>We talked a lot about religion, and we ended up making up two religions for the game.
>All the existing religions are still there in the world, in the universe, but we focus on the two new ones because those two religions accentuate the vibe of theology in the game.
>So there’s the Sanctum Universum, and they’re sort of the church where they believe that humans going through space and being able to explore the universe is a sign that God exists, and God wants us to be closer to him.
>And then there’s the Enlightened, basically an atheist church. They’re humanists; they’re just like, There’s nothing theological about this.
>And so we would have a lot of talks on our own journeys, our own theology. You know, what is out there?
>We were really inspired by things like 2001: A Space Odyssey or Contact or Interstellar — these really sort of heady sci-fi concepts.
>[Religion] was a way to talk about these big concepts but not dive too far down the rabbit hole — you don’t want to offend people.
>We actually had Shane Liesegang, who was one of our writers [on Skyrim and Fallout 4]... He’s now studying to be a Jesuit priest.
>We talked to him about: If we were to make this real, this religion, what would we do? How would we write it?
>And so he advised us and did some writing for us, he wrote for the Sanctum Universum, and it really grounded it in the believable.
Now that the game's been out for a while, what are your thoughts on this?
Did the game inspire you to look at spirtiuality any differently than you did before playing this? Did any of the religions in this game resonate with you?
Do you agree with Pagliarulo when he says that religion WAS a way to talk about these big concepts?
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I wanted to be Catholic in this game made in 2022 and set in the future 🙁
This game really got people thinking
thats literally Sanctum Universum
Multiverse bullshit isn't deep. Stop falling for clickbait articles
I'm not sure what you mean by multiverse, but if there is a race or races of beings in a higher spacial dimension it significantly raises questions about the nature of humanity and our religions
Most religions came to be because people raised those very questions.
Most of them were people praying to the sun
Are you sure?
Buddhism and the Abrahamic religions, the overwhelming majority of the global population today, both never had roots in sun worship. The earliest interpretations of Jehovah/Elohim actually stem from him as a storm god or from earlier Mesopotamian religion and its a manor plot point of the Old Testament that the israelites frequently deviated from their monotheism to make him a storm god at the head of a pagan pantheon with other local deities
Then why was Helios such a minor god among the Greeks?
Apollo, God of sun and fire, is pretty fricking important in Greek Mythology
Anon, you genuinely don't know what you're talking about. Different city states honored different sun gods. There even came to be a syncretic religion shared between Egyptians and Greeks after a certain point in time.
I doubt you even know the Greek creation myth.
Okay, and sun worship or solar deities existed outside of Greece and Egypt. The original point was that a lot of religions started off in sun worship. There are cultures all over the world that were undiscovered at that time worshipping the sun.
>South America with the Incas
>Ameratsu in Shintoism
Ra is pretty important in Egypt too
>a lot of religions started off in sun worship
"A lot" is very different from "most."
I mean praying thunder instead of praying to the sun is a really stupid hair to split.
Apollo isn't a fire god, and he's known for his oracle more than anything regarding the sun.
Helios is literally the sun.
It's one of the more interesting parts of the game. The only way the rest of the games industry talks about religion is through tired "what if the church.... was evil?!?!" tropes.
You can't do much with them. I wanted to join House Va'ruun cuz I thought they might have Gnostics, but there doesn't seem to be anything you can do with them
This is the space snake one right? Can you join it?
I haven't found a way to, and I don't think you can.
I suspect that's because they're going to sell it to you as DLC.
More like what if the church wasn't evil
>we dont want to offend people
losing at square one
talking about religion at any length is going to offend someone on one side or another, you cant provoke thoughtful questions by going so surface level
countless people died over this shit throughout human history regardless of your opinion on it, its a dickless statement to go "oh man we want to ask all these heady questions and stuff man but lets not actually get anybody upset!"
These were also pretty much my thoughts regarding this. The game just doesn't seem to deliver a meaningful conversation about religion in any capacity because of it. This Emil guy kinda seems like he's full of shit.
>you must le offend to make le deep religious commentary
Lmaoing my legs off. Millennials are such a stupid generation
that is not what anon was saying at all, you moron
That wasn't what he was saying. He was saying that they were getting in their own way by placing the greatest importance on inoffensiveness when dealing with a topic that is by its very nature offensive to most people. He's saying they half-assed it.
You can't really do much with the religions in the game. You can talk to a few representatives, but there's no quests involving them.
I wanted to be Catholic in this game made in 2022 and set in the future 🙂
I work for a Catholic church, numbers have been decreasing for a long while now. You only see a few elderly people every event or so. This religion will be over in less than 200 years
My local church is right by a woman's university and catholic woman's university and its full of tradthot weeb Hispanic girls.
>weeb Hispanic girls
where @
You do realize you just posted one, right?
