Okay, I am gonna tell you about my top 3 favorite games. All of them share similar characteristics, like the hero fighting against tyranny or nihilism. All of them are existentialist, dystopian and partly post-apocalyptic. I am going to analyze the story, setting and philosophy behind these games. Let’s do it!

Half Life 2

The first game is Half Life 2. The best thing about it is the story. I am a big fan of George Orwell’s 1984 and dystopian stories in general, so I appreciate the dystopian elements in Half Life 2. I come from a post-communist country, so I got a real feel of how it was to live in a totalitarian regime. You know, the post-communist countries like the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia.. they share a similar feel. A lot of Half Life 2 looks like it takes place in Eastern Europe, and you can see this even more in Half Life: Alyx. In Half Life 2, there is a massive tyrannical alien race in the Universe, called Combine. They are like Reapers in Mass Effect, but in HL2, these Combine aliens are classic tyrants. And they are so great and efficient at what they do. They invade the world they want to overtake and they use its resources for their benefit, but in a way that there is no friction or resistance at all. So they manipulate the political leaders, and they use minimal effort in this. They are very efficient, they use the resources of the victim. So, in HL2, these aliens manipulate the political leader — Dr. Breen, and they use all sorts of very clever things to control the citizens. At the beginning of HL2 when you, Dr. Gordon Freeman, arrive at City 17, you can see the other confused people, and if you listen to them, one guy tells you “Don’t drink the water, they put something in it to make you forget”. Another guy on the train tells you “I hate it when they relocate us, I never get used to it”. And these are very subtle hints at what’s going on. The Combine wants to keep people separated, so they move all the people to various cities, so they can never form any friendship, any family, any resistance. They are all alone and afraid because they have no power. And when they are afraid and they have no friends, they can’t form any sort of resistance. So that’s a clever thing to do for a tyrant. And that’s one of many subtle things that you may not notice when playing Half Life games. Another thing is that they use this constructed language, similar to newspeak in 1984. They use medical and biological terms to hide the atrocious acts they do. To cauterize the wound means killing everybody in the area. Non-mechanical sexual stimulation rewards means being allowed to have real sex (there is a suppression field in Half Life, preventing the sexual urge). More in the video below. The guards, the Combine, the Civil Protection (CP) units, if you listen to their radio comms, you can infer from that that they are manipulated by fear. Because the CP are still human. They are collaborators, traitors of humankind, and they collaborate with Combine because they are afraid. They have reasons to be, because when they fail to capture you, Gordon Freeman, not only them, but their whole family is gonna be wiped out. And the same thing happens if they die capturing you. Their whole family is gonna be wiped out. So, in a way, you, Gordon Freeman, the silent protagonist, the hero of HL2, when you kill a CP guard, you also kill his family. So you, Gordon Freeman, killed hundreds, thousands of people from the families of the collaborators, innocent people. This is very similar to the social status system North Korea has. If you fuck up in a major way, it’s over for your whole family, your grandparents, and your children. Your DNA will be erased. If they find that someone is collaborating with the resistance, they (the Combine Overwatch AI) deduct food rations from the whole bloc, which is how it happens in communist countries and communist regimes. The closest thing to it is North Korea. And if you watch the documentaries about North Korea (e.g. The Mole: Undercover in North Korea), they are stuck like in the 1960s, and they live in fear, they can’t even fucking smile. They can smile only about the things the leader has done. If you do anything wrong, and you live in the bloc, and if you do something that is against the leader, against the regime, if somebody tells on you, you are in big trouble, but so it the whole bloc of people, because they are associated with you. This of course breeds fear, this is a thing that happens in communist countries. I know because this was happening in Czechoslovakia. Your neighbours would tell on you. If you had more cash than you should’ve, they told on you and the authorities came and took it away. They will be guarded against the unforeseen consequences this might have on the whole block. So they will be protected, as collaborators. The people behave like tyrannical leaders, and this is something I got from Dr. Jordan Peterson — because he studied totalitarian regimes for 40 years, so he knows his stuff — the individual in a tyrannical country behaves like the tyrannical state. That’s why it works. Because every single individual in these countries behaves in congruence with the tyrannical regime. Everybody is a tyrant. Every single individual in that country is a tyrant. All you have to do is to look at North Korea. People there are so afraid they tell on each other.. the point is, that’s why it’s often enough that one free man, like Gordon Freeman, takes action, and people follow. Václav Havel, the revolutionary behind the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia, and the first Czech president writes in his book “Power of the powerless” about the “substance” of a post-totalitarian regime like we had. The substance of the wall of tyranny surrounding the people is seemingly hard as steel, but it is enough for one man to start speaking Truth, and the substance becomes fragile and soft as paper.

