Prayers!

Hey all,

Yours truly is undergoing something of a dark night right now and could use some spiritual backup.

St. John of the cross, ora pro nobis!

Console games on a Laptop screen

I don't really want to have a television in my seminary room and I couldn't afford the TV licence either, so I use a little device called EasyCap (and there are tonnes of clone devices with different names) all on ebay for around £10. The device converts the three colour wires that would normally go into a scart lead into a USB head. The USB goes into your PC/Laptop and then you use a video capture program to capture the video coming out of the USB. A decent free program is VirtualDub, a better premium one is AMCap.

Anyway, all this means I can play PS2 games or XBOX 360 on my Laptop screen. There is a tiny lag time between input and display and small sound sync delay but for playing RPGs it is more than sufficient. The device is useful to record the stuff happening in the game and so my brother wants to borrow it to continue his boss walkthroughs for games beyond 5th generation consoles.

The return of 2D platformers

I think it is fantastic that in the last 2 years game developers have started to create some new 2D platform games- there has been Little Big planet, the phenomenally successful New Super Mario Bros and the upcoming Sonic 4. I have never been a fan of the 3D platformers which I think either tend towards becoming adventure games, lame RPGs or simply a continued quest to get a good camera angle. So, lets hear it for neo-retro 2D platformers that get back to the jumping, running, dodging, waiting, timing, falling into lava/spikes, getting crushed, using little springs and squashing enemies that we remember and love.

Video Game Walkthroughs

I'm not exactly sure what I think about walkthrough guides. I wonder if anyone growing up playing games today has had the experience of having had to put aside a game that they simply cannot conquer. When I think back to my NES games there are so many games I never completed- Zelda II, Metal Gear, Wizard and Warriors II. There weren't any walkthroughs around at the time as far as I can recall.

I think nowadays the internet is saturated with walkthrough guides for games. I wonder whether games would be more enjoyable if there was a 6 month lag time before any guides could be produced. Sure it would get on our nerves, but I think that completing a difficult game solo has its own special reward. I am pretty sure I finished FFVII without any guides the first time round and how long it took and how much more of an achievement it was at the end.

It has been one of my resolutions for a while now to complete games first without looking up anything online and it really seems to add to the enjoyment- in the long run. It is also a healthy discipline against curiosity and a kind of soft sacrifice- because we all can get very impatient when we are stuck in a game. In modern seminary language, I think the approach is good "human formation" ;)

Afterwards it can then be fun finding out the millions of side-quests you missed and bosses that could have been defeated in 10 seconds with the right tactic. One of my younger brothers has started a YouTube channel with his boss fights of old Squaresoft games, if you have completed the games already ;), you might enjoy checking out some of the sneaky ways of beating various bosses.

Stories that just get more confusing...

I don't know if anyone else has been following the Final Fantasy VII 'series', my take on it is that the whole thing is getting more and more ridiculous... (at least in terms of storyline). Final Fantasy VII certaily had a wierd enough plotline but the sequals, prequals and side-stories have simply squared the number of questions and expanded plot holes even further.

The identity of Cloud, the identity of Zack, the motive/origin of Sephiroth, the pantheistic planet-worship, the lifestream, the 'resurrection' of Aeris.

Does it matter? That's a good question, and I think it does, certainly so if the games are proposing themselves to be more that just mindless entertainment. Why has it happend? What is causing apparently 'serious' games to tend towards growing into illogical, confusing and incomplete storylines as the game progresses? Chrono Cross, Xenogears even FFVIII are other good examples of this.

Are gamers taking the storylines too seriously? Should the Final Fantasy VII series make sense?

Something in me says yes, that storylines should be completed, that questions should be answered. Pope Benedict in his encyclical Spe Salvi suggests that the desire that we all have for justice in life is due to a fundamental deeply held conviction that there will one day be a final judgement. Things on earth that were unsettled will be settled. The ultimate balance of injustice against God and neighbour will be put right. Our justice will be satisfied because God will bring about true justice. If we are among the saints (which I sincerely hope) we will praise God's justice as we see the accursed sent into hell.

