Religious symbolism, reference and implications, oh my!
Disclaimer: Content is based on the gameplay demo. The final gameplay is subjected to change by Neowiz and Round 8 studio, and thus, potentially making this post’s information outdated. Also, I am not a religious study expert. Please take everything I said in this post with a grain of salt. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To be fair, I thought I’m kinda done with the lore digging mission of this game’s demo but then... something happened. I came back, took a second glance at stuff in the gameplay and realized a few things. This game has a lot of religious and philosophical references, and things don’t just stop at that La Pieta statue at the end of the trailer. 1) Christianity and Gnosticism
The lamp that contains our buddy, Jiminy Gemini the Talking Cricket, is named as “Monad’s lamp”. Monad, in the concept of Greek philosophy, is the absolute Divine being, that comes first and being the perfect existence (that later bear the dyad, and then the points, etc). Monad is usually presented as a circle with a dot in the center, as below:
“The symbolism is a free exegesis related to the Christian Trinity.[5] Alan of Lille mentions the Trismegistus' Book of the Twenty-Four Philosophers where it says a Monad can uniquely beget another Monad in which more followers of this religion saw the come to being of God the Son from God the Father, both by way of generation or by way of creation.[5] This statement is also shared by the pagan author of the Asclepius[5] which sometimes has been identified with Trismegistus. The Book of the Twenty-Four Philosophers completes the scheme adding that the ardor of the second Monad to the first Monad would be the Holy Ghost.[5] It closes a physical circle in a logical triangle”
In this way, the concept of Monad is “tied in” with Christianity and the “voice of the conscience” that the Talking Cricket represents in the novel. As the description suggests, “Do not fear [...] cricket’s guidance will be with you.”, Gemini will function not only as our combat guide AI but probably also as the voice of conscience, the moral compass and the voice of the Divine. Being the voice of the Divine, Gemini could likely end up against P/the player in certain quests, and this might lead to the events like in the novel (the Cricket being killed, and then later appear again as the Ghost of the Talking Cricket). In fact, as I pointed out in one of my previous posts, this Gemini we saw in one of the gameplay demos is not even the first version of Gemini that P met. Additionally, being the voice of conscience and representative of the Divine, Gemini could also act as an agent for the Three council (whose symbol we encountered in V’s factory), and whose job is likely to guide and shape P toward a certain development (with P being hinted as one of the puppets that didn’t receive The Grand Covenant inscription). The reason I’m speculating that Gemini and the Three council are probably relating to each other is because of this symbol:
that vaguely combines the idea of Monad with the Holy Trinity (and further reinstate the statement from The Book of the Twenty Four philosophers) :
With a game that places a lot of emphasis on destiny, predisposed fate and God, it is not at all surprising that we get to see something like this in the game. The floor is drawn out with a “physical circle enclosed in a logical triangle”, and the placement of the chairs vaguely suggests the existence of a Holy Trinity-equivalent in the game. However, note that the game doesn’t strictly adhere to the Holy Trinity’s description in Christianity and also adds in their own creative characterization in the game. It is possible that the Three council is comprised of Geppetto (the Father), Sophia (the Holy Spirits) and Venigni (the Son). So each person, to their own respect, is ‘God’ (or God equivalent) by themselves. Giveth that Gemini made some remarks about a mysterious woman, who is possibly related to Gemini and its duty, could it be that the Talking Cricket is referring to Sophia? Another possible candidate for the third position could be Antonia, who is a genderbend version of Master Antonio (the person who discovered and gave the magical wood log to Geppetto in the novel). Following this interpretation, Antonia is the “Holy Spirits” in the Trinity, whom discovery and work has helped create the famous Krat puppets. note: Someone has pointed out in Discord that Venigni is a reference to the name Benigni. Roberto Benigni is the director and comedian who both directed and played as Pinocchio, the titular character in the movie of the same name in 2002. He then goes on to play as Geppetto in Garrone’s movie in 2019. This is interesting, because a graffiti on the wall accused Venigni as “a dummy”...And the guy is owner and director of a factory which made a lot of important stuff, including puppets...And he is the Prince of the High society too... => So by either embracing the Divine’s guidance, or rejecting it, P is subjected to be an Antichrist Antigod figure or to be led toward salvation, to fulfill his destiny. 2) Buddhism, reincarnation and the concept of rebirth that happens in many heroic journey novel A common concept that is employed in many adventure novel is the death and rebirth cycle for the protagonist. This can happen physically or metaphorically, depending on the plot’s direction. “The adventure of Pinocchio” is no exception. Many times, the protagonist went through literal and metaphorical deaths: being hung on a tree, turn into a donkey and thrown into the sea, swallowed by a shark, mourning for the death of his mother figure, etc. And I swear I don’t have a hallucination from reading the Korean interview (that, unless I have been fooled by the beloved Google Translate), but:
According to PD Choi, there will be Buddhism theme supplemented in the background as if the game doesn’t have enough religious reference already. It may sound far-fetched and ill-fitted with the Western philosophy and Christianity reference already there but, hear me out, this may work in tandem wonderfully. One of the Buddhism concepts that overlap with the death-and-rebirth theme of the novel is the wheel of life and the cycle of reincarnation:
According to the principle of the cycle of reincarnation, one individual/soul will be born into one of the six realms, and depending on the karma they accumulate in their lives, that once one individual die, they will be reborn into an appropriate realm befitting of their good deeds or bad deeds. All beings are trapped in this cycle endlessly, and they can only break free from it through enlightenment. (”All beings within the six realms are doomed to death and rebirth in a recurring cycle over countless ages -- unless they can break free from desire and attain enlightenment.”)
