The Undead Army - Myth: The Fallen Lords

I'm not entirely sure where the idea of an Undead Army originally came from.  There are depictions of animated dead all throughout history.  Skeletons as the grim reaper, zombies in voodoo culture, banshees haunting the Irish countryside.  In terms of depicting them as an organized fighting force, however, that seems - to my limited knowledge - to be entirely the realm of fantasy.  Jason and the Argonauts battled skeletal warriors, Ash fired up his chainsaw against the Army of Darkness, and of course we all know the undead legions of Dungeons and Dragons and in the Warhammer world.  For me though, there is no finer depiction that fully realizes the might and terror of an undead horde than Myth: The Fallen Lords.

It's probably a big surprise to most Halo fans that Bungie tried their hand at a Real Time Strategy game, at roughly the same time that Blizzard was dominating the market with a little-known thing called Starcraft.  This was also the first time Bungie released a game simultaneously for Mac and PC, and though Myth was a fairly big success, it's not altogether surprising given these factors that most people haven't heard of it.

The backstory to Myth is rich and complicated, and I probably can't do it justice in a few choice sentences, but here goes.  Essentially, the world of Myth is a fantastical place with men, elves, dwarves, magic, etc., where the forces of Light and Darkness clash titanically once every thousand years.  This mighty battle is always foretold by a comet in the sky, signalling the arrival of a powerful, evil entity known as the Leveller.  This being comes in the form and body of the hero who previously saved civilization at its darkest hour, forever perpetuating the cycle of destruction.  The Leveller levels the world, basically.

This particular age of the world finds the Leveller taking the form of a former hero known as Balor, a titanically powerful knight.  Balor rallies several ancient sorcerers and warriors to his cause, and these generals become known as the titular Fallen Lords.  Individually, they are Soulblighter, Shiver, The Watcher, and the Deceiver, and each leads a huge army of undead, with a handful of twisted creatures for good measure.

Unlike the Warcraft series, there is no resource management or gathering in Myth.  You are given a select number of troops for each mission, with very occasional reinforcements in certain scenarios.  From the get-go, even on the lowest difficulty setting, you are hopelessly outnumbered, though your troops are typically faster and more elite.  It's this careful management - and distinction between the two armies in the game - that goes a long way to making this my favourite depiction of the Undead Army.

Each mission briefing, which comes in the form of a journal entry of a soldier in the Legion fighting against the Fallen Lords, reminds the player time and time again that they are battling against incredible odds.  At the beginning of the game, the war has been raging for years, and most of the great cities of the Light have already been destroyed and their populations have been absorbed into the ranks of the Undead.  The journal carries a terrible sense of inevitability to it.  The Light is consistently fighting a delaying action, with every troop that falls added to the strength of their foes.

This is borne out in gameplay as well.  The hordes of undead you face seem, at times, limitless.  You find yourself constantly wheeling and shifting formations of your troops to meet new advances with no respite.  The "hold a fixed objective against an advance" style of missions are particularly good for this.  The real tension you feel with each arcing arrow and every swordswing becomes that much more nailbiting and you really get the impression that your entire strategy rests on a razor's edge.

The tension is only heightened when you consider the cost of losing laid out by the magnificent story.  The destruction of civilization is one thing, to be sure, but what is truly eerie about the depiction of the Fallen Lords is the way they seem to corrupt the very land.  The implication is that the poor souls bound to serve are still, in some way, aware of what is happening.  The living servants of the Fallen Lords are no treat, either.  The Fetch, for instance, are mentioned as literally wearing the skins of men, not for decoration but as a disguise against "being recognized" by cosmic entities.  Then there are the Myrkridia, an ancient race of wolf-men that built colossal platforms out of the skulls of their enemies.

To me, these are the key features that make an Undead Army resonate:  a sense of hopelessness, a high-stakes scenario, and a horrific fate for those that fall in the struggle.  Myth checks off all of these boxes with flying colours.  The closest I've seen any other piece of modern media come to hitting these high notes is in Game of Thrones.  Even then we've only had a taste of the might and terror of an Undead Army in the TV series, but much less so in the Song of Ice and Fire books.  Myth gets it.  The Undead Army isn't merely a horde, or a military group.  It's a tsunami.  A force of nature.  It comes in and sweeps the land, and practically nothing can stand in its way.