Qbert

I haven't read through the entire thread but i'm not sure why the op is being ridiculed for bringing this up. There have been threads discussing this since release. It's been noted mulitple times that the developers used their own real world liberal philosophies to guide the creation of the game world and with at least one of the devs being an admitted atheist/agnostic why is it a leap to believe that those philosophies influenced the game as well? An entire civilization (one that is the most advanced in animancy aka science) at the time finds that there are no gods, so they seek to create synthetic gods (through societal genocide) in order to placate the masses. The villan of the story uses the power of those synthetic gods to travel throughout history making sure that science cannot progress to a point where people again may find that no gods exist, and he uses many brutal tactics to ensure that his religion survives. There is no choice at the end to say i reject these made up gods, but i also reject the notion that there are no gods at all. It's been a long time since i played this game so i hope i have the basic story correct but if so that could easily be construed as pro atheist/agnostic to me.

This snide quest parallels Obs's reaction to the original controversy. (based only on the information in this thread, I don't have the expansion) Firedorn is apparently the leader of a cult that seeks to protect evil. Your quest is to kill them to aid the good people who seek to root out this evil. Seems a pointless provocation but I would be surprised if anyone really cared enough to start flaming at this point.

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2015/07/08/police-will-seek-hate-crime-charges-fountain-square-attack/29867779/ Now the police chief is reversing course and saying it will be investigated as a hate crime. I'm surprised the DOJ civil rights division isn't sending a team to help with the investigation. They sure were quick to send teams when high profile white on black crimes occurred.

Its okay boys, there is nothing wrong with your wife or partner earning more than you, it should be quite liberating. Think about it you can now say " honey I really feel like going for dinner at our local steakhouse...but do you mind paying ?" Nothing wrong with that Actually, a recent study found surprisingly that women who make more money than their husbands are less satisfied with their lives and more apt to divorce than other women. So watch out Bruce! http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/01/living/infidelity-men-women-breadwinners-feat/ Also, here's a good roundup I found on the pay gap issue. It's too bad that Democrats routinely use such misleading statistics to promote the "war on women". Par for the course in politics i guess. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2015/04/02/the-equal-pay-day-factoid-that-women-make-78-cents-for-every-dollar-earned-by-men/

[citation needed] Sorry, I don't have access to the secret Pentagon and CIA databases where they keep such information. My belief comes partly from the lack of large terrorist incidents in the USA since 9/11, not for lack of the other side trying. But also b/c I had the Snowden: Traitor or Hero discussion with my Father when the Snowden information first broke. I was on the side of Snowden Hero b/c I generally dislike giving the government too much power due to the propensity for abuse, and I dislike the idea of people violating my privacy. My Father was a very high ranking military officer and while his chain of command did not include Special Forces, the nature of his job allowed him to have 1st person awareness of some anti-terrorist operations and was briefed on many more. When we had the discussion, he told me look I can't tell you specifics, b/c it's classified but for everything that you hear about in the media, there are numerous other times that we thwart threats through our intelligence programs. What this guy did hurt our ability to thwart those threats and put many good people who are trying to protect citizens at risk. Since he knew more than me about these things I had to trust his judgement, despite my reluctance to accept the intrusion philosophically. He didn't mention any specific program mind you, he spoke rather in general about the intelligence apparatus and in general about what Snowden revealed, so I can't comment on how useful a specific NSA program has been. That’s the really tough part about all of this, there is really no way to know what is really going on, and there are valid reasons for the government to not make security issues transparent. Also, the government has a motivation to err on the side of caution and scoop up more data than needed, rather than take a chance on missing something that may result in innocent people that they are charged with protecting losing their lives. People on the internet, in contrast, generally have a motivation to call for greater freedom and privacy and an end to government security programs from the comfort of their armchairs and first world problem outrage while remaining largely ignorant of whatever realities exist outside their comfy bubble and the consequences such actions could have. It doesn't leave much room for rational discussion, I have found. Those that know, can't talk, while those that talk, don't know. Even Snowden had but a small view of the entire system, and chose information based on it's relevance to what he saw as his agenda. [citation needed] To be fair, you're not going to find SF actions in the news all that much or breakdowns of plots foiled by the CIA. They have a lot of methods. They did cite some 54(ish?) incidents which were then proven to be mostly overseas, not imminent, and foiled by other more conventional means Also, Qbert says he believes it works and it's pretty hard to dissuade someone of their feels. That's why I carry around a magic rock. Not dead, must work. What evidence do you have then to make a judgement regarding the success or lack thereof of our intelligence gathering apparatus, specifically related to anti-terrorist actions? Or are you just dealing with the feels as well, as we all are in this arena?

