It's about time I finally talk about Sunless Sea, as it's one of the video games that had a deep impact on me as a person. It's been many years since I finished playing it now, yet the experience still reverberates. Its game design and its writing both had a lot to do with this.
Sunless Sea showed me something about faith, security, risk, and courage. It forced me to examine what I value, and what I'm willing to spend for it. It taught me some things are worth suffering for.
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| Sunless Sea screenshot, from Failbetter Games. This is the "Avid Horizon," a gateway from the subterranean Neath directly into ... space? |
And in a curious intersection of two very different works, it also helped me understand The Chronicles of Narnia better than I ever did before. They were accessible to my child self, of course. I read them then and got a notion of what they were trying to say. But some ideas don't develop fully until they are informed by experience, and it's experience that video games excel so thoroughly at providing. I'm going to relate the two as I try to explain what I got out of this game.
First comes the rather counter-intuitive thought that someone overwhelmingly righteous and positive is not necessarily safe, expressed in this little excerpt from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe:
“Is—is he a man?” asked Lucy.
“Aslan a man!” said Mr. Beaver sternly. “Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea. Don't you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion—the Lion, the great Lion.”
“Ooh!” said Susan, “I'd thought he was a man. Is he—quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”
“That you will, dearie, and no mistake,” said Mrs. Beaver, “if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly.”
“Then he isn't safe?” said Lucy.
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver. “Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.”
“I'm longing to see him,” said Peter, “even if I do feel frightened when it comes to the point.”
To describe how Sunless Sea illuminates this, I'll have to start by giving some background.
Sunless Sea belongs to that subgenre known variously as “Eldritch,” “Cosmic Horror,” or “Lovecraftian Horror.” The basic hallmark of such a setting is that the universe is secretly chock full of Things Man Was Not Meant to Know, and dominated by otherworldly powers (alien or metaphysical – at some point the lines start to blur) whose modes of existence lie beyond our comprehension. Interacting with these powers, or digging beyond the comforting surface of the world to learn The Real Truth, is liable to ruin one's mind. Sunless Sea's flavor of this emphasizes the wonder that rides right alongside the terror, which is part of the reason why I like it so much. Nonetheless, the game is positively crawling with danger, and the worst of it goes beyond even main-character death. You can sell your soul – literally – or sell it figuratively in any number of different ways. You can get entangled with a couple of particularly nasty cults. You can acquire a semi-permanent craving for human flesh (ew). You can watch your crew start killing each other under the influence of insanity and privation. And here's the best part: the game will force you to make important decisions on the basis of very incomplete information. Navigating it was an exercise in trying to avoid things that smelled bad without crippling my ability to explore and learn. I was faced with a few choices in which either course of action might have devastating results. Sometimes I got it right; sometimes I didn't.
All the dangers I just listed apply to one's in-game character, but there's a sense in which Sunless Sea is dangerous for the player as well. This arises from two important features of its design. First, it's basically a narrative role-playing game, and like many RPGs it demands some “farming.” Preparing your character for the game's greatest challenges calls for many hours of hauling trade goods around the ocean to amass experience, wealth, and equipment. Second, if you play it as it's meant to be played, there is no possibility of restoring your game – mistakes cannot be undone. This includes mistakes that result in your character's permanent death. So whenever you make a chancy decision, you're rolling dice with a substantial time investment. Farming longer before attempting the more difficult parts improves your chances of success, but it also increases the amount of work you lose if you have to die and start all over. As the endgame approaches, daring leaps into the unknown become proportionally less attractive, and moral dilemmas grow teeth.
It was into such a world that I apprehensively launched my little virtual steamboat, eager for discovery, but also determined to guard my character against death if at all possible.[1] I was immediately faced with the problem of which of the underground ocean's Powers were safe to interact with. You can hobnob with everybody from the king of the aquatic zombies to an enormous sentient coral reef, but that doesn't mean you should. Prominent among these characters are the three known as the “sea gods,” who sometimes serve as patrons for travelers: Storm, Stone, and Salt. Storm is the dragon who lives in the roof; he is perpetually angry and likes blood sacrifices, sometimes of the human variety. I didn't care for him much. Stone is a living mountain whose presence acts like a fountain of youth for those lucky enough to dwell near her base. She helps sailors return home and stay alive. She's the closest thing the setting has to a benevolent entity who might watch over you. And Salt … it's somewhat unclear what Salt is. It[2] is the patron of horizons and farewells. It likes offerings of secrets. It's pleased when you take strangers on board your ship. It's enigmatic, challenging, and unpredictable. And I proceeded to surprise myself by liking it best out of all the three.
Stone would've been the natural choice for a nervous captain to kiss up to, but somehow I was drawn to Salt instead. It definitely wasn't safe, but over and over again I gambled on it anyway. And as things turned out, some of the most rewarding moments in the game happened when I went out on a limb to interact with Salt, and it ended up paying off.
Now when I say “paying off,” I don't mean that my character was rewarded with wealth, comfort, or power. What Salt generally provides is the chance to gain enlightenment and transcendence by doing painful, frightening, stupid things. Granted, Sunless Sea's explicit knowledge economy permits even enlightenment to be processed into currency and stat points, but there were plenty of other ways of getting those. It wasn't the numerical advancement that I really valued here.
The weirdest thing about all this is that I don't think my appreciation for Salt arises in spite of the fact that it is not comfortable. I like Salt precisely because Salt is not comfortable. If reaching out hadn't cost me a little apprehension – if I hadn't been compelled to take some things on trust – then it wouldn't have been worth as much. If the benefits Salt offers didn't entail some risk and strain, they wouldn't be worth nearly as much either. And if Salt weren't mysterious, unknowable, and even mind-shattering, half the wonder would be gone out of it too. This creature would be ordinary … on my level. Sublunar.
And zooming out from the context of the game, I realize that I don't want God in the real world to be entirely comfortable either. I don't need Him to be fully comprehensible by my human brain. I don't need Him to make all kinds of guarantees to me up front. I want Him to be enormous and awe-inspiring and holy. I don't want Him to make everything easy for me all the time. I might even want to do some of those painful, frightening, stupid things. I want to embrace what is arduous and costly in my spirituality. I want to be glorified, not safe.
And that is why I finally understand what C. S. Lewis was talking about in that kids' book on my shelf. Or what Charles Williams is talking about, with just a hint of disparagement, here:
"... they couldn't all want Archetypes coming down on them, not if they were like most of the religious people he had met. They also probably liked their religion taken mild -- a pious hope, a devout ejaculation, a general sympathetic sense of a kindly universe -- but nothing upsetting or bewildering, no agony, no darkness, no uncreated light."[3]
Church (the type that I attend, anyway) frequently emphasizes the warm, benevolent attributes of God – the ones that would be better represented by Stone. The God they talk about here is the God who saves people, loves people, forgives without limit, and cares about your problems. And these are all valid aspects of His character, I believe. But personally I wish we discussed the God of mystery and majesty a little more often.
More to come in Part II, in which I talk about Going East. And if you follow me on social media, I will be posting The Neathbow. What's that, you ask? Vivid colors from a place without a sun.
[1] Sunless Sea expects that you will die a lot and go through many characters. I died only twice – and one of those times, the primary cause was a bug!
[2] I prefer not to use "it" for any sort of sentient being or person, even an incomprehensible genderless alien. I'm following the game's writing here.
[3] Quote from The Place of the Lion.
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