I’m writing the following to gather my thoughts about the themes of Pillars of Eternity, and thought there might be a chance that others would be interested. Obviously, mega, mega spoilers.
Pillars of Eternity has two themes. The first, which is the focus of Acts I and II, relates to animancy, is a fantasy proxy for real world things like stem cell research or modifying the human genome. I guess one way to describe that theme is whether it’s right to research things that might potentially and quite fundamentally tamper with the human condition. I don’t have much to say about this, but RPS did quite a good overview: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/03/30/further-thoughts-on-pillars-of-eternity-animancy-faith.
The best way to describe the second theme, which is the focus of Acts III and IV, is how to live if atheism is true, that is, if there is no God. The most important influence, by far, on that theme as it appears in Pillars is Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Grand Inquisitor. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s a story-within-a-story of what I think most people consider to be Dostoevsky’s greatest novel, The Brothers Karamazov. (There’s quite a good CliffsNotes summary at http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/b/the-brothers-karamazov/summary-and-analysis/part-2-book-v-chapter-5.) The referencing by Pillars to Dostoevsky is quite overt: it’s not an accident that Thaos, in the time of the PC’s former life with him, had the title of Grand Inquisitor (Iovara calls him that). And both Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor and Thaos are outwardly “religious” people, but really closet atheists (yes I know it’s complex for Thaos), who see their roles as to keep humanity in ignorant bliss from the truth. And both are very, very dissatisfied about the basic human nature they have to deal with.
But there are big differences between Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor and Thaos. In Dostoevsky’s story, at the risk of grotesque oversimplification, (the real) Jesus makes a visit to Earth in the 16th century, but the Grand Inquisitor arrests him. The Grand Inquisitor’s problem with Jesus is that, while God is real, Christian freedom requires so much self-denial that only a very small and select part of humankind are capable of exercising that freedom so as to get into heaven. The vast majority of people are condemned. The Grand Inquisitor, out of benevolence to humankind, sides with the Devil, in that his plan is to let people be condemned but to live out their earthly existence happily, comfortably, and ignorant of their damnation.
In contrast, in the world of Eora in which Thaos lives, the starting point is that the gods aren’t real. (It’s a bit jarring that, although they obviously exist in that world, the line “the gods aren’t real” is used so many times at the end, but it makes sense if you think that it’s an attempt to explore a real philosophical question. That's also why there’s very little justification for why the Engwithans were so sure there were no real gods - justification would be beside the point for the thought experiment.) Thaos’ job is therefore to keep people ignorant of that fact, and to ensure that they have religious faith in order to maintain some semblance of order compared to the alternatives, namely, complete anarchy, either through having no god, or too many gods. So the Grand Inquisitor and Thaos are alike in a lot of ways, but polar opposites in others.
In any case, the point of the Grand Inquisitor references in Pillars is to reinforce the basic philosophical question: assume for the moment that there is no God and religion is a lie. How, then, should we live? The two broad possibilities the game contemplates are: (1) pretend that religion is true, because the idea that there’s no religion to give us meaning is too horrible to contemplate; and (2) roll with it, and impose your own meaning onto the world. (And Kana makes this circular by saying that there’s meaning in everyone’s collective struggle in creating meaning.) This second idea is all very existentialist (see, eg, Nietzsche, Sartre and Heidegger, and the list can easily be extended).
It seems to me that, while the game does try not to make up your mind on that question, the stronger authorial voice by far is in favour of (2).
To be clear, I profoundly disagree with part of the way the game treats the second theme, which reflects my own religious beliefs – though I still very much enjoyed thinking about the issues the game raised. But does what I’ve said above accurately capture what’s going on and what’s at stake?
