Why ULTRAKILL's Story is Worth Paying Attention To

Alright, brace yourselves, hot take incoming: I really like ULTRAKILL. I know, right? Somebody had to say it. There’s not much to be said on the game itself that would justify the bandwidth it would take to deliver similarly scalding hot takes. But dropping the sarcasm for a moment, there is one community sentient I take issue with. Specifically the non-engagement with the less “videogame-y” parts.

Honk Honk I’m Bobo The Clown

Right off the bat, ULTRAKILL does not demand the level of seriousness I am about to give it. There are a million examples I could point to, from the sandbox literally being gm_construct to the museum that allows you to pick up and throw marketable plushies of everyone who worked on the game. My personal favorite has to be A R M B O Y ! ! !, a secret enemy hidden behind a building in 6-1. When you get close to A R M B O Y ! ! !, his name appears on screen, an effect that Hakita often uses to break kayfabe.

But then there’s the book.

In ULTRAKILL, books are usually used to convey lore. They’re some of the only holdable objects with 0 gameplay purpose, their exclusive function is to deliver prose. Which is why it is the perfect tonal in-joke for the book to contain this.

It’s a really funny game. It’s self-aware, and not in a quippy “I guess this is something I do now” kind of way where it’s almost embarrassed of what it is and trying to offset that. It knows what it is, and it’s proud of it. Most importantly, it has enough confidence in itself to break character for a gag before resuming like nothing ever happened.And even then it has more sincerity in its jokes than most games have in their climax.

Case in point, every layer in ULTRAKILL has a secret level. For the act finale layers, these are the Prime Sanctums. These house secret super-bosses that take up a considerable space in the lore, even more-so if you consider all the Greek myths they grandfathered in. Others are Johnathan Blow’s seminal work The Witness, or for the young’uns reading this, the game The Looker was making fun of. Even these joke levels are capped off with actual, literal testaments. As in the written word of God with a capital G. This nicely leads to a very important aspect of ULTRAKILL’s narrative and worldbuilding.

This is Dante’s Inferno fanfiction.

Whoa Is That Gabriel? From The Bible?

Basing the narrative and setting off Inferno instead of The Bible is a very interesting decision, because to put it mildly, Dante Alighieri didn’t give a damn about biblical accuracy. It could be generously called the 1300’s equivalent of Dante portraying himself as the based chad christian and everyone else as the cringe sinner soyjak burning in hell. I’m exaggerating, obviously, but a major part of interpreting Inferno in a modern context is recognizing which parts were written as an enduring depiction of eternal damnation couched in a time when Florence was a sovereign state. Additionally, you have to figure out which parts were one guy trying to cement his specific vision of Christianity after 13 centuries of heresies, schisms, and crusades.

This theological hodgepodge makes for a very flexible setting, where Archangel Gabriel and King Minos can coexist. In a way, Hakita is just taking advantage of the same scriptural gap that Dante did, since the bible is actually pretty shaky on what Hell even is. In ULTRAKILL it’s explicit canon that God created Hell to punish mankind for not following his word. But in the bible it’s left really ambiguous whether or not Hell was actively created by God or if it’s more like a spiritual dumping ground for everyone who doesn’t get into heaven. The whole “lake of fire” image isn’t touched on until Matthew and isn’t really fleshed out until Revelations. In other words, Hakita and his writers are doing exactly what Dante Alighieri did 700 years ago, interpreting cultural ideas of Hell into their creative work, and not retelling the same story we’ve been reading for 2000 years.

I mean, you probably could’ve figured that out by the inclusion of King Sisyphus, you know, the boulder guy from Hades? Actually I was curious about if there was any mention of Greek myths in the bible since it was being written in the same general area and there’s a lot of cultural crossover with old myths. But a search on “Is Sisyphus in the bible” brought me to a bible study website where people recommended verses about disregarding “cleverly devised myths”

And if you thought “that seems like a thinly veiled antisemitic dogwhistle”, don’t worry, scroll down like 5 verses and you have someone implying the Myth of Sisyphus is a Jewish plot to turn people away from the truth.

I would look up if Inferno was considered heretical in its day, but every search just leads to stuff about the 6th circle, Heresy. Dante was accused of heresy, but only 8 years after his death (1329), and for Monarchia, which he wrote in 1313. It wasn’t even for theological reasons, just because it argued for Florence’s independence from the Papal States. It also got banned by the church over 250 years later in 1585. I swear, every time I look into church conflicts, they’re never juicy semantic arguments over interpretation of scripture, it’s just politics by another name.

Anyway, all that to say when ULTRAKILL explicitly takes from Dante’s Inferno, that’s the exception rather than the rule. King Minos has a snake motif, but not for wrapping around himself a number of times corresponding to which circle of Hell he’s sentencing you to, it’s for sick-ass fighting game combos and energy blasts.

