Enkeli

You have yet to define proof outside of, "if it is written then it is true." I am not saying that proof must be conclusive, but it must fall in to a category of either observable or persuasive. Your standards of proof justify the existence of Santa, Aliens, and Goblins. And when challenged to differentiate between the validity of any writings, all you do is reference the very writings that you are supposed to be validating. You quote the Bible to prove the validity of the Bible; yet the Bible is composed of writings from various authors that make no reference of a Bible. Again, you quote the Bible to try to prove the validity of the Bible... lol I will move to referencing a publication from Howard Clark Kee, "Jesus in History, An Approach to the Study of the Gospels." Example of Gospel contradictions: Regarding Mark (the oldest gospel) and more contradictions: From, "The Framework of the History of Jesus," by K.L. Schmidt, we can see Mark's lack of eye witness accounts: You may choose to ignore scholars, that's your choice. However, the proof offered by scholars such as Schmidt and Kee fall in to categories of observable and persuasive. As a theology student, I cannot resist commenting a little bit now that the discussion has been moved to off topic. It seems like this discussion builds on the idea that the Bible must either be 100 % error free or else it is a fairytale. If you look at more recent scholarship (maybe you have done so?) you will find a lot more positive overall assessment of the historical reliability of the Gospels than in the century old scholarship you are quoting. Scholars in mainline theological seminaries and universities usually agree that the Bible has some historical errors. Nevertheless, particularly the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke are argued to contain much historical material dating back to a hypothetical earlier source which scholars call Q. All of the gospels are dated now usually in the first century, which is too early for legendary accumulation, and contain many differences from later legendary gospels like the Gospel of Peter and such. In my opinion Christians don´t necessarily need a completely inerrant Bible. However, I think scholars of a more conversative bent are not unreasonable in denying the errors. None of the usual stuff is very convincingly an error, there are pretty good answers to everything that is written on typical skeptical websites. For your examples regarding the Gospel of Mark, see here: http://www.tektonics.org/ntdocdef/markdef.php . This site gives good examples of responses which you can search for by biblical passage. For example, Mark´s passage could plausible just be a list of places Jesus visited, rather than a precise itinerary.

Not sure what happened to my quote box... "And you also show you know nothing about the bible. It never, not even once, contradicts itself. You have not read it and understood it at all." Here's 492 to get you started This site is fun too This talk about real world religion seems a bit off topic, I came to this thread looking for discussion of Pillars and religion. But if you link to such pages, why not also link to some page with typical answers to such criticisms? Surely you as a fair minded skeptic have read from both sides of the issue, and also wish for your readers to do the same? For example, see http://tektonics.org/ for some popular-level answers to such stuff. Or for science and faith stuff, see e.g. http://biologos.org/common-questions/gods-relationship-to-creation/fine-tuning . "Link wars" lead nowhere though.

I think this is well stated! Also, even Thaos says that Iovara is virtuous. So there is good reason for the party to accept Iovara´s testimony that the Engwithans did not believe in the existence of gods, and that the gods known to Eora are created. However, it does leave a lot of open questions though. Like how did the Engwithans manage to prove that no gods exist using their soul science? All of their technology seems to be adapted to manipulating human souls. But in traditional theology God is very much unlike a human soul, being the ground of being for all of reality. It seems hard to capture such a being in a lab to be tested against his will. Therefore it´s hard to understand how the Engwithans could have tested things. I would have liked an option to talk about this. It seems to me that on Eora we would still have a lot of the same reasons to believe in a Creator God, like the teleological argument. For many (most?) people on Earth the orderly nature of the cosmos, including the possibility of complex life capable of thinking about the universe, is better explained as the creation of a purposeful Creator, rather than e.g. random chance. Phenomena like consciousness (let alone souls, if they were proven to exist) also fit a lot better with theism than with atheism according to many people. We might disagree with such arguments but they are very intuitively compelling even according to critics like Richard Dawkins and David Hume. On Earth we find such arguments in diverse cultures, already in Ancient Rome, Greece and India. So, I would guess that these kind of arguments would also occur to someone on Eora. As a Watcher I would have liked to ask Iovara´s opinion on such cosmological questions.

