(Alright, here we are finally with the first full example of what to expect around these parts.)
First, a brief introduction for the uninitiated. JRPGs—that is, Japanese Roleplaying Games—are narratively driven form of interactive media which overwhelmingly follow a story archetype: our heroes are young and inexperienced, some villain or catastrophe ruins their day, they struggle to make things right, then things get more complicated, a bigger problem is revealed, so our heroes get stronger, the stakes keep escalating, until finally it reaches the penultimate manifestation of the woes that trouble our heroes’ world… some villainous god.
And it is a “god” more often than it isn’t.
The first time, it’s exciting and novel. A climactic showdown with an entity of “supreme” power. A capstone to all the hours the player spent taking on gradually tougher and tougher foes. Yet, after two or three titles many players start to wonder if the developers of these games could be trying harder to come up with more interesting finales.
This is not an unreasonable perspective… but I think there’s a more interesting way to look at it—through the lens of the history and culture that inspires it.
(I should say now that there will be major spoilers for some of the titles mentioned here.)
It’d be simplest to explain this by looking at a specific example in the genre. And for that I’ll choose Persona 5, one of the more prominent and popular releases of the last decade.
It’s definitely not because I’ve argued with some friends about this one and want to show them why actually the ending is totally interesting and not at all cliché.
Persona 5 is a story in the “epic” genre about justice and freedom; about the oppression of the young by the old, and of the stunting of new potential through the selfish actions of those who should be guiding and nurturing the next generation. The story begins when our protagonist is wrongly convicted of assault leading to a series of confrontations with corrupt authorities at various levels of society, starting from the bottom and working his way up.
Not by beating them up physically, mind you, but by fighting with their “inner selves”—quite literally. The protagonist and his allies discover the existence of “cognitive worlds” and use them to infiltrate the literal palaces of their opponents’ minds, where they fight these corrupt authorities’ “shadows,” and steal the “treasure” that forms the root of the distorted desires that made them into the despicable people they are. With such desires gone, the target in the real world is no longer able to compartmentalize the guilt of their actions leading to a “change of heart,” and usually to them turning themselves in.
Their first target is their school’s PE teacher who’s physically and sexually abusing his students. From that success, they build their way up to taking on the soon to be elected Prime Minister of Japan whose ambition and abuse of power is spread far and wide—having even played a part in the stories of all the previous bosses and in the protagonist’s own wrongful conviction.
I’ve heard people say the game should have ended after taking down the would be prime minister. After all, the build is fantastic, the music for the fight is phenomenal, and the conclusion cathartic. It’s a prime point to conclude on…
But the story does not end there.
Even though the big bad politician—who was going to win in a landslide—confesses his sins publicly and goes to prison, our heroes return home to find the people of Tokyo… entirely indifferent. Worse, not even a full day passes before people seem to forget it ever happened. Nor does it seem that any of the other people in the politician’s cabal will have to face the same justice, as they scramble to jump ship with whatever consolation prizes they can carry.
As the world seems to sink into total apathy, it’s revealed that a greater, supernatural force is at work: the “god” known as Yaldabaoth—a cognitive manifestation of the collective unconscious who was born to answer mankind’s greatest wish:
To be “free.”
Free from a need to choose. Free from the need to think for themselves… Free from having to figure out how to live in an increasingly complex world where school teachers are children’s worst abusers and our elected leaders plunder us faster than any thug on the street.
Yaldabaoth is here titled “the god of control” and it’s shown that the triggering event of the whole story was a cosmic bet he made with the enigmatic entity “Igor” over the nature of humanity. And so, both sides chose a champion for their cause, gave them a supernatural power, then let them loose on the world to see which path humanity would take.
