Waging a Propaganda War in The Great Villainess

Streaming is mightier than the sword

By Willa Rowe | August 4, 2025 | 10:12am

Video Games Features Great Villainess: Strategy of Lily

Waging a Propaganda War in The Great Villainess

Half the battle in waging a successful war is knowing how to do good PR. At least that’s the mentality that cuts through the familiar medieval stylings of the new strategy game The Great Villainess: Strategy of Lily. It’s one of the many subversive design choices that developer One or Eight employs that turns what could be another generic entry in the strategy genre into a piece of satire on the way so much of war in our current climate occurs: through a screen.

The Great Villainess has a familiar story that leans on tropes that abound in anime, manga, and games. Scarlet, the leading lady and titular villainess, is framed early on for the murder of the nation’s ruler. This sets her on a path of revolution, in which she slowly collects allies across a sprawling map in hopes of overthrowing the status quo of a flawed ruling class. It’s something we’ve seen before in other villainess stories, as well as a cookie cutter story of revolution that doesn’t seem far off from every other war story you might find in a strategy title. The secret to Great Villainess’s success lies in its presentation of these tropes.

That presentation largely relies upon a mechanic called the Stream Airship. This is the vessel that transports Scarlet and her allies across the map—a large steampunk airship with the eyecatching edition of a giant screen on the outside. That screen becomes the most vital tool Scarlett has in her revolution, as it is a tool for disseminating information to the masses (be they friend or foe).

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This isn’t only a narrative device; in fact the Stream Airship is largely a mechanical tool that will help you turn the tide of battle with shocking effectiveness. During combat, a mix of turn-based battles and strategic troop movement on a large map, Scarlet has the chance to dispatch the Stream Airship to areas as a means of intimidation and distraction. For example, if an enemy troop is giving you particular trouble, or you just want the chance to move your own troops into a more beneficial position before your opponent has the chance to strike, you can broadcast a stalling stream via the airship as it looms above the battlefield. This lets Scarlet weaponize her natural charm to stop enemies in their tracks, distracting them from the battle at hand.

Scarlet is able to sway enemies to her cause in the right circumstances. But in another twist on familiar genre elements, The Stream Airship plays a part in this as well through capture streams. If an enemy commander has low enough health these can be enacted as a way to pressure them into joining the revolution through the very public forum of a broadcast. As a protagonist, Scarlet also feeds into this theme of using narratives as a vital aspect of the war effort. From the jump, The Great Villainess establishes that she has been accused of killing the king. However, despite leaning into this spreading rumor, Scarlet is not actually guilty of such a crime. Yet as her mission of revolution grows she continues to present herself as the ruthless assassin everyone believes her to be. It is a role she plays in the grander story of this war, another tool (like the Stream Airship) she can use to intimidate and destabilize the enemy while also earning allies who celebrate the king’s death.

This persona is on full display in how Scarlet interacts during battle as well as in visual novel cutscenes between combat. More critically it is heavily present in the stalling streams that Scarlet stars in when utilizing the airship. While we don’t get to see what exactly her talk show is, we do see a steady stream of comments on the right side of the game screen from characters in the world reacting to it. It’s a Twitch stream comment section of enemies gossiping about Scarlet’s reputation and what it means for the battle at hand. In this, Scarlet understands that everything is performance. She disregards the idea that history is written by the victor and goes one step further, enacting a propaganda machine to effectively write herself as the victor in real time—and through convincing others that she must be right, making it reality.

All of this occurs through the lens of The Great Villainess‘s tongue-in-cheek comedy. This is why the satire is pulled off so well. Behind the showy streams of the airship and the over-the-top personality of Scarlet are more ethically alarming tactics. Alongside the airship and turn-based combat, battles revolve around the control of supply lines. Battles can be won and lost quickly if the necessary routes providing resources to troops can be cut off completely. Starve the troops, starve the population, and you can win a war. It’s a tactic we see constantly in our real world, again through screens, as Israel starves the Palestinian people in it’s ongoing genocide. And while that is one of the most immediate connections to be made between The Great Villaness and our current political climate, it is by no means the only one.

The focus on propaganda, on screens and providing some sort of entertainment circus through the cult of personality is constantly on display in the news cycle. Scarlet—while a loveable anime hottie with questionable ethics—is employing the same tactics of misinformation and fearmongering that is at the heart of many current campaigns against marginalized members of any given community. The Great Villainess smartly rolls this commentary into its stylish presentation, charming characters, and thrilling strategy design.

Willa Rowe is a queer games critic based in New York City whose writing has been featured in Digital Trends, Kotaku, Inverse, and more. She also hosts the Girl Mode podcast. When she isn’t talking games she can be found on Bluesky rooting for the New York Mets. (We forgive her.—Ed.)