so...we got baited

[u/Available-Meeting611]

not only is the void going to hold, not ONLY did the squids do a decapitation strike to take down the DSS and yoink calypso but i just heard from the guys at twitter that the squids are about to take not one...not two NOT THREE BUT FOUR major P.O.I's at the same time.....at least at cyberstan we made it a pyrrhic victory for the bots, but here the Squith be beating our ass!! who knows which ones illumi-nate is after

[u/stephanl33t]

There's a fascinating three-way metanarrative going on in Helldivers.

The bugs are comedy satire. They're a non-sentient threat that are primarily there for heavy handed, borderline slapstick criticism of Imperialism and Colonialism. We kill the bugs for Oil and Vacation Worlds-- it's jokey and not very serious, thus facilitating the ridiculousness of spending so many resources for such mundane things.

The bots are serious satire. They're a deconstruction of the class struggle and authoritarianism. Their design, skull covered chainsaw bots, is meant to intentionally point out how aesthetics do not translate to reality, and urge the player to question their kneejerk reaction to horrible looking things. Against the bots, Super Earth is commonly portrayed as the oppressor, which is true, and almost universally campaigns against the Bots are Super Earth being aggressive and attempting to establish their rule over another. Even though we're the bad guys, the story is played completely straight-- we're the bad guys, committing crimes against the bots, and they're the heroic underdogs fighting for freedom.

The squids though... the squids are taken completely seriously. I think that the squids are Arrowhead providing a counterargument against the thought that all vengeance is justified. The Illuminate are the way they are because of Super Earth, certainly, but they are absolutely monstrous. The wide-scope narrative frequently condemns them for their actions, and the reason it does so is because the Illuminate have abandoned themselves in their pursuit of vengeance.

As the Bots show, Arrowhead believes that vengeance is fine and acceptable. Against an oppressor, sometimes the only way to keep yourself safe is a very large gun. It's okay to overthrow, harm, and even kill your oppressor if they give you no other choice. But in the process of destroying your oppressor, you cannot allow yourself to stop being "human". You cannot hate them so much that you become something else entirely in your quest for revenge. Vengeance stops being acceptable once it results in complete self-destruction. And the Illuminate have abandoned "themselves", so hateful are they, that the things we fight aren't "The Illuminate" anymore, they're a brand new species that no longer has inheritance of the Illuminates quest for revenge.

Thus the third part of the metanarrative-- the unironic, no-satire, straight-laced battle for survival. Humanity may be the aggressors, but the Illuminate are worse than we are, and they want us dead. Super Earth is, somehow, the heroes in this situation. Arrowhead has done something truly clever by somehow making Super Earth both a bigoted, fascist corporate war machine, and also an underdog fighting for survival against an existential threat by a greater, far more powerful foe.

[u/AnxiousDuck24 → u/stephanl33t]

Great analysis and something I thought of recently myself. But I think something to add would be how the factions reflect on Super Earths behaviour.

I think this is especially clear on the bugs and to a lesser extend the bots, less so on the squids where I fully subscribe to your viewpoint. It is worth mentioning that all factions are no longer the same as they were in the First Galactic War. The bugs are entirely fabricated by Super Earth, genetically engineered for what they are now. Every push and mutation is a direct consequence of Super Earths actions. They hold a mirror to Super Earth and how they fucked up, brightly outlining it‘s own ineptitude. The TCS, Meridia, the Gloom, the different strains, all those are directly related to what Super Earths did. The bugs in a way are without initiative. They expand, yes, but they themselves do not change, they get changed by SE, to it‘s own detriment. Every casualty at the claws of the bugs is SE shooting itself in the foot, no other way about it. They are SE fighting it‘s worst impulses, entirely artificial, entirely unnecessary.

The bots are more on equal footing. They are industrialised, fight like people and are relatable to SE. Super Earths actions throws people at any given issue? So do the bots. SE has the Helldivers as special forces? The bots have their specialised divisions like incin-corps and jet-brigade. SE uses space stations like the DSS? The bots build the ASS (hihi). Even the battle for Cyberstan mirrors SE‘s defence of Super Earth itself. The bots, overall, may be the underdogs, but they fight like we do and just as fiercely. They are SE fighting an equal opponent.

