3:24 Yeah. I hate that term "unskilled labor" too. Its "unskilled labor" until there isn't someone to stock your favorite brands. Then its "essential work."
I think this game is a perfect representation of Post Soviet mindset. They love Soviet esthetics, but they are cut throat capitalists, and use everything to make money. It seems that such sexualization is mostly result of Mundfish seeing its customers as not having sex men. And this game has its nostalgic and funny moments, but it is kinda sad.
Hypersexualization and over-the-top stuff like an old grandma with a shotgun and a flying house are good for sales, because crapitalism has a tendency to trivialize everything culture-related into a bright and shiny rollercoaster ride that can be sold easy.
Yes, I think there's a sad aspect of resurgent Russian nationalism that sees Soviet iconography as simply meaning the vanished power and influence of Russia and not the emancipatory, internationalist project that it was.
There is nothing soviet beyond aesthetics in this game, majority of people in the game act and think as modern day hipsters from european country, not like soviet era people. There is no need to dig so deep in one direction to see that. But still even only for the aesthetics and not showing soviets like bloodthirsty ghouls this game is better then others and should be praised.
“Soviet era people” didn’t have all this fancy sh1t. Robots, polymer, etc. So it makes sense for them to act differently. The Soviet Union displayed in this game is the Soviet Union that never was. People in Soviet sci - fi books don’t act like “Soviet era people” either. This is normal.
@@HobGobMob Just admit u men only care about the sexualization of the robots and defending this pointless game which barely portrays anything accurate to the Soviet Union
At this point the game-play is decent, the game runs very well, the graphics are very good without calling for high end graphics hardware. That combination is a bit rare and is enough for me to play it. I dislike the rampant phallic symbolism, the casting of machines in gender roles and the robotic "female" ballet dancer that propositions P-3.
The lack of women was definitely something I noticed, but after hearing your analysis it sounds like this was a huge missed opportunity. There should have definitely been more women in the roles of scientists and soldiers.
Absolutely fantastic! I love the citation of legally protected and promoted rights to women and, furthermore, any citizen regardless of nationality, ethnicity, etc. As far back as 1917 and 1918! Also, this game seems to just be another bang bang junk of a shooter with some veneer of soviet-punk aesthetics. Edit: That twitter quote sums it up even better.
it would be cool to see more of this style of stuff, game reviews, precisely because there's so few people with an appropriate educational background on topics such as this
I think that it’s quite rare to find a game that tackles this. But the WW2 cod games would be very interesting to see tackled. When I played call of duty 2 as a kid I was shocked that there was woman soldier in my war game. I didn’t even know woman were allowed to go to war at that point.
I'm gonna preface this by saying that I'm 100% pro-horny art, it can be great! However, I think there's a big difference between something being delightfully horny and something being leeringly horny. From what I've seen, Atomic Heart (like a lot of games, especially big budget ones) seems to fall very firmly into the latter category. You can absolutely write a story with very overt sexual themes and situations and still depict the characters as having their own internal lives and agency, and I would argue that usually makes the whole thing better.
Oh agreed 💯💯 I'm no prude, I've played my fair share of visual novels games that avoid upsetting me in this way. Because character development is often a huge part.
@@LadyIzdihar Yeah, exactly! Also, sorry if it seemed I was implying you were prudish, that wasn't the intention. I've been following your work for a long time now and I know you've had issues with those assumptions in the past.
"Give us True Horniness! Yes to mutual respect and character complexity! No to objectification and exploitation!" It is time to put this slogan on red banners and go storm AAA game developers.
I like to compare such things to Bayonetta character which is EXTREMELY HORNY but she isn't stripped of her agency. She's a badass, very tall, duel-wields big guns and fights on heels Compare it to... this... and you are just met with this [ i.e. Atomic Heart's characters] and you are just feeling sick. They aren't badass, they are sexy and that's their whole character This is sexualisation VS objectification kind of thing. When you sexualise a character, or a person [WITH THEIR CONSENT!] (A loved one during intimate moments for example), it isn't inherently bad, but when you are OBJECTIFING the person/character then you are starting to have problems. Example of this would be revealing clothing: a V cut on a character isn't inherently bad in on itself, it's nice to look at, but when the camera does *the thing* over the V cut in every cutscene possible and characters talk more about it than anything else regarding that character, then we are haveing a problem As one of my favourite posts on this subject said (paraphrasing): "Sometimes media tries to make something so horny that it comes back around and becomes un-horny and repulsive"
"Atomic Heart" is all form and no substance when it comes to socialist ideas. It's very pretty and incredibly nostalgia-inducing, but that's it - I seriously doubt that the devs even tried to include a leftist political message (or any political message for that matter) into the game, and none of them are probably marxists. Personally, I'm thankful that at least the USSR is not portrayed as a totalitarian inhumane dump for a change. P.S. Unrelated, but at this point the real Tereshkova deserves to spend the rest of her days logging trees in Siberia - she's an incredibly reactionary bourgeois politician of the worst kind. P.P.S. In case the author reads this - have you played Disco Elysium? When it comes to marxism and general leftism in popular culture, I think that game is somewhat of a phenomenon. Not only is it beautifully drawn, written and narrated, but its story heavily sympathizes with the communards of the game's fictional world, whose attempt at a social revolution was brutally demolished by a joint military intervention by a bunch of bourgeois states. Basically, kinda like "Russian civil war meets the Paris Commune with a dieselpunk aesthetic".
@@tensonra8011 no wonder, really. For a person who's lived their entire life in a capitalist environment, imagining a fundamentally different society is incredibly hard. Remember how many people think that their everyday life under capitalism is "just the natural order of things"? As if there never was and never can be anything else, neither in the past nor in the future. IIRC, Second Thought expressed an interesting idea that the subtle ideology of modern capitalism is that capitalism is natural, and any other society is either a utopian fairytale or just a stupid idea.
@@MLPGamer44 My point exactly. Sovietwave actually is pretty awesome though! For example, there's a track called "Death Fears the Young" (Маяк - Смерть Боится Молодых), which never fails to get me daydreaming about all of the great things that humanity would've already implemented by now, if not for capitalist sabotage during the last century or so.
Communism in Disco Elysium is... interesting. They kind of flipped it around and instead of materialistic scientific worldview we get the height of idealism.
@@MK_ULTRA420heather mason, evie from ac syndicate, the girl from nier automata... maybe just look at more games, lol. The female cast from bloodborne... If a female character is only femenine bc you can sexualixe it, the problem may not be the developers lol
@@MK_ULTRA420 well does it mean it's a good thing to sexualize things then? Doesn't it remove any other characteristics from that character other than being sexual
I'm almost finished reading the book "See what you made me do" by Jess Hill which is about domestic and gendered violence. It's really opened my eyes to how much the media (including video games) grooms people to accept the victimisation of women. Telling your partner you love them one minute and calling them a bitch/whore the next is not love, it's control and this is sadly normalised everywhere.
I have not played the game, but watched a letsplay video of a part of it, and I have also noticed a different thing. All the characters I have seen are pronouncedly Northern European, with blue eyes, lighter skin and so on. Meanwhile, the game takes place in Kazakhstan, where a large proportion of urban population was Kazakh (not all of them though). And there are no Kazakh or other Central Asia, or Caucasian characters. Even Caucasian lezginka dance in the prologue is performed by someone who looks very Russian. Finally, none of the Northern European-looking characters has a Ukrainian, Belorussian or Jewish name, only Russian ones (and one German). So the ethnic mix-up of this wonder city is more like to a wet dream of a Russian nationalist than to the Soviet realities, where new urban centres were mixing pots of different ethnicities.
Do you realize what was the population of Kazakhstan in 1950s and how many russians were there compared to kazakhs? Only since 1970s in Khazakhstan there became 4 times less russians than was before. You people just swim in your pseudo-righteous virtue signalling delusions and you're discussing a country you have zero clue about
every new thing i learn about this game is more egregious and exhausting than the last. you deserve the Hero of the Soviet Union medal for playing that all the way thru
I don't think its the only idea, but imagine if the prompt for the robotic uprising in the game was that they had collectively decided that they were not the means of production but instead exploited workers? It would at least be engaging with some of the themes and not just the sovietwave aesthetic slapped on bioshock gameplay.
Finally! I'm here cuz Ian Neves from História Pública recommended your channel. I'm glad you made this video. The gaming industry has always been filled to the brim with hegemonic discourse. I'd like to see more videos breaking down such discourse not just in the media in general but specifically in media industries that took off with neoliberalism. Thank you!
Was there many people in general in the game? Like IIRC it was mainly robots in the game, and from that it could have had an interesting dialog in it as the robots took all productive labor in the world so in a sense you had humans become more bourgeois as we were divorced from labor while robots became a proletariat. Could give you a look into labor aristocracy if done right.
But automation is a good thing under socialism. If people in a communist/socialist society can automate mundane tasks by offloading them to robots, they don't thus become bourgeois, they just free up some of their time and effort for other meaningful things to do - self-education, art, cognitive work, and yes, possibly additional leisure too. Robots can be considered proletariat (or any other class) only if they're sentient, and perhaps in this game they are, but in real life a robot is nothing more than a sophisticated tool.
I remember watching a review of a modern film set in the USSR. The reviewer said this interesting phrase: "They (filmmakers) make films about themselves, and not about people of that era." Perfectly describes all the modern attempts of young people from the RF and the CIS to create something with topics related to the Soviet Union. They do not understand the essence of the USSR and socialism itself. Therefore, even when they try to portray something positive about this time (which is extremely rare), they fail.
@@bloomingpain-flower7074 people do be like that. It perfectly describes _why_ we won’t get historically and ideologically accurate films and games about USSR. They would be made by modern people for modern people.
On the topic of women's rights in the USSR, what are your thoughts on the criminalisation of abortion between 1936 and 1955? I can't quite understand how such a backlash happened in a country that was otherwise so progressive on the issue.
I think I've done a short TikTok and maybe even posted it on here, can't remember, on the very topic! But I've been meaning to do a more long form vid on it thanks for reminding me!
It's because they needed manpower and specifically men to be born to be used in wars, and after the war male population has dropped dramatically and they needed to make up for it.
@@lepersonnage371 found the facist Women were often forced by their partners to have abortion which at the time was not as safe and technology . This was to protect women in regards to the circumstances they were facing at the tiem5
The thing that upsets me the most is just how the game it's so deliberately capitalistic, not only on its frivolous and cliche critique about how socialism works, but in its narrative as a general. There is no problem in being sexual and horny. Its actually good that we can talk about these kinda topics so openly, and i can see how sometimes the game does benefit itself from this narrative style. Still, there are examples where the only reason why theres so much sexualization is marketing and to take some money out of it, and talking about sex and related topics openly doesnt mean trivialize it, it actually means the exact opposite. These are moments when much more than addressing sexual themes, atomic heart once again throws women to the sidelines and even takes away a certain part of their depth, and spoiler, most of them dont even have any And we know that this is just capitalism projecting itself
Have you ever played ATOM RPG? It is the only other Soviet themed games thats any good I can think of. It is in a post apocalyptic USSR and youre goal is to help rebuild the soviet union. The games has portraits of Lenin and everything.
