I’m not sure if we are born fearing death, but it doesn’t take long for that fear to creep into our hearts. The world wastes no time in showing us our mortality, and how fragile life can be. Tragic accidents. Illness. Age. Once we become aware of it, death becomes omnipresent around us, guiding our hands and choices. Some take actions to push off that creeping wave, choosing safety over adventure. Some choose to face death with candor and a grin, daring it to inch closer. But for all of us, the fear of what is lurking in the shadows hides in our hearts at least a small amount. And for some of us, like me, those shadows tickle at our heels.
The Human Cost
As of this month, it has been 10 years since I lost my father to cancer. While the battle itself was long, the ending came quickly. It wasn’t the cancer that got him, but a blood clot, a complication from metastatic surgery. He got up one morning, drank some tea with his fiance, laid back down to nap while she went to work, and never got back up. By the time anyone got there, it was long over. Gary Wilson Sr., age 56, career firefighter, was gone before anyone could blink.
There are many things I could say about my feelings around that day. Once an uncle called me and I returned home from Boston, I settled into my responsibilities in a haze. Funeral arrangements, speakers at the Mass, notifying friends and family, ironing a suit, standing at the head of the endless wake line, cracking jokes to the people who knew him best, and finding the quiet moments to sit. Sit and look at the looming figure around me, wrapping its cold arms back around me. Death had returned and made its presence known, a little under six years since its last visit.
Now, at this point you may be asking yourself: Okay Gary, enough depression; what does this have to do with video games? Simple: Games are a constant dance with death. Death has become the cheap language of games, used as a punishment and reset more than anything with consequence. It has reached such a zenith that gaming has had to develop a new language around what death actually means. Imagine trying to explain that there is “death” in games, but also “permadeath,” which is like death death. But still not actually. And with all this dancing with death, few games have actually attacked what it means to die. To be afraid of death. To push back against it. Not death in the physical sense, but Death, the beautiful reaper themself.
Enter Death’s Door
Enter Death’s Door, a 2021 isometric adventure game developed by Acid Nerve and published by Devolver Digital. You play as an unnamed character, known simply as the Crow, who works as a reaper for the Reaping Commission Headquarters. As an operative of the Commission, it is your job to collect the souls of creatures who choose not to leave life willingly. Being a video game, this plays out via some very tight sword combat with a variety of magics to help out. Upon being alerted to a potential conspiracy involving the Commission, the Crow sets out to unravel what is happening in the world—namely, why no one seems to be dying at all.
The answer lies at the heart of my original statement: the fear of Death. Throughout Death’s Door, the Crow comes across numerous Giants, who are beings who have pushed off Death and refuse to leave. One pursued science to prolong their existence, another through tyrannical rule, and the third through seclusion and avoidance. All three lash against the Crow and bargain for more time, claiming that they just aren’t done living yet. The Crow collects them all the same.
Soon, it is revealed that the very ruler of the Commission, the Lord of Doors, has crafted his own bargain with Death. The Lord of Doors will handle the reaping while Death themself takes a break, in exchange for an extended life span and a promise to choose a successor when the time is right. Rather than do that, the Lord of Doors trapped Death behind a door, breaking the cycle of life and death. Begging for more time, the Lord of Doors is dispatched by the Crow nonetheless.
The Banality of Dying
Death in Death’s Door is a “matter-of-fact” aspect of life. The Crow, after all, is just doing their job, helping usher beings to their inevitable end. The work is dispassionate and clinical, and comes with little fanfare. Every boss fights and begs and flees, but the end arrives regardless. Death’s Door seems to ask a very simple question: If Death is always coming, why fight it? Why rage against what is inevitable?
When I first finished Death’s Door, I didn’t really know what to make of it. On one hand, I loved it completely. The gameplay is excellent, the aesthetic is awe-inspiring, and the music is beautiful. I found the quiet storytelling compelling, but the message didn’t sit right. After all, I had been fighting against Death for years. I could see Death in every corner. If I accepted Death peacefully, isn’t that just giving up? It clawed at me for weeks, until I decided I had to have been mistaken. Nothing this beautiful could possibly be saying just give up, right?
I played it again, and finally it clicked. A conversation with my father, about five months before his passing, crept back into my head. I had been angry, angry that after years of fighting, my father was beginning to decay. I didn’t know what to do with that anger, so I lashed out. And my father, not always the best man but a good one, sat and listened. He listened while I bemoaned losing years of my life to the anxiety around his passing, the depression from my mother’s slow suicide, and the shit position I was in, with a younger brother I did not get along with, extended family I kept at arm’s reach, and a world I didn’t understand. And how deeply scared I was of what the future looked like, of the uncertainty of life.
He apologized. He was sorry that I had sacrificed so much. He realized that I stopped living my life for fear of his Death. And then he told me to knock that shit off, buckle up, and get back on the ride. He reminded me that Death was going to happen, regardless of whether I cared or not, regardless of whether I fought or not. But if I refused to live, I had already lost.
Choosing To Tango With the Reaper
Death’s Door made it click. The Witch who pursued science sacrificed her family and lover just for the chance to see tomorrow, regardless of whether today was worth it. The Frog King, who ruled tyrannically and without peer, was so consumed by anxiety that life wasn’t worth it anyway. And the Yeti, who secluded herself away and hoped to be forgotten by Death, was consumed by loneliness and loss. None of them lived lives worth living because they were focused on Death. They spent everything to rage against Death, all for Death to arrive anyway. They ruined what could have been beautiful in pursuit of eternity.
I am unlucky that Death has lurked around me for so long. And for years, I let that presence guide my hands, my actions. I let fear prevent me from living, like these Giants before me. Accepting the fragility of life isn’t giving up anything besides that all-consuming fear. Nothing I do today can change the fact that today may be the last. And worrying about tomorrow gets you nowhere if today wasn’t worthwhile anyway.
10 years is a long time. 20 years will be even longer. And, hopefully, 50 will be even longer than that. But choosing to look at Death every day won’t make the truth any less inevitable. One day, this will all end. The Crow will come for all us, regardless of whether we throw hands in its direction. And I can choose every day to get back on the ride, buckle up, and put my hands in the air. Maybe the drop will be my last, but at least I’m enjoying it for now.
In the words of the great Terry Pratchett: “THAT’S MORTALS FOR YOU, Dᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴄᴏɴᴛɪɴᴜᴇᴅ. THEY’VE ONLY GOT A FEW YEARS IN THIS WORLD AND THEY SPEND THEM ALL IN MAKING THINGS COMPLICATED FOR THEMSELVES. FASCINATING.”
This is really beautiful, Gary! Thanks for sharing ❤️