as much as human beings are capable of great things like me and jules's untitled banter podcast available every friday on the whatculture gaming podcast feed we're also responsible for so much suffering like when our hosting service decides to eat an episode instead still there is that underlying feeling that across nature nurture and everything else the long-term forecast for our very survival can occasionally be not that encouraging obviously there are many reasons to be hopeful for the future but these video games didn't hold anything back when delivering certain messages i'm scott from URL_TOKEN and these are NUMBER_TOKEN video games with little hope for humanity also note there are spoilers for the last of us NUMBER_TOKEN and soma within number NUMBER_TOKEN defcon there's no more terrifying real-life example of humanity's self-destructive potential than the enormous body counts racked up by war and the fact that so much of contemporary peace is sustained by the idea of mutually assured destruction that is don't nuke us and we won't nuke you because if you do new curse we'll go downswinging by firing all our nukes back so that everybody loses this was superbly embodied by NUMBER_TOKEN cold war rts defcon a nuclear war simulator in which the player is tasked with obliterating as much of the enemy nation's land mass as possible for maximum destruction and human casualties all while minimizing their own losses a typical game sees millions of deaths incurred on both sides serving as a brilliantly cynical commentary on how war turns mass death into a statistic and how fighting wards with button presses and computer screens removes a lot of basic human empathy from what's actually happening number seven red dead redemption in addition to being one of the most entertaining video games ever made red dead redemption is also one of the most low-key nihilistic in its portrait of the human race rockstar's masterful open-world western strips away the romantic sheen of the old west mythologized in classic john wayne movies and instead focuses on the ugly brutality of a lawless life the game's primary theme is the violent nature of people themselves embodied by both john marston's actions throughout the game and his inevitably bloody demise by the end however this goes a level deeper with the epilogue where jon's son jack comes of age and seeks revenge against his father's killer ensuring this cycle of violence continues as a young man follows his father's footsteps only to result in more bloodshed the commentary across both red dead games seems to be that humanity has and always will be its own worst enemy murdering for riches and sheer survival and in the case of the player themselves finding considerable entertainment value number NUMBER_TOKEN dead space NUMBER_TOKEN. if red dead redemption explores humankind's violent past then dead space considers its brutish prospective future the iconic sci-fi horror franchise takes place in the NUMBER_TOKENth century where humanity is spread throughout the galaxy but the outlook sure is bleak for starters humanity was nearly rendered extinct by resource shortages on earth and they've found few truly viable planets elsewhere but the real threat to humanity is in reality itself the various human factions squabbling to gain control of the alien monoliths known as markers in turn unintentionally allowing the necromorph plague to spread this grim outlook was cemented with dead space NUMBER_TOKEN's awakened
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