Anti-Religious Sentiment in Video Games (have you noticed?)
- Thread starter Yeslek Ssomllur
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Heres a list of games with Religious main characters
http://www.dorkly.com/article/1762/christian-versions-of-games
http://www.dorkly.com/article/1762/christian-versions-of-games
Think games like Halo, Silent Hill and Dead Space have it bad? You haven't played Shin Megami Tensei where God is depicted as the biggest asshole of all time.
By the end of SMT 2, everybody from the main characters to Lucifer to the Archangel Gabriel wants God DEAD because he was responsible for nearly everything bad that ever happened to anyone in the entire game, and would you believe me if I said Satan was God's minion? (There's a reason it was never released in NA)
And in SMT Nocturne, one alternate ending has you, leading the legions of Hell to storm the gates of Heaven to kill God, who was a total asshole in this game too.
Shin Megami Tensei: Where God=Evil and Hell=Good. You don't get any more anti-religious than that. (Or at least Anti-Christian)
By the end of SMT 2, everybody from the main characters to Lucifer to the Archangel Gabriel wants God DEAD because he was responsible for nearly everything bad that ever happened to anyone in the entire game, and would you believe me if I said Satan was God's minion? (There's a reason it was never released in NA)
And in SMT Nocturne, one alternate ending has you, leading the legions of Hell to storm the gates of Heaven to kill God, who was a total asshole in this game too.
Shin Megami Tensei: Where God=Evil and Hell=Good. You don't get any more anti-religious than that. (Or at least Anti-Christian)
While I don't agree with all the examples of all religion being mocked in certain video games, religion is becoming a bigger tool for creating antagonists in video games. Instead of pointing to some kind of grand scheme from writers or how it reveals a changing society that more easily accepts anti-religious fanaticism, I think it has to do with the one true religion of all game developers. Money.
Religions a great topic for a bad guy, because nearly every person has a bad opinion about religion in some form or another yet it feels still very controversial and puts the player in the position of telling them that, "Only you know the truth and can see past the lies." Now using an example like Halo. Evil alien cult religion trying to destroy earth can be interpreted in so many different ways depending on who you want to hate. For an anti-religious person it can just be yet another example of religious fanaticism gone astray, for a conservative Christian living in America it can be seen as fundamentalist Islam.
While some games like Assassin's Creed target the Templars and the Catholic church, it's honestly just an absurd anti-historical rip-off of The da Vinci Code. The games series that I thought had something reasonably well thought out to say about ideology was the Bioshock series which showed us through extreme capitalism and then socialism how dangerous and destructive ideologies were when taken to an extreme. Most other game series I've seen that have anything to say about religion have so little to say that is intelligent it's fairly obvious to see that it's just trying to milk religion for another bad guy.
Religions a great topic for a bad guy, because nearly every person has a bad opinion about religion in some form or another yet it feels still very controversial and puts the player in the position of telling them that, "Only you know the truth and can see past the lies." Now using an example like Halo. Evil alien cult religion trying to destroy earth can be interpreted in so many different ways depending on who you want to hate. For an anti-religious person it can just be yet another example of religious fanaticism gone astray, for a conservative Christian living in America it can be seen as fundamentalist Islam.
While some games like Assassin's Creed target the Templars and the Catholic church, it's honestly just an absurd anti-historical rip-off of The da Vinci Code. The games series that I thought had something reasonably well thought out to say about ideology was the Bioshock series which showed us through extreme capitalism and then socialism how dangerous and destructive ideologies were when taken to an extreme. Most other game series I've seen that have anything to say about religion have so little to say that is intelligent it's fairly obvious to see that it's just trying to milk religion for another bad guy.
I've noticed awhile back. The latest religion basher is Bayonetta. Dont care now. I just find it funny.
Actually Unitology is more like Scientology than Christianity while the religion of the Covenant is as you have said Jew/Christian/Islam. I'd like to know how you got the impression that Unitology is closer to Christianity than Scientology.Yeslek Ssomllur said:
Wow, God of Everything really made me laugh.bruein said:
Anyway, yeah, but I really doubt (m)any developers have "bash religion and promote atheism" as a project goal. You know how when you turn on either Assassin's Creed game there is the message saying how the game was made by a group of diverse faiths, cultures, ideals, etc. Whatever the exact wording is. It's pretty much saying "Hey don't be offended or take this too seriously, it's just a game." Most reasonable, religious people are not going to.