It's a great game, but it doesn't even mention any ideas or goals of Marxism-Leninism when it comes to rebuilding the society (at least the first part, I haven't played the expansion). It's basically Fallout 1/2 with a Soviet aesthetic, money, bartering and commodities included.
@@vadimk3484 ATOM RPG Trudograd had a communist faction you could kinda-not-really join, but it doesn't really go anywhere since the ATOM KGB/XYZ main quest ends it abit abruptly because you have to do something else, plus iirc it was just abit joke-y communist anyway, y'know?
@@toffee3944 Gotcha. I haven't played Trudograd yet. It's kinda sad though that even those games/movies/books that sympathize with the left, often portray communism as a silly utopia and communists as either overly romantic dreamers or just idiots. For example, I absolutely loved Disco Elysium for saying that the communards were much better than every other political power, however for some reason the main character's "leftist" dialogue options are an asinine and cringy attempt at trolling/mocking communist ideas. Leaves a mixed feeling, although I still think that game is incredible. Maybe the authors tried to depict someone who thinks he's a Marxist while actually being a babbling idiot, but if that's the case, then it feels a bit too deep.
@@shkeni Metro games are aggressively anti-communist/anti-Soviet, the message is there in plain sight. The books were that way too - putting it mildly, the author, Dmitry Glukhovsky, is not a particularly smart person who knows history of the USSR from bad movies and propaganda cliches. The games are nice otherwise, though.
There are human woman in the game, mostly in the start before the things go to shit and there are also plenty of women in the duty roster of the facility if you read logs on the computers and the audio logs. Furthermore it is only really the protagonist that refers to Larisa as a bitch, with is reasonable as he sees her as a enemy during most of the game. The other characters seem to show a great deal of admiration for her feats and skills.
I have replayed the game and I have noticed that there are actually female bodies around the facilities, some of them even are the bodies that you can speak with, so I am not quite sure what you were on about when you said that there were no women.
You pretty much confirmed my fears. When I first heard about this game was because of the horny (in a harassing way) upgrade bot. It made it clear this game was not going to be for me... It's so so sad.
Great video. I started playing the game but didn't care for it. The whole "Tereshkova" sex doll robot thing was what first pricked my ears and the upgrade fridges. I was also foreseeing an anticommunist message with the "collective" mind thing and sadly I was right, guess I didn't miss much by dropping it. I've had similar issues with the treatment of female characters with the Metro games, which I've played more. They are generally just sex meat, post apoc fiction once taking the idea that 'human nature' is about domination and enslavement. In the last one (which deals more with the Soviet past from a nationalist lens, the main train you ride on throughout the game is called the "Aurora", for example), there's a single female character (a sniper) whose place in the narrative comes simply from being a prominent male commander's daughter and the main character's love interest. She's always getting captured or needing to be saved. Still, you do see some statues of Lenin lol.
Thanks for the review! The hypersexualisation and under-representation of women in this game kind of killed off my excitement for it. This is reflected across the entire gaming industry though, and idk when women will cease to be objectified in media.
The only other proud soviet characters I've seen in gaming were in COD of all franchises lmao, the soviet campaign of World at War comes off like surprisingly extremely positive about the soviet union lmao
I remember I saw a trailer for an older version of the game that looked more interesting, then I saw a more recent trailer where the characters had british accents and immediately lost interest.
Just because the game is set in the Soviet era doesn't mean the creators understand that thinking. It is one of the deepest kinds of sexism, when they need to imagine a person they always think of a man first.
Little spoilers, you're so nice! I love this game, it being so casually 'Red' without having to defensively justify itself, putting in your face Marx/Lenin bust, Stalin references and anti bourgeois posters everywhere. Usually mainstream games with SU references are hella 'doomer' like Stalker or Singularity, or have to parrot anti-communist moralism to justify it existence to the public like in the Call of Duty world war series and Command & Conquer.
Good point. The game is actually not pro-soviet or pro-communist, it's not more than "See, Soviet Union was not a godawful place, actually". But being not enough anti-communist or anti-soviet is a sin by itself nowadays.
Are the game designers of Atomic Heart still operating under the notion that only boys and men play video games? That would seem to be the only reason why they'd still market the female characters in various stereotypical ways. Meanwhile, there are plenty of gals who would dig their teeth into this gaming experience. I'd have to agree with comments in this video and on this thread that the sexism in the game is more in line with the Western treatment of women than what it sounded like the Soviets enjoyed. Then again, it's just a video game, a fantasy to indulge in for a while. It's an alternate history with a lot of creative license, from the sound of it. People have done and will continue to behave and believe in a number of unacceptable ways. I don't think that video games with so much violence necessarily encourage violent behavior in real life anymore than the objectification of women in AH would encourage young men to act on impulses against us. It's always going to be a useful critique of society as well as a limitation on our most personal affinities for the dark and unconventional. When I jack into a video game, I step out of reality for a while and into another one that I might not actually want to live in. I don't play video games so that I can continue to worry about all of the things that I think are wrong with the society I inhabit.
Стоит отметить что и в настоящем СССР, несмотря на прекрасно проделанную работу по вовлечению женщин к самым разным профессиям, было гораздо больше мужчин учёных, особенно академиков.
If you look at the dead bodies they are almost all the very same model. This is to save time. It's bad for immersion, though, and this time saving technique also results in less female representation. But I am uncertain if it was deliberate, i.e. knowingly not wanting a bunch of dead women lying around. Instead they just made a generic soldier man and placed that body everywhere.
Suppose we can't expect much from a retrospective futurist video game portrayal of an alternate-universe USSR...yet still, disappointing. Having a cultural space opened to insert the actual historical record is great, if the distorted version doesn't hold the narrative.
@@LadyIzdihar Absolutely! I haven't had a chance to play the game yet, but I'm saving your video for reference for a couple of friends who've just started it.
Она смотрела на игру жопой? Там полно женских сотрудников, погибших во время бунта роботов. Причем в военной форме Более того, когда герой только начинает путь, весь город заполнен и мужчинами и женщинами... Аааа, я понял, здесь проблема не с глазами а с головой. Докопаться до автомата, что она себя странно ведет, хотя это неодушевлённый предмет... Бля они посчитали трупы)))))))))))))))))))))))0
I never knew that women were elected into the soviets. With American politics, it's usually/mostly dominated by men, thus this experience as an American has sort of indoctrinated me into this idea that usually governments are run by men. What a wonderful example of one of the successes of the Soviet experiment!
I didn't expect the game to be any kind of perfect representation of the Soviet Union, but for what it is, a game that doesn't completely demonize it, unfortunately in our times, is a step up.
also it's a bit weird that alla pugacheva's "arlekino" is in this game if it's set in 1955, that song wasn't out until 1975-76, and alla herself would have been 6 years old in the year the game took place. could they not be bothered to use soviet music from the actual decade it's meant to be set in?
Вы в своих рассуждениях делаете большую ошибку. Вы разделяете женщин и мужчин! Они все в первую очередь граждане Советского Союза и только потом делятся на женщин мужчин или по национальному признаку. У людей в Советском Союзе другой менталитет., им и в голову не придет подобное разделение. Поэтому там нет например расизма, потому что его там просто нет! Воспитание совсем другое.
I recently discovered your channel and I love the work you do it's so important! I was wondering if there is anything written about Parenthood in the USSR and what was considered ideal in raising children and starting a family in the Soviet Union?
Great video! I wanna address that fetishization of soviet women's(women's in general) and soviet's aesthetics is part of dehumanisation and shouldn't tolerated in mass media product. I'm kinda disgust that done by people from my country. Game looks and feel like product for western audience, except it doesn't has ideas like "all soviets(russians) are bad". Sad that setting being used for that mindless game, there were potential being something bigger and greater than we are got.
First woman cosmonaut in this universe was an entirely different person by the name of Maria Tereshkova (I think the reasoning being they wanted to still pay homage to real life Tereshkova without breaking it too much). There were plenty of female workers, even the ones that fell victim to the robot uprising and you can even interact with numerous "echoes" of the dead female (and male) employees (namely a dead tour guide in VDNKH that gives you a side objective of finding out what happened to all of the students). And if you go into the list of the facility employees there are plenty of women there, most of them in executive/managerial positions. Bodies in tubes and labs were not just women, but also men who too only wear their underwear (you even showed one of the male bodies lying on the table in the video), same with the surviving Kollectiv 2.0 test subjects. Not to mention all the civilian women you meet in prologue of the game. And regarding the supposed prevalence of the number of women over man in this universe: WW2 was largely a landslide in this reality, with far less casualties, however the devastation caused by it was mainly due to "brown plague" that Germans unleashed as a petty revenge for their loss. So if we factor that it, the demographics would be somewhat dissimilar to that of post WW2 USSR in real life, probably with far less difference between female and male population (which still was 79 men for every 100 women which is a big difference, but not as big as to reduce the dominance of men in fields they are more prone to engage in). Besides, having equal rights doesn't necessarily mean equal outcomes, which was the case in real life USSR where most of the high-end positions and namely most of the researchers were still male due to the inherent differences of interests between women and man (notice I'm saying specifically their individual interests, not their capabilities). Even soviet legislature realized that equality of outcome is not something they can influence without creating problems (unlike modern western counterparts that are somewhat obsessed with equality of outcome which I as a Russian of Ukrainian decent find really strange). As to the appearance of bots - the male "servant" model (Vovchik) also looks as a blow up doll (very ugly one at that) and also serves your every whim (albeit they are a less sophisticated model as it later turns out). I'd argue they even have a far more "sexualized" (if you can even call it that) look compared to tereshkova bot. Also their design was mainly inspired by the early mass produced plastic dolls for children, rather then sex dolls as you claim. As to the appearance of the ballerina robots - how else are they supposed to look? The ones that are body guards of Sechenov are repurposed design of ballerina robots created by Petrov. Can't say anything about "Nora" vending machine, that one really is strange and unfunny no matter how you look at it. The profanities in this game are thrown around left and right towards every character (especially if you play in Russian, which was very poorly translated into English in my opinion). Also how would you feel after someone almost blew you up with a grenade? At that point in the game P-3 literally thinks she is in cahoots with the Petrov and is responsible for the massacre. Is everyone supposed to be kind and gentle to her because she is a woman despite the context? Doesn't that just reinforce stereotypes? And finally the strangest one: "Baba Zina is subservient to men because she helped out the main character". That one just straight up BS, I'm sorry. She quite literally bosses the main character around on more then one occasion, she is more of a strong matriarch role rather then "subservient" as you say. With all that, you call yourself "educated" and "aware". I'm sorry, but you are just selectively choosing stuff to construct a narrative of non-existent sexualisation and oppression where people developing this game were mainly adhering to realism (as much as you can do that in world with advanced robots and physics-breaking substances) and weren't playing favorites. For the most part, in-game representation of women pretty much follows that of the real life USSR (albeit everything kinda looks like a mishmash of 50s 60s and 70s rather then a well-defined time period). What modern people often don't realize about USSR is that women, with all of the rights they were given, still followed traditional gender roles, both in personal and work life and that was encouraged by the Soviet government. Woman was first and foremost a mother and a wife, and a man was a father and a husband. It's not subservience on the part of women, it's just common sense. Men and women have different priorities, so no matter how much rights you give either of them, majority will still fall under traditional gender and societal roles, socialism, capitalism or whatever else -ism be damned. I completely agree with you that they used a lot of the stuff from different time periods which look out of whack being side by side, but your view on female representation completely overlooks the context to construct a narrative you want, not what actually happens in the game. I really hope you won't react to this comment in bad faith, cause I really don't have anything personal against you or women in general, I'm just being a voice of common sense.
