Hello everyone, users and guests Stopgame.ru, my name is Gleb, and today we will discuss a thorough topic.
From now on I will duplicate the poster of the article at its beginning, because I do not really like how he (poster) looks like a preview. Closer to business!
No matter how anyone treats religion, but not to admit that it occupies a huge place in the life of our society in any way. Religion is one of the strongest cultural centers, uniting their followers. At the same time, religion is a whole sphere of our life that is present in this life, even if we take an atheistic position.
Many customs, traditions, myths that we observe and use, sometimes unconsciously, some holidays that we celebrate, works of painting, literature, architecture that we observe and study, even our own language and some established expressions from it, all listed more or less religiously, or came from religion. Religion is part of our national identity, part of our cultural code, as well as huge soil for endless disputes and battles.
With your permission, I will not go into a lengthy reasoning about the eternal. I will not turn you into faith, or vice versa to agitate for atheism, I will be grateful if you leave your attitude to religion with you. Maybe we’ll talk about it somehow and, most likely, not here.
I will better ask you the following question: tell me, dear readers, how is such a fertile and big topic a full of various positions, stories and conflicts, could pass by our favorite video games? Well, I couldn’t think. No way. Here we are smoothly and approach the theme of my blog.
Difficulties in structuring the blog about religion in games
I thought quite a little how to better structure this blog, in what order the examples are given, where to start. The theme is in which it is easy to break on a lengthy reasoning, but to withstand a readable structure is a necessary task, for your comfort, dear readers. Having thought a little, I noticed such an obvious, in fact, the fact that the religion, so widely represented in games, occupies completely different positions in them and causes completely different feelings.
Probably, in relation to the player to religion and the opposite attitude of religion towards the player, I will build the narrative of this article. We will go from bad relations to good.
Important remark! In the process of writing an article, I realized that I represent too much material, and it will be difficult for you to read it all in a blade, but it’s not less important to me, your comfort is very important, even though in terms of the degree of watery of my texts, it is difficult to trace. I will break the article into two parts, in this part we will only scold the religion, only scold, because the developers devote a large amount of time in their games, and there is a lot to discuss this aspect. Well, already in the second part we will deal with a more neutral and positive manifestation of religion in games.
Religion is antagonistic. Confrontation between religion and player.
The category of games in the industry is very widely represented, where the followers of religion are the enemies of the protagonist, and religion seems to be hostile, strong, militant. On a religious topic, just build a conflict. The developers tear off all the covers and with fantasy shows what the terminal stage of the religiosity of the brain can lead to (it is: TSRM).
Most often, representatives of some militant sect become opponents, with a shepherd at the head, who with a good word and automatic plants their ideas, which seem absurd and, necessarily, inhuman.
Probably – this is the oldest performance of religion in games, which is still used with enviable regularity.
Blood (1997)
One of the first such games, probably, can be considered the “Blood” shooter of the 1997 release.
According to the plot of the game of the protagonist and his lover, the members of the religious cult, in which the hero and his person consisted themselves, but did not just have a successful career and made a successful career and with two other members of the elected.
The Cult “Kabal” worshiped, unexpectedly, the Slavic God of the misfortune of the Chernobog, although it was based in the alternative USA of the first half of the 20th century (and here are evil Russians, well, at least evil Russian gods).
In general, our heroes, Chernobog did not like, and he hastened to fire them, by information of the pulse of the above characters to zero. So trust after that evil, Slavic deities.
It is impossible to say that the cult, the death of their chosen ones somehow harmed a lot, well, in the near future. Twenty years later, the “bondage” grew and began to do exactly that any psycho fanatics began to do, frantically believers in ancient, evil, Slavic gods.
Began to rob and destroy cities, create atrocities and violence, resurrect undead and call for demons, turning the whole world into one big Russian morning on January 1st.
Of course, our protagonist https://gamesnotongamstop.co.uk/poker/ gets out of the grave and stops the Sabbath, by arson/execution/tear/explosion/extinguishing/bypassing/sucking out the life of the occultists and all their called creatures, including the Chernobog himself, not for the good, but in the vengeance, which miraculously coincided with the cleansing of the hated hero of the world from the spanned worship.
The plot of this game is interesting in its own way, but in those days the game industry lived according to the covenants of Karmak:
It is clear that the cult, presented in the game, is a typical pagan belief, built on violence and extinction of evil, ancient forces.