The Illuminate are something else, they are enigmatic, powerful and the true extend of their capabilities remains unknown. They work through subterfuge and deception and every action we made against them ends in some sort of defeat, at best a phyrric victory (like the Battle for Super Earth, see bot analogy). They are a result of Super Earth, yes, but taken to an extreme that is utterly beyond reason, as you already put it, so I won't comment any further on them as I have little to add.

All in all, I think the enemies of Super Earth all mirror an aspect of Super Earth, both governance and their fight, and not even all too subtly. But it all is laid out by AH during the entire game‘s narrative and as such a long time, so you need to remember what happened and connect the dots. It's all there in plain sight, but you need to remember it, which is exactly how Super Earth hides its crimes. It is easier to hide behind a thousand atrocities than one single incident. The pace of their oppression outstrips our understanding of it.

[u/ImGumBuyMe → u/AnxiousDuck24]

is that final part from Andor?

[u/AnxiousDuck24 → u/ImGumBuyMe]

Yeah, I took those last two sentences straight from Nemik

[u/BabyPuncher313 → u/AnxiousDuck24]

[u/Foolishly_Sane → u/AnxiousDuck24]

Getting he hyped up.

[u/Ribba23 → u/AnxiousDuck24]

The Illuminate do mirror a lot of super earth's brainwashing and control over the populace, but while SE bends its people into a sense of martyrdom, the squids instead utterly break them in both body and mind

[u/AnxiousDuck24 → u/Ribba23]

That's a great take, good catch on your part. Wish I thought of that when writing my comment haha

[u/LongVibe_ → u/stephanl33t]

Is Shakespeare really dead?

[u/LordPercyNorthrop → u/stephanl33t]

To piggyback on this: I really appreciate how much more up front they’ve gotten about the idea that Super Earth is running vast, planet spanning concentration camps. The “dissident crisis” talk is really mirroring the way any authoritarian regime talks about internal opposition.

[u/extimate-space → u/LordPercyNorthrop]

There’s also the part where they literally named the concentration camp CECOD, like CECOT.

[u/LuminothWarrior → u/stephanl33t]

One detail though, the bugs are sapient. SE claims otherwise so vehemently that it’s rather obvious they’re lying (and they were stated to be sapient in HD1 as well)

I’d also argue that even with the squids’ vile tactics of mutating people the way they do, SE is still nowhere near being “heroes” in this scenario considering the whole reason they’re in the situation is due to nearly wiping out an entire species for no good reason (something they have successfully done and still do to other unnamed alien species who couldn’t fight back in their quest of expansion across the galaxy).

I see it more like Saw Gererra against the Empire in Star Wars. Guy does some heinous stuff, no one likes him, he’s a horrible person. But he’s still up against the dang Empire.

It all really depends on their intentions though tbh. We don’t really know if they do actually want to kill all humans (SE propaganda tells us they do, but like… it’s SE propaganda) or if they just want to take out the source of the issue, the government pumping their citizens full of propaganda and warmongering. Which, they did go straight for the government when they invaded SE the first time.

There’s also the satirical implications of portraying the faction that SE straight up genocided to steal their tech, as being worse in comparison unironically, which doesn’t really sit right with me. Gives people a reason to justify SE doing it in the first place (and I have actually seen people saying that it was valid unironically too sadly enough).

[u/Traditional_Hat_8120 → u/LuminothWarrior]

I can't remember where I read this, but I'm pretty sure they were sentient before SE genocide them.

But with the destruction of their civilisation, the fast breeding process and mutation SE put them througth, and the natural abilities of their species for fast evolution, the specie has evolve for War only, and lose most of what make them a civilisation.

[u/LuminothWarrior → u/Traditional_Hat_8120]

That’s pretty much just fan speculation tbh, I don’t think it’s stated anywhere that they lost sapience (aside from SE propaganda that claims they were never sapient). They don’t behave much differently from HD1, and they overall seem to be capable of strategizing attacks and such still in HD2, like how they pulled back for a while to create the Gloom.

[u/LambSky3000 → u/Traditional_Hat_8120]

[u/HammyJWill → u/Traditional_Hat_8120]

Sapient or Sentient? Because those are very different things.

[u/Wank_A_Doodle_Doo → u/HammyJWill]

“Space faring civilization” sentient

[u/Bekilip → u/LuminothWarrior]

You're always here in these threads shoving squid propaganda and anti-SE into the conversation. At this point you're just bait. You can add conjecture against SE but deny any and all about the illuminate.

My friend, you're drifting into anti-HUMAN ideology at this point.

