Religion in Video Games

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Hi…I know video games are so engaging because they’re colorful, easy to get into, hard to lose at, gives a sense of accomplishment often, somewhat predictable, and clear-cut. Quite unlike real life.Is religion the same way?
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It depends on each game. Look at a game like bioshock, many people may say that is anti-religion. I got just the opposite from it when I played and I have played it many times, I found that the many cause of the fall the city, the biggest was the loss of God. There are many religious references in the game, but because people where not following the church any more they began modifying their bodies and it just recked the whole city. Greed and pride where the downfall because they thought that could create what ever they wanted. Red Dead Redemption could be seen as for the Church because anyone that you meet from the church seem shown in a good light. Also in the Resistance series seems to show faith in God as a good thing which is really strong in the third one.
 
carguy said:
It depends on each game. Look at a game like bioshock, many people may say that is anti-religion. I got just the opposite from it when I played and I have played it many times, I found that the many cause of the fall the city, the biggest was the loss of God.
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Agreed. The opening scene even establishes that the villain, Andrew Ryan, despises the pope.
 
Fone_Bone_2001 said:
Agreed. The opening scene even establishes that the villain, Andrew Ryan, despises the pope.
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The two things I will say in his defense is that I like the idea of his city that it depends on the people not the government for things. Also, he does make a point of it is good to have free will.
 
carguy said:
Red Dead Redemption could be seen as for the Church because anyone that you meet from the church seem shown in a good light.
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I recently bought Red Dead, and found it immediately anti-church. In the very first train ride movie like 2 minutes into the game, the hero overhears some bigoted, dumb minister telling a girl that people who don’t go to heaven from not getting communion are savages. And he also tells her that he will tell her what’s right and wrong when she doesn’t know, and it came across as very arrogant, particularly when followed up by the rude “savage” comment.

Anyone play Red Dead can tell me what the pro-church parts are??
 
carguy said:
The two things I will say in his defense is that I like the idea of his city that it depends on the people not the government for things. Also, he does make a point of it is good to have free will.
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In addition later in the game you can see boxes of confiscated or hidden bibles and crucifixes, which only goes to show of the real longing for God, even in a place like that.
 
Anyone play this game for NES? I did when I was 10 or so…

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Can the fact that my eyes nearly burned just from looking at its picture count as an additional indicator?
 
True, but as I said in one of my posts there downfall comes from the loss of God.
 
Lokabrenna said:
…I think The Elder Scrolls is a mixed bag: the Nine Divines are generally portrayed in a positive light (and the Knights of the Nine are particularly devout), whereas Daedric cults could be seen as “evil” (many are seen as more negative forces, but some are not). I’d say that the Nine Divines are the Crystal Dragon Jesus in the Elder Scrolls universe, and the Daedra cults represent Pagan religions.
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Forgive me if I geek out.

Arguably, the Daedra represent something more akin to the Asuras in Hinduism (or the Devas in Zoroastrianism); one of the big splits within the Aldmer race was that one sect, who became Altmer, worshiped the Aedra, while another, the Chimer, worshiped the Daedra.

And then the Chimer leaders betrayed Indoril Nerevar and set themselves up as gods, the Tribunal. Since they broke an oath in doing it, they were cursed by the Daedric Prince Azura (god/dess of oaths, among other things); their skin turned gray and their eyes turned red, and the Chimer became the Dunmer.

As for who would be the “pagans” of the Elder Scrolls setting, humans, other than the Cyrodiilic ones. The Nords worship Shor, who the elves revile as Lorkhan, a traitor to the Aedra who tricked the other gods into making the world (and weakened them—the elves believe they themselves were gods, until Lorkhan did that). The chief deity of the Cyrodiilic pantheon is Akatosh, who’s also the elf god Auri-El, and he hates Shor (he even took over one of Shor’s divine champions, Pelinal Whitestrake, during the Alessian Crusade). The reason Cyrodiilic humans worship the elven pantheon, incidentally, isn’t because they were enslaved by elves, but because the elves they were enslaved by, the Ayleids, were Daedra worshipers; Alessia made a covenant with Akatosh to get the aid of the Aedra (Eight Divines, Talos not having been born yet, and Trinimac having been turned into Malacath) against the Ayleids’ Daedra.

In the latest game, the Thalmor political party that’s taken over the high elves and wood elves has forced the human empire to stop worshiping Talos (a human) as one of the gods, although I personally think that, given Talos often used a guy called Wulfharth Ash-King as a body-double and Wulfharth was an avatar of Shor/Lorkhan, Talos being rejected from the pantheon just recapitulates the expulsion of Lorkhan by the rest of the Divines. If, that is, Talos/Wulfharth was not himself in some way Lorkhan—possibly using Akatosh’s blessing of the Dragon Blood (Wulfharth and Talos were both Dragonborn, like your character in Skyrim) to regain his Aedric nature.

