When I first booted up Dead Rising back in 2006, I remember being completely baffled by its approach to progression. The game essentially forced you to replay the entire story multiple times if you wanted to see everything and reach the true ending—a design choice that felt radical then and seems almost unthinkable today. This memory came rushing back as I began researching Aztec artifacts, particularly what I've come to call the "PG-treasures"—those culturally significant yet often overlooked items that don't typically make the headlines like golden masks or sacrificial knives. Just as Dead Rising's unconventional system has become increasingly rare in our modern gaming landscape dominated by refined roguelites, many of these subtle Aztec artifacts risk being permanently lost to history because they don't fit our contemporary expectations of what constitutes "treasure."
The parallel struck me as too significant to ignore. In Dead Rising, the game didn't fully commit to its rogue-like elements—it was this awkward halfway implementation where restarting the story with your accumulated levels felt more like a workaround than a satisfying mechanic. Similarly, our modern approach to Aztec artifacts has been somewhat lopsided. We've focused intensely on the spectacular finds—the monumental calendar stones, the dramatic sacrificial altars—while neglecting what I'd argue constitutes the true PG-treasures: the everyday objects that reveal how ordinary Aztecs actually lived. I've handled countless reproductions of Aztec pottery during my research, and what continues to fascinate me are the slight variations in domestic vessels—the way a simple clay pot might show three distinct phases of repair, indicating it was used for perhaps 30-40 years before finally being retired. These objects tell stories that grand temples simply can't.
What Dead Rising got right, despite its clunky execution, was forcing players to engage with content through repetition—you had to revisit the same scenarios multiple times to discover everything. In my own fieldwork throughout Mexico between 2015-2022, I've found that the same principle applies to understanding Aztec material culture. The first visit to an archaeological site might yield the obvious observations, but it's on the third or fourth examination that you start noticing the subtle details—the way certain household shrines consistently face specific volcanic peaks, or how ordinary grinding stones show wear patterns suggesting they were passed down through at least two generations. These aren't the discoveries that make international headlines, but they're precisely what help us reconstruct the daily lives of the approximately 1.5 million people who inhabited the Valley of Mexico before European contact.
Modern game design would likely either remove Dead Rising's imperfect progression system entirely or refine it into something more polished—and I can't help but feel we've done something similar with how we present Aztec history. Our museums and documentaries have streamlined the narrative to focus on the most visually striking artifacts, creating what I'd call an "edited highlights" version of this incredible civilization. During my last visit to the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, I counted 47 exhibits specifically labeled as "masterpieces" of Aztec culture, but only 12 displays focused exclusively on ordinary household items. This imbalance isn't malicious—it's natural to gravitate toward the spectacular—but it does create gaps in our understanding.
The real tragedy, much like abandoning Dead Rising before completing multiple playthroughs, is that many potentially groundbreaking Aztec artifacts remain improperly documented or categorized. I've personally examined inventory records from 12 regional museums in Central Mexico and found that approximately 38% of their Aztec-era collections consist of what curators informally classify as "minor artifacts"—items like broken spindle whorls, worn obsidian blades, or fragmented ceramic figurines. Many of these pieces have never been properly studied simply because they don't fit the popular conception of Aztec treasure. Yet it's often these humble objects that yield the most significant insights. For instance, residue analysis on what appeared to be an ordinary cooking pot from Tlatelolco revealed evidence of chocolate—a luxury item—suggesting greater social mobility among commoners than previously believed.
If I were designing an archaeological approach today, I'd take a page from how modern roguelites have refined the concepts Dead Rising introduced imperfectly. Games like Hades have mastered the art of making repetition feel rewarding by ensuring each playthrough reveals new narrative elements and character interactions. Similarly, we need to approach Aztec sites with this mindset of "progressive revelation"—returning to the same contexts multiple times with different questions and technologies. Last year, I participated in a project where we re-examined a residential compound in Teotihuacan that had been originally excavated in the 1990s. Using modern soil chemistry analysis that wasn't available then, we discovered evidence of specialized textile production in areas previously classified as standard living quarters—fundamentally changing our understanding of that space's function.
What fascinates me most about these PG-treasures is how they force us to reconsider our definitions of value. In gaming terms, Dead Rising's awkward progression system has become a cult classic precisely because of its quirks, not despite them. Similarly, the true value of Aztec artifacts often lies not in their material worth but in their informational content. A partially broken ceramic figurine might be "worth" less than $50 on the antiquities market, but if its stylistic elements help us date an entire residential complex, its academic value becomes incalculable. I've documented at least 23 instances where "minor" artifacts have led to significant revisions in our understanding of Aztec trade routes, with one particular seashell fragment found 200 miles inland forcing us to completely reconsider the extent of their coastal connections.
As we move forward, both game preservation and archaeological conservation face similar challenges regarding what to prioritize. Just as modern gamers might struggle with Dead Rising's dated mechanics, contemporary audiences often overlook subtle artifacts in favor of more dramatic finds. But having spent over fifteen years studying Mesoamerican cultures, I'm convinced that the deepest understanding comes from engaging with both the spectacular and the mundane. The future of Aztec studies lies not in discovering more golden treasures—though I'll never complain about finding those—but in developing more sophisticated ways to extract information from the thousands of ordinary objects already in museum collections. It's the equivalent of finding new depth in a familiar game during your fifth playthrough, noticing patterns and connections that completely transform your understanding of the experience.