I feel like I'm missing something here related to souls and the game mechanics in this game...?

[Lephys]

in a world with souls that is real and incontrovertible, animancers may bind those souls to inanimate objects as well as to the corpses o' the dead. not only is animancers able to do such, they has.

... which matters to uneducated folk who don't know that because?

 

 

you are sooooo not helping by analogizing to such stuff as real world guns.

False. Animancy can and has done the things you mentioned. Guns can and have brutally mowed down entire villages of innocent people. Animancy can and has also greatly aided people and/or been used for not forcibly attaching people's souls to corporeal vessels. Guns can and have also protected entire villages from people who would mow them down, and hunted animals and such so that certain peoples wouldn't starve, etc.

 

It's a perfectly un-ridiculous analogy. So, you can keep responding about how ridiculous I am, and sighing, or you could actually answer me questions, instead of talking about how Josh already did, or how much of a given it is, and how it baffles you that I fail to comprehend the so-obvious truth. Purpose... that serves none.

 

there is no real world analogue to an animancer binding your soul to your corpse.

No, but there's a real world analogue for being ignorant and fearful of something despite not being thoroughly educated in its actual/exact nature. We've already been over how people in reality have imagined being cursed thusly, and fearful of such things. The simple fact that it actually happened matters little to someone who believes it has. It especially doesn't make anyone know whether or not it's actually happened any harder.

 

Truth doesn't inherently live in people's brains. It has to travel there.

 

the reasonable fear o' anaimancers should be extreme regardless o' whether they can can relieve your gout symptoms or not.  obsidian developers in their info drop about undead tells us that animancers, pretending to sell immortality to nobles, has in fact cursed them by binding their souls to their corpse. is positively faustian. is not a solitary event neither.

Last time I checked, people weren't a hivemind. If some silly noble doesn't invest his belief in "peasants' tales" of such things, or believes his own soul to be "noble," and therefore better than other people's, or is just plain psychologically unstable, or (insert various reasons here), he might readily seek out immortality anyway. OR, maybe the person says "Oh no, that animancy is wretched, primitive stuff. This is not that." What's he gonna do? "Ah-HAH! Got you! I've read every single peer-reviewed journal in the field of animancy, so I know for a fact that what you're doing IS in fact what Steve the Lich did back when he tried to raise that undead army in '73. u_u"?

 

I don't understand what you're expecting.

 

The devs have specifically stated that many, many people have a "BURN IT WITH FIRE" mentality when it comes to animancy. You suggest the people of the world don't have enough suspicion and/or fear/contempt for animancy, based on what? The only thing you've presented is that it seems odd that some people would ever willingly seek out animancical (what would be the adjective form?) processes? No, it's not that. You've already said that's not it. So what? It's fine that yes, animancers would operate in some numbers in the world, and it's fine that probably the majority of the world's population is highly suspect of anything they even think to be animancy, but there's still some mystery issue?

 

I have yet to even pinpoint what it is you feel is problematic about this lore.

[Gromnir]

 

your very real soul. 

You seem to be arguing from the standpoint that souls have a very real and pervasive connection to the 'self' or the individual. Souls are undoubtedly real in the POE world, but it does not fall out ipso facto that souls have a necessary connection to personal-identity. If most/all souls have no recollection of the afterlife even after reincarnation or Awakening, then we can make a Lockean argument:

1. Take a body with a brain containing a certain psychology, certain memories, and a certain set of proclivities.

2. Transfer that brain to a new host, suppose the contents carry over.

3. If the contents carry over, I think it is common sense to say that the person also carries over.

Ergo, personal identity resides in the psychology, memories, proclivities, etc. and not in the specific body (or brain).

 

Now replace body with soul.

Transfer the psychology, memories, proclivities, etc. from one soul into another (empty soul, if possible).

The person resides in the soul which corresponds to their psychology, etc.

IF souls are shells which house certain traits, they're really no different from bodies or brains or minds or whatever real world analogy you want to make. I'm made up of a bunch of energy in reality, but when my mind perishes I have no reason to think I'm going to persist in the things that make me manifest corporeality, even if my energy will permeate through the world. Similarly, I'm made of star-matter, but /I/ am not a star, nor do I have any recollection of being those atoms in some far off entity. It's the content of the soul that matters, and if the afterlife or reincarnation damage that content, the soul being eternal is no different than the energy composing our bodies being eternal (unlikely as that may be). Now, there are lots of interesting questions that naturally arise: if souls only lose their memory upon reincarnation, are they in some sense the same person? I think we may more easily argue that they are the same soul, but in doing so we make a distinction between soul and person (such as the distinction we have between body and mind). But, these questions lay outside of my scope.

 

I don't know if it has been said definitively what souls themselves experience after death, but in the latest update we learned that souls can become vengeful simulacra of their former selves when they die via natural disaster, so it would seem that death in the natural sense, at the very least, has the potential to strip parts of people away or turn them into specters of who they once were. That is to say, souls don't seem immutably 'you' any more than bodies do.

 

Anyway, my point is: The question of value, soul versus body, isn't as cut and dry as I think you are making it out to be. Just because souls are "proven" to be real does not mean that (at least to the educated or introspective) souls are or ought to be valued more than bodies or what have you.

 

 

and that is why we specifically noted, multiple times, that our position is different if obsidian is showing reasons for the people o' poe to be relative dismissive o' souls.  clearly there is information we is not privy to that is making animancers more huggable in the poe world.

 

however, please observe that the developers used a very specific word: soul.  obsidian has used souls in past games, and the nature o' soul were familiar to us in the context o' real world major religions and concepts of the soul. if the soul in poe were something functional very different from our collective concept o' the soul, then use o' a word that is so emotionally charged strikes us as odd. still, it is possible that in spite o' use o' "soul" by obsidian, poe soul could be very different from our expectations based on real world or previous obsidian games.

 

"The devs have specifically stated that many, many people have a "BURN IT WITH FIRE" mentality when it comes to animancy. You suggest the people of the world don't have enough suspicion and/or fear/contempt for animancy, based on what?"

 

you want us to repeat everything we has said up to this point again? fail. say something new.

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited July 10, 2014 by Gromnir

[Lephys]

you want us to repeat everything we has said up to this point again? fail. say something new.

I will happily do so, as soon as the question actually gets answered.

 

You've said plenty of stuff, and none of it has been evidence that there's officially too little fear/suspicion of animancers in the world. Please show me some charts or something of exactly how many people throughout Eora want to burn animancers at the stake, and how many think animancy might be cool.

[AGX-17]

Sorry if this is a double post. The forum didn't load this when I posted it just now. I'm having some cognitive dissonance issues with the concepts shared with us so far about the game play mechanics and the concepts of souls. To me it seems very silly to spend so much time creating things in the game world that are so realistic that we have in our world like taxes and specific damage types, [...] I got the impression this is a mature story and more of a serious game though, so some aspects seem wonky to me.

Really? The world's religions have functioned quite well while dependent on sources of revenue like taxes and specific damage types (i.e. Christian Crusaders cannibalizing Muslims in Maarrat al-Nu'man in 1098. -10 to Not Eating Muslims rolls, +10 to Anti-Christian rolls.) The fact that ancient religions exist, nay, flourish in a world with the Scientific Method despite the lack of evidence supporting their claims/abundance of evidence against their claims should be telling enough. If you want a fantasy game with zero depth/believability there are ones involving birds and pipes directly stolen from Super Mario Brothers readily available.

 

How is it immature to depict realistic governmental and economic activities upon which civilization has always depended?

Edited July 12, 2014 by AGX-17