by Cuddy, Luke
In the Halo books, Cortana reveals to the reader secret information in the form of the personal history of John-117, the Master Chief. In a sense, then, the Halo books themselves can be seen as a sort of apocalyptic text, offering secret insights unavailable to the player in the games alone. Another way in which secret information appears in the game is in the form of objects like the thirteen “hidden skulls” in Halo 3, a collection of secrets in the game which, when discovered, affect gameplay in sometimes unpredictable ways, as in the removal of the HUD (heads-up display) on the screen. These objects unlock achievements and generally make gameplay more difficult, creating prestige for players and amassing points for them in ways that raise their status among their real life peers.
The entity 343 Guilty Spark also acts as an otherworldly guide in Halo, answering questions from Master Chief, Cortana, and the Arbiter about the Halos’ true purpose. Guilty Spark, referred to as an “Oracle” by the Covenant, is a floating Forerunner construct designed to guide any human to activate the Halos. Guilty Spark assumes that the Reclaimer (its name for the current human trying to activate the Halos) already knows the Halos’ purpose, and will dutifully carry out their deadly activation. Guilty Spark also knows the Forerunner’s secrets, and Cortana learns these when she is inserted into the control room’s mainframe.
These technological mediators call attention to an important distinction between traditional Jewish and Christian apocalypses and Halo as an apocalyptic videogame. In Halo, artificial intelligence—not an angel—tells us how to navigate the new worlds in which we find ourselves. Players of Halo realize that the universe the games depict is fictional. Nonetheless, societal warnings about the dangerous future of an unthinking hyper-technologized world may have real merit, especially as we watch the devastating effects of the BP oil spill in the Gulf Coast. Perhaps Halo’s handling of artificial intelligence shows that today we more commonly associate the idea of revelation with technology than with divine forces. Yet still we’re fascinated with stories about saviors, especially interactive stories in which we get to be saviors. Perhaps it’s a truism to suggest that we need not believe in God in order to long for understanding of the human situation. And it may be easier today to imagine wisdom coming from technological sources than divine ones. One might even say that Halo suggests that our belief in the divine is in some ways being implanted by our “faith” in technology.
Otherworldly Journeys
As John J. Collins explains, an “otherworldly journey” in traditional apocalypses takes place “when the visionary travels through heaven, hell or remote regions beyond the normally accessible world.” Revelation, he says, “is usually predominantly visual,” a claim that is all the more interesting for the importance of vivid graphics in contemporary videogames.58 Also like in videogames, traditional apocalypticists depict the otherworldly realm as a place that can be entered into as a “temporary world” formally distinguished from surrounding space and time.
Take, for example, Enoch’s description of his ascent into the heavens, described in terms that sound remarkably like the design for their own videogame:the vision clouds invited me and a mist summoned me, and the course of the stars and the lightnings sped and hastened me, and the winds in the vision caused me to fly and lifted me upward, and bore me into heaven.
In heaven, Enoch sees “a wall which is built of crystals and surrounded by tongues of fire” and “a tesselated floor (made) of crystals.” On the ceiling, he sees “fiery cherubim” (I Enoch 14). Later, an angel gives Enoch a tour of otherworldly locations, including the “firmament of heaven,” a “region at the end of the great Earth” and a “deep abyss” filled with fire. The angel with him explains to him the meaning of the vision, and its relationship to God’s purposes in the coming end times (I Enoch 18). As Collins notes, in apocalypses “heavenly geography” of this sort is typically described in vivid detail, relating it to beliefs about God’s order and power over creation (Collins “Introduction,” p. 9).
What Collins calls “heavenly geography” appears often in Halo, in the lush and varied geography of the rings, a few of which Master Chief visits. In addition, if you play the third game of Halo on the most difficult “legendary” setting, you see Master Chief at the end of the game stuck in half of the ship, the only bit remaining after a cataclysmic explosion. If you win the game, it ends with a vision of the ship descending to a planet infused with symbols that the astute player will recognize as associated with the Forerunners, implying a sort of return to divine origins. Thus, the trope of journeys to otherworldly places is a core feature of Halo play, inviting the player to see himself or herself as a visionary traveling around the Halo universe, gathering important information, completing crucial tasks, and defeating enemies. Some people even view the virtual world itself as a glimpse into a world or “reality” not limited in the same way as our physical world: a place where bodies do not decay, where fantasies can be fulfilled, where our actions have deep and meaningful impact. The player in this case is the apocalyptic visionary.
The End Times
Videogames are “temporal” in their explicit division of gameplay into levels and time-limits, mimicking those apocalypses that divide time into epochs or stages before the final end. For example, in “The Apocalypse of Weeks” in I Enoch, time is divided into ten periods of “weeks,” with history reaching its climax in the seventh week (the author’s own time) and looking forward to the eighth week (in which judgment of the wicked will take place). The expectation of an imminent end characterizes many apocalypticists’ messages of impending judgment of the wicked and rewards for the just. Time in apocalypses is typically presented as moving inexorably forward toward its imminent end.
