Table of Contents

**Metaphysical Learning Through Gameplay.** Nowadays, many modern video games have a strong metaphysical background. The game mechanics of these games, in addition, are sometimes consciously designed to reinforce these concepts, synergistically complementing the overall narrative and creating a greater sense of immersion for the player. Picture: Elden Ring is one of these games. In the image, the titular ring that gives its name to the game is a composition of different runes or partial aspects of reality. The creatures of this world are called to compete to achieve the right to decide the New Order that will rule over the world, thus becoming Lords of the New Age.

1. Introduction

Video games have become one of the greatest hobbies of our time. Both simply as games, learning through trial and error to excel in a particular activity designed to be fun, and as narrative vehicles, they are probably the most influential audio-visual medium today.

Nowadays, in fact, their economic impact surpasses even that of Hollywood and the music industry¹, especially among the younger generations.²

1.1. Interactivity and Immersion

What defines a video game is its interactivity and the sense of immersion it creates in the player. Video games, especially story-focused ones, are very much a simulation of a different world, and good games maintain the illusion that our decisions and actions have a fundamental bearing on events.

In some of them, we are engaged in interactive stories, vicariously living the lives of the protagonists, like in the movies. In others, we create avatars of ourselves, projecting our personalities into these virtual universes, partaking of their particular narratives, mechanics and logic.

Each game, furthermore, has rules and mechanics that define it. They define what the player can and cannot do, as well as what he must do if he wants to survive or advance in the story. Like anything else, these mechanics can also have a metaphysical value, as they teach us how the reality behind these artificial worlds work.

2. The Concept of Multiple Lives and Our Relationship With Time

The clearest example of the above is the notion of having multiple lives. In skill-based games (e.g., arcade games, action games, platformers), it is typical for the protagonist to accumulate extra lives that allow him to make mistakes, die and try again.

With time and a variable amount of practice, overcoming the various trials becomes something to be proud of, providing a feeling of progress and achievement. You can afford to make big mistakes. In fact, it is encouraged to make them, “living dangerously” inside these worlds, as there are few consequences and learning is the priority.

What video games (and even computers in general, with their Undo Command [Ctrl+Z]), have introduced is a different relationship with time. Here, time is circular, not linear. Life is a resource that can and should be cashed out to obtain experience and knowledge.

Image 1. The concept of extra lives has been a staple of video games since their very beginning. Picture: classic extra life icon in the Super Mario Bros. franchise.

3. Aiming for Death: Souls Games and the Birth of Stoic Gaming

This, which in itself would not go beyond a mere curious observation about the internal logic of a video game, becomes more interesting when you add a metaphysical background that explicitly aims at conveying the notions of cyclical existence and reincarnation. It is at this point, with game mechanics reinforcing a main point of the narrative, that we can more clearly speak of the metaphysical value of a videogame. This is the case with one of the most important modern game genres, the “Souls-like” games, based on the Dark Souls franchise.

Image 2. In early video games, the difficulty could be very high. Modern games, on the other hand, prioritize reducing player frustration.

Souls-like games, embodying a new dialectical pendulum swing, gave players back the challenge of the game. Picture: Super Ghouls´n Ghosts.

The original Dark Souls created a different type of gameplay, at the same time a return to the high difficulty of classical first-generation video games and a breakthrough in modern environmental storytelling and connectivity with other players.

By adding a coherent metaphysical explanation and background to its game mechanics, both gameplay and the philosophical background behind its narrative mutually reinforced each other. Dying in a video game, until then historically considered a lack of skill and a nuisance (which in arcade games was also costly in terms of money), became here something to be sought after.

The classic game design philosophy consisting of introducing the player to the game´s mechanics through easy introductory levels, only gradually increasing the difficulty, was gone.

Death became the only means by which the player could learn and overcome trials, with adversaries designed to kill you in your first encounter with them, sometimes in unfair ways, with no possibility of escape. Death, more clearly than ever, was emphasized. Attaining a “good death” through which the player could learn became one of the main secondary goals of the game.

Each death, moreover, became an event to share and celebrate. Players could see where and how other players died, as well as messages left by them explaining to others the obstacles that they could not overcome. Death united players. At the same time, it emphasized the main themes of the game, centered around how the protagonists are trapped in a cyclical existence and how to break it.

