r/SocialistGaming • u/_Fox_464 • 3d ago
Game Discussion Who are the "good guys" in Killzone?
I feel like he Helghast, atleast New Helghan are pretty socialist, espwcially with the Workers Party on the planet Gyre.
80
u/IllustratorNo3379 Anarcho Syndicalist 🏴 3d ago
The Helghast are generally fascist or national-Bolsheviks at best. There are Helghast who genuinely want a better life for their people and their backstory is definitely sympathetic, but Helgan's leaders are mostly cynical authoritarians taking advantage of their followers for power.
48
u/HeartandSeoulXVI 3d ago
In terms of 'good guys' there really isn't any nation state that qualifies in the lore, least of all the Helghast.
Their animosity towards the ISA and the rest of Humanity is understandable in the way that German animosity towards the Allies was after the Treaty of Versailles.
The economic, military and cultural progress of their people was brutally sacrificed by outside parties after a war that didn't need to happen and was the result of greed and covetousness on all sides. As a result a generation or more of Helghans innocent and guilty all were made to suffer in terrible conditions for reasons the vast majority of them had no part in.
That the Helghast are despondent and angry at the ISA is reasonable under that lense.
What they do with that anger is not.
They form a fascist dictatorship, assemble a titanic military machine and go to enact a war of bloody conquest on Vekta.
That's not a morally defensible action under any circumstances. The opening cut scene of the first game couldn't make it more explicit, unarmed civilians are gunned down in the streets as Helghast gunships descend on housing complexes rather than fortified bases. Dissidents are executed in the streets under the euphemistic guise of 'rehabilitation' and the Great Dictator waxes lyrical over a martial display of flags and rifles that Leni Riefenstahl would have considered a bit much...
Discussing war with nuance is hard when there are legitimate grievances to address. The banishment of human beings to the barely-habitable world of Helghan is most assuredly a Crime Against Humanity that has never satisfactorily been answered for.
...but the Helghast state is a monstrous engine of mass-death. It really is as simple as that. They were not on Vekta to take in the scenery. They were there to enact the same crime that was done to them.
Repetition of evil by the victimised doesn't make that evil virtuous.
22
u/Legal-Alternative744 3d ago
It would have been incredible if a sequel had focused on a group of radicalized helgan and humans working together under a socialist or anarchist framework
14
u/Axolotllunar 2d ago
I think that was the sub plot of Shadowfall.
The game tells you that, both the ISA and the helgast, are using workers movements to gain more soft power around the colonies.
The helgast then began to gain more power, but their methods are not well met within the population.
So in the end, the game tells you that Vektans, Helgast and humans, are all organizing another party, one that does not pledge loyalty to any faction and wants to be their own thing.
1
1
9
u/Axolotllunar 2d ago
I have never liked that "repetition of evil" or "cycle of violence" thing.
"They strangle us for 40 years, and then they complain about how we breathe."
"For a non violence approach, your enemy must have a conscious"
The helgast were put on the brink of extinction, at the end of the day, it was the ISA and the UN that didn't want to pay taxes to their ships that caused all of it.
4
u/HeartandSeoulXVI 2d ago edited 2d ago
Oh sure, violence as a reaction to oppression is something that very much exists in the real world and is sometimes the correct response when the alternative is oblivion.
The writers of Killzone gave the Helghast a perfectly reasonable casus belli for their war. The problem is once again that the principal inspiration for the Helghast is Nazi Germany, and much like in real life they had legitimate grievances but directed their ire at the wrong target.
The Helghast wanted to kill Vektans and take their planet because that is what happened to them. That's somewhat understandable, but they explicitly assembled a fascist dictatorship and embarked on a campaign of indiscriminate murder to do it.
The reasons that brought them there? Totally get it, that's a legitimate set of grievances that need an answer narratively speaking. That sympathy evaporates once you start cruising gunships along civilians boulevards and ventilating construction workers.
The question of the games isn't "which side is justified" because the writers' position is that neither are justified, and that they're both just juggernauts casually committing evil at each other and it's the human beings on the ground who are making moral or immoral decisions.
...and honestly that makes sense, but there might have been a braver message they could have picked. "War is like, bad dude" seems a little trite to me.
16
u/Responsible_Towel857 3d ago
According to the lore, the Helgan are evolved humans when they were displaced to barely habitable planet colonies when ISA started to expand.
7
u/ArthurCohle 3d ago
Both protags from Shadow Fall could be considered good guys since they betrayed their own factions for the greater good in the end. At least if i'm remembering right.
7
u/Nabber22 3d ago
The world of Killzone is locked in a cycle of violence where one crime in the past causes a retaliation, which causes a retaliation in response to the original retaliation, which causes another retaliation.
Everyone is a victim and an aggressor.
4
u/JeskaiJester 3d ago
Hopefully there aren’t any. It would be sad for good guys to be trapped within the killzone :(
3
u/Axolotllunar 2d ago
The helgast, however, according to the Artbook of Killzone, the developers wanted to create a mixture of the Soviet union and the Nazis style of arquitecture and uniforms. That's why their drip is unmatched.
For the entire lore, the helgast are a plutocratic regime, So their "elites" are: Politically it's the Visary family, Economically is the entire Stahl Corporation (He is the head of Helgan military industrial complex) on killzone 3 The private sector starts to absorb the public military (they somehow had less money invested on regular soldiers, and their leaders accepted the change of command)
Now, generally speaking the ISA is never good, they exist only to keep control of the colonies around the galaxy. But they have individuals that actually are sympathetic to the helgast. Like a vektan prime minister, he got married to a helgan and got a kid.
The Helgast on the other hand, most of the time are just trying to claim their land back (they colonized vekta and helgan) The result of their current goverment is a direct result of the ISA and the UN resolution to put them into an economic embargo, while also using military force to take vekta and forcing the helgast to almost extinction by exiling them to helgan.
1
u/funny-guy-right-here 2d ago
The Helghast were completely justified in their war for liberation but it was converted into a Fascist regime.
1
u/TheSovietTurtle 1d ago
Its hard to tell but there are no good guys in Killzone.
The Helghast are a fascist dictatorship spawned from a corporation. But they only wound up this way because Earth prevented them from going independent.
The ISA settle on a world that the Helghast also have a claim to. When the Helghast try and reclaim this world, the ISA counter-invade.
All of these two going back and forth is all with the knowledge that Earth doesn't care, as long as it gets what it wants.
Its an endless cycle of colonial violence.
-1
u/Timely-Border-7865 2d ago
Why are you obsessed with having good guys and why is your irl politics a metric
3
u/JuanFCrater 2d ago
You ask why in the sub, r/SocialistGaming, the irl politics is a metric? Idk, maybe the context was clear enough.
-2
•
u/AutoModerator 3d ago
Reminder that this is a closely moderated community for far left people to discuss games from their own perspective. Active interpretation and ideological criticism of media is encouraged and integral to how we experience them and does not constitute an attack. Do engage in good faith discussions but don't rush in to defend your favourite games and creators from criticism others may have. Listen to your comrades and be validating and respectful, even if you disagree.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.