I'd play a game with a with a pro-religious main character or pro-religious themes as long as it was told well and plays well. Told well as in not with a theme like "Atheism is wrong. Believe or you are going hell". I've had some ideas floating around for a pro-religious game in my head.Korten12 said:
When people stop crushing newborn kittens for pornography, then I'll have a say if there's a god.
The one thing that bugs me is when religious dogma is mocked for it's "backwards, superstitious" propaganda in games set in a fantasy world. (Actually, I'm thinking specifically of Oblivion and Dragon Age, so let's stick with Bethesda) Many in game characters scoff, "Gods? That's impossible!" Even while summoning a wind storm out of their arsehole. Or, even worse, when the "rational" characters retreat into what is usually some kind of empirical, scientific study of magic (which is at least dissonant in itself) while preposterously ignoring the extremely overt presence of deities in the land. Like how Morrigan patronizes the in-game clergy (namely Leliana) even if she is directly addressed by ethereal projections of the gods she claims do not exist, or how she (and Sten too) doubt the efficacy of the Urn of Sacred Ashes even after if fucking works. Or "Elsie God-hater" from Oblivion, who obnoxiously declaims the 9 for their insubstantially, despite the fact that I just got back from a quest one of them gave me. I mean, especially after the Nights of the Nine missions, you start to wonder how she supports her view at all.
It seems they have transposed an empirical vs. superstitious world view dichotomy onto a universe for which it makes no sense, ostensibly just to broaden the role play experience, which I find a little cheap.
It seems they have transposed an empirical vs. superstitious world view dichotomy onto a universe for which it makes no sense, ostensibly just to broaden the role play experience, which I find a little cheap.
Thank Avo this thread was made! Fable has some good tasks that you are forced to to in order to gain God's favor, such as donating hundreds of thousands of dollars and/or sacrificing innocent people to the Devil
It's why I like Assassins Creed so much. It's a game where you typically get to stab zealots in the face, and all the while there's a huge plot about disproving God in the game's world. But it doesn't get in your face about it or shove the ideals down the throats of religious people, either. I think that's pretty admirable when storytellers manage that.
Why would you want a game about a normal churchgoer? That's just boring.manythings said:
And Dragon Age had genuinely good people in the Chantry.
I think that the main reason for the covenant being religious nuts is because that was the only motive that Bungie could think of. How else would 3 people have such tight control of such a large group of aliens?
I think it is important to draw a distinction between games that set up organizations or plots, religious in nature, that are meant to be taken on their own terms, like Silent Hill or Condemned, and those that earnestly intend to comment, negatively or otherwise, on faith, religion, or a particular belief system, like Dragon Age. It's a subtle difference, actually, but a very big one. Think about it this way: it's very common nowadays to cast Russia as America's big world-class enemy in games, but no one really bats an eye at it. But what if a game actually attempted to promote the idea that Russia really is a world-class evil that America needs to violently purge? The content of that game might not be noticeably different from a game like Modern Warfare or Bad Company, but the ideological difference would be very, very jarring to gamers- and, given how these things occasionally go, maybe to FOX News within a week or so.
It's true that the plots of Condemned and Silent Hill both center on the actions of the adherents of warped beliefs, but I don't think either one is meant to suggest anything unsavory about faith itself- either in its own context or in the real world. After all, in both of these games, the myths around which the two cults are centered are very real, and it is not the existence of the belief systems that is meant to be found repulsive, but the twisted beings and occurrences they are centered around.
Condemned never makes reference, even implicitly, to any real-world belief system. Silent Hill often uses symbolism and architecture meant to evoke Christianity, but the nature of its use seems to discredit the idea that it is making a negative commentary on real-world faith. One could easily argue that the juxtaposition of seemingly Christian symbology- or, in the case of Silent Hill on the PS1, an actual Christian church- warped by the Order's purpose is only used as a technique to create horror because it plays with the age-old idea of something benign and ubiquitous becoming malign and uncouth in a new context. Or to put it simply, the creepy Order churches in Silent Hill only seem as creepy as they do because the game assumes that real-world Christianity is more or less good.
