Playing Tokyo Jungle reminds me of my insomnia, of all things. The reason I often stay up until I can greet sunrise is because thereâs this serene calm that comes with being awake late at night.
Everyone is asleep. The streets are empty. Itâs peaceful to not have anyone around. I can focus. Itâs kind of like a power fantasy, actually. The world is at once both mine to take and yet beyond meâa not tameable entity whose machinations do not care for, and sometimes defy the going-ons of people. The world keeps spinning whether youâre awake or not.
The world also keeps going whether youâre alive or not. While playing as a Pomeranian that travels post-apocalyptic Tokyo to kill and eat animals in an effort to stay alive isnât as calming as the velvet of the night, thereâs still an air of peacefulness that comes with it.
The reasons are ones that I think Hayao Miyazaki, who is behind popular films like Spirited Away and Ponyo, would be enthusiastic about. Noted by academics for his disdain of digital things, a New Yorker profile once quoted him saying that he looked âforward to the time when Tokyo is submerged by the ocean and the NTV tower becomes an island, when the human population plummets and there are no more high-rises.â Kind of extreme! Unsurprisingly a good deal of his work was in love with the idea of a Japan that was more in-tune with nature and the spiritual world ruled by Shintoism, Yokai and Kami
World War 2 changed everything according to Miyazakiâwith it came the creation of a consumerist society that destroyed the environment. He didnât like that. An article by the Japanese Times quotes him saying, âI was frustrated because nature â the mountains and rivers â was being destroyed in the name of economic progress.â The book âAnime from Akira to Princess Mononokeâ also quotes him saying that, âPeople changed their value system from Gods to money.â The people of Japan had lost their way, and the only way things could be remedied was if humanity disappeared altogether.
And what we have in Tokyo Jungle is similar to the world that Miyazaki mightâve envisionedâŠif it wasnât likely that he hates video games. No spirits in Tokyo Jungle, but definitely a sense that nature rules supreme. Seen in light of the animatorâs criticisms of society, itâs easy to pinpoint why something like Tokyo Jungle feels calming, almost necessary: gone are the pesky, annoying humans who didnât value the right things. In their place exists not a more ruthless reality of kill or be killedâas one might initially think when looking at Tokyo Jungleâbut rather an ecosystem whose participants are well aware of their role in nature. Everything in its right place.
Maybe that sounds nihilistic, but in reality I donât see Tokyo Jungleâs premise shying too far away from the type of world that most games present us. Where game spaces might feature well-designed architecture, well-written history, or a game might feature well-designed mechanics, people still feel absent fairly regularly.
Recently Simon Parkin similarly criticized Halo 4 in a review over at Eurogamer for its lack of people:
âBut while this one-man army has renewed purpose and a new crisis to tackle, that lack of humanity is hidden in plain sight. For a game so focused on saving the universe, the Halo series is curiously devoid of people to save. Itâs filled with others to destroy, of courseâŠ
Itâs a universe filled with weapons, more weapons than ever before, the Prometheans adding their armoury of esoteric rifles and machine guns to the already enormous array of killing tools. But people to save? You wonât find many of those here.â
While Iâve not played Halo 4, Iâve felt similarly recently while playing Dishonoredâwhich technically does have people, but hear me out. The game takes place in an Victorian setting based off 1800âs London, with a plague decimating a city built to be surprisingly accommodating to a sneaky assassin. So much effort was put into building that city, building a world that fascinates with its politics and history, ultimately leaving you wondering about its society.
But where are most of the people to ground all of that? Why are the people so far out of the frame unless someone needs to be killed or avoided, why am I working so hard to save a city that is basically dead? What in the world is everyone fighting over?
There was a moment in one of the missions in Dishonored, where I endeavored to climb to the highest peak of the level. The streets were largely empty and quiet in this part of town, the only audible thing was the beating of the heart I held in my hands. The vibe was right for climbing crazy high, I decided.
As Corvo landed his final blink, all I could feel was a thrill. Not so much of reaching my summit, but instead of conquering the night, of conquering my skills. A sense of control that came with doing whatever I wanted: the city was mine. But as I looked around from above, everything under me looked empty and unpopulated.
I thought about the kingdom under the tyranny of the lord regent, I thought of the great whale beasts that we killed to fuel our everyday conveniencesâboth things that I never really got to see in the game. Iâm more acquainted with the rats of Dunwall, with the books of Dunwall than its actual everyday citizens.
Instead what we have are thugs, the military, the aristocracy, the weepers and a very small surviving population that I barely got to knowâpossibly due to the plague and because the point of Dishonored isnât the characterization, rather how we go about eliminating our targets. But what is a city without the everyday people? The thrill disappeared, and in its stead came this overwhelming feeling of destitution.
The thing about insomnia is, once I snap out of the dark spell of the night, once I look past the romanticism of having no people around, I donât feel idealistic or empowered about it anymore. I just feel lonely.
Thought of some empty games or cities while you read this? Share some pictures in the comments!
