Anti-Religious Sentiment in Video Games (have you noticed?)

[Yeslek Ssomllur]

Ok, I've been wanting to know what people thought about this for a while, and I couldn't find anything on the forums, so here it is...

Has anyone else noticed the strong anti-religious sentiment in popular video games? It ranges from gentle lampooning (Dragon Age) to outright condemnation (Condemned). It seems like radical fundamentalists should be more concerned with all the pointing and laughing at organized religion in gaming than with a couple of men trying to share the same taxes.

I am Atheist or Agnostic (depending on how much sleep I've gotten), so it doesn't bother me. In fact, my two favorite game series's (series'?), Silent Hill and Dead Space, have plots in which the damage of religion is the MAIN FREAKIN' PLOT. "Unitology" is a huge, hilarious middle finger to Christianity, and Dead Space is STILL flying off shelves! Which brings me to my main point.

There is one game franchise that almost everyone owns at least one game from. It has sold more copies than the Bible or Starcraft or whatever you want to name, and is, hate it or love it, pretty much a household name. I know DOZENS of Christians, Jews and otherwise, ranging from lightly spiritual to obsessed bible-thumpers, who all own this game and play it regularly. I think you know what I'm talking about.

HALO! "The Covenant" is more than a criticism of Judeo-Christian religion. It is a voracious, hate filled mockery. How have so many people overlooked this? Or have they? The Arbiter, the use of different alien races for different combat positions, the "Hierarchs?" The whole role of the Forerunners, a people whose intentions the Covenant blindly miss the point of, in a debacle that leads them fighting for their own demise?

Halo is direct parody. How is it also more popular than air? What do you guys think? And are there any other games who feature religion as the main antagonist that you can think of?

 

[SantoUno]

Fallout 3 has groups which pretty much symbolize how nutty religious groups can be and what they worship.

 

[BlumiereBleck]

Yeah I've noticed it, sure I don't agree but, I've stopped caring, I'm not a minority ;}

 

[manythings]

of course they have an anti-religious thing, the second religion is brooched as a subject nowadays people kneejerk and start screaming about the insidious way the right wing is trying to force dogma on them. When people can mature a few fucking shades then maybe something interesting with regard to religions can occur in the medium, until then the fuckwits will make sure atheism is forced on people.

 

[Chaosninja89]

A ton of the games I play have small (or occasionally large) religious jokes, but most are just for laughs, although I have had a couple games downright insult my religion, which I'll keep to myself in order to avoid being flamed to death...

 

[Ih8pkmn]

/dignity
Well, yes. In Tales of Symphonia, one of the main aspects of the plot is an evil church that forces people to partake in magic experiments and is racist. Also, their god is a crazy bastard obsessed with resurrecting his sister.

 

[Sebenko]

Yeah, they make great evil organisations, too.

And great heroes, look at 40K, they're the he- waittaminute!

 

[jowo96]

I think that its probably because many game makers are sick and tired of religous nuts protesting everything they make so this probably comes out a bit in the games they make.

 

[Gigano]

Well, the God of War series had you murder an entire Pantheon of deities, including the very popular-image-of-the-Christian-god-like Zeus, and ultimately had the protagonist making the "surviving" goddess superfluous by empowering mankind instead of her (although ironically by the "self-sacrifice" way made so common by that Jesus dude). Assassins Creed had you fighting Crusaders, and AC2 had you fighting the Pope.

These are some pretty direct & overt examples of anti-religion - if not anti-religious - sentiments in gaming. I take little pity on the religions though, since most of them has missionary commandments to spread their propaganda, and a history of forcing themselves on people that goes far beyond what they choose to take down from the store shelves...

And it's not like people are going to dislike religion based on having played a few games with an unspecified critical view of some placeholder religion; in my experience, most anti-religion sentiments comes from having read the "holy" scriptures of the various religions themselves.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Religion - and by that I mean Christianity - is an easy fall guy in games, because it's seen as old fashioned, non-scientific and therefore, evil. Plus, Christians don't really care that much anymore when their religion is being mocked so it's a nice, cozy controversy to use it in games or movies.

 

[Charisma]

i see it as a symptom of humanity's slow, necessary weaning off the teat of superstition

a cutting of the umbilical cord, if you will

i myself am planning a series of short stories/books that will culminate in humanity giving a big middle finger to the gods, and i plan on framing it in terms of a "coming of age" story for the entire human race. as in, god is a parent figure, and if humanity expects to mature and evolve, it must turn away from its gods and take responsibility for itself.

that's how i see it.

 

[TheVampireCabbit]

Well, pretty much the entirety of the Assassins creed cast seems to be made up of atheists. The Templar villains are confirmed, and the assassins are implied since they know that the whole religion thing is really just people using the pieces of eden to screw with the populace into making them think things.

Apart from that hmm... Bioshock 2 has Sophia Lamb using a cult sort of situation to control her populace and make them willingly give up their own lives by infecting them with religios stupidity. And Andrew Ryan in the previous game constantly attacks religion for being a parasite on the face of the world.

