Exile or Humanity: Pyre’s Take on Justice

Caleb Millard

Pyre is a video game from renowned San Francisco-based studio Supergiant Games where you, as the player, adopt the persona of the reader, a faceless character exiled for knowing how to read. You have been exiled into a mythical fantasy realm known as the Downside. The only way back to society is by competing in a series of rites where you must plunge a sphere into the opposing team’s pyre. Everyone in the Downside has been cast there by a country called the Commonwealth. As the main political power of Pyre’s fantasy world, they tend to conquer and exile anyone that opposes them based on their own sense of morality, rather than any true sort of justice. The game’s narrative later reveals that the outcome of these rites qualifies one of your top three team members for freedom and reintegration back into the Commonwealth.

The Commonwealth aims to use the punishment of exile to create the perfect utopia and reduce all future crimes to next to nothing, which is a theoretically beautiful idea but impossible to achieve in practice.

The biggest flaw with this sort of quasi-utopian justice system is that there is no room to make mistakes. By definition, this system divides people into binary definitions of good and bad. For example, we can look at quite a few justice systems in the world, namely in North America and Asia, that are very harsh. They show little concern for people learning from their mistakes. One minor slip-up and individual’s struggle to find a job for the rest of their lives. People feel spiteful and have no choice but to repeat their offenses. The Commonwealth even exiled those of a different race than themselves. The way the Commonwealth exiled fantasy races like Wyrms, Harpys, and Imps, bears a striking resemblance to how many justice systems seem to handle marginalized groups. They hand out punishments that are different than what might be sentenced to those who the enforcers see in a more positive light, whatever their bias may be.

cated or even have responsibility within their walls. Each of these systems provides a different outlook on justice and asks different questions about what it means to be rehabilitated.

The key thematic piece of Pyre is seeing that even the most heinous criminals who have been exiled have a side of humanity still left in them. They have the potential to grow into something redeemable. It poses the problem of our justice system that we cast them away and ignore them. It not only dehumanizes them, but it also takes away the idea that we see that people have stories and reasons behind their actions. We need to see these motivations and figure out the best plan of rehabilitation, rather than exiling them away.

While Pyre may be a game based on fantasy, it has some very real statements to make on modern justice. These statements stem from the extremely immersive lore of the world Supergiant Games created; the Commonwealth has taken over most of the world, and the resulting so-called peace results in the exile of anyone who the Commonwealth deems bad or who deviates from the norm. Once the exiles wake up in the Downside, they are stuck there for life unless they join a team and compete in the aforementioned rites against fellow exiles.

We see the similarities between what Pyre says about the modern justice systems and their version of justice. Modern systems focus too much on punishment and not nearly enough on rehabilitation. Rehabilitation is compassionately seeing those who have made mistakes and recognizing that some can be redeemed through this experience. Rehabilitation and the opportunity to wipe your slate clean will provide the opportunity for those who have made minor slip-ups to continue on in life without the pressure to commit more offenses. For those who have committed more heinous crimes, we should still provide them with the opportunity for rehabilitation even if they deservedly no longer have the right to be free. Multiple prisons in Europe have provided the opportunity to be edu-

Pyre points directly at the flaws in our justice system by allowing us to see our real world inside a fantasy world. By playing this game, you know that even the worst people in this world have some shred of human decency. While some seem to deserve their fate, you see the humanity and value of them as a human being. Pyre points out that humans are not very good at justice. To cast someone away from civilization and society for the rest of their lives due to a small mistake is a sad reality that happens all too often. The way Pyre presents its characters tells us their stories in a way that can humanize even the worst of people, to the point where you can see the potential for good within them. We should look forward to the way we conduct our lives and see the humanity in all.