I agree on almost everything except Tereskova since is established that the robots are an early version and in some years they will be equal to men, so i think the uncanny design was a good decision :3.
I haven't played the game and only heard about cuz geoffreyday worked on the soundtrack but watching some gameplay that updrage fridge scene just does NOT work at all
I'm a few hours into this game and I've been reading every log and advancing pretty slowly. From what I could take so far the game is very anti-communist in it's core but (as more ppl said already) it seems to love the "socialist aesthetics". The protagonist is not a likeable person, the glove is presented as a jerk and every person has an "evil intent", whether that is made clear or not. Also the upgrading machine is a staple in almost every "recreational room", so the ideia is that every soviet worker is a "lunatic machine fucker". I might be wrong here but it sure is what it looks like to me. They wanted the players (mostly westerners) to view those bizarre things and associate with how the soviets were. I don't mind the sci-fi part that they use to justify the game being during '55 but having Moon colonies and stuff, this part I think is the best part. Finally the way that they portray women is so weird that almost look intentionally bad, but on this topic I couldn't add anything more that what you, and the ppl in the comments, have already said.
I started the game and at first, it seemed pretty intriguing. The truly glorious Soviet aesthetic that could fit anywhere between 1950 and 1985 with the clean streets, red flags everywhere, and other things, but I just couldn't shake the creeping feeling that something was off. So I got to the palace or institute (or whatever that fancy building was), got my assignment, got into the car and was transported to the flying island. But the longer I played, the worse that creeping feeling became, and then it just hit me like a brick: the game doesn't depict the Soviet Union, and even less so the 1950's Soviet Union, it depicts a pseudo-utopian modern society with a Soviet "skin". The protagonist didn't behave like a 50's Soviet citizen (or any individual living in the 1950's for that matter), the hairstyles were not period-appropriate, the lingo was not period-appropriate, and so, so many other small things that you can easily miss, but when you start noticing them, you just can't unsee them. Well, I quit the game some time after first meeting the good Doctor, and never went back. Yeah, I don't regret it, the game is trash. Also, I cannot add much to the "there are no women in this game" discussion, since, as I've already written, I have not played it for very long. But to note, the prologue does feature a lot of women NPCs, it's just that they're irrelevant to the actual meat of the game. Also, also, HROT, a Czech Quake-clone set in 1986 Czechoslovakia was way more true to life, despite being a Lovecraftian satirical horror FPS. Speaking of HROT, I hated the choice of final boss, even though I understand why the dev chose him. It just felt out of place. And it does feature a couple of female enemy types, but they're mostly bosses. But I have to note that women's rights in the Soviet Union weren't really all they're cracked up to be. Yes, Soviet women had more rights than in other countries, but overall, they were still quite often disrespected and treated as second class citizens, who still had to look after children and the household on top of having to work a day job. Let's not forget that all those fancy events and reports were also often held and written for show (as is often the case even today). And it wasn't just on the topic of women's rights, either. It was, and still is a common practice. But back to the subject of women's right in the Soviet Union, you can even see this in many Soviet films from different periods. Most depicted men as heroes and protectors, and women as those that needed protection or as supporting characters. One film that I found particularly appalling in this regard was the 1973 sci-fi comedy called This jolly planet (Эта весёлая планета), where a group of pedantic aliens - led by a woman captain - came to Earth on New Year's eve and ended up at a costume party, trying to understand why humans celebrate New Year. Everyone just assumed the aliens were in costume (because the aliens looked human, obviously) and in-character. At one point in the third act, the aliens were trying to convince the humans that they really were visitors from Alpha-Centauri, but no one would believe them, so the crew-members asked the captain on what they should do, to what the no-nonsence, responsible and authoritative captain replied "You figure it out. After all, I am but a woman, a weak woman." It just felt so wrong for her character, but the film treated it as the aliens finally starting to understand humans.
I want to play it... But I have to recognize that the creators are likely only aware of the neoliberal shock therapy of Russia as an ideological starting point. It just would have been nice if what you are describing was more authentic to that historical moment because it's not unreasonable to reflect that history accurately but still make a game where "something went wrong in the soviet system!" Maybe for example, the robots became sentient and did their own revolution against humanity. A cyber 1917.... Which would have been something interesting to grapple with.
The very reason I stopped plying games with human characters unless reviews prove the game is not hypersexualising women (or animals for that matter bc that one game traumatised me).
Second comment here, but I have had so many people recount things from the awful movie "Enemy at the Gates" as historical. People will recite happenings there as if they are true and it has done so much harm to people's perception on history.
Game developers really need to touch grass. This is always common place in games. It's a wierd soviet themed hentai with Duke Nukem as protagonist. The good thing is it's not as anti commie as papers please. That shit was just the worst propaganda.
I've wanted to play this game sooo bad. But, I'm not surprised these issues are still apparent in gaming. It sucks because theirs sooo much good stuff they could've done with this game..
I loved the look of this game but was worried it would just be exploiting the soviet aesthetic for the sales, and that made me apprehensive to actually buy it. I think your review is an honest look at the kind of message this game is sending to it's audience, and it's significant lack of self-awareness seems akin to a bad 80's b-side action flick. What you've covered here absolutely reinforces my original apprehension. I don't think I'll be picking it up... Thank you!
Булджать вроде не коммунист, но он хорошо подметил насчёт политической составляющей в Atomic Heart. "Вопрос на засыпку: пропагандирует ли BioShock американскую мечту? Вы же узнали, как Америка выглядит, из этой игры?" (If ppl start to demand bee war 2, respond them with "The condition for it was told in the first part")
The makers pov is coming from a capitalistic pov with being Russia friendly(which i have no problem with) Not from a genuine dialectical materialist,historical materialist socialist pov from the makers in the game.
I tend to agree with all that you have said. The most charitable explanation for the few women is that the women were mostly scientists and other workers that were killed. That is not clear from the actual imagery though, most of the deceased appear to be male and it doesn't justify the gender disrespect that you have discussed. I didn't fully realize the sexual undercurrents in the game till I was beyond the return period though as consolation, I bought it on sale so less impetus to MundFish. When I as a male, raise these point in Atomic Heart discussions, I get nothing but grief. I think that some males feel seriously threatened by females that seek to compete for the entitlements that are associated with just being male. Personally, I think that the game would have been much more interesting if the roles of Sergey (i.e., servant) and Ekaterina (i.e., purity) had been reversed. It would have not altered much dialog since P-3 is not an acronym for Sergey, so it would have worked for Ekaterina. Also since Ekaterina "studied ballet and made significant achievements in both dance and martial arts" she is a more logical choice as the lead character. Based on the game lore, Ekaterina would have had a far superior curriculum vitae. At least, it would be more plausible to see her do the tunnel crawling, jumps, platforming and melee fighting. The dialog between Charles and P-3 is nowhere near the caliber of that between that of Alyx/Russell in HL/Alyx (which was based in Bulgaria's Sofia and Bourgas). I enjoyed much of the game, the graphics are excellent and efficient, the game play is reasonable, but plot is at best convoluted and the rampant sexualization is a considerable and unnecessary detriment to the game. For me, a memorably offensive statement is in the sequence in the Theater where the ballerina robot chides P-3 about the length of time he has been apart from female companionship. This in my opinion is equivalent to bestiality, it is a statement that at minimum can only be uttered by a sentient being in possession of free will as well as the concept of informed consent. The day that it can be properly uttered by a machine is the day that machines achieve at least a human level sentience (I hope never).
Would probably make for a shorter video, but what are your thoughts on soviet female representation in Call of Duty: Vanguard? Obviously Call of Duty as a brand advertises for a fascist empire, but the Kavernacle said Vanguard humanized the USSR more than most other games of the genre
It‘s such a damn shame that most went away from this game believing what Charles told them throughout the game was the actual plotline, when in actuality it becomes quite clear that the Party and most importantly Sechenov really do have the best in mind, for everyone. SPOILER!! Actually cried a tiny tear at Molotovs death. Even if he was portrayed a bit more goofy than I‘d think he would have been, but I always had to remind myself: This game was marketed towards the west, so pure Soviet Propaganda would not have sat well, most likely. And the SU seemingly turned revisionist in this Universe, too. Why it did I cannot really figure out, but that‘s interesting. The game was certainly not written by anyone with a degree in Soviet history or a Marxist-Leninist individual.
Though I did not feel as tho P3 was a proud KGB agent. He was confused most of all, made Nazi Jokes and explicitly stated his apathy towards the system multiple times. Again, I think this is just to keep it accessible and due to a lack of political education, it bothered me immensely nonetheless.
I just knew about this game thanks to the aesthetics and the my communosphere playing it. I am not a gamer though, and seeing a bunch of info about it, I really decided to avoid it, in the way of being a very sketchy representation (obviously, it is fiction and no hope should be given on most games if we want an accurate representation of reality). And it is good to see you reviewing it, specially because you are a Soviet historian (as you mentioned) and you have really read a bunch of content regarding it.
I think the game is softly anti-communist, if you take a closer look you can catch that passive stance very clearly, the premise itself is problematic considering the Soviet view of labour, which was integral to their way of life, everything in the USSR was labour centered, the idea of having robots doing everything is definitely something the soviets didn't sought after, didn't fit their views, the soviets saw automation as a way to easy manual labour, not extinguishing it, the concept of extinguishing labour by automation is pretty much a contemporary concept made mostly by liberals which can't think of a healthy and democratic workplace. The other problem is the game name itself *spoiler ahead* operation atomic heart also doesn't make any sense in the Soviet policies, they didn't wanted to take over the world, so you can take my first point and join with the second, a society that deeply automate their labour which is planing to use those robots as weapons to take down their enemies, that looks like the US, not like the USSR, revolutions aren't made by imperialism, they are importing machines which are used to define their softpower, after that they would engage combat mode to attack and occupy the country, that's imperialism right there. Together with what you said and the entire premise of the game being made around a Russian Federation/US kind of USSR, I really think there is a lot of anti-communist narrative right there, just not as obvious.
