Religion and video games
Ultrakill is a game you might have heard of. Whilst not out-and-about famous, among certain internet niches it has gained a bit of a cult following. It’s blend of fast paced run-and-gun gameplay and it’s incredible use of music to heighten the adrenaline during fights, but to calm you down when out of them is amazing, but it is more known for it’s use of biblical stories as a way to form the story.
Ultrakill doesn’t really have much of a story from the offset, being more about getting through the mission as quickly as possible and (usually) killing everything in your way to get there. Reading through several parts of the books found along the way however, as well as it’s use of the circles of hell as level and section names, the religious aspect behind Ultrakill cannot be ignored. Whether it is the cutscene at the end of each act where you have defeated Gabriel discussing the role of God, or the characters and their placements in each circle (this whole game uses Dante’s inferno as a large part of the inspiration) such as King Minos who is simply a husk, a boss for you to slay as epically as you can. The game does not per se advocate for or against religion but more uses it as a framing device to tell an interesting story, however it does very much have a Nietzschian feel about it, with Nietzsche exclaiming “God is dead” and Ultrakill using this to as the reason of Heaven’s downfall (partially).
It is an interesting game to explore itself, but more interesting is the intersection of religion in the wider video game industry and how it forms the games we play and is often included. Plenty of video games incorporate aspects of the Christian religion as a framing device to speak about the evils in our world or just as a way to tell a great story (think of Devil May Cry, with the main character literally being called Dante and his brother being Virgil). DMC has since had a Netflix series made about it which goes into a very weird level of religious zealousism in relation to how the characters discuss the Makaian people (often called demons to dehumanise the refugee’s). The netflix series is not particularly good but is fun. Back to the the video game, DMC primarily uses religious themes and mythology as a springboard in aesthetics and storytelling rather than being theological in basis or even having a particular message one way or the other.
With plenty of other games using Christian or Greek mythology, what makes this so appealing? I believe this is that a lot of the stories told are inherently of an epic scale which makes this something that can be easily fantasised. Look at God of War for example, which uses Greek mythology to great use to put the player in a situation where they are quite literally fighting gods. Bioshock and several Final fantasy games certainly have religious aspects, whether it be how the church or religion interacts with people and holds significant power, and how these forces can be corrupting.
Video games are a great way to explore these themes but care should be taken about how religion is discussed. A more historical game, Crusader Kings 3 (or generally the whole series, since the name of the game is a reference to the religious wars which were the crusades), does suffer from normalizing religious extremism, whether it be Christian, Muslim or a self made religion. Through having players explore the very real aspect of religious pressures on many nations of the time period, it is certainly a game that attempts to show that religion was the dominating political force, but it does not condemn even horrific acts that were undoubtably committed during many of the wars between the European Christians and the Muslims of the Middle-East and Northern Africa, which is very disappointing to me. This would not even have to take the form of a declaration that all religion is evil, but Paradox interactive does have a habit of showing eras where tragedies occurred but aims to stand in the middle as a neutral observer of the history as it was.
This is something that I would like to put through to all games that include religious backgrounds as whilst we know that killing the demons in DMC is externally just a way to progress the game, it could be internalised as the struggle of a religion against a new world that is ever more secular. Many cases of violence have occurred due to people who live in an echo chamber of religious doomerism and people coming to get them (whether it’s homosexuals, the “trans agenda” or illegal immigrants), and thus these people must be removed, much like in Crusader Kings or the DMC series.
Religion in a game does not have to be bad, as when it is simply an aesthetic theme, no statement in support of or in rejection of has to be made, it could just be the reason to fight non-descript evil beings which are easier to state are evil in religious contexts where they are the embodiment of evil. Care should still be taken with how this can be interpreted when looking at other ways of incorporating religion though, as having people do horrible things and gamifying religious wars can (and has) lead to religious violence and general non-acceptance of people that may be different to ones self.
