I’ve come face to face with a God. He lives
in the sky, and he’s a giant flying whale. If you’ve played the game Skyward Sword,
you know what I’m talking about. Levias, spirit of the skies, is a pretty awe-inspiring
sight for a Wii game. When I was little, I spent hours circling around this deity, at
times coming so close to divinity I felt I could reach out and touch it. So, you can imagine
my excitement when I learned that Breath of Wild, a game set thousands of years
later, also includes Levias. He’s dead. There are many stories in which divine beings
come to an end. But what happens after a god dies? Would they… decompose, their godly forms
rotting away to nothing? Or would they linger, their figures forever changing the surrounding
environment, or even becoming an environment themselves? Would they ever really die?
(Waves Crashing) The short film The Drowned Giant is about — well, a drowned giant, obviously.
But that obviousness is the point. Washed up on an otherwise ordinary beach near a small town,
the giant’s corpse is a blunt truth — something the narrator and other locals cannot ignore or
rationalize. Without any context for where the body came from, it’s at first treated as a deity,
the crowd reverential and apprehensive. But then, something changes. This colossus, be it god
or monster, begins to rot. And just like that, the spell is broken. The townspeople swarm the
fallen titan, clamoring over its immense form, as if trying to reestablish their own importance
relative to the superbeing. Over the following days, animals descend upon the carcass as
well, hastening the disfigurement of the remains. Though disturbed by the general lack of
respect, the narrator cannot, in the end, resist the urge to climb upon the corpse himself. The
fact that the Giant’s decay, its decomposition, is what strips away its godhood in the eyes of
the masses speaks to the inherent paradox of a dead deity. In most classical mythologies, dying
is the pastime of mortals — what makes a god a god is their immortality, their permeance. The
narrator has the sense the giant will reawaken, that something so powerful in life must still
hold power after death — but the body remains motionless. Soon, people see it as just another
piece of trash, an unsightly obstruction that should be disposed of. They eventually decide
to cut the body into sections and haul it away piece by piece. The Drowned Giant is ultimately
a melancholy examination of mortality, of how any being can be disrespected and forgotten, no matter
how large they loomed in life. It is one thing to gaze upon the corpse of a god you did not know
in life. It is another thing entirely to know a god before it falls, and know a god after. In the
Xenoblade games, godly beings called Titans are so numerous that it’s actually hard to keep track of
them all. That is, except for in the third game, which makes things simpler by turning all
Titans into lifeless husks that now make up the landscape. The reasons for this are — too much to
get into, trust me. But the tragedy here is pretty straightforward. Here are the shells of beings
that you know if you’ve played the other titles in the series. The game doesn’t draw attention
to these remnants either, which is notable, since Xenoblade is, on balance, a pretty loud franchise.
Instead, the remains quietly fade into the background. Most characters don’t even remember
what they were. I think what saddened me the most about Levias’ corpse in Breath of the Wild — you
know, aside from my celestial whale friend being a pile of bones — is the fact that no one seems to
remember this deity. There are some researchers who debate his identity, but they assume he was
just a large extinct animal, not the god I knew him to be. But I really can’t judge, because there
are actually other giant whale skeletons scattered throughout this game. When I first saw these, I
didn’t know what to make of them. As it turns out, they’re actually the remains of other whale gods
from throughout the series, lost deities that I didn’t even know about. For beings that were once
worshiped, it’s hard to imagine a more tragic fate. These gods haven’t just died… they’ve been
forgotten. (Chanting) One isn’t likely to forget the deities of the God of War saga. In the current
series based on Norse mythology, clashes between gods and other divine beings regularly reshape
the landscape. The sheer scale of godly power that these games capture is just astounding, creating
countless unforgettable moments. It’s curious, then, that the experience that stuck in my mind
the most wasn’t meeting a live god, but a dead one. Midway through the first game in the Norse
saga, you arrive upon the mountainous corpse of Thamur. Though technically a giant rather than a
god, in-game lore suggests Thamur had the power to challenge Thor himself, a power so great,
it continues to shape the world in death. Even decaying, Thamur’s body emits a maelstrom of
cold that has frozen the surrounding ecosystem, an effect you can see from miles away. His sheer
mass also flattened an entire village when he first fell. This idea is also present in the Greek
God of War titles, where the death of a pantheon member had an immediate and apocalyptic effect on
whatever domain they had authority over. Unlike the fallen gods discussed so far, Thamur still
holds influence over the environment in his icy, cadaverous grip. You don’t just observe the
power of Thamur’s corpse from a distance, though — you have to climb it. And the act of
scrabbling up the side of this colossus, like I was one of the townsfolk from The Drowned Giant,
conveyed to me the scale of a god’s power better than any of the series’ most gonzo action beats.
