No Man’s Sky Impressions | Rock, Paper, Shotgun
The reality after two days of play
No Man’s Sky Impressions
on August 11th, 2016 at 4:13 pm.
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I am having a tremendously good time playing
[], but I’m really getting annoyed by No Man’s Sky. Such is the dichotomy that’s central to this most peculiarly hyped of indie projects, that it is at once magnificent and mundane, breathtaking and benign. It is very much what everyone feared: a massive concept with no ideas to go in it. And yet it seems, from my first couple of days , to be enough. I had to tear myself away to write this, what with a few quintillion stars I’ve still yet to explore.
If you’re still amongst the very many who aren’t sure what the game actually is, it’s this: an open universe, 1.8×1019 solar systems, each with explorable planets of varying flora and fauna, biome-types and technology, and you. You begin on a planet with a crashed ship, and need to nip about blasting rocks and planets with your multi-tool’s mining beam, gathering elements necessary for building components to fix your vehicle. So is it a survival game in that sense? No, not really. Once the ship’s working, you can zoom about on the planet, and eventually up into the sky. Fix some more bits and bobs and you’ll eventually get the ability to travel between stars, at which point you can opt between three paths: searching for the centre of the galaxy, searching for some weird deity thing, or just arsing about to your heart’s content.
Each of the two scripted paths (scripted in the loosest sense – the planets you’ll explore on the way are procedurally generated by your arrival, unique to you unless someone else stumbles upon them after you’ve been there and named everything) are so woolily explained as to offer me little interest in pursuing them. They are, in the loosest, most fragmented sense, an effort to create a notion of direction for the player in a might-as-well-be-infinite playing space. But so far the result is so slapdash and half-arsed as to be genuinely annoying. If you’re going to tell me to go somewhere, at least have a reason beyond telling me to go somewhere else.
But the process of going somewhere, the experience of approaching a new planet filled with new bonkers animals, is what grips. As you fly around a planet’s surface you’ll spot geologically interesting places, perhaps a glowing cave entrance, maybe the ruin of an ancient religious relic, or some hastily constructed metal buildings housing one of three alien races. You land nearby, get distracted by some lootable crates, curse your limited inventory space both in person and on your ship, then juggle elements and items about to try to make some room, once again promising yourself you’ll finally spend the hundreds of thousands of units (the in-game currency) you’ve earned on a decent new ship, rather than madly saving up for an ever better one. Oh yes, the base – you go toward the door, find it’s locked, so blast it open with the boltcaster on your multitool, the one you’ve specced up with new tech found elsewhere, created with the ever-growing variety of elements and equipment that’s overflowing your inventories, and attract the attention of the godforsaken sentinels. It’s a gun battle now, switching your fire onto them, trying to take them out before they call reinforcements, or perhaps focusing on the door while getting blasted in the back so you can get inside and hide from them.
Get in, get safe, and solve a really dumb puzzle to discover the location of a forgotten ruin on the planet with secrets to divulge, then suck all the carbon out of the plantpots, sell your loot via a device on the wall that connects to an off-world market, and head outside again to… well, you’ve no idea yet, you’ve not stumbled on it.
All that is what makes No Man’s Sky amazing. And all that is also what makes No Man’s Sky so vacuous and annoying. Let’s go through all those things I genuinely enjoy (apart from the sentinels), and point out their enormous flaw:
“Bonkers animals”: You know those kids games where you can randomly put together a giraffe’s head on an ostrich’s body on a frog’s legs? That’s all it is. Randomly cobbled creatures from a pool of Spore-like elements, resulting in mostly very stupid-looking animals that have things like horns for heads. Not horns on their heads. Instead of heads. It is impressive that they “evolved to match the planet’s ecosystem” as we were told eighty-million times during the last three years of hype. I’d have thought the not-able-to-eat HORNHEAD (as I named him, in caps) might not have made it as a species.
“Geologically interesting places”: Are caves. Each planet has a distinct look, again thanks to randomisation + procedural generation, so maybe the sky’s blue, or it’s pink, or it’s green – trouble is, I’ve played far too many video games to be overwhelmed by an odd coloured sky. In the end you either find caves, or you land on ground. And the PS4’s draw distance is absolutely atrocious, meaning that most of the time anything interesting to land near hasn’t finished loading until it’s too late and you’ve flown past. I’m desperately hoping this is better on PC.
“Ancient religious relics”: Are very inefficient one-word dictionaries. One of the nice elements of the game is constantly gathering word-for-word translations of three different alien languages, such that when you talk to them (to trade, ask for help, or occasional plot moments) you can understand incrementally more of what they’re saying. Lovely. But for some reason, the scrappily thrown together tale of some ancient god thing means that these relics offer some ambiguous nothing line of rubbish, and then a new word. You’ll likely have found more words on the walk up to it.
“Metal buildings”: Okay, here’s my biggest complaint with this game I’m desperate to get back to. Every single planet in the entire universe, all 18 quintillion of them, has been visited before you. Not by another player – your great-grandchildren will still be finding new planets – but by one of these three alien races. They’re already there, willing to offer you some units, or some health, or a translated word, sat seemingly waiting for you on the offest of off chances that you might pop by. Further, every single planet in the entire expanse of space is policed by these sodding sentinel things, who appear to have some ethical problem with my mining for iron, because do too much of it when they’re hovering around and they’ll shoot at you. God knows why they thought this was a good idea, but they’re a permanent irritant in a place that’s meant to be your own. You’re not discovering anything. You’re just turning up afterward and deciding what everything’s called – from solar system to rock name – like some lunatic 15th century explorer. “This plant? It’s called Simon! And the planet, it’s called Wobblybottom 7b! Sorry, you weren’t using it, were you?”
“Limited inventory”: I think they got a little too carried away here, what with just how much stuff you actually need to be carrying to get on, let alone the extra valuables you’ll want if you’re to make any decent money to get anywhere. I think they could have been more generous, a few more slots, but I can’t deny it’s fuelling my desperation to find the ideal slightly bigger ship.
“Specced up with new tech”: This is perhaps the most egregiously dreadful aspect of NMS. Rather than getting better ship components, or better guns, or better life-preserving equipment, you get the ability to augment what you’ve already got. The only actual way anything gets better is by its number of slots, either ship or multitool, thus allowing you to add more of these augmentations. But to build a new one you need a spare inventory slot, and then work out what’s better than what you’ve already got via it’s tiresomely obfuscated text descriptions, rather than just holding up both and the game putting a number in green or red. God how I wish the game would put numbers in green or red (well, it does, but that’s for relative worth of items sold in different markets). It’s ludicrously fiddly, although I expect this to drastically improve when I’m not trying to do it all via the boxing-gloved hands of a PS4 controller.
