So, just finished the game. Generally I found the ending very well written and I was surprised, but pleased, that there were epilogues for all the party members. I found Sagani's ending in particular to be very sad. She was probably my favorite party member and, in my game at least, she lost all spirit and eventually killed herself or wandered off on a hunt.

I did not like, however, the stories' sudden and casual settlement on the gods don't exist. Its not explained how the Engwithans knew for certain that there are no gods or why our characters should believe this. It was accepted uncritically asif Iovara was some mouth of truth. More than that, it seems plain to me that the writer was an atheist and either believes the atheistic position is undoubtedly true, or simply wished to write a story that disregards divinity. This struck me as coming at the expense of the story and saying something about our positions as human beings. I thought Iovara and Thaos both presented interesting takes on human feelings in the absence of divinity though, again, I got the sense that atheism was undually favored over theism, mostly because all the truthful responses favored atheism and all the noble lie responses favored pretending to yourself or others that there are gods.

I'm hoping this doesn't start a flame war. I don't expect people to agree with my position, necessarily, but it did seem to me that this was a misstep in the story and a better (and more timeless) plot would simply deal with the world's inability to *know* the gods exist or who/what they are in some absolute, scientific way. Which is more akin to reality anyway and would say more about us as human beings.

Your thoughts?

My thoughts? I'm grabbing the popcorn...

I'll eventually further develop my point of view but imho you're viewing the ending a little too much on extremist point of view.

The Engwithans discovered that the old gods, that the actual world didn't even know existed before, didn't exists at all. So they "invented" this new gods.
This new gods are... powerful creatures? Not much is explained except that these gods begun to exists when the Engwithans begun to "believe" and choose to share the knowledge of their existance.

Now, in the ending slides you've an actual tangible proof of the existance of the actual gods if you made promises to all of them and broke the promises of course. I did that to see the outcome and there was a lot of "disasters" going around.

Now, to me, seems that the point in this story is that the gods of Engwithans didn't exists but was invented to better control the masses. The Engwithans discovered that and agreed with the fact the having gods help giving direction to the masses but they choose to actually make these gods real and not just a fable.

So, the actual gods exists but as the death of one of them proof, they're not invicincible. They're not "gods" in the way that we (player) consider to be but more like the classic fantasy games in which gods are just very powerful entities.

Sorry for any confusion, english not my first language and i'm in a hurry. As said, i'll expand my view later if this thread receive more partecipation.

It nowhere does state that any god or gods never existed. All the Engwithans found out was that if there had been any creator god or gods they left a long time ago and that the Wheel turns without any divine intervention. So, following Voltaire ("If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.") they apparently sacrificed themselves - by the looks of it their entire civilization which also explains why they suddenly disappeared but had enough prior knowledge to ask the Glanfathans to guard their ruins - to create powerful beings that essentially simply *posed* as gods.

The remainder of them, led by Thaos, then started the Inquisition bringing the new gods to every corner of the world so that all kith would feel beholden to try and live as decent a life as possible in order to not garner any divine disfavor that would ruin their next life before it began. Obviously that worked, the new gods of course were ultimately extremely powerful beings, powerful enough to make no difference between real and abstract divinity.

Except for one minor detail, of course. The new gods have no divine mandate at all, which is the *truth* that Iovara was spreading, the truth she was tortured and killed for. They just are what they are, either constructs or severely empowered mortals. I'm inclined to believe that the Engwithans just used a lot of essence (souls) to empower several probably already powerful beings.

Why? Because, well... Abydon was said to have been killed and his soul then bound to some animat (golem). That this is possible is seen on several occasions in the game (e.g. Keeper of Caed Nua). Waidwen was said to be Eothas personified and both Woedica and Magran intervened with his direct meddling in mortal affairs by having Durance and eleven others create the Godhammer weapon, something so powerful it doesn't just kill you, but obliterates your soul.

This is evidenced by Durance's personal quest and the fact that the Watcher sees his soul as damaged, which the Godhammer did. Magren tried to hide her involvement by making sure that everyone who knew about it wasn't just killed but utterly annihilated (I wonder if that pissed off Rymrgand).

That souls or essence can be used to empower beings can be seen during the Sacrificial Bloodlines quest or when doing the Dozen's quest related to ancient Engwithan weaponry that needs to be infused with essence to work. So that ties in quite nicely. Eothas is dead because the Godhammer killed his soul, Abydon still lives because he had his bound to his golem representation. Galawain asks the player to use the gathered souls to strenghen the Dyrwood as a whole, Thaos wanted to give Woedica more power so she can rank among all other gods.

Thaos, over the course of time, then attempted to keep other civilizations from finding out that their gods are simply very powerful, but ultimately not divine, beings. By any means necessary (as he quite directly puts in his final dialogue).