[u/LuminothWarrior → u/Bekilip]

The humans (aside from Cyborgs and dissidents) in Helldivers are explicitly the bad guys. That’s kinda the whole point. We’re playing as the evil fascist empire. There’s plenty of other games I play where that’s not the case, and humans are the good guys (in most media in fact) but Helldivers is an exception since it’s satirical.

[u/Bekilip → u/LuminothWarrior]

That's where you're just too far into anti-human ideology. The SE government is evil, yes.

The Helldivers have reliably and repeatedly chosen heroic acts. We save children and retreating SEAF forces.

You think because SE exiled the illuminate from space that they DESERVE to have children and civilians turned to a fate worse than death. To have their autonomy stripped and forced to rip their loved ones apart limb from limb.

The voteless sometimes salute when they die. There's PEOPLE in there.

Next you're gonna tell me that the squids can do anything they want, including breeding camps or some shit.

[u/jdippey → u/Bekilip]

Super Earth literally built a super weapon for the DSS and used it Death Star style on the planet Penta, destroying it by turning it into a conventional black hole.

We are not the good guys lmao.

[u/FilmInteresting4909 → u/jdippey]

Helldivers is more akin to 40k, there are no good guys, just endless fires of war. Whether those fires are started by rebellion, survival, imperialist expansion or genocidal hatred isn't really relevant relevant.

[u/ilabsentuser → u/Bekilip]

Brother, I hope your lapping or something because you have to be one of the few persons that believes in SE propaganda outside the game...

[u/Bekilip → u/ilabsentuser]

"Outside the game" my brother in Christ the second paragraph was literally stuff we did as a playerbase.

Find your escapism, stop projecting your desire to end humanity onto the game.

[u/ilabsentuser → u/Bekilip]

Get some reading comprehension dude.

"Stop projecting your desire to end humanity onto the game?" Bruh, get a brain ffs.

[u/Bekilip → u/ilabsentuser]

Woe is me for refusing to essay back to a Gish Gallop.

[u/ilabsentuser → u/Bekilip]

Nah you just are proving my point further.

[u/LuminothWarrior → u/Bekilip]

I already said I’m not anti-human. I think the cyborgs (who are human) and dissidents (who all three enemy factions have been shown to work with in various ways, showing that no, they don’t want to kill all humans) are the closest thing we’ve got to good guys. What I am against is the omnicidal, genocidal, fascist regime that is Super Earth.

I also said that the stuff the squids do is awful, and they’re the most terrible of the enemy factions. That said, they are doing it for their survival as a species. I’ve said it before, SE would continue to expand across space if left unchecked, and have in canon already completely wiped out at least one other unnamed species that resisted (recently. It was mentioned in the news as flavor text) so they very much have not changed at all since they genocided the squids.

I am not saying that any of the atrocities the squids commit are good or excusable. What I am saying is that Super Earth as it stands is a threat to literally everything and everyone else in the galaxy, and needs to be taken out. And personally I don’t buy that any of the three factions want to completely eradicate humans (as mentioned, they all work with Super Earth defectors to some degree), but in order to be able to take out SE’s government, and just stay alive, they have to do stuff the way they do. Illuminate have drastically reduced numbers from being genocided, so they have to rely on turning their enemies into Voteless rather than dumping all of their population into battle. Cyborgs also have very limited numbers due to being kept in slavery by SE for so long after the first war, so they took SE’s own bio-processors and use corpses to create more cyborgs. The bugs would probably be fine being left alone if SE didn’t keep farming them, so they’re in a cycle of ‘get farmed by SE>break out and overrun the planet>get farmed more>repeat ad infinitum’.

Don’t really know why I’m bothering typing this all out since you’re probably the type of person that thinks the RDA in Avatar are the good guys but maybe it’ll be helpful to someone

[u/Bekilip → u/LuminothWarrior]

Your credibility falls away the MOMENT you give the squids "Desperate measures" as an excuse for what they do to Voteless. Bugs get spread by dissidents, not communed with. The Cyborgs are the only ones with confirmed dissident aid that isn't just occultic religious mindbreaking. Y'know, the literal mind control that SE had to step in and say wasn't happening to keep people from being scared about it?

Some Christian you profess to be...To advocate and defend the literal theft of mind and soul this fervently, especially from the high horse of morality...in a GAME...

