Tonight I Killed a God

WARNING: This post may be a little bit spoilery for the Destiny storyline, but it’s definitely worth the read 😉

Unless you’ve been under a NYMG you know by now that Alex and I have been playing a lot of Destiny (Bungie 2014)…and I do mean a lot. I won’t even begin to tell you how much. One of the things that disturbed me about the game was the fact that we were often asked to come in and kill hordes of Fallen while they are actively praying to their god. I mean on bended knee arms up-stretched to the heavens praying. That shit gives me serious pause. What does it mean that I am being asked to come into a sanctuary and murder worshippers who are unaware of my presence because they are communing with their god? Am I supposed to think that this is ok because they look different from me (not that “I” am not different with blue skin, white luminescent eyes,  and glowing images of constellations floating just below my skin) or because they worship a different god than I and my ilk do?

I asked myself all of these questions in a split second as I surveyed the scene in game and compressed it all down to “Really, we kill them while they’re praying?” and voiced that to my fireteam. They responded with “Oh my god” and other utterances of surprise and quick snippets of analysis before we did what we were ultimately going to have to do in order to successfully complete the mission and advance the narrative. We killed all of the worshippers and then went on to kill their god. There was no option not to. There was no way to make peace with them. No way to agree to allow their god and their beliefs to co-exist with ours. It was simply kill or be killed and none of us wanted to die.