Feelin' like video game RPGs are stuck

[cashew]

So, as I get older and seek more nuanced narratives in my entertainment, I'm looking at the slew of video game RPGs coming out and feel like the offering is either a power fantasy (which is fine, power fantasies are great) or attempting to deal with something heavy by killing children.

We are literally living through a period where socially liberal people are pretending they aren't supporting fascists and the best that video game narratives can offer is still "killing children is bad". Like...yes, killing kids is very sad (even the fascists can say this while simultaneously deny the killing of said kids). But maybe we can dip just a little bit deeper into all the other more insidious forms of villainy, such as the aforementioned fascists' denial of children killing or the fact that people can say "kids dying is bad" but somehow still find it in themselves to justify the slaughter regardless?

And yes, I am thinking about the current genocide that's happening in Gaza, where nearly half of the casualty are children. The fact that a majority of Americans are still supporting Israel and unironically claiming that any criticism of the Israeli government is equivalent to antisemitism is an example of evil that is more complex than "killing kids bad". And I think video games ought to be tackling that if they're going use dying children for drama.

I'm just kind of done with video games that use fascists as an easy bad guy without actually digging into all the uncomfortable truths around fascism: the fact that it feeds and preys on survival instinct, that perfectly "good" people can support fascists while convincing themselves that they are not, that fascism rises to power because too often people can't recognize a fascistic leader until they're part of the persecuted group. Y'know, the fact that power fantasies powering pretty much all video games are one of the ripest breeding ground for fascistic tendencies. Because the hero narrative literally is built on the idea of a few superb individuals that solves the world's problems, which is the building block of fascist ideology, the justification for an in-group supremacy.

I think what I'm saying is this: If you (the video game developers) don't want to actually engage with the fundamentals of fascist ideology, find a different antagonist.