Playing with Religion in Digital Games

6. Citing the Medieval: Using Religion as World-Building Infrastructure in Fantasy MMORPGs

134 “A betrayal. A curse. The Age of Strife Begins. . . . Warriors, heroes, and adventurers begin the restoration. . . . What role will you play? Join the battle for supremacy or let chaos rule. Shadowbane.” This resonant baritone voiceover to the cinematic introduction to Wolfpack’s 2003 massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) lists dualistic clichés of fantasy role-playing games as the camera pans over scenes of armed three-dimensional male bodies engaged in combat, shooting arrows, casting spells, wielding siege engines, and arguing over strategy at campaign tables. As the only opportunity for cinematic narrative in the game, this opening video informs each new player that the game loading on their screen offers more than the realistic mechanics of premodern warfare. The conflict they are about to join is purposeful , each player a participant in a tragic battle originating in religious violence, which will frame their game experience as part of a war-torn world’s history. The cutscene’s camera slowly pans over the runes etched on the blade of a bloody sword thrust into the shattered trunk of a dying tree, capturing a moment of tragic betrayal when Cambruin, a mighty human king, was transfixed to the World Tree. As his blood ran down the tree’s trunk, the Shadowbane blade petrified the tree, shattering creation. TherunesappearupsidedownandbackwardonShadowbane’sblade, in the medieval runic alphabet known as the Elder Futhark. The letters transliterate into the roman alphabet as a meaningless cluster of consonants :“h-d-z-p-t-th-s,”butthedirectorof thisvideocertainlydidnotexpectthatitssubscriberswouldbeabletoreadearlyGermaniclanguages . Citing the Medieval Using Religion as World-Building Infrastructure in Fantasy MMORPGs six Rabia Gregory Citing the Medieval 135 Rather, those familiar with the game’s lore are expected to recognize the seven “runes of power,” whose meaning supersedes any linguistic purpose. The camera’s slow pan over their angular forms on the bloody blade identify the sword as the legendary Shadowbane, transporting the viewer to the instant after the sword pierced and shattered the World Tree. This event irrevocably altered the cycle of life and death for the world of Aerynth. The cinematic trailer then dissolves to login and character creation screens, allowing players to mark the bodies of their own avatars with runes that determine race, dexterity, strength, and other character statistics, along with any special attributes. Fully integrated into the mythography of the game they are about to play, players then enter the game world at the base of the Tree of Life, grown from the seeds of the shattered World Tree. This blending of historical medieval elements, such as Germanic runes and the World Tree, into the mechanics of contemporary computer gaming conventions, such as character attributes of strength, dexterity , and stamina, is often described by gamers and scholars of gaming as “medieval fantasy.” It is more precisely what Umberto Eco has termed “neomedievalism,” a repurposing of medieval imagery to represent contemporary values and problems and to engage contemporary audiences. Eco’s neomedievalism distinguishes the invention of modern narratives that remakeand reimagine medieval history from “medievalism,” depictions of the historical medieval in post-medieval media.1 Rather than exactly recreating the medieval past, these games blend the costumes, weaponry, and cultural traditions of different places and times to create different, yet still recognizably human worlds. Game designers incorporate katanas, battle bishops, flamberges, leather jerkins, lace-up bustiers, synthesized plainchant, cartoonish wattle-and-daub houses, vaguely Gothic cathedrals, woods filled with rats and spiders, and spearwielding amazons in plate-mail miniskirts into their worlds as narrative elements that make the superhuman and magical feats of players’ characters plausible. Eco’s notion of neomedievalism is essential to understanding the experience of realism elicited by religion in video games. Get Medieval (Monolith, 1998), an overhead, two-dimensional, shooter-spoofing fantasy adventure game, is driven by the witty lines mocking serious medi- 136 Rabia Gregory eval heroism from the Barbarian, Sorceress, Thief, and Amazon players rather than by the challenges posed by its dungeons or the innovation of its gameplay, which closely copied Atari’s 1986 arcade game Gauntlet. Electronic Arts’ 2010 take on Dante’s Inferno embellishes a fourteenthcentury storyline with exaggerated violence. The spirit of Dante transforms from an exiled political dissident and father into a muscular Templar , amusing players with the audacity of the adaptation rather than novel gameplay. And MMORPGs, which often use the same layouts for graphical user interfaces, offer similar if not identical commands and emoticons, and design combat...