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SPA/ENG

Abzû

ENG

I do not remember very well, but at the beginning, you find yourself drifting without knowing what happened or because you are here, and all you can do is go forward, following the fauna of the place.

Although in a matter of a few hours you can get to finish this game, you can give you a lot of emotions, to enjoy swimming next to other aquatic beings, discovering each of them, together with the landscapes that are shown and atmospheric moments that They catch us.

Many of the most memorable sections of Abzu are the most limited in terms of character interaction, but this is not a point against the game. These moments where the player gives themselves over the current, or is shocked by the appearance of a giant shark, makes the world feel more alive, as if the environment they can interact with is ultimately a greater force of change and existence than they themselves are.

#abzu #giant squid studios #505 games #matt nava #2016 #tiny design #game design

Happy ABZÛversary! Here are some early ABZÛ sketches by Matt Nava

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ABZÛ’s World Explained

ABZU is a 2016 video game developed by Giant Squid and published by 505 Games. It’s a wordless exploration art piece with a somewhat ambiguous storyline. It’s wonderful and gorgeous and immersive and if you finished it thinking, “what just happened?” you are not alone!

SPOILER WARNING: The game ABZU is best experienced knowing as little as possible going in. If you haven’t played it, go do that now! I’ve spent weeks thinking about it; you won’t be disappointed.

Story Theories By Others & What They Are Missing

Paul Tambarro at Crave Entertainment thinks ABZU is an eco-friendly, “give back what you take” morality tale taking place in a fantasy world.

Billy D at One Angry Gamer thinks it is about an amnesiac android who chooses to save an ocean after discovering its beauty.

NP-complete at IGN’s Gaming Boards recognizes that Abzu is a character and place in Babylonian religion, but believes the game itself is about a woman’s fertility journey (this one is so creative - I love it!)

Mike Peckham’s review at Time comes close with this line: “a metaphor for a creation myth that's vaguely Babylonian.”

Riley MacLeod at Kotaku is also onto something: “the plot appears to be loosely based on the Babylonian creation myth in the Enûma Eliš, the words of which are featured in Abzu’s soundtrack.”

Here’s what these reviews are missing: This game is not “metaphor” for something “vaguely” Babylonian, it is literally the same setting as the Babylonian creation myth, which we now call the Enuma Elish. The events that transpire differ from the ones in the myth, but we can infer that many of the characters are the same. Abzu is both a place and a character in the game, hence the title.

Who are you and how do you know this?

I’m nobody special! I finished the game and was unsatisfied with the story explanations already on the web. I read some wikipedia articles, then bought Stephanie Dalley’s 2000 revised translation of the Enuma Elish and read it and all the footnotes. I also found this pdf from the California State University Northridge and Mackenzie’s 1915 translation transcribed on sacred-texts.com. I am not a religious/archeological/linguistics scholar and haven’t taken even a 101 course in any of those subjects, so please take what I say re: those things with a grain of salt. Many apologies if the parallels between the Enuma Elish and the game were obvious to those of you with expertise. They weren’t to me, and I suspect to others as well.

The Universe of ABZU

In Akkadian mythology (a broad term for Sumerian and Babylonian dialects), before the earth is formed, the universe is organized in three planes: A saltwater ocean, Tiamat, on top, the underworld void space in the middle, and a freshwater sea, Apsu (or Abzu), on the bottom. You visit each of these places in order in the game.

You interact with five shrines to dive down into the underworld void space. In the final act of the game, you dive even further through the red well, entering the Apsu.

Let’s review how you move through the game world. You begin in a shallow ocean (Tiamat), move through the green kelp zone, and find the first shrine. You dive down through the “holy water” in the shrine and are teleported to the dark starry void space of the underworld.

After interacting with the first shrine in the void space, you are teleported back to Tiamat. Next is the first triangle door, pink dolphin pool, and second shrine. There again, you dive down to the underworld and are teleported back to Tiamat. Next is the bait ball and second triangle door, then the orange kelp zone, and the third shrine and dive down to the underworld.

Next is the deep sea and shark rescue scenes, the fourth shrine and dive down. After that is the story twist with the tetrahedral ship interior, shark death, and palace zones. You reach the fifth shrine and descend to the underworld a final time, but this time dive even further down into the red well.

Instead of teleporting, you are treated to a cutscene of the tunnel to the Apsu, the freshwater sea, where you are spit from above into the center of a spiraling series of pools.

The Characters of ABZU

No, not you the player character, I mean the identifiable Akkadian deities.

The Enuma Elish says that in the beginning, there was no sky and no dry land, nor even a marsh or reed bed, but there was Abzu (the male, ‘begetter’) and Tiamat (the female, ‘bearer’). The first generation of gods “emerged from within them” and were called Lahmu and Lahamu. It then describes generations of gods, each more powerful than the last.

The first generation was Lahmu and Lahamu.

The second was Anshar and Kishar.

The third was Anu, the sky god and former chief (later chief gods are said to ‘have Anu’, as in the authority or power of Anu).

The fourth generation was Damkina and Nudimmud (also called Ea), who performed a great deed by killing (‘calming the waters of’) Abzu and making Abzu’s body his new palace. Some gods then went to live with Ea in the Apsu while others remained with Tiamat.

(I’m going to refer to Abzu the character with the ‘bz’ spelling, and the place as ‘Apsu,’ but in reality the spellings are interchangeable.)

The fifth and greatest generation was Marduk, who was born in the Apsu and performs the greatest deed yet by killing Tiamat and using her body to fashion the earth and heavens. For this, he is recognized by all the other gods as supreme, and ‘the black-headed people’ are to revere him.