Without pain, there was no gain. This pain, however, was not random, as it rewarded the diligent. Hard work paid off.

3.1. Gameplay as an Act of Defiance

This gaming philosophy created stoic players who found meaning in a game that taught them useful life lessons applicable to their daily lives, as opposed to the trend towards excessively “soft” games that had taken hold in the industry. Through game mechanics, players found that they were better prepared to play the game of life.

In addition to being mere video games, Souls games were also a countercultural act of rebellion against the status quo, against a general culture of entitlement, victimism and outrage. It meant the return of the hard but rewarding times that would create the hard men needed to survive them.

This nascent genre became a refuge and at the same time a reclamation and a reconquest of a traditionally masculine space. They became one of the symbols of the increasing popularity of Stoicism, an alternative to decadent Western cultures that no longer provided adequate guidance to young men. The Zeitgeist was being challenged.

4. The Metaphysics of Dark Souls: Chaotic Unity against Painful Plurality

The Universe of Dark Souls is one of cycles. Life, proceeding from the First Flame, comes and goes, as does time, which ends and restarts as the Flame periodically fades away and is rekindled.

The Flame represents the Principle of Differentiation, being also the source of all dichotomies (polar opposites), such as light and darkness or life and death. When it fades, differences begin to blur, everything merging back to their pre-differentiated state (e.g., life and death becoming similar to each other, with humans becoming the Undead).

In such a time, reality starts collapsing and converging, with darkness predominating and the gods losing their power. To avoid this and to extend the Age of Fire, the bearer of a powerful Soul (the player) must link themselves to the First Flame, becoming the sacrificial fuel needed to start a new age. Alternatively, he can decide to let the Flame fade, ushering in an Age of Dark.

“As flame rises, so does it fade. Such is the way of things.
Do you intend to link the fire? Then you must first take the throne.
Prove your worth. Find the ancient crowns. Seek adversity, and they will be yours.
And your wishes, granted”

― Vendrick

Image 3. In Dark Souls, many characters worship the fire, the First Flame, from which everything came forth and to which it all will eventually return. The cycle of lives and deaths is, then, nothing more than the pseudo-illusory play of a fire that will eventually fade away, resting in the homogeneous darkness until a new cycle of manifestation begins.

4.1. The Not-So-Fictional Mythological Background of Dark Souls

The whole metaphysics of the Dark Souls series is summarized in the initial opening cinematic of the first game:

“In the Age of Ancients, the world was unformed, shrouded by fog. A land of gray crags, Archtrees and Everlasting Dragons. But then there was fire, and with fire came disparity. Heat and cold, life and death, and of course, light and dark. Then from the dark, they came, and found the Souls of Lords within the flame.[…] With the Strength of Lords, they challenged the Dragons.[…] Thus began the Age of Fire. But soon, the flames will fade, and only Dark will remain […]This is your fate.”

― Dark Souls (2011). Abridged opening cinematic [emphasis added]

In it, we find:

Impersonal Monism: in the form of the darkness from where it all proceeds, with dragons being the archetypical symbol of Chaos, an impersonal First Principle lacking definition. Here, everything in creation is contained in possibility but is not yet truly real. There is no clear distinction between an I and a Thou, as the notion of limit is not yet present.

Emanationism and Complementary Dualism: the first emanation, the First Flame, containing all duality by being a symbol of how a fire includes both the light that allows us to see everything that exists as well as the shadows it casts. Fire is the source of life, with Souls emanating from it. Therefore, Souls are also fire. This is an analogous concept to the popular Taoist Yin-Yang.

Rebellion against Fate: and the possibility of using the Flame (stealing the Fire from the gods, as in the myth of Prometheus) to take the heavens by storm. This self-deification is the opposite process and the necessary corollary of the doctrine of emanations, as sparks of fire are part of the fire that originated them, just as a wave in the ocean is part of the ocean itself.

Liberation from a Cyclical Existence: composed of successive Ages of opposite character.

