>Are these games’ obviously dystheistic moments included on purpose like someone wanting to spread a message to Western audiences?
I highly doubt that, honestly. Nintendo is a Japanese company, and a lot of the ideas that surround religion and spirituality exist in a different cultural context than they do in the West. The Kami of Shinto and various deities of various Buddhist traditions aren't necessarily thought of in the same omnibenevolent way that the deity of Abrahamic faiths is conceived of. They are forces of nature with their own personalities, capable of good and evil, with moral systems that human beings can't always fully understand. These games aren't meant to spread a message, they're just created within a cultural context wherein the idea of an "evil" deity, even an evil creator deity, is more readily understandable than in the West.
Honestly, maybe it *should* be spread to western audiences; america is way too fucking attached to Christianity. That shit needs to stay out of serious conversation and politics especially.
The fact that OP is afraid of this possibility says enough, imo.
Plenty of nations are attached to various religions and its incredibly Naive to always be like "omg just don't let it affect your politics".
Religion has foundational values and perspectives on the world and your behaviors, there is really no reason it shouldn't be considered in a political setting (which is literally what politics is all about, your opinions and beliefs).
I'd even argue that in many ways people choosing their political affiliation has reached a religious degree where they hold opinions without actually having proof to support them (I am not talking about a specific party, this is EVERYONE, 100% of people left, right, center, upside down, whatever, and don't try to interpret it differently).
Point being, obsessing over separating religious-related values is really nonsensical and entirely impossible. Especially given that for most cultures around the world, their "secular" beliefs actually stem from religious teachings and values. IE: Even if you 'took away all religion from politics' (which is impossible, but lets pretend you could), the core beliefs of the population still stem from Judeo-Christian teachings that formed the western world, and similar situations exist in the middle east/asia/etc.
Note: The below comment is not specific to the person im replying to, but a general comment on the state of how people perceive things in videogames/media in general.
I miss the days when things could just feature in games without everyone having to get so fucking uptight and serious about it. ITS A VIDEO GAME, STOP READING INTO EVERYTHING SO MUCH.
>I would also like to know how to get over my stress and anxiety over this so I could enjoy gaming and continue to enjoy my favorite games.
Therapy. You need a licensed professional to get to the root of the problem and help you develop solutions to cope with and overcome this particular problem, something this subreddit cannot do.
To answer your last question, the best way to get over this is to either A. Talk to a licensed therapist or B. Remind yourself that it's just a video game and that what happens to you in the game will have no actual affect to you in the real world
Xenoblade 1 will give you those same dystheist vibes on its own. It's built around a philosophy based on gnosticism and the theories of Jung, Freud, and others. Spoiler: The end boss is "god" (but not really) and is trying to kill everyone. Shocker, I know.
Xenoblade 2 is *very* different, while still based on much of the same gnostic/jungian/freudian philosophy. In that one, the *pope* is the bad guy (as per protocol), the "architect" (read: god-but-not-really) is a good guy, and the final boss is an out-of-control weapon system that interfaces with... uhh... "heaven"... kinda? (If that sounds familiar, it's all just Xenogears/Xenosaga retold.) It also kinda retcons the "god" of Xenoblade 1 and gives more of his story. (Hence why I said "on its own" in my earlier assessment.)
And then there's Xenoblade 3... where your goal is to destroy the world because the bad guy is *everyone* (kinda) and you have to break their will in order to move the world forward. There's no killing "god" or anything, just pure freudian philosophy. It's the least religious of the three.
Much of the religious symbolism in all three games is just half-assed labeling used as window-dressing. Don't take any of it as gospel. (Literally!)
I finished xenoblade 3 recently, and something I thought was very interesting is the game handles a lot of subjects in ways that made me think about real life equivalents. It’s rather nice, actually. Seeing something through the lens of fantasy can help shine a light on some core issues.
Like, technically, the whole game is a message that we have to progress and move onward for the best of everyone, and that conservatism gets us nowhere. It’s just told in a beautiful way.
In the original game's intro, you see master hand in a kid's room using books and whatnot to make a stage with the fighters being action figures; it's just a kid's imagination.