Yaldabaoth’s view is that what man wants more than anything is the safety and security of a rigid control structure: the paradoxical freedom of the cage—or the “jail of regression” as it manifests in the cognitive world. This is the freedom of “abandonment.” This could also be called “detachment,” but there is a healthy form of that which I am distinguishing from here. This isn’t merely realizing that there are greater things in our lives beyond the immediate, material concerns: it is a complete abandonment of all concern. A spiritual suicide that leaves an empty body to do nothing but consume and seek physical comforts—unless even that becomes too inconvenient.
Worth noting is that in this jail of regression, the player finds the psychological manifestations of the past foes of the game: not in some kind of hellish suffering, but a hellish bliss, no longer burdened by their distorted desires or any desire at all. Despite all of their misdeeds, they too were granted Yaldabaoth’s “freedom.”
The enemy of this freedom, logically, is anyone who would still cling to the concerns of life, and thus “justice” is punishing any fool seeking to escape the cage, or worse, who inspires others to break out.
Contrarily, the protagonist and his allies are fighting for the “freedom” to live according to the calling of the heart, and accepting the responsibility that comes with their actions. Their justice is one that punishes those who shirk that responsibility—who act with cruelty and against the natural law of life. To the heroes of the story, it is an offense of the highest order to find the evil they fought against lazing about happily in a cell with no obligation to pay for their crimes.
And so, with the “mastermind” of all the preceding conflicts revealed and the root conflict of their ideals made clear, the young students at the lead of our story face off against a cosmic entity and we seemingly dive fully into the “fantastical.” The story becomes a sort of Jungian interpretation of the Gnostic myth of Yaldabaoth. To reinforce this journey into the abstract even the environments of the cognitive world become ever more strange, geometric, and divorced from any recognizable landscapes.
It’s reasonable then that some of the audience would feel that this shift in narrative seems arbitrary and disconnected… but I argue that it certainly is not. Everything in this game is based in the ideas and stories of our own history as a species. While the nature of those ideas is abstract, they come from very real sources and speak directly to the human experience—whether or not you ultimately think the statement has value in the end.
And it is here that I ought to explain some of Jung, the use of his ideas in the series, and the Gnostic ideas that he reinterpreted.
For those of you who know a bit about the Gnostic heresy, stick with me a bit, and keep in mind that I use the word myth quite specifically, as the references here—interpreted through a Japanese worldview—are used in much the same way as, say, Marvel uses the Norse pantheon.
For those unaware, Carl Jung is an influential psychologist from the early 1900s who founded the school of analytical psychology. Like Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis (and the two did briefly work together) Jung is interested in the subconscious elements of the mind, but he takes those ideas in a different direction.
In brief, the concepts in the Jungian framework of psychology we’re interested in are:
The Collective Unconscious: the inherited psychological presuppositions of a person—that is the ideas and instincts that you born with (contrary to the “blank slate” hypothesis of a newborn’s mind). This is experienced most directly in the images and workings of dreams, but also forms the basis of our reactions in the waking world.
The Persona: the constructed, conscious personalities a person uses in day to day life. This is likened to “masks” we wear (Persona being Latin for “personality” and also the masks actors would use in performances) as it is not the “truest” representative of a person, but the one they need to act in the immediate. Sometimes begrudgingly (smiling at work in the morning when you just want more sleep) sometimes happily (geeking out with your friends over some new product you enjoy).
The Shadow: the unconscious qualities of a person which they repress. Usually for the shame of how they clash with their own idea of who they are or their moral values, but sometimes out of ignorance. It’s the “brutal” side of a normally gentle person, or the “hero” hiding in a scoundrel.
Individuation: the ultimate goal of psychotherapy, the process where a person integrates the various aspects of their psyche to arrive at their “true Self.” The persona is cast off, the shadow recognized and reconciled, etc.
It’s important to note that individuation is different from “individuality.” It’s not about highlighting your quirks, but taking in all of the aspects of what makes a human a human with everything that makes you “you.” It’s not against individuality and your uniqueness as a person, but it is against defining yourself solely by those unique elements.