An effective videogame is similarly characterized by what designer LeBlanc calls the dynamics of “dramatic inevitability, the sense that the contest is moving forward toward a conclusion.” According to LeBlanc, if a game’s contest appears “as if it will never conclude—or not conclude any time soon—then it has no sense of urgency, and the dramatic tension is dispelled.” In both apocalypses and videogames, involvement depends upon “our level of emotional investment in the story’s conflict: the sense of concern, apprehension, and urgency with which we await the story’s outcome.” 59 Whereas in apocalypses the periodization of time creates tension, in videogames other techniques are used, such as the technique called the “ticking clock.”
The ticking clock, says LeBlanc, “stands as a constant reminder that the game will end, and soon.” The ticking clock features of a game conveys “a sense of forward motion: as time runs out, the players feel propelled toward the conclusion of the contest.” One way to enhance this experience is to utilize an actual countdown. Another is to give a sense of dwindling resources, “quantifiable assets within the game state that deplete over the course of play and are never replenished.” Ticking clocks are “nonreversible processes” or “changes to the game state that can’t be undone” (pp. 446–454). These project a sense of linearity into an experience that is moving inevitably toward a fixed outcome.
Time in apocalypses can also be viewed as cyclical. As Aune states, an apocalypse “anticipates a cataclysmic divine intervention into the human world bringing history to an end, but thereafter a renewal of the world in which Edenic conditions will be restored.”60 However, Flannery-Dailey suggests another model for understanding time in apocalypses: the “spiral model.” Time is linear in its movement toward the end of time, but it is also cyclical “in that it is characterized by a regular succession of events that begins again repeatedly at the starting point.”61 The repetition is not perfect, since previous events are not repeated but “recapitulated” through symbolic interplay.
Mark Wolf says something similar about videogames in The Medium of the Video Game (2002). Videogames exhibit “repetition” in “cyclical or looped structures of time, which in some ways combine notions of movement and stasis” (p. 77). Of videogames, Wolf claims that the repetition generate
s a sort of familiarity that engenders confidence, so that “Learning the patterns of behavior and working around them is usually itself part of the game.” In videogames, players must learn the spatial structure through repeated plays until they experience “a sense of the temporal loops” and so that “their timing, linkages, and other structures” will help them successfully navigate the space (p. 81). According to Wolf:Repetitions, cycled images, consistent and repeating behaviors, revisited narratives branches, and the replayability of many of the games themselves create a sense of expectation, anticipation, and familiarity for the player. They encourage the player to find the underlying patterns which allow him or her to take control of the situations encountered, and this assured orderliness may well be an important factor in the allure that videogames have for many people. (p. 82)
The ticking clock in Halo typically precedes some sort of cataclysm. The player thus has a stronger stake in the outcome of the story, having to complete tasks with the added impetus of urgency to prevent the end of the game, but more importantly, to save the world. Instead of offering a simplistic timer counting down, Halo repeatedly depicts increasing levels of chaos and systems derailing all around, with the need for imminent escape. In addition, there is literally a countdown timer in the last level of every Halo game. In the first and third game, you must escape the Halo before you are destroyed by it. In the second game, you must stop the activation of one of the Halos by killing Tartarus (a Brute minion of the Covenant) and thwarting the firing of the ring.
The urgency and danger created via the ticking clock in the different levels in Halo are akin also to the journey through multiple heavens in Jewish merkavah (or “chariot”) literature and the hazards that visionaries typically encountered in them. In such visions and journeys, the seer must “negotiate with heavenly beings,” including being “threatened by dangerous angels.”62 To ascend through the heavens and indeed to make it out alive at all, the visionary must know the right incantations, the appropriate actions, and must exhibit the right kind of piety. Levels of ascent also appear in The Ascension of Isaiah and also in The Book of Enoch which includes Enoch’s “ascent to heaven” and “his guided tour of remote places, where he sees such things as the chambers of the dead and the places that have been prepared for final judgment.”63
In addition to the player’s movement through increasing levels of play, the idea of ascent is also quite literally indicated in Halo through the dream of the Covenant to “ascend” into divinity, which they mistakenly believe will happen through activation of the Halo array. This idea of “ascent” as a mode of entering a new world is also distinctively gnostic, as the gnostics believed that secret knowledge could enable them to ascend to a state of unity with the divine. In gnostic apocalypses, ascent is the entire goal of the visionary, who instead of viewing the punishment of one’s enemies, is treated to a vision of eventual reunification of all things in the godhead. However, the Covenant’s own drive to ascend to divinity in Halo contrasts with such traditional gnostic views in that instead of achieving enlightenment, they instead are damned for their ignorance. Indeed, the only thing they effect is their own destruction, and thus their quest for wisdom is a profound failure. The gnostic ideal of unity is in fact best achieved by Cortana and Master Chief in their ability to recognize the true function and intent of the rings, the equivalent of gnostic wisdom.
Halo enables players to replay games at four different levels of difficulty, with each level offering greater challenges and occasional new experiences and insights. While the campaign mode reveals the story, the online multiplayer mode invites the player to compete with or cooperate together with fellow players for virtual victories, which afford the players higher online rankings and community status.