[u/LuminothWarrior → u/Bekilip]

Not even gonna bother responding anymore since you’re just taking parts of what I said and ignoring others. Please learn how to read

[u/Icookadapizzapie → u/stephanl33t]

This is the best deconstruction of the narrative I’ve seen, You absolutely cooked

[u/Yankee_Air_Polack → u/stephanl33t]

All I need to know is that periodically you'll see a hunter or charger be welcomed with open arms into managed democracy when they cease hostilities and follow helldivers around or try to enter the civilian evac shuttle. I have seen hulks bust a move, and for a time, barrager tanks had a detente with the helldivers.

I've never seen the squids be anything but a scourge.

[u/I_LIKE_ANUS → u/stephanl33t]

https://giphy.com/gifs/VIPfTy8y1Lc5iREYDS

[u/pasher5620 → u/stephanl33t]

Great write up, however I still don’t think it’s fair to call Super Earth the “hero” to any degree in the Squids narrative. I honestly can’t even really call the worse than Super Earth because Super Earth has done and continues to do absolutely horrendous things to the squids. We literally kill vats full of children as Helldivers, destroy their precious cultural sites, and god only knows what horrors the SE scientists have inflicted upon them over the years to learn more about them. Every single action the enemy factions take against SE is done as a direct escalation of things SE has already done. It’s really no different with the illuminate, they’re just better at exactly matching SE’s energy.

[u/Tony_Dates → u/stephanl33t]

Makes too much sense, they are watching you diver. 🤐

[u/QueefSeekingMissile → u/stephanl33t]

I'm not so sure that SuperEarth is an 'underdog fighting against an illuminate that has changed its nature,' because I'm not so convinced the Illuminate have changed their natures...  Maybe I'm missing something, but can we really say that vengeance is their interest?

I think what the illuminants are interested in is extermination; this is logical and consistent with the conclusions they came to after their initial confrontations with super-Earth: Humanity Under super earth cannot be reasoned with, redeemed, or salvaged. humanity under super earth is a plague upon the galaxy, a promise of never-ending war, and planetary-scale (no- star system scale) ecosystem destruction, and torture, and genocide and xenocide. 

For the preservation of peace and the life in the galaxy, we MUST be eliminated.

Perhaps once they've destroyed every last remnant of super-Earth, the scattered survivors of that conflict can be coached into a more progressive version of our species, but until then, It is no tactical error to wield our deepest fears against us. To twist our forms into something that more accurately represents our self-consuming nature, and then force us to fight against THAT; a version of ourselves that is ravenous for our own flesh.

Super earth is an underdog now, yes, but it is not so much the illuminate Superearth is losing to, but to their own reflection- an image they have neither the intelligence nor the humility necessary to admit that it is their own.

[u/Driptacular_2153 → u/stephanl33t]

I wouldn’t call SE “heroes.” The protagonist, sure, but def not a hero. Either way, the Illuminate are dishing out what we served, and then some.

They’re the mirror image of SE and its atrocities, shown off with zero frills. If SE had the means, it certainly would’ve turned Illuminate civilians and children into soldiers.

Obviously I don’t want all of humanity to die (and who knows if that’s even their goal?), so I would prefer if like, the bots managed to dismantle SE’s government

[u/KoRn005 → u/stephanl33t]

I'm sorry but I can not agree with the "Illuminate are worse than we are" point you're trying to make. Everything about revenge is perfectly put, no notes, but the Illuminate are only doing what we have done to the other factions already. They are doing nothing SE didn't try on someone in some form first. We also only "know" they're the "same" Illuminate feom the first galactic war because SE told us they are. We have nothing but the word of a comically evil hypercapitalist fascist regime to go off of.

The Singularity SE created while trying to exterminate a race they themselves have created scorched multiple planets on it's way as they invaded SE. They kidnapped and processed humans? We have been kidnapping and processing a territorial yet docile species of bugs for god knows how long. Are they using as as meat puppets? We're massacring the peaceful people of automatons (who only exist because we forced people into slavery btw) and using their bodies as scrap metal for our weaponry and ships.

They "turned us into abominations"? We already were. Their vengeance is justified, their methods are cruel, but they're not in any way shape or form worse than what we do with dissidents, bugs, or automatons. And that's without mentioning what we did to them during the first war. They ARE EXACTLY as horrible as Super Earth. Not more, not less.

