Video Games as Mythos

This is my final paper for my last lit class: Mythology and Folklore. It was a pretty open paper, allowed to be about pretty much anything from our notes or discussion that stuck with us, which we would like to elaborate on. The page reference is from the Lit book we used, "Introduction to Mythology: Contemporary Approaches to Classical and World Myths" by Eva M. Thury and Margaret K. Devinney (4th ed.), and the Yellow Woman myth I refer to is a contemporary version by Leslie Marmon Silko.

From the Yellow Woman story, Page 826:

“’I don’t believe it. Those stories couldn’t happen now,’ I said. He shook his head and said softly, ‘But someday they will talk about us, and they will say, Those two lived long ago when things like that happened.’”

I had made the note:

This is a recognizable element that I’ve encountered a video game, (yes, I play), in which the main character Jak is following the works of the great Mar from long ago, and gradually the player realizes that somehow the main character is the Mar from long ago.

It is the video game Jak and Daxter to which I referred when I mentioned this similar feel of “what has happened shall happen again.” In the first game, Jak is a green-haired young man with a best friend, Daxter, who has been magically changed by Dark Eco into a talking ottsell (made-up ferret-like thing that’s orange). Daxter wants to be “human” again, (they all have very long pointy ears, but are otherwise humanoid), so they go on a quest to figure out how to do this. While on this quest, some things come to light that make the quest into an adventure that involves going through a rift into the future, where Mar is revered as the maker of Haven City. In truth Jak was born there and then sent into the past as a four-year-old, where he grew to be a young man who returns to the “future.”

There is so much more to this story. While it is “only” a plot to a video game, I believe that myths created by cultures of our history hold meaningful similarities to the story of Jak and Daxter. Like the myths, there are many openings of doors that create new adventures, and new secrets coming to light, which are integral to keep the players interested in new challenges. This is what I feel has been a much-used tool in mythology as well because these stories of heritage are not only told to the adults of a community but also to the youth who have throughout time needed help paying attention when adults talk. Also, unlike the violence, greed, and force of some video games I won’t name, *ahemgrandtheftauto,* the ideas in Jak and Daxter are about unlocking puzzles and strategizing in order to get what is needed. This is also what mythology teaches us – in very strange “Kintu-and-cow-visiting-heaven” sort of ways. Of course, there is the “hero’s journey” and “father quest” that you don’t realize has happened until it’s too late. Jak meets Demos who he doesn’t know is his father until Demos says his last words. He dies in Jak’s arms after a harrowing battle that they won together.

The idea in Yellow Woman’s quote, the time-changing reference to themselves as the past, suggests a magic to me, the reader, which I can control. I myself could become a story of the past, just like these mythical characters doing world-changing things. Even if it’s only a family past in which I am known. I am “Aunt Jenessa who brought her family to Oregon without knowing what would happen,” which could be heroic. “She could draw magical pictures that look like words from far away,” which is like an enchanting power.

Having control of the myth, of my own myth, is also akin to Jak and Daxter because when I’m playing, I have the controller in my hand. Should I make Jak kick or punch? Will he take a vehicle, or use his hover board? Will I wait for the perfect job that makes me happy, or take whatever is available to support my family now? Learning from the story, and guiding one’s choices because of what is learned, is a strange but true similarity between mythology and Jak and Daxter storyline. Telling the story of Kintu (Uganda myth) finding a cave in which to hide food might teach the listener to have faith in dire situations. Telling about Inanna’s (Sumerian myth) husband who did not mourn her and was punished might teach the listener about proper respect and meeting consequences. Spraying the fast-growing weeds with green eco in repeated trips teaches the player that even if it looks as though you’re not getting anywhere, if you keep trying you’ll succeed. Frankly, that’s probably the main lesson in just about any video game. Meeting his father without knowing it might teach the player that you don’t know what you have until it’s gone, so respect and appreciation should always be practiced.

Jak and Daxter, or any other video game that I know of, is not created from our history’s mythology, (maybe except for God of War, which is based on the main character fighting against the wrath of the well-known Roman gods). But when you consider how popular video games are, there is some sort of interest tapped in each player that tells us what they are like. For instance, I like the mythical story/adventure puzzle type of games; I am creative and intellectual. My husband likes God of War, which is full of blood-splattering and knife sounds, figuring out how to kill a titan, and a muscular, tattooed hero-figure; he might enjoy a sense of power and is intellectual. He and my youngest son enjoy Call of Duty, which is based on a real war, (depending on which COD you get, there’s one for each war); They are achievers who hit what they aim for. My oldest son likes car racing games where he can design his car; he may be enjoying freedom of speeding without true consequence, and control of appearance. My middle boy sometimes plays that also, or a parkour game, climbing, jumping, balancing in an urban environment; he can do what he wishes he could do in real life (if there were a spot for it) and lives vicariously through this game. As choices in life suggest, our choices in video games hint at who we are. Just as the myths we tell, which suggest what is important to that general culture at that time.

If these games were set into a container and buried, and 1000 years later found and examined by the distant future “us,” the information gleaned from these games would be like a myth about humans of the 21st century. It would likely tell the 1000-year people as much about who we are, as myths we read tell us now about the societies of our 10,000-year past. Interpretation of human society through video game storylines is distorted by the completely fictional obvious parts – the characters, (green-haired, pointy ears, what the heck’s an ottsell?), the specific goals of the characters, (Free a balloon ship from the anchors in the bog), the challenges they face, (rock-throwing monster in the lava field) – and only shows the fact that the story of completely made-up events is important to us. It doesn’t show that “stabbing and slashing” is important, as Kratos in God of War might suggest, but that “doing whatever we have to in order to gain our goal” is what appeals to us.

And likely, in 1000 years, humans will end up saying something like, “Oh! This stuff is like when we play Lifestance now days.” (Made-up name of a game that I imagine would involve holograms by then). History will repeat just like the plight of Yellow Woman, and other versions of Jak and Daxter, or Kratos in God of War, or even the vile characters in Grand Theft Auto will re-exist in another capacity because their essence is who we are. We express our individuality by taking control of these characters, whichever one our personality chooses, and living great adventures vicariously through them. Myths of the past show us the same spirit of the people from whom we emerged. I wouldn’t be surprised if, when the actual people who told the myths for the first time heard how we’re analyzing them, they laughed and sniggered and pointed at how big a deal we’re making of them. Myths might have been the precursor equivalent of sci-fi books of the 19th and 20th century, and our video games today: simply an addictive, adventurous pastime that everyone enjoys.