What’s really scary is, I’ve barely scratched the surface of that setting. There’s also the whole Anu/Padomay dychotomy, the Ehlnofey and the shattering of Nirn, the Psijic monks of the elves, who and what the Hist are…those games were written by people whose geekiness I find impressive.

As to the negativity/positivity of religion in Elder Scrolls, the religion is portrayed fairly balancedly—it’s something more like Japan or China than the West, although the Greybeard monks in Skyrim are too much like Christian monasticism (though, then again, Hindu hermits have a similar approach to the gods). Also, the setting’s only systematically atheist culture, the Dwemer or dwarves (though they’re the same size as humans, and actually a race of elves), are worse than the very cruelest of the other races. Not only did they make themselves extinct (probably) by trying to create their own god, but they also blinded and enslaved a race of refugees, the Falmer, who later became something like the Morlocks from Time Machine.
 
Hastrman said:
Forgive me if I geek out.

Arguably, the Daedra represent something more akin to the Asuras in Hinduism (or the Devas in Zoroastrianism); one of the big splits within the Aldmer race was that one sect, who became Altmer, worshiped the Aedra, while another, the Chimer, worshiped the Daedra.

And then the Chimer leaders betrayed Indoril Nerevar and set themselves up as gods, the Tribunal. Since they broke an oath in doing it, they were cursed by the Daedric Prince Azura (god/dess of oaths, among other things); their skin turned gray and their eyes turned red, and the Chimer became the Dunmer.

As for who would be the “pagans” of the Elder Scrolls setting, humans, other than the Cyrodiilic ones. The Nords worship Shor, who the elves revile as Lorkhan, a traitor to the Aedra who tricked the other gods into making the world (and weakened them—the elves believe they themselves were gods, until Lorkhan did that). The chief deity of the Cyrodiilic pantheon is Akatosh, who’s also the elf god Auri-El, and he hates Shor (he even took over one of Shor’s divine champions, Pelinal Whitestrake, during the Alessian Crusade). The reason Cyrodiilic humans worship the elven pantheon, incidentally, isn’t because they were enslaved by elves, but because the elves they were enslaved by, the Ayleids, were Daedra worshipers; Alessia made a covenant with Akatosh to get the aid of the Aedra (Eight Divines, Talos not having been born yet, and Trinimac having been turned into Malacath) against the Ayleids’ Daedra.

In the latest game, the Thalmor political party that’s taken over the high elves and wood elves has forced the human empire to stop worshiping Talos (a human) as one of the gods, although I personally think that, given Talos often used a guy called Wulfharth Ash-King as a body-double and Wulfharth was an avatar of Shor/Lorkhan, Talos being rejected from the pantheon just recapitulates the expulsion of Lorkhan by the rest of the Divines. If, that is, Talos/Wulfharth was not himself in some way Lorkhan—possibly using Akatosh’s blessing of the Dragon Blood (Wulfharth and Talos were both Dragonborn, like your character in Skyrim) to regain his Aedric nature.

What’s really scary is, I’ve barely scratched the surface of that setting. There’s also the whole Anu/Padomay dychotomy, the Ehlnofey and the shattering of Nirn, the Psijic monks of the elves, who and what the Hist are…those games were written by people whose geekiness I find impressive.

As to the negativity/positivity of religion in Elder Scrolls, the religion is portrayed fairly balancedly—it’s something more like Japan or China than the West, although the Greybeard monks in Skyrim are too much like Christian monasticism (though, then again, Hindu hermits have a similar approach to the gods). Also, the setting’s only systematically atheist culture, the Dwemer or dwarves (though they’re the same size as humans, and actually a race of elves), are worse than the very cruelest of the other races. Not only did they make themselves extinct (probably) by trying to create their own god, but they also blinded and enslaved a race of refugees, the Falmer, who later became something like the Morlocks from Time Machine.
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Dude…that was impressive. But can you expound a bit more on the section regarding your theory of Talos that I have highlighted in bold. You might be on to something there.
 
Ugh, it’s even worse with sound (I couldn’t even bear to watch this the first time in the office pantry’s soundless computer). >_>;;

Honestly, I’d sooner play games like Alice: Madness Returns or even that upcoming zombie game Lollipop Chainsaw. (Regarding the latter, I actually though their first trailer was almost as retarded… until they released the second featuring the Bosses of Zombie Rock. :hypno:)
 
Lost_Wanderer said:
Can the fact that my eyes nearly burned just from looking at its picture count as an additional indicator?
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I love Angry Video Game Nerd’s bible games videos(he also reviewed pretty much all of Wisdom Tree’s other games too, including the infamous “Super Noah’s Ark”)… Great Comedy… maybe for the “South Park” generations, but none the less great comedy.
 
colliric said:
I love Angry Video Game Nerd’s bible games videos(he also reviewed pretty much all of Wisdom Tree’s other games too, including the infamous “Super Noah’s Ark”)… Great Comedy… maybe for the “South Park” generations, but none the less great comedy.
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Does he get anti-theistic though? I’ve been thinking of watching the guy but usually when its YouTube… :\
 
From memory, I’m fairly certain he doesn’t. His focus is on the gameplay, graphics, etc. I can’t say I was offended watching it.
 