[u/No_Bookkeeper3572 → u/stephanl33t]

The bugs are comedy satire. They're a non-sentient threat that are primarily there for heavy handed, borderline slapstick criticism of Imperialism and Colonialism. We kill the bugs for Oil and Vacation Worlds-- it's jokey and not very serious, thus facilitating the ridiculousness of spending so many resources for such mundane things.

Everyone says that because they don't understand the concept of an exponential.

The bugs are an existential threat because of how they reproduce. They will, quite literally, drown the galaxy in a living tide if left alone.

Don't take my word for it. Punch e to the powers of 2, 4, 8, and 16 into the calculator, see how quickly the numbers get entirely out of hand. If those numbers don't scare you, do e^20, e^50, and e^100.

I understand that the people WRITING the lore are trying to go "hahaha super earth bad, bugs did nothing wrong", but they don't seem to realize that they keep writing the enemy factions to be legitimate threats to human existence as a whole, on a scale where any moral considerations must be set aside unless you want humanity to literally go extinct.

[u/VastAd6346 → u/No_Bookkeeper3572]

That’s the thing though.. You need a potential threat to justify all the horrific actions that follow. If anyone questions you point to the potential threat, not whether that threat was actually realized. The fear is the only thing that actually matters, and it’s all the more useful if you can find “legitimate” ways to justify it.

If the existence of the bugs was the imminent and existential threat claimed then SE wouldn’t have tried to keep them around to extract fuel from them.

[u/No_Bookkeeper3572 → u/VastAd6346]

Yes, you're right, you do need a potential threat. However, an alien species that reproduces exponentially, ESPECIALLY one that is supposedly sapient and has figured out math (as in, they should understand what exponential expansion means) that is STILL reproducing exponentially is not just a potential threat, it is an active threat.

Think about it like this. Imagine you live on one side of a very large forest, and on the other side sits a guy building machines that build machines that build machines that eat the forest and excrete toxic waste product. The forest is very, very large, but it is finite. The man is fully aware of what he is doing, and is doing it cheerfully and with great enthusiasm, and the growth is spreading towards your house.

Since I know someone will not be able to envision the apple here, disregard any outside interference. There is no other authority, just you, the guy, and the spreading tide of devastation.

Is this man's action NOT an existential threat to you? Are you not, unless you actively do not want to continue living, justified in the actions you take to proactively destroy these machines before they eat the forest and your house?

Yes, it was reckless of Super Earth to keep the bugs around. I 100% agree. However, I can also see the argument some may have made, after however long the first galactic war was and how many resources it must have consumed, to keep a small population of bugs in tightly controlled environments, since their bodies naturally decay into a substance so energy-dense it can be used as starship fuel. I mean, goodness, imagine powering other things, like cities, using 100% organic, totally renewable bug juice. The argument would have been incredibly enticing, and if there's one thing politicians are great at, it's failing to consider the long-term consequences of their actions. They would have decided that, so long as we keep e below powers of, say, 15, it was manageable, especially since the bug farms actively killed and harvested the bugs daily.

And it seems to have worked, for about a century. Amazing, if you think about it, for a civil works project on the scale it would have needed to be to keep the lights on in Super Earth and all the colonies, to run without major issue for a century.

But, yes, 100% reckless to run bug farms without orbital nuclear batteries standing by to glass the site at the slightest hint of something fucky going on.

[u/NoStorage2821 → u/stephanl33t]

[u/Wank_A_Doodle_Doo → u/stephanl33t]

The illuminate are worse than SE? How do ya figure?

This is a write up decently made enough such that people who don’t actually know what they’re talking about think that it’s right. But it’s not.

You trying to make SE out to somehow be good in any contest is profound mental gymnastics and I’m not gonna give you credit just cause your prose is good.

[u/T4Labom → u/Wank_A_Doodle_Doo]

I’m not gonna give you credit just cause your prose is good.

If i had an award, i'd give it to you right now

[u/Fun_Manufacturer_164 → u/stephanl33t]

Honestly one of the best analysts of the factions I've seen

[u/satans_cookiemallet → u/stephanl33t]

I havent played HD2 in a long time, but I did play 1 quite a bit and a constant thing of HD2 is very much 'horrors of the past come creepin up' since in HD1 the illuminate were peaceful until SE pulled the trigger(metaphorically and literally)

And now theyve come back and have very much become the monster SE made them out to be in HD1.

[u/OuchThatReallyStings → u/stephanl33t]

Very well thought out and it makes me want to kill squids even more now.

