As technology becomes more advanced, particularly virtual reality hardware and systems, it’s becoming ever-so-slightly more feasible to manufacture an entire reality. Obviously, we’re not at the point of the Matrix yet, but what if wewere?
Since that movie, and well before that in multiple realms of fiction, the idea of simulated, manufactured worlds has been tossed around, entire existences crafted and compartmentalized for the express purpose of falsifying reality.
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Frankly, I’d say the creativity of this subset of fiction is definitive proof we’renotliving in a simulation, because a simulation would probably be more interesting.
Naturally, video games are no exception to this facet of storytelling, though it’s not exclusive to the realm of science-fiction either. A simulation can be made with computers and virtual reality, but it can also be conjured forth with magic or even cobbled together with elaborate machinery and trickery.
It’s also not always a given that a simulated world is a major plot secret; sometimes it’s dropped in your lap right off the bat. Whatever the precise nature of it, these are the games that I believe went about it in the most interesting ways.
MAJOR SPOILERS FOR SEVERAL OF THE FOLLOWING GAMES BELOW!
9Saints Row 4
We Have The Matrix At Home
Saints Row 4
If you didn’t know,Saints Row 4was originally supposed to be a DLC expansion for Saints Row The Third titled “Enter the Dominatrix,” which is why 4’s DLC of that same name is presented as a behind-the-scenes thing.
I guess the scope of the expansion got so big, they decided to spin it off into its own thing, as well as vastly expand its story and premise.
In typical tongue-in-cheek Saints Row fashion, Saints Row 4’s simulation is a hodge-podge of a few different references, most predominantly The Matrix. Following an invasion of Earth, the Boss, now the President, is kidnapped by an alien race called the Zin and placed in a simulation of their deepest fear: a G-rated family sitcom.
After they break out of that with Kinzie’s help, they’re dumped into a simulated version of Steelport where, through hacking and futzing, they can break and manipulate reality in all kinds of dumb ways.
Basically, the simulation premise is more or less just an excuse to do the weirdest, silliest nonsense the series ever got up to without having to come up with excuses for it, second only perhaps toits brief foray into Hell.
8Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga
Life In The Recycling Bin
Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga
Just about everyShin Megami Tenseigame features an intersection of the mystic and the technological to some extent, but perhaps the game to be most overt about it was Digital Devil Saga.
With a name like that, I know I’d expect some manner of simulated chicanery, though the precise nature of it still ends up being quite a surprise. Near the end of the first game, it’s revealed that the entire world you’ve been journeying around, Junkyard, is actually an elaborate virtual simulation.
It was originally created by Sera, who was… going through some stuff in the real world, let’s say, and wanted a personal hideaway to help her cope. This is also why all the denizens aremuch nicer versions of people she knows.
Junkyard used to be substantially nicer, but as its appearance and residents reflect Sera’s own mental state, things took a turn for the worse after she witnessed the real Heat O’Brien being killed.
That’s why everyone in the Junkyard is locked in a state of perpetual warfare, even before the Atma virus started turning everyone into digital demons.
7Prey (2017)
Walk A Mile In Morgan’s Shoes
The majority ofPrey’s story seems fairly straightforward at a glance: you’re a scientist named Morgan Yu, you’ve been unknowingly brought to a space station and experimented on, and there are a bunch of icky aliens called Typhon making a mess of the place.
As I’ve come to expect from seemingly-simple sci-fi, though, it was never going to be that clear-cut. This is because, as the ending reveals, you’re not Morgan.
You’re not even human; you’re a Typhon who was captured and, through Neuromods and computer simulation, embedded with the real Morgan’s memories and made to live througha dreamlike approximationof the actual Typhon invasion of Talos I.
As Alex explains, the point of all this was to help foster a sense of human empathy in you, something that Typhon brains are normally incapable of, all so you’d help end the ongoing Typhon attack on Earth.
Depending on your choices, this process could fail and require a do-over. You could find your humanity and join Alex, or you could immediately revert to a Typhon and tear his head off.
6Professor Layton And The Curious Village
It’s A Small World After All
Professor Layton and the Curious Village
The dictionary definition of the word “simulation” is “an imitation of a situation or process.” Considering this, a simulation doesn’t need to be virtual; it could be something as simple as a bunch of elaborate robots in a fake town, which just happens to be the big reveal behind the very firstProfessor Laytongame.
As Layton and Luke investigate the mystery of the village of St. Mystere and its benefactor, the late Baron Augustus Reinhold, they come upon an interesting revelation: the entire town, residents included, is nothing but an elaborate contraption.
All the town’s residents are remarkably advanced automatons, subtly programmed to challenge any who would investigate the mystery of the Golden Apple withriddles and dilemmasto test their mettle.
Additionally, the true identity of the Golden Apple is the Baron’s daughter, Flora, whom the robots were built to protect and obfuscate.
