The Strange Melancholy of Slaying Monsters
- Video games have traditionally used a "player-versus-environment" model of monster slaying for accomplishment, but many titles subvert this ritual to introduce ethical dilemmas and an elegiac tone.
- In the Western tradition, the concept of the "tragic monster killer" dates back to J.R.R. Tolkien’s analysis of Beowulf, which rejects the notion of martial heroism as its own end and acknowledges the inevitable ruin of the warrior.
- Games like Shadow of the Colossus highlight this moral complexity by forcing players to slay peaceful, majestic creatures; the game lacks regular enemies and presents the colossi's deaths with agonizing visual effects and mournful music rather than a celebratory fanfare.
- Titles such as Dark Souls and Bloodborne reinforce a melancholic atmosphere by designing bosses characterized by deep sorrow and tragic descents into ruin, mirroring Friedrich Nietzsche's warning about becoming a monster when fighting them.
- Mainstream titles like BioShock, Spec Ops: The Line, and God of War incorporate the "false hero" trope, forcing players to confront their complicity in violence or show resignation toward inescapable gaming conventions.
- The indie game Undertale subverts RPG norms by humanizing its quirky monsters and allowing players to spare them through non-violent negotiation, ultimately revealing that classic progression mechanics like EXP and LV stand for "execution points" and "level of violence."
Hacker News Discussion
- Personal Experiences of Disenchantment: Several commenters shared specific gameplay moments where accidentally humanizing a virtual opponent permanently altered their perception of video game violence, including a player who quit Skyrim after realizing they had slaughtered a homeless bandit family for meaningless loot.
- The Psychology of Fiction and Reality: A discussion developed around how players reconcile virtual actions; while most understand that video game enemies are just code, the introduction of narrative texture and realistic consequences can pierce the layer of abstraction and invoke genuine guilt or melancholy.
- Military Shooters and Propaganda: Some users recalled playing tactical shooters like Operation Flashpoint, where the sudden realization of the geopolitical absurdity or human cost behind a simulated conflict broke their immersion and temporarily ruined first-person shooters for them.
- Intentional Game Design: Participants praised developers who deliberately use ludonarrative resonance—aligning gameplay mechanics with the narrative—to challenge the mindless power fantasies common to the medium.