Streaks volumes about the type of culture runs rampant in game developers. But yeah American mentally protecting into the game. The aesthetic is the only soviet thing about it.
I haven't played the game but what i think and hope are two things, first that this game is a satire or something like that or that the game fell victim of commercialization and the devs wanted the game to be very commercial so selling it with all the restrictions imposed in russia wouldn't be hard, otherwise i hope the devs don't think that way about the soviet era and women, but i have to admit i did felt attracted to Left and Right despite being oversexualized.
You got it right, "Atomic Heart" has very little(if any) of the Soviet spirit and substance, and is primarily about questionable aesthetics. There is an actual joke that "All sex in the Soviet Union was packed and gone to the Facility 3826". However, I want to point out, that there is something useful there. If you just take the list of the employees, and the mail stuff in the in-game computers, you'll see, that there are lots of women working on the facility, comparing that to, say, similar facility in "Half-life"(or relatively recent "Black Mesa"), where scientists are almost exclusively men. But this, of course, is too little to outweigh the minuses you've mentioned.
If this game had just been a virtual simulation or a museum of the USSR as it was an into an alternate timeline, even without any of the existing plot or the shooting, it would have been much better. Damn shame tbh.
I think the atomic heart is game about end of Soviet Dream. End of Soviet Dream if you will. However this end is because Soviet Union have reach its limit. This is explained the lack of feminin character. The heart have been replaced by "atomic". Become heartless regime with corrupt ideal. Active and young feminin ideal is what lack in this game. It because this game is about that. Ideology without feminin counterpart. The 3 female character is description on the ideology liberalism : Larissa (masculinized), communism : Ekaterina (Separation of brain hemisphere), fascism : Zinalda (vengenge). it correspondence with 3 male main villain for each ideology.
This also explain the end where P3 dream of Robotic Ekaterina to save him. Save him for this ideology that masked for toxic masculinity. If you see this in perspective of man angst you will see something. Almost get sexually assaulted by technology. Getting wrecked by two female robot balerina. Fear of being mind controlled as murder weapons. It is male angst against state and ideologies, against technologies, social engineering.
You should try workers and resources Soviet Republic, that's a good game with lots of architecture and vehicles from the eastern block and it's a simulation of planned economy.
I'm interested to make a video about women rights in Soviet Union compareto capitalist nations. Is there any post about the comparison of those charts?
It really sucks that a game I've been looking forward to just keeps getting worse with every new piece of media I see on it. It's a huge missed opportunity to not have more amazing female protagonists in a game with a setting featuring the Soviet Union.
Regarding the amount of women I think you see what you want to see. There were plenty of women in the opening sequence. Many women are mentioned in that list of workers of facility 3826. And there aren't that many main characters in general to include more women there. Or do you think there should be exactly 50% women everywhere because equality?
I personally have been enjoying the game but not without any major criticisms, most of which you addressed. One of the best decisions I made was switching the language to Russian because the English dub is atrocious. It has several major issues. I do think there were some attempts on not being a totally anti-Soviet or communist story, but some major pitfalls as well. But it’s pretty obvious there was not enough care put into women being portrayed with a lot of car and intent. It has several good ideas and a good aesthetic but largely is wasted potential even if I did cold away liking it for the most part. Granted I am a man so some of these issues just don’t affect my enjoyment as much. I just overall found the aesthetic, gameplay, music, and concept (if not always the execution of the concept) enjoyable enough for what I often enjoy in my FPS games. I also think the weird middle ground of somewhat positive or sympathetic portrayal of the USSR without actual meat on it or falling into the traps of misogyny is just representative of how a lot of Russians (given that Mundfish did originate there) is nostalgia for the aesthetics and power of the USSR but not exactly socialism or progressive elements of it.
This video is perfect for me, cause I (as a Communist) was mildly curious about this game's portrayal of the (post-) Soviet Union, but I have zero interest in playing it (didn't like the trailer, nor like FPSs). With that said, from what you mentioned... It sounds pretty much like exactly what I expected (Soviet aesthetics and nothing else). Or maybe worse (with that dash of thinly-veiled misogyny).
I was actually holding off on watching reviews of this game from the usual places I go to (GiantBomb, Waypoint) because I had this sinking feeling that they were going to discuss this game with the usual western, anti-Soviet, anti-Russia lens. I still haven’t actually checked if that was the case, but I’m still glad that you made a review about it. 🙏🏽 God, it sucks to hear about how egregious the sexualization of the female robots and characters is and how there aren’t many actual human women in the game. Add in the corny writing and I might skip this one. Edit: after listening to your review, I think I’m definitely going to skip this one. Good grief. 💀
Thank you so much comrade, it's me the guy from Twitter. 😂 I really liked your review, and I agree with your points in the video, so I'm posting here my point of view if anyone wants to see it, what the game is about in my vision: Like I said in Twitter this game is, besides the anti-communist propaganda, pure misogyny all the time, and I don't care if they did this because they wanted more players buying, they certainly deserved punishment from a certain iron man with mustache for portraying USSR like this. Although, I must say that by reading logs on the game, the game being a distopia on USSR, the endings being either "Totalitarian dictatorship under a mind controlling device" or "Genocide", just shows their true intentions in despicting anti-communist propaganda, even if you put all the fighting random robots aside (which again, is shown as a choice of very few individuals who are just in control of everything, to kill everyone in USSR, even as a fiction that is just plain stupid and insulting to all the government and state structure they had, they literally won civil war while against all the captalist nations at their necks, beat the NotSee germany at great cost, but not without strategy, became from a semi feudal country to equal in power, infrastructure, influence in the world as the USA in very few years, so yeah, to show it like it was just a great "castle of cards" is just very insulting, but we all know that was intentional), it still is like 80% of the game just a big combination of Misogyny and ahistorical Anti-Communist propaganda. You would need to ignore the whole story from beginning to end to remove all the lies they recreate from the captalist point of view. And here I'm not saying that USSR was pure Utopia and that it never made mistakes, what I'm saying is just that it is so shameful to see that, people literally don't care for what the USSR really was for it's people, it's history is so rich, you had so many unbelievably beautiful art and movies, movies that actually really made you think like Solaris or The Circus, and all we see is just another stupid american copy of a certain Steampunk game, put some Michael Bay explosions and random violence without reason, soviet aesthetic, dump an ocean of misogyny, and paint anti communist propaganda all over it in a subtle clean way like a dog whistle, and voi la. A complete uther american garbage, and it doesn't matter where the people who made it are from, who made this is completely submerged in the captalist dominant ideology. The purpose of this game and any captalist game like this, is just to make harder to people really think and know about USSR, it really just is about bringing total oblivion and "recreate history" from their point of view, like this game, with ahistorical lies from captalist countries. That will never happen, and the history of the people who bravely fought against the biggest killing and colonizing machines humanity created will not be forgotten, not in the USSR, neither Cuba, Vietnam, China, Laos, nor anywhere else, their fight will not be in vain and will never be forgotten, because it is part of our history, the history of the working class, and we will always come back and we will win, comrade. But besides all that, believe it or not the gameplay is good, I think most characters are very superficial, the most well developed character is Babushka (which was purposefully made in ironic way based on internet memes, so they wanted to make her a kind of comic relief character, but whatever) and the Scientist who helps the protagonist at the end, but the game isn't exactly intended to be a narrative masterpiece, so that, the gameplay and the beautiful scenarios are pretty okay.
I want to play Amtomic Heart but my PC isn't that good. also the game kinda look like westerized in some ways like the sexism in the game. it's cleary bioshock ish game so I bet they're bad faith crittism of the USSR in game. the game is made by Russian studio funed by Russian capitalist so I bet that will have some imported om the story. I am don't know I just feel unsure what to think about this game. sure I have played it yet but from what I see and hear about the game. it look anti communist in some way while also whitwashing parts of USSR's history.
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3:24 Yeah. I hate that term "unskilled labor" too. Its "unskilled labor" until there isn't someone to stock your favorite brands. Then its "essential work."
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That covid flashback.
It can be both. It just means it doesn't matter who does it .
I think this game is a perfect representation of Post Soviet mindset. They love Soviet esthetics, but they are cut throat capitalists, and use everything to make money. It seems that such sexualization is mostly result of Mundfish seeing its customers as not having sex men. And this game has its nostalgic and funny moments, but it is kinda sad.
I agree!
Exactly this!
Hypersexualization and over-the-top stuff like an old grandma with a shotgun and a flying house are good for sales, because crapitalism has a tendency to trivialize everything culture-related into a bright and shiny rollercoaster ride that can be sold easy.
Yes, I think there's a sad aspect of resurgent Russian nationalism that sees Soviet iconography as simply meaning the vanished power and influence of Russia and not the emancipatory, internationalist project that it was.
Yep. This is purely a fan service game.
There is nothing soviet beyond aesthetics in this game, majority of people in the game act and think as modern day hipsters from european country, not like soviet era people. There is no need to dig so deep in one direction to see that. But still even only for the aesthetics and not showing soviets like bloodthirsty ghouls this game is better then others and should be praised.
“Soviet era people” didn’t have all this fancy sh1t. Robots, polymer, etc. So it makes sense for them to act differently.
The Soviet Union displayed in this game is the Soviet Union that never was.
People in Soviet sci - fi books don’t act like “Soviet era people” either. This is normal.
@@ivansmirnov7342 In Soviet sci-fi people act accordingly to setting, so no, this is normal only if you normalize bad writing.
@@HobGobMob What's wrong with normalizing bad writing? Go on then...
@@HobGobMob Just admit u men only care about the sexualization of the robots and defending this pointless game which barely portrays anything accurate to the Soviet Union
At this point the game-play is decent, the game runs very well, the graphics are very good without calling for high end graphics hardware. That combination is a bit rare and is enough for me to play it. I dislike the rampant phallic symbolism, the casting of machines in gender roles and the robotic "female" ballet dancer that propositions P-3.
The lack of women was definitely something I noticed, but after hearing your analysis it sounds like this was a huge missed opportunity. There should have definitely been more women in the roles of scientists and soldiers.
