Apocalyptic references in gaming? Yes it's true..

[Anarchy101]

I'm sure most of you, or at least some of you, have heard about all of this 2012 hullabaloo...and probably two dozen theories also..ranging from everything to climate change, polar magnetic shifts and nuclear war too increases in consciousness or entering the 4TH dimension and so on.....i'm sure you've heard one of those at some point.

Anyway to my point, I see alot of references to some of these 2012 theories in video games, but not just for 2012..

First good example.

Bioshock - Takes place in a city called "Rapture" where human beings are genetically altered and have unlocked mental abilities...also the note of a totally different style of government.

Fallout - The name speaks for itself, it takes place post apocalypse...

Half Life 2 - This one is my favorite but most far fetched....involves alot of illuminati conspiracies.. Takes place in the very near future..a few years...involves paradigm shifts, merging dimensions, higher dimensional intelligences influencing humanity, giving them new ideas/technology....the ability to teleport, and faster then light speed for example, and controlling them totolatarian style..

Final Fantasy 8 - A pretty unpopular PC game but was successful on the consoles nontheless. But out of all squaresoft rpg's this is the only one to bring up the idea of "time compression" or the merging of reality with 4th dimensional time. A pretty crazy mathematical equation...but hey Einstein said it was possible...

There are more but I think i'll just mention one more for now..

Chrono Trigger - I know, not a PC game...but the storyline has to be mentioned :)...video games are video games. So 65 million years ago some alien crashes into the earth, buries itself, wakes up in 1999 and starts attacking everyone, merely so it can harvest them and use them as fertilizier.... Sounds like a direct references to war of the worlds to me...

[Mike2828]

Like you said, its a part of our culture. There has been rising awareness of doomsday scenarios referenced in anything (in american media anyway). There is lots of legitimacy to any scenario as well. The decline of society, meteor strikes, disease, dwindling natural resources are all very real things that people are aware of and in turn express in the form of media and in this case video games.

Turn on the national geographic channel. Every other show is about the end of the world, "MEGA COMET" "WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN: AN ICE AGE TOMORROW" "GLOBAL TSUNAMI" so its not just video games.

I think they are fun (and just as inevitable as the next person). Its also the reason I feel the zombie genre is so popular (and why no movie or game has gotten it right yet)

[Cellus]

Pish, you've obviously never seen Shawn of the Dead.

[dxj]

Originally Posted by Cellus

Pish, you've obviously never seen Shawn of the Dead.

+1

Or 28 Days Later.

If people are interested in the Zombie Horror stuff, I would suggest to check out the TPB's of "The Walking Dead" Very good, it's not just about zombie attacks all the time, but it's quite psychological (in parts)

Also "The Zombie Survival Guide" I totally know what to do in a zombie attack now.

[bruiser]

The 2012 stuff comes from the Mayan calendar. It predicts the world will end then. I predict it's wrong.

[Aus_Karlos]

I found out that we actually live in a "Binary Star System". Planet X (Which scientists have just figured out to be a Star) is going to Pass into Pluto's orbit.
But then they predict that its going to flip out magnetic field around so North is South and South is North.. And its all happening in 2012...
OMGGGGG WHAT WILL WE DOOO...

[sobeit]

Originally Posted by Aus_Karlos

I found out that we actually live in a "Binary Star System". Planet X (Which scientists have just figured out to be a Star) is going to Pass into Pluto's orbit.
But then they predict that its going to flip out magnetic field around so North is South and South is North.. And its all happening in 2012...
OMGGGGG WHAT WILL WE DOOO...

we die....

[Anarchy101]

Originally Posted by Aus_Karlos

I found out that we actually live in a "Binary Star System". Planet X (Which scientists have just figured out to be a Star) is going to Pass into Pluto's orbit.
But then they predict that its going to flip out magnetic field around so North is South and South is North.. And its all happening in 2012...
OMGGGGG WHAT WILL WE DOOO...

That is just not fact. The closest star system to us is Alpha Centauri which is about 4-5 light years away. Other close star systems include the Zeta reticuli system, Sirius and I believe Tau Ceti? And those are 40 some light years away. Far too much of a distance to have any effect on our solar system let alone our planet or our Star. Unless these nearby stars went supernova and we get hit by a gamma ray burst....which isn't going to happen because the stars near to us are still fairly young, about a million years or so older then our own, and still have several billion years left in their lifecycle.

Besides, Stars (suns) don't just go "rogue" on their systems....A star is the central gravitational point of every solar system, whether it's binary or not, in other words the Sun may be orbiting, but everything else is orbiting around it. Stars do not circle around other objects the way planets orbit stars. Stars only orbit around the center of a galaxy (usually a black hole), in the same way our planets orbit our star. So you can't just have a Star from a distant system that's several trillion miles away just leave it's system and fly into another one. It doesn't make any physical sense and it has never happened before. The only things stars can do is spin, heat up, cool off, explode and implode.....and ours, and the ones near us, aren't going to be doing that for several billion years..