I think that's the joke dood
Where is that I need a wife
That's because they compromised everything with Vatican 2 kek.
The most alive christian sects are the most radical ones these days.
only in white first world countries, but then again, they will be over in 200 years too
What about space snake that will punish the unbelievers? That sounded like the best one.
I made it to newgame +2 and have no idea what any of the religions were. Just these guys like snakes and attacking people, i shot your leader and nobody cared, and who?
Why are the Starfield devs so fricking dumb? The could've been great.
It really could have. I really hope that this game's success is a wakeup call to some competent developers who could actually deliver on what Pagliarulo is describing in this interview.
Emil is the genius that gave us FO3's ending of "go die in the radioactive chamber or you're a bad person"
And FO4's broken dialogue system that fricked over all the writers
And FO4's synths being a nothing burger in terms of plotline
And the whole Father plotline in FO4
And the awful main quest of Skyrim
He got to do all this because journalists like Oblivion's Dark Brotherhood questline he wrote. Go replay that and tell me if that man should've ever been upjumped in his role at the company to be in charge of so much.
It was surface level but the devs aren't cowardly nor dumb, they are smart. Religion is extremely divisive.
Even Christians fight each other over the most minimal of differences. Like the sinlessness of Mary.
"Fire and brimstone" religion sucks and is for sheltered edgy losers who think that being a obnoxious online soccermom is a personality.
That guy is successful and you are a failure.
Look at you, celebrating someone else's failure. That's very big of you, anon.
If the devs were as smart as you claim they would have found a way to tackle this topic by way of allegory instead of making space Catholocism, space Theosophy and space Islam.
>Look at you, celebrating someone else's failure. That's very big of you, anon.
I am absolutely sick of those edgy losers. They wonder why people are becoming more communist, atheist, or trans when they do everything they can to present God in a negative light to everyone that they meet.
The youth has Christian trait of charity and benevolence which is why they identify as left-leaning socialists or liberals, but these clowns constantly squander it.
I hear you, but I just felt that should be said all the same. It does you no good to lash out at that guy; he's looking for a fight with anyone that will give it to him.
I also think that even if that guy is being an internet tough guy and an butthole that the heart of what he's trying to say, that we shouldn't be content to rest on our laurels, is valid. I readily admit that I could be misunderstanding him.
>we shouldn't be content to rest on our laurels
Precisely, and that is why I called him out. People into that edgy brand of Christianity end up becoming atheist or pagan the moment they hear a sermon about assisting refugees.
Everyone have to feel it within their heart to change themselves, and if your words and actions make the majority of people quit or not want to do it in the first place then you want to rethink your approach.
Please have the self awareness to realize that it is absolute lunacy to tell people to give everything up for old people and losers that will never be satisfied with what you sacrifice for them. A lot of people are non-Christian because they see plenty of successful non-Christian intellectuals that are 10x more young, charitable, and benevolent.
Again, I hear you, I even largely agree with you, but you're making an awful lot of assumptions and, in my opinion, catastrophizing a bit.
I personally think that guy in that Tweet would have done better to not mention the state-endorsed "all lives matter" slogans and instead just focus on love. Saying things like "black lives matter" and "trans lives matter" amounts to saying obvious truisms, and I personally believe that singling out specific demographics only serves to embolden readers and listeners to focus on identity politics and contrast our differences instead of highlighting what we have in common, which is a need to love and be loved. I hope you understand what I mean.
>Religion is extremely divisive.
>Even Christians fight each other over the most minimal of differences
Portraying sectarian differences within a faith would be great, though. I'd love to hear debates on Ganker or even reddit about which faction is right and which one is wrong.
It's not interesting, it is just tiring and dumb like console wars. Instead of being happy that some still remain in the faith despite it having mostly empty pews consisting of old people and miserable losers, they want to whittle the remaining few away lmao.
I'm talking about in vidya
Holy shit you think Bethesda devs are smart? They work at Bethesda, the company synonymous with low effort bug-riddled games with boring samey npcs and empty open worlds, they can't be that smart.
this guy sounds like a midwit
lmao this dumb moron actually thought this shitty ass story will change anyones worldviews
holy kek
>writes a story about a son finding his father
>writes a story about a father finding his son
>just hamfists it in there despite such a personal connection being massively at odds with the freeroaming "be whatever kind of person you want to be" nature of the world and setting
It's a mediocre space game that does absolutely nothing new
Is everyone at Bethesda this fricking pretentious?
I'm left to assume that everyone who isn't doing gruntwork is at this point. I can't imagine working for someone like this.
>Former Bethesda writer is a Jesuit
Absolutely no surprises there
No but noticed andreja talking about things muslims do. Like killing the equivalent of a pet goat when you are a child so it is easier for them to kill later in life. Pretty messed up
His writing is fricking trash
Did some digging. I'm not surprised but still kek..