Makes a video about a topical video game
(Actually it’s an educational video about the women of the Soviet Union 😉)
I try to Include education where I can 😂
@@LadyIzdihar hopefully the algorithm blasts the video off and more people can get the education they need 🙏
@AHxIntrovert44 that will end 2 ways
1. People will have an open mind and actually understand
2. People will pass it off as "SJW TriGGeRED"
@@endcaps1917 no such thing as bad PR 😎 👍
@@LadyIzdihar "I try to Include education where I can"
Said every woman ever
Absolutely fantastic! I love the citation of legally protected and promoted rights to women and, furthermore, any citizen regardless of nationality, ethnicity, etc.
As far back as 1917 and 1918!
Also, this game seems to just be another bang bang junk of a shooter with some veneer of soviet-punk aesthetics.
Edit: That twitter quote sums it up even better.
it would be cool to see more of this style of stuff, game reviews, precisely because there's so few people with an appropriate educational background on topics such as this
totally agree! pls do more reviews
I think that it’s quite rare to find a game that tackles this. But the WW2 cod games would be very interesting to see tackled. When I played call of duty 2 as a kid I was shocked that there was woman soldier in my war game. I didn’t even know woman were allowed to go to war at that point.
I'm gonna preface this by saying that I'm 100% pro-horny art, it can be great! However, I think there's a big difference between something being delightfully horny and something being leeringly horny. From what I've seen, Atomic Heart (like a lot of games, especially big budget ones) seems to fall very firmly into the latter category. You can absolutely write a story with very overt sexual themes and situations and still depict the characters as having their own internal lives and agency, and I would argue that usually makes the whole thing better.
Oh agreed 💯💯 I'm no prude, I've played my fair share of visual novels games that avoid upsetting me in this way. Because character development is often a huge part.
@@LadyIzdihar Yeah, exactly! Also, sorry if it seemed I was implying you were prudish, that wasn't the intention. I've been following your work for a long time now and I know you've had issues with those assumptions in the past.
"Give us True Horniness! Yes to mutual respect and character complexity! No to objectification and exploitation!" It is time to put this slogan on red banners and go storm AAA game developers.
>100% pro something
>has conditions for your support
I like to compare such things to Bayonetta character which is EXTREMELY HORNY but she isn't stripped of her agency. She's a badass, very tall, duel-wields big guns and fights on heels
Compare it to... this... and you are just met with this [ i.e. Atomic Heart's characters] and you are just feeling sick. They aren't badass, they are sexy and that's their whole character
This is sexualisation VS objectification kind of thing. When you sexualise a character, or a person [WITH THEIR CONSENT!] (A loved one during intimate moments for example), it isn't inherently bad, but when you are OBJECTIFING the person/character then you are starting to have problems.
Example of this would be revealing clothing: a V cut on a character isn't inherently bad in on itself, it's nice to look at, but when the camera does *the thing* over the V cut in every cutscene possible and characters talk more about it than anything else regarding that character, then we are haveing a problem
As one of my favourite posts on this subject said (paraphrasing): "Sometimes media tries to make something so horny that it comes back around and becomes un-horny and repulsive"
"Atomic Heart" is all form and no substance when it comes to socialist ideas. It's very pretty and incredibly nostalgia-inducing, but that's it - I seriously doubt that the devs even tried to include a leftist political message (or any political message for that matter) into the game, and none of them are probably marxists. Personally, I'm thankful that at least the USSR is not portrayed as a totalitarian inhumane dump for a change.
P.S. Unrelated, but at this point the real Tereshkova deserves to spend the rest of her days logging trees in Siberia - she's an incredibly reactionary bourgeois politician of the worst kind.
P.P.S. In case the author reads this - have you played Disco Elysium? When it comes to marxism and general leftism in popular culture, I think that game is somewhat of a phenomenon. Not only is it beautifully drawn, written and narrated, but its story heavily sympathizes with the communards of the game's fictional world, whose attempt at a social revolution was brutally demolished by a joint military intervention by a bunch of bourgeois states. Basically, kinda like "Russian civil war meets the Paris Commune with a dieselpunk aesthetic".
Kinda feels like an actual case of “Soviet nostalgia”
Like if someone turned those Soviet futurist music playlists into a game.
yep, theres some "aesthetic" but the whole society in the beginning is pretty much just capitalist
@@tensonra8011 no wonder, really. For a person who's lived their entire life in a capitalist environment, imagining a fundamentally different society is incredibly hard. Remember how many people think that their everyday life under capitalism is "just the natural order of things"? As if there never was and never can be anything else, neither in the past nor in the future. IIRC, Second Thought expressed an interesting idea that the subtle ideology of modern capitalism is that capitalism is natural, and any other society is either a utopian fairytale or just a stupid idea.
@@MLPGamer44 My point exactly. Sovietwave actually is pretty awesome though!
For example, there's a track called "Death Fears the Young" (Маяк - Смерть Боится Молодых), which never fails to get me daydreaming about all of the great things that humanity would've already implemented by now, if not for capitalist sabotage during the last century or so.
Communism in Disco Elysium is... interesting. They kind of flipped it around and instead of materialistic scientific worldview we get the height of idealism.
That part when the ballerina twins was getting the keys that's when it finally hit me, like these robots are oddly sexual. Especially for the USSR.
Those ballerina twins transmit more sexuality and femininity than any other female protagonist on Playstation, and they don't even have faces.
@@MK_ULTRA420heather mason, evie from ac syndicate, the girl from nier automata... maybe just look at more games, lol. The female cast from bloodborne...
If a female character is only femenine bc you can sexualixe it, the problem may not be the developers lol
@@MK_ULTRA420 well does it mean it's a good thing to sexualize things then? Doesn't it remove any other characteristics from that character other than being sexual
@@Layd36 Yes, why not?
@@MK_ULTRA420yea thats whats wrong with them
I'm almost finished reading the book "See what you made me do" by Jess Hill which is about domestic and gendered violence. It's really opened my eyes to how much the media (including video games) grooms people to accept the victimisation of women. Telling your partner you love them one minute and calling them a bitch/whore the next is not love, it's control and this is sadly normalised everywhere.
Another great video. I still haven't finished the game but I can certainly see the points you're making by the point I'm up to.
and on international womens day😭😭 a painful reminder of how much was lost and how far we still have to go
I have not played the game, but watched a letsplay video of a part of it, and I have also noticed a different thing. All the characters I have seen are pronouncedly Northern European, with blue eyes, lighter skin and so on. Meanwhile, the game takes place in Kazakhstan, where a large proportion of urban population was Kazakh (not all of them though). And there are no Kazakh or other Central Asia, or Caucasian characters. Even Caucasian lezginka dance in the prologue is performed by someone who looks very Russian. Finally, none of the Northern European-looking characters has a Ukrainian, Belorussian or Jewish name, only Russian ones (and one German). So the ethnic mix-up of this wonder city is more like to a wet dream of a Russian nationalist than to the Soviet realities, where new urban centres were mixing pots of different ethnicities.
Do you realize what was the population of Kazakhstan in 1950s and how many russians were there compared to kazakhs? Only since 1970s in Khazakhstan there became 4 times less russians than was before. You people just swim in your pseudo-righteous virtue signalling delusions and you're discussing a country you have zero clue about
every new thing i learn about this game is more egregious and exhausting than the last. you deserve the Hero of the Soviet Union medal for playing that all the way thru
Shame it's a missed opportunity in the educational and historical sense but, that means you got to make a video about it.
🤓
@@MK_ULTRA420 Seems that disliking education and being a conspiracy theorist go hand in hand XD. Who woulda guessed?
I don't think its the only idea, but imagine if the prompt for the robotic uprising in the game was that they had collectively decided that they were not the means of production but instead exploited workers? It would at least be engaging with some of the themes and not just the sovietwave aesthetic slapped on bioshock gameplay.
Also, in the game Tereshkova is modeled after Marina Tereshkova (a fictional actress?). So, not after the cosmonaut in the game universe.
Finally! I'm here cuz Ian Neves from História Pública recommended your channel. I'm glad you made this video. The gaming industry has always been filled to the brim with hegemonic discourse. I'd like to see more videos breaking down such discourse not just in the media in general but specifically in media industries that took off with neoliberalism. Thank you!
"I looked."
Lady Izdihar gaze confirmed.
Was there many people in general in the game? Like IIRC it was mainly robots in the game, and from that it could have had an interesting dialog in it as the robots took all productive labor in the world so in a sense you had humans become more bourgeois as we were divorced from labor while robots became a proletariat. Could give you a look into labor aristocracy if done right.
But automation is a good thing under socialism. If people in a communist/socialist society can automate mundane tasks by offloading them to robots, they don't thus become bourgeois, they just free up some of their time and effort for other meaningful things to do - self-education, art, cognitive work, and yes, possibly additional leisure too.
Robots can be considered proletariat (or any other class) only if they're sentient, and perhaps in this game they are, but in real life a robot is nothing more than a sophisticated tool.
Yeah, which is why I said this would be a good line of debate.
That sounds like the plot from _ Animatrix_
I remember watching a review of a modern film set in the USSR. The reviewer said this interesting phrase: "They (filmmakers) make films about themselves, and not about people of that era."
Perfectly describes all the modern attempts of young people from the RF and the CIS to create something with topics related to the Soviet Union. They do not understand the essence of the USSR and socialism itself. Therefore, even when they try to portray something positive about this time (which is extremely rare), they fail.
@@bloomingpain-flower7074 people do be like that. It perfectly describes _why_ we won’t get historically and ideologically accurate films and games about USSR. They would be made by modern people for modern people.
On the topic of women's rights in the USSR, what are your thoughts on the criminalisation of abortion between 1936 and 1955? I can't quite understand how such a backlash happened in a country that was otherwise so progressive on the issue.
I think I've done a short TikTok and maybe even posted it on here, can't remember, on the very topic! But I've been meaning to do a more long form vid on it thanks for reminding me!
th-cam.com/video/X4M2eOmjPWo/w-d-xo.html
It's because they needed manpower and specifically men to be born to be used in wars, and after the war male population has dropped dramatically and they needed to make up for it.
@@lepersonnage371 found the facist
Women were often forced by their partners to have abortion which at the time was not as safe and technology . This was to protect women in regards to the circumstances they were facing at the tiem5
The thing that upsets me the most is just how the game it's so deliberately capitalistic, not only on its frivolous and cliche critique about how socialism works, but in its narrative as a general. There is no problem in being sexual and horny. Its actually good that we can talk about these kinda topics so openly, and i can see how sometimes the game does benefit itself from this narrative style. Still, there are examples where the only reason why theres so much sexualization is marketing and to take some money out of it, and talking about sex and related topics openly doesnt mean trivialize it, it actually means the exact opposite. These are moments when much more than addressing sexual themes, atomic heart once again throws women to the sidelines and even takes away a certain part of their depth, and spoiler, most of them dont even have any
And we know that this is just capitalism projecting itself
Have you ever played ATOM RPG? It is the only other Soviet themed games thats any good I can think of. It is in a post apocalyptic USSR and youre goal is to help rebuild the soviet union. The games has portraits of Lenin and everything.
