They seem to believe they’ve absolved themselves of that responsibility by simply including that nice little statement about it before your game begins. I believe it’s down right dangerous to depict antisemitism and racism the way this game does without taking a STRONG and beat-you-over-the-head-with-it clear stand against it and this game simply fails to do that. I think it’s incredibly irresponsible to include this sort of language in a game being sold in a country that currently has child immigrants and asylum seekers locked in cages, dying inside concentration camps while people stand idly by with the attitude that they are, in fact, also “filthy migrants.” We don’t need this ideology reinforced in our entertainment media. Some of the first dialogue players see when starting the game is an exchange between the main character and an NPC who goes on about “filthy migrants” and how the city has fallen into crime and squalor since their arrival, how they’re only there to cause harm. Just read any one of Octavia Butler’s novels to see this masterfully done. There have been plenty of sci-fi and fantasy authors who have addressed social issues without including historically accurate depictions of them. You see, I refuse to believe that fantasy and historically accurate racism are things that need to coincide.
Perhaps it’s just me (though I doubt it is) but I just don’t feel like putting a statement that you disagree with these beliefs but included them in a fantasy game anyway is quite enough, nor does it absolve you of responsibility for what you’ve created and how it’s interpreted. Upon launching the game, you’re presented with a screen not unlike that of Mafia III: You play as Charles Reed, a private investigator with supernatural abilities struggling with his deteriorating mental health, and you spend your time in the game in the fictional city of Oakmont trying to solve your own mystery concerning your visions and you find yourself being frequently hired to solve various mysteries for townsfolk while you’re there. Both in its accessibility and it’s gray-area approach to H.P. The Sinking City, a game I’ve been very eager to get my hands on, released today and I can’t recall a time I’ve ever been more disappointed by a game.