Saying that lives matter is such an insultingly stupid platitude. It’s as if they’re just baiting people into saying the opposite so they can take the moral high ground without any real effort.
Yeah it's not like the moment people started saying it other people started sperging out insisting they also matter because they misconstrued it as an attack on themselves
I can't really fault those people for feeling attacked by someone who is basically implying that they don't care about certain human lives. I mean, he already said the same thing but better with
>Everyone is worthy of love.
If black lives matter so much blacks should stop murdering each other every five minutes and take care of their own fricking kids.
Therapeutic "Christianity". Disgusting. God loves you and wants you to be better.
>What you are, in this moment right now, is enoughh
unironic heresy
Yup.
If my choices matter then why is fricking everyone in Starfield essential? Why can't I persist in the doomed world I have created.
Now that I think of it, Groundhog Day does Starfield better than Starfield does.
I won't lose faith, but the idea of humanity going into space yet remaining obese and adopting a diaper suit aesthetic makes me want to kill myself.
I get exactly what you mean. The picture of the future that Starfield paints is as bleak to me as a lot of purposefully dystopian works of fiction. It depicts a world where the entirety of human civilization has come to mirror Los Angeles.
Hallowed be they name, xir kingdom come, hirself will be done
I really wish this game had even attempted to tackle the things this guy is describing in earnest. I would have been able to look past the awful gameplay and character writing if it did.
I lost faith alright, in Bethesda that is.
Same here.
I skipped Fallout 4 and 76 when they released despite enjoying Skyrim. I picked up Fallout 4 on a whim last year while it was deeply discounted and bounced right off of it after just a few hours. Never bothered playing 76 since I only heard awful things about it from other people.
Starfield was the last chance I was willing to give them as someone who was excited to gobble up the teaser trailer for TES6. I have no interest whatsoever in playing the next Elder Scrolls game now.
Same exact thing I did, I have no hopes for TES6, it's gonna be jank and soulless, and they refuse to actually fix the limitations in their engine.
Why is this man still employed after FO3. You can feel his touches all over starfield, and they're bad.
>but not dive too far down the rabbit hole — you don’t want to offend people.
absolute cowards.
It's all about accentuating the theology vibes bro. Substance is overrated; style is where it's at. Butt-ugly, uninspired style, specifically.
>or lose faith
I know I did. This game is basically the anti-thesis for their world building philosophy
HOW about that Frickin' homosexual get the frick out of writing video games plotline because every game he write for it's story is Shit.
>sci-fi setting with religion
>no cult centered around merging with machines and becoming a hivemind
One job
>atheists talk about religion and God
anyway..
It's interesting, but you're not going to get a deep discussion of theology from a game unless you get people of exceptionally deep religious backgrounds to do it because ultimately it's a totally different world for them.
I've been hanging out with a lot of super Orthodox guys recently and I realized that they were drawing really complex spiritual questions out of stuff that I couldn't see at all because I'm from a Protestant family, have you ever heard one of these people go off about "Gnostics" and now everything is somehow Gnosticism? That's not a term anyone except they use, because to normal people "Gnosticism" was some heretical sect from 800 years ago.
Starfield like most media does not engage with religion in a particularly cerebral way and honestly that's probably for the best, because just to start with I've always been of the opinion that maybe 5% of people are intelligent enough to even understand deep theology if explained in detail, and of that 5% perhaps 5% have any actual use for it. Jesuits are actually proof of this, they obsessively learned theology, and upon discovering that the practical applications of theology are basically nonexistent, they gave up that and switched over to being the Catholic CIA.
All very fair points. I just think that if the lead writer of this game is going to talk the talk about tackling subjects like this that he should really walk the walk, you know? It's not as if I don't know any better, but I just wish people like Pagliarulo who are going to say stuff like this when they have such a vast platform would realize the gravity of what they're talking about.
>have you ever heard one of these people go off about "Gnostics" and now everything is somehow Gnosticism?
I haven't, no, but that sounds like some very interesting company to keep. I've actually never met an Orthodox Christian before. My immediate family are all agnostic but were raised by Protestants, but ironically I hold a very similar outlook on Gnosticism that your Orthodox friends have. I'm not really a fan of the pessimistic, self-loathing brand of Gnosticism that /x/ loves to talk about.
Forgive me for blogging a bit here, but I have a bit of a unique perspective on religion that has always driven me to question it and strive for deeper understanding. When my agnostic parents divorced, my dad remarried a woman who would only marry him on the condition that we all convert to Christianity. Methodism, specifically. Being forced to convert to a religion when I was a bookworm child who was allowed a lot of unsupervised internet time led me to try and learn as much about the history of the church as I possibly could, which also led me down the path of trying to understand the mystery schools and Gnosticism.