“Godforsaken sentinels”: I mean, what happened? They thought, “This game is far too fun. Let’s add a ubiquitous interfering flying nuisance that can kill the player for the crime of chopping up a rock.”
There are many, many other niggles, not least these incessant appearance of “Milestone achievements”, where rather than politely popping up an achievement like “Met 15 aliens” in the bottom right of the screen, it instead screams this banal information at you across the middle of the screen, pulling in widescreen bars above and below, and in doing so takes away your ability to play properly. Er, yes, thanks for letting me know that I’ve translated 30 words, but I’m kind of busy? It’s the sort of thing that rather bellows of not having had enough real human hands on it before release.
And yet, it’s got me. It’s got me not because of the massive scale of the thing (although anyone who pretends to be anything other than blown away when swooping the game’s camera through the 0.% of stars you’ll ever see (I made that number up) is a dangerous monster), but because of the minutiae, wanting to improve my equipment, get that ideal better ship and then immediately begin saving up for the 1.5m unit beauties I’ve seen docking in spaceports, learn more vocabulary so I can have an idea what these very explory aliens are saying, get better defences so sentinels are more of a waspy nuisance than a sharky threat. I have found myself embracing these tiny incremental steps in a game world so big that all the players in the world will never explore even a significant fraction of what it offers. And I know, somewhere in the back of my mind, that there’s equipment to be gained that will let me make vast swooping journeys far faster than I currently can, and that feels like something to dream about as I go.
It’s a shame that after so long, after so many delays, what I come away feeling is that No Man’s Sky needed another year to really work out what it was for. That existential crisis is ever-present in all you do, all the space imaginable, and no really clear idea of what to use it for. If anything, I feel like it should be the universe into which a thousand other game narratives are released. And yet it’s a space in which I’m enthralled, simply by the simplicity of it. I’ve no idea how this will pan out, what I’ll find after more than two days in there. And certainly no clue how different the experience will be when I restart it all on PC tomorrow.
That’s crucial for us, and I’ve deliberately not talked about the very problematic crashiness of the PS4 version here since that’s someone else’s problem. My motivation here has been to get a grip on what’s actually here, what it really offers. After the weekend I’ll return with a proper review of the PC version, and hopefully some larger conclusions after a lot more play.
No Man’s Sky is , for $60/?40.
Disclosure: Our Alec did some last minute writing for No Man’s Sky. He won’t write about the game for us anymore, and we won’t speak to him about it or at all.Show Spoilers
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The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized
"Citizens, do you want a revolution without a revolution?"
The anti-trope to , this is a considerably
version of . This is different from the , in that . However, it is important to mention that these rebels tend more often than not to be portrayed heroically (at least at first). The rebels are all
at best, as brutal or more so than their enemies. At worst, for every idealist there's five thugs who signed up for the looting and/or psychos who just want an excuse to rape and kill people (if the
is one of these, than it might be an indication that the rebellion is villainous in this case, or, at the very least, is one hell of a
if they weren't always like that). No matter whose side you're on, it's sacrifice, honor, duty, and "shut up and follow orders!" They will usually be led by a rebel version of , or possibly a subversion of that archetype. The more desperate the circumstances, the more b expect lots of
on any village that they even suspect isn't sympathetic to their cause,
and other forms of extreme cruelty towards POWs, and lots of
to frighten those who are on the fence into supporting them, often in the form of
. Depending on the nature of the conflict, genocide may or may not wind up
if the ruling power is largely comprised of one specific ethnic or religious group, it's probably a safe bet that all members of that group will be targeted.
If you fall, another might rise to take your place, but don't expect your comrades-in-arms to mourn. You were dead already the moment you put on the rebel uniform. Remember that , and whatever you do, . If you are caught, you are on your own. You never existed. This is war, and people do things during war that can never, and should never be forgiven. Do you know whose side you are on now? Can lead to a
against supporters of the old regime, . But more importantly — more important because of the
involved — it can lead to
(i.e. the revolutionaries' brutality is no better than the Empire's) and also to violence against some of the revolutionaries themselves, often valiant leaders and close friends of near past, as in the most famous case of Georges Danton and Camille Desmoulins guillotined by orders of
and his Jacobins during the
. Robespierre tasted his own concoction later as of the Thermidorian Reaction.
The reasons and debate on whether revolutions have to be, or inevitably will be un-civilized are quite complex and a subject of study by many historians. Most revolutions do not happen in a vacuum of ideological freedom. Luck, chance and
play a major role, and even the most severe revolutionaries like ,
or even Robespierre did not start out as politically radical to begin with, rather they radicalized as a result of circumstances and existing pressures. And of course, even if a Revolution is successful,
of the earlier regime might decide to foment allies from neighbouring nations who also feel that the
is becoming upset, and the existing revolution is creating a bad example for their own people. The end result can be that a revolution on behalf of the people ends up becoming a power-play between governments of two nations, neither of them really have the best interests of the people on the ground.
See also . Generally falls under . Contrast
Likely to overlap with . If the revolution is against
or other terrible government, examples of this trope may also be . If the revolution is against
, then maybe
(in which case
had better hope ).
Succeeding could well
. Some characters in such a setting may be
and the more self-aware of those will realize that
in the world they're creating. The victory may be not the end of it, since there always can be a "postscriptum" — .
occurs in revolutions that have been dragge as you continue having to drag in new recruits, they will have less of an understanding of why they are fighting beyond the current regime being bad news and the revolutionary forces being good news, which leads to even further dehumanization of the opposition and makes them think far less about doing truly awful things in the name of their cause.
If the rebels act like this trope but , than the result might be the audience .
The title of this article is a pun on
&&&&open/close all folders&
&&&&Anime & Manga&
, the flashbacks to the mid-1860s in the manga around the beginning of the Jinchuu arc and the Remembrance , and Ishida's group in Peacemaker Kurogane. However, in reality, the first wave of "Patriots of the Restoration" was a lot worse than shown in Ruro Ken, murdering any merchant who had dealings with westerners.
Rock encounters an ex-Japanese Red Army member in "Lock And Load Revolution". The old man was an idealist working for a world revolution, . After the movement fell, he joined forces with other terrorists, in present, an Islamic group led by a Lebanese Jihadist. Also, the super- Roberta was a Cuban trained assassin and a FARC guerrilla who became disillusioned when she realized she was just a guard dog for .
