Because Obsidian are hacks who can’t write.

>>4000683
They cared that people might discover the gods were artificially created. Because then they'd realize that they could do something about that. In particular, the Leaden Key was a cult dedicated / obedient to Woedica, who is a personality obsessed with her own authority and control. So the Leaden Key is more like Woedica's personal pet project to protect her own goals, and by extension the secrecy / mystery of the other gods as well. Eothas disagreed with her and attempted to reveal the artificial origins of the gods while also destroying the machinery which they constructed to improve the reincarnation cycle (that's the plot of PoE2 where he continues his efforts and succeeds).

So, no, it was not about whether the gods were "real". No one was trying to say they weren't. What was at stake was the knowledge of their artificial creation because that could result in mortals doing all kinds of shit with that exact same technology. Undermining the gods' authority was what Woedica wanted to avoid, but it's the most trivial and obvious use for animancy. A "hard launch" into transhuman infomorph dissolution is basically what the Engwithans did on purpose. They all vanished in the process, being literally absorbed into gestalt forms which were what continued as the gods known in the modern era. None of the individuality of their original components still survives: it's like a purely blendered soup.

It might be argued that the Engwithans were primitive in their methods just farseeing in their goals. But it is demonstrated through the course of the story that modern era animancers are not more sophisticated and certainly not as wise. So another "hard launch" into an infomorph singularity would hardly have a better result... which would be disastrous for life on the world (look at the itty bitty baby soulstorm biawacs and the destruction they wrought, then imagine that happening all over the world at once).

>>4000683
They did the supermath, and decided that society will either become retarded or repeat their experiments and do worse.

Though if they had been smart, they probably would not have done their god creation retardation in teh first place

>>4000700
Ok, fair enough, that makes more sense.

Why didn't they release the game yet?

>>4000719
What do you mean?

These games are so dull. The true crime was apparently ancient fedora techtards ushering in a world so boring, gay, and soulless.

>>4000683
Real is not the point, it's "natural".
The ancient retards were blinded by materialist empiricism and assumed that measurement and manipulation means understanding. An epistemological trap where the model of a model is mistaken for reality.

>>4000683
What >>4000692 said, and muh hecking semitic semantics

>>4000683
he's a cunt
also could have to do with him/engwithans being insecure about the whole let's make gods in case gods don't exist idea, showing unconscious doubts perhaps

the fucko actually sacrificed his own wife to the abomination, didn't he
letting her turn to ash and burning her soul for the insanity

Because it's a major blow to their legitimacy and they know better than assuming most people would just be okay with them being artificial while brutally suppressing the use of the technology that allowed them to become gods?

Did anyone else feel little gravitas while engaging the narrative because "Engwithan" is a dumb name?

>>4000683
They are real in the sense that an idea is real, and there's that saying that you can never kill an idea. You can let it fade out of memory, though.

>>4000852
It's full of dumb names. Fucking fampyrs LOL.

>>4000852
Sounds fine for me.

the creator has a bad case of barely suppressed crypto-christianity, manifesting as atheism.

>>4000992
God, you Zoomers really do have the literacy rates of 20th century toddlers.

>>4000962
post a vocaroo

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>>4000992
>suppressed crypto-christianity, manifesting as atheism
W
U
T

>>4001494
he means historical materialism

Because they could make their own gods or do something to the Adra veins that connect to the wheel to starve out the gods or who knows what
Animancy is already dangerous for the gods its even worse if people come to know its such an ultimate power if mastered

Whos the shittiest god? I thought it was the entropy bull but I learned the green incel druid is actually retarded and a huge pussy when I did that island quest

>>4000992
Isnt Eothas basically Jesus? he is portrayed as a hero and the best god

>>4001517
but how is that manifestation of crypto-christianity?

>>4001527
There is this talking point among a certain section of neopagans, professional academics, and marxists that atheistic revolutionary materialism is what Jesus really wanted and you should completely ignore most of the New Testament because "that isn't REAL Christianity".