Perhaps in the same vein, the desire for a closure and completeness to a storyline relates to a deeply held desire that is part of human nature. A desire for life to have a meaning a desire to know its meaning. Praise God that we do- in Jesus Christ.

Chrono Trigger- The Christian Allegory?

A while back I came across some comments suggesting that Chrono Trigger, the great Squaresoft RPG (originally on the SNES but now on at least two other platforms) should be read as a Christian allegory. I had fond memories of playing CT years back and decided to replay the game carefully in order to consider this claim. Interestingly, in my research I found one website dedicated to the idea of CT as a Christian allegory but also another website presenting an existentialist reading of Chrono Trigger.

After replaying the game through Its pretty clear that the game can't be read as any kind of full on allegory- it simply doesn't itself that seriously. Just looking at the naive way that the game presents time-travel should be enough to stop would be academics from pulling some grand philosophy out of it all. The Characters are happily under-developed and take on all manner of strange experience with the same detachment as the gamer.

So, if the game is 'Christian', it is on a subtler level. There are odd resemblances here and there to the Gospel or Christian virtues but it would be very silly to go around the cast of the game and identifying them as the masks of different New Testament characters- it falls to pieces very quickly. Like in The Lord of The Rings, reflections of Christ can be found in the actions of Gandalf, Frodo and Sam at different times, but as a whole no one character is Christ throughout. What makes LOTR explicitly Catholic is the way it presents reality, I'm going to look at CT under 5 criteria to see how strongly or if at all we soak up a Catholic vision of reality in CT.

Reality of Objective Moral laws.

It is clear that Lavos is bad and that Queen Zeal has become wicked because she has sold herself to him. The people of Zeal realise belatedly that their whole lives are based on using Lavos's wicked energy and that the magic has corrupted them. The judgement of Crono by the chancellor is very interesting in that we get an application of the moral law against the main character. Magus causes some problems in this area. He is clearly a wicked character from his efforts to invade peaceful Guardia and the way he treats Glenn/ Cyrus who are truely noble. The problem is that later he is able to simply becomes a member of your team and there is tacit approval in how he was essentially trying to accomplish the good end of destroying Lavos through wicked means. In a 'Christian worldview' Magus would have to remain an antagonist and be destroyed or make an act of repentence for the wicked and misguided actions he had taken.

Interior Struggle to pursue the good.

CT doesn't really give us insights into the characters' interior struggles within themselves to do what is right. This is no criticism, the game isn't trying to be profound or to present an explication of the human condition.


Divine Providence working through free will.

I think we can see the Gates as an example of Divine Providence. The game doesn't make this claim but there is enough evidence to see things this way. The gates to different time periods are not caused by Lavos randomly but they are purposeful. The characters realise this and although their speculation is that it is caused by "the entity" which is trying to preserve its existence we could see the purposeful gates as an example of providence. The providence moves interestingly with free will in that no matter what the characters do in the past the present is largely preserved and they continue to exist. Such an extraordinary maintainence of the status quo is absolutely illogical scientifically but could plausibly be preserved by a being that transcends time. In fact the existence of God transcending time is the only thing that could make the Chrono Trigger world hold together. CT doesn't take this stuff seriously at all but we can draw these thoughts from the game fairly I think.

Self Sacrifice for others

CT deals with this quite well. On a few occasions the theme tune music sets in as Crono agrees to undertake some self sacrificial mission for the good of someone else. Ultimately of course we have Crono's laying down his life in the first battle against Queen Zeal and Lavos. Perhaps it is in virtue of Crono's death that the gate opens up for the others to escape....

Marle is quite disobedient, this is her nature, it would perhaps be more ideal if she was able to overcome herself and accept her future responsibility as queen or if we got some hint that she intended to do this (Like prince Hal in Henry IV). We do see however her love of Crono in her immense efforts to restore him to life and her chaste devotion of him. Frog is a paragon of medieval virtue whose duty is to protect Queen Leene and who is fulfilled in this role, a Christian Gentleman as it were.



Basic Christian Theodicy- Monotheism, Goodness of creation, understanding of eternal reward/punishment based on moral behaviour.

