The cross you gave to me
Listen to an audio version of this article by becoming a Patreon supporter.
The following contains spoilers for Lucah: Born of a Dream
Last summer The Last of Us: Part II (Naughty Dog, 2020) released to near-universal acclaim. The sequel to 2013’s morose ponderance on the fragile relationships of Bad Dads, Part II shifts the focus to Elle to reckon with the cycles of violence she‘s become trapped in as she seeks revenge for her surrogate Bad Dad’s murder. In the background of this release were alarming reports of the studio’s habitual labor abuse, which one ex-animator described as requiring "weeks of recovery afterwards." Running parallel to these reports was Naughty Dog’s ongoing denial of sexual harassment allegations. As Part II racked up awards for its supposedly “stunning, nuanced exploration of the strength and fragility of the human spirit” the victims of the studio’s cycles of violence have received no justice.
Video games are built on violence. Violence towards their creators at the hands of industry overlords. Violence towards their fans through the cultivation of toxic communities. Violence to the planet by the manufacturing of useless hardware and the ballooning footprint of server farms. Violence as the primary verb through which we understand our interactions in these digital worlds. The argument of whether games should be violent is over, violence has won.
For as entwined with violence as games have always been they are remarkably bad at understanding or discussing it. The Last of Us compartmentalizes violence as the actions of individuals, some human pathogen that will inevitably erupt should we lose the organization of the state. Bioshock: Infinite (Irrational Games, 2013) crudely equates black liberationists with their white abusers as if the only justifiable violence is that done by The Player. Bioshock (Irrational Games, 2007), infamously, tries to criticize our unquestioning involvement in digital violence but forgets it‘s a shooter with the philosophical sophistication of a high schooler. Hotline: Miami (Dennaton Games, 2013) is Fight Club (Fincher, 1999). Spec-Ops: The Line (Yager, 2012) is Heart of Darkness (Conrad, 1899). We can find better examples digging through small projects but looking at games that have been culturally impactful the best we can get are literary adaptations crammed into marketable genres (even Spec-Ops had online multiplayer).
Not every game needs to be a treatise on video game violence (the thought is nauseating). But what is revealing is how any admittance and interrogation of violence within a game’s text – no matter how shallow – is accepted uncritically as a profound commentary on the medium. Video games are so desperate for recognition as SERIOUS ART and are keenly aware of their juvenile tendencies. The most anyone is prepared to do, though, is wink at the camera and remind you that “actually, you like the violence” as they crunch their teams again.
///
Lucah: Born of a Dream (melessthanthree, 2018) opens with the imperative that “you must fight…it’s all you know.” The world comes into focus, all scratches and harsh colors. Almost immediately you are beset upon by monsters. Towering red sprites clipping in and out of existence, cutting off exits, demanding a confrontation. So you fight, dodging, slashing, summoning familiars, calling up unknown magiks to aid you. Every system is precision forged, building out further and further as you gain new attacks, new skills, a deeper appreciation for how each move compliments its neighbor. As you rest beneath a cross a level-up screen tempts you with a handful of possibilities, funds disappearing into one path as the others close. As if to remind you, despite all your might you are not in control.
Halfway into your journey through this hell, this purgatory, this void – whatever you call it the feeling’s the same – you come across an arcade. LCD screens cut small windows of light in the dim interior but it’s only the final game in the far corner that is playable. I Am Not A Machine. Ironic.
Inside the game is yourself, a little crushed, the darkness that much more invasive. Your skills are the same but the visibility is gone. You lash out recklessly at the endless waves of enemies, accomplishing nothing, always falling. You wake up on the ground of the arcade, groggy but unharmed. It’s just a game after all.
In this one scene, the often inscrutable Lucah comes into sharp focus. From the beginning, this world has been a collage of Catholic iconography, lingering trauma, and the inescapable presence of violence. It is a world built on pain, capable of inflicting only more pain, and which tries to craft that pain into something compelling. In this arcade, we are thrown out. We are reminded of our humanity and the necessity to move forward. This arcade can only amplify and regurgitate our pain. It does nothing to heal it.
Lucah is not a game to linger in. Its citizens are desperate to escape to the point of death and you’ve come carrying a blade. To get caught up at this arcade, to revel in this violence sans all-purpose, is to lose yourself to the architects of this damnation. The church commands blood, calls acolytes to self-flagellate as they wait for the messiah to strike them down. Only violence exists here because violence is the only goal. It can achieve no end.
Lucah is not unusual in having its primary mode of interaction be violence. Nor is it unusual for creating a world that is both horrific and compelling. But where it transcends its contemporaries is recognizing the source and limits of that violence, contextualizing it not as blunt mechanic but a terrible shackle to the player’s freedom. We speak to this world in violence but always with the hope a new sound will emerge.