When I recently replayed Breath of the Wild, I tried clambering up the leviathan skeletons,
an experience that reminded me how small I was in comparison. And that even in death, these
gods, too, still hold power. At a glance, it doesn’t seem like there’s a dead god in the game
Jusant. What there is, dominating every frame, filling every inch of your thoughts — is the
mountain. And your job, your singular goal, is to reach the summit. As in God of War, the
very act of climbing in Jusant feels like a form of worship. Every handhold is a prayer, every
completed route a hymn to the mountain’s power. Jusant also requires you to make these leaps
of — well, faith, for lack of a better word, where you’re suspended on nothing but a rope and
the trust that the mountain will hold you. It is in these moments that you can get the closest to
fathoming the true size of the mountain’s body, to comprehending the extent of its power. You
encounter the remains of multiple civilizations as you make your way up this peak, cultures that rose
and fell entirely within its shadow. It is clear in the art these societies have left behind that
this mountain was something they worshiped. To the people who lived upon its form, this mountain
was — is — a kind of god. And this god has died. There is a sense that the present-day peak is a
husk — a dried out skeleton of its former self. The wreckage of boats, fishing equipment, and
withered coral that scar the landscape indicate a vast ocean once surrounded this region. The
game’s very title, Jusant, a French maritime term for a period of low tide, supports this narrative.
Without getting into spoilers, there’s evidence this drought came from human activity throwing the
ecosystem out of balance. This mountain was a god, and we have killed it. There is a polluted,
corpse-strewn deity on the face of the Earth. Its name is Mount Everest. Actually, its name
is Chomolungma in native Tibetan, meaning “Goddess Mother of the World.” The name Everest
comes from Welsh cartographer George Everest, a man who famously disliked the idea of a deified
peak being named after an outsider. But the name stuck with the English-speaking world — and so too
did an obsession with scaling this icy God. Today, hundreds of people climb to the summit every year,
many of whom are wealthy, inexperienced outsiders following well-traveled routes. Yet Chomolungma or
Everest still holds frigid, unpredictable power. In his book Into Thin Air, author Jon Krakauer
writes a firsthand account of the 1996 Everest disaster, a blizzard in which eight climbers
lost their lives. This event was a tragedy… but also not uncommon. Since the 1920s, over three
hundred people have died trying to reach the peak — a staggering one third of whom have been
guides from the Sherpa community, an ethnic group indigenous to the Himalayan subregion. Outsiders
have long relied on Sherpa guides to make it to the top of the mountain. Edmund Hillary, often
called the first person to summit Everest, did so alongside Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing
Norgay. Guides face significant exploitation and inconsistent safety measures, often carrying much
of a client’s gear. Between oxygen tanks, tents, and food containers, literal tons of garbage have
been left on the slopes. In their haste to ascend a god, tourists have left her body disfigured
and the community disrupted. In the epilogue of “Into Thin Air,” Krakauer relays the account of
a sherpa orphan lamenting the state of the sacred mountain, stating: “Outsiders find their way into
the sanctuary and violate every limb of her body by standing on top of her, crowing in victory,
and dirtying and polluting her…” For many, climbing Everest is clearly not an act of worship.
