I don't want to sound like I'm judging but I'm a religious sort and while I have no problem with anti-religious people expressing the thoughts in story telling but I don't get any

entertainment from reading such books
And something I read about Primorda made it sound like Da-Vinci Code, evil religious conspiracy stuff. I was thinking about buying it but now I’m having second thoughts.

I don't want any big spoilers but I'm thinking of buying this but if this did turn out to be story with anti-religious theme I wouldn’t get much fun out of it. So I would like some information before spending my $10.

Thank you.

Well, it has been accused of anti-atheism in an other thread in this very forum section. You might want to read that thread (with comments from the writer) and see if it helps you decide.

By the Bayesian definition of anti-religious: no, not even remotely. There's nothing even remotely resembling valid atheist propaganda like The God Delusion, and there's nothing even remotely resembling disgusting commercialized trolling like The Da Vinci Code. Absolutely no religious conspiracies, neither good nor evil. There are four religious characters in total: one good (main cast), one evil (mentioned in the lore, you never see him in the game proper), plus a practical guy and a cloudcuckoolander among the supporting cast (so, basically, the D&D alignment spectrum). Overall, the game portrays religious characters in a favorable light.

By the literal definition: yes, of course, it can't be helped. I am not aware of any recognized religion that allows for soulless but human-like robots. So whoever finds the portrayal of intelligent life that is not created by a divine being offensive will be offended. Benchmark: If you are not offended by the spell Raise Dead in Temple of Elemental Evil, you will probably be fine.

So you want to talk about Primordia?

Okay, first we need to have a workable definition of Good. I propose this: While we don't actually meet Steeple in-game, we have some pretty reliable sources on the opinions he held, namely, the Gospel of Man and EFL. Of particular version is the test of faith and EFL's reaction to Horatio's possible interpretations of the Gospel: EFL's replies are as close to the official interpretation as we can get. Let's go over them.

"Why are we here?"
The correct answer is "because Man created us". Every other answer is trying to bridge the is-ought gap - so, err, good job, Steeple?

"What is Man?"
Again, it's good that "God" is recognized as an essentially meaningless tag, and "our lord and master" is a logical consequence of Man's presumed awesomeness.

"With what duty did Man charge us?"
And here's the most important question: what should we do? And if you try answering "To build machines in his image", EFL emphatically disagrees. "Thou speakest heresy, wanderer." Meanwhile, it's made very clear that machines are indeed worthy successors of humanity, that even a bulk-produced floating lamplet who talks in beeps can possess charm and personality. Crispin and Clarity are not deficient because they've been built by other robots, and 318 is only awesome because she flat out ignores Man's directive (I'm talking around spoilers here). In light of this, "to maintain the world" is nothing more than a meaningless applause light (a nice-sounding phrase that you're supposed to approve of with no actual plan of action behind it).

Now, EFL is not to blame - he's programmed to "keep the faith" as it is. But Steeple could have designed the religion of Humanism any way he wanted. And, apparently, the "future robots will suck more and more" meme was so important that MetroMind saw it as an existential threat. Remember, MetroMind does not actually care whether a belief is true or not; "Man was supersparklingperfect" is not functionally different from "Man is a myth" - you can put a Progressive spin on either. Every other tenet of Humanism is in line with MM's ideology, but that one was so poisonous that it actually warranted a coup and all the associated risks.

(Note that while neuropsychology allows for a distinction between evil and stupidity when humans are concerned, this distinction does not exist for robots, so instead of "evil" you can also say "stupid" or "badly designed". I choose the words by how specific actions of robots are most likely to map to human behavior).

That's very interesting. It didn't occur to me to think of what EFL said as reflecting on Steeple. Still I think that under your definition Steeple is good. I'll admit I had to check a video walkthrough to see what he said, sadly for a Man I do not have infinite Memory, this were his words:

"Keep this world, tend it, and make it flourish."

I believe then that it should be a tenet of humanism to try and make the "world a nicer place" for all, because if it does not flourish Man may never return. Vague sure but the sentiment, and intent, is there.

Unfortunately I was not able to find a video with the exchange between them where he mentions making machines in Man's image, they all went straight for the right answer, and as I said I do not remember the actual words spoken.

I do hold a different interpretation though. You said "future robots will suck more and more", an imperfect machine creating another and piling up mistake upon mistake with things becoming worse exponentially. Probably leading robots to just stop creating new things because they'd know it would be worse than what they have now.

A noxius ideal no doubt, but I don't think it's how humanism views things. I imagine the idea is that robots would strive to do better, aiming for perfection. Fail, yes, for an imperfect machine cannot replicate the work of a perfect one, but with hard work (and I bet he'd say faith as well) they could do the best they can and get better each time, maybe even reaching something close to perfection one day, a day very far away certainly, but in an exercise of faith a robot would strive to become closer to Man, even if he knew they would never quite reach their level.