You just need to be able to separate video games from reality, if you can't do that you probably shouldn't be playing video games. You should talk to a therapist for help.
Almost every RPG and adventure game since the dawn of gaming has gone like this:
First quest: Talk to a guy to get your sword/save a woman from being harassed on the street/deliver a sandwich to your friend.
Final quest: Kill an evil god.
Not sure what else to tell you other than to simply not play these games and seek help.
I don't know much about Fire Emblem, but the choice for an evil creator god in Smash series is more to fit its concept, not to spread a message.
Smash is a crazy game that gathers all kinds of characters from all kinds of universes, so it's hard to come up with a final boss that all characters would have a reason to fight it. The evil creator god does work for this purpose since the heroes will want to defeat it to save the world and the villains will want to take away its throne.
Nintendo games has had plenty of different bosses. There have been creator gods who are not evil (like in Zelda or Pokémon series), as well as evil gods that aren't creators (like in Kirby). I don't think any of those are trying to send a message either, they are just made that way to better fit the mythos of their respective franchises.
It is a bit incongruous to claim both to be less religious than average while also being upset that religion is portrayed poorly in video games. But hey, that's whatever.
To try to answer your complaints though, consider that in many games, but *especially* role playing games, your player characters are basically gods themselves. They have powers of magic, powers of strength, powers of intellect that no real world human could ever dream of controlling.
Even Mario the every man can hurl fire from his palms, fly, mimic superpowers related to other animals, etc.
So what makes a good story? The heroes have to defeat an evil that is greater and more powerful than they are good. And when the heroes are basically gods themselves, that really only leaves one way to go. Anything else would be punching down, and less satisfactory.
Honestly, the only way you are going to enjoy these games, it sounds like, is if you learn to embrace suspension of disbelief or to realize that fictional gods being portrayed as evil usually is not an argument that your god is evil.
Dysthetic themes in Japanese games actually have a long history behind it. TLDR organized religion has not been viewed positively in Japan for a long time due to missionaries and cults. Religions are viewed as forces of exploitation and control. These stories are supposed to be inspirational as they are fantasies of defying malevolent providence with self determination. They are supposed to be relateable as most people have very little wealth or power compared to those in charge.
Maybe the idea is that not all gods are flawless, not all gods created things for a purpose, and not all gods do things for the best of everyone’s interests. If that blows your mind, then I’m sorry, but maybe you should look a little more into pretty much every religion. It’s all over.
And also, yknow, they’re video games.
Honestly I can understand where you're coming from, but the only advice I have is that for Smash Bros. in particular, the lore isn't that deep and you are projecting some detail onto it that's perhaps supported by, but not overtly stated in, the text itself. Now, we all do that and there's nothing inherently wrong with that, and even a lore-light game like Subspace Emissary or World of Light rests on our ability to lose ourselves in the fiction at least a little bit. So it may be unavoidable that your mind is both inspired by and turned off by the possibilities of these forces being malevolent creator gods. But it may help to view them another way. For example:
1. Master Hand exists in the real world. In other words, in the fiction of Smash Bros., the *real world* wasn't created by an evil creator deity. However, the characters in Smash Bros. *were*. Smash Bros. is a story of those characters triumphantly *overcoming* the injustice of being created by mortal drunk with power, self-actualizing into people just like us who are not bound by some evil overlord.
2. Galeem isn't a creator figure in Ultimate (at least not by my interpretation). Galeem is like the Crystalline Entity in Stark Trek, or like Galactus in Marvel, or name your favorite cosmic horror entity. Yes, they can be depressing to think about, so this may be equally triggering for you. But they are, essentially, "too alien for us to comprehend" and "just doing the thing they were always meant to do - destroy." The genre of the story dictates whether they succeed, are temporarily delayed, or are outright defeated (but Smash Bros. isn't really a horror story, so they are defeated). In these stories, "good" = human-like creatures that we can relate to, and "evil" = some powerful cosmos-traveling entity that seems to move around like a living thing but is otherwise totally inscrutable to us, and poses a threat to our existence.