The Reverse Organization from
have typically been displayed as not terribly nice people, but the government they've been rebelling against has shown hints of being equally not nice, particularly if half the things Reverse has said about them are true. However, they may have
following recent chapters, wherein they
used an innocent young nun as a human sacrifice, essentially destroying her soul and condemning her to a slow death in order to lure in a gigantic armor bug to attack the capital.
: In the Balbadd story arc, the anti-government Fog Troop were quite nasty before
Alibaba took charge of them. So much so, in fact, that when
Alibaba and Sinbad change the organization from thieves and vigilantes to a legitimate rebellion several members leave on the spot. Even worse,
after the Fog Troop finally succeeds in overthrowing the corrupt king, all the former members of the Fog Troop show up... and use magic to work the citizens of the nation into a frenzy, turning the bloodless revolution into a massacre purely out of spite.
Metropolis: The Zone 1 rebels are shown to lash out against the defenseless robots, and launch a violent assault against the Marduks working for the Red Duke. Ultimately, they fail because their uprising was engineered by their opposition, and the rebel leader falls to a trap alongside his troops.
In , perennial antihero Sasuke Uchiha announces he intends to become Hokage and change the world so that no-one will have to suffer like he did. He later clarifies that he intends to do so by sealing away the Tailed Beasts and killing the Five Kage while they're still trapped in the Infinite Tsukuyomi, as well as anyone else who tries to stop him.
The Survey Corps, from . They try to avert this trope as long as they can, but then the government sends in the 3DM death squads (think about how awesome 3D-Maneuver gear has been used against Titans. Now think about what would happen if you traded the blades for guns installed in the grapple controls.) and sends in serial killer Kenny Ackerman, so they have to step up their game. Armin murders a hesitating Secret Servicewoman to save Jean, and it gets worse from there.
&&&&Comic Books&
: V makes no bones about the fact that he is a terrorist. note&
Quite a few
comics have attempted to extend this to the Rebel Alliance, trying to , as well as explain how the cash-strapped outfit got its money. Sometimes it's just down to the occasional
pilot, such as Jal Te Gniev (who later makes a
after watching a teenager he'd abused
for him—and shooting with a gun that he'd bought to kill Gniev). However, it did sometimes come down to situations where in order to keep working, the Alliance and later New Republic would have to kill innocents themselves.
In fact, after the Rebels won at Endor, destroying the Death Star, one of the first acts of the New Republic they established was to execute Grand Admiral Osvald Teshik for war crimes after he was captured in this battle. With Palpatine and Vader dead, he was pretty much one of the highest ranking Imperials captured. Tragic fact that Teshik was one of the few decent Imperials.
In the , Skrull Kill Krew.
: The comic, much as it is a satire of zero-tolerance policing, also satirizes freedom fighters. Mega City One is a totalitarian , the terrorists are democratics. The regime is incredibly brutal, but rebel movements like Total War have no problem with killing millions of people in their own city by detonating nuclear bombs.
&&&&Fan Fiction&
Between 1980 and 1983, the
fandom was inundated with stories speculating on how — or if — Han Solo might be thawed out of the carbonite in which he'd ended . One particularly memorable story, "The Revenant", had him being unfrozen thirty years later. Leia is dead, Chewbacca is dead, Lando is dead ... and Luke, who arranged Leia's death to bring a group of unaligned planets to the Rebellion's side, is First Citizen of a New Republic oppressive as ever the Empire was.
presents the Defias Brotherhood as completely nihilistic and destructive.
Technomad's two
show Ellie Linton and her friends as considerably
than they were in canon.
The secession of Westerguard in
zig-zags this and . On one hand, large majority of population is with the secessionists and Hans makes sure to arrest rather than kill the opposing forces. On the other, ship sequester , and friendly fire issues are visited.
One of the most important tropes in the French film . The film follows a cell of the French resistance battling the Nazi regime. While the Nazis are portrayed as terrible monsters, it's repeatedly highlighted that the French have to get their hands dirty as well. Much of their work consists of executing traitors, including their beloved female comrade. While the movie isn't a pro-Nazi film, it clearly suggests that war is disgusting and hellish even if you're one of the good guys.
In , the Red Army Faction morphs into this trope over time. They start as a motley collection of political activists, juvenile delinquents, left-wing youths, and journalists who mainly participate in protests and rallies and undertake some occasional arson and vandalism with a political message. Eventually, they become brutal terrorists, robbing banks and bombing American military installations. Later "generations" of the group get progressively more radical and violent, taking and executing hostages, hijacking aircraft, bombing a newspaper, and kidnapping and assassinating public figures.
, where we see bombings and shootings directed at civilians...on both sides.
catalogues Jews who were sold out to the Nazis by members of the Dutch Resistance. After the liberation, the Resistance harasses people who collaborated with the Nazis, even if it was done out of fear or as a part of their cover as double agents. People accused of being collaborators and harshly treated until an officer puts a stop to it.
The anti-government resistance group, the Fishes, quickly turn into this in
when the more radical Luke hijacks the organization, after assassinating his predecessor.
In , Bane presents himself as a revolutionary trying to free Gotham from the control of its corrupt elite. His methods? Gather an army mostly made up of mercenaries and
escaped convicts, trap most of Gotham's police underground, put all members of high society and other dissidents through a , and threaten to detonate a nuke if anyone tries to interfere. And through all of this,
Bane is not remotely interested in helping Gotham. The entire point of the "revolution" is to spread chaos and distract the populace from his true plan of destroying Gotham.
the communist revolutionaries kill a lot of unarmed soldiers and 'bourgeois'. Some conversations point out that most of the revolutionaries are doing it to secure themselves better positions under the new rule.
The Bolsheviks in .
The Danish film Flame And Citron (2008). The title characters are assassins for the Danish resistance, but find their superior is using them to kill people to cover up his own crimes.
In , once the rebels take the fight to the Capital, you can see their tactics become more brutal and morally ambiguous. For example, when President Snow offers to open his mansion as a refugee camp, the rebels disguise themselves as refugees to get close enough to open fire, completely disregarding the fact that actual refugees and civilians are in their line of fire. It also doesn't help that
Thankfully, Katniss and Plutarch manage to save the revolution from collapsing in on itself.
film , set in a , deliberately subverts the gallant resistance trope. The protagonist witnesses the death of her friends in a shootout between local partisans and German soldiers, and the movie ends with prisoners from a British SS unit being massacred by their captors.
is built around this trope.
Yuri: "I guess they [African militants] can't own up to what they usually are: a federation of worse oppressors than the last bunch of oppressors. Often, the most barbaric atrocities occur when both combatants proclaim themselves freedom-fighters."
The workers in 's
are somewhere between this and an .