After everything was solved, Flora was supposed to take the Baron’s riches from their final resting place, but since doing so would deactivate the town, she decides to leave it all there, so the robot citizens can go on with their lives.
5Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair
Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair
Compared to the first game in the series, the secondDanganronpais much stranger in terms of events and circumstances. Like, I could conceivably see a bunch of teens being locked in a school, but randomly dropped off on a gigantic, somehow fully-livable desert island?
No sir. That’s not even getting into the bizarre events that befall the students, such as the Despair Disease or Nekomaru getting turned into a robot.
Admittedly, it’s easy to write this off as Kodaka’s writing getting weirder, but that’s not the whole truth. Jabberwock Island is part of an extremely elaborate virtual system called the Neo World Program.
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The best and brightest of the Future Foundation created this virtual world as a sort of therapy program to rehabilitate those conscripted into Ultimate Despair by Junko Enoshima.
The plan was to have those members of Ultimate Despair have a happy high school life on this island, after which the memories of those experiences would overwrite their real memories, erasing whatever screwed them up. Unfortunately, the program got a bad case of Monokuma and everything fell apart.
4American Arcadia
Manufactured On Multiple Levels
American Arcadia
Shortly after the introductory chapter of American Arcadia, it’s revealed that our protagonist Trevor Hills, alongside the entire populace of the titular city, is living in a Truman Show-style simulated environment.
The city and its sealed dome are packed to the gills with cameras so the people of the outside world can tune into their favorite residents’ lives anywhere and everywhere. A large chunk of the city is just set dressing.
Naturally, Trevor decides to make his escape from the city, and with Angela’s help, he almost succeeds. However, unbeknownst to either of them, this escape attempt was another simulation layered on top.
The media company that owns the city deliberately leaked intel to Angela soshe’dleak it to Trevor and try to get him out. This was all a setup for a new spin-off show, “Escape From Arcadia.”
This revelation leads to my favorite moment in the game: he’s given a choice between blowing the whistle on his treatment, or acting like he knew everything was fine all along for a cash bribe. Instead of either option, he shouts “LEAVE ME THE F&*% ALONE” at the camera and washes his hands of the whole thing.
3Viewfinder
The World As It Could Look
Viewfinder
Viewfinder makes it clear early on that you’re in some manner of simulated environment, both from your partner straight-up telling you and the fact that you can freely manipulate reality.
This simulated space was created by a team of ambitious researchers, all of whom were trying to find a way to revitalize the world’s ecosystem.
Not far into the game, the simulation actually crashes due to a data overload, and you need to temporarily log out. This both gives you a view of the elaborate, enclosed device you’re navigating in, and a view of the real world outside, which has been reduced to a pollution-tinged technological dystopia.
The game’s final arc comes with the realization that the researchers’ experiments ultimately went nowhere, and that you’ll need to shut down and erase the whole thing to leave.
However, in a bit of a hopeful spot, you pick up a little sapling on your way out and bring it back into reality with you. How? I dunno. It’s a science plant, it had science done to it.
2Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Getting Into Art
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Fextralife Wiki
For the majority ofClair Obscur: Expedition 33, our brave Expeditioners are traversing a Continent packed with mysterious phenomena and inhuman, supernatural beings like the Gestrals and Nevrons.
It’d be very easy to just take this world at face value as a high-concept fantasy realm, and I certainly did, right up until it very clearly wasn’t.
In actuality, Lumière, the Continent, and everyone living there are artificial beings, brought to life through a process of magical painting utilized by a family of Painters and Paintresses in the real world.
This Canvas was originally a world of whimsy painted by the real Verso in his youth, but following his untimely death, it became an unhealthy coping mechanism for his grieving mother, Aline.
The only “real” person in the Canvas is Maelle, who is actually Alicia, the youngest daughter of the family, accidentally “painted over” into a new person by Aline. This is why the real Renoir and Clea are so callous about their treatment of the Canvas; to them, it’s not a real world, and they’ll happily destroy it if it means getting Aline back.
The Monsters Are Fake, The Dying Is Real
The premise of Illbleed is that anyone who can successfully survive the tricks and traps of the titular “Virtual Horror Land” will win a cash prize of $100,000,000.
The park’s various attractions each feature an elaborate simulated horror scenario, packed full of deadly animatronics, death traps, and vanilla scares meant to give you a straight-up heart attack.
The thing about Illbleed that I find kind of hilarious is that, both in setting and premise, the deadly nature of these simulated horrors is not a secret. In fact, it’s openly advertised.
Thousands of people have either died or disappeared on the park’s premises; you even get to see the park’s official morgue at one point, which has a conveyor belt of human gore casually rolling by.
Illbleed is not full of real monsters, barring one instance of a maybe-maybe-not ghost born from the souls of departed park guests. It is a straight-up murder park, and, for some reason, it stays open despite the literal mountain of corpses out back. Maybe they have a really good legal department.