The general worldview formed by the sum of these metaphysical ideas is, even if the symbolism used is partially original, extremely old. It is called Panentheism. However, its dark portrayal of ultimate reality and the theme of a war breaking out between the old and the new gods in order for the latter to gain supremacy is more similar to ancient Mesopotamian religion³. The rebellion against a fate imposed by an unworthy deity is also characteristic of Gnosticism⁴.

4.2. Additional Thematic Analysis

a. A Rebellion in Heaven: The War of Fire and the Souls of Lords

From the First Flame, Three Great Souls emanated: the Souls of Lords. The Lords, in turn, allied themselves with one of the Everlasting Dragons (Seath the Scaleless, the betrayer) and fought the rest, vanquishing them and claiming dominion over the world. The battle of the Hero/God against a dragon or serpentine creature is a classical motif found in many ancient mythologies.⁵

Image 4. From the impersonal Flame, the first Souls came forth. The highest reality of Dark Souls, as in all those who adhere to Panentheism, is a Principle or Force, not a personal God (hypostasis; as in Theism).

The Lords created kingdoms, becoming the first fathers of civilization. The golden Age of Fire began. The world was now under their rule, perceived as gods.

Image 5. The solar deity Gwyn used his thunderbolts, a classic symbol of Sky deities, to vanquish the Everlasting Dragons, symbols of Chaos. The appearance of differentiation, the concept of limit, allowed each particular Soul to manifest as a unique fragment of the Absolute by limiting the All-Potentiality of the Dark, of Chaos or the Void. This is a classical theme found in many ancient mythologies around the world.

b. A Fourth Beyond the Three and the Myth of Prometheus

A fourth unique Lord Soul, the Dark Soul⁶, was found by mankind´s progenitor, the Furtive Pygmy. Humans, being born of the one who stole the Fire from the gods, and containing fragments of the Dark Soul within them, were supposed to be the bringers of the Age of Dark. They are called the Undead.⁷

Image 6. Mankind´s father, the Furtive Pigmy, “found” in the Flame the principle of darkness, the Dark Soul, which mankind inherited. This highlights that fire (and its light) includes darkness, its opposite, in its essence.

The Undead, of which the player represents the Chosen One, are sent on a quest to ring the Bells of Awakening, slay the old gods (the bearers of Gwyn´s Soul, see below)⁸, and then offer those souls in order to open the path to the First Flame and change the fate of the world.

c. Primordial Serpents and the Self-Sacrifice of the Fearful Sky God

An important dialogue serving as a declaration of principles for the side of Dark is given by the Primordial Serpent Kaathe:

“Hmm… You are astonishing. The truth I shall share without sentiment.

After the advent of fire, the ancient lords found the three souls. But your progenitor found a fourth, unique soul. The Dark Soul.

Your ancestor claimed the Dark Soul and waited for Fire to subside. And soon, the flames did fade, and only Dark remained. Thus began the age of men, the Age of Dark.

However… Lord Gwyn trembled at the Dark. Clinging to his Age of Fire, and in dire fear of humans, and the Dark Lord who would one day be born amongst them, Lord Gwyn resisted the course of nature, by sacrificing himself to link the fire, and commanding his children to shepherd the humans, Gwyn has blurred your past, to prevent the birth of the Dark Lord.

Image 7. Due to it being a Lord Soul, the fragment of the Dark Soul present in every human being allows them to channel different iterations of Disparity (polarity), in this case, especially the pole of darkness, to which it is intrinsically attuned.

Being the smallest but potentially the mightiest of the four Lord Souls, it has the power to animate life and raise sentient beings from the Abyss, to which she is inherently linked. Mankind, instead of being born from God´s order and will, as in theistic religions, is in Dark Souls the purest embodiment of Chaos.

I am the primordial serpent. I seek to right the wrongs of the past to discover our true Lord. But the other serpent, Frampt, lost his sense, and befriended Lord Gwyn.

Undead warrior, we stand at the crossroad. Only I know the truth about your fate.

You must destroy the fading Lord Gwyn, who has coddled Fire and resisted nature, and become the Fourth Lord⁹, so that you may usher in the Age of Dark!”

Image 8. The Darksign is a mark put by Gwyn on the Dark Soul of every human to make them mortal. It is the symbol of mankind´s curse. Once they die, those branded with it are reborn, but will eventually become Hollow and lose their mind. The circular fire can be interpreted as solar symbolism, the Sun being “reborn” each day.