There’s clearly something wrong with the holy mountain in Horizon: Zero Dawn. I could tell there
was something wrong from the start of the game, when I looked up and saw these eldritch metal
tentacles, spilling out of the mountain like mechanical intestines. A post-apocalyptic
title, Horizon is full of the wreckage of civilization — the skeletons of buildings and cars
and lampposts—and for most part these ruins feel benign. The only thing menacing about them is
what they imply: that some terrible fate befell humanity. But the ruins on the holy mountain don’t
feel benign. They feel like a disease. It isn’t the exterior of the mountain that the survivors
in Horizon worship, however. It’s the interior, a chamber containing a god called All-Mother.
To the viewer, it quickly becomes clear that this god is a fragment of ancient technology,
one the survivors revere for saving them from an apocalyptic danger. The tentacled corpse smote
upon the mountainside also has a name — although it isn’t called a god. It’s called the
Metal Devil. And once you hear that name, the story of what happened to the world starts to
fall into place. In fiction, the corpse of a devil has a very different presence than the corpse of
a god. In the Studio Ghibli film “Naussica of the Valley of the Wind,” civilization was wiped out by
biomechanical weapons of mass destruction called God Warriors — although most survivors now see
these creations as demons. But in both “Naussica” and Horizon, there are characters who seek power
in these accursed remains, attempting to wield the rotting, long-fallen devils against their enemies.
We’re getting into spoiler territory here, but in each narrative, attempts to wield these demonic
weapons end in further apocalyptic disaster, the characters inevitably losing control, undone
by the same human arrogance that had previously destroyed the world. It’s no accident that both
stories contrast these remains with nature, framing them as the consequence of disrespecting
the natural order. Ultimately, these demonic corpses feel like humanity’s punishment for
trying to play God. Human hubris can become its own fallen god. There’s a decomposing colossus
punishing the characters in the 2014 Russian movie Leviathan. And it’s not the giant, mysterious
whale skeleton you see throughout the runtime — or at least, not entirely. The true deity putrefying
in the background of Leviathan is, instead, a societal one. All of civilization that we see
throughout the film feels like it’s rotting from the inside out, infested with governmental
corruption. The film’s title appears in reference to the Hobbesian Leviathan, or at least
an idealized version of it — the deity of society one buys into for a nation to function. In the
film, this deity is rapidly decaying. Wooden ships like ribcages collapse upon the shore. A
fish processing plant calls to mind a slowing circulatory system, all the workers inside
the final blood cells dragging this organism along before the inevitable. A condemned
house is picked apart like a beached whale, first by stragglers and then by the apex
predator of a demolition machine. Though not technically set in the post apocalypse,
this world seems to have died a long time ago, and is only now beginning to stink. I think part
of why the dead Leviathans in Breath of the Wild struck such a chord with me… has less to do with
the state of the remains, and more to do with the state of the world around them. Though it doesn’t
always look it, Breath of the Wild is a true post-apocalyptic narrative, set after a calamity
destroyed much of civilization. This devastation is embodied in the appearance of another deity in
the series. In Skyward Sword, the Goddess Hylia is represented by a shining statue — fitting for an
era of relative prosperity. In Breath of the Wild, the statue of Hylia is overgrown, forgotten
in a half-demolished cathedral abandoned years ago. It’s a testament to how much of the world has
been lost post-calamity. I think that’s what I was really mourning. Not just Levias, but the larger,
abstract ‘Leviathan’ of a functioning society. Not a Hobbesian one, but the kind of community that
wouldn’t have forgotten this deity so easily. But must a dead god represent an end, or could it also
represent a new beginning? Though less common, there are stories where a god’s death brings new
life, their remains serving as a foundation upon which something new is built. The Marvel Comics
city of Knowhere is built in the skull of a fallen celestial — basically that universe’s equivalent
of a god. In the animated series The Owl House, an entire civilization thrives on the bones of a
still-rotting deity. I’ve said the word ‘rot’ a bunch in this video, but in nature, rotting isn’t
something inherently negative. The decomposing remains of a leviathan like a whale can feed
other lifeforms for years — even decades. Such events are called whalefalls, and while I talk
more about them in my video on Dead Worlds, it’s worth reiterating just how much life
these sea gods bring to the ocean floor, their skeletons becoming miniature ecosystems. Has
