The Plight of God: Insignificance and the Eternal Cycle in “Dragon’s Dogma”

Show that living holds worth enough to fight for!

Seneschal, “Final Judgment” – Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen

On my down time I replayed the cult classic Capcom game Dragon’s Dogma, the high fantasy, dark world classic from 2011 which I have vivid memories of when downloading the demo to repeatedly play the tutorial, kill the griffin and otherwise be blown away at being the “Arisen”, the advanced warrior scouring the land in search of their lost heart. Except the Arisen is no hero. They are no herald of the new world. They are simply a candidate to stabilize the world, an ordinary human who takes up the dragon’s challenge on the dingy beach of a forsaken village and has their still-beating heart ripped out in front of their childhood love. Suddenly you awaken without a heart, command your team of “Pawns” and seek out forbidden knowledge and command bombastic powers at your fingertips in pursuit of your lost heart.

Fighting vigilantly against wind, fire adn thunder to seek the temple of naught, beyond the Greatwall in the shadow of the wyrm. To make the choice of what you will become. For the price of a single life, the story can come to an end, but lose your beloved. Or fight on and claim the mantle of the world, the eternal ring in your hands alone. Time flows with your footsteps alone, the throne of creation your inheritance.

From a viewer’s standpoint, this is insanity.

Best explained from a fellow blogger at Amiga Guru:

The game begins with your death! You die while trying to defend your village, killed by the dragon. He pulls your heart out of your chest but, for some reason that you’ll find out only later on in the story, you don’t die. So your quest has begun since you decide to protect your homeland and get your revenge. From this moment on, you’ll be overwhelmed with main and side quests, while you explore a huge open world trying to unfold the mystery.

Gianluca Girelli (g0blin) – Amiga Guru – A Taste From the Past
Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen Review | TheXboxHub

In this endearing story, I travel with my mage and sorcerer companions while playing as a jaded Mystic Archer exploring the depths of caves and haunted islands as I search for the meaning of my existence. Why was, a small town girl living in a lonely world (:3) chosen as the arbiter of fate, the herald of the new world destined to take down the dragon? Luckily, that purpose became depressingly clear as I and my Pawns became stronger and eventually toppled the dragon, later ascending to Godhood as the grand Seneschal. Yet very little information is given on what it is beyond its basic purpose, so let me begin with a little explanation.

First, a look into real-life etymology: a Seneschal is one who strictly supervises and/or serves as administrator behind domestic arrangements, ceremonies and justice (in whatever form one interprets that to be). Generally, they are a steward of sorts, an officer in domestic affairs. This is important, given that they are traveling wanderers known as “Arisen” before their tenure as a god.

An Arisen is one who is chosen by this unseen force and have their heart stolen (impaled) and contained in the body of the Dragon, a being existing only to test those men and women with strong wills. The Arisen’s job afterward is to venture across the monster-ridden land to combat and kill this Dragon with the help of their Main Pawn. Only this does not have to happen; they can bargain with the Dragon to leave the lands as they live a heartless, immortal life with the ones they love. A Seneschal, however, does not accept this offer and so ventures to and executes this Dragon, opening a portal in the Everfall, where you contend with the Seneschal for the throne of godhood.

A Seneschal is an “Arisen” who has ascended beyond the throes of life through sheer willpower and strength. Lore of Dragon’s Dogma lists this being as “an Arisen who has conquered all in their path… becoming the guardian of the world.” They exist independently of the world, outside the bounds of time and space, in their own pocket dimension where they watch.

This deity’s job is to oversee the world from his or her Chambers and ensure the world continues to see life and death as necessary. Thus, a Seneschal must send in the Dragon during times of peace to cause death and destruction in search of an Arisen. The Dragon’s existence is an anomaly: it can be created by the Seneschal but oftentimes, it is the body of a fallen Arisen who has not succeeded in defeating the deity and is cast down into the skies to locate another, far stronger Arisen who might be viable.


The Endless Cycle.

“Show that you’ve the strength to break the yoke that binds you.”

