A relentlessly bleak strategy game.
The second game i've ever played that makes being a good person an actual dillema instead of mere aestethic
The main contradiction with this conceit is of course the core nature of city builders - you're a half-god, perched roughly 300m above the land, shaping an entire micro civilisation at will. It lends itself easily to megalomanical power trips, less so to empathy.
And indeed, the first time I've played Frostpunk, I approached it with the same detachment I always did with this genre. I choose the order path because frankly, it looked cool and it was more of a choice of aestethic than anything else. And as my utopia-where-we-execute-one-person-each-morning-to-keep-going reached the end and the game dared judge me for my actions...well, I felt preached to despite not choosing the religious path (heh).
"How dare you moralize to me after giving me the tech tree that led me to my orwellian little machine?"
Only on my second playthrough, did I realise that this is not so much a game of choices as a game about restraint.
The political tech tree isn't a tech tree, it is rather a downward spiral of dire emergency measures. I wouldn't say the game communicates this poorly, I think it's more of a problem of how we're conditioned from other games to treat these things. It is also very easy to assume that the moral choice is right there (As it often is with other games): Faith (good) or Order (bad) ?
But no, both faith and order paths start out well with actual morally good additions to your society and indeed the ending judgment is reasonable too and won't scold you for those early decisions like communal gatherings or religious food shelters. "You haven't crossed the line" the closing text informed me the second time around and I felt proud.
Yes, on my second path I picked faith. Albeit not a faithful man, I was quite disilusioned by any definition of "order" watching state crackdowns on various protests in the post-pandemic age. Moreover, while the situation in Frostpunk is much more dire than a low lethality pandemic, I still recalled pretty well the various "emergency measures" the state enacted then and how they all seemed to curtail criticism against the government moreso than help stop a pandemic.
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. " says Marx, and so I ventured into the path of faith.
Temples, churches, food shelters, shrines - they all felt harmless but soon after the people started nagging for religious police. And this time around, I refused to oblige. The perks were obvious, the effects all positive and it was precisely here that the game grabbed my empathy, it was here that I snapped out of my urge to complete tech trees and to adorn my city in badass banners of a perverted cause. It is here that other games fail at making moral choices meaningful. Nor Bethesda nor Bioware can resist the alure of rewarding goodness or of making the choice materially the same albeit with a different aestethic. Paragon and renegade is hardly a choice about morals or selfishness, it's a choice of wether you want to be a prick with red eyes or the hero the game practically begs you to be.
True moral choice is sacrifice, it's knowingly making things harder for yourself, missing out on things or skipping precious content. It's when the game offers little to no mechanical rewards for being a hero. When by accepting new refugees, you stack the odds against yourself, when you restrain yourself from slipping into despotism only for your people to be more miserable and more pissed. When you refuse to enlist children into the workforce and risk the future of your entire city. But you do it anyway. Because it is the right thing to do.
(To answer the opening sentence - the other game is Pathologic 2)
The main contradiction with this conceit is of course the core nature of city builders - you're a half-god, perched roughly 300m above the land, shaping an entire micro civilisation at will. It lends itself easily to megalomanical power trips, less so to empathy.
And indeed, the first time I've played Frostpunk, I approached it with the same detachment I always did with this genre. I choose the order path because frankly, it looked cool and it was more of a choice of aestethic than anything else. And as my utopia-where-we-execute-one-person-each-morning-to-keep-going reached the end and the game dared judge me for my actions...well, I felt preached to despite not choosing the religious path (heh).
"How dare you moralize to me after giving me the tech tree that led me to my orwellian little machine?"
Only on my second playthrough, did I realise that this is not so much a game of choices as a game about restraint.
The political tech tree isn't a tech tree, it is rather a downward spiral of dire emergency measures. I wouldn't say the game communicates this poorly, I think it's more of a problem of how we're conditioned from other games to treat these things. It is also very easy to assume that the moral choice is right there (As it often is with other games): Faith (good) or Order (bad) ?
But no, both faith and order paths start out well with actual morally good additions to your society and indeed the ending judgment is reasonable too and won't scold you for those early decisions like communal gatherings or religious food shelters. "You haven't crossed the line" the closing text informed me the second time around and I felt proud.
Yes, on my second path I picked faith. Albeit not a faithful man, I was quite disilusioned by any definition of "order" watching state crackdowns on various protests in the post-pandemic age. Moreover, while the situation in Frostpunk is much more dire than a low lethality pandemic, I still recalled pretty well the various "emergency measures" the state enacted then and how they all seemed to curtail criticism against the government moreso than help stop a pandemic.
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. " says Marx, and so I ventured into the path of faith.
Temples, churches, food shelters, shrines - they all felt harmless but soon after the people started nagging for religious police. And this time around, I refused to oblige. The perks were obvious, the effects all positive and it was precisely here that the game grabbed my empathy, it was here that I snapped out of my urge to complete tech trees and to adorn my city in badass banners of a perverted cause. It is here that other games fail at making moral choices meaningful. Nor Bethesda nor Bioware can resist the alure of rewarding goodness or of making the choice materially the same albeit with a different aestethic. Paragon and renegade is hardly a choice about morals or selfishness, it's a choice of wether you want to be a prick with red eyes or the hero the game practically begs you to be.
True moral choice is sacrifice, it's knowingly making things harder for yourself, missing out on things or skipping precious content. It's when the game offers little to no mechanical rewards for being a hero. When by accepting new refugees, you stack the odds against yourself, when you restrain yourself from slipping into despotism only for your people to be more miserable and more pissed. When you refuse to enlist children into the workforce and risk the future of your entire city. But you do it anyway. Because it is the right thing to do.
(To answer the opening sentence - the other game is Pathologic 2)
It's an ok game but it really didn't suck me in like other city builders.
great game
Este juego lo probe pirata y tras jugarlo un dato me di cuenta de tres cosas.
Primero, esta super guay. La vista cenital esta muy bien pensada con la forma de funcionar del juego. El arte es precioso y las decisiones morales y eticas son duras, aunque siempre hay que apoyar la explotacion infantil.
Segundo, que es un juegon con mucha complejidad, mas alla de la que yo me imaginaba, aunque estoy seguro de que con esfuerzo se puede hacer.
Y tercero, si algun dia lo compro, ya que, adivinen, tambien lo perdi, tal vez lo platinee.
Primero, esta super guay. La vista cenital esta muy bien pensada con la forma de funcionar del juego. El arte es precioso y las decisiones morales y eticas son duras, aunque siempre hay que apoyar la explotacion infantil.
Segundo, que es un juegon con mucha complejidad, mas alla de la que yo me imaginaba, aunque estoy seguro de que con esfuerzo se puede hacer.
Y tercero, si algun dia lo compro, ya que, adivinen, tambien lo perdi, tal vez lo platinee.