BONUS ARTICLE. How the game of my childhood transitioned from a residually Christian secularised paradigm to a modern neo-pagan, neo-Gnostic cosmology, Satanic soteriology.
Hazbin Hotel is basically the endpoint this trajectory in musical format, but with the understanding of international relations, law, and morality one would expect from a Disney adult.
At this point I'm not sure if described changes are a product of a changing cultural landscape or simply the need to market new enemies, new stories, new concepts for new products in what's essentially a content empty aesthetic.
Christian cosmology does not lend itself to video game or fantasy easily. All the examples of great Catholic fantastical fiction have Christianity as a broad backdrop for a world in which in it is not directly apparent. With Tolkien we had gods and angels and fallen angels, but God doesn't play a direct part. In The Book of the New Sun God is orchestrating small events that feed into a great redemptive catastrophy, while in something new like Sun Eater God is, again, very much in the background.
What we believe does not make for a good "setting” in the way Gnostic mythology or various pagan religions do.
When Christianity is used as direct inspiration, but emptied of its actual theological content, we get progressive slop like Between Two Fires.
With these I think that Doom is just trying to retell the same story over and over again, because it's expected by the market to have a story.
This is a good argument. After all, grace and faith are notoriously difficult to translate into gameplay mechanics — far more difficult than various forms of paganism and magic thinking. Mana is more playable than grace, indeed. What matters, still, at the first place, is the position of the protagonist, and therefore the player, regardless of the surrounding lore. Is he omnipotent? Does he stand before a mystery greater than himself? Does he receive, or merely exercise power?
In this respect, the industry has gradually shifted from an authentically human position towards various forms of 'god mode,' whether in the Terminator franchise, The Elder Scrolls, Doom, or countless other examples. I am not sure this development is solely predicated on pure laws of free market or even the limited logic of the gameplay mechanics and how they are more easily integrated into the final product.
What I find particularly interesting at the second place is the broader cultural movement from quasi-Christian categories — with their good-versus-evil dichotomy and their war against demons, even in secularised and materialistic forms — towards something that first approximates the world of ancient epic mythology and then moves beyond it into a kind of personal theogenesis. The hero is no longer merely saving the world; he is becoming divine, or discovering that he already was. Nerevarin, Dragonborn, the Doom Guy who from a no-name (called Doom Guy outside of the game lore per se), a nameless marine transitioned into a semi-divine and almost immortal Doom Slayer with a lore of his own.
I do not think this development is independent from the cultural/religious transformations of the West. On the contrary. For in Japanese games, for example, one can see a purely pagan worlview that is almost untouched by Christianity (except for some aesthetics), in which, I would claim, the protagonist is much more susceptible to the forces of nature, various chthonic horrors and ancient curses that he cannot escape or defeat.
Of course, I may be mistaken. Please, tell me what you think of it.
I would ask myself, how do you justify the protagonist having a massive role in the story? Let's tale Skyrim or Morrowind for example, you are on a mission to save the world, but as its an RPG you need to provide a reason for why it's the player who will do it and explain within the story why you can manage to do it in the first place. You also need cool powers. Hence, making the protagonist some form of a demigod makes sense from a gameplay and storytelling perspective.
Games in general are always trying to hack the male brain, that craves power and success and making the player a demigod is easy. With Japanese media I'm not noticing a large difference. Isekai, that is "I died and reincarnated from a completeoser to a super powerful demigod surrounded by women with massive breasts who love me" is a large phenomenon, certainly larger than it is in the West.
I'm sure that your perspective is not wholly incorrect, as man is never a pure subject of the market, but an active participant, especially in art. But I don't think we've experienced a large change from the 80s until the 2020s with art. It's just gone from left wing with old world residuals to total woke. Christianity hasn't been a cultural force since 1945 IMO.
Another side note. With the massive popularity of Warhammer we are seeing a resurgence of Catholic imagery inspired video games and other media. Trench Crusade is made by homosexual atheists, but is made compelling largely by taking Catholic and Eastern Orthodox aesthetics and making them extreme. Video games like Witchfire in a similar fashion (although it's not gay and blasphemous) and Arms of God partake in mixing Catholicism and fantasy or science fiction. This might be a fad, or a signal that the cultural landscape is going from “the dark ages were terrible because of Christianity and the Crusades” to “this is awesome and I want to kill demons with a hospitaler tabard on me”.
This is a great discussion! As a side note, I can’t believe you’ve read all those series—are there circles where they’re standard? The Catholics I know stick closer to the more realist novels (Greene, Undset, Cather), with the sole exception of Canticle for Leibowitz, and the sci-fi enjoyers I know haven’t heard of Wolfe or Roucchio, much less Lafferty, whom I love.
The internet is a large place, I'm a part of a few online communities where most have read Wolfe, Rouocchio, Lafferty (I like him as well, but he's a strange one) etc. Catholic science fiction and fantasy have some strong writers. Currently John C. Wright is the most distinguished one to my knowledge.
To be fair, I've never really met a reader who was not into fantasy to at least some degree. Whoever likes Wolfe, has read Undset. Those who don't like Wolfe haven't read realist authors either.
