Diablo Shrugged

Some time between the great Kubrickian monolith arriving on the African savannah with its double-edged gift of individualism, and the NES, wild tribes and civilisations covered the planet, each with their own colourfully intricate mythologies, featuring a comic book array of splendid gods. This was the time of polytheism – the time of many gods.

Some time after this...

Polytheism offered a marketplace approach to deities, allowing villagers to worship gods at their leisure, in exchange for a little supernatural help (at the god’s whim, of course): with fertility, perhaps, farming, or war. During the decline of the Roman Empire, however, an alternative movement gained momentum: monotheism – the Walmart approach to heavenly assistance; a one stop shop.

Monotheism differed greatly from its precursor, as a vague and casual array of relationships between people and a variety of gods was transformed into an all-encompassing and intimate relationship with god, governing all aspects of mortal life and the distinct fork in the road beyond it – branching out to either heaven or hell.

While polytheism promoted individual liberty, monotheism demanded strict adherence to a highly codified set of practices. It was a system designed to permit large groups of people to live fruitfully together (to avoid ending up like the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans), and to convince people to give up their liberty in exchange for community benefit, monotheistic dogma played on their fears. In contrast to the ultimate reward of heaven, a dire pit of untold suffering was created – Hell. As an opponent to the great shepherd, a merchant of chaos and suffering was devised. He goes by many names. Gamers know him as Diablo.

You may remember him from such films as Little Nicky.

So, over a few hundred years, a distinct cultural shift occurred. The focus upon mortal life was shifted to immortal life. What did forty or fifty years on the planet mean when placed against eternity? And with such a focus, notions of good and evil became crucial to the governance of mortal life. In essence, a binary mode of thinking about life was instituted: behaviour was either approved by The Lord, or in the aid of Satan.

This way of thinking began to infiltrate Western culture at its roots, providing the dominant architecture to storytelling for the past two thousand years. From to , to , pitting the forces of good against the forces of evil is the most fundamental narrative structure of them all – a popularity that can be explained by the cultural architecture which preceded it; the binary structure; God vs Satan; good vs evil; the success of Good equalling Heaven, its defeat or corruption, Hell. No grey areas. No in between.

Video games are no exception. Due to a low technical ceiling, it was only natural that the Old School should turn to a simple story for its architecture, and unsurprising that Good vs Evil should inspire the new : a series of escalating challenges building towards a final showdown with the Devil incarnate – Bowser, Ganon, Red Falcon, Death Adder – whichever guise The Beast had assumed this time around. The objective, and one’s motivation for playing, was always clear. Strike the lethal blow. Watch the credits roll. Slump in satisfaction, happy to have banished evil from the land. It was very much a case of same Satan, different day.

We live, now, in a different age. Science rules, superstition is in its death throes. As a consequence, culture has changed course once again, into the realm of post-modernism – a time of uncertainty. No more binary black and white, no more good or evil. As a consequence, recent advances in gaming technology have attracted a new breed of game designer – a storyteller wishing to plumb the recesses of all the vexing new grey areas which have opened up.

My surprise at emergence has its basis in the fact that Good vs Evil has been wheeled out once more, despite having toppled from its perch. Surely, this is its curtain call, though. After all, we’ve come so far. Full circle, one could say. Seldom, now, do games present hierarchic plots entirely resolved by a single act. With multiple endings, moral choice, and sandbox randomness, gaming has acknowledged that when it comes to a zero-sum game of Heaven or Hell, success or failure, the well has run dry.

Contemporary stories reflect the complex, often contradictory, and occasionally futile struggles we face. Rather than coddle us with the notion that paradise awaits so long as we play by the rules, they portray life as a series of frustrations and satisfactions divorced from a cut and dried conclusion. Thus, the brutal threefold self-destruction of conclusion; anticlimax; and the irony of providing Capital Wastelanders with hope through a campaign of tyranny and murder.

A reflection of a shift from monotheism to post-modern polytheism? I always thought it was about huge dudes with drills for arms.

As the grip of monotheism has slipped, the creative spirit of polytheism has returned. Rather than living our lives in pursuit of a singular goal (Heaven), allied to a singular movement (against evil), our desires have become freed. We acknowledge that intellectual/emotional judgements, rather than spiritual/moral rules, are the only authentic tools we have with which to forge meaningful lives.

Definitions of good and evil lie in a state of constant flux, and paradise will forever elude us – a fact that informs the kinds of games we wish to play; stories that make sense, and that we want to engage with. I’m certainly glad, therefore, that is a wonderful game; and that it inspires a fitting ovation to one of the grand figures of storytelling, and touchstone narratives of a civilisation. And then we move on, with great trepidation, to an uncertain future.



Source : http://www.ign.com