>>4001527
rationalism is a byproduct of christian thought
modern marxists are almost entirely moralistic and prescriptive
personally i think humans are simply bad at civilization

>>4001538
>rationalism is a byproduct of christian thought
>modern marxists are almost entirely moralistic and prescriptive
one word: reaching

>>4000692
the amount of midwits who hate poe is starting to make me appreciate those games more

>>4001580
more reductive, like most sentences, and lazy.
i could explain, but it'd take many many offtopic posts and something tells me you probably wouldn't be willing to follow along.

>>4001583
that's kinda sad, letting other people inform your tastes.

>>4001583
You are right, its the kind of game you can only appreciate in a reactionnary way.

>>4000852
The problem is that the game bombard you with strange and exotic (for a CRPG) names for things that are otherwise very mundane for such type game without ever letting you really digest them, the first being the Biawac or whatever. They are also inconsistent with their distribution of conventional english names and Celtic names for thing that seems to belong to the same culture.

>>4001607
I always called the acorn helmet you get in the tutorial dungeon the Biawac Protection Helmet to explain why you survive

so i checked out this vagrus game some guy mentioned in the other thread
doesn't seem like a crpg to me
it was more of a spreadsheet sim

>>4001627
>the other thread
kill yourself?

The difference in quality of endings (and really, writing) from 1 to 2 is amazing all these years later. The watcher is simply a passenger to the grand-story and can just lightly influence Eothas, which barely changes anything in the long-run anyways.

So fucking stupid.

>>4001711
They blew their load too early with the first game. The whole thing should've actually copied BG1 and made the stakes much much lower.

>>4000683
Obsidian hating incels will cope & seethe but he is easily one of the best villains in the last 20 years of CRPGs. Best since Kreia for sure.

>>4001775
Yeah definitely a well done villain, but I think the voice acting is a bit forced. Did it need to be? Perhaps because the game has tiny characters with no graphics to speak of representing him so overdone auditory impact was needed, they thought?
Kind of reminded me of Irenicus, same issue, possibly the same reason I guess.

>>4001840
>but I think the voice acting is a bit forced.
Why do we not know who voiced him to this day? imdb still unironically lists Todd Haberkorn

>>4001524
That’s one reason why I called it crypto-Christianity.

>>4001897
Well calling it crypto-christianity is one thing. But at the same time calling it atheism. Choose one IMHO.

>>4001890
It's my fault.

t. evil Jew

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for me it's

>>4001524
Did you even play the game dude?

>Eothas
>[E]othas => othas
>move the o at the end => Thaso
>move the o one bit to the left => Thaos

>>4001918
>stopping halfway, satisfied by himself
you rearrange letters a bit more and find the true hermetic meaning: Shato

>>4001725
In hindsight, BG1 was actually a big creative risk since it decided to be a low level adventure without the high level power fantasy that is now expected from those games. The most ''exotic'' places you would visit are dungeons, decrepit forts and the like, with much of the game being wilderland adventures with a dash of urban exploration at the end. Then BG2 comes around and gives you all the fantastical explration you could ever want, since you are now high level.

Contrast this to BG3 where you litteraly start the game in a plane-jumping ship with with mind flayers on an exotic plane only to be sent back to a mundane wilderland exploration. Actaul downgrade, where do you go from there? The game blew its load too early and theres nothing that can one up that. Which is one of the reason you'll never get a follow up on that game.

>>4001994
BG1 was a normal AD&D tabletop campaign in scope and length, I don't really see any "creative risk".

>>4002021
Don’t you understand? In hindsight, it was a creative risk, because after its commercial success, its sequel would later accustom audiences to expect more from the future games that followed it.

>>4002028
underdark and beyond in bg2 kind of suck, i never bother doing throne either

so the best parts of bg2 are the ones that are like bg1 anyway

>>4001994
BG2 might be epic in power but in a way, it's still a relatively, to the rest of the FR, small scale personal story.of revenge and ambition, not a world spanning existential threat. Pillars 1 is too heavy out of the gate.
I don't know why you bring up BG3, that's a completely different beast.