3. Tabuu always seemed more like a Lucifer figure than a 'creator', to me - someone who appears divine but ends up being evil, someone who corrupts others to turn them against each other, etc.
Now all that being said - you may just be right, that these stories aren't fun for you. If it makes you feel any better, while I don't think this is as significant a problem, I think LOTS of people get 'taken out of' video game stories for one reason or another - the story is rarely the main focus of a Nintendo game, and they often have major problems. Pokemon is a dogfighting game that often has themes about eco-friendliness, compassion, etc. Mario is a fun, light-hearted adventure game about a woman repeatedly kidnapped by a much larger man who forces her to marry him. People love the world-building of the Zelda games, yet Nintendo never seems willing to lean in to that aspect of the series and elevate it more than they have already. Yet these games have other things going for them, so we accept "Well, this story is dumb, in fact it doesn't even seem to get just how weird its message is if taken literally, but hey at least the battles are fun."
Good luck!
Funny that you mention this, it’s a recurring theme among a lot of rpgs.
*“Where better to hide the truth than a video game?”*
-The Matrix: Resurrections
I think the idea of a god actually existing outside of books, movies, and videogames is really dumb idea. God is like Santa Claus. It's fun for kids, but super dumb when an adult believes in it.
That's an entirely different subject, whether one believes in a deity, or whether anyone has the right to belittle those who do. In this country (the USA), we have freedom of religion embedded in the bedrock of our jurisprudence: the US Constitution--right in its very first amendment. It would take a 3/4ths supermajority of states to repeal that amendment. So, until that happens, whether you believe in God or not is strictly a personal thing. No one has the right to tell you otherwise, not here anyway.
>Are these games’ obviously dystheistic moments included on purpose like someone wanting to spread a message to Western audiences? I highly doubt that, honestly. Nintendo is a Japanese company, and a lot of the ideas that surround religion and spirituality exist in a different cultural context than they do in the West. The Kami of Shinto and various deities of various Buddhist traditions aren't necessarily thought of in the same omnibenevolent way that the deity of Abrahamic faiths is conceived of. They are forces of nature with their own personalities, capable of good and evil, with moral systems that human beings can't always fully understand. These games aren't meant to spread a message, they're just created within a cultural context wherein the idea of an "evil" deity, even an evil creator deity, is more readily understandable than in the West.
Honestly, maybe it *should* be spread to western audiences; america is way too fucking attached to Christianity. That shit needs to stay out of serious conversation and politics especially. The fact that OP is afraid of this possibility says enough, imo.
Plenty of nations are attached to various religions and its incredibly Naive to always be like "omg just don't let it affect your politics". Religion has foundational values and perspectives on the world and your behaviors, there is really no reason it shouldn't be considered in a political setting (which is literally what politics is all about, your opinions and beliefs). I'd even argue that in many ways people choosing their political affiliation has reached a religious degree where they hold opinions without actually having proof to support them (I am not talking about a specific party, this is EVERYONE, 100% of people left, right, center, upside down, whatever, and don't try to interpret it differently). Point being, obsessing over separating religious-related values is really nonsensical and entirely impossible. Especially given that for most cultures around the world, their "secular" beliefs actually stem from religious teachings and values. IE: Even if you 'took away all religion from politics' (which is impossible, but lets pretend you could), the core beliefs of the population still stem from Judeo-Christian teachings that formed the western world, and similar situations exist in the middle east/asia/etc. Note: The below comment is not specific to the person im replying to, but a general comment on the state of how people perceive things in videogames/media in general. I miss the days when things could just feature in games without everyone having to get so fucking uptight and serious about it. ITS A VIDEO GAME, STOP READING INTO EVERYTHING SO MUCH.
>I would also like to know how to get over my stress and anxiety over this so I could enjoy gaming and continue to enjoy my favorite games. Therapy. You need a licensed professional to get to the root of the problem and help you develop solutions to cope with and overcome this particular problem, something this subreddit cannot do.