It's a great game, but it doesn't even mention any ideas or goals of Marxism-Leninism when it comes to rebuilding the society (at least the first part, I haven't played the expansion). It's basically Fallout 1/2 with a Soviet aesthetic, money, bartering and commodities included.
@@vadimk3484 ATOM RPG Trudograd had a communist faction you could kinda-not-really join, but it doesn't really go anywhere since the ATOM KGB/XYZ main quest ends it abit abruptly because you have to do something else, plus iirc it was just abit joke-y communist anyway, y'know?
@@toffee3944 Gotcha. I haven't played Trudograd yet.
It's kinda sad though that even those games/movies/books that sympathize with the left, often portray communism as a silly utopia and communists as either overly romantic dreamers or just idiots. For example, I absolutely loved Disco Elysium for saying that the communards were much better than every other political power, however for some reason the main character's "leftist" dialogue options are an asinine and cringy attempt at trolling/mocking communist ideas. Leaves a mixed feeling, although I still think that game is incredible. Maybe the authors tried to depict someone who thinks he's a Marxist while actually being a babbling idiot, but if that's the case, then it feels a bit too deep.
The Metro games have some Soviet theming but it's once again seen from a Russian chauvinist perspective I think.
@@shkeni Metro games are aggressively anti-communist/anti-Soviet, the message is there in plain sight. The books were that way too - putting it mildly, the author, Dmitry Glukhovsky, is not a particularly smart person who knows history of the USSR from bad movies and propaganda cliches. The games are nice otherwise, though.
There are human woman in the game, mostly in the start before the things go to shit and there are also plenty of women in the duty roster of the facility if you read logs on the computers and the audio logs. Furthermore it is only really the protagonist that refers to Larisa as a bitch, with is reasonable as he sees her as a enemy during most of the game. The other characters seem to show a great deal of admiration for her feats and skills.
I have replayed the game and I have noticed that there are actually female bodies around the facilities, some of them even are the bodies that you can speak with, so I am not quite sure what you were on about when you said that there were no women.
@@onsholo She's on her personal tirade because her ideal society crumbled before her eyes and now she's mad at capitalist men for it.
You pretty much confirmed my fears. When I first heard about this game was because of the horny (in a harassing way) upgrade bot. It made it clear this game was not going to be for me...
It's so so sad.
Great video. I started playing the game but didn't care for it. The whole "Tereshkova" sex doll robot thing was what first pricked my ears and the upgrade fridges. I was also foreseeing an anticommunist message with the "collective" mind thing and sadly I was right, guess I didn't miss much by dropping it. I've had similar issues with the treatment of female characters with the Metro games, which I've played more. They are generally just sex meat, post apoc fiction once taking the idea that 'human nature' is about domination and enslavement. In the last one (which deals more with the Soviet past from a nationalist lens, the main train you ride on throughout the game is called the "Aurora", for example), there's a single female character (a sniper) whose place in the narrative comes simply from being a prominent male commander's daughter and the main character's love interest. She's always getting captured or needing to be saved. Still, you do see some statues of Lenin lol.
Those ballerina twins transmit more sexuality and femininity than any other female protagonist on Playstation, and they don't even have faces.
Thanks for the review! The hypersexualisation and under-representation of women in this game kind of killed off my excitement for it. This is reflected across the entire gaming industry though, and idk when women will cease to be objectified in media.
There are plenty of AAA titles that don't objectify women, like The Last of Us and Horizon Zero Dawn
Absolutely! Still not enough imo though.@@MK_ULTRA420
After watching this TH-cam review I take back what I said on Twitter this is honestly a insightful and fair review tbh.
The only other proud soviet characters I've seen in gaming were in COD of all franchises lmao, the soviet campaign of World at War comes off like surprisingly extremely positive about the soviet union lmao
I remember I saw a trailer for an older version of the game that looked more interesting, then I saw a more recent trailer where the characters had british accents and immediately lost interest.
I think we all need to remember, that this game was made by Russians, not Soviets..
I thought it was American
@@Deckbark no, they are Russian developers
Just because the game is set in the Soviet era doesn't mean the creators understand that thinking.
It is one of the deepest kinds of sexism, when they need to imagine a person they always think of a man first.
Little spoilers, you're so nice! I love this game, it being so casually 'Red' without having to defensively justify itself, putting in your face Marx/Lenin bust, Stalin references and anti bourgeois posters everywhere. Usually mainstream games with SU references are hella 'doomer' like Stalker or Singularity, or have to parrot anti-communist moralism to justify it existence to the public like in the Call of Duty world war series and Command & Conquer.
Good point. The game is actually not pro-soviet or pro-communist, it's not more than "See, Soviet Union was not a godawful place, actually". But being not enough anti-communist or anti-soviet is a sin by itself nowadays.
Are the game designers of Atomic Heart still operating under the notion that only boys and men play video games? That would seem to be the only reason why they'd still market the female characters in various stereotypical ways. Meanwhile, there are plenty of gals who would dig their teeth into this gaming experience. I'd have to agree with comments in this video and on this thread that the sexism in the game is more in line with the Western treatment of women than what it sounded like the Soviets enjoyed. Then again, it's just a video game, a fantasy to indulge in for a while. It's an alternate history with a lot of creative license, from the sound of it. People have done and will continue to behave and believe in a number of unacceptable ways. I don't think that video games with so much violence necessarily encourage violent behavior in real life anymore than the objectification of women in AH would encourage young men to act on impulses against us. It's always going to be a useful critique of society as well as a limitation on our most personal affinities for the dark and unconventional. When I jack into a video game, I step out of reality for a while and into another one that I might not actually want to live in. I don't play video games so that I can continue to worry about all of the things that I think are wrong with the society I inhabit.
Стоит отметить что и в настоящем СССР, несмотря на прекрасно проделанную работу по вовлечению женщин к самым разным профессиям, было гораздо больше мужчин учёных, особенно академиков.
I'm not doubting you, but do you have any good places to find these sort of statistics?
If you look at the dead bodies they are almost all the very same model. This is to save time. It's bad for immersion, though, and this time saving technique also results in less female representation. But I am uncertain if it was deliberate, i.e. knowingly not wanting a bunch of dead women lying around. Instead they just made a generic soldier man and placed that body everywhere.
Suppose we can't expect much from a retrospective futurist video game portrayal of an alternate-universe USSR...yet still, disappointing.
Having a cultural space opened to insert the actual historical record is great, if the distorted version doesn't hold the narrative.
This is why I want historians to be consulted for things like this!
@@LadyIzdihar Absolutely! I haven't had a chance to play the game yet, but I'm saving your video for reference for a couple of friends who've just started it.
What a loss that the USSR was destroyed, it's ruins will cast their shadow over the generations for a long time.
Она смотрела на игру жопой? Там полно женских сотрудников, погибших во время бунта роботов. Причем в военной форме
Более того, когда герой только начинает путь, весь город заполнен и мужчинами и женщинами...
Аааа, я понял, здесь проблема не с глазами а с головой. Докопаться до автомата, что она себя странно ведет, хотя это неодушевлённый предмет...
Бля они посчитали трупы)))))))))))))))))))))))0
I never knew that women were elected into the soviets. With American politics, it's usually/mostly dominated by men, thus this experience as an American has sort of indoctrinated me into this idea that usually governments are run by men. What a wonderful example of one of the successes of the Soviet experiment!
Interesting that the game makers did not focus on WW ll Soviet women soldiers, Air Force, & partisans, only 1 decade earlier.
I didn't expect the game to be any kind of perfect representation of the Soviet Union, but for what it is, a game that doesn't completely demonize it, unfortunately in our times, is a step up.
also it's a bit weird that alla pugacheva's "arlekino" is in this game if it's set in 1955, that song wasn't out until 1975-76, and alla herself would have been 6 years old in the year the game took place. could they not be bothered to use soviet music from the actual decade it's meant to be set in?
No, it has its in-game explanation
Вы в своих рассуждениях делаете большую ошибку. Вы разделяете женщин и мужчин! Они все в первую очередь граждане Советского Союза и только потом делятся на женщин мужчин или по национальному признаку. У людей в Советском Союзе другой менталитет., им и в голову не придет подобное разделение. Поэтому там нет например расизма, потому что его там просто нет! Воспитание совсем другое.
I recently discovered your channel and I love the work you do it's so important! I was wondering if there is anything written about Parenthood in the USSR and what was considered ideal in raising children and starting a family in the Soviet Union?
I would love a review of Atomic Heart that just talks about how the characters clothes aren't period appropriate
Lol I COULD do that 🤔
You seem to be uniquely specialized to do so lol
It's almost like they're trying to rewrite history with video games...😅
Wdym? It's alternative history, so of course they are "rewriting" it
Great video! I wanna address that fetishization of soviet women's(women's in general) and soviet's
aesthetics is part of dehumanisation and shouldn't tolerated in mass media product. I'm kinda disgust that done by people from my country. Game looks and feel like product for western audience, except it doesn't has ideas like "all soviets(russians) are bad". Sad that setting being used for that mindless game, there were potential being something bigger and greater than we are got.
I thought it was a bit iffy, thanks for clearing it up
First woman cosmonaut in this universe was an entirely different person by the name of Maria Tereshkova (I think the reasoning being they wanted to still pay homage to real life Tereshkova without breaking it too much). There were plenty of female workers, even the ones that fell victim to the robot uprising and you can even interact with numerous "echoes" of the dead female (and male) employees (namely a dead tour guide in VDNKH that gives you a side objective of finding out what happened to all of the students). And if you go into the list of the facility employees there are plenty of women there, most of them in executive/managerial positions. Bodies in tubes and labs were not just women, but also men who too only wear their underwear (you even showed one of the male bodies lying on the table in the video), same with the surviving Kollectiv 2.0 test subjects. Not to mention all the civilian women you meet in prologue of the game. And regarding the supposed prevalence of the number of women over man in this universe: WW2 was largely a landslide in this reality, with far less casualties, however the devastation caused by it was mainly due to "brown plague" that Germans unleashed as a petty revenge for their loss. So if we factor that it, the demographics would be somewhat dissimilar to that of post WW2 USSR in real life, probably with far less difference between female and male population (which still was 79 men for every 100 women which is a big difference, but not as big as to reduce the dominance of men in fields they are more prone to engage in). Besides, having equal rights doesn't necessarily mean equal outcomes, which was the case in real life USSR where most of the high-end positions and namely most of the researchers were still male due to the inherent differences of interests between women and man (notice I'm saying specifically their individual interests, not their capabilities). Even soviet legislature realized that equality of outcome is not something they can influence without creating problems (unlike modern western counterparts that are somewhat obsessed with equality of outcome which I as a Russian of Ukrainian decent find really strange).