On the other hand, there are games like Fallout or Dragon Age that are meant to explicitly invoke real-world religions, and they do so with varying intents and effects. In Fallout 3, the Church (or was it the Children?) of Atom is meant to lightly mock the concept of misplaced faith, but all in all it seems to be done rather tongue-in-cheek and I don't think there's any real malice there. Dragon Age does a pretty good job, actually. It's been a while since I played, but from what I remember, Ferelden was not a theocracy, but other than that the Andrastian church was definitely meant to invoke Roman Catholicism in the Middle Ages. Taking that as a basis, I'm actually rather pleased with how they handled it all. There is a question about whether or not the church's beliefs are misplaced, and that question is never definitively answered. There certainly was something special about Andraste, at any rate, but how that bears on the church dedicated to her deification never has any definite judgment passed on it by the game (nor, by extension, by its creators). The church and its adherents are shown to be flawed, but overall benevolent. The church is not perfect, but it does manage to do a great amount of good for the land. The people's faith, mistaken though it might be, strengthens Ferelden. That's a pretty grown-up way of framing it, and it helps add a lot of depth and believability to the setting- which is the strongest part of that or any BioWare game.
There are games out there that seem to view religion in a very negative light. 99% of the time, this means 'Christianity' as much as it means religion as a whole. One thing I've noticed is that, while not always the case, this is particularly common among Japanese games, and in Japanese media in general: manga, anime, what have you. The earliest example I can think of is the Ethos church in Xenogears, which is an obvious stand-in for Christianity. Naturally, the Church is not only false, but outright evil, perpetrating a world-wide conspiracy for its own benefit. Grandia 2 is a very similar example: the fictional Catholicism stand-in is not only false, but a scheme to revive pseudo-Satan and take over the world. I've never played Shin Megami Tensei, but from what I hear (even in this thread) it isn't exactly subtle about its notions of God. There are a lot of games like this, come to think of it, and I'm dimly aware of a lot of these plots occurring in anime, but I'm really not very familiar enough with it to say. Evangelion, of course, throws around a ton of faux-Christian symbolism, all of which is only barely deep enough to try and cast it in a negative light. Over-the-top evil or amoral caricatures of Christianity, usually Roman Catholicism, seems to be a pretty common thing in Japanese media, meaning there is a lot of spillover into videogames. I'd dismiss any of these examples, by themselves, as being flukes or attempts to be clever, but there certainly are a lot of them for them to be flukes- or clever. Whether or not it springs from any genuine disbelief or outright dislike of Christianity by the Japanese is beyond my capacity for speculation.
It's less common among Western developers, but it happens. Dead Space was mentioned, and it certainly deserves to be. I'd have put it in the first category if not for how overt the parallels to Scientology are. It's certainly deliberate, and whether their intent was to subtly bash Scientology or not, they certainly picked their target well enough- not enough people that play games care about Scientology, and thus won't be offended by it, but most will be familiar enough to understand the parallel.
Game developers need to be a little bit careful with this subject matter. As long as they make it clear that it's all just a game, they'll likely only draw the normal background level of fundie backlash, which is to be expected anyway. But on the rare occasions where a game developer might take a clear stance for or against a religion (other than Scientology, apparently) or religion in general, that's when things can certainly go haywire. We've yet to see what would happen if a big game actually did try to pull something like that; most games are considered to be pushing the envelope if they attempt themes or morals that wouldn't be out of place in Saturday morning cartoons. I don't really see it happening anytime soon, though; no one will care unless a big-money A-List developer tries something like that, and A-List developers aren't known for social activism- thank God.
It's true that the plots of Condemned and Silent Hill both center on the actions of the adherents of warped beliefs, but I don't think either one is meant to suggest anything unsavory about faith itself- either in its own context or in the real world. After all, in both of these games, the myths around which the two cults are centered are very real, and it is not the existence of the belief systems that is meant to be found repulsive, but the twisted beings and occurrences they are centered around.
Condemned never makes reference, even implicitly, to any real-world belief system. Silent Hill often uses symbolism and architecture meant to evoke Christianity, but the nature of its use seems to discredit the idea that it is making a negative commentary on real-world faith. One could easily argue that the juxtaposition of seemingly Christian symbology- or, in the case of Silent Hill on the PS1, an actual Christian church- warped by the Order's purpose is only used as a technique to create horror because it plays with the age-old idea of something benign and ubiquitous becoming malign and uncouth in a new context. Or to put it simply, the creepy Order churches in Silent Hill only seem as creepy as they do because the game assumes that real-world Christianity is more or less good.
