I've read it, and I don't see the author saying anything about "sending a message" or politics or anything, just that he dislikes what's shown in the game because it's in bad taste. A perfectly valid opinion even if you don't share it. You're the one making this political.

There was some question awhile back about if they modified the code for Rimworld as part of their article and called the author's ethics in question:

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/11/02/rimworld-code-analysis/

Had never heard of the website before that (Actually I probably have but it's not like I knew of it.) but after that, well....

https://kotaku.com/rimworlds-gay-women-controversy-explained-1788555928

RPS has turned over time. I haven't been there is a very long time and don't plan to. With that said, good PC gaming sites are few and far between these days. If you know of any good one's, let me know. I still go to PCGamer every once in a while, however; I can only tolerate that site in short spans.

I always found this a really weird argument! If a game deals with rape, then OF COURSE it has a "message" about rape. It doesn't matter if the game is intentionally trying to send a message, or that message is a byproduct. You can't say something, about anything, without saying something about it. This message is a part of what the game is, same as gameplay, graphic and IAP. And any aspect of a game runs the risk of people talking about it, sometimes critically.

Why do you care? Why does it bother you?

I don't know you at all, but it seems that you have trouble understanding that other people see the world VERY differently than you. Just because you see it as a trivial detail doesn't mean it's trivial to everybody else, nor does it mean it's trivial to everyone except a handful of people: sjw/ white-knights/ snowflakes.

You don't care about the boss, others do. So what are you actually complaining about? All I hear is you complaining about other people expressing their dislike of something. The author said that he didn't want to play, and that's it. He didn't call to have the game changed, or smear that game dev, or criticize the publisher. He didn't say others should avoid the game, or open a public debate about it. He said HE didn't like it, end of story. Are people not even allowed to talk about aspects of games they dislike?

I'm not trying to attack you, I just have zero understanding of what your issue is, other than you using a bunch of buzzwords.

I don't think there's any kind of "message" in the ending -- it's just using the extremely overdone "rape as drama" / "rape is a special kind of evil" trope. The situation and monologue with the final boss does seem a bit out of place, considering the lack of meaningful dialog up to that point. The real tipping point for me is the monologue from the women after the boss is defeated. It doesn't "trigger" me in any way -- it just comes off as extremely eye-rolling and sophomoric. If that was the intent... well then, "mission accomplished."

But let's not get triggered or make a political issue out of it. The game just throws in a cheesy classic trope at the ending to try to create some kind of "drama."

It's winter here. Plenty of snowflakes to go around.

Let's consider a similar hypothetical situation, but over a different subject.

Suppose that a certain game has a villain, who turns out to be the final boss, and who happens to be black. Further, suppose the game has about as much dialog as Super Mario Bros. 1 (that is, not much). You play the game, have a lot of fun doing so, kill the final boss, and the game gives you the message "Congratulations! You killed the [n-word]!", only with that n-word (a racial sulr) spelled out. How would you feel about that?

I don't know, tbh it does seem somewhat tasteless, why put something like this into a game?

I never use any kind of slurs against anyone. Or swear at anyone. Not even in jest. But what's wrong with spelling out "nigger" here? It's a quote, you're not calling anyone that.

I can't speak for her, but I'd do it out of common courtesy. Sure, we can spell it out, but why?

And that's hardly a quote. It's not like she censored "Tom Sawyer" or something.

Not really all that similar though. In your example racism is portayed as positive from the protagonist perspective. A better comparison would be the main character being black and the final boss being a white guy saying "Time to die n*****!"

It would seem out of place but nothing particularly offensive as your objective is to actually kill the racist. Some might have a problem with it still.

I have not seen the game in question and will not comment directly on it. However I agree with the sentiment in general that rape is not something to deal with lightly in any medium.

I thought it would be simply about that, which would have been a completely silly criticism (bad guys being evil, if you don't show them being evil, how could they be bad guys, and how would our fictions -as they traditionally do- explicit our good/bad values ?).

But in this game, there's the gooey hypocrisy of the hero being basically the same as the bad guy : he's rewarded by having a harem fantasy fulfilled, without the guilt. It's a caricatural expression of a very commonplace cliché : baddie wrongfully owns slave, good guy saves slave, good guy rightfully owns slave (by slave's own accord : the gratitude-love-worship of the damsel or of the native, etc). It's a fantasy that stinks a bit of mixed feelings towards the bad guy's commodification of humans. But again, 98% of action stories are based on this.

I'm not even sure the author of the article pinpoints this very well (there's just a sentence evoking it). But yeah, it's just a roll-eye-worthy detail of the game (have fun with Unepic's humour, heh), snowballing into an article and reactions to the article and all that.

Still, in my eyes, it's always fun to consider the implications of all these tales. For grins and shrugs more than autos-da-fé.

https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/08/11/the-sixth-slave
https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/08/13/breaking-it-down

Ahhh... the good old times of yore, when one could play violent, tasteless videogames just to have some mindless fun and no-one would care :)
...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o64qCT0lLI0