Another aspect that’s important to understand about Jung’s work is how he sees the various symbols, myths, and religions of humanity as the language of the unconscious… in a way. The specifics of this are beyond the scope of the article, but suffice to say that the writer’s of Persona (the game) really like this concept as its integrated into the game in many ways, such as how each of the playable character’s “Personas”—cognitive beings they manifest to do battle—are named and designed (with great artistic license) after various notable people in myth and history.
In just this title, for example, we have Arsène Lupin of Maurice Leblanc’s novels, Captain William Kidd the Scottish pirate, Ishikawa Goemon the Japanese outlaw, and more. Additionally, the “cognitive worlds” explored throughout the game are full of real-world elements exaggerated and symbolized—such as a school becoming a castle in the mind of the abusive PE teacher, and the National Diet building becoming a cruise liner in the mind of the corrupt politician. These worlds are even populated by mythical beasts, legendary knights, classic ghouls, and minor deities from various pantheons of real world cultures.
Which brings us back to the myth which the writers of Persona used to illustrate the final conflict of this game: Yaldabaoth versus Satanael.
In the [heretical] Gnostic tradition—which has manifested in several places and time over the history of Judaism and Christianity—they believe that the God of the Bible is actually a “false” god, Yaldabaoth—or the “Demiurge”—who has trapped the parts of the “true god” in the material world: in its people and things.
Of course, as any Christian ought to know, if you can subdivide “god” then whatever that entity is can’t be big-G “God” by definition, so even the “true” Gnostic god is a heretical conceptualization.
To some Gnostics, it is then the angel Satanael who realizes the deception and rebels. Though the exact names and roles seem to shift based on the strain of Gnosticism. What is consistent in Gnostic belief is the idea that the material world is evil and it is the goal of humanity to “break free” of the material world through “gnosis”—Greek for “knowing”—so that the pieces of god trapped in the material can rejoin to form a whole again.
As you might imagine, a cult based on the idea that the physical world is evil by sheer virtue of it existing had a tendency towards practices that were against the propagation of life. Having children was shunned, genital mutilation was common, and extreme fasting was encouraged. The only good purpose in the physical life was the pursuit of uncovering the “hidden mysteries” that got one to the ultimate truth of life.
Now, if I’ve done a decent job of summarizing both you might immediately start to notice some similarities and differences between “historical” Gnosticism and the version of events given in Persona:
First, that Yaldabaoth did not create humanity, but was created by humanity. Manifesting first as the elusive “Holy Grail” in extravagant golden luster before his full existence is revealed, he is quite literally an idol of human make—the target of man’s distorted desire for an object to grant all his wishes for happiness.
Second, that the heroes aren’t trying to escape the physical world but to save it from being merged into the cognitive and ultimately erased.
In many ways, then, Persona 5 puts forward a complete inversion of the myth. I might even go so far as to claim that it is a metanarrative about Gnostic thinking, where Yaldabaoth is not the object of the Gnostic belief, but a representative for that kind of self-destructive belief system.
Which is why it’s important to consider the Jungian influence on Persona. Jung very much spoke on Gnostics, and while there is seemingly debate over how much he bought in at different points of his life, from the evidence I’ve scrounged up so far, at some point he seems to have settled on treating their ideas in quite the same way as he treated other myths and belief systems: as yet another lens for the psychological examination of a person.
I have my own personal critiques about Jung’s ideas and way of life, but at the same time I do recognize the basic mechanics of his psychological analysis methods have merit. Whether the stories we tell are true or false, they do reveal how we see the world. I know that trait of storytelling is true as I’ve been able to observe it myself, and it is that Jungian way of looking at it which the writers of Persona seem to have emulated.
While maintaining the role of a “jailer,” this man-made Yaldabaoth was tasked with the role of rehabilitating man to create a perfect society, an—seeing that it was man’s own foolishness that hindered man—sought to do so through domination of their wills. He is at first indifferent to the material world, but as he experiences the stubborn rebelliousness of man, he grows to despise it and to erase it entirely. The heroes, then, are rejecting his “divine” imposition so that humanity can continue to follow the natural law of the heart, and work past their difficulties through mutual cooperation and by taking responsibility for their own happiness—and the happiness of their fellow man.