The coup in
is violent, bloody, and not only involves civilians but actively targets them.
The rebels in
most certainly count. After they stopped receiving foreign monetary aid for the revolution, the guerrillas turned into farming coca plants and kidnapping and ransoming important foreigners. They also have little qualms about shooting civilians or police officers. Of course, they were
to begin with.
Franco's troops (who were formerly the rebels) in .
Raza and his revolutionaries in . Although the heroes have some sympathy for Raza's cause, we are still shown Raza's forces massacring the troops on the government train they capture.
has the protagonists (American teenagers
) shooting prisoners and enemy wounded.
with regards to . Emma Goldman feels the Bolsheviks have become so murderous that they are no longer worth supporting. John Reed responds by accusing Goldman of having an unrealistically idealized view of revolution, that revolution requires terror and blood.
In contrast to the rebels of the later films, the Separatists in the
prequels are almost entirely shown as being evil. Their rebellion against the republic is little more than a big business backed attempt to rule the galaxy in the name of profit, with all of the big names fully aware of this. Being controlled by a
certainly didn't help their causes reputation either. It's only the planets that revolt against the Republic in hope of receiving Confederacy assistance that actually believe in the moral cause beyond lip service.
The Rebel Alliance itself is actually aware of this it specifically does not permit this kind of behavior from its cells, lest the Imperial propaganda painting Rebels as iconoclasts and destructive terrorists start to actually ring true with the general public. Extremists who refuse to obey this are kicked out.
the Alliance cut ties with Saw Gerrera and his resistance group because they became too brutal and caused too much collateral damage. On Jedha, Gerrera's men attack an Imperial convoy in the middle of a crowded neighborhood and cause a lot of civilian deaths. Gerrera is also willing to use
on prisoners to extract information. We also see that the main Alliance leadership is not above fighting a dirty war when necessary. Cassian kills a fellow rebel rather than allow the guy to be captured by Imperials and interrogated. Rogue One is formed from a group of Alliance commandos, spies, saboteurs and assassins who have grown tiered of doing the Rebellion's dirty work.
In , Clu's revolution against Flynn's leadership kicks off with the
genocide of the Isos, followed by establishing a police state that routinely "rectifies" delinquent programs into soldiers in Clu's army, or pits them in gladiatorial games to the
death deresolution.
In , after the Dragon is slain, the city descends into anarchy, so rape, robbery and senseless violence ensue.
both the Maori rebels and their British oppressors become increasingly brutal as the war drags on.
A problem for Pancho Villa in . Madero coaxes Pancho into supporting him by saying that the revolution needs to be civilized, and that Pancho needs to fight as an organized army and not murder the enemy soldiers he captures. Pancho is reluctant, but agrees, and does become civilized for a time. But after Madero is killed Pancho fights back in his old prisoner-killing bandit style, which costs him the support of idealists like Don Felipe. And when he takes over as President of Mexico, Pancho is an incompetent administrator, which he eventually admits.
Pancho (to Madero): You can't win a revolution with love. You've got to have hate. Y I am the bad side.
, starring , won the Palme d'Or award for its application of this trope to the Irish Revolution (and then the ), so it must have done something right.note&
&&&&Literature&
A major story arc in the
is , continent-wide rebellion in the culturally diverse Seven Cities. It is an affair of
that is soon revealed to be an .
factions that actively oppose the government in the
novel Prisoners of Power act like this. Or worse.
The Brotherhood in 's , while having motives much more ethical than the Party's, are not much better in their methods. Winston and Julia swear to use any means (including murder or terrorism) in its cause. Made even more complicated by the fact that the Brotherhood may not even exist and everything O'Brien told Winston about it might have been a lie.
In the vein of the Militant Godless, Camus' The Rebel. Complete with atheist suicide bombers.
used this trope in all his novels:
was a rebuke to Nikolai Chernyshevsky's What is to be Done?, a utopian novel about Russian progress and reform. Dostoevsky responded to it with his novella about a man who will never be part of the New Order, and that humanity is fundamentally self-destructive and flawed. He developed this further with
where fantasies of change only hurt the innocent and finally in
that ideas and wounds are collective and that a desire for change, even in the form of new ideas, leads to an act of .
argues that violence is a tool of binding revolutionaries together in a single unit, since everyone is equally dehumanized and guilty, and molded on the path to discipline. The revolutionaries in the book are so obsessed with this form of discipline that they never think of actual political ideology. So they become corrupt and abusive, led by Pyotr Verkhovensky, their ideologist who preaches about the necessity of wiping out millions of people for the victory of the revolution and finally kills one of his own cell members on the suspicion that he could be . Likewise, the original ideologist of the group, Nikolai Stavrogin, who they all believe to be a , is in fact a self-destructive nihilist reeling from guilt at the time he raped a little girl. What is even worse, the leader of this group has a prototype from real life — Sergey Nechaev, one of the most infamous Russian terrorists of that time.
The nasty-as-can-be French revolutionaries in 's
written under the aegis of counter-revolutionary doctrines like Edmund Burke's Reflections and Thomas Carlyle's history of the Revolution, still it's definitely true to the events.
trilogy, pretty much all of the revolutionaries are
users who are just as evil as
they're rebelling against.
In the third book of , guerrilla leader Sula leads a brutal resistance against the aliens, complete with car bombings, assassinations, and purposefully goading the government into executing innocent hostages. While she doesn't purposefully murder schoolchildren, she considers it their own fault if they wandered too close to her bombs. "Human warmth is not my specialization".
The theme of The Resistance Trilogy by Clive Egleton, set in a . Innocent bystanders get killed and those at the sharp end find themselves manipulated, or even targeted for killing, by their superiors. In the final novel the Soviets are pulling out of Britain due to war with China. This should be a time of victory, but instead the 'moderate' wing of
forms an alliance with
government to destroy their hardline members (including the protagonist). The novels end on a former Resistance member, now Minister of the Interior, announcing new anti-terrorist measures to counter 'subversion'.
books jump back and forth in time quite a bit, but often imply that the various quasi-utopias in the far future were arrived at by, say, slaughtering a large percentage of the world's population.
This is a major theme in Mockingjay, the last book in
trilogy by Suzanne Collins. By the end the rebellion only avoids simply becoming a direct copy of the
they were trying to replace by a narrow margin.
, although POV is on
side and revolution ultimately fails in the first book. Played more or less straight in the third book.
features the Committee of Public Safety led by Rob S. Pierre. Rather similar to their primary
inspiration, the original
under , it begins its reign with a
of the fighting arm of the fleet and political figures with actual or potential ties to the previous regime. This serves in cementing their power base by undercutting the primary lines of opposition, but at a tremendous cost in blood. They then went one step further beyond that and established not only
to ensure the loyalty of the People's Navy, but also a .
