I like that quite a few companions in Owlcat games resemble real-life people who were indoctrinated in cults/under authoritarian regimes. I appreciate the fact that you can see them struggle vastly in their deprogramming.
In most games involving this topic, it takes a bit of back and forth, some tact, and persuasion skills to āfixā these NPCs, but the emphasis is usually on the end result and how your choices have mattered. But in Owlcatās games, there's so much narrative focus on the companionsā internal suffering when they are questioning their old beliefs, and the constant fear as they choose to leave a harmful place and rebuild their lives despite immense hardships, and their ending can easily turn out to be bad.
I'm always disappointed when real-life people don't reflect on how the system they are a part of can be problematic, and when they even contribute to the harm without any thought for more marginalised people, but these stories remind me that it is difficult to give up oneās comfort to act on dissenting beliefs.
I guess it's more reason that I should surround myself with people who are conscious of political or societal problems and are willing to help enact changes even with great risks. I should also lend a hand to people who are trying to get out of bad situations, because itās difficult and itās commendable.
My understanding that these characters (Kibellah, Heinrix) are written by people who may have lived already under Soviet Union and then in Russia. They would know what it's like, they literally escaped themselves.
Heinrix is every Russian boy who grew up in the 90s, watching pirated anime with shitty dub about piloting giant mechas, but then became what we call "comrade Major" who shoves bottles up the asses of the enemies of the ruling regime.
He still remembers the opening song from his favorite anime
I literally saw someone under an Owlcat Ad protesting them and telling people not to buy their games because they were a āRussianā studioā¦ Many people don't care about dehumanisation as long as itās not done to themselves.
