Quote:
Originally Posted by gray pierce
Would you honestly like to be cast in the role of someone who believes his race is superior and others should be exterminated?
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There are so many problems with this mentality.
1.) You are not "cast in the role" of an adventure game character. They are an independent story character over whom you exert some control. When Guybrush turns and makes an aside to the 'camera,' he is talking to you, the player, a separate person. In other media, you can read a book about Nazis, hell, you can even read 'Mein Kampf,' without completely identifying with the Nazis. Adventure games are no different in this respect.
2.) Even if you were to be 'cast in the role' of a Nazi, that certainly wouldn't be a bad thing. How many film and TV actors have been literally 'cast in the role' of Nazis? Did any of them become Nazis? Did any of them lament the experience? Of course not. It's an opportunity to explore a new and dark facet of the human experience.
3.) There are already plenty of games where you can play as Nazis, terrorists, or a fictional Nazi stand-in. These are mostly shooters, which tackle the subject with less nuance than an adventure game would.
4.) And perhaps most importantly, ignoring or glossing over difficult or disgusting parts of our human history is SIGNIFICANTLY more problematic and offensive than trying to face them and grapple with them in art and literature. If we relegate the Nazis to simply evil cartoon bogeymen, if we don't acknowledge and explore their humanity and the very real human situations and decisions that led to the adoption of National Socialism - then we deny the fact that this was something done by people, not monsters, we deny the fact that this is something people are capable of, and could happen again, and we tacitly invite such evil to recur.