>>4000683
Probably some concerns about legitimacy. If people believe that they have always existed they are a lot more likely to worship them.

>>4002030
sucks that if you rush it to get sister back early then the pre-underdark parts aren't fun afterwards

>>4002062
It's annoying in particular if you actually want to use Imoen in your party

>>4000692
TRVKE
Thaos is basically a gnostic cultist

>>4002096
Yeah I think that's why I didn't actually replay it as F/M or F/M/T which I initially wanted to. I replayed BG1 2-3 times but didn't feel like continuing the characters into BG2 after the prologue. I have huge nostalgia and that itching and all, but then I think "do I rush it to Spellhold or no" and drop the thought soon after without deciding.

>>4002117
People might complain about this shit in Cyberpunk or whatever, but I really hate the ticking clock aspect in in BG2. You're either leaving your sister a prisoner of the wizard illuminati that want to practice enchantment magic on her or wandering around without your soul

>>4002120
But that's understandable if your frehsly dead buddy's widow starts opening her legs for you, no? Feels like that changes the situation.

>>4002105
PoE does not at all even involve gnosticism, newfag.

>>4002197
I mean, it kind of does. Iovara and even the Watcher himself in a typical playthrough could be described as gnostic. Calling Thaos a gnostic cultist is retarded because he's SUPPRESSING the truth about the gods.

>>4001627
What other thread? I just played it yesterday. But this is offtopic.

>>4002238
Iovara is not gnosticism or hermetism, it's not secret mystic knowledge (or dualism), she just shares what she knows with everyone. It's actually not a religious movement, even.

>>4002238
>Iovara and even the Watcher himself in a typical playthrough could be described as gnostic
According to your weird headcanon? Sure.

>>4002105
You learned a new word and you think it's cool to use it everywhere. That's adorable. But embarrassing for you.

>>4001524
Uhhhh..... superficially, I guess there's a kind of performative charity and finger-wagging judgementalism theme to his cults? But nothing about his involvement in the plot has any relationship with Christianity. There just isn't any way to map them to each other. The metaphysics and cosmology of Eora has nothing to do with Christian mythology. So no. Eothas is not any kind of or reference to Jesus.

>>4001522
The incel druid is pretty shitty. But Woedica and Rymergand do give him a run for his money.
Eothas however is by far the worst of the gods, though. He even more arrogant and abusive than any of the others, and he actually successfully destroys the world because he thinks he knows better than anyone how life should be. The entire reason he fucking exists is because of how shitty life was before the Wheel was constructed to improve and correct the natural reincarnation process. That's literally why he exists, was because it so bad that the Engwithans ended their civilization to merge all their people together to form the gods and build the Wheel in the process to fix those problems. And Eothas just goes and smashes it because of his teenage angst bullshit.

As shitty as Woedica the tyrant bitch queen was, she at least had a kernel of a point when she commented that mortals weren't ready for the transition yet. "Pulling the dough from the oven before it's even half baked", as she put it.
Rymrgand is just spiteful, imperious and unyielding. Which is annoying, because as a god he's powerful enough to turn that unyielding nature into extremely heinous actions. But he seldom actually acts, so....

Do you think the universe of PoE was lifeless first? Or did they make it so lifeless and boring to go with Sawyer's """balanced""" (boring) gameplay system, where you're not even allowed to express a character's physical strength ("um Might can be spiritual too, grognard chuds").

>>4002105
>gnostic cultist
an antagonistic figure featured in a gnostic teachings, perhaps/at best
funny to see this term on vidya 4chin

>>4002376
>But nothing about his involvement in the plot has any relationship with Christianity
there could be some parallel to crusades, but IMHO that's a different manner

>>4002376
Eothas is like Jesus in that he wants to allow people to choose, rather than trick or force them. He also walks among mortals. In some ways you could say he's Jesus in the mode of kicking out the money changers.
Christian mythology is baked into even contemporary atheistic Western thought, Jesus as rebel.

because people would start to question why they'd need to worship these particular gods, most of whom are absolute cunts in one way or another, when they could create their own (we see how a god is born naturally with sapadal in avowed so it wouldn't necessarily require sacrificing civilization either)
it's one thing to put up with the quirks of a pantheon of gods under the belief that they are your only option, it's another thing entirely to realize you have options

>>4003201
>natural god
Wait they actually fucked up and retconned one of the core principles of their setting in Avowed?