All this is interesting trivia, but if you’re like me you’re probably thinking “But where’s the HOOK here? An interesting setting is only the start, what actually HAPPENS there?” The answer is going to be a bit unsatisfying. The game’s not out yet. We have the beginning and middle, but only part of the end. Which is why I believe ULTRAKILL’s best example of its core themes comes from a side story. A tragedy that was cut off too soon and likely forgotten to save hard drive space.

V2

V2 is V1 made better in nearly every way, except for 1 very niche, situational use case. Long-term survival in blood-rich environments. Unfortunately for V2…

Well, no matter. They are both machines. It’d be silly to suggest a toaster oven would get an inferiority complex over a microwave. Or in this case, a GoPro over a Red GoPro. However, V2 was built after the final war, meaning it wasn’t wired for non-stop violence like V1 is. We see glimpses of person-hood from other machines¹, but V2 exhibits downright social behavior. It bows, it keeps grudges, it even has a sense of irony². It’s an object that is nonetheless capable of thinking and feeling³. But not quite free will. V2 still follows its given directives without question, same as every other machine. Yet in these conditions, a sense of self was able to blossom. A mind without free will.

Which brings us to Testament III

God (Yes, that one)

Despite not being a JRPG, it is my belief that God will be the final boss of ULTRAKILL. Or, if not God directly, Gabriel empowered by the residual divinity in God’s corpse. The assumption that God will die at some point is basically handed to us. Act III is called “GODFIST SUICIDE”, it’s not exactly a secret. Plus, each testament illustrates God’s reasons for creating Hell, his guilt over doing so, and eventually his search for oblivion⁴.

I believe the guilt and longing for death are as they appear on the surface, but not everything lines up with God’s motive for creating Hell. If this is the same God described in Dante’s Inferno, we’re talking about an omnipotent, omniscient, infinitely divine being somehow becoming …impatient? I don’t buy that. The clear takeaway from the Testaments is that God feels trapped by his nature. He’s specifically horrified by his incapacity for change. What brings this conflict into focus is my favorite lorebook in the game, hidden in a secret corner for 7-4. From other hints, we can assume it was written by Hell Itself, and it reads as follows:

THIS IS THE ONLY WAY IT COULD HAVE ENDED.

WAR NO LONGER NEEDED ITS ULTIMATE PRACTITIONER. IT HAD BECOME A SELF-SUSTAINING SYSTEM. MAN WAS CRUSHED UNDER THE WHEELS OF A MACHINE CREATED TO CREATE THE MACHINE CREATED TO CRUSH THE MACHINE. SAMSARA OF CUT SINEW AND CRUSHED BONE. DEATH WITHOUT LIFE. NULL OUROBOROS. ALL THAT REMAINED IS WAR WITHOUT REASON.

A MAGNUM OPUS. A COLD TOWER OF STEEL. A MACHINE BUILT TO END WAR IS ALWAYS A MACHINE BUILT TO CONTINUE WAR. YOU WERE BEAUTIFUL, OUTSTRETCHED LIKE ANTENNAS TO HEAVEN. YOU WERE BEYOND YOUR CREATORS. YOU REACHED FOR GOD, AND YOU FELL. NONE WERE LEFT TO SPEAK YOUR EULOGY. NO FINAL WORDS, NO CONCLUDING STATEMENT. NO POINT. PERFECT CLOSURE.

T H I S I S T H E O N L Y W A Y I T S H O U L D H A V E E N D E D .

The pages of the book are blank.

What a read, huh? For such a gameplay-focused project, it’s funny the story’s narrative linchpin lies in the difference between “could”, “should”, and “did”. According to God’s design, Humanity should have “LET THE EVIL OF THEIR OWN LIPS CONSUME THEM”. This almost happened. The Final War nearly wiped out all life on earth, and its automated nature meant it should have continued long afterward. A perfect, poetic conclusion. Humanity undone by its ingenuity, the very thing that led them out of their caves would usher them into their graves. But that’s not what happened.

God mentions that humanity is damned to an eternity of torture for failing to follow His word, but Hell was likely created way, way before The Final War. This creates an interesting difference between God and Humanity. God says in Testament III “I HAVE CREATED HELL... And now I can no longer unmake it”, but Humanity somehow did both. They created Hell on Earth and then unmade it with The New Peace. They had the flexibility to admit they were wrong that God simply didn’t.

I don’t know where exactly the story goes from here. There’s plenty of loose ends that I have nothing to say about. All I know is that for every hour spent in the cybergrind, I’ll spend another thinking about how beautifully poetic a failed vision can be.

Signing off: Wheelsbot

Toss a coin my way, but don’t shoot it this time, K?