Speaking of traditional apocalypses, Nogueira points out that the process of gaining access to heavenly worlds through religious ecstasy is not easy: It “demands technique.” The recitation of proper formulas such as the kedusha appears in apocalyptic liturgies in Revelation and The Apocalypse of Abraham.64 Salen and Zimmerman observe in Rules of Play (2004) that games too require skills, some of which are consistent with those described in ascents: “visual scanning;” “auditory discrimination;” “motor responses;” “concentration;” and “perceptual patterns of learning” about the system of the game (p. 315). Salen and Zimmerman remark that to play a game is “to experience the game: to see, touch, hear, smell, and taste the game; to move the body during play, to feel emotions about the unfolding outcome, to communicate with other players, to alter normal patterns of thinking.” Journeys to other worlds, whether in videogames or in traditional Jewish and Christian ascent literature, require intense concentration and developed techniques.
False Identity
Writing under someone else’s name is an exceedingly common practice in ancient Jewish writings. A number of reasons for the adoption of pseudonyms have been offered by scholars, including Stone’s argument that writing pseudonymously evokes “an aura of antiquity and participation in a tradition of great status and authority.” 65 By writing in another’s name, authors can “claim that they possess a tradition of learning inspired by God but not deriving its authority through the Mosaic revelation” (p. 10). Players of Halo create their own pseudonym, registered to their Xbox Live account, in order to participate in a tradition of virtual skirmishing and rising in both ranking and ability.
In The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic (1964), D.S. Russell identifies another reason for pseudonymity: an experience that he calls “contemporaneity,” which refers to the author’s identification with the ancient personage whose name he adopts and so shares the same visionary experiences and receives the same divine revelations (p. 136). In other words, the author experiences the same things as the person he’s writing about and writing as. The apocalypticist in this way could see himself as an extension of the ancient seer’s personality (p. 138). Such language resonates with contemporary discussions about players’ identifications with avatars.
Thus, one could argue that contemporaneity, as a form of identity play, is a very basic element of ritual, of games, and of apocalypses. The player in Halo primarily enacts the personality and actions of the Master Chief, but occasionally plays the role of the Arbiter (in the second game). The player “contemporaneously” enacts the tasks of the Master Chief, the messianic figure in the game, through pivotal firefights that amount to the salvation of humanity from the Flood. In so doing, the player also becomes a sort of visionary, experiencing the game as a vision.
Apocalyptic Angst
So are there any common characteristics when one compares ancient fans of apocalypses and contemporary fans of videogames? One possibility is the Sitz im Leben or “situation in life” of the people typically drawn to these forms. David Hellholm has suggested that the Society of Biblical Literature definition should include the statement that apocalypses are “intended for a group in crisis with the purpose of exhortation and/or consolation by means of divine authority.” Devotees of apocalypses, then, are typically feeling overwhelmed by forces beyond their control and are driven by a desire for certainty, assurance, and a sense of empowerment.
The life-situation of traditional apocalypses is well known, characterized by the experience of oppression and suffering at the hands of Greek and Roman overlords. In some ways, the life-situation of today’s videogame players is similar, at least in spirit. Marc Fonda points to the disasters in recent decades, including “natural calamities, abortion, the Gulf War, political correctness, the AIDS epidemic, 9/11, as well as political and economic instability throughout the world.” Fonda says that the anxiety caused by these events may cause “those of us in the West” to suffer from “disaster syndrome.” We have “become stunned, withdrawn, passive, suggestible” and we are experiencing “diminished mental capacity” as we have trouble “perceiving reality correctly.”66 Maybe some contemporary game players, like the ancient apocalypticists, feel a loss of control and purpos
e, and turn to games for the certainty games like Halo offer in telling us who is “good,” who is “evil,” and what to do about it.
Fonda outlines what he sees as “characteristics common to both millennial movements and postmodern thought,” including the claim that adherents to both “suffer from a specific degree of angst caused by the recognition of impending doom of civilization as they know it.” The hope of apocalypticists is for a “revitalization” that emerges out of a need “to reduce the stress and anxiety that confronts people when their society is no longer capable of providing an effective means of doing so.” Thus, in today’s society, Fonda sees examples of secular apocalypticism in “feminist thought, a perceived environmental disaster, scenarios regarding plenary destruction, and certain Internet subcultures.”
Halo, too, can be seen as a form of “secular apocalypticism.” Despite the obvious religious imagery in Halo, casual players themselves are not likely to see their gameplay as a religious activity, even if they might indeed feel overwhelmed by angst in their daily lives and experience the game as a temporary oasis of moral certainty. Furthermore, the transformation of traditional religious imagery within a game—especially within the context of a fantasydriven and violent First Person Shooter—suggests that Halo’s commentary on religion is more scathing: this apocalypse is not literally expected to arrive by anyone playing the game. Accordingly, judgment is merely a performance of virtual doom, a ritual acting out of contemporary angst with no ultimate payoff.