We shouldn't expect pre-Christian stories to present Christian theology (Tolkien explains this well in 'on Fairy Tales'). Although CT has some trappings of being in a post revelation world (the time is written as BC/AD, there is a Cathedral in the Middle Age) it is probably fairer to asses the game as if it presented a world before the revelation of Christ. Tolkien's Middle earth is pre-revelation and that its why the general worldview and religious understanding is one of High Paganism- holding the the beliefs virtuous and good pagans would naturally tend towards from their analysis of the world.

CT generally does present a pre-Christian natural religion. We don't have any reincarnation talk, the planet is not deified and a few 'ghosts' of virtuous characters go upwards towards heaven (The hero Toma for example) suggesting their continuous and blessed existence. There is not a similar treatment of wicked characters, which is a pity. The game doesn't take itself seriously to present any understanding of where monsters come from, but ideally they would be seen as a disorder in creation- in the same way we would see a savage wolf attacking humans.
Robo undermines christian theodicy a little in that he seems to 'learn' emotions. This is obviously erroneous. He should have been presented as unable to understand human behaviour and existing soley to serve those who truely posses freedom, intellect and will. The fact that he has a 'girlfriend' is a bit silly, perhaps its sillyness is its redeeming grace. Again, the issue of Magus poses some problems in that Christian theodicy would present this wicked character as either meritting death or needing to repent. The game's acceptance of him actually doesn't flow with the story because it undermines the Frog/ Glenn/ Cyrus theme which is very positive and creates unhelpful relativism in the game.

The treatment of magic is very complicated in the game, I am not exactly sure if it is given a careful account. I don't think it took the issue that seriously. It seems on the one hand that magic originates from Lavos and this is wicked but also there is some kind of elemental magic bestowed by spekkio which is presented as good. There is something positive in the fact that the magic is bestowed from 'above' but the role of the Gurus is poorly explained in CT. In a Christian Natural Theology they would have been religious figures of some kind and were endowed with their respective gifts.

Conclusion

So whilst CT is not a Christian Allegory in that we do not see the life of Christ or Salvation History running through it, we do, in many places get true values embodied and the possibility of using some of the story's contents of acting as an intoduction to the Gospel. The treatment of Magus lets the game down a little. Chrono Cross's reading of CT messes things up quite a bit too- but CC is far far more illogical than CT but with the added problem that it does take itself seriously. When a game 'takes itself seriously' the gamer has to be much more cautious in discerning the undercurrent philosophy as it is trying to teach in a way a 'fun/ naive' game like CT is not.

Gaming after conversion.

I am sure many of our readers can recognise how, at some point in their life, they made a transition from a child apprehension of the Catholic Faith to an adult one. A good number of others will have approached the Faith from a nearly total neo-pagan upbringing but in both situations the 'converts' will come to see many of the things they used to do as incompatible with the Gospel of Christ.

It is interesting as to how deeper conversion effects catholic gamers. I was certainly someone who was playing video games long before I had any grasp or acceptance of the faith and 'converted', as it were, only around the age of 17. How then should the full Catholic faith alter my appreciation of gaming? I don't think I have come to a conclusion yet. On the one hand, if I reflect on the philosophies underlining a lot of the games I really love (Console RPGs mainly) I find really questionable stuff (I'll reflect on this later) on the other hand, I know that such games can be great for relaxation and can be a common point of dialogue with many guys my age.

I think there are two legitimate approaches then towards gaming (especially of the RPG and adventure variety which are essentially interactive novels), the first is to totally reject all games that are not explicitly and wholly in conformity with the Gospel (this was the approach of Tertullian on the subject of whether Christians should read pagan fiction or attend the theatre). A 'liberal' reading of Tertullian's approach would be to also allow the legitimate video game corpus to include morally ambivalent games like Duck Hunt, Driving Sims, Sports Sims, Puzzle games and a few cheesy 'bible based games'.

The second legitimate approach towards games, so far as they are not intrinsically evil, is to see the values, philosophies and ideas that are good and noble in them so as to enrich our appreciation of what Tolkien refers to as 'the true myth', the Christian Revelation. Vatican II, in the quotes on the side of the blog takes this positive approach and hopefully in my posts I will be able to look at some of the great video games and see what we can take from them that will enrich us as followers of Christ.