At the same time, we have David from the cyberpunk anime, and his death was so logical and understandable that not only did it not cause outrage, I would rather be surprised if he survived, and now we get a situation where one is a minor character, and it’s hard to watch his death, the second is the main character, and his death is perceived absolutely calmly. Although I’m one of those who, in general, don’t really like it when characters die, for irrational reasons, and Game of Thrones was hard for me to watch.

And so I started thinking, why do authors use the narrative of death in their work??

Today I will discuss this controversial topic.

Let me make a reservation right away that in this blog I undertake to talk only about the plot component of games; the use of death in gameplay is a topic for a separate blog, to which I will return sometime later.

And yes, it’s impossible to talk about plot twists without spoilers, so there will be even more spoilers ahead.

But let’s start from the base.

How it all began?

Death is something unknown, frightening, depriving you of control over the situation and your usual way of life? Or death is a new state, peace, liberation from worldly vanity? Perhaps death is just a transition to the next cycle? Or maybe death is not a state at all, but simply nothing?

There is a theory that at the beginning of human history there was no understanding of death as non-existence. Some observations of mammals, particularly monkeys, show that they do not distinguish between the living and the dead . They treat the corpses of members of their species as if they were alive until the corpse decomposes. Apparently, the attitude towards the dead was similar among developing people. However, relatively recent observations of chimpanzees prove that they may well mourn the death of a relative.

However, still E. Tylor, in his book Primitive Culture, wrote that death was initially perceived as a mysterious change in the behavior of a relative. And he reasonably assumed that for ancient consciousness the similarity of death to sleep was obvious. They took care of the deceased as if they had fallen asleep, for example, they allocated a special place in the cave fenced off with stones, and brought food and necessary things there.

But the further we moved in development from our furry ancestors, the more often we began to wonder, and I would venture to guess that we will continue to wonder, what is death??

Throughout its history, humanity has already described many philosophies, theories and paradigms that in one way or another relate to this topic. Answers to the age-old question can be found in religious literature,

Be careful and attentive! Take your time! Don’t be scared! You’re dead!

Bardo Thodol – Tibetan Book of the Dead

in philosophical works

Death is close enough that you don’t have to fear life

Friedrich Nietzsche

and in many other statements.

I have learned to look at death as an old debt that will have to be paid sooner or later.

Albert Einstein

It’s incredibly interesting and useful to dive into a detailed analysis of each of these ideas, but of course we won’t do that here, at least for now.

However, I note that despite the fact that this is an extremely deep and philosophical question, this does not negate the fact that this topic concerns everyone, which is why it can be studied endlessly and from completely different angles. This is what we can observe by looking at how often death motifs are used in art.

After all, even before the sayings of Socrates

Death may be the greatest of all blessings for man, but people fear it, as if they know for sure that it is the greatest of all evils.

Plato – Apology of Socrates

Return to roots is peace. Peace is a return to destiny. Returning to destiny is an eternity.

Lao Tzu – Tao Te Ching

people were already creating legends and sketching stories that explained their understanding of death, which according to researchers of ancient cultures such as G.Spencer or B.Malinovsky and gave rise to all religious beliefs and rituals.

One of the most prominent ancient representatives who glorify the motives of death in their culture and art, perhaps, can be called Ancient Egypt. whose entire civilization was focused directly on life after death, whose religion applied the concept of the soul not only to people, but also to animals, where Ba and Ka roam the world after the death of Hat – the bodily shell, and they left most of their works of art precisely for the dead.

If you step from the times BC straight into the Middle Ages, you can mention the works of Bosch, which can be interpreted as ideas of sacrificial death for the sake of a higher goal.

Or a whole separate narrative, including both painting and literature, called Danse Macabre – aka the dance of death, which appeared in Europe in the 14th century against the background of plague epidemics and wars, depicting an allegorical scene where death in the form of a skeleton leads people of all walks of life – from peasants to kings – into a dance, symbolizing the inevitability of death for all.