So how does this tie into real world atheism, or atheism in Eora? It doesn't, really. For true faith no proof is necessary, as evidenced by our own reality. See, WE have no proof that God(s) exists either, but that doesn't stop a lot of people from having faith and believing. Iovara just had her own counter-crusade that stated only that these new Engwithan deities were not divine (also, because that's important - she never said the gods do NOT EXIST, just that they aren't REAL - as in REAL divine beings), and she's right about that. They're not. They're really just empored mortals or massively powerful essence-infused constructs.

The true question you as character have to decide then is how, if at all, that matters. You may find it doesn't matter that the deieties of Eora are kith-made and continue on as before. You can tell Aloth how he should lead the Leaden Key in the future. Heck, you can empower Woedica to make sure none of the truth ever becomes public knowledge and finish what Thaos started if you happen to agree with him.

If there's anything that bothered me about the ending is that I had no option to infuse myself with all that power Thaos wanted to give to Woedica. That would have been fun. But nah... *sigh*

That was pretty much my impression. I thought it was actually explained that the Engwithans actually created the "gods" on purpose, i.e. through some artifice of animancy, rather than just starting believing in them for pragmatic reasons.

@Hickory - haha, you're probably right. Probably a mistake to post this. I'll delete my post if it gets uncivil.

I suppose faith is a little easier to spread if you actually have a pantheon of ridiculously powerful beings to intervene. It's not so dissimilar to god-kings (with Egyptian pharaos or Roman empereros as examples) being constructed to lead people in our own past. Except with more actual magic involved, I assume. ;)

Thanks for your thoughts. I am still digesting a lot about the ending so won't respond to all, at least right now.

Three thoughts though.

First, I think that the ending dialogue says that the Engwithans made certain ideals into gods. This leads me to think that the Magran etc. were not actual people, before or now. This also seemed like a common literary device to me. People in real life "make ideals into gods" by worshipping fame, money, war, healing, etc.

Second, I caught that bit about "maybe the gods just left" after creating the world. Iovara threw that in, but it seemed a very half hearted attempt to introduce that idea. All the rest of the ending dialogues presume, without discussion, that there are no gods because the current "gods" have been disproven.

Third, I'm not really sure that no proof is necessary for "true faith" as you put it. That would be a lot for me to claim to know that. You distinguished, also, between non-existent gods and real gods. I was using the vocabulary in such a way that the "gods" are not gods because they are Engwithan constructs. Just wanted to clear that up. I'm aware that Magran, etc. are actual beings in the lore.

Might be that they forged several constructs from their souls and made them gods. Maybe they're just immortal, "loose" souls with the ability to posses mortal kith in the way Thaos was, but that would make Thaos unduly powerful and only a bunch of essence away from being a god himself. Not sure I like the thought. Ultimately it doesn't really matter though.

I'm not 100% sure but Iovara didn't throw anything "in" there, she overheard that conversation where some Engwithans that were left and knowledgable said that if there had been creators they're either long gone or leave no evidence of their existence. It may very well also be a flawed conclusion - we simply don't know, which was my point.

A heavy handed atheism parallel might initially seem like the writers' intent, but I don't really think that is it. It raises questions of how much of a divine mandate deities really need to be real gods and fits quite nicely with the themes found in the rest of the game. For Iovara that answer was clear, they needed to be true gods, not constructs. For Thaos his gods were real enough to commit horrible atrocities. For you as PC, it is up to you to decide.

As for your third point I thought that to be the point of faith, that's why it is called faith after all. Whether or not that might be enough for the denizens of Eora I can't possibly say. For a large portion of mankind on earth it sure is, but let's not make this thread about proof of God or real life religious debate. :)

It is also stated that the priests in the game don't get their powers directly from the deieties like in other fantasy settings but from their own philosophies (which broadly will align with one of the created gods). So where would the power of the priests come from? It's not what drivers ciphers, mages or druids. So, well, maybe there actually is a real god (or more) in the setting. One not apparent and mayhaps unprovable. Must not necessarily mean there is none.

You read, indulge in, or otherwise soak up too much medieval fantasy. ;-P

Yes, exactly how the current gods were made is not well defined, the last scene you are able to read from Thaos with the thousand of people, the machine (one of those for each god) and the "thing" was seeing to Thaos after the people had died can give an good idea.
However, as Thaos had a very important secret that even Woedica wanted to protect, and is never clearly if was the "Not gods at all" there could be something more ready to appear in the expansion. If the gods are the maximum construct, probably were made with the souls of the thousand of people that were in that place. Still, even if they are composed of so many souls each one is a single mind based upon ideals and are fully independent. The revolution against Woedica, Eothas' revolution are proof of that.