The six realms are (some wording can vary depending on regions):
Realm of God-Heaven (also known as Realm of Deva)
Realm of Demon (sometimes refer to as Realm of Atula)
Realm of Hungry Ghosts ( Hungry ghosts = Preta-gati in Sanskrit, or Gakido in Japanese)
Realm of Human
Realm of Animal
Realm of Hell
In this, Hell is considered the ‘worst’, for all of its torment, and suffering, while Heaven is the representation of “bliss” and “pleasure” (but not necessarily the best, because the ‘Deva’ who enjoy a long life of bliss are eventually blind from the suffering of other realms’ citizens, and in the end, are still subjected to the principle of the reincarnation). Interestingly, a parallel: by traveling to the Land of Toys and being turned into donkeys...is vaguely an equivalent of being reincarnated into the Realm of Animal, because both realms require their denizens to accumulate “ignorance” and “laziness” to be ‘reincarnated’ into animal Now this next part is simply my interpretation of the situation, and again, does not necessarily reflect the game’s content, or the development team’s artistic interpretation. So treat it with a grain of salt (or as a headcanon) ======================================================= With all the info so far, it is possible to consider Krat city right now as a representation of “Realm of Hell”. According to Chinese mythologies, that was popularized in Tang dynasty, Hell is consisted of 18 layers. And then, in an interview, Director Choi has hinted, that the game will have around 15 chapters, each chapter represents an area, with expandable DLC. I don’t know how many DLC packs the team are going to implement but summing up the number, that’s roughly equal to the 18 layers of Hell! Now if you go along with this interpretation, putting into the perspective of P’s journey going into Krat (Hell) to find his father, Mr. Geppetto, then we can draw a big parallel with a famous Chinese Buddhism tale called “Mulian saves his mother from Hell”
(image courtesy of a 19th century scroll, from Wikipedia) The reason why I’m pulling this up as a parallel is not only because of the idea of P finding Mr. Geppetto in Krat but also because of Geppetto’s plea from the Gamescom’s trailer, asking P to help him. In the original Mulian tale, Mulian’s mother was punished in the deep layers of Hell for her sins (”his mother is suffering extremely in the Avīci Hell, the cruelest of the purgatories “), suffering all sort of cruel punishment. Mulian, who is a Buddha’s disciple, wants to save his mother due to filial duty. But he can’t do it by himself, and thus needs to ask for help from Buddha and other disciples. Thanks to his relentless and filial effort, his mother (after reborn through many other realms as well) is finally saved (some ver may say not), and thus the concept of Ghost Festival is born. It is possible that Geppetto has committed some serious sins in the past, and is now “suffering for his punishment” in this hellish Krat. P, being a filial child, is willing to journey into this hellscape to save his father, but he would need help from other characters to do this. note: This story was one of the earliest to be written down in the literature Korea, Japanese and Vietnamese. A another interesting finding. => In this interpretation, P’s journey is parallel to Mulian’s journey. By saving his father, P might be setting up a foundation for an unprecedent virtue/action that never seen before. And like Mulian, who later ascended and achieved enlightenment (breaking free from the cycle of reincarnation), P could also achieve enlightenment, transforming into a being beyond human. (I don’t know if this interpretation can apply to Antonia, no info further so far to support this) ======================================================== 3) P/Pinocchio and how does he fit into all of this? With so many elements coming together like this, it is easily to be confused about what role or figure P is playing in this game. To be fair, I don’t know either. We don’t have enough information to interpret this. One of my speculations is that P is currently “stuck” at the Realm of Hungry Ghost, which is a domain below the Realm of Human, and characterized by an aching emptiness and perpetual yearning for something that is unattainable. This is also a domain for obsession and addiction, and a result of accumulating bad karma for such desire. Some might say it is a domain for those who refuse to ‘descend’ into Hell. This would make sense, considering that P wants to be a human, to ascend to the Realm of Human. I’m using the word ‘stuck’ is because so far, we haven’t seen P displaying any characteristics of a typical denizen of the Realm of Hungry Ghost. More likely, P only reflects a part of the characteristic of this realm: longing and yearning for something perpetually- in this case, Humanity. Thus, this is not a strong evidence to support this theory. Another possibility is that P is already outside of this cycle of reincarnation, but he is willing to earn a ‘soul’, and become a part of this cycle, so that he could fulfill his predisposed destiny that is guided by the voice of the Divine (to be a savior? to break the cycle?). But for whatever his higher calling is, he must first delve into this Hell called Krat city first.
TLDR: In a journey to Hell, influenced by both Eastern and Western religions, depending on whether you embrace the guidance from the High above or not, P may or may not end up being a Messiah, or in a less favorable position. Maybe P stands for Player, not just Pinocchio