In theatrical productions, both in Shakespeare’s Hamlet and his “to be or not to be,” where the scene with Yorick’s skull (the “memento mori” motif) emphasizes the idea of ​​the perishability and finitude of life, and in the play “The Power of Darkness” by Leo Tolstoy, where the author assigned a central role to the theme of death and murder. In the plot of which the main character kills a child, which leads him to moral collapse. Here Tolstoy uses death to explore issues of sin, guilt and redemption.

On the other hand, Terry Pratchet and his “Pestil, Disciple of Death” looks at the same question. Where the very fact of death ceased to be an event, but acquired a personality, character, a responsible position and a weekend. Leading to reflection on the importance of life and death and how even Death cannot control all aspects of life.

Indeed, in his story, death as a phenomenon is not an antagonist of life, but simply represents the natural course of things, and laughter can help cope with this.

He was mistaken, there was light at the end of the tunnel after all. And its source was a flamethrower.

Terry Pratchet – Pestilence, Death’s Disciple

Just like Prtachet, Tim Burton conveys the theme of death through humor and irony in his cartoon “Corpse Bride.”. Where the plot offers us a view of death as a transition, and the world of the dead is depicted as a bright and life-filled place, contrasting with the grayness and oppression of the world of the living, and the leitmotif is the acceptance of loss and the difference in the perception of death between the living and the dead.

The list could go on forever, https://macau-casino.co.uk/bonus/ but even from this small list you can try to isolate some motives for using death. Whether it is a condition for character development, or as a catalyst, it is intended to show how valuable life is, or used as an inevitable end. All this adds up to a picture of plots that one way or another lead us to how the author wants to show the attitude of the characters in his story to life, thus revealing their personalities, or to convey some idea, convey an emotion directly to the viewer. And for a convenient gradation according to ideas, you can use philosophical movements.

So let’s dive into how the authors of the gaming industry use this well-known technique and try to isolate from them the methods and motives for using death.

But before that, one more digression, here I am talking about very subjective things, from which everyone takes something of their own, in this blog I share with you my own understanding, without claiming the truth of this judgment.

What Remains of Edith Finch

The plot of the game tells us about several generations of a family who, according to the protagonist, are cursed. Where every member of the great-grandfather’s line dies from an accident, leaving at most one living descendant, they in turn continue the curse.

So, on behalf of the main character Edith Finch, we wander through the rooms of deceased relatives, finding various kinds of memorabilia that take us straight into the last memories of the deceased, giving us the opportunity not only to observe what happened through their eyes, but also to perform actions that subsequently led to their tragic death. What gives you a chance to feel each of these moments even more vividly, like, for example, you are standing in your ill-fated cannery, and before your eyes there is already a completely different story, or tired of waiting for your difficult fate, you accidentally step onto the rails.

And, perhaps, this game is distinguished by how diversely it uses the narrative of death – not only as a motive for revealing the main, and all the other characters in this story, but also as elements of catharsis and symbolism or even shock for some of them, and at the same time, death is used both as a plot driver and, in some ways, even a philosophical element.

Because in the process of passing we encounter death from many sides, both from the side of someone whose life is about to end, and from the side of someone who has lost a dear person, both from situations when they are afraid of death, and when they seem to be ready for it, both from the side, when it comes so suddenly that they don’t even think about it, and from the side, when all life is permeated with its expectation. This game literally wouldn’t have a story without death.

With all this, the game does not try to delve into guesswork about the meaning of. Doesn’t try to introduce any theories or lead to any morality. Playing with such a fierce concentration on death tells us about life.

Which is typical for many trends in religion and philosophy, but, in my opinion, the closest in spirit would be a trend in Western philosophy such as Stoicism.

The Stoics did not see the problem in the very fact of death. The problem, in their opinion, was in a person’s perception of his death, namely, in the fear of it, and that a person can and should overcome the fear of death using reasonable reasoning. It is necessary to get rid of the fear of death, as it deprives one of mental balance. And Marcus Aurelius emphasized that a mentally healthy person must be prepared for various events, including death. But overcoming the fear of death should not lead to forgetting about it, since oblivion can contribute to a disdainful attitude towards life, wasting it on trifles, negative emotions, bad deeds, etc. d

Maybe tomorrow you’ll die. But this is not a reason to be afraid, it’s just a fact of life.