PrayerShark said:
Dude…that was impressive. But can you expound a bit more on the section regarding your theory of Talos that I have highlighted in bold. You might be on to something there.
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Is it impressive, or very, very sad? 😉 I annoy my brother by reading every book I find (to those who haven’t played an Elder Scrolls game: your character actually finds books that you can read). It’s impressive, though, how much work they put into these games.

I don’t know why I think Talos is actually the Ash King, and thus an avatar of Lorkhan. It sorta seems to be what the “Arcturian Heresy” was getting at, and, well, Talos as a man (the Emperor Tiber Septim) was much too destructive to have become a god on his own; Aedra are beings of order, not dissolution (though, having bound themselves to the world and time, they, unlike the Daedra, can be killed, despite the Daedra being gods of disorder—an interesting paradox).

But Lorkhan/Shor was always a pretty crafty god—tricking the others into divesting so much of their power in order to make the world, for instance—and, well, he was much less destructive than Talos, even if he was something of a trickster. His lieutenants, Tsun and Stun, were the gods of loyalty and mercy, respectively (Stun became Stendarr in the Cyrodiilic religion; as a Nord god, he taught humans that it’s often better to spare your enemies than simply massacre them). And humans, in the setting’s mythos, are Lorkhanic beings (that’s why they live so much shorter than elves, who are Akatoshic—the purely Akatosh beings are the dragons, who are completely immortal). A human ascending to godhood is almost certainly a coup for Lorkhan, who’s the god of humans in the first place.

Also, though, those games are full of little bits of intrigue that don’t directly pertain to their main plots; for instance, I won’t go into much detail, but read the Thalmor intelligence dossier on the rebel leader, in Skyrim. Talos ascending to godhood as a part of a massive plot by Shor/Lorkhan is just the kind of thing I’d expect from Bethesda.
 
Lost_Wanderer said:
Does he get anti-theistic though? I’ve been thinking of watching the guy but usually when its YouTube… :\
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Not really, and in those reviews he actually complains about how they give religion a bad reputation. And essentially Wisdom Tree committed theft in order to publish them. Although his Super Mario Bros 3 review is borderline blasphemous! For real…

He jokes about the Game’s supposed “hidden Messages”, makes jokes about it being devil possessed and shows The Lord trying to destroy the cart with a machine Gun laser.
 
Ok, I finished Red Dead Redemption. Maybe I didn’t recognize the above characters you mention, but I didn’t remember seeing them again after that opening scene. If that’s the case, then the game starts out with the anti-religious bent and doesn’t do a whole lot to portray a minister better. Are they in “stranger” missions?

At one point, Marston assists a couple nuns from the guy “Irish”. This is the dialogue exchange:*Marston: You been workin’ like a weasel on my behalf. Bushwhackin’ defenseless ladies of the cloth? You must have been raised on sour milk, Irish.
Irish: What are you talkin’ about? I’m a good Catholic boy.
Marston: You’re a booze-blind coward.
Irish: And you’re a hypocrite, Marston. You’ve robbed just as many innocent folks as me.
Marston: I tried to rob only those who had more than they deserved.
Irish: [Lord’s name in vain], the church has more money than everybody.*In this little exchange, it goes from Marston defending the nuns, to Irish being a criminal “good Catholic” hypocrite, to what sounds like a pot-shot at the Church and money.

Earlier, Marston (the “flawed hero”) has this exchange with Bonnie:*Bonnie: Let’s get going. Before the weather gets any worse. That sky don’t look good. I’m starting to think somebody up there’s conspiring against me. **Are you a religious man?
**Marston: Not in any real sense. Sometimes I tell myself things happen for a reason. Like what brought me here was fate come-a-callin’. But nobody made my path but me.
Bonnie: We all need to look for answers somewhere. Some in big ol’ books. Some in big ol’ bottles of whiskey.
Marston: Believing in some kind of divine purpose ain’t gonna get me my wife and kid back. Past is who we are, Miss MacFarlane. And there ain’t no changing that. Faith is a luxury I can’t afford.*I took that as another snub at religion.