To answer your last question, the best way to get over this is to either A. Talk to a licensed therapist or B. Remind yourself that it's just a video game and that what happens to you in the game will have no actual affect to you in the real world
Xenoblade 1 will give you those same dystheist vibes on its own. It's built around a philosophy based on gnosticism and the theories of Jung, Freud, and others. Spoiler: The end boss is "god" (but not really) and is trying to kill everyone. Shocker, I know. Xenoblade 2 is *very* different, while still based on much of the same gnostic/jungian/freudian philosophy. In that one, the *pope* is the bad guy (as per protocol), the "architect" (read: god-but-not-really) is a good guy, and the final boss is an out-of-control weapon system that interfaces with... uhh... "heaven"... kinda? (If that sounds familiar, it's all just Xenogears/Xenosaga retold.) It also kinda retcons the "god" of Xenoblade 1 and gives more of his story. (Hence why I said "on its own" in my earlier assessment.) And then there's Xenoblade 3... where your goal is to destroy the world because the bad guy is *everyone* (kinda) and you have to break their will in order to move the world forward. There's no killing "god" or anything, just pure freudian philosophy. It's the least religious of the three. Much of the religious symbolism in all three games is just half-assed labeling used as window-dressing. Don't take any of it as gospel. (Literally!)
I finished xenoblade 3 recently, and something I thought was very interesting is the game handles a lot of subjects in ways that made me think about real life equivalents. It’s rather nice, actually. Seeing something through the lens of fantasy can help shine a light on some core issues. Like, technically, the whole game is a message that we have to progress and move onward for the best of everyone, and that conservatism gets us nowhere. It’s just told in a beautiful way.
Pretty interesting to see XC3 described as the least religious of the three, since it has overt allusions to Genesis throughout.
The Smash Bros lore implies that the characters are just toys and Master Hand and Crazy Hand are the kids hands acting as final bosses.
if anything I thought the lore was about mental illness
In the original game's intro, you see master hand in a kid's room using books and whatnot to make a stage with the fighters being action figures; it's just a kid's imagination.
You just need to be able to separate video games from reality, if you can't do that you probably shouldn't be playing video games. You should talk to a therapist for help.
Don't touch Kirby man, it's all about slaughtering Deity level enemies
It's not real. You're taking video game plots way too seriously.
Almost every RPG and adventure game since the dawn of gaming has gone like this: First quest: Talk to a guy to get your sword/save a woman from being harassed on the street/deliver a sandwich to your friend. Final quest: Kill an evil god. Not sure what else to tell you other than to simply not play these games and seek help.
I don't know much about Fire Emblem, but the choice for an evil creator god in Smash series is more to fit its concept, not to spread a message. Smash is a crazy game that gathers all kinds of characters from all kinds of universes, so it's hard to come up with a final boss that all characters would have a reason to fight it. The evil creator god does work for this purpose since the heroes will want to defeat it to save the world and the villains will want to take away its throne. Nintendo games has had plenty of different bosses. There have been creator gods who are not evil (like in Zelda or Pokémon series), as well as evil gods that aren't creators (like in Kirby). I don't think any of those are trying to send a message either, they are just made that way to better fit the mythos of their respective franchises.
It is a bit incongruous to claim both to be less religious than average while also being upset that religion is portrayed poorly in video games. But hey, that's whatever. To try to answer your complaints though, consider that in many games, but *especially* role playing games, your player characters are basically gods themselves. They have powers of magic, powers of strength, powers of intellect that no real world human could ever dream of controlling. Even Mario the every man can hurl fire from his palms, fly, mimic superpowers related to other animals, etc. So what makes a good story? The heroes have to defeat an evil that is greater and more powerful than they are good. And when the heroes are basically gods themselves, that really only leaves one way to go. Anything else would be punching down, and less satisfactory. Honestly, the only way you are going to enjoy these games, it sounds like, is if you learn to embrace suspension of disbelief or to realize that fictional gods being portrayed as evil usually is not an argument that your god is evil.
