Religion in Games Making a Comeback? (lengthy post)

I never really thought about that so much, the religion coming into games.  But my first thought is... comeback?  When was religion in with games in the first place?
Part of it is that the Bible does have some pretty nasty stuff in there about war and super wars.  Angles fighting demons and so for Dante, based off the book too, and Darksiders, the back story, the basics of it are easy to get down and flesh out because someone has already written it.  In Bayonetta's case, I feel its more of just a name.  You kill Angels.  Use demons, not much religion there I think other than they needed enemies and allies for her.

None of these games are about religion. They're using mythology surrounding a religion that happens to be still active (as opposed to dead ones) as a branching point for their own little thing that couldn't be less religious, honestly. Is a game with Zeus in it about paganism? No, these are characters that are conceptually and visually interesting and in a creative void what you do is look at shit like that and make it your own. Games aren't more religious, devs are just running low on dead religions to rip off for baddies and stories.

Dante's Inferno has only a passing resemblance to the Divine Comedy. Also, it is a huge understatement to say that biblical mythology and iconography has been a major influence in nearly every form of media anywhere for the past millenium.

Bayonetta is very much a "good guy" character.  The angels of the game are just not very good themselves.

None of those examples are Christian in any sense.  I don't recall Jesus playing a role in any, and there is little to do with religious teaching.
 
War is not "evil" in Darksiders.  The character is politically neutral and morally good.  Clearly, the Apocalypse is not a Biblical one.  The story uses a few elements of Revelation, but not many.  God is not mentioned, and nobody blinks an eye over the absence of zombie carpenters.  The game is as Christian as a 1980s metal album cover.  Also, the Apocolypse is not a Judeo-Christian belief.  It sounds like you're trying too hard to be broadly ecumenical.  Jews and Christians have very little agreement on the matter.
 
Bayonetta is in the same camp; there is hardly anything religious about the game.  Angels and Demons both pre-date Christianity and Judaism by a hell of a long time (as do Heaven and Hell).
 
Dante's inferno probably has the most similarity to Christian Mythology, but that says very little.  It's a game inspired by a poem that contains loose elements of a religion.  Having a crosses and religious iconography is by no means rare in games.
 
There are better games that deal with religion either directly or tangentially.  Assassin's Creed comes to mind insofar as it deals with the consequences of religious belief, but it keeps the kid-gloves on when it comes to making any points. 
 
None of these games is religious, let alone Christian.  I, for one, would like to see games that actually address religious beliefs.  None of these games tries to do that.  It would be difficult to make a "Christian" game worthwhile given that Jesus would be boring as shit as a protagonist.

Jesus is a cool dude, you shut your mouth. There are a lot of interesting ideas surrounding the bible, and by that I mean fiction that's not "canon" at all that tries to expand on various abract ideas, like the Ars Goetia, Paradise Lost, Dante's Inferno, etc. And, surprise surprise, those stories also borrow heavily from paganism because paganism was ripe with symbology. Its pretty clear Bayonetta, per one example, has concept artists that were looking at some of the batshit crazy abstract designs you see in, idunno, Baraoque era frescos and the Ars Goetia. Because they look cool. This is a religion that's had more artistic rendering than any other, by far, where people attempt to visually illustrate things that are supposely too massive in scope to ever really be depicted, that was part of the creative appeal. Its ripe for the picking, really. Hinduism too. People need to stop leaning o Nordic Heathanism and Greco Roman Paganism so much.

I meant the things that spring up around it are interesting. I find some of the older abstract depictions of hell just fascinating and weird. Again, not really diving into the stories themselves, just the ideas in the stories. As a concept artist, I read any random bit from revelations and try and visualize it and blood starts dripping out of my ear. You mix that in with the egos of the Rennaisance period and you get bizzare creative works. I tend to think most of Christianity's most impactful visual facades are mostly composited from mythology of the time as that made the transition easier. So looking at it that way, its really just an evolution from the old religions. All that said, I kind of feel like, yeah, its gone the way of paganism. Its just not that compelling anymore. But at the same time, I think those other sources you mentioned are, even now, a little too "foriegn" for most people's comfort. When you offer something "new" like these new IPs, you still have to stay within a comfort zone in certain ways or people feel alienated. And regaurdless of how one feels about the bible, there's an immediate understanding of role because of it and that's something games continue to play off of. Person with bird wings good, person with goat horns bad. How do you tell a good Aztec god from a bad one? That's not embedded into the general consciousness. So people play it safe and avoid that stuff. Which kinda sucks.

Err comparing games like Bayonetta or Darksiders to Wisdom Tree's unlicensed ripoffs on the NES is a bit strange... Wisdom Tree's games were created by Christians to -- in some odd way -- spread the word of the gospel. Game such as Dante's Inferno merely the mythology of Christianity to tell their story, much like God of War uses Greek mythology, or Shin Megami Tensei uses a mishmash of Judeo-Christian, Shinto, Hindi, etc etc etc.
 
Xenogears, in my opinion, was one of the first real groundbreaking titles to use such themes in their story, weaving a tale pulled from the mythos of Christianity and Gnosticism (along with Jungian theory and other crazy things). Weird note: Both Persona 3 and Xenogears have crucifixion scenes.
 
I can see your point though -- more mainstream western titles are seeing themes pulled from this particular mythology. However, such games have been occurring relatively regularly in the JRPG genre, perhaps because Japanese developers have never seen using Christian mythology as a faux pas like developers in the west did in the past. But then again Diablo was a western release and that game screams Christian mythology.

A comeback? I think religion/mythology has been an integral part of video game fiction since the beginning; as it is in virtually every other medium.

Apart from these kinds of looks at religion there's also been the AC2 take on religion and how they essentially look at it as a sham. I thought that was rather interesting.

It's a comment on the state of religion as it is juxtaposed against the nature of science in a civilisation that is growing an ever increasing dependence of technology and loosening societal norms which have historically been either bound by or conformed to religious rule.
 
In short, the internet is killing god.

Dont you know? Free Masons are taking over all the Media xD
....NO im serious :|

The first thing you have to do in the x360 Tropico demo is build a flipping church! There's no getting round it either. 
  
I also read about an xbox 360 indie game downloadable bible coming soon. 
 

Wasn't there a "Left Behind" game?
 
Edit: Indeed there was.

This thread is somehow going to turn into religious bickering/bashing like it was the off-topic board. I almost guarantee it. 
 
However, before that happens allow me to basically say that TC's thesis is wrong. Random religious references in some recent games does not = increase of religion in games. Game developers will take random stuff from any sort of mythology, and that includes Judeo-Christian beliefs as well. It's neither new nor especially worth mentioning.