Sound familiar? In the game, you summon these god generations in order. The game designers evidently took “more powerful” to mean “bigger body size.” (Except Marduk, who gets to be a great white shark because great white sharks are cool, I guess.)

Lahmu & Lahamu, the first generation

Anshar & Kishar, the second generation

Anu, the third generation

Nudimmud (Ea) & Damkina, the fourth generation

Marduk, fifth generation, champion of the gods and sovereign of the universe, who ‘the black-headed people’ revere.

About those shrines….

Marduk is both honored with and takes responsibility for all of the god’s shrines.

“Adornment being wanted for the seats of the gods, Let the place of their shrines ever be in your [Marduk’s] place.” (Enuma Elish translation from California State University Northridge)

“[Marduk] measured the dimensions of Apsu And the large temple, which he built in its image, was Esharra: In the great shrine Esharra, which he had created as the sky, He founded cult centres for Anu, Ellil, and Ea. He fashioned stands for the great gods. As for the stars, he set up constellations corresponding to them.” (Enuma Elish translation by Stephanie Dalley)

Abzu as Character, Place, and Life-Giver

Akkadian speakers attributed mystical fertility powers to freshwater springs, which they believed flowed directly from the Apsu. The game takes this quite literally:

What are we doing today, son? Just gathering liquid life force from the underworld and bringing it back home.

A little freshwater spring (Abzu) mixing its waters with the saltwater ocean (Tiamat) creates new life.

Big springs have shrines built around them. Evidently this one droplet opens up a conduit from the underworld pool to fill up this entire area.

An animating force so effective it works on robots, too!

You just feel more alive when you’re swimming in the Apsu.

Many of the game’s murals depict the black-headed people worshiping Marduk, but just as many show Marduk shepherding his people towards Abzu the character, who is an ammonite:

As important as Marduk is, the black-headed people seem to recognize the essential ubiquity of Abzu in their world:

Abzu watches over all.

And check this out: Just like in the Enuma Elish, Abzu’s physical shape is Apsu, the place. In the final act of the game, you swim through his spiral shell and end up where his eye would be:

After descending through the red well, you swim through Abzu’s spiral shell.

The Enuma Elish uses the poetic phrase “pour out the life” as a euphemism for killing. Evidently ancient Mesopotamians saw blood as one’s animating life force (hey, they weren’t wrong!). Among Marduk’s many attributes:

“The god who gives life, Who restored all the damaged gods as if they were his own creation. Bel [Lord], who revives dead gods with his pure incantation, Who destroys those who oppose him” (Enuma Elish translation by Stephanie Dalley)

Indeed, Marduk apparently uses Apsu’s water flowing from the red well to restore your body.

Marduk, the god who gives life.

Okay, Cool. But What About the Robots and Spaceships?

Surprise: There were no robots or spaceships in the 1000 BCE story. (I know how disappointed you all are.) The diver, the cameras, the electric tetrahedrons, and the spaceships all seem to be inventions of the game designers.

As others have pointed out, the gist of the story seems to be that an advanced civilization came to Abzu’s world to harvest his miraculous life-giving waters. They designed androids that resembled the local people, and thus the harvesting machines co-existed with the natives for some time (long enough for them to put together a mural or three), despite removing so much holy water that most of the local gods were banished. In response, Marduk led his people into the underworld and then the Apsu, but the machines followed them even there.

Marduk leads his people to the underworld.

Yeah, I know we don’t see any humans in the Apsu, but there are these fish with the same color scheme, and they sure are devoted to following you and Marduk around. Maybe the black-headed people’s souls turn to fish when they enter the Apsu?

Marduk remains in the upper world and destroys as many machines as he can, but without his people to move Apsu’s water to his shrine should he die, he needs your assistance before attempting to attack the main ship.

Marduk has already destroyed most of the upper world harvesters, but cannot refill the shrine pools himself.

After you resurrect Marduk, the assembly of gods in the underworld apparently grants you Anu power, allowing you to destroy the harvesting machines and save the Apsu.

I want to emphasize again that the entire last act takes place in the Apsu, a different ocean than the one you start out in. The game ends without anyone going back to take care of either spaceship in the upper world (the one in the sky or the one that killed Marduk).

Best of luck to you, upper world.

Other Questions

What do the hieroglyphs on the walls say? I’ve not found anyone who has cracked the hieroglyph message, if there’s a sensible message there at all. Looking closely, all the hieroglyphs throughout the game are copies of the same block of characters. I suspect they are simply decoration.

If the Enuma Elish is Babylonian, what’s up the Egyptian art/writing and the Islamic architecture and the shark- and eel-headed statuary? True, these are not very historical choices. The Enuma Elish was written in cuneiform, not hieroglyphs; ancient Babylonian art was often relief sculptures of bearded figures, not flat paintings; and the in-game architectural details like muqarnas were developed thousands of years after the Enuma Elish was written down. The game developers included them because they liked them.

Are you saying the game isn’t about diving simulation/wildlife conservation/generalized cosmic ocean myths/the morality of technology/female fertility/meditative video gaming/etc? Certainly not! While it’s safe to say the Enuma Elish was a primary source of inspiration, the developers have discussed many other themes and ideas that went into the game as well. More importantly, this is an art piece and we are all free to build meaning into it, even meaning the developers did not originally intend. The real-world biology, ecology, and conservation messages the game touches are as important as the mythical aspects.

Final Thoughts

I hope this answers some of your questions about ABZU. Overall, it is a clever depiction of the places and characters of one of humanity’s most ancient stories; it’s just not quite as “metaphorical” as other reviews would have you think.

Happy diving!

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