MEETING THE SENESCHAL | Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen (Nintendo Switch) -  YouTube

The entire world draws its life force from the Seneschal’s existence. This includes all animals, peoples, creatures, beasts, monsters and the very skies, nature and planet itself. Hundreds or thousands of years eventually wear down this being and the world soon becomes stagnant. People no longer develop technologically, philosophically or biologically, which incites endless, meager existence with no fulfillment of fruition. To continue the chain of existence and restore vibrancy to a dying world, the Seneschal is to find an Arisen to take their place by sending a Dragon. Even so, the world would become stagnant and die all over again. The Seneschal must uncover a new Arisen. To do this, they must create the Dragon from nothingness, the power of the void.

I’ll not waste time on rhetoric; defeat me, and take my place as keeper of this world.

Following a short skirmish, the Seneschal, emblazoned in a white light holds up a round, mutating form.

Consider… the infinite potential.

The form takes shape as an exact replica of the Arisen standing before it. Like the guardian Seneschal, it too is stagnant and lacks emotion.

Just as you call forth pawns, so I command all life into existence. Call it divine creation, if you must, but expect none of the mercy men seeks in their gods. This is cold truth, the unbending reality of a world without compassion.

Seneschal “The Final Battle”

In the same motion of creation, the Seneschal soon destroys its creation and it returns to dust. Uncompassionate and cold, the same way men regard their world is shared by their deity whose existence is unknown. The Dragon too is created in this cold manner, serving only to feed the Endless Cycle.

“The world, and all its denizens are but empty vessels. In that regard, no different from the Pawns… without volition, there is no true life. The world falls stagnant, dead as an ocean with no current around it. That volition is tempered by the fight for survival… the world thirsts for the will to live. Show that you are more than an empty vessel, animated by forces unseen!”

One might see its view as nihilistic, that all human beings do is survive but do not fulfill their desires. An entire planet, devoid of imagination and merely walk on rationale and borrowed life from their overseer god itself. A meaningless cycle to maintain when there is no development . An Arisen’s existence is to ascend beyond this and show that imagination and drive come from a thirst to live.

The Seneschal is ironic in its question, “What is it that impels you? What force has brought you here?” Ironic in that the Arisen appears unaware that their existence is to serve as a pawn and placeholder for the world’s stability, much like their Main Pawn’s existence as an empty husk to inherit their Arisen’s soul should their master die in battle. The purpose of going so far is merely a test of an empty shell. The Seneschal itself affirms this and forces the Arisen to “break the yoke that binds you.” Escaping stagnation and restoring compassion and vitality to the world. The “Endless” part of the cycle is that after many millennia of solitude as an immortal deity overlooking the world, depression and indifference sets in. The people of the world feed from the life of the Seneschal and soon becomes just as cynical to the point of dangerous to those around them. Monsters begin to run amok and destroy life around them, and the grounds of the Everfall begin to quake and release more horrors on the world, all in an attempt to find a hero capable of ending the gore and gray of the world.

An Arisen is to be the embodiment of the world’s anchor especially when the aformenetioned clone is killed. The Seneschal is capable of erasing the Arisen, another simple, empty human with just a thought and lift of the hand with added intangibility and extreme power that the Arisen cannot hope to defeat.


Claiming the Eternal Ring

Looks like an artist's rendition of the Everfall : r/DragonsDogma
Credit: Robert Gonsalves – Stardust – 2016.

The lore of Dragon’s Dogma exists in a grey, crapsack world. The ultimate outcome is to die; the world falls stagnant, the people lose their will to live, technological progress is halted, and the world is slowly crumbling away without a linchpin to stabilize reality. My battle as the arisen has spanned a thousand years with no end until the dragon lies dead. Upon defeating the dragon and the gods, you return with normal human conditions, and so do your predecessors, leading to their death. Mortality exists once again. And yet the world continues to meet you on its terms, cementing your personal insignificance.