Lucah arises out of trauma. In scattered scenes we see the pain inflicted by the church; by bigotry and authority. We watch characters transform from defiantly loving to agents of violent retribution. At some point, this past collides with the present, or perhaps it was always this dark. What is clear is that this violence did not come from nowhere. It was built and is now turning against its makers.
There is a lot that could be said about Lucah’s themes of post-Catholic guilt and trauma, but what is more interesting to me is how that trauma forms the foundation for understanding Lucah as not explicitly meta-textual but meta-aware. Lucah looks at the shallowness with which other games treat violence and rejects it. Violence is not a solution here, but its utility is deliberate and foundational, the product of the church and state but not equatable.
In Lucah’s first ending you face off against your inner self. They lash out pathetically as they crawl towards you only to be pierced by the same spear the messiah thrust through you earlier in the churchyard. As they die the screen goes black. “What are you doing?” These words hang on the screen, interrogating you, probing for any reason for what you’ve done. There is none, of course, and as the credits roll your character feels not relief but emptiness. You’ve reached the end but what have you achieved?
Initially, this might read as similar to Bioshock’s “would you kindly” reveal, a finger-wagging condemnation of the player’s wanton violence. But the tone here is not accusatory but pleading. What are you doing? Why are you on this quest? What did you think would happen? It is both a signal that this is not the final end but also a notice to the player to wake up, to consider their actions as not input but effect. Who is the target of your rage? Who is being hurt?
Like Elle in The Last of Us: Part II, Lucah is stuck in a cycle of violence. But unlike Part II this violence is not a byproduct of society’s downfall or individual misdeeds. It is built-in, cultivated for the entertainment and benefit of the church and state. Lucah wants out but has misjudged the source and turned their pain inward, cutting it out and leaving an emptiness. The cycle begins again and we see a bit more of what has been lost.
The second opening does away with combat and skill trees. Lines of text wrap across the screen occasionally asking our input, a sort of visual novel with the cover torn off. In these words we see a rare glimpse of hope. Naomi and Anna, two students of the church, have built out a small dream for themselves. In it, they can exist apart from the church’s violence, apart from the game we have spent hours grinding against. Building these scenes as lines of text is not strictly formal but positions them fully outside combat. They show us a possibility of this game and this world not built on violence but instead connection and storytelling. It is not until the church enters that the novel begins to fall apart, thrusting us back into combat, back to the beach we first washed up on, back to the start of this cycle.
If it feels like a contradiction that’s because it is. Lucah is both a game about violence and about its limitations, the inevitable edge against which every combat-focused game runs. It does not naively assume all violence is the same or that we might simply exist apart from the violence around us. Lucah is imperfect, they are hurt, they are looking for an exit. Where many games aim their scorn at the player as culpable in digital violence, Lucah wants to actually talk about violence as a force in the world. Not as a product of moral failing but an institution, a cycle built on centuries of abuse, doctrines of hate, traumas left unhealed. That it uses violence as the voice of this exploration is fitting. We are not adjacent to this violence. We propagate it, build ourselves with it, and must ultimately reject it to ever find peace.
Though affecting and thoughtful, Lucah never masquerades as anything but artificial. Though it likely comes from a place of lived trauma it is a game, not a historical text. Games are built on violence but as we find ways to explore what that means we must find a distinction between real and fictional violence, understanding the scope of harm being done, where digital violence collides with real tragedy. This is not meant to sanitize games that use violence to further cruelty, but to refocus the conversation away from games as instructional and reactionary so we might understand how violence can regain some significance. Lucah’s scratchy crayon visuals can communicate the pain and intensity felt by its protagonist but they are not modeled off reality. Nobody at melessthanthree is being forced to study car crash victims to “get it right,” or contracting with arms dealers to perfect their gun models. Just as we draw distinctions between real and fictional violence, we need to understand where that violence comes from, who is actually being harmed. None of these things exist in vacuums. We cannot talk about digital violence without stepping into our world and looking at the cause. We cannot ignore the violence of a game’s existence, even one as considered as Lucah.
Video games about violence so often fail because they do not actually understand what they are doing. They can copy others, depict violence in shocking fidelity, and endlessly trawl the waters of individuals doing individually bad things, but they are culpable of so much violence themselves the shots will always miss. Lucah understands form is the message, that violence is messy and contradictory, and that games cannot simply adopt the language of film and literature and achieve the same ends. It is a game of relentless despair, and yet underneath it all its tenderness cannot but shine through.