Just feels very iffy… Seems to imply the Wapiti should just surrender, lay down their arms and let themselves be genocided. The writers seem to think the Wapiti should just let themselves face attack after attack and not do anything. Also, very weird that they try to portray US soldiers as victims. Arthur picks up the ID of a soldier and said something alongside the lines of “he’s just a kid!”. Imagine this kind of shit in a WWII game. Oh no, we just killed this poor, poor, poor boy from Hamburg! He liked puppies and flowers!
I remember being worried while playing that the story would go in that direction. But there’s a scene where Rain Falls explicitly says that he doesn’t want his son to fight, not because he thinks its wrong, but that its futile and he wants his son to live. All of his other sons have died fighting and he’s decided that even though fighting the gov is right, he’d rather have a living son. Its been a long time, but i remember it being a really moving scene that clarified it for me.
It seems they were making a statement on what heroism is in an unwinnable situation - Dying in a fight you can’t win even though its right, versus shouldering the pain of living through injustice you can’t defeat and doing what you can for those still living. I don’t think they pull it off perfectly at all, but that’s my best guess of what they were going for.