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Paradise Killer, Cosmic Horror, and the Crimes of Empire


Regardless of its bafflingly incoherent use today, for most of its existence the term "woke" had a very different, and specific, meaning. Coming from Black civil rights movements of the 1920s and 30s, it referred to becoming cognizant of the systems of oppression that exist in every aspect of Western culture, to "wake up"  from the sleepwalk of the blind structural acceptance, and, eventually, involvement in movements to undo those systems. It's a powerful term, implying the sudden collapse of everything one has been taught and accepted as a dream, an enforced fantasy. Coming face-to-face with the brutality inflicted by today's society and acknowledging the centuries of cruelty and destruction it took to build that society is terrifying - often the best we can do is try to push it to the backs of our minds simply to get through the day.

Another concept was starting to make its appearance in the 20s and 30s, even if there wasn't a name for it yet: cosmic horror. Stemming from the works by H.P. Lovecraft and the authors he inspired (and encouraged), cosmic horror can be seen as an expression of terror at one's significance compared to the vastness and unknowable nature of the universe. Within the genre, awareness of reality and the potentials it contains comes at the cost of sanity: existence is simply too massive for our limited brains to comprehend, particularly when it comes to powerful alien beings that are very, very different from us. (It should be acknowledged that, in addition to the developments in physics and astronomy Lovecraft lived through, his idea of horror through exposure to the Other draws from how exceptionally racist he was for most of his life.) But beyond its application to a universe far older and larger than our own limited society, the framework of cosmic horror is a useful model in describing how we learn of our own monstrous history and the ugliness that undergirds everything we take for granted. It costs us something to consider how the device you're reading this very post on is dependent on materials obtained through literal slave labor. Or how every aspect of our food network requires nightmarish worker exploitation at every step of the way, from the initial stages of production to the final point of sale. Most of all, perhaps, as Americans, there is the fact that everything is build on the near-total genocide of native peoples the work of enslaved Africans. Once you know these things, you can't un-know them and return to that un-woke sleepwalking state ... but we can't hold them in our head all at once and move through the world, either. The horror is real, and it is massive, and it is crushing.

Paradise Killer is a 2020 indie mystery adventure game made by the British developer Kaizen Game Works that builds its complex setting on both cosmic horror and human exploitation. In keeping with genre traditions, much is left unexplained and the information we do get is revealed to the player as they engage with the game world. The setting might also be described as having a conceptual "Three Stooges Syndrome," where there are so many crazy ideas going on at once that it never quite crosses the threshold into being irritating.  To sum as briefly as possible, there are a group of immortal beings (who may have once been human, it's unclear) who draw their power from eldritch cosmic gods. To worship and/or imprison those gods (again, the information the game gives you is intentionally inconsistent), the Syndicate creates island "Paradises" in pocket universes, miniature cities resembling earth resorts. Invariably, though, these Paradises are corrupted either by the arrival of demons (a far more chaotic form of cosmic being) or through the capricious efforts of the gods themselves, who often have their own inscrutable motives. In addition to the Syndicate, each island is populated by some thousands of humans ("Citizens") abducted from Earth, who work to keep each Island Sequence functioning and to placate the gods through worship - usually for many generations over the course of a Paradise's existence. When an Island Sequence has to end, the entire population of Citizens are brutally slaughtered to release enough psychic energy to create the next Paradise... and the cycle repeats. With everything literally built from the lives (and deaths) of a permanent underclass, all for the benefit of untouchable beings who view them as little more than an exploitable resource... the underlying message is pretty clear. Despite the extremely dark backstory though, the game's wold is sunny and brightly-colored, drawing influence from the "vaporwave" aesthetic or, as I like to call it, "80s Trapper Keeper art." The music, too, draws from retro and faux-retro influences, bathing the player in layers of synthesizers, drum machines, and ridiculously catchy melodies. All of this highlights the artificiality of the setting, driving home that this is a created place, outside of time, strictly for the benefit of the powerful who are just passing through.

Into this thematic cacophony is thrust the player, cast in the role of Lady Love Dies, former Investigator for the Syndicate's Paradise Psycho Unit. (Would you expect the characters populating the Paradise Killer universe to have normal-sounding names?) In keeping with the tradition of "detective as outsider" Love Dies has been exiled from the Syndicate for over eight thousand years (3,004,769 days, to be precise) after she was tricked by one of the gods, leading to the destruction of Island Sequence 13. Her exile abruptly ends, however, when the Council of Syndicate leaders are murdered on Island 24, just before they begin the process of ending it. If she can solve the murder, there will be a place for her on the Island 25. Right off the bat, then, we're given a complicated relationship to the Syndicate, mirroring those we all have with our own callous societies built on suffering. Is Lady Love Dies eager to rejoin the Syndicate and embrace its values despite everything it's done to her and to  countless Citizens sacrificed over millennia? Is she going to take this as an opportunity to dismantle the Syndicate, at least enough to break the destructive cycle? Or is sh e going to begrudgingly perform her duties, aware of the horrors her people perpetuate, but ultimately powerless to do anything about it? The choice is up to the player, their character developed through dialogue options and, ultimately, how they choose to conduct the trial that serves as the game's climax.