As to the appearance of bots - the male "servant" model (Vovchik) also looks as a blow up doll (very ugly one at that) and also serves your every whim (albeit they are a less sophisticated model as it later turns out). I'd argue they even have a far more "sexualized" (if you can even call it that) look compared to tereshkova bot. Also their design was mainly inspired by the early mass produced plastic dolls for children, rather then sex dolls as you claim. As to the appearance of the ballerina robots - how else are they supposed to look? The ones that are body guards of Sechenov are repurposed design of ballerina robots created by Petrov.
Can't say anything about "Nora" vending machine, that one really is strange and unfunny no matter how you look at it.
The profanities in this game are thrown around left and right towards every character (especially if you play in Russian, which was very poorly translated into English in my opinion). Also how would you feel after someone almost blew you up with a grenade? At that point in the game P-3 literally thinks she is in cahoots with the Petrov and is responsible for the massacre. Is everyone supposed to be kind and gentle to her because she is a woman despite the context? Doesn't that just reinforce stereotypes?
And finally the strangest one: "Baba Zina is subservient to men because she helped out the main character". That one just straight up BS, I'm sorry. She quite literally bosses the main character around on more then one occasion, she is more of a strong matriarch role rather then "subservient" as you say.
With all that, you call yourself "educated" and "aware". I'm sorry, but you are just selectively choosing stuff to construct a narrative of non-existent sexualisation and oppression where people developing this game were mainly adhering to realism (as much as you can do that in world with advanced robots and physics-breaking substances) and weren't playing favorites. For the most part, in-game representation of women pretty much follows that of the real life USSR (albeit everything kinda looks like a mishmash of 50s 60s and 70s rather then a well-defined time period). What modern people often don't realize about USSR is that women, with all of the rights they were given, still followed traditional gender roles, both in personal and work life and that was encouraged by the Soviet government. Woman was first and foremost a mother and a wife, and a man was a father and a husband. It's not subservience on the part of women, it's just common sense. Men and women have different priorities, so no matter how much rights you give either of them, majority will still fall under traditional gender and societal roles, socialism, capitalism or whatever else -ism be damned.
I completely agree with you that they used a lot of the stuff from different time periods which look out of whack being side by side, but your view on female representation completely overlooks the context to construct a narrative you want, not what actually happens in the game. I really hope you won't react to this comment in bad faith, cause I really don't have anything personal against you or women in general, I'm just being a voice of common sense.
I agree on almost everything except Tereskova since is established that the robots are an early version and in some years they will be equal to men, so i think the uncanny design was a good decision :3.
Apparently the dialog is much better in Russian 👍🏾
I haven't played the game and only heard about cuz geoffreyday worked on the soundtrack but watching some gameplay that updrage fridge scene just does NOT work at all
I'm a few hours into this game and I've been reading every log and advancing pretty slowly. From what I could take so far the game is very anti-communist in it's core but (as more ppl said already) it seems to love the "socialist aesthetics". The protagonist is not a likeable person, the glove is presented as a jerk and every person has an "evil intent", whether that is made clear or not. Also the upgrading machine is a staple in almost every "recreational room", so the ideia is that every soviet worker is a "lunatic machine fucker". I might be wrong here but it sure is what it looks like to me. They wanted the players (mostly westerners) to view those bizarre things and associate with how the soviets were. I don't mind the sci-fi part that they use to justify the game being during '55 but having Moon colonies and stuff, this part I think is the best part.
Finally the way that they portray women is so weird that almost look intentionally bad, but on this topic I couldn't add anything more that what you, and the ppl in the comments, have already said.
Really make you thinks if Mundfish, the developer offices is not in Russia for more than just taxes avoidance reason.
I started the game and at first, it seemed pretty intriguing. The truly glorious Soviet aesthetic that could fit anywhere between 1950 and 1985 with the clean streets, red flags everywhere, and other things, but I just couldn't shake the creeping feeling that something was off. So I got to the palace or institute (or whatever that fancy building was), got my assignment, got into the car and was transported to the flying island. But the longer I played, the worse that creeping feeling became, and then it just hit me like a brick: the game doesn't depict the Soviet Union, and even less so the 1950's Soviet Union, it depicts a pseudo-utopian modern society with a Soviet "skin". The protagonist didn't behave like a 50's Soviet citizen (or any individual living in the 1950's for that matter), the hairstyles were not period-appropriate, the lingo was not period-appropriate, and so, so many other small things that you can easily miss, but when you start noticing them, you just can't unsee them. Well, I quit the game some time after first meeting the good Doctor, and never went back. Yeah, I don't regret it, the game is trash. Also, I cannot add much to the "there are no women in this game" discussion, since, as I've already written, I have not played it for very long. But to note, the prologue does feature a lot of women NPCs, it's just that they're irrelevant to the actual meat of the game.
Also, also, HROT, a Czech Quake-clone set in 1986 Czechoslovakia was way more true to life, despite being a Lovecraftian satirical horror FPS. Speaking of HROT, I hated the choice of final boss, even though I understand why the dev chose him. It just felt out of place. And it does feature a couple of female enemy types, but they're mostly bosses.
But I have to note that women's rights in the Soviet Union weren't really all they're cracked up to be. Yes, Soviet women had more rights than in other countries, but overall, they were still quite often disrespected and treated as second class citizens, who still had to look after children and the household on top of having to work a day job. Let's not forget that all those fancy events and reports were also often held and written for show (as is often the case even today). And it wasn't just on the topic of women's rights, either. It was, and still is a common practice. But back to the subject of women's right in the Soviet Union, you can even see this in many Soviet films from different periods. Most depicted men as heroes and protectors, and women as those that needed protection or as supporting characters. One film that I found particularly appalling in this regard was the 1973 sci-fi comedy called This jolly planet (Эта весёлая планета), where a group of pedantic aliens - led by a woman captain - came to Earth on New Year's eve and ended up at a costume party, trying to understand why humans celebrate New Year. Everyone just assumed the aliens were in costume (because the aliens looked human, obviously) and in-character. At one point in the third act, the aliens were trying to convince the humans that they really were visitors from Alpha-Centauri, but no one would believe them, so the crew-members asked the captain on what they should do, to what the no-nonsence, responsible and authoritative captain replied "You figure it out. After all, I am but a woman, a weak woman." It just felt so wrong for her character, but the film treated it as the aliens finally starting to understand humans.
I want to play it... But I have to recognize that the creators are likely only aware of the neoliberal shock therapy of Russia as an ideological starting point. It just would have been nice if what you are describing was more authentic to that historical moment because it's not unreasonable to reflect that history accurately but still make a game where "something went wrong in the soviet system!" Maybe for example, the robots became sentient and did their own revolution against humanity. A cyber 1917.... Which would have been something interesting to grapple with.
Thanks for making this video!
The very reason I stopped plying games with human characters unless reviews prove the game is not hypersexualising women (or animals for that matter bc that one game traumatised me).
Second comment here, but I have had so many people recount things from the awful movie "Enemy at the Gates" as historical. People will recite happenings there as if they are true and it has done so much harm to people's perception on history.
Ending credits were longer than the game 🤦♂️
Game developers really need to touch grass. This is always common place in games.
It's a wierd soviet themed hentai with Duke Nukem as protagonist.
The good thing is it's not as anti commie as papers please. That shit was just the worst propaganda.
I'm curious what you think of Disco Elysium, if you've played it.
I've wanted to play this game sooo bad. But, I'm not surprised these issues are still apparent in gaming. It sucks because theirs sooo much good stuff they could've done with this game..
Islam has bigger issues regarding the treatment of women...
I loved the look of this game but was worried it would just be exploiting the soviet aesthetic for the sales, and that made me apprehensive to actually buy it. I think your review is an honest look at the kind of message this game is sending to it's audience, and it's significant lack of self-awareness seems akin to a bad 80's b-side action flick.
What you've covered here absolutely reinforces my original apprehension. I don't think I'll be picking it up... Thank you!
Have you played pathologic 2? If so, what are your thoughts
Булджать вроде не коммунист, но он хорошо подметил насчёт политической составляющей в Atomic Heart.
"Вопрос на засыпку: пропагандирует ли BioShock американскую мечту? Вы же узнали, как Америка выглядит, из этой игры?"
(If ppl start to demand bee war 2, respond them with "The condition for it was told in the first part")
The makers pov is coming from a capitalistic pov with being Russia friendly(which i have no problem with)
Not from a genuine dialectical materialist,historical materialist socialist pov from the makers in the game.
The comparison of ads at around 4:24 made me puke a little.
I tend to agree with all that you have said. The most charitable explanation for the few women is that the women were mostly scientists and other workers that were killed. That is not clear from the actual imagery though, most of the deceased appear to be male and it doesn't justify the gender disrespect that you have discussed.
I didn't fully realize the sexual undercurrents in the game till I was beyond the return period though as consolation, I bought it on sale so less impetus to MundFish. When I as a male, raise these point in Atomic Heart discussions, I get nothing but grief. I think that some males feel seriously threatened by females that seek to compete for the entitlements that are associated with just being male.
Personally, I think that the game would have been much more interesting if the roles of Sergey (i.e., servant) and Ekaterina (i.e., purity) had been reversed. It would have not altered much dialog since P-3 is not an acronym for Sergey, so it would have worked for Ekaterina. Also since Ekaterina "studied ballet and made significant achievements in both dance and martial arts" she is a more logical choice as the lead character. Based on the game lore, Ekaterina would have had a far superior curriculum vitae. At least, it would be more plausible to see her do the tunnel crawling, jumps, platforming and melee fighting. The dialog between Charles and P-3 is nowhere near the caliber of that between that of Alyx/Russell in HL/Alyx (which was based in Bulgaria's Sofia and Bourgas).
I enjoyed much of the game, the graphics are excellent and efficient, the game play is reasonable, but plot is at best convoluted and the rampant sexualization is a considerable and unnecessary detriment to the game. For me, a memorably offensive statement is in the sequence in the Theater where the ballerina robot chides P-3 about the length of time he has been apart from female companionship. This in my opinion is equivalent to bestiality, it is a statement that at minimum can only be uttered by a sentient being in possession of free will as well as the concept of informed consent. The day that it can be properly uttered by a machine is the day that machines achieve at least a human level sentience (I hope never).
I actually didn't notice those things, which makes sense since I'm a man, thanks for you work
Would probably make for a shorter video, but what are your thoughts on soviet female representation in Call of Duty: Vanguard? Obviously Call of Duty as a brand advertises for a fascist empire, but the Kavernacle said Vanguard humanized the USSR more than most other games of the genre
It‘s such a damn shame that most went away from this game believing what Charles told them throughout the game was the actual plotline, when in actuality it becomes quite clear that the Party and most importantly Sechenov really do have the best in mind, for everyone. SPOILER!! Actually cried a tiny tear at Molotovs death. Even if he was portrayed a bit more goofy than I‘d think he would have been, but I always had to remind myself: This game was marketed towards the west, so pure Soviet Propaganda would not have sat well, most likely. And the SU seemingly turned revisionist in this Universe, too. Why it did I cannot really figure out, but that‘s interesting.