Oblivion has the people who worship the nine divines, but then several characters point out that no matter what you do they pretty much do nothing in the world. though this is an interesting example because those gods legitimately do exist unlike normal. then you have the Daedra worshippers, who like their alternative gods (though they arent really called gods) because something does happen when they pray, even if it is often not totally good.

Vampire the Masquerade is interesting because it explains (kinda) religious miracles and makes fun of them. All the religious people in that game are portrayed as zealous, sadistic, psychopathic murderers who kill vampires indescriminatly instead of going after the ones that purposefully kill whoever they like (when the normal ones just bite them and leave them dazed). However it explains that faith is a legitimate power that can affect vampires, a man with enough faith in god can push them back and cause things to happen. However, this doesnt have anything to do with gods. in game lore states the exact same can happen for a man with faith in money. Apparently there has been a case of a man repelling vampires with his credit card.

All in all, i guess game design is a technological based career and therefore science based. and scientists tend to enjoy making fun of silly stuff like religions.

 

[EnigmaticThor]

There is one game franchise that almost everyone owns at least one game from. It has sold more copies than the Bible or Starcraft or whatever you want to name, and is, hate it or love it, pretty much a household name. I know DOZENS of Christians, Jews and otherwise, ranging from lightly spiritual to obsessed bible-thumpers, who all own this game and play it regularly. I think you know what I'm talking about.

HALO! "The Covenant" is more than a criticism of Judeo-Christian religion. It is a voracious, hate filled mockery. How have so many people overlooked this? Or have they? The Arbiter, the use of different alien races for different combat positions, the "Hierarchs?" The whole role of the Forerunners, a people whose intentions the Covenant blindly miss the point of, in a debacle that leads them fighting for their own demise?

Halo is direct parody. How is it also more popular than air? What do you guys think? And are there any other games who feature religion as the main antagonist that you can think of?

But I don't see how any of those things are a parody of any mainstream religion. While a religious group is the main antagonist, the group has more of a feel of a cult writ large (and gone horribly wrong) than any mainstream religion now. Halo, as a series, has some interesting things to say about religion, but nothing that could be reduced to something as blunt as a "hate-filled mockery."

 

[daubie]

I was raised Catholic, but don't give a damn anymore. I've never been bothered by any of these references. Actually, In FF 4 One of the character's names was changed from Cain to Kain to avoid the direct religions reference when it was brought to the US. That kind of pissed me off. The character is named Cain for a reason, don't change it.

 

[SantoUno]

until then the fuckwits will make sure atheism is forced on people.

What? Is that supposed to be a bad thing?

Not like if that's even true. Developers just have quite an imagination, so they project that by depicting what some religious groups can become.

 

[GiantRedButton]

Well, the God of War series had you murder an entire Pantheon of deities, including the very popular-image-of-the-Christian-god-like Zeus, and ultimately had the protagonist making the "surviving" goddess superfluous by empowering mankind instead of her (although ironically by the "self-sacrifice" way made so common by that Jesus dude). So there could be something to it.

well its not like jesus did it first, well he was going to die anyway. Prometheus did that before christianity was around

Well, pretty much the entirety of the Assassins creed cast seems to be made up of atheists. The Templar villains are confirmed, and the assassins are implied since they know that the whole religion thing is really just people using the pieces of eden to screw with the populace into making them think things.

Well at the time that is excatly what the church and the templars did, they just used torture instead of painless artifacts like the apple^^
You don't have to be an atheist to recognize historical facts (unless you believe that what the bible says is right and the earth is only 8000 years old, i know someone who does that^^) most catholics i know do acknowledge that this happened

 

[lostzombies.com]

Probably has something to do with most game designers being part of the new generation (20-30ish) who view religion as something archaic, corrupt and not relevent to modern life. For better or worse.

If games were made by 50+ year olds then we would probably see non-stop ironic patriotic drum banging combined with know your place rhetoric


generalisations ftw!

 

[Krion_Vark]

HALO! "The Covenant" is more than a criticism of Judeo-Christian religion. It is a voracious, hate filled mockery. How have so many people overlooked this? Or have they? The Arbiter, the use of different alien races for different combat positions, the "Hierarchs?" The whole role of the Forerunners, a people whose intentions the Covenant blindly miss the point of, in a debacle that leads them fighting for their own demise?

The definition of a Covenant:
an agreement, usually formal, between two or more persons to do or not do something specified.

The definition of Arbiter:
a person empowered to decide matters at issue; judge; umpire.

Just by the simple definitions throws your argument about Halo being a religious parody out the window into a flaming car as it flies off a bridge to explode in vernacular that is Michael Bay. If you tied in the fact that the Prophets alien race are the ones that made all the decisions it could have been more of an argument which I would have taken the definition of a prophet and taken down your argument more. If you used Assassin's Creed series I would have agreed with you 100% since they don't even try to not be against religion and taking almost every conspiracy theory about Religion and use that as the main plot point.

 

[Gigano]

...
well its not like jesus did it first, well he was going to die anyway. Prometheus did that before christianity was around

True, very little in Christianity is actually all that original when it comes down to it, but it's been popularized in contemporary western media by Jesus's supposed "Sacrifice" (i.e. by their own accounts being dead for 3 days, then resurrecting and going to eternal bliss).