I started to unspool thoughts on my experience with Nikolai's chapter of Quartet yesterday, and managed to hit my 5000 character message limit. I don't need to inflict that book on fedi... let's try to condense this...

Nikolai's chapter is an almost blow for blow retelling of the invasion of Poland, re-set in a fantasy magicpunk world. It opens with a hate rant from a military grunt that is very obviously a mantle for Nazi rhetoric, then introduces your protagonist who is the "neutral person" (pejorative).

The story never wavers from two points: these people are Evil, and your protag is a neutral, uninterested party who has morals but is unwilling to act on them until some turgor point that is both far past the line, and unclear to all involved including the player.

It's ultimately not even the atrocities being committed that does it; it's that a superior officer executes one of your squad for dereliction when they say no first. Even when you have to bear arms against your former superiors, it's not because of any moral impetus; it's you happened to be standing between them and their target.

and that might be a shit message except when it's all over, and you've stepped over the line and killed your superior rather than stand down and let them kill innocents, one of the people you just saved looks at you and says "Can we trust you, or is this just because you have no choice now?"

Nikolai says "Until an actual 'good man' comes along, you've got me"

He doesn't get to be the fucking hero because he waited until it was plain as day, and even then only drew his gun because he was going to go down with the oppressed. He doesn't try to get the people he oppressed up until now to trust him. He doesn't try to redeem himself. Because he can't. He may not even trust himself to do what's right if it happens again; he's not a good man, he's a human with his own motivations and fears and is not some hero who will throw himself in the line of fire for what's right.

I think my discomfort (and frankly fear that these devs were not going to do this story justice) prevented both absorbing the lesson of the story at first, and contextualizing it for my audience, and that sucks. It's something I plan to correct.

It's a lot. I think the most succinct thing mulling in my brain over it is the discomfort I felt because "Oh Nazis" and more the fear of how people would react to using my stage to showcase this story. I think if I'm going to explore this stuff, I need to not be afraid of that and be willing to just say "This went somewhere I didn't expect, and it's bad, and I denounce it"

But this one seems... okay. Uncomfortable, painful even, but correct. But that's what I'm taking from this experience.