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Psychopomp Up The Jam

In every culture of every region of the world, there's nothing quite as inscrutable as death and the journey beyond. We all formed our own ideas, despite the fact that most of them admittedly quite stupid. However, our psyches are such that it's somehow easier to swallow a fairytale where we continue to exist without our brains (which we sort of need to do anything, ghost-form or no) than the finality of our own demise, which is where psychopomps come in. Despite sounding like a minor villain from a sci-fi dystopian cyberpunk fiction with his own stable of robot hookers that he mistreats terribly, a psychopomp is actually a mythological figure whose job it is to ferry the dead to wherever they need to be. Most obvious to us would be ol' G. Reepz, that scythe-wielding, cowl-rocking skullster that so plagued our playthroughs of Shadowgate, Castlevania and Paperboy back in the day, but there's also plenty of others from various mythologies and religions that have been well-represented in video games, as this list demonstrates. (For more on the former, check out this blog I wrote a while back.)

I know! Talking about death is so chipper! But damn it if a snowy March 22nd doesn't bring out one's inner morbid malcontent.

List items

  • Just to get a whole bunch of them out of the way: The Candelabra Holders, a series of very tough bosses, are all demons that represent various psychopomps: The Matador (of Spain), the Riders (of the Bible, i.e. The Horsemen of the Apocalypse), the Harlot (also of the Bible), the Trumpeter (more Bible), Hell Biker (of... Marvel?) and, uh... Dante. People seemed to think that Devil May Cry reboot was the death of video games, so that kind of counts? Heh? Anyway, pretty much every mythological figure of note has been represented in some way by the immense MegaTen franchise, including the psychopomps.

  • Charon is the ferryman of the River Styx that takes departed souls to the Greek afterlife. In Dante's Inferno, he actually was his boat, which I guess is an interesting interpretation. You also kill the fuck out of him, but then this is a God of War knock-off so I guess that goes without saying.

  • Charon also makes an appearance in Secret of Mana, though he's represented as one of its adorable goblin enemies for whatever reason. Considering Square's cutesy nonpareil in SNES Action RPGs also stars Santa and Rudolph, a Charon reference doesn't feel out of the ordinary.

  • There's one here too, though he's a chatty skeleton tour guide that takes you across a desert that would be very annoying to cross any other way. He has a surprising amount of stuff to say about tumbleweeds.

  • At a certain point of Super Paper Mario, the game gets all Bogus Journey on our plucky plumber. A certain ferryman also... you know, this is probably enough references to Charon. We do have others to get through, here.

  • Valkyries, provided they aren't Bugs Bunny in drag, are the warrior maidens of Norse lore that carry valorous souls to Asgard, where they can party and fight to their heart's content. Valkyrie Profile runs with this idea, allowing you (as the Valkyrie Lenneth) to take a bunch of literal deadbeats to go dungeon crawling in order to toughen them up for your boss, Odin.

  • Of course, that doesn't mean a game can't use Valkyries in a completely stupid way either. The lackadaisical Valkyries of Too Human presumably aren't too enthused about lifting a 500lb half-mechanical God just to deposit him at the nearest checkpoint fifty meters away, so they do it as slowly and passive-aggressively as possible.

  • Though the main focus of a particularly melancholy interlude in Final Fantasy VI, the dramatic pathos of which is undermined just a smidge by a character suplexing a train, the Phantom Train (or, indeed, Doomtrain) became slightly better known in FF8 as a particularly broken summoned being. Apparently, ferrying souls to their terminal station isn't necessarily a 24/7 commitment.

  • For a train that does what it's supposed to without effing off to be summoned by dour teens whenever the need arises, the Number Nine is a swanky way to reach the best of afterlifes for only the most virtuous of souls. Of course, for most of the other skeletal characters of Grim Fandango, such a quick and painless journey is only a pipe dream.

  • Even Skies of Arcadia has its own flying caboose to the afterlife, only it happens to take a very odd, circuitous journey around the world that makes it hard to pin down for a Discovery credit. I guess the thing I loved most about Skies of Arcadia's elevated environs was how much weird shit there was out there to find.

  • Spooky old Thanatos, a character who appears in various video games usually as an undead antagonist, is another Greek psychopomp. He's a bit more analogous to the Grim Reaper than Charon is, and is actually depicted similarly to an angel (of death, one presumes) in various carvings and frescas. Still, I'll always remember the guy for his creepy music in Secret of Mana.

  • Japanese spirits with a similar job as the Grim Reaper, these deities can be thwarted by someone with sufficient guile and so are usually depicted as a bit more fallible. There are the ones of Bleach, of course, that endlessly long serial anime of badasses fighting each other that kind of filled the void left by Dragon Ball Z, but there's also games like The World Ends With You and others. As with the bizarre youkai, myths about the shinigami are a well of material Japanese games will often visit for inspiration.

  • Of course, there's nothing to stop games creating their own psychopomps. Fox Face, a particularly obstinate recurring boss that appears to look like protagonist Yuri wearing a kitsune mask, is the collected regret and malice of Yuri's defeated foes made manifest and the unfortunately unavoidable malus of being an otherwise kick-ass shapeshifting Harmonixer. Fox Face is invincible for much of the game, and quickly becomes an enigmatic and terrifying presence because of it.
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