This is much closer to Jung’s interpretation of the myth—which he uses to point towards the aforementioned “individuation” process—but has at least one distinct difference I find interesting: Rather than being about just the protagonist’s individuation, it’s about society’s individuation. We see this in the finale as the protagonist finds his true Self while struggling against Yaldabaoth’s overwhelming power, allowing him to be recognized by the world as a hero. The recognition then becomes a beacon of inspiration, and the collective will of humanity shifts. Where it had once given birth to Yaldabaoth with its apathy, it now gives the protagonist the power to tear him down—to kill “god.”
Put another way, by recognizing and rejecting their own distorted idea of “freedom,” and accepting the heroes’ reformed version, society finally destroys the idol they had enslaved themselves to.
This is again why I say that the shift to such an abstract opponent is not just inline with the events before thematically, it is the natural endpoint. All of the individual conflicts were lesser forms of that same pattern: man desires something; his suffering distorts that desire; instead of taking responsibility for his situation, he projects it onto the next generation as they pursue their desires; and the cycle continues ad nauseum.
Once the immediate plot switches to the abstract, it isn’t dropping the literal, it is reflecting on the literal. The climax is an introspective event for both the protagonists and the culture they live in. All of which serves the underlying theme of “freedom.”
While you might find all of these connections to historical ideas interesting in of themselves, you might now be led to wonder: the writers aren’t Alexandrians of the second century, Jewish mystics of the renaissance era, or German psychologists of the early 1900’s. Why would they be interested in what Gnostics believe and why would they place the personified manifestation of those ideas as the final boss of their game?
Put another way, why are we shooting a Gnostic god in the face with a gun?
One question at the heart of Persona 5, which the writers have expressed is heavily inspired by the current events of their home (if that wasn’t obvious), is: what is a just society?
For most of the game the idea is explored through direct analogues to Japan’s real-world issues:
The protagonist’s wrongful conviction points to the woes of Japan’s legal system in real life and its oppressive favoring of the prosecution, even for minor or poorly evidenced accusations.
The abuse scandal in the heroes’ school highlights the peer pressuring people face everyday that keeps them silent in the face of the evils they might suffer at school, home, and work.
The growing apathy of the world as people expose themselves to the chaotic influence of internet enabled mass-communication, as illustrated throughout the game in the gossip spreading through digital feeds and the open chatter throughout Tokyo.
While Japan is beset by these various social problems, they are also known as one of the most peaceful countries in the world (at the time of the game’s release, and still to the time of my writing this). And, while not as prosperous as in the 80’s, the Japanese people are getting by.
The value of this status quo is spoken to in the game by the golden exterior and accomplishments of each villain. The abusive teacher was a world class athlete first and is now winning the school prestige in its sports programs. The plagiarizing painter is bringing vitality to the classical arts. The relentless CEO has built a successful global brand, the corrupt politician is giving people hope for reform in a stagnating economy.
Things could continue as they are, and as Yaldabaoth shows the protagonists in his jail, people can find happiness by simply releasing the desires that make them want more than they have. So… Is there actually a problem to solve?
Let’s rephrase the question: what is making society unjust?
Apathy, the writers seem to answer.
Yes, people in the game’s world—as in the real world—are “getting by” but aside from a privileged few, their existence lacks the kind of fundamental meaning that motivates life. Most of the young characters, who should be the most inspired and excited to go out into the world, are instead withering away in solitude and oppression, suspicious of one another and despising those who should be guiding them.
They don’t tell their friends when their teacher beats them up, they don’t go to the police when they find themselves trapped in a drug cartel’s smuggling operation, they become despondent and hopeless as their job in the big food conglomerate treats them as slaves in all but name.
And who does the game say is ultimately to blame for this? Everybody.