Having paid tribute to this game, as a classic that you need to know, I have to say that in the framework of the topic I raised, you can find examples more interesting, in the days when the game industry has already grown and echoed.
Series Dead Space (2008-2013)
In this regard, a series of Horror-IGR Dead Space will be especially remarkable. This series means something personally for me, probably that’s why I took it as an example, and also, because the topic of religion in this series is revealed very well. Maybe someday the time will come when we will talk about these games separately, but today we will focus on religion.
The Church of Unitology is widely featured in the plot of the game, which actively contributes to those horrors that is happening in the world, by and large with the light hand of unitologists and all the misfortunes of the protagonist who poison his life from childhood, since his mother, being an aggressive believer, spent more effort, time and money on the church, because of which he could not enter the prestigious university.
The Church of Unitology has become so influential and gained power so that it completely replaced the rest of the world religions and has so many resources and influence that in terms of power is compared with, quite secular, the earthly government with which it competes (and then openly fights) the entire series.
According to the beliefs of this church, a person whom we know him is an imperfect, dying form of the existence of mankind. A person should become something greater, something qualitatively new, something … One. In a new guise, humanity will reunite with its more powerful and wise creators, and will harmoniously live in love and prosperity.
As you understand, the obsessive idea of turning humanity into something new and the whole (the opinion of mankind itself is not taken into account at all, and should not have been taken even in the project, when unitology has not yet had an absolute majority of influential supporters and essential means of propaganda) could not lead to anything good.
The good ideas about the arrival of mankind to the new level of evolution, in which everything will be according to plan (you only have to wait), turns into chaos from meat, screams and tears. Unitologists undertake to help in the spread of an infection of an alien infection, which rapidly resurnses the population of people or drives them crazy, after which it turns them into monsters, which are called necromorphs in the world of the game.
The infection is transferred by an artifact, which is called an obelisk – a sacred artifact for the Church, which is in unitology simultaneously the progenitor of mankind, which, by the way, is pure truth, and a means of communication with the wise creators and a means of degeneration, the formation of a single.
It is worth saying that the obelisk itself has the strongest intelligence and psionic abilities, he himself is able to inspire people with what will please him, which does not simplify the fate of mankind in these games.
The Church of Unitology from the game really takes a lot from religious beliefs from our real life. Here you have a paradise life after death and the Messiah – a martyr who died for human sins (the founder, as it turns out, in one of the spin -offs, the involuntary founder of the Unitology Church is Michael Altman) and pompous rituals, and religious rites, and prayers.
There are also some real prototypes. Most often, unitologists are compared with scentologists. Scientology, founded by Ron Hubbart in the early 50s, is a very dubious one, such as a religion, which believes the high spirituality of all people, the denial of existence, as such, and also believing human degeneration, in new future lives. Indeed, the Church of Unitology has some points of emitting with the religious concept of Hubbart. Especially in the sense that satalogy is also considered a very influential religion, and has famous and significant followers in politics, art and business. Who knows, maybe in 500 years, Scientology will become so powerful that he can compete for world domination with the powers that be – those in power?
But also a lot of general unitology has with the totalitarian sect of the “Heavenly Gate” founded by Marshal Eppleite in the late seventies. The followers of the sect believed that humanity should die, and after death, people would be on spaceships that will take them to the true world, where they would live in harmony without knowing troubles.
The nuclear composition of the sect, namely 39 people, including five children and the founder died, during the mass of mass suicide in the ranch in Santa Fa, California. Then for more than one year the sectarians who were not present at this action killed themselves for a ticket for a spaceship. What also intersects with the plot of unitologists who massively killed themselves when time came “reborn”.
The world of the game is doomed without any chance of a positive outcome, not in the last turn because the obsessive and strong religious idea, based on an imaginary good, which is actually not good, but very vice versa, has gained great power and influence in human society. At such moments, you think about how good that all sorts of marginal sects remain all sorts of marginal sexts and do not have the strength to acquire the status of world religions and compete on equal terms, in terms of the level of influence with secular governments.
Far Cry 5 (2018)
“Gleb, let’s talk a little more than earthly, more mundane that you are all about all sorts of pagan occultists, and sai-fi sectarians from the XXVI century? Chernobog absorb you!" – readers will indignantly tell me. Patience, friends! Let’s look at a closer to our real world, an example of a totalitarian sect from games, an example of the Eden 5 Gate sect from Far Cry 5.