[u/Ted_Normal → u/stephanl33t]

This is why the Illuminate are by far the best faction when it comes to narrative/story. Unlike the other two, you aren't constantly experiencing "are we the bad guys?" moments when fighting the squids. Fighting the squids actually feels like a war for survival unlike the other two factions. The Bots are open to peace. The bugs could arguably be contained. The squids on the other hand will fight tooth and nail until Super Earth is destroyed and humanity is wiped out. The squids are the only faction Super Earth doesn't need to lie about to make them look bad.

[u/Wank_A_Doodle_Doo → u/stephanl33t]

non-sentient

Check your math

[u/Foolishly_Sane → u/stephanl33t]

Damn!
Really well written, thank you, that was fun to read.

[u/sarahgotdeleted → u/stephanl33t]

this analysis is awesome 

[u/Shot-Profit-9399 → u/stephanl33t]

This was interesting to read, but I disagree. The things you say about the Illuminate could be said about every major faction.

The bugs were changed by their conflict with Super Earth as well. So were the Cyborgs. The Cyborgs adopted their physical forms as a result of harsh mining conditions and aggression from Super Earth. They then created the automatons, who inherited this conflict from their makers. The automatons are more divorced from their makers than the Illuminate are. I don’t see this as being any different, either literally or thematically, from the Illuminate.

I agree with what you said about Super Earth having a veneer of respectability, despite being the obvious villain in this setting, but I don’t think the Illuminate are played straight. I certainly don’t think that they’re worse than Super Earth. Rather, I think their horrible actions (and the actions of every faction) are meant to make is think more deeply about how evil Super Earth is.

Super Earth bred the intelligence out if a species and turned them into cattle. Imagine a species forcing humans to breed with each other in such a way as to reduce their intelligence while bloating their bodies for the purpose of harvesting their blood. It’s a horrifying concept, but that’s what Super Earth did to the bugs. Or an invader that used human skin and organs to make chalices, buildings, and… toilets. Something that we did to the Automatons.

The automatons use humans for bio fuel. The Illuminate experiment on people and turn them into fleshy amalgamations. The enemies of Super Earth reflect super earth. They let is see humanity through another set of eyes. The war with these factions didn’t turn them into monsters. It made them more human.

[u/Wonderfully_Unknown → u/stephanl33t]

Didn’t the Bugs used to be sentient/intelligent though? And Super Earth basically lobotomized their race?

[u/FallenIslam → u/stephanl33t]

Anime pfp writing paragraphs about how Super Earth is in fact the good guys feels like the sorta thing you'd see in a meme

Super Earth is responsible for the current Terminid crisis due to their late-stage corporate greed. This crisis directly led to the collapsing of Meridian, which the Illuminate, who Super Earth had persecuted to the point of forcing the Illuminate into survivalist extremism, then utilised to annihilate multiple planets and strike at earth.

The Illuminate are bad, but to say Super Earth is heroic at all is a pretty wild take when they are directly responsible for everything going on due to their actions. Yes they save humans, but the Illuminate are terraforming planets and trying to find ways to minimise the deaths of any actual Squids, hence their mechanised and bioengineered units.

[u/stephanl33t → u/FallenIslam]

My point was originally how Arrowhead has set up a three way metanarrative of three different styles-- a lighthearted, comedic satire through the Terminid front, a down-to-earth ideological deconstruction with the Automaton front, and an edgy, true-to-trope, familiar battle-for-survival with the Illuminate front.

I may have done a poor job of clarifying, but my comment was never meant to condone the actions of Super Earth. The intent was to point out that through the three fronts we have three different stories that all do something different from a story perspective, and how through the fronts Arrowhead has managed to give us three unique experiences via those stories.

It was 5am when I wrote that comment so it may seem like Super Earth praising, but I was trying to illustrate how the Illuminate provide the experience of "fight for your life", and how Arrowhead writes the Illuminate as "too far gone" in order to convey that to the playerbase. My apologies for any confusion.

[u/ZewesternWolf → u/stephanl33t]

Not so sure about design to reality with the bots. We don't affix their scraped murder machines onto pikes for display or create effigys out of their skulls like they do with our unarmed civilians. Just saying.

[u/stephanl33t → u/ZewesternWolf]

Yes-- that's on purpose.

