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[ManofOne]

This monochrome mould was firmly established by the Fallout series, gaming’s most famous post-apocalypse, which is set in an America decimated by nuclear war in the 1950s, leaving survivors scrabbling through irradiated cities to a soundtrack of chirpy doo-wop. Fallout established the post-apocalypse as fertile terrain for storytelling, for exploring complex ideas of how to re-establish society when every system has broken down. Humans splinter into factions with sharply competing ideologies in the series’ high-water mark, Fallout: New Vegas. And while some find the outlandishness of sci-fi and fantasy unrelatable, post-apocalyptic stories hit a sweet spot by envisioning extreme scenarios that still root humans like us at their centre.

Series such as The Division, Metro and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. use the post-apocalypse as a useful foundation to embed traditional game mechanics. In most games, you start with nothing and slowly acquire power, an arc that overlaps neatly on to the story of someone who has survived the end of the world. Meanwhile, non-human enemies such as zombies and mutants provide cannon fodder for gunplay while avoiding pesky questions of the ethics of killing humans. In Frostpunk, a smart city-building game set across the frozen tundras of London during a volcanic winter, the apocalypse provides a pretext for resource management and strategy, posing tricky moral questions — do you choose to put your community’s children to work in the furnaces or risk your elderly freezing to death?

While the aesthetics of the gaming apocalypse are mostly tired, there are a few exceptions. Horizon Zero Dawn and Zelda: Breath of the Wild argue that the end might look colourful and lush. Meanwhile The Last of Us series offers evocative dioramas of lives lived in abandoned American homes following a zombie outbreak. There are the crops on the deserted farm, left to wither on the vine, and the diary entries written by a girl who cannot understand why her father never came home. The poignancy comes from witnessing the evanescence of human life, described by Cormac McCarthy in his post-apocalyptic novel The Road as “the absolute truth of the world . . . borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.” Stories of the apocalypse are most commonly interpreted as warnings and prophecy. They reflect the anxieties of the times, giving us nuclear destruction during the cold war, zombies when consumer culture reached new heights, and environmental catastrophe as the climate crisis became a mainstream concern. A handful of games, such as Kentucky Route Zero and Night in the Woods, even reckon with a form of economic apocalypse, depicting the shuttered shops and debt-crippled denizens of rural America. These examples are rare, however, supporting the statement of Fredric Jameson (by way of Slavoj Zizek) that “It is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism.

https://www.ft.com/content/2b95270d-763d-4b0a-9b75-b26a8f96d58d

 

[Guilty_AI]

 

[I collect VHS tapes]

Aren’t post-apocalypse games by definition not end of the world games? Post-apocalypse games are grim because they take place after an apocalypse.

 

[FunkMiller]

I absolutely love artwork that depicts the world after man has gone and nature has taken over again. One of the reasons I love The Last Of Us so much. It gives me a sense of peace... though they may just be the misanthropist in me.

 

[MiyazakiHatesKojima]

Death Stranding did it best.

 

[ManofOne]

Aren’t post-apocalypse games by definition not end of the world games? Post-apocalypse games are grim because they take place after an apocalypse.

This is what I was thinking but the article makes a good point. It doesn't always need to be bleak like total destruction. You can add a bit more colour.

 

[justiceiro]

Paywall for a article that puts arguments against itself in its own text? Nah...

 

[anothertech]

 

[nowhat]

This is what I was thinking but the article makes a good point. It doesn't always need to be bleak like total destruction. You can add a bit more colour.

HZD says hi.

(although, that would be like post-post-apocalypse - and yes, I didn't read the article, as per tradition)

 

[Maestr0]

Or it can be Xenoblade Chronicles X and the Earth is obliterated.