Marcus Aurelius

Probably the most striking example of such a story, as in Edith’s memoirs, can be considered the film “The Tree of Life” (2011). Where the exploration of death takes place through the personal memories of the main character, who tries to find the meaning of life by looking back at his past and facing the inevitability of death and loss. The film philosophically dissects the process of growing up and realizing the finitude of life, emphasizing the fragility and value of every moment.

Ideas of stoicism can also be found in “Less Than One” And. Brodsky, where the writer inscribes this philosophy into the Baltic landscape, perceived day by day by a teenager.

Likewise, “What Remains of Edith Finch” tells us about how living people accept or do not accept their inevitable death, about how this changes their lives, how relatives of the deceased grieve and experience the loss, about how they worry about the living and what strange and sometimes crazy actions this concern can push them to, everything to protect themselves and their relatives from a sad fate.

And, as I see it, the ideas of stoicism are manifested most clearly in the heroine of the story, who demonstrates to us a colossal degree of acceptance that her entire family is dead, and the fact that her life is also finite.

Of course, this plot can be interpreted in different ways, and I will not undertake to claim that I know what exactly the author meant.

But for me, Edith’s whole story centers around the problem of accepting death, both her own and that of her loved ones, and it is realized in surprisingly bright colors. The game seems to outline before us the picture that death is still an inevitable fact and that first of all it is worth appreciating the current moment.

Perhaps the most significant thing for me in this game is the mood with which the authors show us these stories, how calmly and even easily they talk about these kinds of complex things.

And maybe this game will allow someone to introspect in order to cope with their grief and accept someone’s death.

Signalis

Of the entire list, Signalis is perhaps the most interpreted story. Because what exactly the authors wanted to say cannot be said unequivocally, and probably no one. And we can talk endlessly about what kind of horror is going on there, but we’ll leave that for another time, now I propose to dwell on the fact that what we see is really happening, and Elster must kill Ariana.

Starting our journey behind the replica with damaged memory, we slowly move through the disfigured station, fighting off maddened creatures, replicas similar to us in the past, stumbling here and there on scraps of memories of our past, slowly restoring our previous life of affection and feelings, obsessed with the only thought of remembering the promise.

Signalis uses death both as a means of revealing and motivating the character and as an element of catharsis. The need to kill a loved one changes and distorts Elster, even if we don’t hear it in her words, the game quite vividly paints more and more crazy images, and the closer we get to our goal, the more clearly the anxiety and powerlessness before the need to accept or not accept the inevitable is conveyed. It is death that is the final note of the story, although here a lot still depends on the ending. And only more clearly against this background does the character’s attitude towards the lives of everyone else reveal itself, and if we kill each of the enemies because he attacked us first, which fits into the concept of self-defense, although finishing moves, even if they are an homage to the game’s mastermind, still raise questions about excessive cruelty, then the value of our own life, the closer we approach the highest value – Ariana’s death, is increasingly rapidly reduced to a minimum.

And here I think it’s good to contrast such an interpreted story with the ideas of such an equally interpreted direction of philosophy as existentialism, which interprets death as an ultimate situation, and the fear of death is a universal human feeling that helps to discover the truth about oneself.

Where one of the main figures of this philosophical movement, Karl Theodor Jaspers, draws a fundamental distinction between the death of one’s neighbor and the death of oneself. "The death of a loved one can be the ‘deepest wound’ in life. Like everyone else, the one closest to him dies alone, and this separation seems to take place absolutely and forever .»

An example of existential fear can be found in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go, which tells the story of clones destined to donate their organs, knowing their inevitable death from childhood.

Or in the anime Evangelion, which deals with issues of loneliness, despair and death in the context of an existential crisis. However, in interpreting the latter one can go even further than in interpreting the history of Elster.

