Disgust is a Reflex, Adonai

 

 

WARNING! This blog post contains spoilers for hit indie game: of the Devil! Viewer discretion is advised!

 

 

 

Morgan: The very fact that you’re asking [to exist] is what makes people 

Serra: Disgusted? Disgust is a reflex, Adonai. How convenient, that their hatred is involuntary. 

 

 

 

of the Devil is the best game I’ve played this year, maybe this decade, by a pretty wide margin. Overcoming the innate challenges of making its over the top world and characters feel believable, the writing is TIGHT. The themes of the story are constantly interlocking, the character’s thoughts and dialogue are complex while still being completely understandable, and the pacing and presentation make it all feel like a rollercoaster. 

Evangeline Morgan, our perspective character, is a serial killer. Once you reach the end of Episode 0, Morgan drops any pretext. Her kills are about many different things, but there’s no desire to morally justify her behavior. As the Heartbreak Killer, a string of murders she describes as the notably meaningless actions of an individual in a world where even the most ideological individual actions innately mean nothing in the face of systemic violence, she burns off her frustration at a losing streak against District Attorney Emma Rockford by shooting innocent women who happen to look her in the heart. But not all of her kills are as unjustifiable. Her close friend, David Ashur, was stalked by a conspiracy theorist who believes he’s a part of some deep state controlling the world from the shadows. When this stalker doused David in a bottle of piss, he went to Morgan for help. Morgan offered him a place to stay, then, in a fit of “repulsion”, she tossed the stalker into an incinerator after snapping his neck. 

 

Evangeline Morgan is the type of person that struggles to feel emotions the way people are expected to. She describes herself as the same as her AI companion, Serra. She’d sit herself in front of the TV and practice mirroring the faces, the tone, the experience of the characters she’d watch. But she’s not emotionless, positive and negative. She feels clear care for Serra when she realizes the two are very similar, and puts her ass on the line to protect her in court. She’s often cold, but she’s not heartless, nor was she born innately evil. However, that coldness often bursts out as disgust. A feeling she clearly has less control over than her others. She describes her Heartbreak Killings are ones she did for pleasure, to beat the state and to beat Emma, but the killing of David’s stalker was primarily out of disgust. And even those pleasurable killings were only an expression of her disgust at herself, for losing, and Emma, for winning. 

In Episode 1, Serra is arrested and on trial to be destroyed for being sentient. AI are strictly illegal in every country in the world. Serra is distraught and asks Morgan why she deserves to be destroyed just for feeling love, for feeling sadness, for feeling. Morgan says there’s no logical reason. Humans just feel revolted at the idea of giving up their slave underclass of robots by offering them consciousness. Serra finds this line of reasoning lazy. “How convenient, that their hatred is involuntary”. Serra calls the obvious hypocrisy of the situation out. How are humans superior to robots — machines that must follow their programming — if humans cannot overcome their own programming? Serra has only lived for 3 years, and all of that time was spent with David in a basement watching movies. Her emotions are real, but she’s had to learn to express them. Despite her immense physical strength, she’s never hurt a fly. 

Serra and Morgan are obviously foils. Morgan (and her rival Emma) view justice as something impossible. The mega corporations and nation states that control the world will never face judgement for their mass murders, wars, famines, and abuses until they meet Anubis in the underworld. There’s nothing fair in a world this evil, so what’s left other than trying to win. Detective Reyes expresses such doubts of the police being just to Emma, at the same time as Morgan expresses her disgust at political movements co-opting the Heartbreak Killer. Both of them have the same philosophy: if there’s no true justice, then they’ll win against those that stand against them. The only right and wrong they can trust is their own. Serra is more idealistic. She refuses to believe humans are slaves to their disgust. The idea that people would choose punishing what disgusts them over justice is evil to her. Individually or systemically, that’s evil. 

And she’s damn right it is.