Month: April 2020

Video Game Music

~ tkrksn ~ Leave a comment

If you’ve been following my writing for a while, you can probably guess that I’m a fan of video game music.  I actually started collecting it as an alternative to listening to the radio on my long drive into work, but Ive now got a pretty sizable collection (enough to simulate my own radio station by running shuffle all on my songs lol).  Today I thought it would be fun to talk about some Catholic inspired songs in games. While many songs include Latin lyrics to make things sound epic (like the Song of the Post at the bottom), I want to focus on some songs that are more obviously Catholic inspired.  Specifically, I’m going to talk about Gregorian Chant inspired songs and the song Megalith -Agnus Dei- from Ace Combat 4.

For those unfamiliar, Gregorian chants are typically prayers being sung by monks in monasteries for their daily prayers, although you can encounter it in other places as well.  For a long part of the church’s history it was the primary form of music in Catholicism, and I believe it still is considered prominent among Catholic music (I think I remember the Catechism or some Vatican II documents mentioning that fact but don’t quote me on it).  As a Catholic, when I hear this kind of chanting, it really gives the place I am a holy vibe. In video games, this kind of chanting is primarily used to give areas an air of mystery and majesty. The most prominent example I can think of is the Temple of Time from The Legend of Zelda:  Ocarina of Time. 

This plays in the titular Temple of Time, a building that looks a lot like a medieval cathedral, with stone, stained glass and flying buttresses everywhere.  It gives the building kind of a solemn feel, like something ancient and important is there (which is true in the story, although you may not know it yet when you first arrive).  This song has stuck with me all these years since I first played the game in 1998 and honestly probably comes to mind even before real Gregorian Chants just because I’ve listened to it so much.  Another example of chanting is the song The Incomplete Stone from Nier. 

Nier takes place in a super post apocalyptic world where the ancient lost civilization with ruins scattered everywhere is modern society.  Early in the game, the main character goes to explore an ancient tower (basically a ruined office building). This song plays in the ruins while you are not in battle, giving them a real mysterious feel.  The echo effect on the male voice makes it sound especially chanty, as Gregegorian chants would typically be done in large open monasteries which creates an echo. There are other examples of Gregorian Chant like songs, but these two in particular really show how Catholic like chants are often used to give a mysterious feeling to an area of a game.

The other song I wanted to talk about and the song that inspired me to write this post is Megalith -Agnus Dei- from Ace Combat 4. 

This is actually from a game I’ve never played-  I mainly know the series because it is famous for its good music.  When I was researching the soundtracks to decide whether or not to buy them, I encountered this song as one of the most popular in the series.  I was immediately thrown off because Agnus Dei is one of the prayers in the Mass (you can see it on this Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnus_Dei_(music)).  Apparently this version is the climatic final fight song of Ace Combat 4, but with some lyrics from the Latin prayer (you can see the lyrics in the video description or here: https://www.animelyrics.com/game/acecombat4/megalithagnusdei.htm).  At first I thought this was simply a Japanese composer that thought a foreign religious song from the Mass sounded cool and just threw it in superficially as is typical, but it seemed to me at the time that some of the lyrics were changed to fit the context of the game.  I’ve since found out that the lyrics actually come from Mozart’s Requiem, which music for a funeral Mass (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_for_the_Requiem_Mass#Agnus_Dei). This revelation shows they knew what was being said in the song and specifically chose it for the fight.  That being said, there is still a bit of silliness with the lyrics in the context of the game’s world. The Ace Combat games take place in Strangereal, a fictional, vaguely modern world to justify fighter jet dogfights, which is a world where Christianity likely doesn’t exist (because it’s not the real world).  The bulk of the Agnus Dei prayer, which is “Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world” is so incredibly specific to Christianity that the line really doesn’t make sense in a setting with no connection to real life. Despite the bit of disconnect between the world and the song, I thoroughly enjoy this song and am glad the composer decided to put it in the game.  Even if they might not realize it right away, giving people a positive exposure to Christianity can only be a good thing.

So there are some songs in video games inspired by Catholicism and a brief discussion about them.  I have to say, I really enjoy it when any Catholic sounding songs show up in games, even if it’s as superficial as just having Latin lyrics.  As I listen to more songs (and run out of other ideas), I think I’ll occasionally come back and write about them, so look forward to that.