So Signalis invites us to experience the feelings associated with an existential crisis, with the loss of meaning and the inevitability of the death of a loved one and, worse, death at our hands, no matter in the name of deliverance or not, the important thing is that after Ariana there will be no more. And even though the game won’t tell us anything directly, the entire environment will literally scream about what’s happening inside, as if showing the state of our heroine and trying to convey it to the player. Trying to show how the fear of one’s own death fades into the background and life takes on the only meaning, becoming only an instrument for fulfilling a promise, and it no longer matters what one has to sacrifice one’s hand or oneself. I will not go into discussions about the cyclical nature of what is happening and about the mountain of corpses, presumably Elster, in the elevator shaft; in this frame, only one touch is important to us, how ordinary one’s own death is accepted. And that is precisely why the endings of this game are so important, being the key point of Elster’s awareness, after all the anguish and the devastating feeling of powerlessness in the end, our heroine finally comes to some conclusion, reflecting the degree of her acceptance of the inevitable, be it complete denial or acceptance.

For me, Signalis is, first and foremost, a state-of-the-art game that inevitably draws the player into the depths of an oppressive feeling of despair on the verge of hysteria. I went through all the possible endings, trying to finally catch up with the meaning, and I still think that I never really grasped it. Apparently, this game in my mind has gone through all the stages from complete misunderstanding, bewilderment and rejection, to acceptance of the full scale of its interpretation. And if we ignore the ambiguity, then for me Signalis is rather a crazy set of pain, anxiety and despair, crumbling into a terrible dance of emotions of loss, a kind of reversal of the ideas of Silent Hill 2, which inspired the developers, only here we do not experience the consequences of the death of a loved one at our hands, but inevitably move towards this event.

Death Stranding

So we started our journey, got a moped and a pistol, and then a truck and a machine gun, and with all this arsenal, destroying huge oil cats and cutting the umbilical cords of children for likes, we are gnawing our way to each of the nodes in order to finally hook up the local people to the state.optics. So we got the story of the greatest courier, a unique foreman, a legendary installer, a conqueror of villains, a unifier of America and a generally good guy named Sam. And it would be much easier if everything was just like that. However, the death twist contains a motley kaleidoscope of plots that form a multi-layered cake of ideas, ranging from a stick and rope, ending with questions about the afterlife, this is, if you avoid all sorts of theories about the cost and value of connections between people, the importance of work, barter and social approval.

Death Stranding is the most complex game on my list today, and to be honest, it was much easier to play than to write about it. I am glad that in this blog I am only interested in one layer – death, it is confusing that it is death that is included in the title of the game and is justifiably its key element. And if you look at it this way, you can put together a whole blog using just one DS, intersecting it with various kinds of scenario methodologies and philosophies. Someone wrote a whole book..

But I’ll still try not to spread my thoughts too far, so let’s dispense with Homo Demens.

And how does Kojima use death in his game?? It immediately struck me that death, being an important pillar of the narrative, does not stick out to the foreground and is always present, as if the leitmotif of what is happening. We are not looking for a cure for death and do not seek to send someone to another world, this is basically not welcomed here, which already interestingly reverses the game-mechanical patterns, but that’s not what we’re talking about here.

However, it was death that was the cause of both all the circumstances and all participants in what was happening. Take, for example, the fact that the death and subsequent resurrection of Sam was the catalyst for the entire post-apocalypse, and the fact that it was reflections on the topic of the afterlife that gave us a good mystification of what is happening and additional gameplay situations, being both a tool for revealing a good part of the characters and a way to raise the philosophical question of what happens after death. And even though the Egyptian concept of the soul is revealed only in the context of Ka and Khat, (in Russian transcription it is written Khat (ẖt), Kha is the god of the desert) and not its nine components and, in my opinion, it was taken rather simply as a beautiful way to explain the author’s idea than a meaningful deepening into the philosophy of death of ancient Egypt. However, this does not deny that there is another idea running throughout the game.