Before our dear Arisen becomes the protagonist, the story establishes that they are not the first or most important. Untold numbers of Arisen existed before, namely Savan, the Dragonforged, Daimon, Duke Edmun and even Death have been Arisen in their time and have been cursed befitting their choice against Grigori. All who have faced the Seneschal have either become it, or become the next beast to scour the great lands seeking a new linchpin. Savan’s tenure as Seneschal raises an eyebrow on why he did not try to take his life as we are instructed to during our reign.

We are the first to try and make sense of the dying sandbox beneath us, which we cannot interact with nor influence. We have no strength, authority or word in the world below, yet our hollowed existence is necessary to keep it going. Why do we need this world? We are not directly told. What is implied though, is that following our deaths, the world refuses a vacuum and once more finds a human soul to oversee the world and cast judgment – including the ability to create humans and monsters – as only the most powerful soul with humanity and imagination could. Thus the legend of the dragon is born again.

How? We watched ourselves die. We watched the Main Pawn take our bodies and become us, free of the Eternal Cycle. Why must we suffer our fate again and again when the cycle is broken?

It isn’t. Not in terms of how we see time.


Recurrence and Violence: the Nietzschean Interpretation of the Will to Live

The world of Dragon’s Dogma exists to be an everlasting war to sustain our will to live. To live, according to the lore was not to raise families or reproduce, as this represents comfort and inaction in breaking the yoke that binds us. To live is to fight. To create change and meaning for ourselves, as selfishly as we deem necessary. Grigori explains:

What is your purpose here, Arisen? If you sought to live you had naught but run and hide yourself away. But then, tell me, child of man… what does it mean to live in truth? To wage war against the passing days? To pray to the unseen for a few breaths more? To raise grand cities from stone, and spawn new life in turn? Mankind has done this, yes, and more. But is the tapestry you weave truly of your own design?

Grigori, “The Final Battle”

To the creator, our free will is tested best when we fight, when we cause violence and create the means of change with our two hands. The ones with the purest will to survive is he or she who bests the dragon and becomes the Seneschal. A constant and consistent violence in the calm flow of fate and time.

The Seneschal explains why they necessitate this status quo: without the fear of death and destruction, people lose their will to live. With the knowledge that they will one day die and lose their beloved friends, family or possessions, they work hard each day to bring small change to their long lives in the hopes they can be content with what they have. Without this, they will stagnate. Enter Seneschal, whose existence is not known but is felt, and inspires the people of Gransys to push forward each day. The death of their loved ones could push them over the edge, or hold on tightly to their own lives in retribution. Each successive Seneschal would have greater willpower than the last, and one would eventually become more than a hollowed shell serving the world’s whims.

Upon suicide, the Arisen makes their voice clear through action: God’s occupation is a worthless one and serves no purpose, handing the power of destiny and decisiveness to the survivors and inheritors of a gruesome, violent and depressingly grey world. Hence the tagline of the game translated:

the delightful and ever novel pleasure of a useless occupation.

Henri de Régnier

Players are shown the truly unbreakable cycle of monotony, where personal choices for those who are chosen are ultimately meaningless. Personal progression growth opportunities in the game are presented as beneficial to the parties they help, but provide no greater depth or improvement to themselves. The universe in-game simply decides that their only meaning to exist is to fight ever on, marching toward a bleak existence out of their control.

To drive that point, you create absolutely nothing in the story. Nothing has changed by the end of your journey, and the world still exists without you. Lack of visible productivity is often met with contempt, and one is encouraged to produce, create, advance and have a proof of work to demonstrate the positive life you have led. Not in this world. Nothing is created by or for you. You are told in the final battle that you have won, and – personally – I felt no sense of success. No happy villagers, no praise, no recovering world, only my eventual death is the reality I face. We are too much the same by the end of the game to have it mean anything, that we are indulged, from Arisen to Seneschal, that our occupation as savior of realities is completely useless.

