Oppression in History and Video Games: A Rant
In the real world, the tragedy of a lot of the more fanciful executions that occurred was that the claimed charges were false. Killing witches is bad because there weren't really any witches, so innocent people were getting killed. However, if we veer into the realm of alternate history, it's important to note that if the charges were true, all of the sudden these actions become a lot more understandable. If Martha really was cursing her enemies and causing their babies to be stillborn and their crops to fail, that's really bad! It's not even clear if imprisoning her would stop the magic! Death becomes a more understandable resort. In the same way, if a cabal of Jews really did kidnap Christian babies and sacrifice them and eat them, and put young Christian boys on mockeries of Pilate's trial before crucifying them, well, that's murder. They kind of do deserve to be executed, if this really happened (which it didn't).
Thus, if in your literature or video game, you want to touch on this note - which I heartily endorse, of course - it's important to not make the villains "right", unless you're intentionally doing some grimdark cynicism, or unless you actually play them not as villains but justified. A positive example: Harry Potter. The Death Eaters are basically wizard-racial-superiority types, and lots of the Wizarding World basically subscribes to their views that mixed blood is somehow "bad", but they're wrong. In the actual reality of the setting, there is no difference between normal-human born wizards & witches, mixed bloods, and purebloods. They all have the same potential "power", morality, etc. While the HP series villainy has other issues, this part is done correctly - the reader can be frustrated along with Harry & Hermione that "YOU IDIOTS THIS IS STUPID WHY ARE YOU SO HUNG UP ABOUT BLOODLINES." (A nice tonic to all the many other fictional series where bloodlines actually are super-important, too. Sure Harry is still a chosen one, but it has nothing to do with his parentage.)
However, I've been playing both Dishonored and more Fire Emblem Awakening lately, and both awkwardly trip this up. Let's talk Fire Emblem first. In the first plot arc of the game, we learn that ~10 years before the game starts, the unnamed Exalt who fathered Emm/Chrom/Lissa goes on a crusade against Plegia. Ylisseans worship Naga, Plegians mostly seem to worship Grima. The war drains both sides of people until he dies, and 16-year old Emmeryn calls off the war. Plegia is still cheesed off, though. The tone in the first 11 chapters is unmistakable: the Exalt was wrong and made a terrible error, earning Ylisse only a bitter enemy. Okay, a cautionary tale about how once you start a religious war, stopping it is hard; hate lives on, etc. Fine, solid. However! In the third plot arc of the game, we discover that worshipping Grima has the unfortunate side effect of rendering you magically bound to sacrifice yourself for Grima's feast, or something. Not only that, we are explicitly told that this ritual requires a lot of people, and that Validar had intentionally not sent any Plegians to fight Valm because he needed them all to restore Grima to full power. (And it's not clear if this ritual also requires the Fire Emblem, but it apparently doesn't, but maybe would have been easier had they also had the real Fire Emblem. Whatever.) The consequence of waking Grima up is apparently the end of the world and the extermination of all human life within 15 years or so. In other words, the kind of fate so terrible it pretty much justifies breaking every single human law or ethical guideline to stop if you value the continuance of humanity at all. So... the exalt was right. If Emmeryn's father had succeeded in his war, and exterminated the Plegians, then the world would not be under threat from Grima! Did you just provide an in-game reason for genocide to be a good idea?! This is sickening, and surely not intentional by the writers. Anyway, freedom of religion does not really apply when someone is worshiping the very real dark dragon who actively wants to destroy humanity, and said worship gives him power. Blargh. Any power of the moral from the first arc is undercut by the third arc accidentally saying "actually, the Exalt's only fault was that he failed in defeating the Grimleal, they really do deserve to be attacked and destroyed immediately."
