Just doing a politics check before I give them my money. Obviously, the splash screen and emphasis on combining cultures seems a little like SJW red flags, but not, on its own, enough to really push it one way or the other. Anyone know anything about the studio or game beyond that?
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (21)
sorted by:
I played through a full game of humankind (10h) and I think its only around 3 out of 10 on the woke scale, and isn't nearly as bad as civilization 5 or 6. For example, the cultures you pick throughout the game are almost all historically relevant, as opposed to the random irrelevant african and native cultures that make up the majority of leaders in civ 5+6. The combining cultures aspect seems to be purely for gameplay reasons, as switching cultures each age lets you change/adapt gameplans instead of being locked in at start. Aside from the splash screen, you can only really notice anything woke if you are actively looking for it.
The game has you make a decision every few turns that slightly adjusts your cultural alignment, and for the most part these seemed to be very well balanced for the first half of the game, with tradition vs progress and nationalism vs globalism appearing to be equally viable, and there are bonuses for remaining neutral as well. After you get to the renaissance time period the progressive alignment starts to become overpowered, and a few of the cultural decisions you have to make have a clear pro scientism slant. Nationalism still seems to be viable lategame. Pollution and global warming are also brought up as lategame mechanics, but I didn't see them actually affect much.
The leader portraits, units, and most units looked like they were designed to be as neutral as possible, and I didn't see any woke race/gender stuff being pushed there.
The narrator will commonly make sarcastic quips about the decisions you make, but it seems to take shots at every possible ideology.
One anti-sjw game mechanic that I found amusing is that atheism is treated as its own religion.
Overall the game seems like a much better option for this genre than civ, but the pro-scientism in the lategame might be slightly annoying.
Thanks for actually playing it first, instead of judging it based on its dumb name and cover art.
I myself, have played through a few of the endless games. All decent imo. Nothing super ground breaking but enjoyable for what they are.