The followers of the sect believe that the Earth, torn by contradictions and conflicts, is on the verge of a total, inevitable catastrophe, which will rub all living things from the face of the earth.
It is for this catastrophe, the so -called Eden are preparing intensively, simultaneously terrorizing the Hope District, aggressively turning into their faith, smoking in drugs, trying and killing people, well, in general, they are engaged in things that are familiar to destructive religious movements.
During the plot, the game will still make you think about how Joseph Sid is the founder and prophet of the sect is globally wrong and whether he is not global at all. The game is really implicitly, but the problems of the global war of all against all and the tension of world relations are raised.
The gates of Eden are the most closed sect, it is aggressive to strangers and to all the Gentiles, the world outside the Hope district, for sectarians – aggressive, completely alien, there is not an illusory threat from it. The sectarians close as much as possible from him, kill, or capture all bloggers and journalists from external land, build bunkers and strengthen. areas, actively turn into their faith only those who live in their area, without even trying to go to a more global level.
Also, the sect is very influential, has its own armed formation, many weapons and resources, the police and local authorities are taken under control, it bought up most of the local lands and has a lot of movable and real estate.
According to ideology, the sect resembles some very perverted version of Catholicism, with the idea of the arrival of a court day put at the forefront.
It is difficult to say unequivocally which prototype was taken for the gate of Eden. Rather, Ubisoft took inspiration from the very idea of these destructive sects, making a sort of team hodgepodge.
The idea of the inevitable end of the world, in the same extent related to fire that the world will burn out in fire, can be observed by the Swiss neophary sect: the "Order of the Solar Church" founded by Luc Jure in 1984. Which also actively engaged in mass suicides.
The story itself and the charismatic leader of the sect remind us of the “temple of peoples” – a sect founded by Jim Jones in 1955. Only ideologically the followers of the temple of peoples were religious communists, and lived in a closed commune in California, but also had large financial resources, filed propaganda and killed journalists. Subsequently, they jointly went into another world, through self -confusion, which claimed the lives of 963 Americans, two hundred of whom were children.
There is an intersection in Edem’s gates with the already mentioned scentology, in the aesthetics itself, symbolism, as well as the idea of love and forgiveness of any sins, at least among their people. But none of the listed multidimensional organizations can be called directly one hundred percent prototype for the intra-game sect.
You know, there are still many games where religion is presented as a opposing player forces.
We are with mine friend We talked a little about another game – this is Warcraft III, It happened in it such a phenomenon called the cult of the damned. I wanted to classify him on this list, even to write, and a friend said that it was not even worth counting the religion to the end, and that this movement is not about religion at all. I won’t talk about it anyway, because well, well, a lot has been written, so Warcraft III It remains with brackets, but I will be very glad if you tell my opinion on this score and judge us.
“Well, it’s clear – these religious fanatics, all this religion is opium for the people, I read your blog Gleb, and I am becoming a militant atheist, as you think, I should already go and burn the churches, take off the bells with bells?" – reasonably ask me, my dear reader. Please wait, don’t resort to radical measures.
You could notice that the overwhelming part of the games using the interpretation of the religion that I outlined in the heading of this information block tells about all kinds of fictional sects, or evil religions of no analogues in reality, and if there are criticism of real religious exercises, then only in dense times when the religion still went overcame the stick. I assure you – this is not the only manifestation of religion in games, albeit the most classic and common.
Well, what is happening there with a more peaceful manifestation of religion in games, we will soon discuss with you in the second part, and now we will round.
We summarize
As we can observe, not only in games, but also in real life, religious ideas can be dangerous. Even good intentions, as you know, will lament the road to hell. And the best ideas of love, kindness, compassion with improper interpretation can be distorted in completely opposite.
Do not forget, my readers, that despite any of your views and beliefs, we need to remain people. We are very different, and not familiar people, we do not need to love each other, just value, because. The appeal at the end of my blog is not about this. Simply, as the editor -in -chief of this site said, in one of its previous blogs
I hope neither you nor your loved ones will never overtake the obsessive, strong ideas about false good. For all good. Somehow gloomy came out. Well, nothing in the second part we will discuss more peaceful topics.