Dark Souls: Prepare to die edition

Let’s move on to Dark Souls. My second most favorite game. I’ve already made a video about this — link. I talk more about the mythology of Dark Souls than replayability. Dark Souls is mythological and existentialist- the Universe is nihilistic, nothing matters of course, BUT — you have to create your own meaning. That’s what Dark Souls is about. Against all odds, you, a nobody, can turn around the nihilism, the inevitable doom of humanity, you can turn that around, just by having some hope for the future. my Dark Souls analysis starts at 1:00 In Dark Souls, you begin in a cell, locked in a prison with some other people who lost all hope. And this guy, Oscar of Astora, throws you a key (he actually throws you a corpse with a key), through the roof. He frees you from the prison. He isn’t sure that you are the Chosen One, so hee frees everybody from the prison. This is of course metaphorical, symbolical, element of the story. If you think let’s say to the Matrix — that is the same story. Matrix is the prison, Neo is the nobody, but he’s actually the Chosen One, but Morpheus doesn’t know this, so Morpheus saves everybody he can from the prison, from the Matrix. He’s the archetype of Senex, which is a Jungian archetype, he’s the Wise Old Man, you can see it in all good movies and games. The hero is being shown how to do things by the old and experienced mentor — by a Senex, which is a detail-oriented wise old man. In the Lord of the Rings it’s the Gandalf, in Star Wars it’s Obi-Wan, in Matrix it’s Morpheus, in Dark Souls it’s Oscar of Astora, in Fight Club it’s Tyler, in Mr. Robot it’s Mr. Robot and in Fallout New Vegas, which I am gonna talk about next, you start with being killed, and this old doctor saves you. So, Dark Souls begins in prison, Oscar frees you, and you kill bosses on your way to the Kiln of the first flame. And you sacrifice yourself the same way as Jesus because all of these stories are analogical to Jesus’ journey. Same as Matrix, it’s the same story. Jesus Christ had to sacrifice himself for the good of humanity. Same as Neo, he had to die and be resurrected, same as the guy in Dark Souls, in the end, he burns himself — or you can choose not to do it and let the darkness come. But if you sacrifice yourself, you will use your Soul, your Dark Soul, to prolong the Age of fire (Light) by 1000 years, and then somebody else, some brave individual, must come and burn his Soul again. That same concept exists in Buddhism. Buddha has the same life path and story as Jesus Christ. Avoid temptation, walk the narrow path, attain Enlightenment… and then come back. Story of Dark Souls is analogical.

Fallout: New Vegas

The third favorite game of mine is Fallout: New Vegas. As I said, you start with being shot in the face. You are a courier, a nobody. And you are carrying a platinum chip for another Senex archetype, Mr. House. You are a regular guy. This is often the case in mythology and stories in general, you are just a guy. Every-man archetype eventually becomes the Hero. Because a member of the herd can always rise above, through Truth. You have to be willing to learn new things, you can’t be arrogant. You can’t become arrogant, otherwise you will stagnate. So to progress in the story (of your life), you need to start as the Every-man. The story of Fallout: New Vegas is dystopian and post-apocalyptic. It’s again about saving humanity, humankind. There are multiple factions in FN:V, there is Caesar’s Legion. They are tyrannical, they use slaves and murder people by crucifixion. Tyrannical Caesar’s Legion Then there is NCR, the New California Republic. The story of FN:V is that America caused the nuclear apocalypse, and these NCR guys are trying to keep the old ways because they think they are good without realizing that the “American way of thinking” is what caused the nuclear apocalypse in the first place. NCR Those are the main two sides, factions.. and there is this Mr. House, who is the Senex in this story, a visionary. He is a pacifist I would say, but he’s that kind of pacifist who understands how things really are. He’s not like Albert Einstein, who used to be a pacifist in a wrong naive way. Einstein thought it would be good if countries had such a system that it would be impossible to have a war against each other. This is of course nonsense, because if you want peace, you need to prepare for war. That’s it. Even in normal real-life social interactions between men, if you are weak, you can’t be a real pacifist. In that case everybody knows you can’t defend yourself, so if you say you are a pacifist, everybody sees you are just saying that because you are harmless. You have to be strong and be able to cause mayhem, and then choose not to. That’s what being a pacifist is really about. You need to be able to defend yourself and then choose not to attack. If you have this ability people will just not fuck with you. And that’s what America has been doing for a long time. They constantly need to stay on top, the arms race. The danger of negative consequences of attacking them needs to be so big, that the attacker chooses not to do it. So that somebody chooses not to do anything stupid. Mr. House is that kind of guy. He has an army of military robots and he wants to avoid another war. I think this is a good time to stop. So, that’s it about my 3 favorite games, I hope you enjoyed this read, and don’t forget to follow me for more stories! Dr. Gordon Freeman, Solaire of Astora, NCR veteran ranger