Explore life and you will see death. Explore death and you will understand how to live

Krishnamurti

In general, despite all the Western background of what is happening in the plot, the game over and over again demonstrates, from my point of view, clear signs of Eastern philosophy, primarily in the manifestation of the doctrine of Anitya अनित्य (Sanskrit) aka 無常, wu-chan (Chinese); 無常, mujo (Japanese) or acceptance of impermanence, which states that everything in the world is in constant motion and nothing is constant, including gods, stars, planets and death is an inevitable part of this variability. What we see both in the destructibility of our buildings and in relation to the death of the main characters, most of whom accept their own demise as an inevitable reality. However, there is no talk about cyclicality characteristic of Eastern philosophy, which was clearly strongly influenced by the stories of individual characters involved in the plot, whose views are quite typical of Western trends.

So, for example, Hartman and his driving desire to find his family, coupled with his rationalism and attitude towards life, is again a reference to the existentialists, however, death for him is not the frightening “nothing” accepted in Sartre’s works; for Hartman, death is a completely understandable and expected abstraction, where he can unite with his family.

Similar experiences can be found in the novel A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. Although the book is not so much about meeting specific deceased loved ones, but about finding peace and getting rid of pain. Or in “The Catcher in the Rye” by J. D. Salinger, where Holden often muses about the meaning of life and how reuniting with his brother could bring him peace of mind, although these thoughts are often disguised as youthful nihilism.

However, Hartman is not the most clear-cut example, which cannot be said about Deadman – he is a clear example of Heidegger’s philosophy, which considers death as a source of authenticity. Heidegger considered death as the fundamental possibility that gives life authenticity. Deadman, being the result of an experiment to artificially create a person for whose body there is no difference between life and death, is constantly in search of the meaning of life and his place in the world, of which he, by virtue of origin, is not a part.

Similar ideas can be found in the movie Blade Runner or the original novel.

In contrast to the search for the inner deep meaning of Deadman, one can consider Higgs, whose views are rather a perverted version of anthropocentrism – a philosophical worldview, according to which man is the center of the Universe and the goal of all events taking place in the world, the terminal stage of which, combined with Higgs’ characteristic fatalistic attitude towards the fact that we will all die anyway, fits well with the desire to hasten mass extinction. Well, why wait really?.

And for each of them, death is a goal, a motive, a reason to act, study, develop, they strive for it, and for each of them it is death that is catharsis.

The same cannot be said about the sisters Molingen and Lokni or our protagonist Sam, for whom death was rather a starting point, a reason for guilt, an element for revealing their plots, a trigger for events. Death in their stories is meant to give us puzzle pieces to put together the answer to the question, why is it all for?.

It seems to me that Death Stranding is the most philosophical statement of all on my list today.

And speaking in our context, for me Sam’s thorny path is in many ways an attempt to speculate on the topic, how a person’s worldview will be formed if he knows exactly what awaits him after death, what will happen to him if he learns to enter and return to this hitherto uncharted territory, how people will develop under the yoke of such knowledge, how loss will be felt and whether society as a whole will change.

Does the game give any clear answers now?? Unless you learn to accept.

Spec Ops: The Line

I’m not a fan of military shooters, so until recently this game fell out of my sight, but after playing for just a couple of hours, I realized that it was in vain. The beginning of the plot is simple: we are brave soldiers, we have come to save the unfortunate, and at the beginning everything looks classic, we are clearly good, the enemy is clearly evil. Know yourself, play the shooting gallery.

But the game doesn’t make you wait long and in the very first hours you have to choose who to save civilians or who is important for completing the task. And even though in fact this choice has little effect on the plot, nevertheless, on behalf of our hero, we must make a decision, and in addition to the fact that opinions on the importance of this or that choice in our team are divided, we will also be forced to contemplate its consequences in all details, without strain, and so simply, ordinarily.

That is, you, a person who has the power to save someone, literally choose who lives and who dies, there is no option to save everyone. And, perhaps, at this moment the game directly tells me that here, my friend, we are simulating real conflicts, and not running merrily through the desert.