Hazbin Hotel is basically the endpoint this trajectory in musical format, but with the understanding of international relations, law, and morality one would expect from a Disney adult.
At this point I'm not sure if described changes are a product of a changing cultural landscape or simply the need to market new enemies, new stories, new concepts for new products in what's essentially a content empty aesthetic.
Christian cosmology does not lend itself to video game or fantasy easily. All the examples of great Catholic fantastical fiction have Christianity as a broad backdrop for a world in which in it is not directly apparent. With Tolkien we had gods and angels and fallen angels, but God doesn't play a direct part. In The Book of the New Sun God is orchestrating small events that feed into a great redemptive catastrophy, while in something new like Sun Eater God is, again, very much in the background.
What we believe does not make for a good "setting” in the way Gnostic mythology or various pagan religions do.
When Christianity is used as direct inspiration, but emptied of its actual theological content, we get progressive slop like Between Two Fires.
With these I think that Doom is just trying to retell the same story over and over again, because it's expected by the market to have a story.
This is a good argument. After all, grace and faith are notoriously difficult to translate into gameplay mechanics — far more difficult than various forms of paganism and magic thinking. Mana is more playable than grace, indeed. What matters, still, at the first place, is the position of the protagonist, and therefore the player, regardless of the surrounding lore. Is he omnipotent? Does he stand before a mystery greater than himself? Does he receive, or merely exercise power?
In this respect, the industry has gradually shifted from an authentically human position towards various forms of 'god mode,' whether in the Terminator franchise, The Elder Scrolls, Doom, or countless other examples. I am not sure this development is solely predicated on pure laws of free market or even the limited logic of the gameplay mechanics and how they are more easily integrated into the final product.
What I find particularly interesting at the second place is the broader cultural movement from quasi-Christian categories — with their good-versus-evil dichotomy and their war against demons, even in secularised and materialistic forms — towards something that first approximates the world of ancient epic mythology and then moves beyond it into a kind of personal theogenesis. The hero is no longer merely saving the world; he is becoming divine, or discovering that he already was. Nerevarin, Dragonborn, the Doom Guy who from a no-name (called Doom Guy outside of the game lore per se), a nameless marine transitioned into a semi-divine and almost immortal Doom Slayer with a lore of his own.
I do not think this development is independent from the cultural/religious transformations of the West. On the contrary. For in Japanese games, for example, one can see a purely pagan worlview that is almost untouched by Christianity (except for some aesthetics), in which, I would claim, the protagonist is much more susceptible to the forces of nature, various chthonic horrors and ancient curses that he cannot escape or defeat.
Of course, I may be mistaken. Please, tell me what you think of it.
I would ask myself, how do you justify the protagonist having a massive role in the story? Let's tale Skyrim or Morrowind for example, you are on a mission to save the world, but as its an RPG you need to provide a reason for why it's the player who will do it and explain within the story why you can manage to do it in the first place. You also need cool powers. Hence, making the protagonist some form of a demigod makes sense from a gameplay and storytelling perspective.
Games in general are always trying to hack the male brain, that craves power and success and making the player a demigod is easy. With Japanese media I'm not noticing a large difference. Isekai, that is "I died and reincarnated from a completeoser to a super powerful demigod surrounded by women with massive breasts who love me" is a large phenomenon, certainly larger than it is in the West.
I'm sure that your perspective is not wholly incorrect, as man is never a pure subject of the market, but an active participant, especially in art. But I don't think we've experienced a large change from the 80s until the 2020s with art. It's just gone from left wing with old world residuals to total woke. Christianity hasn't been a cultural force since 1945 IMO.
Another side note. With the massive popularity of Warhammer we are seeing a resurgence of Catholic imagery inspired video games and other media. Trench Crusade is made by homosexual atheists, but is made compelling largely by taking Catholic and Eastern Orthodox aesthetics and making them extreme. Video games like Witchfire in a similar fashion (although it's not gay and blasphemous) and Arms of God partake in mixing Catholicism and fantasy or science fiction. This might be a fad, or a signal that the cultural landscape is going from “the dark ages were terrible because of Christianity and the Crusades” to “this is awesome and I want to kill demons with a hospitaler tabard on me”.
This is a great discussion! As a side note, I can’t believe you’ve read all those series—are there circles where they’re standard? The Catholics I know stick closer to the more realist novels (Greene, Undset, Cather), with the sole exception of Canticle for Leibowitz, and the sci-fi enjoyers I know haven’t heard of Wolfe or Roucchio, much less Lafferty, whom I love.
(Also, @Marcus, Sun Eater mentioned)
The internet is a large place, I'm a part of a few online communities where most have read Wolfe, Rouocchio, Lafferty (I like him as well, but he's a strange one) etc. Catholic science fiction and fantasy have some strong writers. Currently John C. Wright is the most distinguished one to my knowledge.
To be fair, I've never really met a reader who was not into fantasy to at least some degree. Whoever likes Wolfe, has read Undset. Those who don't like Wolfe haven't read realist authors either.