Gwyn, the Lord of Light, one of the Three¹⁰, and the first one to ever link the First Flame, is then depicted like an inverted and fearful Christ figure, sacrificing himself not to save humanity but to save the “gods” from humanity, quenching the intrinsic power of human nature to overcome the race of the gods and leading mankind intentionally astray, allowing them to create religions. He is also portrayed as a hypocrite, because he is trying to prevent the humans from following the same path that they themselves followed when they overthrew the dragons. Again, similarities with the Enuma Elish can be drawn, where the relationship of the gods with mankind is less than ideal.

5. Metaphysics of Choice: Dialectics and False Dilemmas

Apart from all the above, many other game mechanics can be considered as conveying metaphysical notions. Not all of them, however, are obvious.

In games where the story is the main attraction (e.g., adventure games, role-playing games) the very fact that the player has to decide between a limited number of options may be hiding important metaphysical presuppositions that are not always easy to see.

A game may confront the player, for example, with a false dilemma. This could take the form of two antagonistic and incompatible alternatives in a scenario that in real life might have more options. Thus, by constraining choices to dichotomies that represent polar opposites, the game would be implicitly endorsing a worldview that does not believe in the possibility of transcending this duality.

As discussed HERE and HERE, a dialectical either/or logic such as this would be compatible with some worldviews but not with others.

Image 9. The worship of fire is common in Dark Souls. The player has the choice of either sacrificing himself to rekindle it and make it last or letting it die out. It is implied that the latter is the true purpose of mankind, born of darkness and growing stronger with it.

This is typical of role-playing games that have implemented a system of morality (Good/Evil), or more often one of order (Order/Chaos), to track the player´s choices that will define how the story concludes.

More advanced games, such as those in the Shin Megami Tensei franchise and its spin-offs (e.g., Persona), include however a greater variety of choices than mere dichotomical ones. It is here where the most important metaphysical implications (and worldview promotion) can be found.

A typical categorization of the possible choices presented to the player in many of these games, leading to markedly different endings in their aggressively esoteric narratives, follows:

Option A: The Path of Light, Good, Law and Order. Excessive order, however, is portrayed as being a limiting factor for the growth and expression of the individual, bearing inside the potential seed of tyranny.

Option B: The Path of Darkness, Evil and Chaos. Associated with freedom and individuality but also with the suffering and inequality that absolute selfish freedom can cause in the other.

Option C: The Path of Neutrality. An equidistant position that implies avoiding taking any side in the cyclical conflict between both poles just mentioned. Opposites coexist in tension but more or less balance each other out. This option means going back to the beginning, to a period of uneasy truce between A and B that will, however, not last.

Option D: Breaking the Rules and Escaping the Cycle. Usually a special ending with multiple requirements to obtain it, implicitly assumed to be the best and true one. This option stops the periodic alternation between A and B, while rejecting C’s passive conflict avoidance.

The player thus manages to free himself from the tyranny of the opposites. He wins the game by not agreeing to play it, sometimes killing its Creator (or challenging him) in the process. Often representing the totality of mankind, the player becomes his own Law, setting the new terms of the game and emancipating himself from the periodical mutual necessity of light and darkness (Complementary Dualism). He is able to do so by coming into contact with the impersonal primordial reality that is the real source behind this polarity, or by integrating these opposites inside himself.

In the more complex games, option D, furthermore, can include additional paths antagonistic to each other:

D1: The Selfish New Lord. The player becomes the new Law with only selfish intentions in mind. He is a representation of pure mundane ego.

D2: The Sacrificial New God. The player inaugurates a new age (the Age of Man), creating a better world for all, sometimes at the cost of his own sacrifice.

Games that allow the player to choose option D suggest a worldview in line with Panentheism and Non-Dualism, while those that do not are more Manichaean in nature.

Image 10. The Usurper of Fire (I). Becoming a modern Prometheus, the players can steal “the fire of the gods”, uniting the darkness of their Dark Soul-born essence with the First Flame. This union of opposites is symbolized by the fiery black Sun turning pale.

5.1. The Unacknowledged Presuppositions Behind the Allowed Choices

The above options constrain the player´s thinking into a series of choices that are not necessarily neither exclusive nor comprehensive.

