This is going to be an unconventional review that focuses heavily on the message of Rebel Inc. rather than just its gameplay. Specifically, this review examines how Rebel Inc.'s portrayal of insurgencies undermines any commentary the game may be trying to make, as well as how it weakens its narrative.

Rebel Inc. is about wrestling with insurgents in an unstable, war-torn nation. And yet, we know next-to-nothing about our titular rebel. We do not know their name, their goal, their identity, or their origin. They are red diamonds sprouting from red squares trying to make red districts. They have an identical list of demands across every game, and the consequences of acceding to their demands is never touched upon. We don't know who their leaders are, what kind of political party they form, or what they've demanded we apologize for.

We are left to wonder if they're Talibanesque fundamentalists, NLF knock-offs, FARC-like guerillas, or Islamic Statists. We are given no indication towards any of these except perhaps the Taliban, as the game is most clearly inspired by events in Afghanistan. The rebels are abstracted to the point of meaninglessness. All of the game's narrative weight rests upon them and your conflict with them, but they are entirely void of substance. For a game praised for its "hyper-realism," the sterility of its central conflict is rather jarring.

This discrepancy is exacerbated by how nearly every initiative you can pass has a unique description that gives you an idea of what it does. These descriptions attempt to paint a picture of the various processes that go into rebuilding a war-torn nation, with its corruption hotlines and coalition forces, its agribusiness subsidies and its PR campaigns. This process is depicted as entirely altruistic, and its only drawbacks are externalities: corruption, natural disaster, etc. The game does not bother to interrogate the motives of the capitalist hegemony supporting the reconstruction efforts (these motives are, based on the recently published Afghanistan Papers, deeply compromised by short-sighted greed and callous indifference). They are presented as an unambiguous moral good, and your success is entirely dependent upon staying in the capitalists' good graces.

The rebels receive no such love -- they rollout no initiatives of their own, much less with flavorful descriptions of what they do. The rebels on one map are functionally identical to the rebels on any other (barring the special 6th and 7th maps). They have no formal allies (barring an event where a rival country funds them) or place in the world, and their supporters do not interact with you or make a case for their support. They are unambiguously evil, and any attempt to recognize them as anything else will cost you dearly.

There doesn't even have to be a mechanical benefit to amicably reconciling with the rebels, just some kind of narrative consequence. If the rebels are made morally ambiguous or even more righteous than the hegemony, the game can create a very powerful dissonance around the supposed value of the hegemon's favor and the player's personal morals. Will you compromise your beliefs to maintain your place in the international hierarchy, or will you forsake the established order to unify the region in the interest of its people? Or, in other words, will you question the international imperialist status quo regardless of the risks? Rebel Inc. does not.

I hope that, as this game nears its full release, its potential as a piece of geopolitical commentary is better realized. Until then, it will likely remain a fun but ultimately shallow product.