Snowden is tough for me. I appreciate what he revealed and how it led to more transparency, however he still stole sensitive information, impersonated other employees in order to hack, betrayed his responsibility as a security contractor, and ran away to avoid prosecution to China and Russia, two of his country's biggest opponents. Who knows how much information Russia and China gained from Snowden, despite his supposed safeguards? I commiserate with the position he was in, as whistle blower protection is not high priority unfortunately, but he specifically hatched this plan and carried it out knowing full well what he was doing and he absolutely should be prosecuted for his crimes, in my opinion, the same way any person who gives sensitive information to foreign entities should. I also contend that anyone who thinks that any government should just cease all it's attempts to defend itself from threats if it's methods run the risk of gathering unneeded data on citizens is being naive about the danger level in the world. I believe that the methods employed by the US government have done an awful lot to keep terrorist incidents and hostile country actions from impacting US citizens negatively. Sometimes they went too far, i agree and a constant balancing act between freedom and security is the right and proper way to run a democracy in my opinion. The government is unable to be completely transparent when it comes to security issues for obvious reasons, and citizens are responsible for electing officials who they believe will respect reasonable boundaries in these areas.

Perhaps he's comparing it to normal difficulty on other games, such as BG.

Last night i had unlimited arcane assaults, as long as i clicked the button before or maybe right as soon as the previous one hit. Aloth spammed it at animats at least 10 times in a row. I'll have to see if i can replicate it this evening before counting it as an official bug.

Completed. Wow, Two surveys filled out in two days. I must be getting soft in my old age. All this helping people.

Did it, hope it helps out your research. One thing i found a bit confusing was your choice of words in a few of the responses. The expert level question with choices good, then high and the later question answer choices of quite false, and false choices didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I took good to mean somewhat expert and high to mean high level of expertise, and quite false to mean somewhat false. Hope that was the correct interpretation. Good luck.

I visited Poland and there were many women there who met my Western beauty standard's approval. I thought more than in the West, ironically.

Badler just posted that it's being uploaded onto steam in the Steam depot announcement thread.

I always thought Buddhism didn't have anything to do with gods. That it's about suffering and how to end it, and belief or non belief in gods had no bearing as long as it didn't interfere with that goal. I'm no expert though and there are probably different versions of Buddhism and different practitioner beliefs just like in Christianity, which i'm more familiar with.

So I guess you have never studied real religion? Ever hear of this guy called Buddha? I am pretty sure there are a lot of people out there who would consider him some take on the word "god" and his faith makes it painfully clear he was originally just a man. Your definition of "God" is far too strict. An ant likely looks at a man and might equate them with being a god on some limited intelligence way. We live thousands of their lifetimes, can kill them with literally no effort. cause flood their homes with seemingly divine power. In reality we are just biologically different and know how to get water out of a sink. But does that change the perception of the ant? No it doesn't. That's why I said it wasn't even a question about gods to begin with, but a question of belief. The Buddha is not thought of as a god in Buddhism and is not prayed to. He is looked up to and respected as a great teacher, in the same way we respect Abraham Lincoln as a great president. He was a human being who found his perfection in Nirvana. They would be wrong though, according to those who practice the religion.

That's true, but it certainly seems to be where the story is leading, and perhaps you merely are not strong enough yet to oppose the gods. The choice is continue to propagate a lie that is eventually destined to be exposed by science or cast people free from the shackles of that lie to forge their own destiny. My guess is that the expansion will lead us along that path. It would be interesting if after that happens, proof was found of an actual non-synthetic deity, (maybe an evil deity) throwing everyone into chaos again. Or maybe they try to make you their new god.

And not indicative of the fact that they have so much power that they still hold the cards and want to maintain power, and so they certainly won't give you the option of ending all of them?