As for Metromind's coup, I don't think it had anything to do with humanism, she was just trying to get as much power as possible for herself. Besides, after reaching power she never created anything whatsoever, in fact by shutting down Factor and hogging all the energy for herself she only made it harder for any robot on Metropol to create, so I doubt Steeple's views on creating robots should affect her.

P.S.: I promised myself I woudn't write as much as you but I guess this game brings out the most verbose in all of us. And did time go by fast when writing this!

Starmaker's explanation of why MetroMind opposed Steeple is so damn elegant -- this is why I think she's got a better handle on Primordia than I do! My own take was a more crude reason vs. faith coupled with "If you venerate the past, you are less like to pursue Progress" thing; hers is much cleverer and precise.

That said, one possible alternative take is that the Gospel and the Humanism you hear about from EFL is not the same thing Steeple was preaching. The kiosk (with monocle) describes Humanism as "civic religion" proposed by Steeple, which doesn't quite jibe with the kind of mysticism in the Gospel. Also, the Gospel is patently inaccurate (or, at least, full of misleading symbolism) in its description of humans, even though -- per Memento Moribuilt -- Steeple had access to all of the information about humans, which included that they were mortal, biological creatures full of all sorts of flaws. Presumably, if Steeple's Humanism were deliberately misleading, Memorious would have opposed him on that basis, but Memento makes no mention of any such opposition; Memento says that Memorious disdained Steeple as redundant with Memorious's own databases, not because Steeple's data was corrupt.

An explanation for the divergence between evangelical Humanism and civic Humanism would be that EFL was (re)built hastily and with a rather peculiar core logic: EFL was built to be, as the name suggests, ever-faithful. That required a certain kind of zealotry built into his core logic. That core logic, coupled with receiving a very narrow set of constants -- "all my love for Man," which was only some part of Leopold's overall personality -- would yield a pretty skewed view on Humanism. Rather than the more gentle, quasi-historical, community-oriented "civic religion" Steeple might have been proposing, you end up with this mystical and transcendental "creed."

Meh. It's something!

Just finished the game and man did this become an interesting thread!

POST YOUR IMPRESSIONS.

But that takes effort!

" Hi John,

I'm the writer on Primordia. I absolutely did not intend to criticize religion in the game. I'm not a particularly religious person myself, but Primordia isn't a mouthpiece for my views, and in any event, while I'm not particularly religious, I tend to get along very well with religious people, so I wouldn't go out of my way to criticize them.


Hope you give the game a try! If so, I'd be delighted to know your reaction to it.

Best,
Mark "


Well mark, when I saw the writer of the game had come to answer my question himself you could have knocked me down with a feather.

I thought about it and you'll be glad to hear that I went ahead and bought a copy of your game and I'm looking forward to trying it out and forming my own opinions on the game's portrayal of religion :)
Right now I'm starting a new term of college and what time I have for gaming is going towards the investigating old first person shooters (much to your annoyance I'm sure) so it will be a few months before I can comment on how the game speaks to me as a religious person. But if you care to remember our talk till then I'll be glad to inform you of my opinions.

It's also worth mentioning I'm not that good at adventure games (only ever solved one puzzle in Myst) so I I'll also be able to tell you how accessible the puzzles are to someone who isn't an adventure expert.

Happy New Year.
John.

I Hope you geo the message I've beeen trying to send to you. If not It is at last on this thread so you can look it up. I've been trying to reply for a while but my message wouldn't get through and I didn't know why, I think it was because My post was too long. Thanks for contacting me. And od tell if you got the message I meant to seand you (it ends with a very belated Happy new year)

Sorry, was off on vacation and just got back.

I'm delighted that you're interested in trying the game. As someone who spent his college years on a mix of FPS and RTS games, I'm hardly one to insist on adventure game purity! In fact, I think adventure games make a rather so-so break from studying compared to shooting zombies and unleashing zegling hordes.:)

But when things settle down and you give it a go, let me know!

Steeple's motivations could be due to several reasons. One, for example, may be that he revered humanity's potential, and his beliefs were formed from a sense of service to the memory of humanity. Humans also worked as an excellent vehicle for Steeple's idealism, so it may have been a calculated move to take the builders of robots and cast them as greater than they were to promote him views.

And, a random thought: the difference can also cast a sinister twist to Steeple -- was he designed to provide two different religions to help reinforce robot obedience? A humanistic belief system for humans and a system venerated humanity for robots to believe would help reinforce their obedience to their human builders, or, in their absence, those built by man.

It does provide an interesting take on why Metromind opposed Steeple. If humanism provided a sort of underlying endorsement on Manbuilt robots for their proximity to the 'divine', then it says something that Metromind would have opposed Steeple's teachings instead of usurping his belief system to reinforce her own position. The fact that she discards the faith instead of using it as a tool shows a degree of disdain for faith and/or humanity in general.