All the same, the game pretends like there’s some kind of providential something-or-other behind things I guess. Quite a number of the mission names are plays on Bible verses, such as “Father Abraham,” “And the Truth Will Set You Free,” or “The Prodigal Son Returns (to Yale)”.

I hardly played any of the side missions or the ones with “strangers.” I did do one in Blackwater where some woman is praying in what looks like a Protestant church (because there’s no crucifix or stained glass) but she crosses herself, so I’m not sure what to make of that - maybe the writers don’t know one Christian from another. On the other hand, her follow-up stranger mission at the cemetery seems to insinuate the woman was a con artist. It was cryptic to say the least.

All in all, not a very favorable game to Catholics from what I could tell. But not too openly anti-Catholic other than the one pot-shot. Generally, religion is kind of a ho-hum, it’s for some, not for others, whatever floats your boat, kind of thing. Plus there’s the moron pastor at the beginning (unless he was a con man as the other poster said).

Oh, and I thought the ending was t-e-r-r-i-b-l-e, and right now I consider it the most over-rated game I’ve ever played on PS3. It might be the only one I played all the way through and didn’t really like. This is pretty much most missions: Ride-your-horse and follow the other person. This consists of holding the X button and following the other person, sometimes for several minutes on a dirt road. The scenery is nice, but after the 30th time, it’s a little boring. Plus the dialogue is always, “Life is tough. I used to ride with Bill. When are you going to take me to Bill?” every time. Oh, and then most missions end with the same shootout format every time.
 
MarcoPolo said:
Ok, I finished Red Dead Redemption. Maybe I didn’t recognize the above characters you mention, but I didn’t remember seeing them again after that opening scene. If that’s the case, then the game starts out with the anti-religious bent and doesn’t do a whole lot to portray a minister better. Are they in “stranger” missions?

At one point, Marston assists a couple nuns from the guy “Irish”. This is the dialogue exchange:Marston: You been workin’ like a weasel on my behalf. Bushwhackin’ defenseless ladies of the cloth? You must have been raised on sour milk, Irish.
Irish: What are you talkin’ about? I’m a good Catholic boy.
Marston: You’re a booze-blind coward.
Irish: And you’re a hypocrite, Marston. You’ve robbed just as many innocent folks as me.
Marston: I tried to rob only those who had more than they deserved.
Irish: [Lord’s name in vain], the church has more money than everybody.In this little exchange, it goes from Marston defending the nuns, to Irish being a criminal “good Catholic” hypocrite, to what sounds like a pot-shot at the Church and money.

Earlier, Marston (the “flawed hero”) has this exchange with Bonnie:*Bonnie: Let’s get going. Before the weather gets any worse. That sky don’t look good. I’m starting to think somebody up there’s conspiring against me. **Are you a religious man?
***Marston: Not in any real sense. Sometimes I tell myself things happen for a reason. Like what brought me here was fate come-a-callin’. But nobody made my path but me.
Bonnie: We all need to look for answers somewhere. Some in big ol’ books. Some in big ol’ bottles of whiskey.
Marston: Believing in some kind of divine purpose ain’t gonna get me my wife and kid back. Past is who we are, Miss MacFarlane. And there ain’t no changing that. Faith is a luxury I can’t afford.I took that as another snub at religion.

All the same, the game pretends like there’s some kind of providential something-or-other behind things I guess. Quite a number of the mission names are plays on Bible verses, such as “Father Abraham,” “And the Truth Will Set You Free,” or “The Prodigal Son Returns (to Yale)”.

I hardly played any of the side missions or the ones with “strangers.” I did do one in Blackwater where some woman is praying in what looks like a Protestant church (because there’s no crucifix or stained glass) but she crosses herself, so I’m not sure what to make of that - maybe the writers don’t know one Christian from another. On the other hand, her follow-up stranger mission at the cemetery seems to insinuate the woman was a con artist. It was cryptic to say the least.

All in all, not a very favorable game to Catholics from what I could tell. But not too openly anti-Catholic other than the one pot-shot. Generally, religion is kind of a ho-hum, it’s for some, not for others, whatever floats your boat, kind of thing. Plus there’s the moron pastor at the beginning (unless he was a con man as the other poster said).

Oh, and I thought the ending was t-e-r-r-i-b-l-e, and right now I consider it the most over-rated game I’ve ever played on PS3. It might be the only one I played all the way through and didn’t really like. This is pretty much most missions: Ride-your-horse and follow the other person. This consists of holding the X button and following the other person, sometimes for several minutes on a dirt road. The scenery is nice, but after the 30th time, it’s a little boring. Plus the dialogue is always, “Life is tough. I used to ride with Bill. When are you going to take me to Bill?” every time. Oh, and then most missions end with the same shootout format every time.
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It is rare to find anything out there that is very pro anything because of the media fire storm it would create. That is the problem with a lot of things.
 
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