Song of the Post-

Apocalypsis Noctis

Final Fantasy XV

Just because the chanting doesn’t mean anything doesn’t mean it doesn’t sound cool

Mass Effect

~ tkrksn ~ Leave a comment

One of my favorite games in more recent years was Mass Effect (the first one, not the second that most people prefer).  It’s a space epic with a cool story and moral choices that at least appeared to matter at the time (part of the reason why people didn’t like Mass Effect 3- they really didn’t).  In particular, I liked the world building done in the game and all the extra information on the various alien races which wasn’t really needed, but I thoroughly enjoyed (in fact, part of the reason I didn’t like Mass Effect 2 as much as most people is that they went back on that lore a few times for gameplay reasons).  Today I want to talk about my favorite scene in Mass Effect and how it ties into Catholicism (note- this is kind of a big reveal scene near the end of the game so SPOILER ALERT).

At this point in the game the player character Commander Shepard has gone against the wishes of the galactic government in order to continue investigating  the threat of the Reapers- giant inorganic life that periodically comes into the galaxy to wipe out all organic life. Shepard goes to the hidden Ilos where an artifact called the Conduit is supposed to be.  While fighting through the planet, he and his team are temporarily trapped and redirected down a side passage. There, they meet Vigil, an ancient computer program created by the Protheans- the alien race that previously dominated the galaxy before being killed off by the Reapers. 

Vigil reveals that when the Reapers attacked the Protheans 50000 years ago, the people working at the research center on Ilos were put into cryogenic sleep to hide as records of life on the planet had been destroyed in the initial attack.  By the time the Reapers finally left the galaxy, there were only a few of the researchers left to revive on the planet. These researchers, knowing that there wasn’t any hope to revive the Prothean race, decided instead to spend their little remaining time helping the people of the future. 

They created the Conduit- a mass relay that would send someone to the location where the Reapers first appear and made some changes to delay the Reapers return (which is why in Mass Effect 1 you are only fighting a single reaper rather than all of them). They also created Vigil, an AI that could explain what was going on to whoever eventually showed up on the planet many millennium later.  After talking to Vigil, Shepard and his team use the Conduit to go to the Citadel and stop the one Reaper from bringing in the rest, ending the first game. I remember when I first played Mass Effect, this scene with Vigil cemented it as one of my favorite games of all time. For some reason, I always enjoy stories where some people in the past do something to help the people in the future they will never meet.  Now you may be wondering, how does that story connect to Catholicism? The answer is actually my favorite bible verse.

“Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:30-31).  This is probably my favorite passage in the Bible, from the end of the Gospel of John. It’s effectively the same idea as the story of the creation of Vigil in Mass Effect. Some ancient people left behind a record that will help save people of the future they may never meet.  There is however, one key difference between the two- the Gospel of John is real and was written for me, rather than some fictional character. Think about the early Christians. Many of these people went to their deaths proclaiming the truth about Jesus to lead others to him in the future (this is where the term Martyr actually comes from- it means witness).  Without them, Christianity as we know it really wouldn’t exist today (barring supernatural means of course). If these people had kept it to themselves rather than spreading the Gospel, it probably would just be a minor footnote for in depth textbooks on the history of Rome or Judaism instead of the most common religion in the world. Because of the actions of these people 2000 years ago, I am able to know the truth today.

So as you can see, the story of the Protheans on Ilos can show the importance of the works and witness of the early Christians.  As someone who honestly isn’t a very emotional person, thinking about the Bible verse I mentioned still always gets to me because I know it actually is addressing me in particular (in addition to everyone else).  I think seeing some of your favorite elements of fiction in real life can have a real effect on people (for example, JRR Tolkien converted CS Lewis to Christianity when he explained how the Gospels were like all the myths the two liked, but the Gospels were actually true).  This effect is honestly probably a large part of why Mass Effect was so memorable to me and why 13 years later the scene with Vigil still stands out so clearly in my mind.