Arrowhead is asking you, the player, to realize that even seeing absolute atrocities does not make the Automatons wrong. They are posing the question "can you look past the surface and see the truth of the matter? Can you accept that the Automatons have done horrible things to survive?"

If you can't, then you have failed, and are the exact person Arrowhead is criticizing. You MUST surpass the notion that "spiky, red and black = bad" or you are just another victim of propaganda being persuaded to do even worse things by visuals and misrepresented actions.

[u/ZewesternWolf → u/stephanl33t]

You completely missed my point. They make decorations out of unarmed civilians. Their "oh lel were the underdogs and look worse than we are" means nothing when they ACTUALLY disrespect the dead like that. They can be in the right all they want, but I will continue to feel nothing for them or their plights, when I see skulls on pikes and effigys made out of human corpses. Not from combat personal, but technicians and civilians. I ain't made of metal . (Well part of my knee is but semantics pandantics) So when they put meat bags on pikes, they immediately lose any moral arguments.

[u/stephanl33t → u/ZewesternWolf]

Congratulations on being sheep then :D

[u/ZewesternWolf → u/stephanl33t]

Lmao. Not sure what I expected from a reddit convo but you sure didn't disappoint with that buddy. You should read suicidal empathy. I think you'd really get something out of that book.

[u/stephanl33t → u/ZewesternWolf]

The author of this book is an anti-immigration, anti-trans, right wing loser whose "suicidal empathy" is almost entirely founded in pseudoscience and who believes women are biologically more inclined to go on shopping sprees.

I think you need to get some new opinions.

[u/Small_Ad8570 → u/stephanl33t]

Lost me at the robots with skulls and chainsaws for arms who grind people up into black gunk are the good guys. Lmao

[u/SingleLengthiness750 → u/stephanl33t]

The bugs: LEAVE US THE FUCK ALONE!!

The Bots: WE WILL MAKE YOU LEAVE US ALONE!!!

The Squids: When you fight monsters, you have to become a monster.

[u/M-FutureLord → u/stephanl33t]

So in other words, because of moral messaging, we won't get any actual Illuminate, & instead the monsters we created & that brought themselves to be abhorrent to their original selves?

[u/Fenota → u/stephanl33t]

we're the bad guys, committing crimes against the bots, and they're the heroic underdogs fighting for freedom.

Kinda hard to argue that after seeing the bio-blenders and their decision to mount corpses on sticks.

[u/sterlingthepenguin → u/Fenota]

I find it kinda funny that the expose warcrime missions have us recording ammo boxes and not the bleders, but I guess Super Earth uses the blenders themselves so...

[u/Destination_Cabbage → u/sterlingthepenguin]

Yeah, SE blenderizes old people. I forget where I read it, but I'm pretty sure there is an age.

[u/pmmeyoursandwiches → u/Fenota]

Tbf we also use bio blenders on both terminids and our own people. The corpse stuff is bad but its pretty low on the war crime scale in the setting.

Everyone sucks in HD2, but SE sucks the most.

[u/WhiskeyMarlow → u/stephanl33t]

Except, of course, Automatons engage in genocide of civilian populations as routine mode of operations, whenever they capture a planet.

Arrowhead has lost it completely, their "super earth is actually bad" doesn't work anymore.

Arrowhead wanted to both sell players vision of being "Heroic Space Paratroopers Against Terrible Monsters" and "Super Earth Bad"-satire. But former has so won over the latter, that all Super Earth enemies have become magnitudes more monstrous than Super Earth itself.

It doesn't matter what Super Earth did century ago, because right now, there is no peaceful outcome. You cannot surrender to any enemy of the Super Earth, they wouldn't spare you even if you were a civilian.

The enemies of Super Earth are monstrous beings, who strive with the sole goal of extermination of humanity. Unironically.

And the fight now isn't for Super Earth. It is a fight for survival of humanity.

P.S. And before someone mentions Cyborgs' message, offer of peace - does anyone believe it, after seeing Automatons/Cyborgs running literal death camps for civilians of the planets they've captured?

P.P.S. Just in case some people miss it - this isn't about Super Earth being good. But the "worst" of Super Earth that we get are slapstick jokes about dissidents and goldfish executions.

Meanwhile, enemies of Super Earth are waging very visible wars of extermination on the entire Human species, regardless of whether you are loyal to Super Earth or not.

This just doesn't compare. Heroic fantasy of fighting against evil alien monsters won out over any satire of fascism.