It's hard to deny Island 25's emptiness when you experience it firsthand, though, and everything that emptiness implies. Much like Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain's Afghanistan and Angola, the setting is defined through the absence of its people. Paradise Killer goes far beyond that game's deserted villages and outposts, though - this is a population that was here just a few days prior, and we know exactly what happened to them.You go through their apartment complexes and workplaces looking for clues and unique collectible items, many of which provide brutally honest glimpses into the lives the Citizens led. "Time is meaningless on the islands," reads the description for "Inaccurate Alarm Clock," "but Citizens cling to these signifiers from their old lives for comfort."  "Unavoidable Pain Pills" has the text "All workers on the island are prescribed pain medication. All goods produced in the farm and Deep Factory have to be hauled by hand. If it was good enough for ancient Egypt..." Most haunting for me, though, was the "Absurd Message Stones:" "Stones painted by children before they go to the slaughter ritual. They make wishes for their next life. Citizens don't have a next life."  When you talk to the remaining Syndicate members, they're generally dismissive of the now-deceased Citizens, not even granting them the dignity of mockery - simple resources to be used, no more. We're reminded that Love Dies herself is complicit even beyond being part of the Syndicate: it's revealed through dialogue that her Isiah Bullet, her ex-husband already safe at Island 25, was in charge of Citizen abductions when they were together and remains so. Evidently, it wasn't something she had a problem with at the time.

But the past, as they say, is a different country, literally in the case of Paradise Killer, and the player is under no obligation to continue Lady Love Dies's presumed pre-exile callousness. Over the course of your investigation, you'll meet and come to know all the Syndicate members on Island 25 (since they're all suspects), and get to hear some different takes on the relationship between the Syndicate, their gods, the Island Systems, and the Citizens. Nor is the Citizens' viewpoint completely relegated to the things and spaces they've left behind - although I won't go into specifics, with the game being a mystery and all. One viewpoint I can mention without spoilers is that of Shin U'thk Jiggath  (or "Shinji" for short... if this is a reference, I struggle to make it work): a demon you meet before you even get to Island 25, who offers a counterpoint to the Syndicate, their gods, and the concept of order itself. Shinji is the only character you'll meet who exists completely outside the system, so while he isn't necessarily on the side of the Citizens, he doesn't see their slaughter as, at best, a necessary evil the way the Syndicate do. And it's through these entirely optional conversations that you develop your own version of Lady Love Dies - for a being of infinite chaos, Shinji is remarkably inquisitive about humanity (immortal or otherwise) and the viewpoints they hold. I always bee-lined to his conversation spawn points whenever I saw them. Without Shinji as a fellow outside, I think players might find themselves too drawn into the comfy world of the Syndicate, their stories, their desires, and their schemes. Or, worse, they could find the Syndicate too annoying to spend time with and quit the game altogether.

While it's clear that the creators of Paradise Killer were working through their own feelings of living in a society built on the brutality of the British empire, it's serendipitous that the game came out in 2020, a year when Americans were brought face-to-face with the systemic injustices that keep our civilizational machinery running. The 1619 Project had been published the previous year, dragging into the spotlight the slavery behind our founding myths and cementing "Critical Race Theory" (something the work decidedly was not) as the conservative boogeyman of the day... which would eventually become the inescapable "woke" panic that surrounds us today. Lawmakers responded by enshrining the heroic, virtuous founding mythology in educational curriculum through legal means - remember Trump's "1776 Project?" It was COVID, though, that made present injustices unavoidable, with the poor and minorities shouldering the heaviest duties and suffering the worst consequences. The murder of George Floyd put systemic brutality on display, and the subsequent protests made it seem like things were going to actually be addressed... for a while. It's frustrating now to look back on all of it and see that, not only has nothing changed, not only has it gotten worse, but the idea of change itself has been villainized, even by the people who were theoretically going enact it. Once the promised mass deportations begin, we're going to have to face exactly how much our entire system is still based on cheap exploitable labor. We all try to do what we can, but sometimes all we can do is try not to think about everything that's being done in our names, to keep the status quo operating and unchanging. To do so would be staring into the eldritch cosmic horror, to do so invites only madness.

It's not a spoiler to say that, no matter what choices you make as Lady Love Dies, you aren't able to bring down the Syndicate single-handedly, much as the player may want to. There would be a catharsis in that, but not an honest one, not for those of us who live in the crumbling ruins of empire, everything supporting us running on a fuel of blood and sweat and death. That might be one of the reasons Paradise Killer has stuck with me in the week since I've finished it. For all the goofiness of its setting, for all the elaborate grotesqueries of its characters, it's still too real for comfort.

Send questions, comments, and brightly colored pastel depictions of horrific cosmic deities to neversaydice20@gmail.com or tweet us @neversaydice2

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