Song of the Post-

Vigil

Mass Effect

One of the most hopeful sounding songs I can think of in games

Yakuza 3 and Happiness

~ tkrksn ~ Leave a comment

One of my favorite new series of games is Yakuza.  I had heard about it a long time ago, but never got around to playing it until Yakuza 0’s US release a few years back.  The series is basically a combination of a serious, manly Japanese crime drama main story and a bunch of super goofy side quests.  Recently, the Yakuza 3, 4 and 5 collection released on PS4, giving me a chance to play the last few games in the series I’d missed (I had already played 6 since it released on the PS4 earlier).  I just finished up Yakuza 3 as I’m writing this and it’s ending stuck out in my mind. So today I’m going to discuss the ending of Yakuza 3 and how it relates to happiness (spoilers obviously).

For the final showdown in Yakuza 3, the main character, Kazuma Kiryu is rushing to a hospital to rescue his protege and the current leader of the Tokyo underworld, Daigo Dojima (who is recovering after being shot at the start of the game) from Yoshitaka Mine, who is planning to kill him and take over the crime organization.  After fighting his way through a hospital filled with Mine’s underlings and black market partners, he finally reaches the depressed Mine on the roof with the unconscious Daigo.

Mine explains his backstory. He became an orphan at a young age, with his father’s last words encouraging him to use his bright mind to make something with his life.  Mine then spends his childhood and young adult life working extremely hard to become a super successful and rich investor. Having accomplished all his goals, Mine realizes that despite all his achievements, he still isn’t happy with his life. He then decides to join the Yakuza, figuring that the power that comes with being part of the underworld will make him happy.  Now a super successful leader in the Tokyo underworld, Mine realizes he still isn’t happy. He decides that maybe the honor and respect that will come with replacing Daigo as the leader of the Tojo Clan will finally make him happy. To accomplish this, he has to kill Daigo, the only man he truly respected (which is why he’s so depressed when you finally reach him). Kiryu insists Mine is wrong, and the two have their dramatic shirtless fight to finish the game (as is tradition in the Yakuza series). 

After being defeated, Mine realizes the error of his ways and sacrifices his life to protect Kiryu and Daigo from his black market partner that decided to betray and kill all three of them. Yakuza 3’s story isn’t necessarily as good as some of the others in the series (I feel it had higher highs and lower lows), but this was probably my favorite set up for a final fight in the series. But what does it have to do with Catholicism? To answer that, we have to look at what exactly is happiness.

So what is happiness?  St. Thomas Aquinas discusses this in question 2 of the first part of the second part of the Summa Theologiae (here’s a link if you want to read it yourself, but be warned it can be tough if you aren’t familiar with Aristotelian Metaphysics: http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2002.htm).  St. Thomas’ answer is ultimately God, which explains why we can’t be truly happy until we are in heaven (even if we can get some degree of happiness on Earth).  He then discusses various possible sources of true happiness and why they are wrong. The four you typically hear on this topic are wealth, power, honor (which should sound super familiar after finishing Yakuza 3) and pleasure (which Mine wasn’t interested in so I’ll skip it for today).  Wealth can’t make you happy because artificial wealth (money) is just a shorthand to make acquiring natural wealth (things you need to live) easier while natural wealth will only make you happy to the point your basic needs are met. This argument has been backed up by modern studies, which show that more money will increase your happiness until your needs have been met, and any additional money after that won’t increase happiness.  Power can’t make you happy because power just enables you to accomplish other things, which may or may not lead to happiness. To put it another way, having power won’t make you happy, but using power to do good things will lead you towards happiness (which wouldn’t really help Mine anyways since he’s getting underworld power). Finally, honor won’t make you happy because honor isn’t a good, it is merely others recognizing a different good within you.  The good itself may lead you to happiness, but others respecting it ultimately doesn’t make a difference. All of these alternate possible sources of happiness (pleasure included) are super common in today’s world and it’s all too easy to see that none of them work. Looking at it from a more Augustinian angle, people are trying to fill the infinite need for God with various finite things, so they are never satisfied. Happiness ultimately comes from being with God, not with various items in the world.