Theology student / Christian believer here. I thought that POE´s way of handling religions was pretty interesting, and was not offended by the game. Actually I mostly liked the twist where the gods were created by the Engwithans. This made the game feel different from usual fantasy tropes. The game evoked questions like "what really makes something a god worthy of worship?" The game also had nice discussion of how the themes of "how to handle uncertainty in making decisions" and "how to live with your mistakes". These to me felt like big themes in addition to religion, since they were present in a lot of the quests and dialogue with companions. Some other random thoughts about POE and religion: 1. We are told that the Engwithans were able to establish that there is no theistic God who is interested in human affairs. Yet we don´t have a coherent cosmology or origin story of Eora which would make sense apart from the existence of God. Why does Eora exist at all, why is it ordered in such a way that life and the cycle of souls is possible, and so on? Some hints from the game even tell us that there is life after the souls themselves are ground to dust; for example if you decide to destroy the souls as Rymrgard wishes. I guess you could say that this all brings Eora close to Buddhism. For me the problem with this solution is that (in my opinion) Buddhism also does not have a credible cosmology. This has been a reason for some Buddhists like professor Paul Williams, Dr. of Buddhist studies from Oxford to convert to Christianity. I remain skeptical that the cosmology of Eora can become credible without God. But it will be nice to see what the writers do with the cosmology in the sequel! 2. The gods of Eora often seemed quite simplistic, being the embodiment of some quite specific ideas. Often they were even repugnant in their "the ends justify the means" kind of attitude. I wish they had been more complex. The god Eothas was perhaps the most well done in this respect, as well as Ondra and Abydon after the expansion. 3. About whether the "gods" created by men are real - I feel like Thaos was right that these gods are real in the sense that they have the power of gods (thought not the power of God with a capital G.) However, they were not real in the sense that they were not representative of the ultimate ground of being of all reality. Also, because they are created entities and morally ambiguous, it is hard to see why they would be worthy of worship and devotion in the same sense as a perfectly good creator God. I wish that there had been some dialogue option to tell Thaos from a religious perspective that no, the ends do not justify the means, and that true worship should not be built on lies. 4. Related to the last point, my problem with the end dialogues with Iovara and Thaos was that the options were basically to A) seek the truth, be moral and be atheist, or B) compromise in your morality and truth seeking for some reason (e.g. the "comfort" of lies) and continue to be a religious person. The option of being a religious person who seeks truth and despises Thaos´ evil was largely missing from the dialogue with both Iovara and Thaos. This may be the reason why some have felt that the game was anti-religious, and I have to confess that the end dialogues also made me think that maybe the writers had read too much of bad critiques of religious belief like Dawkins. But the game elsewhere did also have lots of examples of moral religious people, so in broader view I still have hope in the writer´s ability to portray religion.

I had 19 CON on my character and he just swam up to the surface.

What I did was to bypass most of the mobs by circling around the fort from the top side. Then over the ladder using a character with 6 stealth to open the gates. Then I basically just walked to the right carefully.

It seems that you just have to be really sneaky if you want to get to the command tent without combat. There is another entrance in the back of the fort that you can use for this purpose. I fought only one group of Iron flail guys on the top right of the map but I believe it should be possible to avoid all combat with them.

There is enough content in Act 2 plus white march to level to 16. However, the level scaling for Act 3 seems to be tailored for maybe level 11-12 characters. Going into Act 3 even at lvl 13 will redult in a stomp. So I guess the only way to keep the end game difficult is to skip a LOT of good content in Act 2/white march. This is based on just two playthroughs of the game though, one on hard and one on potd. One problem is also that the upscaled Act 3 is not the only area meant for lvl 12 characters, for example the Cragholdt bluffs challenge area is also good to do at lvl 12-13. So no matter what some content of the game will be too easy. My hope is that in the future the devs or modders will increase the level scaling of Act 3 and 4. In that case it would be possible to do all the content you like in Act 2 without having to worry about the rest of the game becoming a stomp.

You can also get the Iron Flail from WM pt II to help you. I am wondering if actually having these helpers has any gameplay effect though. Can you actually lose the battle of yenwood? Does not having helpers simply make the battle against the lord harder?

Thanks! I had all of his conversation options greyed out, but on rechecking I managed to find some new options .

IMO there is no need to start from the beginning for the stronghold content. The biggest addition is a quest related to the stronghold. In case it doesn´t begin for you automatically you can trigger it to begin manually using these instructions: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/84094-update-30-beta-has-been-updated/ The quest is quite short and the battles are not hard, but it´s fun. In addition, stronghold quests have now been changed to give you unique artifacts; prestigious visitors also have some dialogue which require choices from you. There appears to be quite a lot of these quests, so you won´t be able to experience all of them without starting a new game. But you will be able to experience quite a few of them already while completing WM pt II, and I personally would not think a restart would be worth it just for these. As for the artifacts, the best quests only come after your stronghold already has a lot of prestige, so here too I think there is no need to start the game over.

How do I trigger the questline? Even a small hint would be appreciated.

Downloaded 1.3. gigs on Steam, going inside the game it tells me that WM pt II is now available. However, it actually is not yet available, and the icon for it is still greyed out. We must be getting close now . edit: aand its working now.

Andrea, maybe I shouldn´t have quoted you because that tends to give the impression of disagreement. Actually I knew that you understand and meant to simply explain the relation of my two requests further in case people found it confusing. I´ve really liked your posts on this issue and am in complete agreement.

It comes in as one way to help ensure that we get a challenge. For example, if we find out that TWM pt II upscaled content is meant to be started at lvl 12, then I will know that my lvl 13 party should skip the early side quests (or maybe do them but not claim the rewards). On the other hand, if we find out that it is upscaled to lvl 14, then I will know that I can do all the side quests without worrying that the rest of TWM pt II will become easier. For me the best option would be to have the optional level scaling happen according to the player´s level - then I know I could experience all the content at a challenging level, as I believe (hope) it was meant to be. Inspector, sorry if I offended with my remarks on Act III upscaled content, I was merely attempting to give feedback as AndreaColumbo stated. I am super excited for TWM part II and glad to have such a good RPG to play.