In Dishonored, we learn that the Overseers, the religion of Dunwall, have big hypocrites for leaders. Additionally, you got inducted into Team Outsider (very strangely... since Corvo is silent, rather than a "deal" or contract with him, he just shows up and says "hey, I like you, have a tatoo and magic powers."), and the Overseers hate the Outsider and consider him basically the devil.... and you work against the Overseers somewhat incidentally, you are presumably supposed to be not a huge fan of the Overseers. The game also wants to be ambivalent about the Outsider, in fairness; you get told in the between-mission loading screens that "The Outsider is neither good nor evil." In reading logs of things like "interrogation" sessions of Outsider-worshippers, you find that they have magic powers and can do things like possess people, alarming the interregators as the person's spirit flitted from interrogator to interrogator. Okay, that is kind of terrifying (and you do indeed have a possession power you can buy in-game!). So... what's the verdict? Let's look at the Outsider-affiliated people other than Corvo, who can be played as both "good" and "quasi-evil."
* Granny Rags has an Outsider Shrine. She wants you to murder some thugs and to get back at the thugs by planting plague goo in their elixir stills, which would cause people who drink their elixir to get sick rather than healthy, or at least make the elixir worthless. Uh-huh.
* A crazed survivor who'll attack if you enter his apartment has a Shrine near Kaldwin's Bridge. You can read his journal, where he finds the Whalebone inscribed with the Outsider's mark, becomes obsessed with it and misses going to a job, gets into a fight with his cousin who came by to visit (& help!) him, but picked up the whalebone himself. And he uh murderered his cousin, and clearly descended further into madness rapidly thereafter, realizing that everyone is thieves coming to take his precious rune. As a little mini-horror vignette, A+, but I'm not filled with trust for what the Outsider's artifacts do to people.
* The torturer who tortured Corvo for 6 months is an occultist and Outsider worshipper, complete with Outsider magic. Additionally, the Outsider claims in the above vignette that he ignores Sokolov as he's "not interesting enough" and thinks that the Outsider can be summoned with specific words or phrases. Which implies that the Outsider powers only come to those whom the Outsider finds interesting, and freely. So... the torturer is also an interesting dude to the Outsider, just like Corvo.
* Daud & the assassins have Outsider powers, too, and kill various notable people. Uh huh.
Anyway, I like the plot element, but "neither good nor evil?" Uh. It's pretty clear that the Outsider is, at best, someone who enjoys watching humans be horrible to each other, like a Roman emperor watching gladiators go at it. God of chaos, madness, & assassins and all. Considering that someone with Outsider powers is an *extremely* dangerous individual who can possess others and flit past defenses (like, uh, the whole freakin' game of Dishonored), I really really can't fault the Overseers wanting to kill them! Going back to the historical case, this is like "what if the witches in Massachusetts had REAL POWER to kill people." This is less bad than the FE case, as Dunwall is a more cynical world, but trying to spin this as "neither good nor evil" is a bit much. Just embrace that a crazy chaos god gave you power, but that doesn't mean Corvo needs to use the power for evil.
Although on that note, I must say I find the "evil" path actually more fitting. You are an assassin given power by the devil to go around killing people. Additionally, while the writers seem to think the Empress is sympathetic for some reason, I'm much more cynical of this. You can't build a quasi-fascist state in 6 months by magic (unless you are Harry Potter Book 7). The Empress "should" be as bad as the rest of them, these are her advisors after all, but whatever. Additionally, I'm with the Zero Punctuation review: The decision to make Corvo a mute was a mistake, just as it was for Gordon Freeman. It sort of works if you play Corvo as the silent deathbringer who just wants revenge and nothing else, similar to how Crono just wants to save the world, of course; hence my preference for the "dark" interpretation of Corvo where he's just another political player getting revenge against those who shoved him out of the way. The positive Corvo interp suffers, however, but it's clearly intended - the (supposedly trustworthy) Empress speaks highly of Corvo (is he the royal *consort* as well as bodyguard or something? Who's Emily's dad?).
Okay, I just wanted to randomly rant. I'm pretty okay with killing Grimleal in FEA or having Overseers oppress Outsider worshippers in Dishonored, yet the games themselves have a more incoherent view on the matter, with sometimes it's okay and sometimes we'll imply it's bad.