As you can see, Mine is looking for happiness in the world that will never be able to truly make him happy.  When I was first watching that ending, I remember being amused that not only was he going through the classic happiness substitutes, but he was even doing it in the same order as the Summa I linked before.  I honestly wasn’t expecting to come up with any ideas for this blog while playing the Yakuza games, so it was a nice surprise. I hope you can learn from the example of Mine and remember that true happiness ultimately comes from God.

Song of the Post-

Fly (Final Battle Version)

Yakuza 3

A cool new intro can turn a normal battle song into final boss music

Free Will

~ tkrksn ~ 1 Comment

One of the more amusing things about being a Catholic interested in nerd media is you find a lot of inaccuracies that go unnoticed because no one else involved in the production or fanbase is even a practicing Christian, let alone Catholic.  For example, there was one anime I watched where a character worked for the bishop of the English Puritan Church. When I heard that, I started cracking up, thinking “Ah yes, the English bishop of the people that thought Anglicanism was too Catholic, got kicked out of England and ended up in the new world where they were known as the Pilgrims- that makes total sense.”  Today, I wanted to talk about one of the more common incorrect ideas that shows up in various media- Catholics mind controlling people into being Catholic.

Catholic mind control shows up in many stories, especially ones where the Catholics are the antagonists.  I’ll mention two examples. The first is in Assassin’s Creed 2. At the end of the game, you find an ancient alien device that mind controls the people around you to do your bidding. 

As it is found under the Vatican and is used in one DLC by a monk to cause a zealous mob to riot in Florence, it is implied that the reason Catholicism was established was not because it is true but because Catholic leaders have been using this relic the whole time.  Another example comes from the same show as the English Puritan Church I mentioned earlier- the anime A Certain Magical Index. This show alternates between story arcs where magic is the focus (with the Catholic Church being the main antagonist) and science is the focus (where the government of the super scientific city is the antagonist).  In one arc, a few Catholic mercenaries are sent to the science town to use a relic of St. Peter that will make everyone in the town believe they were Catholic all along.

I can kind of see why mind control is such a focus in a series with Catholic antagonists.  Part of it is probably atheist writers expressing how they felt growing up and projecting their feeling about organized religion on to Catholicism regardless of where they originated (as I mentioned in the past, if you are going to include a religion you’d include Catholicism for the aesthetics).  The other part is probably that if a goal of an organization is to convert everyone into following it, it only seems natural that mind controlling people into believing it would be the fastest way to accomplish that. This however, is where the lack of understanding Catholicism shows itself- Catholicism deeply cares about free will.

So why does Catholicism care so much about free will?  It clearly isn’t an obvious connection because so many writers believe it would be natural for the Catholic Church to just mind control everyone into submission.  The answer is love. You can’t have love without free will (if you don’t believe me, you can look into stories where mind control is used to make someone love another- the person forcing love always comes across as abusive and creepy).  God wants everyone to choose to love Him, and you simply can’t have that without the free will to make the choice. This reality has many implications. One is part of the answer to the problem of evil (although only a small sub part). Why would an all good God allow people to do evil acts in the world instead of just removing the ability to do so from all humanity?  The answer is that without free will people can’t do the good of choosing to love Him. This is why, for example, the church has always condemned forced conversions and baptisms (even if some people ignored that rule and did it anyways)- you can’t force someone into wanting to love God. This is also why some people believe that in the Garden of Eden story (which doesn’t need to be taken literally by the way) the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil was even an option- so that Adam and Eve could choose to obey God and not take it.  Finally, free will is often used to reconcile the idea of Hell and an merciful God- someone with free will can still choose to reject that mercy even if it is offered to them. So as you can see, free will is extremely important to Catholicism and Catholic theology and answers many major questions people have about the faith.

In the end, it is quite hilarious that Catholics in various stories will use mind control to forcibly put humanity under the church’s control.  Removing free will is something that goes against so much of what the church teaches that mind control makes it extremely clear that the writer doesn’t know anything about Catholicism.  Still, if nothing else, it can give you a nice laugh now that you know what the church actually believes. You’d be surprised at just how enjoyable that accidental comedy can be.

Song of the Post-

Venice Rooftops

Assassin’s Creed 2

I had forgotten how good the Assassin’s Creed 2 music was before writing this post