Oh and stars have no effect on the Earth flipping it's magnetic poles that I know of. The planet does that itself. A magnetic flip, which is still just a theory even today, supposedly only occurs once every 26,000 years or so. So....if you do the math and go back in time, these magnetic flips have occured several dozen times or more...over the course of known history. We've been here for what? 100,000...maybe 150,000 years? So it's happened 5-6 times since cromagnon man and neanderthals walked the earth...and millions of other species of plants and animals also....and these magnetic flips had no adverse affects on our ancestors....or even simple forms of life such as insects...so what would make you think that it would mean doomsday now? People always do that, they automatically think that "global change" means doomsday...it doesn't...people automatically pick the most negative assumption for the outcome of something so large, when it will most likely be a positive event...and a good change.

If anything happens in 2012...it will probably be a change in global consciousness, self-awareness, the way we use our brains and the way we perceive reality....almost like a psychadelic "amplified" reality...being completely in-tune with EVERYTHING. Why you ask? Well, because our solar system is entering a part of the galaxy that it hasn't been in for over 26,000 years...it's almost like were returning to our roots. Magnetism will be different, gravity may be different, and since the neurotransmitters in our brains are affected by electro magnetic signals.....a huge change in electro magnetism may mean a huge change in the way our brains operate. Don't forget we only use half of our brain, evolution put the other half there for a reason....for future expansion! We may become more intelligent, have different world views, we may unlock new or unknown mental abilities and have a totally different social and cultural structure...or we may all become mentally retarded...who knows? But if anything at all happens I think that's the most reasonable is a global change in consciousness. And honestly, I think we need it, with our "consumer capitalism" society that we live in now, with our coast to coast shopping malls and false value systems, our lying, dishonest and incompetent governments/leaders, destruction of the environment, using up all our natural resources and destroying the very thing that created us to begin with....this isn't intelligent behavior...it's absurd behavior, an intelligent species doesn't act this way. The world has become too top heavy with it's own ignorance....and it's only a matter of time before something has to change, and change happens naturally..

[Jack.Sparrow]

:O That's got to be the longest post I've read.

I guess we'll find out in 4 years time

[Anarchy101]

I put alot of thought into that one....hehe :)

[Mike2828]

Long post or not I read it and enjoyed it. Its an interesting thought but I doubt 2012 is going to hit us and bam like a light switch people are capable of levitation and magic sorcery. ****, I'm open to anything but the future looks rather bleak in my opinion. I could give two shits less if society collapsed tomorrow. In fact I would be glad to have everything I know turned upside down. The day to day grind is rather mundane and boring. Consumerism/money/communism/monarchy blah blah blahhdy blah who gives a **** anymore. Apathy is exhausting in its own way but Jesus if I have to put up with this annoying SPEND SPEND SPEND lifestyle I'm going to settle on a farm and poop a pair of sweatpants for fun because I just don't have it in me to care about maintaining this culture.

[ebackhus]

2012 will come, and go, just like 2000 did. Uneventful except the few who can't think for themselves.

[stressfreesoul]

It wont be 2012. However the end of civilisation will happen. We will be the root cause, but we wont all die. The rich and selected will continue on to create a master race of useless chatshow hosts and politicians.

[Anarchy101]

Isn't it a shame that in dire situations or a state of global crisis that people go haywire and become delusional/irrational and total chaos breaks out.....instead of everyone gathering their thoughts together and actually stopping, thinking, and working together to work out a solution to their problem....and there's always a solution.

People need to get that "WERE ALL GONNA DIE AHHHH!!!!" philosophy out of their heads and be a little more rational in dire situations. It just shows how stupid people really are.

[sobeit]

Originally Posted by Anarchy101

People need to get that "WERE ALL GONNA DIE AHHHH!!!!" philosophy out of their heads and be a little more rational in dire situations. It just shows how stupid people really are.

but we all are going to die!!!! Its those who think they are going to live forever thats delusional

[Anarchy101]

Originally Posted by sobeit

but we all are going to die!!!! Its those who think they are going to live forever thats delusional

Of course, everyone does, I know that....what I meant was people still seem to have that primal almost animal like instinct of reacting harshly when threatened or in a bad situation. Especially if it involves the downfall of a society, government or even humanity itself. It isn't an intelligent way of dealing with a problem.

[stressfreesoul]

Yeah man, I was joking...

There will be life on this planet for millions of years, but natural selection decides whether we stay or go. Who is to say what creature will become the next dominant species on this rock?

Personally (harking back to the original thread post), I think the references to Apocalyptical circumstance do fuel something in our subconscious that makes us irrational in certain situations, however I think in a real world ending situation, we would be very capable of surviving because we are HUMANS. The fact that the scenarios in games and movies now-a-days depict doom in ever more gruesome and inventive ways only highlights the fact that it is only fictional representation and not real.