Noctis seems to come down in favor of hard determinism. Its galaxy is one in which planets ceaselessly orbit their parent stars; in which moons and rings revolve about their planets; dumb plants and animals grow and live without ambition; and rocks rest in total vacuum upon the edges of ravines, unmolested since the day of their formation. It is a galaxy very much like our own: vast, beautiful and almost totally devoid of consciousness (and therefore, free will). Aside from the player, Noctis has no sentient life - the only exception being some extremely rare ruins of a forgotten civilization (of which the player is ostensibly the last known survivor). But these ruins are only the remnants of buildings, and through their isolation only drive home the point that the galaxy is now empty of creative spirit.
The most ardent determinist could not have crafted a better exemplum of her theory than Noctis. Even the very worlds of Noctis - all trillion or so of them - are generated, not randomly or by design, but procedurally, in accord with rote mathematical algorithms.
Sentiency, Sanity and the Limits of Belief
The allure of determinism is utterly intoxicating to the human mind. I feel its pull on chill autumn nights as I scan the wide heavens with binoculars and ponder my own insignificance. I can sense the imponderable engine of the universe, pounding away at its own pace. Thought and emotion slip away, and all that's left of the world are objects in motion and objects at rest. For a time, I exist outside myself. I am Tennyson, gazing at the tree.
Any who have never experienced this mystical mode that I describe, need only play Noctis to feel it arrive in force.
But it will only remain with you for a short time before fading away, leaving you to catch your breath. The thrill of the experience is like that of a rollercoaster: It is enjoyable precisely because it is terrifying, and we who partake of it must first overcome our better judgment otherwise. We harbor deep-set fears of our own mortality, transience and ultimate inconsequentiality, and sharp exposure to Noctis' determinism does nothing to assuage them. Indeed, for all the strength and perverse appeal of Noctis' universe, we must, in the end, recoil from it even more forcefully and seek desperately to achieve terms of peace with a universe that seems unremittingly inclined to wage war upon human sanity.
Any world that operates without free will, and in which sentience loses its distinction from mere matter, is insane. We cannot contemplate it while retaining any kind of grip on our own minds. We cannot believe it without entering into an alien state of mind, and even when the hallucinogenic power of Noctis convinces us to believe in a determinist universe, we cannot sustain that belief for long before returning to our normal way of thinking. Determinism, in the long run, is untenable, and anything we cannot believe, in the long run, cannot possibly be true.
With each new planet, Noctis reinforces in the player's mind just how small and fragile humans are. But the inevitable consequence of that realization is a newfound appreciation of how precious we are, too; how starkly and beautifully we contrast with the overwhelming majority of stuff in the universe. Noctis encapsulates nearly everything that exists, but what little it omits is the most important stuff of all.
Phillip Scuderi writes for Gamers With Jobs, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of South Florida. Beyond this, his loyalties remain uncertain.