>>4003203
not really a retcon but a special circumstance, basically the adra for the living lands, you know the shit your soul is pumped through when you die regardless of where you are, is a closed loop not connected to the rest of the world so overtime the excess soul energy (there was a civilization there back in the day) birthed sapadal. the difference to the engwithan process is really just in time and the fact they deliberately defined their god's personalities. sapadal is basically an autist groping blindly beyond a vague god of the living land domain - in the game you decide to either help the god learn some morality or you kill it since woedica freaked the fuck out at the implication and wants it dead

>>4003203
Not really in a contradictory sense. The "god" of the living lands basically is just a cluster soul bullshit that was trapped in the living lands due to how the adra flowed that became aware, but is also so powerful and connected to the land that it throwing a tantrum means massive natural disasters.
Everywhere else didn't have that problem so other beings didn't form naturally. Once the other gods figured it out they basically cut it off more somehow after killing off basically everyone in the island

>>4003208
>>4003210
Which makes no sense and is definitely a retcon to their earlier lore. Adra was always around even before the Engwithans. If gods could be created like that it should have happened before and their whole stick about not finding gods is bullshit.

>>4003224
>their whole stick about not finding gods is bullshit
They decided that the Science was settled and that was it. It was always bullshit that they chose to believe in because the alternative would have been to admit that their methodology was flawed and their tools limited.

>>4002381
>Do you think the universe of PoE was lifeless first?
It had to be lifeless to avoid hurting the heckin children and having sex.

>>4000683
>Why did he and his cult care that people will find out that gods are not "real".
Because he's some priest (or similar). His career is based around religion, so people finding out that it is all a lie is a threat to his livelihood. Its like how some Milk Man in the 1950s might have had a similar problem with the advent of refrigeration.

>>4003252
That just feels kinda pathetic desu. Hard to take teh themes and the pathos of Engwithian history with gravitas it reaches for when the key flaw of their whole system is just that they built their forgot to check the lands next door when building the whole metaphysic that they sacrificed their total collective being to.

Real "sir there's a Waffle House down the street" vibes.

>>4002381
It didn't feel lifeless to me.

>>4002500
Uhhhh... First of all, "worship me or I'll torture you for the rest of all eternity" is not a consent-based proposition. It's a threat with extortion as the motive.
Second, Eothas was not worried about whether mortals would choose to worship the gods, he wanted to get rid of the gods entirely. He wanted to break the Wheel so that mortals would directly experiment with animancy and develop superior technology that would obviate any of the few remaining reasons mortals still worshipped the gods. He was not like that asshole Yahweh or Jesus at all, because Eothas wanted mortals to become atheists.
He was like Yahweh/Jesus only in the sense that he believed he knew what mortals should do and was willing to try to force them to do it, regardless of how many billions of mortals would die or suffer in the process. That part is a real similarity.
Jesus was not a rebellious figure. At all. At fucking all. What the FUCK are you even on about there? Are you one of those bullshit propagandists trying to normalize Nat-Cs?

>>4003224
The adra existing before has nothing to do with the gods. The gods are entities within the "reservoir" of the world's souls. The adra is just a physical intrusion of that reservoir into the material plane of existence, and is a functional channel for souls to move between.

>>4003352
You should stop using the verbal tics of a teenager with the "Uhhhh..." or "At all." stuff, it makes you seem petty and emotional rather than self-assured.
>Jesus was not a rebellious figure. At all. At fucking all
lmao, Jesus was a radical operating from the shadow of the Roman Empire and the religious structure of his locality. You mistake the person for the institution and chose to ignore my example of the moneychangers. I suggest reading the Grand Inquisitor chapter of Dostoevsky.
>Nat-Cs
I have no idea what this is. Are you in some ideological bubble responding to buzzwords? You should stretch out of that and be open minded. You're just painting yourself into a corner with semantic conflation.

