Videogames and Politics

When I finally completes Tales of the Abyss 3DS last week, I felt like a better person. After a week passed, I realized why I felt this way. I actually played a game with a great story that was once and can still be relevant to our society today. Now, it might not speak to gamers who had the luxury of being conscience in the early 2000's, but the story does speak to the rest of us who knew of the political issues of the time. Tales of the Abyss tackles issues like human cloning and international diplomacy from a threat of environmental destruction and the attack from another nation. Minus the issue of the threat of war, environment and human cloning topics were big in the early 2000's. Actually, both were a wedge issues in both the 2000 and 2004 elections in the United States. This game really does give us a view point on how difficult these topics are. Take the cloning issue in this Tales game. Do the clones have the right to exist, are clones nothing more than bodies to use in war, or can clones really be their own person? Topics like this really drove the game to be one of the better RPG's in terms of story. Not that the battle system wasn't awesome in it either.

My main point is that Mixing videogames and politics topics do make for great stories. It allows the current generation of gamers to see a different perspective of how these issues might affect a character and his overall development while being able to relate to the issue themselves as real people. It also allows new gamers and people who were not conscience during that time to understand what shaped our current society. Kids who were born in the mid-90's and later would not properly understand how big of an issue human cloning was in the early 2000's. Heck, being a teenager did not mean I fully understand the implications of all these topics. Really, games are a great way to show people current and former political situations. Plus, who doesn't feel involved in a games story when it uses topics that we are familiar with? Anyway, mixing politics and videogames does create a great story. As long as they don't get too carried away with it.