What initially seems like a wide range of potential solutions available to the metaphysical problem presented to the player is actually limited by the game’s implicit choice in favor of dialectics and its three main presuppositions:

The cyclical nature of A and B.

The equidistance and complementarity of A and B, being two sides of the same coin, both ultimately undesirable temporary solutions.
The subordination of both A and B to D, which precedes and transcends them.

In short, the player cannot choose, nor is he allowed to conceive, a solution to the conflict that does not follow the above presuppositions. During his time within the game world, he has to assume its particular logic, everything else becoming unthinkable.

THE UNRECOGNISED ALTERNATIVE CHOICE – [Click Here]

How Would a Trinitarian Non-Dialectical Solution Look Like?

If we were to represent a non-dialectical Trinitarian (Christian) position in the game, which the previous scheme does never contemplate:

B would be derived from A, being its mere negation and lacking true ontological reality. Therefore, B could be a choice but never a real solution to the problem: it would be a bad choice.

Option D, furthermore, by including B, would not be a real option either. In fact, it may be understood as an excuse to include B and provide it with an ontological justification.

Choosing A, instead of generating a new temporal cycle of order, would mean that B ceases to exist forever at the same time that the player becomes the “new” Law by being the receptacle of the previous one (D´= the player not only choosing but becoming A). This is the Christian concept of salvation or deification (Theosis), contrary to the process of return of Panentheism, which involves complementary dualism (A+B=D).

In short, a Christian solution would imply no cycles, the affirmation of the transient (not complementary) nature of B, and the existence of a transcendent God not defined by the hermetic Principle of Polarity.

5.2. Choices in Dark Souls

In Dark Souls, the player can choose between two endings of the Manichean type;

To Link the Fire (A): the player, embodying the Chosen Undead, offers himself and all the Souls collected as a sacrifice for rekindling the First Flame, a symbol of the Principle of Differentiation and Order. He is consumed by the flames and the Age of Fire is renewed, continuing the curse of the Undead (mankind) for another cycle. The world is reset.
The Dark Lord (B+D): where the player chooses not to rekindle the First Flame, thus ending the Age of Order and bringing back the Age of Dark (pre-formal Chaos), where there is no light and realities are in a greater stage of unity and confusion (e.g., life and death, places and timelines begin to merge). The player is revered by the Primordial Serpents¹¹, who bow down before him, the new monarch of all creatures. In this ending, the player becomes the law of the new world, including options B and D mentioned above.¹² This is a common theme in Japanese media (e.g., Rebuild of Evangelion).

Image 11. In the End of Fire ending, the Firekeeper, following the will of the player, extinguishes the Flame. A new, ill-defined age of darkness begins. Flame and Order will, however, eventually come back.

In the last game of the series however, which is Dark Souls III, the player has available additional options that flesh out more the “break the cycle” ending in the schema discussed above. In the last game of the trilogy, Option B becomes the End of Fire ending, leaving the previous self-deification of the player (D) for two new and more explicit endings:

Betrayal (D1): In addition to the standard Linking of The Fire and End of Fire endings, which are explicitly explained to be temporal solutions, the player can now choose to betray the Fire Keeper¹³, striking her and taking the Flame for himself. Players who follow this path are called accursed for their selfishness. This ending, in addition, is the only one that does not unlock an achievement, emphasizing that it is not a good one.
The Usurper of Fire (D2): Dark Souls´ version of the archetypical true ending, for which the player has to work harder. To obtain this ending, the player has to perform a series of tasks, including marrying a character named Anri. Anri’s gender is always the opposite of the player character’s gender, implying Complementary Dualism¹⁴. The player relinks the Flame to himself, “stealing” the power of god, and becomes the Lord of the New Age, the Age of Man.

Image 12. The Usurper of Fire (II). After usurping the fire, the player becomes the new Lord of all creation. A new and unknown Age begins, leaving behind the dichotomy between light and darkness that the protagonist has managed to re-unite in himself.

5.3. Choices in Elden Ring

The pattern described above continued with Elden Ring, the last game of the creators of Dark Souls and one of the most acclaimed videogames of recent times, which counted George R.R. Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire [Game of Thrones]) as one of its main writers in charge of its worldbuilding.