In 's , Jumdar characterizes the Loyalists as this, neglecting to note they were the legitimate government fighting a coup.
In On the Razor's Edge, Gidula tells Donovan that as Padaborn, his rebellion had killed many innocents who had just gone to their jobs early.
In , Rubashov ironically recalls having advocated civil war and other extreme measures as the only way to win the Revolution, and that as a
its only consistency with past ideology is its denial of decency. Rubashov sees his nemesis Gletkin, who received none of his education in pre-revolutionary times, not as a betrayer of the Revolution but as its logical product, and calls him a "Neanderthal."
In : the Book of D'ni, after
falls, the charismatic slave Ymur feels that only when the Ronay are slaughtered to the last child will there be any lasting freedom. He suffers
it opens with the hero leading a coup against a corrupt king. The revolution quickly escalates to mass public beheadings of the nobility, riots, and war.
In , Faroth and his revolutionaries don't pay much attention to nuance, and just want to kill all the Norlanders without regard to the fact that some of them are sympathetic (and also without regard to the fact that some innocent Shadari die too). Faroth also treats the revolution as if it were his personal property, and won't let anyone else have a leadership role. One character explicitly describes Faroth's group as more like a gang rather than the band of good people she'd hoped for.
The rebellion in . While the native Raka people have clearly suffered for centuries under terrible oppression, and the current monarchy is clearly corrupt, the rebellion has to do some very moral grey things to usurp them (including the murder of innocent children). The main character spends much of her time ensuring that it won't be more of a blood bath than it needs to.
A recurring element in the
trilogy, where the ruling Protectorate is repressive and fascist but there's a lack of good alternatives. Kovacs is reluctant to join the neo-Quellist revolution in Woken Furies because in his experience, revolutionaries rarely turn out to be better than the people they're overthrowing. He had personal experience with this in Broken Angels with Joshua Kemp, a charismatic revolutionary who used Quellist rhetoric to justify using nuclear weapons on innocent civilians.
The heroes of
massacre liberal intellectuals, burn heretics at the stake, deport most Hispanics and hang Blacks for any violent or drug-related crime, deter a bombing campaign through liberal use of hostages and human shields, kidnap government officials who disagree with them, demolish buildings that don't fit their preferred Old World aesthetic and at one point, nuke a major city. For all that, they're still one of the nicer US successor states.
&&&&Live-Action TV&
: Udara in the telemovie of the same name, a group of Tenctonese terrorists who resorted to brainwashing their own children into assassins and suicide bombers to fight the Overseers on the Slave Ship. Even after the slave's emancipation, Tenctonese sentiment was divided on whether the Udara were freedom fighters or extremists who did more harm than good.
features a band of Trotskyists who plan to put a stop Josef Stalin's bloody reign in Russia from abroad. Literally the first thing they're shown doing is commandeer a train bound for Germany and execute the engine-drivers.
has plenty of violent uprisings. Free Mars. Other Mars Resistance cells. The Narn Rebellion against the Centauri. The Telepath Resistance, however, straddle the line between this and .
: Gaeta's Mutiny and especially the New Caprican Resistance.
episode "Nob and Nobility" presents the French Revolution as this (, of course). The French Ambassador brags about having murdered his loyalist predecessor and , and is positively elated at the thought of torturing and executing aristocrats (and Englishmen). That said, given that a French aristocrat (who admittedly turns out not to be who he appears to be) in the same episode describes his preferred state of the world as having other people earn money and then give it to him, l'ancien r&gime doesn't come off as much better.
are clearly better than the Federation, the main cast are all anti-heroes at best and Blake is often called on his devotion to the Rebellion over taking care of his people. And then he was replaced with Avon, who didn't even pretend to take care.
This crops up from time to time.
The Reign of Terror, natch.
"The Ark" has the Monoids, who were slaves for the humans until they rebelled.
In Warrior's Gate, the Tharils once ran a slaver empire, until the slaves revolted and enslaved them.
The rebels in "Day of the Daleks" are fighting the Daleks and are portrayed as quite brutal people, killing UNIT soldiers ruthlessly. A suicide bombing by them is responsible for a
that caused the wars they were trying to prevent.
: In "Deception", a rebel group proves itself quite ruthless, killing an unarmed D'Haran prisoner of war who's been
by Kahlan already simply to vent their rage when one of their own is killed, and then attempt to use the same magical weapons of mass destruction the D'Harans had used on their people against D'Haran loyalists.
: Played with. , , , and
show that some members of the resistance are very unmerciful to any Monroe militia member (former or otherwise), are willing to torture as part of interrogation, are willing to sacrifice civilians to kill off militia officers, and show signs of becoming similar to the militia. However,
show that some resistance members are careful to ensure that no faction uses
an atomic bomb and anthrax as weapons in the war effort.
: The Bajoran Resistance. They were anti-heroes at the very best, had a running mantra of
and were sometimes even explicitly referred to as "terrorists", and not just by Cardassians (though usually). Ditto the Maquis.
Kira Nerys:
For fifty years you raped our planet, and you killed our people. You lived on our land and you took the food out of our mouths, and I don't care whether you held a phaser in your hand or you ironed shirts for a living. You were all guilty and you were all legitimate targets!
: In this German drama, between the , , and , the latter are usually the best of a bad lot, but are not above a bit of pillage or antisemitism. This is exemplified when they ambush a train bound for Auschwitz and loot it for weapons, but are prepared to leave the prisoners in the cattle cars to their fate.
: The Resistance used biological warfare against the enemy. Given that most Visitors lived in sealed starships and thus had the option of simply leaving unharmed, it's not quite as nasty as it sounds.
episode , Abaddon makes clear that her attempt to overthrow Crowley as the King of Hell is going to be vicious.
: The Resistance is shown to use quite brutal tactics in their fight against the collaborationist CTA government, and one member, Quayle, openly argues against being merciful. Later Red Hand is shown to use even more ruthless ones, attacking civilians who collaborate with the occupation and making use of suicide bombings.
, especially the last 2 seasons. Captain Flint's reasoning is basically: If you're trying to fight a David vs. Goliath One Man War against a slavery-supporting, sexist, and viciously homophobic Empire, you better be prepared to
so that your enemy will be scared enough of you to think twice about hanging your supporters. Some of the freed slaves also get very brutal in revenging themselves on their former masters - including their wives and children.