But this is not where the game ends its voyage to test my moral compass or my ability to abstract myself. Either by giving the choice of which of the prisoners to shoot, or by forcing them to use white phosphorus, then by telling us that with this action we subjected 47 civilians to a painful death. Or slowly leading the player through a trench with mutilated corpses. Not a cutscene you can skip, you’ll have to go through it slowly on your own.

And the further we go, the darker the sky above our heads becomes, and the task changes from salvation to revenge.

The plot ends on a high note, where it turns out that everything that happens at some point is a figment of the protagonist’s imagination and then there are only two options, shoot or surrender.

Here the motives of death are presented in its most severe form, war. No thinking about what will happen beyond the line, about what happened before. No sorrow, just drowning consequences and corroding guilt. Deaths in the hands of the protagonist shape him, push him to new elections and new deaths, burying him under corpses. In fact, this is a story with a deliberately tragic ending, about the inability to accept certain consequences, and death is used not only as a factor for revealing characters, but also as a shock element. Where each new death is a measure of the actions of the protagonist, primarily according to his own assessment, consider it another nail in the lid of his own coffin, turning the psyche of the protagonist into a patchwork quilt of memories and insoluble contradictions.

In the reality of this plot, there is no need to talk about the philosophical and theoretical background of what is happening, Spec Ops is not about attitudes to life or death. The whole storyline is an inevitably progressive BPT, in particular complex PTSD, which clearly provoked dissociative identity disorder. I will not undertake to confirm, since I am not a specialist in the field of psychiatry.

And, like the warriors of the Assyrian kingdom, they saw “ghosts of enemies killed in battles,” and the first mentions of symptoms date back as far as 1300 BC. uh., so our protagonist, suffocating in the inability to accept what is happening, comes up with an alternative reality with an insane enemy, from whom our hero Martina Walker must protect herself, her group and civilians. Deeply condemning and trying in every possible way to counteract the atrocities committed by Conrad, the former commander of our protagonist, whose name is now borne by the very person created by Martin. The same man responsible for all the troubles that our valiant squad had to endure and the unacceptable things that Walker had to do. Thus, on whom one could place all the blame for what happened, and consider oneself a hero.

Perhaps this game was the most difficult test on the list for me, and the most unexpected. Since initially I did not expect anything more meaningful from it than from an ordinary shooter for the evening, but in the end I received a naturalistic presentation, where the game, forcing you to press the rocket launch button, literally forces the player to share the emotions of the main character, and in some way feel the burden of guilt and powerlessness.

Here we are not invited to go deeper into thought and reflection about what we have done; here, in my opinion, the task is simply to show the consequences. And yes, taking us along the path of the main character, the plot very straightforwardly pokes us in the face with a rather simple morality, but, perhaps, this is a rare situation when I am not against such moralizing.

Conclusion

So and Why did Oda kill Ace?? Yes, at least to better reveal Luffy’s character, to give him a kick in motivation to take the next step. And it was really necessary… No matter how hard it was for me to admit it.

For David, death is catharsis, the final point of his story. We were led to this very carefully, but throughout the entire narrative.

Likewise, in all the games listed today, death is an integral part of the plot, representing a tool that works at such a deep level that it copes perfectly with both the role of a trigger and the role of motivation, symbolism, catharsis, and as a shock element, and all this can also be served in one cocktail, well, to accurately tap into emotions.

How to relate to this, what to make of these messages, does it carry any significant meaning, is it ethical?? Draw your own conclusions.

On my own behalf, I will add that I think what death is in a metaphysical sense, the soul, consciousness and where all this stuff goes after biological death, from the position of a scientific approach we will not know for a long time, if we ever find out at all, and whether this is necessary is also a question. However, reflection on this matter, in my opinion, is completely justified, as is looking for answers for yourself in different types of art.

This is the kind of discussion topic I came up with this time, I’m sure every game on the list can be broken down into other theories and methods, and the list is far from complete, write in the comments what other games and how do you think they use the themes of death?