Game Editor Jude Emmanuel-Nwosu delves into the versatility of Death and the Underworld in the Gaming Space, charting where our storytelling obsession with the macabre springs from.
Death –as a concept – has proven to be an invaluable source of inspiration for video games over many years. There are countless games where a dead character has served as inspiration for the protagonist, or the goal is to simply avoid death for as long as possible. There have even been games where dying is essential to the gameplay, such as Sifu, Returnal, and Death Stranding. Further, there is a trend of using a realm of the dead as a setting for a game.
Supergiant Games’ roguelike Hades, is the most popular example of this ‘realm of the dead’ trend, but a growing number of games use a fictional underworld as a setting too. Have a Nice Death, is another roguelike, developed by indie studio Magic Design Studios, which has the player control Death, the CEO of Death Incorporated, through his mismanaged workplace – which also serves as the afterlife – as he attempts to whip his subordinates back into shape. In Bayonetta 2, the titular witch deviates from her usual angelic killing spree and ventures to Inferno, the universe’s underworld, to rescue her fellow witch Jeanne from the clutches of death.
Dante popularised the idea of Hell being an organised place with rules and specific places and torments for its inhabitants, with the numerous circles of Hell.
Despite its prevalence in games, using the underworld as a setting in a piece of media is far from a novel idea. The renowned 14th century epic poem, The Divine Comedy, is known for its depiction of Hell through which Dante, the protagonist – and author self-insert – travels. Dante popularised the idea of Hell being an organised place with rules and specific places and torments for its inhabitants, with the numerous circles of Hell. This makes the underworld feel more like a society of sorts with rules and categories.
The idea of travelling through the underworld on a quest has persisted in mythology and literature for centuries. While Dante’s adventures through Hell shows the unique structure of the place, stories like the Epic of Gilgamesh and the myth of the twelfth labour of Heracles feature the protagonist exploring the realm of the dead with a purpose. However, none of the above have proven as popular as the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.
The tragic story between these lovers features the Greek underworld of Hades front and centre and is one of the few Greek myths to do so. The ending of their myth being so preventable infuses the story with a human element, grounding the supernatural premise of rescuing a lover from her premature end.
The protagonist does not even need to be alive for a plot in the afterlife to work; they could be trying to revive themselves by escaping the underworld.
All of these are sources of inspiration that make Death and the realm of the dead a setting ripe with potential for stories. The Underworld is such a universal concept that anyone can immediately understand it as a setting. Dante gave the afterlife enough worldbuilding to feel like the underworld had a structure to it and yet, because the idea of an afterlife is so subjective, people can put their own spin on it – one person’s underworld can be vastly different from another’s.
Stories like that of Orpheus give a relatable quest for the protagonist to enter the underworld in the first place. However, stories about the underworld need not be exclusively tragic romances. Reviving a loved one is a quest that you can give to practically any protagonist, but one can visit the underworld to meet a specific person or if your protagonist is especially bold they can endeavour to kill whoever governs the afterlife, be it a god or death personification. The protagonist does not even need to be alive for a plot in the afterlife to work; they could be trying to revive themselves by escaping the underworld.
after all - you can’t kill what’s already dead
For games specifically, an underworld setting fits perfectly. Designing enemies can be just as creatively stimulating as outlining the netherworld setting itself. These inhabitants could represent the foulest aspects of humanity who attack on instinct, making them memorable but also easy to cut down, or they can be sympathetic souls driven to violence by their fate.
These are just two possibilities out of many. It can provide explanations for some of the video game norms; it makes more sense for enemies to respawn in the underworld, after all - you can’t kill what’s already dead. The same logic can work for an undead protagonist like Zagreus from Hades.
Death has been a popular source of inspiration across all forms of storytelling media for centuries. It is only natural that it is just as prevalent in the most novel and interactive narrative medium: games.