On the other hand, there are games like Fallout or Dragon Age that are meant to explicitly invoke real-world religions, and they do so with varying intents and effects. In Fallout 3, the Church (or was it the Children?) of Atom is meant to lightly mock the concept of misplaced faith, but all in all it seems to be done rather tongue-in-cheek and I don't think there's any real malice there. Dragon Age does a pretty good job, actually. It's been a while since I played, but from what I remember, Ferelden was not a theocracy, but other than that the Andrastian church was definitely meant to invoke Roman Catholicism in the Middle Ages. Taking that as a basis, I'm actually rather pleased with how they handled it all. There is a question about whether or not the church's beliefs are misplaced, and that question is never definitively answered. There certainly was something special about Andraste, at any rate, but how that bears on the church dedicated to her deification never has any definite judgment passed on it by the game (nor, by extension, by its creators). The church and its adherents are shown to be flawed, but overall benevolent. The church is not perfect, but it does manage to do a great amount of good for the land. The people's faith, mistaken though it might be, strengthens Ferelden. That's a pretty grown-up way of framing it, and it helps add a lot of depth and believability to the setting- which is the strongest part of that or any BioWare game.
There are games out there that seem to view religion in a very negative light. 99% of the time, this means 'Christianity' as much as it means religion as a whole. One thing I've noticed is that, while not always the case, this is particularly common among Japanese games, and in Japanese media in general: manga, anime, what have you. The earliest example I can think of is the Ethos church in Xenogears, which is an obvious stand-in for Christianity. Naturally, the Church is not only false, but outright evil, perpetrating a world-wide conspiracy for its own benefit. Grandia 2 is a very similar example: the fictional Catholicism stand-in is not only false, but a scheme to revive pseudo-Satan and take over the world. I've never played Shin Megami Tensei, but from what I hear (even in this thread) it isn't exactly subtle about its notions of God. There are a lot of games like this, come to think of it, and I'm dimly aware of a lot of these plots occurring in anime, but I'm really not very familiar enough with it to say. Evangelion, of course, throws around a ton of faux-Christian symbolism, all of which is only barely deep enough to try and cast it in a negative light. Over-the-top evil or amoral caricatures of Christianity, usually Roman Catholicism, seems to be a pretty common thing in Japanese media, meaning there is a lot of spillover into videogames. I'd dismiss any of these examples, by themselves, as being flukes or attempts to be clever, but there certainly are a lot of them for them to be flukes- or clever. Whether or not it springs from any genuine disbelief or outright dislike of Christianity by the Japanese is beyond my capacity for speculation.
It's less common among Western developers, but it happens. Dead Space was mentioned, and it certainly deserves to be. I'd have put it in the first category if not for how overt the parallels to Scientology are. It's certainly deliberate, and whether their intent was to subtly bash Scientology or not, they certainly picked their target well enough- not enough people that play games care about Scientology, and thus won't be offended by it, but most will be familiar enough to understand the parallel.
Game developers need to be a little bit careful with this subject matter. As long as they make it clear that it's all just a game, they'll likely only draw the normal background level of fundie backlash, which is to be expected anyway. But on the rare occasions where a game developer might take a clear stance for or against a religion (other than Scientology, apparently) or religion in general, that's when things can certainly go haywire. We've yet to see what would happen if a big game actually did try to pull something like that; most games are considered to be pushing the envelope if they attempt themes or morals that wouldn't be out of place in Saturday morning cartoons. I don't really see it happening anytime soon, though; no one will care unless a big-money A-List developer tries something like that, and A-List developers aren't known for social activism- thank God.
Neither has absolute proof one way or the other, but when the evidence we do have all supports one conclusion, it becomes more a matter of logic and rational thinking than belief. Believing everything spontaneously came into being over billions of years following a set of unchangeable rules that all things must obey is significantly more rational, and supported by significantly more proof, than believing the universe burst into being at the whim of an omnipotent skyfairy 6,000 years ago.Gunsang said:
Religion makes for some great source material, just like ancient myths. It's tons of fun to devise a story around an ancient, supernatural phenomena and the people who worship them. Doubly so if it flips the source material around a la Final Fantasy Tactics. Unlike myth, most people have a passing knowledge of most religions, so there's no need to have the game come with its own encyclopedia.
Though the only difference between religion and myth is popularity.