The first hours of our Skif’s adventures in the Zone probably owe more to Bethesda games than any other source of inspiration. We got an uber-technological military Ward organization, an assortment of definitely-not-super mutants and hordes of feral dogs in lieu of radioactive cockroaches. But deeper into the game, dodging anomalies and tentacled Bloodsuckers while keeping an eye out on the threatening play of lightning in the violent red sky, one starts to understand more about the Zone’s enigmatic beauty. It reaches far beyond the obvious modern Western sources of inspiration… toward the prevailing, all-consuming sense of Biblical end-of-the-world dread.

The Book of Revelation(s) by some guy called John is a decent starting point for ANY sort of first-person shooter. In fact, most of the well-established series in the genre lean on the last book of the New Testament in some shape of form, be it a part of an actual DOOMsday in its title or deeper philosophical connections in “Half-Life 2”’s (and to some extent, “Halo’s”) visions of The Fall. With “apocalypse” being, quite literally, the first word in John of Patmos’s little treatise on the end of mankind (talk about your doomscrolling blog article!), it starts things off with a bang — and then uses a stunning amount of detail to create the perfect open-world setting.

Any other prophecy in any other sort of fiction (or outside of it) hints only at the vaguest shapes of things to come. The Bible sells its story through a grounded vividness most reminiscent of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds: there’s a natural progression and cinematic escalation to the opening of the seven seals and all the other good stuff.

Tarkovsky’s version of “S.T.A.L.K.E.R.” (or rather, “Stalker”) directly quotes the rather startling passage from the book — the one about the kings of the earth hiding themselves in the rocks of the mountains. “Stalker 2” and its FPS brethren are a bit more subtle. But it’s hard not to think of John’s warring angels as a series of mini-bosses, each one personalized beautifully by eerie quirks of behavior — like that one fella taking his time to fill the golden censer with heaven’s fire at an altar before hurling it down to Earth for thunder, lightning and quakes. And then come the Horsemen…

Memorable boss characters aside, the last chapter of The Good Book stands firmly on all three pillars of John Romero’s abstract 3D level design style. For example, there’s a full HALF AN HOUR OF SILENCE before the seventh seal cracks open and the real fun begins. John’s haunting passages follow all the rhythms of a good first-person shooter harkening back to the first “Doom” game. Moments of tense anticipation precede minutes of close-quarters battles in tight corridors — before being rudely interrupted by the occasional hour-long open arena massacre. And there’s the big trailer moments (either gameplay or cinematics) of the Day of Wrath, be it the plague star falling, “burning like a lamp”, or a flaming mountain (clearly a spaceship!) splashing into the sea north of some little Greek island. When the sun becomes black, and the moon like blood… but we don’t really want to spoil the rest of the thing!

Circling back to “Stalker 2” as the flagship of classic apocalyptica in modern gaming, it’s hard to say which references to the Book (or Tarkovsky’s movie, for that matter) are strictly intentional — and which simply REVEAL (for lack of a better word) themselves as soon as the developers start to apply supernatural to post-nuclear. It’s definitely not a direct adaptation like “Darksiders” — and not even a college graduate-level interpretation like “Death Stranding” (the Bible by way of Neon Genesis Evangelion). But it’s extremely interesting to see — and feel — deeper connections to the, ahem, source material than in any videogame set in a sterilized nuclear wasteland or on alien-colonized Earth.