&&&&Music&
is the . In this musically accompanied poem Scott-Heron predicts that the revolution will not be broadcast on TV for you to enjoy from your lazy seat, but it will indeed be a real society changing revolt that not to be taken lightly.
In 's , it initially looks like the revolutionaries are just . Then they break into the Citadel, and we find out what becomes of the royal family...
&&&&Radio&
played with this by having a pair of vapid TV talking heads discussing, in a very civilized manner, the boiling alive of Queen Elizabeth II after a clearly violent and horrible revolution.
&&&&Theater&
being a Marxist explored the concept of revolutionary violence in many of his plays.
His most controversial was his Lehrstruckes ("Teaching Plays"), one of which is The Measures Taken, the plot consists of a Revolutionary cell executing one of their own when the latter becomes a liability. The victim himself realizes that his death is necessary for the greater good and accepts it with stoicism. This was so controversial that at his HUAC hearing, Brecht was interrogated specifically about it.
has a protagonist Shen Te invent a violent alter ego Shui Ta to protect herself from exploitation and harm. Shen Te is normally pacifist and meek, Shui Ta is not. Shui Ta finally says, in typically pithy Brecht-style:
"You can only help one of your luckless brothers/By trampling down a dozen others."
Much of 's The Coast of Utopia trilogy, set during the 19th century in Europe, primarily Russia and France. Let's just say it had a historical basis and one of its main characters was Mikhail Bakunin, and I don't mean the guy from .
In , the rebels take the 's daughter hostage and threaten to hang her to get their revenge and make themselves "feel powerful for a moment."
&&&&Tabletop Games&
: The Ebb Revolutions on Mars were brutal socialist uprisings sponsored by the Soviets which usually involved a city's entire Silthuri, Kastari and Pilthuri castes being executed, along with anyone else deemed counter-revolutionary.
&&&&Video Games&
is set during the French Revolution, which as it turns out was actually instigated by the Templars in order to destroy the corrupt monarchy in order to re-establish their own authority.
Their earlier game
makes it clear that the Revolution is essentially led by a group of wealthy white slaveowners who will attack native villages and displace them from their land.
games, the Resistance is very, very much willing to use hardball tactics. The best example of this is the protagonist, the unleashing of whom on a target is not unlike using a tactical nuke, but in the manual it also notes that while General Maxis seems sincere in his ideals, the WEC has tried to get him to surrender himself, dismantle the Resistance, or do less drastically stupid things by threatening civilians. Maxis has never given in, nor tried a third option.
has two factions rising up against the brutal dictatorship that lorded over the third-world planet of the game - the "Solo Nobre Concern", a collection of
that fight against the Loyalist government so they can establish their hypercapitalist regime, and pay their mercenaries to destroy property and kill civilians, and the Corvids, a far-left collection of radical collectivists, anarchists, and other far-left philosophies that use suicide bombers disguised as civilians and civilian centers as . Both sides rampage through populated cities with glee
The Scoi'a'tel in . The game does go to great lengths to explain the understandable grievances that led to their formation and continued existence (being conquered, treated as second-class citizens and subjected to violence and pogroms by the humans), but also makes it very clear that they are ruthless murderers who attack innocent or not-so-innocent civilians, sometimes in particularly gruesome ways, rather than the oppressing government's armed forces. Quite a few Dwarven and Elven NPCs express their profound dislike for them.
At one point early on, a member tries to convince Geralt to let him take some crates of medical supplies. If you give them to him, it later turns out they really contain some really nasty weapons that only work on unarmored civilians. Which they use to prominently assassinate an unarmed civilian (who happened to be Geralt's contact in the city). Who happens to have a second job as a drug pusher, making addicts of elvish teenagers so he can force them into drug-controlled slavery and/or prostitution. Or at least that's what the moderate dwarves and elves say. So, that one particular incident was probably justified, but later it gets worse.
The Defias Brotherhood in
may count as an example of this. The Defias began as a group of disgruntled stonemasons who were cheated by their government. Unfortunately, they became too heavily involved with criminal elements and ended up robbing and killing the peasants.
repeatedly refers to the Northgate Rebels of
as . Since they have hidden an important quantity of explosives in the capital, he might not be entirely wrong. Additionally, the general pointlessness of the civil war (on both sides) puts a point on it.
helps a little.
The Takers in
(and to a lesser extent in Geneforge 1 as well). Then a fair chunk of the rebellion (especially the ) in Geneforge 3-5.
Rebels are always bad guys in the
series, most notably the Neo-Terran Front, a violent
rebel organization that believes it can forge an alliance with
, and the Hammer of Light, a band of
who believe that the aforementioned
are the prophesied "Great Destroyers" who must cleanse the universe to prepare it for the enlightened (i.e., the Hammer of Light themselves).
Both the UFLL and APR in . Sure, they both claim to be fighting for their people's best interests, but really they're both as corrupt and vicious as each other. The game's ending has the player rejecting both factions and siding with The Jackal, and .
has the Golden Path, a large group of rebels opposing , the current king of Kyrat. Just like in , the rebels claim to have the country's best interest at heart, but you eventually see that they're really no different than the people they're fighting against.
Hell, they're even worse. At least the Royal Army never
by threatening to kill their families.
In , there are secessionists, known as Insurrectionists, who want to break off from the UNSC (they mostly appear in
material, outside of a few brief appearances in
multiplayer and a few in-game mentions from
onward ). At the beginning of their campaign, they were viewed sympathetically, as all they wanted was their independence. This view largely ended when they began killing people (most infamously when one group deliberately nuked the Haven , killing two million civilians and injuring 8.3 million), and now they're squarely in this trope.
The Renegades from
are a group dedicated to fighting the organization that "guides the world," Cruxis. How do they do this, you may ask? It's implied that most of the time, when a Chosen fails in the Journey of Regeneration, it's because the Renegades kill them, thus prolonging the cycles of Regeneration. Hell, even after forming an alliance, Yuan still resorts to his plan to hold Lloyd hostage and force Kratos to undo the seal. Even Kratos seems to acknowledge that Yuan is serious with his threats.
AVALANCHE in the
games are the protagonists, but certainly not civilized —
itself starts with these rampaging eco-terrorists committing a massive bombing, killing a lot of innocent people — and then the next day, they do it all over again! Not to mention the fact that some of the members (read: Barret) act thuggishly when not on the job too.
That's the revived AVALANCHE. The original incarnation of AVALANCHE seen in :
was far more ruthless.