such a lifeform even died? But there is another kind of godly skeleton that produces another kind
of rot. The eeriest region of the game Subnautica, is the Lost River, a noxious environment flooded
with toxic brine. And at the center of this fallout are the bones of the Gargantuan Leviathan,
a creature so much larger than the other in-game lifeforms it borders on the divine. There’s a
sense that the Leviathan’s decomposition is what’s creating this poisonous brine, that it’s power
still haunts the environment after death. But even here, there are creatures that have adapted
to this briny wasteland. In fact, some species seem to flourish down here, their entire lifecycle
tied to these pestilent remains. Life upon such a polluted, adversarial Leviathan is a struggle,
it’s unpleasant — but it’s still a life. On Earth, polluted holy sites are rarely abandoned by the
people who worship them. There are no statistics on how many sacred bodies of water or mountains
have been contaminated over the years — but a quick search shows you the numbers are in the
hundreds, if not the thousands. Many of these sites are still visited regularly by individuals
who must risk their own health to continue their way of life. And most of these sacred landmarks
are far from beyond saving. Even Everest, despite the severity of its trash accumulation,
could be made into a healthy region once more. But it would require effort, a change in the way these
places are unprotected. It would require struggle. Hyper Light Drifter is a game about fighting
for your life, no matter the conditions or the fallen titans before you. At least, I think that’s
what it’s about. See, Hyper Light Drifter doesn’t contain a single line of dialogue, communicating
its themes entirely through visual and environmental storytelling. And the visuals that
leave the biggest impact are easily the remains of the Titans. These immense beings lie scattered
throughout the land, and their presence is —well, it’s disheartening to say the least. Because
there is a rot, a sickness, slowly overtaking the character you play as, seemingly related to
whatever wiped out the Titans. Though there’s evidence the Titans weren’t the nicest creatures,
if these beings, these gods, have all perished, what chance do you have? The theme of Hyper Light
Drifter is rooted in personal experience. Lead designer Alx Preston was born with a deteriorating
heart disease, which he cites as an inspiration for the game’s presentation. You can also see this
in the title of the game’s studio, Heart Machine… and in the giant, literal Titan’s heart you
can find, that, despite being robbed of a body, continues to beat. Like the drowned giant, one
of the Titans has been disrespectfully cut into pieces, and yet its fractured parts continue to
function. Alx Preston — who is still making games, by the way — knew Hyper Light Drifter might be
his last ever project, and yet he pushed through and created something that will last into
the future. At the end of The Drowned Giant, the narrator is surprised to find some of the
being’s bones have become part of the town, its scattered parts becoming structures and
supports for houses. Though the Giant is gone, its influence is not. It reminds me of a story
in Norse mythology. Though only briefly mentioned in God of War, in the original Norse myth
there’s another giant-turned-divine-corpse called Ymir. Following his death, Ymir’s body
becomes the foundation for the entire world: “Out of Ymir’s flesh was fashioned the earth, and
the mountains were made of his bones; The sky from the cold frost giant’s skull, and the ocean out of
his blood.” Something can still be made from the body of a fallen leviathan, even if it isn’t the
same as what it once was. Maybe it’s wrong of me to wish Levias had stayed the same. I don’t know
what life he might have nurtured, what ecosystems fed on his remains. Levias still exists, both in
my memories (and on my Wii if I turn it back on because he’s from a video game but, you know,
metaphor.) The Leviathan of civilization also still endures. Though much of Breath of the Wild’s
world has been destroyed, there are pockets of survivors from which a community could remerge.
Maybe that society would revere Levias — not for the god of the skies he once was, but for the
modest shelter his remains now offer. Zelda games have always had a sense of decaying divinity,
that the land itself was once something sacred and is now decomposing. Even the brightest
titles can capture this feeling. But there’s also a consistent sense that not all is lost yet,
that the world can be rebuilt on the bones of what came before. “The giant is still alive for me,”
the narrator states at the end of The Drowned Giant. “I often dream of his resurrection.
A colossus, striding through the streets of town… picking up the fragments of himself on his
return journey to the sea…” And as always, thanks for watching. If you enjoyed this entry, please
lend your support by liking, subscribing, and hitting the notification icon to stay up to date
on all things Curious. See you in the next video.
