It’s to the game’s great credit that early decisions reinforce this sense of self-righteous crusade by making it deceptively simple to take the moral high ground. When the Patriarch leases a disused air force base to the Rangers as their HQ and gives them free rein to round up his wayward children, the game’s choice to follow his flag or build up an independent faction committed to the rule of law and constitutional values seems like a no-brainer. But that period has dragged on for five decades, and the Patriarch’s penchant for luxury and oversized monuments to himself belie a man losing his grip on political reality and the shaky allegiances that secured his dominance. The Patriarch, Colorado’s ruler, presents himself as a benevolent dictator seeing his nation through a period of stabilization and transition towards democracy. It’s a welcome shift of focus from robot to human concerns, and it’s a suitably Shakespearean premise for a story that is first and foremost about the balance of power and the difficult choices that come with power.