While by no means blaming the specific evils committed by any individual on the victim, the writers still put forward the argument that the core problem of “tyranny”—that is, oppressive control or the abuse of authority—will outlive any specific actor or conspiracy… as it has before.
The villains themselves are an example of this as they are shown to have come from places of innocent desires only to become distorted by the pressures of their lives. The abusive PE teacher was an Olympic athlete who cracked under the pressure of expectations, the power-mad politician was once a kid inspired by a school field trip where he was told that one day his generation would be the ones to “steer the ship” of the Japanese nation—and you can imagine what shock he experienced when he grew up.
This is that pattern I mentioned before: desire, suffering, cowardice, tyranny.
All of the sidequests in the game—the small side stories—illustrate how even at the lowest levels of society the oppressed can become tyrants of their own worlds: bullies creating more bullies, a woman stealing neighbors’ cats to cope with the loss of her own, employees suffering at work becoming abusive in their relationships, etc.
This is a cycle of apathy. In their suffering, people let themselves become numb to the world, both to the betterment of their fellow man as they use their fellow man as an outlet of their frustration, and numb to their own needs as they wallow in their misery and let it destroy them from within.
So, to rehabilitate society, it isn’t enough to take down just the biggest bully of the day. Whatever the “original evil” was that set off the cycle of apathy, it’s too late to undo that. The only way out now is for each individual within society—not just some organized minority—to recognize how their desire for “freedom from the need to choose,” is just a scheme to pass their responsibilities onto the tyrant above. And that has ultimately funneled all of the power that comes with that responsibility up to whoever has the most pent up frustration to release. Thus society has let the world distort into a cage and let “justice” get twisted into the beating-stick of our own oppression.
Everyone knows the Spider-Man quote, but few I think realize that the phrase remains true in the reverse.
So what does this have to do with Gnostics and Jung? It’s because Gnosticism has been interpreted by the writers as the penultimate manifestation of this cycle of apathy and tyranny. The Gnostic belief system affirms the idea that the material world is suffering, that we ought to seek out its end as we will never be “free” until it’s gone. As the oppressive “jailer,” this is the form of Yaldabaoth’s rehabilitation of humanity.
The finale of Persona 5 is then a rather direct expression of the heroes playing the part of society’s psychologist, inspiring the people of Tokyo to achieve a constructive rehabilitation through Jungian ideas and escape their self-imposed prison. Once freed, the people in turn collectively grant the protagonist the manifestation of their renewed hope for change.
Then, when the action is over and the supernatural element fades away with the death of the false god, we see the start of this change play out in our heroes’ physical world. The protagonist accepts the responsibility for the chaos he himself sparked in his quest to fix things and willingly goes to prison. While all the people he helped along the way return the kindness to get his conviction overturned, clearing his sentence and fulfilling their justice while making peace with authority.
Alright… Well there’s probably more I could elaborate on (especially on that “peace with authority” bit), but hopefully this was enough to show how sometimes even “out of nowhere” references can actually contain a very direct and deep meaning for the story at hand. You just might have to dig a little to find the meaning of the abstraction and fit the story into the greater real-world context of its influences. By paying attention to what the writers abstract, how they define those abstractions, and learning who the writers themselves are, you can gain insight into what they find important—what the heart of their world looks like.
In Persona 5 we see that the writers live in a world that has become apathetic and disconnected. We see that they acknowledge that the problems of their life can’t be fixed by a few simple acts of rebellion, but that they still think such a rebellion is likely necessary to start the process—so long as it is built on and yields to a greater movement of personal responsibility. We see also an interest in the history of a wide variety of cultures and an ability to view their own circumstances through those lenses to gain deeper insights and connect to the larger story of humanity.
In any case, to return to the original question of this article and leave you with a clear answer: the point of killing “god” in a JRPG is to pull up the central conflict of the story from its root. It is to solve the problem at its most fundamental level and keep it from rising up again. And as a genre of games that tends towards the narrative genre of “epics,” this archetype of deicide is as natural as slaying a dragon is to fantasy.