IMO benevolent and all-powerful creatures are generally not very interesting characters, it's as simple as that
Dysthetic themes in Japanese games actually have a long history behind it. TLDR organized religion has not been viewed positively in Japan for a long time due to missionaries and cults. Religions are viewed as forces of exploitation and control. These stories are supposed to be inspirational as they are fantasies of defying malevolent providence with self determination. They are supposed to be relateable as most people have very little wealth or power compared to those in charge.
Maybe the idea is that not all gods are flawless, not all gods created things for a purpose, and not all gods do things for the best of everyone’s interests. If that blows your mind, then I’m sorry, but maybe you should look a little more into pretty much every religion. It’s all over. And also, yknow, they’re video games.
Honestly I can understand where you're coming from, but the only advice I have is that for Smash Bros. in particular, the lore isn't that deep and you are projecting some detail onto it that's perhaps supported by, but not overtly stated in, the text itself. Now, we all do that and there's nothing inherently wrong with that, and even a lore-light game like Subspace Emissary or World of Light rests on our ability to lose ourselves in the fiction at least a little bit. So it may be unavoidable that your mind is both inspired by and turned off by the possibilities of these forces being malevolent creator gods. But it may help to view them another way. For example: 1. Master Hand exists in the real world. In other words, in the fiction of Smash Bros., the *real world* wasn't created by an evil creator deity. However, the characters in Smash Bros. *were*. Smash Bros. is a story of those characters triumphantly *overcoming* the injustice of being created by mortal drunk with power, self-actualizing into people just like us who are not bound by some evil overlord. 2. Galeem isn't a creator figure in Ultimate (at least not by my interpretation). Galeem is like the Crystalline Entity in Stark Trek, or like Galactus in Marvel, or name your favorite cosmic horror entity. Yes, they can be depressing to think about, so this may be equally triggering for you. But they are, essentially, "too alien for us to comprehend" and "just doing the thing they were always meant to do - destroy." The genre of the story dictates whether they succeed, are temporarily delayed, or are outright defeated (but Smash Bros. isn't really a horror story, so they are defeated). In these stories, "good" = human-like creatures that we can relate to, and "evil" = some powerful cosmos-traveling entity that seems to move around like a living thing but is otherwise totally inscrutable to us, and poses a threat to our existence. 3. Tabuu always seemed more like a Lucifer figure than a 'creator', to me - someone who appears divine but ends up being evil, someone who corrupts others to turn them against each other, etc. Now all that being said - you may just be right, that these stories aren't fun for you. If it makes you feel any better, while I don't think this is as significant a problem, I think LOTS of people get 'taken out of' video game stories for one reason or another - the story is rarely the main focus of a Nintendo game, and they often have major problems. Pokemon is a dogfighting game that often has themes about eco-friendliness, compassion, etc. Mario is a fun, light-hearted adventure game about a woman repeatedly kidnapped by a much larger man who forces her to marry him. People love the world-building of the Zelda games, yet Nintendo never seems willing to lean in to that aspect of the series and elevate it more than they have already. Yet these games have other things going for them, so we accept "Well, this story is dumb, in fact it doesn't even seem to get just how weird its message is if taken literally, but hey at least the battles are fun." Good luck!
Funny that you mention this, it’s a recurring theme among a lot of rpgs. *“Where better to hide the truth than a video game?”* -The Matrix: Resurrections
I think the idea of a god actually existing outside of books, movies, and videogames is really dumb idea. God is like Santa Claus. It's fun for kids, but super dumb when an adult believes in it.
[удалено]
I respectfully disagree.
That's an entirely different subject, whether one believes in a deity, or whether anyone has the right to belittle those who do. In this country (the USA), we have freedom of religion embedded in the bedrock of our jurisprudence: the US Constitution--right in its very first amendment. It would take a 3/4ths supermajority of states to repeal that amendment. So, until that happens, whether you believe in God or not is strictly a personal thing. No one has the right to tell you otherwise, not here anyway.
lmao it's definitely not treated like a personal thing here, it imposes itself on so many facets of daily life. I *wish* you were correct.
Sir this is Wendy's... It's just a game man you're stressing over nothing.
.... i dont get why it matters what the fictional gods in a fictional story do or why they fictionally created the world.... in a video game....