To live in the year 2020 is to be filled with the sense that the world as we know it is coming to an end.
It’s hard to pinpoint just one piece of evidence, but take your pick—an imminent climate collapse heralded by
apocalyptic storms and wildfires; a rampant
global pandemic; the descent of nations around the world into
authoritarian fascism; failing institutions unable to contain the
viral spread of disinformation. It’s not the dystopia we’ve been taught to expect. Instead of giant meteors, zombie plagues, and other numbingly cliché scenarios, ours is a harrowing reality of slow-burning crisis-upon-crisis that has never been adequately captured in speculative fiction and pop culture.
As far as I’m concerned, there’s one game that comes close to evoking the vibe of our end-times, and that’s the bleak, decaying world of Dark Souls.
For a game with lots of exploration and very little dialogue, the lore of the Souls series is astoundingly deep. Using environmental storytelling that rewards patient and perceptive players, Hidetaka Miyazaki’s trilogy is a profound exploration of human nature, fate, and how those with power can distort our perceptions of the world. In my reading, it’s also a parable about the end of capitalism—and what lies beyond it.
It feels like a crushing satire of our reality, with working people struggling through countless boom-and-bust cycles, each time expected to bear the brunt of the latest crisis so that a wealthy owner class can sustain its own power. COVID-19 has put this arbitrary cruelty in plain view for all to see, but it's hardly the first time. Workers in the US were asked to endure economic hardship as banks were bailed out during the 2008 financial crisis, which was caused by Wall Street speculators crashing the housing market with junk bonds. Before that, the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and 90s had already set the working class back decades while the rich and powerful further expanded their wealth. In the ensuing decades, productivity soared while
wages remained stagnant.
Even with this grim reality laid bare, we are constantly told there is no other way, that better things aren’t possible. Presidential candidate Joe Biden promises salvation from the nightmare of Trump, but nevertheless
reassures the rich and powerful that “nothing would fundamentally change.” Abolitionist demands to defund the police and redirect resources to healthcare, education, and social programs have been widely dismissed by pundits and politicians, despite
generations of Black scholarship on the subject.
The entire 2020 election season feels like the end of another cycle in the Age of Fire. Even as the world crumbles around us, we are once again being asked to prolong the existence of a system from which we’ll never truly benefit.
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