Played straight in
with the Global Liberation Army. Your first mission involves "liberating" a local village by flooding the valley it is in, wiping out half of the village in the process. Your second mission involves stealing aid supplies from more poor villagers, and you are explicitly ordered to shoot the villagers if they are taking supplies and level their homes. The third mission involves a massive riot and leveling and looting half a city, and by the final mission, you've gassed a major Chinese city.
is wiped away very, very quickly.
is filled a bunch of extremely violent rebel movements who are either a) A fake movement or b) plans to start their rebellion by causing as much destruction.
has The Reapers led by Bolo Santosi and the Ular Boys led by Sri Iriwan. The path to "revolution" for both is to get Rico Rodriguez to, in Bolo's own words, turn Panau into a "smoldering ruin".
In , Khaled al-Asad's revolution in his
is explicitly shown to be brutal and violent, as the player experiences it from the perspective of the deposed President of the country as he's driven through the street. At first there's beatings and arrests in the streets, followed by civilians being shot as they run away and execution squads shooting people in the street. It ends with the President being marched into a square and executed on international television.
The revolution in
is essentially a racial purge led by racist nobles opposing the Archduchess for revealing her Darcsen ( equivalent of Jews) roots. Later on, it's revealed that it's really just a coup for Count Gassenarl to usurp the throne.
The mage revolt in
is very brutal, and when
goes down the hotheads take control and run away with it.
In , there are many factions triyng to overthrown the Colony government. Every Colony has at least one. In storyline,
Lane Hackers, Blood Dragons and Bundshchuh are even played as good guys. And even other factions like Mollys actaully have at least not ultimately evil intentions. But how all this factions making their point? By attacking innocent trade convoys not unlike other utterly criminal pirate factions without any morale.
A large part of 's plot involves the beastpeople of Morgal's recent, successful, and terribly bloody revolution against the kingdom of Sana. Among other things,
in Belinsk, just for being Sanan nobility.
The Grave Eclipse is caused by the king of Morgal
what he believes is a , which he intends to use on Sana and on Morgal's other neighboring country, Bilibin.
In , the floating city of Columbia is controlled by Zachary Comstock and the Founders, xenophobic white-supremacists who brutally oppress all black, Irish, Chinese and Indian citizens within the city. Opposing them is the Vox Populi, made up largely of the people mistreated by the Founders . The Vox Populi's grievances are understandable, but they have degenerated into vicious marauders who mercilessly bully and butcher the citizens of the city. When the revolt gets underway, Booker and Elizabeth come across the aftermath of many a firing squad and towards the end, Fitzroy
even tries to kill Booker and Elizabeth.
Vox Populi member: Your homes are ours! Your lives are ours! Your wives are ours! It all belongs to the Vox!
Booker DeWitt: When you get down to it, the only difference between Comstock and Fitzroy is how you spell their name.
This was however highly controversial on release, and Ken Levine
provided a
in the DLC Burial at Sea where Daisy Fitzroy was against her extreme violence and that it was an act imposed by the Luteces to serve as
for Elizabeth.
The NSF note& from . The game starts with JC going after them to retrieve a couple crates of plague cure they stole to give to the poor. Whether they should be considered terrorists or
is rather up for debate. All part and parcel of the game's .
The higher ups in the organization seem to be
at best. However, for the lower-ranking members, dialogue that can be had with a bum being hassled by NSF mercs indicate that the NSF happily takes anyone in and arms them, and some people just use that as a chance to get free guns and ammo to do whatever they want.
Enough investigation of NSF terminals reveals the higher ups do not approve of the worst behavior you see NSF grunts involved in, such as hostage taking and robbery, and are deeply concerned about the effects of this behavior on public perception of their cause. Yet they also recognize such behavior is hardly surprising, given that by necessity their organization is largely made up of poorly trained would-be revolutionaries of all descriptions fighting against a ruthless enemy that outguns them badly, causing bad decisions to be made in the heat of the moment.
(2012), the Syndicates are unquestionably evil by 20th/21st century Western standards. However, the Subverters opposing them are
who are unable to offer any alternatives other than "kill as many bourgeois as possible", with leader of the New York branch Kris Delaney gleefully anticipating the civilian collateral damage. It's hinted that a less militant wing of the Resistance is working on a more scientific solution, but you don't see them in the game.
's Civil War questline has the Stormcloaks in this role, many of whom are blatantly racist in their 'Skyrim for Nords' approach. They also employ a
policy to justify their racism which has caused severe friction between the fragile situation of the Argonians and Dunmer.
The Reachmen, also known as "Witchmen", are the native Bretons (racially, not culturally) of "the Reach," a region along the border between High Rock and Skyrim. They are a
people, primitive in
and , led by shamans, who practice elements of
worship, primarily Hircine. From the time of the Alessian Empire (in the mid-1st Era) through the 4th era, they've , warring against any outside conquerors attempting to claim the Reach for themselves. In the 4th Era, with the
distracted by the , the modern Reachmen lashed out and even briefly captured a
city. Though they were defeated and chased off by a Nord militia, the survivors regrouped in the hilly countryside of the Reach and became the Forsworn,
in all but name. While the Forsworn definitely , the wholesale slaughter of civilians combined with the practice of human sacrifice and alliances with thoroughly nasty monstrosities kind of ruins the 'noble rebel' effect. The , Madanach the "King in Rags," acknowledges this, saying "there are no innocents in war, only the guilty and the dead."
"The Beautiful" are a terrorist organization comprised of young
in the Summerset Isles, which uses public assassinations and general mayhem as a means to promote modernity and
the other branch of Altmeri extremism represented by .
The 2nd Era Stros M'Kai uprising saw a group of
capture the strategically important island of Stros M'Kai from Imperial forces while slaying the (admittedly corrupt) Imperial Governor. The Septim
was forced to make several concessions to Hammerfell in order to regain the island and restore order.
The Chots from
were originally rebels against the dictatorial rulers of Earth, but with time have degenerated into a society of sewer-dwelling, savage cannibals. They don't even remember their origins anymore and don't fight for any cause (save for that of having enough people to eat.)
: The protagonists joins the Resistance who are willing to use white phosphorous mortars on GKR mooks, who are portrayed as monstrous. But the Resistance are quite tame compared to the survivalists who are jerks to everyone who aren't on their side, and are very racist against Asians.
The Rebels in
are heavily implied to be human supremacists.
The Pitt DLC for
has an overarching theme of , exemplified in the struggle between Ashur's brutal slave regime trying to engineer a cure for the mutations plaguing the place, and Wernher's rebellion who want to just as brutally take the cure by force.
Also, the cure is a baby. .