>>4003224
it's not though
the whole living land scenario relied specifically on a region's adra network being cut off from the rest of the world and years of concentrated worship of the land to birth a deity, as you noted adra is a natural phenomenon but one that spans the globe where such isolation is extremely unusual. for something similar to happen you'd either need to deliberately isolate an area's adra (which unless you know the process why would you?), repeat the fluke circumstances that happened to the living lands, or some monotheistic religion would have to conquer the world to focus global soul power enough on one specific concept to birth a deity.
not to mention this new gods birth didn't happen until after the engwithans did their thing so it's not like they missed it

>>4003505
Worship didn't have anything to do with it. It's not some being powered by prayer or similar

>>4003517
it does in their initial formation and definition, the engwithans deliberately pushed ideals onto their pantheon to define them and similarly sapadal has the vague definition as a sort of nature god/god of the living land itself because to the extent the civilization there worshipped anything it was the land itself.
so for instance assuming you managed to get everyone or almost everyone on the planet to worship one clearly defined deity you could eventually will it into existence in the same manner

>>4003379
No. It just seems conversational. There isn't anything wrong with having emotions or being casual, anon. I'm sorry that your friends on the playground are being abusive with you about that. You don't need to grow up faster, but you do need to get into a more supportive environment and develop a better mental health situation before you come to 4chan.

>>4003379
Yeah, Dostoevsky. Sure. Hm. Very interesting. You are very smart. By the way, how is Putin doing these days? Not dead yet?

>>4003596
>>4003598
Damn, you're completely lost. Total brainrot.

>it's totally not a retcon that gods can appear naturally
Sounds like cope to me. They simply wanted a new god and didn't care if it contradicted earlier lore.

the only thing 2 did right was fleshing out Berath even more, what a fucking cool God.

>>4003641
It's literally called The Living Lands. The twist is that the land is living. This is hardly a retcon.

>>4000692
imagine the echo inside this head

>>4003655
I don't understand. I did have breakfast this morning.

>>4000683
Just look up shit people philosophize and debate over in real world theology. Centuries have been spent on topics that are "well, it's technically the same thing" to your average person.

>>4003690
>Filoque
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

>>4003651
The most cliché generic god of the entire bundle? Ooooo she's just so stoic and cold and unyielding because she's DEATH oooooo.... fucking spare me.

>>4003635
"Brainrot" isn't just a random word you say when you're having trouble controlling your emotions after getting called out on bullshit, anon. That's not what the word means, that's now how it works. That isn't how any of this works.

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>>4003691

>>4003914
>that's now how it works
In typo, veritas.
Requiesce in Pavlov.

>>4000683
It was one of the worst attempts at the world building of a fantasy world I have ever seen.

>>4003352
>being this much of a redditnigger
You had best be trolling

>>4003596
It makes you sound like a 14 year old girl. Why the fuck are you even here.

>>4003598
>He mentioned Dostoevsky! He must be a Russian shill!
This is why you people are unwelcome.

>>4004165
not him but you are trying too hard

>>4004168
could be but suddenly plugging in a classic most people don't read but the everybody knows as a name wasn't a very good look
my first impression was 'poseur' though, before thinking off the possibility of anon's pro-russian faggorty

>>4003596
No, he's right - it makes you look retarded, underage, or both. If that was your intention then congratulations.

>>4004178
Anything to avoid engaging with the ideas presented, huh? I don't understand divining hidden intent or trying to see beyond the post when you aren't good at it. At least pick a defense mechanism that works for you, like just ignoring a post.

>>4004165
>>4004179
Yeah, you totally seem like such aloof, serious, stoic adults right now. Zero emotion detectable in your communications at all.

>>4004228
Illiterate and retarded, I see. Better luck next time, zoomerchama.

This setting is all used up and wasted. Going so deep into its cosmology from the very beginning and removing any mystery was a terrible idea.