Trope or not, gods just end up being a common target for games about heroes escalating in power while fighting increasingly world-destroying consequences.
So, for each post, name a game and describe it, with the assumption being that every description automatically ends with the phrase:
“…and then it ends with you fighting a god.”
I mean… Dark Souls is the game that essentially created this meme.
Your entire goal is to beat up God and take his place so you can keep things going as they’ve been going for an untold number of centuries. Though IMO that’s one of the bad endings; the good ending is ending the status quo and becoming a new, different god. A god a humanity instead of… Whatever the fuck the gods before were (they are separated from humanity, even though they look like humans) 🤷🏻♂️.
For a much older game… EarthBound. Starts off just being a quirky, modern day (modern day being the 90’s in this case) RPG; ends with you fighting a literal space god that looks vaguely like a fallopian tube.
I’m fairly sure the meme was popularized way back with old JRPGs; just that they tended to be the ones with long enough stories to gain that kind of path of progression.
Yeah if I had to take a guess shin megami tensei series (1987) is solidly in the “… And then you fight God”, but a lot games even earlier probably did the same.
Actual gods, or do self-proclaimed gods that are actually something else count?
Cuz if the latter, Final Fantasy 1 (same year, few months earlier) might be Patient Zero for killing “gods” in jRPGs.
I just checked, and Dragon Quest 2 released in January of the same year as both of those games and ends with you fighting Malroth, god of destruction. If anything is patient zero, it’s the Dragon Quest series.
Haha, I think it’s very likely there are even earlier examples than both of those. I debated counting final fantasy, and did not recall the final boss of Dragon Quest 2.
I think ultimately, Man v God is a story that’s existed for a looong time.