So there is no good ending?

[InsaneCommander]

I mentioned the creation of Woedica as an example. The machine in the end of the game is near a Woedica symbol and I think they said there are other machines. So the vision would be about the creation of Woedica, although the other gods could have been created at the same time.

[Tigranes]

My interpretation is all the gods were created through sacrifice of many Engwithans, perhaps all of them except for those remaining as missionaries. 

 

I'm fine with such important, long-lost knowledge being a bit ambiguous. Given that the only way the player can / does find out is through Thaos' visions that you get for a few seconds, it would be a bit odd to get a wikipedia rundown.

[Karkarov]

My interpretation is all the gods were created through sacrifice of many Engwithans, perhaps all of them except for those remaining as missionaries. 

 

I'm fine with such important, long-lost knowledge being a bit ambiguous. Given that the only way the player can / does find out is through Thaos' visions that you get for a few seconds, it would be a bit odd to get a wikipedia rundown.

What they said.

 

Also let's not forget, Thaos had already fired up the machine with all those souls.  While it would have been nice to take an hour or two to play with Thaos brain you only have so long before he is getting sucked into the machine or back into the cycle.  Not only that but you didn't come to lobotomize him, you went there to stop his plans and free the souls one way or the other.  People think it is sloppy writing that leaves a lot of this open to interpretation.  I think it is excellent writing and developer intent.  They want you to consider the questions and implications of what the story says.  Is a God actually a God if man made him?  Does being man made make a God less than they are?  Is belief in a thing more important than whether or not it is actually true?

 

You can't just write all this crap out in clear black and white answers and put a bow on it.  There are no answers and that's the point.

[Emptiness]

Without really knowing what his plans are I'm not really certain whether I want to stop them...but you make good points, Karkarov.

[RevBlue]

But you already know what his plans are. He is holding all the souls back to feed into Woedika so she gets stronger than all the other gods so she can rule. In addition to people blaming the Legacy on animancy and thus hoping to ban it, because they are afraid of it

[stoneneedle]

The whole "gods do not exist" thing is kind of a misnomer. The voices in your head communicating to you are real entities in the game plot. They do exist, they just aren't immortal and aren't that old; they're only as old as the Engwithan civilization.

 

Gods in this setting can be created or destroyed, and they're basically just really powerful beings that escaped the cycle of the Wheel completely, and can retain memory (or rather, they just don't die, they've increased their lifespan by hundreds or thousands of years--so maybe they don't age).

[Zenicetus]

I was thinking

 

the gods really screwed themselves. No amount of animancy or progress is going to make people quit believing in a god that can hide in the gaps. But making the gods real? An actual obtainable thing? That's just a bomb waiting to explode. Thaos wouldn't have had to exist if the Engwithans never made the pantheon. Making the gods real, gave people a reason to disbelieve the gods.

 

The created Gods in this game are still in the gaps, because it appears that they always operate indirectly, like Eothas "inhabiting" Waidwen and then retreating in the aftermath (if I'm understanding that right). We hear the Gods speak as disembodied voices throughout the game, but they're never walking around in physical form. They influence the world indirectly.

 

That's distinct from other "created Gods" in fiction, like what Roger Zelazny did with "Lord of Light" and "Creatures of Light and Darkness," where you have trans-human, immortal Gods that actually do walk among the lesser mortals. In PoE, the Gods are still a bit ambiguous, and subject to conventional worship. At least that's what I took away from the game.

 

There are things I didn't like about the ending... mainly the inevitable boss fight that requires learning specific tactics to beat a specific scripted encounter. But I like the way the world includes a different take on "The Gods"  than I usually see in games like this.

[nakno3]

Maybe just Woedica was created by the Engwithians?

(The other ones were already there or created by others..)

This would explain why they still have to feed her souls and are trying to make her the mightiest one.

 

Nevertheless i experienced the ending unsatisfying.

There are a lot open threads, you get no real answers and you didnt change anything in the world.

There is a conspiracy of created gods by a lost race millenias ago that is still going on today controlled by Thaos since ever,

and still it affects just a small region, waidwens legacy coming up just for a short while and Thaos acting kind of planless and arbitrary.

And all you get in the end is an psychological inside job ..

and you have to imagine substitutes to the story to make it logical or rewarding..

Edited April 27, 2015 by nakno3

[perilisk]

The whole "gods do not exist" thing is kind of a misnomer. The voices in your head communicating to you are real entities in the game plot. They do exist, they just aren't immortal and aren't that old; they're only as old as the Engwithan civilization.

 

Gods in this setting can be created or destroyed, and they're basically just really powerful beings that escaped the cycle of the Wheel completely, and can retain memory (or rather, they just don't die, they've increased their lifespan by hundreds or thousands of years--so maybe they don't age).

 

They're just soul-powered supercomputers. Built to last, from Adra and Engwithan technology. But while they can reach out and influence things through magic (all magic being soul based), they don't have any physical form in the normal sense, so age is sort of meaningless.

 

Their "realms", as such, are only experienced spiritually, not physically (hence, at no point do you ever see a god's realm -- just a text box and some Adra with pulsing energy). They're hallucinations, magic VR.

[perilisk]

I'm somewhat surprised you couldn't remake Eothas with the missing souls.

 

I don't think the souls are really important, it's just the essence they contain. Essence is substance or energy. Soul is form and substance (the how and why of souls has yet to be explained, but it's probably a trait of living matter that grew in complexity over the course of evolution, mapping somewhat to intelligence).

 

Essence is what separates animate from inanimate (in fact, is pretty much a synonym for anima in our world's classical phiosophy). Even plants have simple souls. It seems that ordinary matter (rocks, water, etc.) lacks essence -- adra is living rock, because it can contain essence (inluding whole, unscathed souls).

 

Anyway, I get the sense that, with the gods, the "form" side of the equation is handled by Engwithan machinery (I guess you could say the game ends with a "deus ex machina", hurr hurr hurr) -- you could dump all those souls into the device, but to produce Eothas, you would still have to reprogram it, and that's assuming that it wasn't built as Woedica at a hardware level.

 

I guess the alternative would be to somehow redirect them to the Eothas machine (assuming it wasn't physically damaged by feedback from the Godhammer somehow) and travel there to do that. But in either case, I don't think the PC's past life ever had enough knowledge to do so, and it's possible that Thaos didn't either.

 

[stoneneedle]

 

The whole "gods do not exist" thing is kind of a misnomer. The voices in your head communicating to you are real entities in the game plot. They do exist, they just aren't immortal and aren't that old; they're only as old as the Engwithan civilization.

 

Gods in this setting can be created or destroyed, and they're basically just really powerful beings that escaped the cycle of the Wheel completely, and can retain memory (or rather, they just don't die, they've increased their lifespan by hundreds or thousands of years--so maybe they don't age).

 

They're just soul-powered supercomputers. Built to last, from Adra and Engwithan technology. But while they can reach out and influence things through magic (all magic being soul based), they don't have any physical form in the normal sense, so age is sort of meaningless.

 

Their "realms", as such, are only experienced spiritually, not physically (hence, at no point do you ever see a god's realm -- just a text box and some Adra with pulsing energy). They're hallucinations, magic VR.

 

 

Oh yeah....the gods are in the Adra. That's brilliant! Honestly, I think this setting has some potential, and room for growth. I like Pathfinder, but I find the setting of Golarion kind of lukewarm. But add in some psionic Ciphers and a Watcher and you've got potential. Otherwise, it's classic D&D. I'd run it.