What would Jesus do? No, no. What would you do as Jesus?
This is the question that a forthcoming video game looks to answer.
Published by PlayWay S.A., the team that brought you Bum Simulator and WW2 Rebuilder: Germany Prologue, is the provocatively titled I Am Jesus Christ. The simulator loosely follows the Christ story, albeit under a pall of blasphemy that makes Life of Brian shift closer to Veggie Tales on the kosher end of the Christian entertainment spectrum. While watching gameplay and reading the description, I find myself converting from a “burn the witches” Dominican to a more Jesuitical “let’s wait and see; maybe it’ll be enlightening” and then back again.
This could be a semi-serious attempt to introduce players to Christianity in a novel format.
The game’s store page on Steam describes the game as offering the ability to:
Walk in the footsteps of Jesus in this incredible first-person retelling of the story of Christ from birth to resurrection. Perform amazing miracles, interact with a cast of biblical figures and travel around the Holy Land from Jerusalem to the Galilee. Become the Messiah in ‘I Am Jesus Christ.
The structure and physics of the game are Skyrim-like, where the player views the world in the first person (truly, “In the beginning” sort of first). Christ’s hands are seen in the liminal foreground and are used to manipulate the world and summon forth miracles whilst managing a prayer meter. The obvious clunkiness and frame-rate drops replicate what gamers in anno domini X would have probably experienced. We’ll know more when the prologue is released next month.
If at Helgen Keep’s character-creation you’ve thought, “I’d rather be the Lord than a Nord,” this may be the game for you. But your grandma would disapprove, and I can’t blame her.