The game was certainly not written by anyone with a degree in Soviet history or a Marxist-Leninist individual.
Though I did not feel as tho P3 was a proud KGB agent. He was confused most of all, made Nazi Jokes and explicitly stated his apathy towards the system multiple times. Again, I think this is just to keep it accessible and due to a lack of political education, it bothered me immensely nonetheless.
Great video!
Have you played Black Book? It’s pre-Soviet times but it might be interesting to you
I just knew about this game thanks to the aesthetics and the my communosphere playing it. I am not a gamer though, and seeing a bunch of info about it, I really decided to avoid it, in the way of being a very sketchy representation (obviously, it is fiction and no hope should be given on most games if we want an accurate representation of reality). And it is good to see you reviewing it, specially because you are a Soviet historian (as you mentioned) and you have really read a bunch of content regarding it.
I think the game is softly anti-communist, if you take a closer look you can catch that passive stance very clearly, the premise itself is problematic considering the Soviet view of labour, which was integral to their way of life, everything in the USSR was labour centered, the idea of having robots doing everything is definitely something the soviets didn't sought after, didn't fit their views, the soviets saw automation as a way to easy manual labour, not extinguishing it, the concept of extinguishing labour by automation is pretty much a contemporary concept made mostly by liberals which can't think of a healthy and democratic workplace.
The other problem is the game name itself *spoiler ahead* operation atomic heart also doesn't make any sense in the Soviet policies, they didn't wanted to take over the world, so you can take my first point and join with the second, a society that deeply automate their labour which is planing to use those robots as weapons to take down their enemies, that looks like the US, not like the USSR, revolutions aren't made by imperialism, they are importing machines which are used to define their softpower, after that they would engage combat mode to attack and occupy the country, that's imperialism right there.
Together with what you said and the entire premise of the game being made around a Russian Federation/US kind of USSR, I really think there is a lot of anti-communist narrative right there, just not as obvious.
wow, I was looking forward to seeing some Marxist comment on this game, thank you sooo much!!!
Единственное мнение о ядерном сердце которое мне интересно.
My expectations for this game were low, I enjoy your review more than I enjoyed the game
Streaks volumes about the type of culture runs rampant in game developers.
But yeah American mentally protecting into the game. The aesthetic is the only soviet thing about it.
I haven't played the game but what i think and hope are two things, first that this game is a satire or something like that or that the game fell victim of commercialization and the devs wanted the game to be very commercial so selling it with all the restrictions imposed in russia wouldn't be hard, otherwise i hope the devs don't think that way about the soviet era and women, but i have to admit i did felt attracted to Left and Right despite being oversexualized.
You got it right, "Atomic Heart" has very little(if any) of the Soviet spirit and substance, and is primarily about questionable aesthetics. There is an actual joke that "All sex in the Soviet Union was packed and gone to the Facility 3826". However, I want to point out, that there is something useful there. If you just take the list of the employees, and the mail stuff in the in-game computers, you'll see, that there are lots of women working on the facility, comparing that to, say, similar facility in "Half-life"(or relatively recent "Black Mesa"), where scientists are almost exclusively men. But this, of course, is too little to outweigh the minuses you've mentioned.
If this game had just been a virtual simulation or a museum of the USSR as it was an into an alternate timeline, even without any of the existing plot or the shooting, it would have been much better. Damn shame tbh.
I think the atomic heart is game about end of Soviet Dream. End of Soviet Dream if you will. However this end is because Soviet Union have reach its limit.
This is explained the lack of feminin character. The heart have been replaced by "atomic". Become heartless regime with corrupt ideal.
Active and young feminin ideal is what lack in this game. It because this game is about that. Ideology without feminin counterpart.
The 3 female character is description on the ideology liberalism : Larissa (masculinized), communism : Ekaterina (Separation of brain hemisphere), fascism : Zinalda (vengenge). it correspondence with 3 male main villain for each ideology.
This also explain the end where P3 dream of Robotic Ekaterina to save him. Save him for this ideology that masked for toxic masculinity.
If you see this in perspective of man angst you will see something. Almost get sexually assaulted by technology. Getting wrecked by two female robot balerina. Fear of being mind controlled as murder weapons.
It is male angst against state and ideologies, against technologies, social engineering.
i watched like 10 minutes of cutscenes it looks like it was birthed from the mind of an american patsoc
You should try workers and resources Soviet Republic, that's a good game with lots of architecture and vehicles from the eastern block and it's a simulation of planned economy.
I'm interested to make a video about women rights in Soviet Union compareto capitalist nations. Is there any post about the comparison of those charts?
You are the lady only we need maam. 😭
It really sucks that a game I've been looking forward to just keeps getting worse with every new piece of media I see on it. It's a huge missed opportunity to not have more amazing female protagonists in a game with a setting featuring the Soviet Union.
Regarding the amount of women I think you see what you want to see. There were plenty of women in the opening sequence. Many women are mentioned in that list of workers of facility 3826. And there aren't that many main characters in general to include more women there. Or do you think there should be exactly 50% women everywhere because equality?
You've left so many comments idk why my video upset you so much.
@@LadyIzdihar Well, because I wrote something, then thought of another point and made a new comment.
@@sert87 Edit your first comment or simply reply to it next time
I personally have been enjoying the game but not without any major criticisms, most of which you addressed. One of the best decisions I made was switching the language to Russian because the English dub is atrocious. It has several major issues. I do think there were some attempts on not being a totally anti-Soviet or communist story, but some major pitfalls as well. But it’s pretty obvious there was not enough care put into women being portrayed with a lot of car and intent. It has several good ideas and a good aesthetic but largely is wasted potential even if I did cold away liking it for the most part. Granted I am a man so some of these issues just don’t affect my enjoyment as much. I just overall found the aesthetic, gameplay, music, and concept (if not always the execution of the concept) enjoyable enough for what I often enjoy in my FPS games. I also think the weird middle ground of somewhat positive or sympathetic portrayal of the USSR without actual meat on it or falling into the traps of misogyny is just representative of how a lot of Russians (given that Mundfish did originate there) is nostalgia for the aesthetics and power of the USSR but not exactly socialism or progressive elements of it.
This video is perfect for me, cause I (as a Communist) was mildly curious about this game's portrayal of the (post-) Soviet Union, but I have zero interest in playing it (didn't like the trailer, nor like FPSs).
With that said, from what you mentioned... It sounds pretty much like exactly what I expected (Soviet aesthetics and nothing else). Or maybe worse (with that dash of thinly-veiled misogyny).
Yeah this game is doing alot of fan service
I was actually holding off on watching reviews of this game from the usual places I go to (GiantBomb, Waypoint) because I had this sinking feeling that they were going to discuss this game with the usual western, anti-Soviet, anti-Russia lens. I still haven’t actually checked if that was the case, but I’m still glad that you made a review about it. 🙏🏽
God, it sucks to hear about how egregious the sexualization of the female robots and characters is and how there aren’t many actual human women in the game. Add in the corny writing and I might skip this one.
Edit: after listening to your review, I think I’m definitely going to skip this one. Good grief. 💀
I guess I just really didn't take a deep look at the game. I just took it as a parody and enjoyed it as it was.
WOW! I LOVE THIS! NICE!
Thank you so much comrade, it's me the guy from Twitter. 😂
I really liked your review, and I agree with your points in the video, so I'm posting here my point of view if anyone wants to see it, what the game is about in my vision:
Like I said in Twitter this game is, besides the anti-communist propaganda, pure misogyny all the time, and I don't care if they did this because they wanted more players buying, they certainly deserved punishment from a certain iron man with mustache for portraying USSR like this.
Although, I must say that by reading logs on the game, the game being a distopia on USSR, the endings being either "Totalitarian dictatorship under a mind controlling device" or "Genocide", just shows their true intentions in despicting anti-communist propaganda, even if you put all the fighting random robots aside (which again, is shown as a choice of very few individuals who are just in control of everything, to kill everyone in USSR, even as a fiction that is just plain stupid and insulting to all the government and state structure they had, they literally won civil war while against all the captalist nations at their necks, beat the NotSee germany at great cost, but not without strategy, became from a semi feudal country to equal in power, infrastructure, influence in the world as the USA in very few years, so yeah, to show it like it was just a great "castle of cards" is just very insulting, but we all know that was intentional), it still is like 80% of the game just a big combination of Misogyny and ahistorical Anti-Communist propaganda.
You would need to ignore the whole story from beginning to end to remove all the lies they recreate from the captalist point of view. And here I'm not saying that USSR was pure Utopia and that it never made mistakes, what I'm saying is just that it is so shameful to see that, people literally don't care for what the USSR really was for it's people, it's history is so rich, you had so many unbelievably beautiful art and movies, movies that actually really made you think like Solaris or The Circus, and all we see is just another stupid american copy of a certain Steampunk game, put some Michael Bay explosions and random violence without reason, soviet aesthetic, dump an ocean of misogyny, and paint anti communist propaganda all over it in a subtle clean way like a dog whistle, and voi la. A complete uther american garbage, and it doesn't matter where the people who made it are from, who made this is completely submerged in the captalist dominant ideology. The purpose of this game and any captalist game like this, is just to make harder to people really think and know about USSR, it really just is about bringing total oblivion and "recreate history" from their point of view, like this game, with ahistorical lies from captalist countries.
That will never happen, and the history of the people who bravely fought against the biggest killing and colonizing machines humanity created will not be forgotten, not in the USSR, neither Cuba, Vietnam, China, Laos, nor anywhere else, their fight will not be in vain and will never be forgotten, because it is part of our history, the history of the working class, and we will always come back and we will win, comrade.
But besides all that, believe it or not the gameplay is good, I think most characters are very superficial, the most well developed character is Babushka (which was purposefully made in ironic way based on internet memes, so they wanted to make her a kind of comic relief character, but whatever) and the Scientist who helps the protagonist at the end, but the game isn't exactly intended to be a narrative masterpiece, so that, the gameplay and the beautiful scenarios are pretty okay.
I want to play Amtomic Heart but my PC isn't that good. also the game kinda look like westerized in some ways like the sexism in the game. it's cleary bioshock ish game so I bet they're bad faith crittism of the USSR in game. the game is made by Russian studio funed by Russian capitalist so I bet that will have some imported om the story. I am don't know I just feel unsure what to think about this game. sure I have played it yet but from what I see and hear about the game. it look anti communist in some way while also whitwashing parts of USSR's history.