![]() What if the shamans of the enemy Dakini, Matak, and Chumara tribes were themselves confonted with the same vision? That would surely explain the efforts of those tribes to impede the player and invites comparisons with the religious conflicts of the real world. Consider the heroine-shaman’s premonition that she must conquer the rival tribes in order to attain heavenly favour. Indeed, its whole premise can be construed as a comment on the tribal nature of belief. Intriguingly, The Beginning goes deeper than merely including incidental references to these kinds of concepts. The shaman’s mystical ability to travel from planet to planet echoes the notion of astral projection, itself a feature of spiritual traditions from Japanese mythology to Hindu scripture. The spiritual referencing extends to the shaman’s mana using spells too among the most powerful, the “Angel of Death” and “Armageddon” spells transparently draw their names from Christian texts. ![]() Other structures that can be worshipped include stone heads - based on ones built by the moai hundreds of years ago on Easter Island in Polynesia - and “vaults of knowledge” based on the ziggurats and temples of Mesopotamian and Mesoamerican origin respectively. The many nods to Native American culture include the reference to the basic tribal workers as “braves” and the inclusion of totem poles as one of various structures that can be worshipped by the shaman or her followers in exchange for new spells and technologies from the gods. If she succeeds, she will become ruler of the entire solar system and will be granted godhood.Įach of the game’s missions takes place on one of the twenty-five worlds, and the campaign takes in all manner of spiritual influences. If the shaman - the player - does not conquer the three rival tribes on each of the 25 worlds, her own tribe will be destroyed by those enemies. This distinction makes her the natural leader of her community, and leads to her receiving a premonition, one recounted in the game’s opening cutscene. The player controls a female shaman, the only person in her village who can cast spells fueled by mana, the spiritual energy which flows through the inhabitants of the Populous world. 25 tiny planets orbit a sun like ours, each populated by primitive human tribes, their characteristics based heavily on various pre-modern civilizations. ![]() Unlike games based explicitly on real-world religions like Christian titles (for example, The Bible Game) and the controversial ( Left Behind: Eternal Forces), the gameplay of the third game in the Populous series operated within its own fictional spiritual cosmos. ![]() One particularly fascinating example that I’ve recently been reacquainted with is Bullfrog’s 1998 strategy game Populous: The Beginning. Whatever their reasons, games developers have from time to time included religious and spiritual references in their games, resulting in the crossing over of these two usually disparate worlds. What links the two pursuits is that arguably they are both concerned on some level with escapism, defined as the search for experiences outside the norm. Spirituality and gaming: surely a toxic combination if ever there was one? The former is - however broadly defined - about the serious task of attempting to engage with forces beyond the material realm, while the latter is often about sitting on a sofa, bashing bad guys and notching up high scores.
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