Nietzschean logic of eternal recurrence takes time as a cyclical concept over a linear one as we interpret it. It does not move in a straight line, and it exists in a series of points in time in a circle, life occurring anywhere there is a point in time. The Eternal Recurrence posits is that there is no free will, which the game supports given that the Arisen’s suicide is considered another part of the cycle. Per Olra’s statement in Bitterblack Isle:

I do not believe that seeking one’s own death is ever the proper course. ‘Tis only effort and the unbending will to press on that see ill circumstances improved. In death, we can change nothing. Yet there are rare times, I believe, when the destruction of the body IS the path to further progress. I do not make light of your decision, nor mean to imply it was one easily or painless made. But through it, you have come to live anew. To meet me here, a denizen of another world. It was because your will shone brighter, proved stronger than any other that you reached your end, and for that same cause you stand here now.

Olra, Dragon’s Dogma – Bitterblack Isle

The only constant shown from an everlasting existence is one of amoral horrors, with the Übermensch (aka the Superman) realizing one day that his existence is both finite and to return, takes hold of his existence as the true master. This is impossible and possible as he leads his life toward one of order and understanding of the self, yet any decision he makes is doomed to be part of the cycle and begin again regardless of the difference in action taken during the second, third etc cycle. It is the greatest burden of the Seneschal and of humanity, the most nihilistic and depressing realization one can have when they are the puppets who can see the strings. There is no beginning, no end, and everything in between is a series of predetermined events with no meaning. We are trapped in this existence, doomed to relive it some day, some way, for reasons we cannot ever understand without knowledge of when it will bring some comfort. The Übermensch overcomes the psychological torture of this realization, and develops themselves as a result of this nihilism, creating hope of satisfaction.

However, the Recurrence suggests a sense of agency for the Übermensch, which does not and cannot exist. Willpower is a psychological illusion one creates as a safeguard to manage their lives befitting their skills, mindset and outlook, but we are left jaded and cynical as a result. Suggesting we remove agency and willpower from the argument, the recurrence is natural to us. This recurrence causes us to not strive to things, but to wander aimlessly improving ourselves until we find a place we are comfortable with. Striving to “become” anything is its own trauma. To knowingly face this hardship each day is a callsign of heroism but not of divinity, given the “god is dead” scenario; one must become the closest thing to a god for themselves if they cannot hold a faith. Divinity here and in Dragon’s Dogma is instinctual, effortless and part of nature. Fittingly, the Arisen cannot take action and must exist simply to exist, defying the Übermensch but embracing the Recurrence in its natural state.

Nietzsche, then, suggests that a linear perspective on time from beginning to end of life is morally fallacious since we are beings of self-preservation. We are more likely to fear our physical ends because it is a heavy thought to bear that regardless of a linear or cyclical perspective of time, we are either gone, or doomed to live this life again. Just because the world exists and always will exists, does not mean this logic is true, rather this is my perspective. Perhaps there is a higher order beyond contemplation. What Eternal Recurrence does suggest however, is that nature will continue to exist, and humans will be naturally violent as we preserve our lives and enrich it in the various ways we know how. The game is no different, given all Arisen march to the gruesome beat of the Dragon’s wings, and the Cassardis/Gran Soren citizens are none the wiser.

Paradoxically to Régnier’s quote, there is nothing delightful nor pleasurable to being the Seneschal, and we are implicitly told to have an occupation useful and worth living out. The role of God is considered to be neither of these, but crucial. Hilariously, Régnier was a poet (i.e. a useless occupation) encouraging others through polite hypocrisy to follow a road of passion and practicality.

The Godsbane served as the first and final act of independence that players could have, and it ends our story immediately. The cycle, created by forces unknown is designed to drain our will to live to continue the world’s existence, draining us of energies to upkeep the hellscape below us. There is nothing wrong with being human, and the simple pleasures we keep are not cast aside by the Seneschal and even makes clear that people should be happy with what they do, whether or not it follows their true purpose. A world without volition is an ocean with no current and a flame with no wind.

Does it matter that the Eternal Cycle is or is not broken? Personally, yes. Knowing the torment is over gives peace of mind. Ultimately, no. The world will exist before and beyond us, our existence pre-written, adaptable, and indestructible.

[This post was drafted in 2018]. Best to clear the inbox. Until next time,

N