Omnitopic December 2011: Faith

Faith and religion are difficult topics for gamers. It’s something some people don’t really want to talk about because it rarely involves shooting people (though it can involve assassination with hidden blades. Thanks Ubisoft), and because people have so many different opinions about the topic. Most of those opinions are angry ones. I mean, if we were all sane and rational about religion, then we’d all be atheists or, at least, agnostics.

That was a religious joke. Don’t crucify me.

(So was that.)

Religion’s become more a topic of games in the recent past than it’s been at any point in its history. Games like El Shaddai directly take on religious concepts and stories, while Assassin’s Creed is not only a game about the Crusades and evil, conspiracy minded orders of the Catholic Church but addresses a lot of these issues head on. And we have older games too, specifically Japanese ones, where the “Church” is always the evil, omnipresent enemy working to crush the wonderful saintly heroes. Even when it’s not evil, it’s frequently there in the background, acting as save point, curse curer, and reviver.

So religion and faith have a lot of history in terms of the stories games tell. A history we hope to mine for interesting stories to tell you, faithful readers! Keep on the lookout for some posts about it during the coming months, or don’t and then be surprised!