"Infinite creates a clear moral equivalence between Columbia’s oppressors and oppressed. Both Booker..."

“Infinite creates a clear moral equivalence between Columbia’s oppressors and oppressed. Both Booker and Elizabeth voice versions of this ‘one no better than the other’ logic, in case you miss the point. Such false equivalencies are beloved by the lazy, the aloof, the cowardly. It’s as if the game almost realizes the absurdity of the scenario it has set up, since it doesn’t even happen in the universe you occupy the first half of the game. You have to cross over to a parallel reality to experience it. It’s like admitting: at least both sides are equivalent in some universe!”

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From Tevis Thompson’s provocative review of Bioshock Infinite - so this, this repeats itself in videogameland over and over again. This lazy, frankly cowardly backing away perspective and context into an imagined and fundamentally absurd “objectivity” that you are never allowed to maintain, because you must pick up the gun. 

This is the problem with Dragon Age II, crystallised in the third act where suddenly all the people you talked to and possibly tried to save or oppress suddenly become targets. There’s no talking down, there’s no negotiating, there’s no standing-back-and-observing. Your hands are as bloody as anyone’s, and you stand there at the end with the game telling you that the oppressed and the oppressors “were as bad as each other” after spending two acts showing you the nuance and particularity and weight of history. (And instead of Bioshock Infinite’s alternate universe, Bioware uses the Tevinter Imperium - the topsy-turvey empire where mages control the Circle, and enslave common men.)