In Elden Ring, the endings available represent the eternal struggle between Order and Chaos, as always, but this time the esoteric concepts that it wants to transmit are even more explicit, especially in the special ending that we are about to discuss.

In this game´s Universe, Order is represented by the Greater Will and its Two Fingers, his messengers. Order, as the First Flame in Dark Souls, represents the Principle of Differentiation that allows particular beings to exist. There can be many implementations of this Order, however.¹⁵ The Frenzied Flame and its Three Fingers, on the other hand, represents this time the side of Chaos.¹⁶

Image 13. Lord of the Frenzied Flame. If the player chooses the side of absolute Unity, represented as Chaos, the entire world burns, de-creating all that exists and turning it back into homogeneous energy that goes back to its source, the void from which it all sprang forth. It is the end of difference, understood as opposition (dialectics), and the suffering that goes with it.

The Complementary Dualism (Unity of Opposites) and underlying Monism of Elden Ring´s worldview is this time made evident not only by the cyclical and interconnected nature of Order and Chaos but also by the fact that the representatives of both, the Fingers, constitute a whole: a human hand of five fingers. This also suggests that they are an intrinsic part of mankind´s nature, trying to lure the player to become a host for their respective ideology.

a. Elden Ring´s Creation Myth

In the creation myth of Elden Ring´s world, the Greater Will fractured the One Great a long time ago, thus bringing everything into existence, including Souls. The adherents of the Three Fingers consider this action to be a mistake because it resulted in torment, despair, affliction, sins and curses:

“All that there is came from the One Great. Then came fractures, and births, and souls. But the Greater Will made a mistake. Torment, despair, affliction. Every sin, every curse. Every one, born of the mistake.”

― Lightseeker Hyetta

Therefore, the original fault that brought suffering (seen as connatural to existence) into the world was God´s own doing, being an immanent deity subject to dialectical categories, such as life and death. No possibility of individual existence beyond suffering is conceived. It is either the unfeeling One, or the suffering Many.

This is the same as affirming that in order to have a personality you have to suffer inside the realm of duality. The One, then, becomes Chaos, the necessary evil of All-Possibility, far removed from the theistic notions of a benevolent personal God that elevates the saved without absorbing their uniqueness (Theosis).

Elden Ring´s story, then, is the battle in the Lands Between (akin to the Astral Plane) of the representatives of the different ideologies to decide the Reason that will rule the New Cycle. Literally, a fight to establish a New World Order. Should we shed our personalities and become one again (Chaos) or remain as separated individuals in a more or less ordered world of dichotomies and struggle? Should the New Order include death or not?

This is the same exact narrative template followed by Dark Souls and other popular franchises focused on transmitting the same panentheistic metaphysical concepts, such as Shin Megami Tensei.

b. The New Age of the Stars

Given that the underlying worldview is the same, it is just natural that the special ending of Elden Ring (D) also follows the same pattern discussed above, symbolizing man´s emancipation from the “gods” and its liberation from the eternal cycles created by the love/hate relationship between Order and Chaos. In this ending, to no one´s surprise, the protagonist is able to remove the influence of The Greater Will from the Lands Between and bring peace to mankind through his efforts of self-deification.¹⁷

The protagonist, the Tarnished, summons Ranni the Witch, the replacement of the previous Lord and Reason of the world, the crucified Queen Marika. This new Goddess takes the Tarnished as her Elden Lord and¹⁸ brings a New Order of her own, the Order of the Dark Moon, consisting of the new couple of gods departing from the Lands Between for the whole Age. As a result of their absence, the Lands Between are left without a Lord for the first time in an Age (Deus Otiosus), giving mankind absolute freedom.

In her final cutscene, Ranni proclaims:

“…The battle is over, I see.
I do solemnly swear. To every living being, and every living soul.
Now cometh the age of the stars.
A thousand year voyage under the wisdom of the Moon.¹⁹
Here beginneth the chill night that encompasses all, reaching the great beyond […].”

With the original Japanese translation continuing as follows:²⁰

“My order will not be of gold, but of the stars and moon, and chill night.
…I want to keep it far away from this land.
…Even if life and souls are one with the order, if (the order) could be kept far away
If it was not possible to clearly see, feel, believe in, or touch the order… That would be better.”