Isn't 1 what Thaos is trying to do though, via atrocities like stealing unborn children's souls? And the reason that option exists in this world is b/c he convinced an entire civilization to commit suicide? Is that not then the evil path in the game? Atheism, scientific progress, and individuals giving their own meaning to life w/o divine interference is treated as good, religion, which is fake, holds up scientific progress, and dulls people's minds into merely following rote concepts is bad. Fake religion is used as the method by which Thaos can control the masses - w/o the reality of gods watching over everything you do, he thinks people will devolve into anarchy. So religion is the famous "opiate of the masses" through which the elite try to control the unwashed, ignorant peasants.

I agree that the Nedyn dialogue option looks like it should be the entry point to the quest, rather than the resolution.

I never had the option of gaining legitimate access to the archives, nor the option to talk to Grimda without mentioning Nedyn, related to this quest. You couldn't talk to Grimda and accept her quest to track down the missing scroll without picking a Nedyn-releated dialogue opion? (Not sure, but I may have visited Grimda and gotten this task before meeting Nedyn.) Yes you can choose to not select the Nedyn related dialogue option. Through the other dialogue options, you can go on a quest to recover the scroll for Grimda. Once this quest is complete, she opens the Elder archives for you and you are free to steal the book. Once you do that however, it appears you can no longer decide to complete the quest any way except for giving the book to Nedyn. This makes sense i guess since you did steal the book, but I know i was still unsure of Nedyn's motivations and it would have been cool to talk to Nedyn, then decide she can't have the book and give it back to Grimda.

My guess is the adra pillars. There is one on the opening screen when the title shows and the lore says souls use these pillars as conduits to the underworld i think.

If that's what it takes, that could be a good counter, for ambiguity. But in order for that to even happen or come to a head, I think you at least have to be given the option of taking a moral stand, and then if that's not enough, argue, and sure, at the end of the whole ordeal, make the choice as to whether you'll go to those lengths to enforce your morality, or if you settle for just taking a stand in this instance, or do not consider the issue worth killing loads of people over. Yeah the option that caters to someone who thinks killing all these people is a good way to prevent what they consider immoral killing would not seem to apply to a broad spectrum of people. Perhaps a religious zealot character would go this route, but there is a much broader swath of characters I would think who would like an option to try and prevent the abortions without resorting to violence and death. I haven't played this quest, so I can't speak specifically, but in much of the general discussion the point has been made that the developers have openly catered the game world to fit their own liberal political philosophy. In this vein, they probably see the anti-abortion position as hate speech, similar to how they viewed the limerick.

Oh but that wasn't funny either. You broke your own rule!

I much prefer continuing this discussion in limericks, so here is my contribution. There once was a troll called victorious Whose sniveling claims of insult were quite porious Her mind was very skewed Evidenced by the hate that she spewed I mean she thought #killallmen was glorious! It's not very good, but please don't criticize b/c i'm a member of a group that had something bad happened to it in the past, and I or someone in my group may be experiencing something bad somewhere in the world right at this moment, so i demand special protection.

So no ethnic or gender group can comment on any other group or rant about not having a voice in society according to your particular worldview. Got it. Hmm you must think most gender and ethnic rights activists are wrong to comment on any other group right? Wait, doesn't that mean you are in fact wrong, since you can't both be a white hetero male and not a white hetero male and yet are commenting on both? I'm confused.

This memorial spat is really small potatoes and both sides have overreacted as usual. I think checking with the backer in a case like this is the correct response, and if it was not backer content i hope they would instead poll the backers to see if a majority feel the content is objectionable enough to be removed. I do not find the memorial offensive enough to warrant removal, i dislike the precedent set by obsidian here, and i hope it is the last of this type of thing. I don't usually know or care about developers personal political views, but if those views have a large impact on the content allowed in the game world without prior notification to the potential customers, then i don't appreciate it. If Sawyer and Obsidian want to make Pillars a SJW utopia world then just be open about it and let the community know this is the goal, and i for one won't buy the expansion, b/c I am not looking to get preached at in a game. I want a believable fantasy world with conflicts, problems, a mix of both ugly and beautiful things all tied together in a coherent and believable fashion, and i hope that Obsidian chooses to go this direction with their future games. If not, then i think they will soon be facing another bankruptcy and no kickstarter will make enough to save the company, and that would be a loss, since i enjoy playing POE so much, despite the bugs.