But is not clear, what happened to Thaos, that event make his soul able to remain awaken or the machine protected Thao's soul from becoming part of Woedica? I was understanding that Woedica is who awakened Thaos soul each time.

By the way, if the gods were made this way, could explain why exist the"Godlikes", maybe are souls that are able to "Escape" from said machines (or even from the gods bodies), however as those souls are able to return to the cycle, I'm not sure Actually not, the manual say clearly that the priest take power from the deities. However, how they do it is not defined, the most interesting data come from Durance's dialogue. He can "drain" power from Magran though he hate her (now, that is being heretic), however he become priest in the "normal" way, so maybe the process has many loops.

Yes, well...

The manual also states you can rest at your stronghold even before you restore Brighthollow and has a certain amount of other things that don't quite add up with the actual game.

When you create a priest character the game tells you:

"While all priests dedicate themselves to specific gods, priests' power is actually derived from their personal beliefs."

Which also explains why you can create a priest of Eothas as your player character who has all the priestly powers including those specific to Eothas even though that particular god's been pretty much Godhammered out of existence. I suppose at some point priests really got their power from the deities themselves like in D&D but at some point it was decided that Eothas is maybe really dead and so they took it out.

There definitely have been some revisions regarding the storyline, especially with Durance who supposedly was rewritten because MCA's original draft of the character was too dark (kind of makes me wonder what the original Durance was like, I mean, it's not like the Dyrwood is a shiny happy people place).

So both priests of Eothas and Durance himself serve the point, it's stated pretty much that his soul was singed by the Godhammer instead of completely annihilated and Magran can no longer see Durance. How would he have power derived from her if she can't see him? If she could, she probably would set something in motion that would finally kill him.

Yes, I know that Durance states that he wants to suck Magran dry for all she's worth before he takes revenge and that goes a little against the idea of deriving power from philosophy rather than gods, but that could be just another lie told to the clergy. Imagine if they found out that their power comes from within and not from their patron deities.

I like the idea that Godlike are born when souls break away from the gods. That could be a great expansion or sequel hook where the final decision then is to restore souls to them or leave them to fade away.

Yes, the priests and paladin could be more linked than at first glance seems (if the Priest is able to take its own energy). If the currents gods are a repository of souls made by mortals, then probably they have many flaws in their design (and that could explain why agents such as Theos were necessary).
Durance's invisibility to Magran, and be able to take power from the deities could be examples of these flaws.

However, there is another question, each god has a machine, what could happened to the one from Eothas ? maybe there are still souls linked to it (And that is why Eothas' priests are still there).
As Woedica was the original chief, is clear why the burial isle was upon her machine, but all the gods had soul there, and even were able to manifest there.

P.d. If you has the godlike paladin in your team and do the quest from the motherhood and birds goodness, the Paladin will demand answers from her and the goodness will avoid to answer.

Edit

And probably, had killed the adra dragon was a dumb act. If I understand correctly, she was there before the creators civilization extinguished, the dragon would known all the related to the gods.


One last question, which are the reach of the gods? If there was a moment for Woedica to manifest with all her power, was when a bunch of adventurers lead by a Watcher were near to kill her right hands in her sanctuary and left her plans in ruin. She truly interact with the environment with those statutes and the protection to Theos, but there were not physical body, at least not like with Eothas avatar (or would had been a game over).

Good question, the Adra Dragon could have been a great repository of knowledge, but on the other hand it was stuck in the Endless Paths for its entire lifetime. Assuming using or consuming souls for power does not give you the knowledge contained within then the dragon didn't know any more than she told you, only bits and pieces at best.

As for the question what happened to Eothas' machine... I guess filling it with enough souls and activating it again could possibly recreate Eothas (or create some other god) instead of empowering the god linked to the machine. Problem is, there's nobody left to know. The watcher's soul doesn't know and Thaos is dead and possibly has all his knowledge destroyed if the player chooses so.

Also, I have no idea how much a god actually can affect the physical world if it doesn't inhabit an avatar like Eothas did. Probably only to the extent shown in the epilogue, if you cross the god(s) that gave you their boon they exact a toll from the Dyrwood in the form of many deaths or attacks by angry birds (die pigs, die! heh) but nothing directly. Why else would they need an inquisition lead by Thaos to spread their faith? Hrm...

I'm really interested in seeing who the main story will move on with the expansion. I wonder if they will add it inside the main game, that is to say, they use the same map and everything, simply puting in more stuff, a "seamless" transition. Or if they will use a Throne of Bhaal kind of map, with the fortress available to enter, but new locations and the old places unavailable to visit.

I'm hoping for both. I read somewhere that two exansions are supposed to be coming out and there are too many open questions regarding the main quest, and I don't mean in the PS:T good way of leaving certain parts to the imagination.