Image 14. The Crucified Queen of the Dark Sun. Queen Marika the Eternal is the ruler of the Lands Between when the game begins. Not always a demigod, she was an Empyrean who ascended to godhood and became the vessel of the Elden Ring.

The concept of Complementary Dualism is key in her character design: as an Empyrean, she was gifted a Shadow (her half-brother Maliketh). Desiring a world free of Death, she removed the Rune of Death from the Elden Ring, her shadow becoming its guardian, and creating the actual Order of the world.

Thus, at the same time that she is the crucified who sacrificed herself to remove death from the world (obvious Christian symbolism), she is Death herself (the red spear that mimics the “Lance of Longinus” on her side). God has a Shadow (god as the Absolute, Panentheism).

The latter, obviously, is a notion alien to Christian theology, where god is Life and death is the temporal consequence of sin, with no ontological reality. In addition, the “cross” in Elden Ring is a mere astrological symbol. Another crucial difference is that it is heavily implied that Marika wants to remove the influence of the Greater Will on the Lands Between, being its slave, thus being linked with the Age of Stars ending.

Given all the above, the character is closer to a representation of Prometheus than of Jesus Christ, even if clothed in Christian symbolism, with the player being analogous to Heracles, who after a series of arduous tasks liberated him.

Mankind, then, abandons The Greater Will and becomes its own Law. The child has outgrown the Father.

Image 15. The New Age of Emancipated Men. In the Age of the Stars ending, mankind gains freedom from the gods, as it finds itself under a new deity (the union of the player and a morally ambiguous demigod) whose aim is to maintain existence from afar, without influencing the course of events. Daylight and its warm light give way to the Age of the Night, the Moon, and its cold light. Instead of the overarching rule of the one Sun, the many Stars. Each being becomes a law unto themselves.

6. Conclusion

Game mechanics in video games are necessary instruments to visually represent and reinforce concepts associated with how the reality of a particular game world works. They are also the link between the player and this world. This is accomplished through classical learning techniques linked with the punishment and reward mechanisms of our brain (classical and operant conditioning).

If these mechanics, in addition, are linked to a metaphysical background that mimics that of certain worldviews present in the real world, such as those discussed in this article, the player sees certain concepts reinforced while others are discouraged or not even acknowledged.

In the case of games that are portrayed as a journey of self-discovery for the player, providing several possible endings, certain choices are more or less explicitly preferred over others. The presence of false dilemmas and the implicit assumption of pre-suppositions that need not be true (e.g., the Unity of Opposites), however, restrict the player’s freedom of choice, more apparent than real, to a few non-comprehensive options. All of them, moreover, by being limited by the same dialectical paradigm, constrain the players’ thought process to operate within it. This happens especially when such mechanics transcend a particular game and become a staple of the genre as a whole.

We have discussed the prevalent presence in many modern games of doctrines such as cyclical existence, dialectical logic and Complementary Dualism. We could also discuss other relevant notions that affect all video games as a whole, such as the concept of an avatar (how the player is the true Self behind all playable characters, which act as mere masks where he can project himself into), or the very nature of video games as virtual worlds (illusory reality). In general, they all tend to fit with a panentheistic vision of the world.²¹

However, it is not necessary to go into an exhaustive analysis to realize that the marriage of a particular type of classical metaphysics with coherent and mutually reinforcing game mechanics is intentional and, at the very least, interesting.

We leave it to one’s own judgment to decide why this modern trend always seems to represent the same esoteric doctrines while inverting others.²²

Notes

International video game revenue surpassed the $142 B mark in 2022 alone [1], with this being almost double the revenue of the international cinema industry in 2023.[2]
This is mainly due to the greater time commitment involved in playing video games compared to watching a film. The more amazingimmersion achieved, in this case, is paid for in time.
See the Babylonian creation myth, the Enuma Elish.
Click HERE for further discussion on Gnosticism.
See, for example: Sri Aurobindo´s explanation of the battle of Indra against the serpent Vritra in the Secret of the Vedas; the Mesopotamian myth of Marduk conquering the dragon Tiamat; Susanoo battling Orochi in Japan; Zeus slaying Typhon and Apollo killing Python in Greece.