It looks like
will fall into this. The organization you and your Agents belong to are nominally fighting against the oppressive , but since this is a
to , assassination, embezzlement, brainwashing civilians into involuntary meatshields and all other manner of morally suspect behaviour is definitely on the cards. Then in the ending your benefactor ends up being worse than the , by using the hijacked satellite (which you helped doing in the final fight) to initiate the apocalypse.
has Libertad, an extremist group that resents the upper classes of Overture for their wealth and easy access to
and wants to improve the miserable lot of the proletariat. Their motives may be commendable, but their members are not above attacking people on the street to steal their Mana. After the , they only get worse.
The Freemen of the Dales from
are deserters from the armies of both Empress Celene and Gaspard de Chalons who became weary of fighting a civil war and are attempting to claim the Dales. They are incredibly violent and will attack both the Inquisition and refugees fleeing the civil war on sight. As well, they are the
of the Elder One, as they were coaxed on by his servants and are used to transport red lyrium through the Dales to be used by the Red Templars.
Invoked by characters pulling the strings in . The
is angry but inclined towards justice, fairness, and nonviolence, and the revolutionaries tend to listen to her. But certain of her people believe that a civilized transfer of power won't lead to them getting power and go to
to rile up her and the police and turn the revolution bloody.
The "Settlement Defense Front" (SDF) from
organize themselves as a revolutionary group that is fighting against an oppressive and overreaching terrestrial government (). However they are violent and inhumane, slaughtering both military and civilian targets across the Solar System. Their real goal seems to be controlling the supply of Earth's fuel by disrupting the various outposts across the Solar System and seizing them.
Played for
in . The entire plot hinges on a sort of reenactment of the
, where a civilisation of animals refuse to eat grains and plants even though they're not in shortage and instead promote the "civilised virtue" of a carnivorous diet. The four factions, the Longcoats (republican capitalists), Commonfolk (), Civilised (the priesthood and noble class) and the KSR () are actually
and only guided by a single principle: they want meat and don't want to share. When the pigs () start to die out due to over-consumption, the warring factions start eating each other's fallen.
&&&&Webcomics&
The various Jidahist factions in Shooting War, though
takes the cake.
In , the ruler of the Tower, King Zahard, is a very cruel man, responsible for turning the tower into the
it is today out of spite and greed. The strongest people he wronged formed a terrorist organization called FUG, and are themselves willing to sink to unspeakably vile depths to get their .
&&&&Web Original&
has various rebel factions, from the Christian Federation and their penchant for suicide-ramming freighters into enemy vessels, to the Liberation and their campaign of terror-bombings. Even the Resistance has as their main gripe the fact that supernaturally-powered humans are forced to serve in the Tech Infantry
forces. These forces are fighting against
that want to eat everyone, other aliens that want to kill all humans and take their planets as living space, and still other aliens who want to enslave humans and work them all to death. This makes their occasionally violent tactics seem a bit extreme.
Although the Earth Federation and the Middle Kingdom that replaces it are both quite nasty, the aliens — especially the Bugs — are usually worse, and the endless rebellions, mutinies, and civil wars make it darn hard to fight the Bugs as a united front.
sees the nonviolent Civil Rights Movement collapse thanks to a drastic misreading of the political climate by President Disney. Martin Luther King, Jr. gets publicly egged, destroying his credibility, and the movement falls under control of the Nation of Islam. One word: jihad.
The French Revolution in
starts out being as violent as our history's...and never really calms down. In the long term this has the effect of forcing nearly all reformist movements to be more nonviolent by default, just to avoid the comparison.
Both this trope and it's inverse characterize the Red May Revolution in
While the communist revolution in America doesn't lead to a Soviet style nightmare, it is far from a tea party. The revolutionaries may have the moral high ground in the face of the dictatorial reaction by the old regime, but they still have their own Red Terror and
system. Anti-authoritarian currents in American society appear to have won out by the present day, as the Red Terror seems to be pretty universally regarded as a mistake.
In the short story , the protagonist witnesses his wife, oldest son, and scores of others die at the hands of his own government. Once given the chance to , he racks up 134 kills in just a few months, and vows to not stop until the rest of the tyrannical government is dead or about to hang.
: The White Fang was once peaceful freedom fighters who sought equality between humans and , but their current leadership opted to go for a more "hands on" thus, they became terrorists who seek to wipe out humanity completely.
&&&&Western Animation&
A couple examples from :
Jet's Freedom Fighters are not a particularly nice bunch. Despite being a charming group of kids who initially help out Team Avatar, they're actually willing to do pretty terrible things to wipe out the Fire Nation. At one point, they attempt to flood a town filled with innocent civilians, simply because the Fire Nation was occupying it. To their credit, the group realizes their mistake and makes a
shortly after the flooding fiasco. Despite , Jet himself ends up stuck in the , though he eventually ends up on the right side, yet his whole movement eventually fell apart.
The Omashu Resistance also does some unscrupulous things in their efforts to drive out the Fire Nation occupying their city. The first thing we see them do is attempt an assassination of the governor's family, including his infant son. Again, they perform a
shortly afterwards.
The main antagonists of the first season of
are the Equalists, a revolutionary group dedicated to seizing more power for
and attempting to
After a terrorist attack in a public event, they end up bombing the city—and while the show can't explicitly say civilians died, anyone looking at the wreckage knows they did.
The Red Lotus in season 3 desire to bring down the very concept of government so that humanity as a whole will be free and live as they should, with no nations of any kind and in total anarchy. , they're quite ruthless and violent, and ultimately their efforts end in vain as most of them end up dead or see the arrival of a true tyrant in Kuvira, after their actions destroyed the Earth Kingdom.
The Decepticons from
are occasionally this, depending on the incarnation. In particular,
depict the Decepticons as having legitimate grievances with a morally grey Autobot government, but they're just too extreme in their methods.
suggests that the Predacons might be in the same boat, but we don't learn enough about the situation to properly judge.
In , for instance, the Decepticons were originally a movement to abolish the Caste System that had large portions of the planet functionally enslaved. They then grew so brutal that their home planet was turned into a lifeless husk, and the Decepticons slowly came to care more about winning, or at least , than actually trying to make a better future.
The Supertrooper riot in . They were . A
circulates
in the barracks, and the Troopers go berserk, believing that their creators are out to kill them. With the sole exception of the youngest (who was at the shooting range at the time), they all go , kill one of their handlers on-screen (possibly more off-screen), and escape.
takes a surprisingly sophisticated look at
for its intended audience. For instance, while it treats the overall goals of the American Independence as a good thing, the negative elements like mob violence, slavery and the privations Native Americans suffered in the conflict are not overlooked while the British/Loyalist side are allowed to express their point of view.
Alternative Title(s):
The Revolution Will Not Be Civilised
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized}