Actually, It somewhat annoyed me in Arcanum too. Its just that, at the time, those politics weren't being shoved into us through every hole, so it just didnt really annoy me enough to matter.

If politics has always been in games then why does it bother me so much now, what actually changed?

IMO, There is one crucial question regarding politics in games : "Does the writer make the player feel bullied into the picking the writer's favorite side?". The answer is, unfortunaltely, quite subjective. However, if the player can pick either choice and feel like the game has treated him fairly with the natural consequences of that choice, then its politics done right.

Why does it feel so much like propaganda now but not then?

The themes themselves aren't exactly modern, the pitfalls of industrialization have been explored explored for a long time like in Thoreau's Walden and Tolkien's Middle Earth books. Likewise racial discrimination has been a theme for almost all of human history, back to even ancient Greek and Roman mythology.

The modern part is the absolutely plummeting quality of the stories the include those themes. Robust and balanced critique of a the pros and cons of a system and making the case that the cons can outweigh the pros has been replaced with blatant lazy strawmanning the side you've decided against into villainous caricatures and pasting over the any flaws of your favoured side with emotionally grabbing heroic sacrifices and Deus ex machina that allow them to leapfrog those problems.

So it feels like propaganda now because it is now, instead of providing balanced food for thought for anyone to consume and digest, it's a blatantly lopsided evangelism only meant to capture the weak and vulnerable and guide them thoughtlessly into the most extreme version of a given belief.

I don't really know if Arcanum is particularly "modern" in its takes on those subjects though, I'm afraid I skipped it. Largely because steampunk ranks only slightly higher than furry shit on my "themes that attract mediocre talent eager to milk a desperately lonely market for easy money" scale, so I don't exactly hold high hopes.

This is the game with the gnomish conspiracy to have ogres rape women in order to create more half-ogres, right? (It's been a long time, I'm only dimly remembering an LP.)

It should be noted that orcs are full of hatred and fear, are naturally predisposed to violence, and have very low IQs by human standards. This is canon.

This would not be canon if the game were made today. This is the key difference, to me.

There is a difference between introducing a real world idea and exploring it fairly without drawing any particular conclusion; and preaching a one dimensional argument with all the intelligence of the Gawker editor in chief who decided to testify that he'd publish child porn given the opportunity.

Not that the former always works of course, but it works far more often than the latter.

You just start noticing it more once you see it for the first time. You know the hatred these people have for you, so your mind is tuned to find their messages.

I think it's partly things you might not have used to notice and partly because game (and movie) design as pushed so hard away from subtlety to total polarization of characters and shoving it in your face directly.

Movies are a much more mature medium and they compare to games fairly well. There's been politics in movies almost as long as there has been movies. It just wasn't always so direct--a.k.a. lame. You're no longer left to wonder about anything. Every character must be clearly bad or clearly good and even worse they make it so obvious, often to the point of straight up telling you. Shame and hate for the bad ones and constant glorification of the good ones starts from the very beginning. Good characters are no longer allowed to have flaws at all--none. The only "positive" trait allowed to bad characters is if they at some point come to the realization the good characters were right from the beginning. Then you add in the even worse level where in modern movies the good must be the preferred liberal classes, i.e. alphabet people, women, etc. The bad characters must be white men, capitalists, etc.

So what I really hate about most of these stories is they aren't a story at all. If I know who is good, who is bad, and good will be worshiped and bad will be shamed all the time--what's the point of even paying attention?

Because the politics now is about changing everything you love about your favorite franchises.

If they simply made a bunch of new franchises with woke characters/storyline. A lot fewer people would be up in arms about it.

But I was never a fan of inserting the popular politics of the day into storyline. Its lazy. I'd rather see people give an angle that wasn't being heard anywhere else