Hello everyone, I'm finally back after a long period of absence, having written just the introduction of this blog; a very productive period awaits me, and I'll start right away with some analysis of Soul Sacrifice, action game developed by Japan Studio and PS Vita exclusive.
This game striked me, so much that I decided to prioritise it to many other projects that I have in mind; I haven't finished it, not at all, I have just a few hours of gameplay but that was enough to begin writing. Soul Sacrifice drags you in an endless spiral of darkness, time expands and your vision of the external world changes while you play, making it more tense and austere; those effects have been possible because I played it on train, accompanied by a somber sky and a static landscape. Our world will not appear threatening, but as you observe from the outside you realize that our Earth is often the result of much hatred, key element in the game that we can find in creation and first civilizations.
Earth and sky have been created by two twin Giants who originally were One and then split: younger Giant's envy forced him to earthly roots, while his older brother dominates the sky and is most adored. Human kind is already corrupted at creation, being born out of the younger Giant's hatred, who contaminated souls and nature itself; humans are divided into two civilizations, the Romulus and the Druids: at first glance those names threw me back to Roman Empire, precisely the long period of wars between Romans and Celts. This intuition allowed me to narrow down society, economics and technologic development of Soul Sacrifice's world, projecting every cultural aspect in that precise historical period. Similarly to history, the Druids are deeply entwined with earth's worship and are overpowered by Romulus, venerating the sky instead and greater by numbers. The defeated population will be assimilated by the Empire and forced to live in great minority, even if some rituals and cultural habits are not pursued. Druid's rituals take part in sorcery, their most powerful skill used to summon spirits and defeat monsters.
Monsters are generated by grief and wars occurred between Romulus and Druids, and they are merely corrupted humans transformed in Archfiends; Druids's purpose is to kill these monsters, making them Romulus's personal assassins in change of protection; homicide inevitably corrupts the sorcerer's soul, because he must seal Archfiends souls inside his body and become a monster himself, sooner or later.
The world is shrouded in a spiral of death and eternal damnation, and it'll be way more interesting to understand the causes of this sorrow than the actual gameplay against monsters. Librom will lead us to this purpose: he is an unknown sorcerer's magical book, containing a lot of explanations on natural changements and Archfiends single stories, humans victims of history and society, lead to exasperation by some events that are seemingly harmless, but full of psychological influences. In Part II of this analysis we will closely watch some of these Archfiends; for the time being we will just say that philosophically speaking, man is evil by nature in Soul Sacrifice's universe, and he has no mean of redemption, not even with religious or practical actions; this because the primordium itself is corrupted, made by an envious Giant and another one, defender of justice and reason but undoubtedly pleased with his sovereignty. The obvious result is that the world is unbalanced and inclined towards darkness, making it impossible for me to blame Archfiend's previous human behaviour: their stories arouse compassion and understanding in my mind and heart. Druids were maybe the only glimpse of justice and good manners, but were forced to live by a necessary evil, making them worst than Romulus.
Soul Sacrifice has a very schopenhauerian vision of world, described as hell in every inch: if man's and primordium's root is a strong sense of self-preservation, and by consequence the fulfillment of personal longings, the ever growing and unattainable desire will lead to boredom and pain; Archfiends always tried to achieve a particular desire, attainable in change of a "low" price to pay (we will see some examples in the future), but presupposed in a certain way, making the original desired partially fulfilled, or not fulfilled at all. The Archfiend will continue to drive himself mad, as all creatures that will not be able to fulfill themselves in this world. Soul Sacrifice's Earth is really Schopenhauer's definition of hell. The evil intrinsic in all creatures forces them in a vicious cycle, greatly summarized by german philosopher in the following quote: " For the world is Hell, and men are on the one hand the tormented souls and on the other the devils in it".
Tearful Tone will gently accompany you in this abyss, and served as inspiration for the analysis; see you soon for the second part!
