Hey so that one IGN review of mouse P.I. for hire pissed me, and a lot of other people off, and while sure it is laughable that a complaint they listed is—checks notes—... "Too much cheese", I am personally more offended at the insult to the game's seriousness. I am still writing my review as the game is not without its flaws, but for a game set within the 1930s it is amazingly accurate to the time period and I think this isn't evident any better than their handling of the rampant racism and prejudice that existed within the time period.
For starters I do wanna preface obviously the game is full of humor, no shit, it's based on old cartoons of course it would, however that doesn't take away from when it wants to be serious as it handles the subject matter of the shrews and the hate against them fucking PERFECT. I think the shrews are the perfect analogy for a minority facing oppression and hate because while in-game there's a lot of mixed stuff regarding them that's a bit puzzling if you try and compare them to any actual race. Ethnicity wise they seem to be polish with notes in clergy row pointing to this as well as the BMP hating them, at the same time John makes a remark about being kicked off buses no doubt a reference to the struggle black Americans faced as the game is set only a decade and a half before the civil rights movement within the US, and the mention and existence of shrewthicket seems to be a parallel to Chinatowns which date back to the California gold rush, but were also arising in places like New York and Boston only a few decades before Mouse P.I. takes place, all this makes for a very confusing picture on who the shrews are supposed to represent, but that's the thing
THEY'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO REPRESENT A SINGULAR MINORITY
The shrews are emphasized to simply just be short, that's their main defining characteristic and Cornelius has the remarks of them being the mices "little brothers" or "short cousins"—which is odd if you know that shrews and mice aren't THAT related and in fact shrews are more closely related to hedgehogs and aren't proper rodents (as in the order Rodentia which mice are apart of)—however if you think about it in the context of a world with anthro animals and especially in mouseburg what does this really matter? Shrews are visually short long nosed mice, and in mouseburg their people like any other who want to make a living, it just so happens they look different and face hate for it, AND THAT'S THE GENIUS OF HOW IT'S WRITTEN! There's no actual reason why the shrews should be receiving hate and as we see in newspapers there have been upsets regarding shrews getting the same payment as mice and mice not liking that, but why? Because they're different, that's all really, shrews aren't any stand-in for any race because they just represent minorities in general who face prejudice for the superficial reason of being a different color, ethnicity wise I will remark that yes, they are seemingly polish but we see mice who are ethnicity wise German, Scottish, and French also, however to simplify and make the shrews represent any one race is to me just wrong and missing the point and I think frankly it's genius to just have them be a separate species who have a some pretty apparent defining physical traits and yet they have hate and prejudice pushed against them by a political party that—I'm not even gonna try and elaborate on, their Nazis, the BMP are Nazis, that's fucking obvious, and as such the nazis do not care about the fact that the shrews aren't any different from mice they do what Nazis do and hate anybody who's not like them, we see in the last level they insult Cornelius for being a literal rat because they are the big MOUSE party and as such they hate anyone who isn't a mouse, there's no real reason why they hate shrews or rats, they just do because they're Nazis and hate doesn't need a justification
Anyways yeah no games great, solid 8/10 I'll try and write that review when I have time, I just wanna talk about this frankly genius writing.