Mircea Eliade´s Patterns in Comparative Religion can be a good source to obtain a summary of the basic structure behind most ancient beliefs.
This tenet of souls as holy (or unholy, in this case) fragments of a higher reality is most explicit in Lurianic Kabbalah and Gnosticism (further discussion HERE).

The idea of Souls as parts and pieces of the One instead of complete individuals is contrary to the Christian view where particular persons are seen as unique modes of existence of the full image of God present in them.
In the game, the Scholar of the First Sin (Aldia) considers the willing concealment of this human nature, the pretension that humans are by nature mortal, to be the First Sin.

This, again, inverts the Christian notion of sin, which signifies acting contrary to our own nature. Stating that human nature is inherently divine in essence is, for a Christian, the lie of the serpent in the Genesis narrative.
Thus, by collecting Souls, the player effectively integrates inside of him all the other possibilities of existence which they represent, becoming whole. This is coherent with pantheist/panentheist worldviews that believe in the Absolute, the All, as the ultimate reality.
In Dark Souls´ world, the bearer of a strong soul is also seen as a potential Lord, being able to link his essence to the First Flame in order to become the fuel necessary to rekindle it for another Age, if so they desire. Individuals, then, are understood as particular manifestations of a form of energy. It is implied, however, that in the end the Age of Fire will have to end, everything becoming One again.
The number four has always represented the world of the senses, of physical existence, or actualized duality (two squared).

It is thus significant that the Fourth overcomes the Three, reinforcing the message that the Age of Man has triumphed and left behind the Age of the Gods.
The serpent and the dragon being a symbol of primordial Chaos in many ancient mythologies that, once conquered, are the substance from where the world is made (e.g., Tiamat).
The theme of man finding his own way beyond that of the destiny created for him by the lords of previous Ages is expressed throughout the game, for example, through characters such as Solaire of Astora, a charismatic knight seeking “his own Sun“.

This is a common theme in Japanese media (e.g., Rebuild of Evangelion).
A personification of the energies of that impersonal god that is the First Flame. If the First Flame can be said to represent the Logos of the Stoics or the Nous of Neo-Platonism, the Fire Keeper is equivalent to the World Soul of Plotinus´s system, the third emanation in the series after the One and Nous.
Analogous to the alchemical Rebis and to the Jungian Anima/Animus theory.
For example, depending on its inclusion or exclusion of death from reality.
The Frenzied Flame being the Outer God of Chaos, to be precise. The three Fingers seek to imbue a host with the Frenzied Flame curse, so that they might become the Lord of Frenzy and destroy the world, returning it to the primal state of Chaos from before the Greater Will arrived in the Lands Between.
This takes place after defeating the Elden Beast, representing the power or energies of the One Will.

The player, then, decides against mending the Elden Ring, the “concept” that gives name to the game and that impersonates the order (Logos) of the Age.

The triumphant player is able to control the energies of god (the ring is described as the “giver of grace“) to make real his vision. The promethean motif so prevalent in these games returns.
In esoteric writings the Moon and the sublunar domain represent dualism and the created order, opposite to the solar symbolism of god and absolute unity used for Marika.

It is also appropriate that the character bringing in this ending is depicted as a witch because Wicca is today´s most popular representative of a dualist worldview (Duo-Theism: Horned God and Triple Goddess [Moon]).
The English translation having been accused of being mistranslated and unclear.
All this is analogous, for example, to the Hindu conception of Brahman as a deity that keeps forgetting and discovering itself in its eternal play (Lila) inside the myriad illusory worlds (Maya) emanated from it.

A player who plays video games where the principal character becomes deified and discovers his intrinsic divine nature, such as the ones mentioned in this article, is a perfect representation of this.
For additional discussion on this topic, click HERE.

Discussed in this Article

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Dark Souls Trilogy. Bandai Namco.
Elden Ring. Bandai Namco.
Demon’s Souls. Sony.

METAPHYSICAL CONCEPT ANALYSIS

The Metaphysics of Gameplay: Death and Rebirth as Spiritual Growth

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SUMMARY OF SYMBOLS AND RELATED CONCEPTS / WORLDVIEWS