Summary
Everything with a beginning must have an end. Some stories like to extrapolate this idea out to its most maximal possible version: the end of everything. Many video games feature cataclysmic disastersor near-apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic settings. There are a handful that take the player’s hand and lead them to the edge, providing video games' own speculative vision as to what the end of the world might look like.
The result is a fantastically diverse array of games with visuals ranging from the bleak to the beautiful, some are all action with big implications and others focus on the minutiae such as talking and walking. Certainly, none of them shy away from the fact that the importance of beginnings is matched by their ending.
Rise Of The Kung Fu Machines
Xenogears
A mysterious organization is turning the tides of a century-long war with ancient technology - giant combat robots known as Gears. A failed attempt to steal one of these powerful mechanized weapons places it in the unwilling hands of a young Fei and his dubious allies. Now he is pursued by military governments, royal pirates, spies, the emperor, and his own forgotten past.
A setting so far-flung into the future that advanced technology has been lost and rediscovered, much of it appearing akin to magic rather than science for many of the world’s inhabitants. Mutated pockets of humanity, God (sort of), a story and lore that encompasses millenniums in the telling and is quite hard to comprehend the first time through; the list of Dying Earth genre hallmarks on display goes on.
There is so much in here that most of the second disc is really the game sitting the player down and asking, “Do you see?”, as it forces a long series of slides and scenes presented like amateur theater as it attempts to convey… a lot. However, it was well ahead of its time and even playing it today the sheer scope and experimentalist ideology ofXenogearsis mind-boggling.
Hideo Kojima has always been known for his unique stories and the bizarre yet heartfelt cast of characters populating them. His take on the Dying Earth genre presented withinDeath Strandingis no different. The only game on the list explicitly dealing with extinction on Earth and, as is so often the way with Kojima games, whilst being absurdly fantastical, it manages to be eerily prophetic. The irony of playing a character who is rarely in proximity with others and dislikes being touched wasn’t lost on anybody playing it through the COVID-19 pandemic.
With gameplayfocused on traversalthrough the terrifying version of Earth’s extinction: bereft of animal life, devoid of company, where death causes huge explosions called “voidouts,” and even the rain ages anything caught in it by years, it can be a somber and scary affair. Yet, at other times, slowly journeying across mountains as an ethereal track byLow Roarkicks in just as the destination comes into view, it can be painfully beautiful.
Like many children’s classics,The Legend of Zeldaseries isn’t afraid of handling mature and dark subjects, none more so thanMajora’s Mask. Considered anS-tierZeldagameand also the series' darkest entry,Majora’s Maskwastes no time in setting the scene. Link is stuck in a Groundhog day like scenario except at the end of each cycle the moon will crash into Termina and the player must restart the game; thus, truly making it feel like everything that was just there has gone.
Of course, this fate can be avoided. Link’s quest is to stop this world-ending event from occurring and while this is the endgame accomplishment, it certainly isn’t the lasting impression left on the player. There is an inescapable knowledge of the inevitable and a mistrust of the Moon while playing through this game.
The set-up here is similar to a lot of dark fantasy stories: an ancient evil thought long gone has returned, turmoil between species (and the factions within), the gods are dead and the world seems soon to follow. However, it differs in three main areas. For one, it uses Norse inspiration but creates a completely unique world and lore, so the story is new to everyone. Two, it has a gorgeous art style reminiscent of Ralph Bakshi movies. Third and most importantly, how the story unfolds depends massively on player choice.
Many games have boasted to have impact through player choice but few deliver so well and to such a scale asThe Banner Saga. Characters may live or die, plot threads are revealed or remain hidden and the world may end or not, all depending on choices made by the player.
Even Death is dead in The Lands Between. The player character, one of the “Tarnished”, is a being resurrected by “Grace”. Much of the world and populace ofElden Ringgives the feeling of something dead, passed its time but forced to go on and remain in some sorry state or another.
The first entry in the list directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki and undoubtedly the closest in parallels toThe Book of the New Sun, a series of classic novels of the Dying Earth genre written by Gene Wolf. The slow reveal that the Lands Between is as much of a sci-fi setting as a fantasy one is masterfully integrated through the little details given away in item descriptions andprogressively otherworldly foes.
So often, the instigator of the dying Earth within the Dying Earth genre is the oncoming death of the Sun.Outer Wildsshares this scenario but expands the concerns of the player beyond the end of one measly planet to an entire solar system. Making space travel feel both comforting in one moment and terrifying in the next is already quite an achievement but even more impressive is just how much feeling is injected into such a large explorable area.
LikeMajora’s Mask, the protagonist ofOuter Wildsis alsostuck in a time loop, only 22 minutes long, before the Sun becomes a supernova absorbing the entire system. The player must learn to make the most of each cycle and is given total freedom as to how they go about it, becoming an adept spacefarer in the process.
Nierfocuses on relationships in the end times: siblings, parental, romantic, and alienated. Eventhe weapons acquiredby the unnamed protagonist have a tale to impart. This is a truly thought-provoking action RPG where the setting is the plot and the characters are the story.
Nieruses its limited assets to the utmost, delivering tidbits of information through the scenery and side characters and then providing completely different takes on events through the subsequent replays necessary to see the different endings. There isn’t really a straightforward “happy/good” ending, which is very fitting, as the same can be said for the characters and world.
Dark Soulsis the perfect example of the Dying Earth genre. A beautiful but fading world and the desperation to hold onto that, to hold onto something, is all pervasive. Everyone has needs, a quest, and a purpose. Without it, only hollowness awaits. In the end, everyone succumbs. The horrific holds a sense of tragedy and sometimes sensitivity, whereas nobility and extravagant beauty are often proved to be cruel and ostentatious. Everything once unquestionably true and solid is unraveling, laid bare for the player’s eyes.
Though there were two sequels, both striving to deliver the same message, nothing takes away from the feeling that this world is ending and that ultimatelyno matter the character build, which ending is chosen or that the player will not be there to experience that very final moment where the world no longer exists, that is still what will happen. It’s all there for a moment, unlike any other, and then gone, forever.
