We begin to see echoes of archetypes down through the years. This is why so many games feature heroes that are mere steps removed from each other; we need certain features to be there: toughness, resilience, adaptability, cleverness, all traits that we want to possess ourselves. These are our demigods, our champions, utilizing their abilities in the service of mankind. By roleplaying them, we learn to inhabit them, and hopefully they become second nature to ourselves. One of the best examples of the kind of all-conquering hero that we love to put in our games is Odysseus. Here's a man who spent ten years fighting the Trojan War overseas, then spent another ten years lost, trying to get back home. Along the way, he displayed great courage, resourcefulness, cunning, and combat prowess. There was no foe he could not overcome, either by force or trickery. It seems pretty clear that God of War's Kratos was modeled after him.

We've created our own pantheon, strewn across a multitude of titles: Tomb Raider's Lara Croft. Metroid's Samus Aran. The Legend of Zelda's Link. Jak and Daxter. Ratchet and Clank. Starcraft's Jim Rayner and Zeratul. Splinter Cell's Sam Fisher. Sometimes our heroes are fighters, like Ryu Hayabusa, or Kratos. Sometimes they're thieves, like Sly Cooper, or Garrett. Whatever their role, they each serve a particular function, exposing a particular portion of our psyche to the light of examination. And new heroes are being created all the time -- Uncharted's Nathan Drake, for example. These heroes arise to fulfill our perpetual need for stories of adversity and glory, and their exploits echo down through the years.

Will we ever outgrow the need for myth? If we have satisfied the need to understand the world and the way it works, and have now moved on to understanding our own natures, can we conceive of a time when we will have attained total self-awareness, and therefore, no further use for stories of conflict? Perhaps the next step after that is memorial. When we have sated our desire for self-knowledge, and possess mastery of ourselves and our environment, perhaps the only use for stories at that point will be to commemorate our journey. We will tell stories of ourselves much the way we already do, of the dark years before enlightenment, when nothing worth having could be gained without having to fight for it; when struggle was the key element that defined our species. Surely we will embellish and exaggerate, just as we do now, and have always done, to give added weight to the tales and lend savor to the retelling. We will all be gods in the end, endlessly reinventing ourselves through our personal dramas and comedies, recapitulating our eternal mythology.