My favorite Nintendo games, Smash Bros. and the Fire Emblem series (spoilers included) have been stressing me out for a long time (I have autism) because some of these games hint themselves in being pro-dystheist (the belief that a deity responsible for the world’s creation is malevolent). This is a common thing with main antagonists in Square Enix and Atlus games, which I don’t like anyways, but it has plagued games I actually enjoy. As a disclaimer, I am not highly religious, in fact I am less religious than the average person, but anything regarding a “creator of the world” who wants to do bad things massively upsets me, both because I think this type of story writing and the whole belief of dystheism is really controversial, incredibly depressing, and that I struggle every day with a disability and depression (I don’t want to believe I was created for malevolent reasons!!!).
In the Smash Bros series, the evil Master Hand is the source of creation of the Smash world and Crazy Hand is the source of destruction. Similar with their masters, Galeem and Darkhon, but nothing about them is truly made clear. Master Hand has also been manipulated by Tabuu in Subspace Emissary and one of them, when freed from Galeem in World of Light, fought player-controlled against their minions in the near-end of the story mode. Overall there’s a lot of pseudo-dystheism (two evil hands representing creation and destruction of the world) and confusion the Smash lore that really stresses me out.
Not all Fire Emblem games stress me out, but certain ones that have a creator god/goddess do: Radiant Dawn’s Ashera and the Heroes’ app Alfador (who hasn’t even been made into a character yet). But also Three Houses’ Rhea/Seiros as an antagonistic Jesus figure. Ashunera is a goddess who creates the world of Tellius as well as the races of humans and human shape-shifters. When the clashing of her people and the racism between the humans and shape-shifters becomes a disastrous issue that challenges her emotionally, she splits herself into Ashera (order and reason) and Yune (emotion and chaos). Yune ends up destroying most of the world in a Genesis-esque flood and is sealed away in a cursed medallion, and Ashera becomes the alpha goddess. In the events of Radiant Dawn, Ashera is woken up from a sleep where she finds out the beings she created just won’t stop killing each other, and turns a lot of people into stone. Yune is freed from her medallion and is enlisted in Ike and Micaiah’s crew to stop Ashera from resetting the world, as well as the corrupt Begnion church. The good news is after defeating Ashera, Yune gets her to chill and they reform back into Ashunera. What affected me though in Radiant Dawn was the sense of “this seems dystheistic” when we find out Ashera, the goddess everyone prays to thanks to the corrupted church, plans to end the world, and quotes like “blind faith” or similar are used in the game.
In the Fire Emblem Heroes app, Alfador, creator god of Zenith, is a parody of Odin from Norse mythology and has two daughters named after Thor and Loki. Unlike mythology, both Thorr (as she’s called) and Loki are evil and carry out the malevolent orders of Alfador, quoted “he who created all” and similarly. Even though Alfador has not appeared in Heroes yet, his mentioning and the writing’s lean to pro-dystheism totally ruined the app for me.
In Fire Emblem Three Houses, Seiros is the daughter of the creator goddess Sothis (who thank goodness isn’t evil), identical to how Jesus in the Bible is the son of God. Seiros creates the Church of Seiros and is even celebrated in a holiday in late December like Jesus. That’s pretty much where the similarities end. Seiros/Rhea isn’t evil but not a great person (she’s the final boss “immaculate one” in Edelgard’s path) and that’s how the Jesus connection stressed me out.
Being a high fantasy game fan, I would like to play the two Xenoblade Chronicles games, but I also heard controversy on those games regarding religion.
Are these games’ obviously dystheistic moments included on purpose like someone wanting to spread a message to Western audiences? I would also like to know how to get over my stress and anxiety over this so I could enjoy gaming and continue to enjoy my favorite games.
