless, and this is intended to reflect upon who you are as a person, which could be anybody. It is not outside the imagination to have a queer black woman as a commander as a result, because it is whoever picks the controls up.
It may not cover past atrocities, but I don’t think it’s fair to suggest that as a fault rather than something that’s just completely out of bounds. Sort of like how making a major point about the unjustness of the French colonization of Algeria during a movie about rebelling in Vichy France just seems…tonally jarring at best. Outside of an ironic jab at the fact that what has been visited upon others is now being visited upon them, it still doesn’t justify Nazism’s grasp and the Holocaust as it occurred in France. Vichy France is what fueled French decolonization, but within the scope of the movie? It’s just not there unless you’re ready for four hours of context to do it justice, and I hate to say this, but not even in a society where we are all communists are you going to find people that are going to entertain that in something meant to pass the time. It’s just a more in-depth discussion for another time, and trust me, this sort of media does inspire it and that’s a good thing.
On that note, this is actually a common trope in scifi; that is, the inversion of the colonizer to the colonized. It started with the very first piece of media to cover alien invasion: “The War of the Worlds” by H. G. Wells. What XCOM lacks in comparison is a critique of colonialism and imperialism (or even a reference, but see the last point), but it does a very good indirect job of showing why humanity must unite beyond borders in such a world-shaking case (unlike what is occurring facing COVID and climate change; aka it is liberal idealism at heart, but that doesn’t change the point). For instance, paying uneven attention or only attention to short term gains leads to countries leaving the council, thus lowering support for your efforts and an actual material loss of resources toward the liberation of Earth. This works out in a fairly streamlined fashion due to it being a strategy game; you require advantages and there are easy to understand numbers tied to the mechanics and decisions to simulate these advantages. It has caused at least one (but likely more) instances of self-reflection on the question of “Why the hell aren’t we cooperating on a global scale?”
I overall feel you are thinking too narrowly about the genre of alien invasion. You’re not wrong on any count in some discussions, but my point is that this is not one of those discussions. You are missing the nuance of a detailed take-down of the game’s shortcomings, because you’re painting broad stroke criticisms without tackling actual aspects of the game itself. This is why I asked if you had played the game and am coming to the conclusion that you have not.