Al is joined by Adam and Joe to dig into the role of villains and evil factions in strategy games. The conversation covers standout bad guy characters including Arthas from Warcraft 3, Kerrigan from StarCraft, and Kane from Command & Conquer, before broadening into whether strategy games are uniquely suited to letting players be evil. The discussion moves through Nuclear Gandhi, Paradox's approach to punishing warmongering, Stellaris' crisis mechanics, and the ethics of playing as historical atrocity-committing factions in games like Hearts of Iron 4. The episode closes on a pointed discussion about Gostomel Heroes, a recently released RTS that depicts Russian forces in the Ukraine conflict as heroes, and where the line sits between historical distance and active glorification of war crimes.

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