Now you might say: “Sure, but do we really need to go to that level so often? Can’t more RPG stories keep things at the more personal stakes? Even if grand things are happening in the background of the story, maybe we can just keep the focus on what matters to the protagonist’s personal life.”
… Well, yeah. That would be a rather refreshing change of pace for the game genre. And I do think sometimes we’re sold too many tales of saving the world and that too many people take that as a literal example of how they should live their life. Then they go out and neglect their own problems to worry about situations they have no direct power over because they are neither lucky enough, smart enough, or powerful enough to solve world sized problems.
However, that’s why I especially appreciate Persona 5’s spin on the “epic.” Not everyone in its world is going to be the hero with the gun, but the hero doesn’t “make his own bullets.” So, if the rest of the world isn’t also doing their part to make things right, then the hero will find himself with an empty chamber at the worst possible moment.
And if there’s just one thing I think we should learn from Jung’s ideas, it is that every epic has a layer of meaning that is personal. The false god in a JRPG might look like some ancient culture’s god, but it can still be your false god. Yours, or your community’s, or even your whole country’s. Regardless, if you’re keeping your mind open to what the writer is trying to say, you may find the “trope” far more varied in its nuance than it first appears.
Now, a few more specific games to mention just for the fun of it.
The Final Fantasy Series
These are all quintessential epics and very poetic ones in their presentation. It’s in the name, after all: final fantasy—the climactic dream. Off the top of my head we have…
FF VII combining the 90’s fears over energy crises, the writer’s own pain of losing his mother, apocalyptic Norse mythology, and Shinto or even possibly Daoist philosophy.
In FF VIII the ultimate obstacle is time itself as its passage tears the characters away from the things they care about while a haze of nostalgia keeps them from appreciating what they have in the moment.
That’s my best guess. That story is bonkers.
FF IX seems to me a lament of the “death” of the feudal cultures of the world with the rise of Imperialism, Industrialization, and ultimately a form of Modernism informed by idealized Classicism—that is, it’s about trying to rebuild Rome and thinking it’ll be perfect this time.
… Hmm… I might need to talk about this one in more depth some day.
FF XVI gives us a tale alluding to the trend of modern elites of our world retreating from the public as we face the effects of over-consumption. All to pursue their own interests and ridiculous plots to “escape” the problems of this material world.
Here we have gnostic influences again, but this time quite explicitly and intentionally as the face of evil in the story.
Chrono Trigger & Ys VIII use their classic, pulpy tales of adventure to tell stories where human kindness and self-sacrifice overcome a cruel, cyclical fate where all life exists solely to feed the engine of evolution. In Chrono Trigger that cruelty is embodied in the form of the invasive, god-like space parasite, Lavos; and in Ys by the “spirit of evolution” itself.
In Xenoblade Chronicles, the god’s of the world were once mortal men who researched and played with the fabric of reality, until they tore it. They destroyed their world and became the lords of the new one where they continue on their petty infighting, causing untold suffering for the young life they created. I think one could take this as a story about dysfunctional families or as a commentary on how modernism cut cultures off from their rich heritage only to then neglect the next generation as well.
I see it as both.
Alright, that’s all for today. Someone with more time could do a much better job of linking all of these references I mention to actual citations, but I’m not paid enough for that kind of rigor.
In the end, I’m not here to convince people that my view is right, I just want to plant the idea in people’s heads that the abstract elements of stories are not always so disconnected from the more literal elements, and that the grandiose is not always impersonal. I’m also reminding my more Christian/Western audience that “killing god” has to be seen through the eyes of the Eastern conceptualizations of a “supreme being” in order to properly assess the actual meaning behind it. Frankly, more often than not, the gods depicted are manifestations of man’s own darkness, whether it be the sins of one or the many.
There are definitely some games that introduce deicide into the plot more elegantly than others, but its inclusion doesn’t necessarily make a game’s ending “played out.”
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