A matter of taste

I hesitated a long time to bring this up. Design and looks are a matter of personal taste. But POE and I are taking different directions for a long time now.

I initially liked POE for the 'exile' look and feel. A deserted land to discover and to survive. With my christian background I was happy that I could comfortably play this game surviving some zombies, roa's and some magical monsters like Merveil and later on Vaal. The direction of POE was pretty neutral. Just a fantasyland with an unique setting.

This made it unique from games like Diable where the hell theme makes me uncomfortable playing it. Im not forbidding designs like Diablo. I just don't feel like being in hell for fun, even when it's 'just a game'. Hell as a bad place you don't want to be is just something thats engraved in my soul.

Then Crown of Thorns as an unique was released. I thought: err... I see the pain theme, but it's sort of the first direct religious reference in the game. Ok, maybe it was an accident. Ill just ignore the item and continue playing the game.

Then act 3 was released. The crematorium instance was the first place I really did not like. The covered pile of bodies @ Piety reminded me of pictures in my history book from events we all wish to forget and never repeat. Why piles of bodies in a crematorium themed setting? Sobibor and Auschwitz had them too. I am playing a game for Piety sake... I don't want associations with some of the worst acts of horror the world has seen when trying to have some fun. Not cool at all.

Later on Act 3 contains more piles of bodies with the Piety fight as crescendo where rivers of blood surround your descent and your path is sometimes blocked with piles of naked bodies. I am used to it now, but if you look at it from a neutral perspective its just bad taste and even kind of pubertal. It's as if GGG tried to hard to design horror.

The first real religious theme is suddenly introduced with a god and a high priest called Dominus wich is a latin name for the christian God. I was really sad when it happend.

The introduction of the masters gave us more religious themed conversations and quests. Demons are introduced as a MTX.
Crucifixions appear on the strands in Act 1.

Act 4 gave us some more ridiculous horror. GGG, come on. An arse hole? I'm not playing that part for fun. As far I know nobody is.

Most of the replies in this topic might be negative towards me being oversensitive and such. But I am a player too and this is my feedback.

Summary: for further expansions, please give us a nice theme instead of bad taste pubertal horror and misplaced religious references.

There has always been an extremely strong religious focus in the story of PoE. One of the playable characters is an exiled Templar of the church. Every character was exiled because of the machinations of the church by Dominus himself. The big bad had existed in PoE lore long before he was ever introduced as a fightable character.

Many of the actions of the church and Dominus himself are historical references. Experimenting on human subjects in order to master Thaumaturgy is an extremely direct reference to Nazi experimentation on the jews during WW2; both with similar quasi-religious reasoning for why members of the church are allowed to harm and murder non-members. It's not supposed to make you feel great inside, but it's equally no worse than embracing our own history.

I believe you may have just missed this large part of the story; GGG didn't add it in recently. I also don't know if any of it is 'misplaced'.

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The 'gory' horror in act 4 is certainly a new trend. They were trying to create an extremely unsettling place with artistic focus on exaggerated body parts, trypophobia, and other instinctual fears.

It looks like they aren't continuing this trend. The new content in 2.2 is focused around the Labyrinth which should be focusing more on scary torture instruments, traps, and simple things like dismemberment and maiming.

Thanks for the constructive answers so far.

Pneuma,

For me a Labyrinth theme feels different. It has a strong game element and there is no historical fact in the real world that resembles a labyrinth with the pain and horror as for example the Nazi behaviour.
It depends a little bit on the realisation, but I'm not negative about that direction.

Back to the lore: you might be correct and I might have been naive, but it does not change the way I feel about certain parts of the game.

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Experimenting on human subjects in order to master Thaumaturgy is an extremely direct reference to Nazi experimentation on the jews during WW2; both with similar quasi-religious reasoning for why members of the church are allowed to harm and murder non-members. It's not supposed to make you feel great inside, but it's equally no worse than embracing our own history.

I don't see the game element in this. What's the purpose? To shock? To learn? To entertain?

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Kaw wrote:

"

Experimenting on human subjects in order to master Thaumaturgy is an extremely direct reference to Nazi experimentation on the jews during WW2; both with similar quasi-religious reasoning for why members of the church are allowed to harm and murder non-members. It's not supposed to make you feel great inside, but it's equally no worse than embracing our own history.

I don't see the game element in this. What's the purpose? To shock? To learn? To entertain?

It's a hamfisted way to show what kind of church the Church of Oriath is. Using a bunch of historical references (like, how Wraeclast is pretty much just Australia) is a shortcut to get a bunch of story across quickly. I'm sure it's also entertaining to some.

The Orathian church extends past the walls of the church and is really talking about the entire governance, military, art, and economy in one big monoculture. Everything is ruled by the higher-ups in the church (not unlike Roman Catholicism during the Dark Ages). High Templars were given absolute authority to do whatever they wanted and, typically, to abuse that authority absolutely.

The various avatars were all exiled, but upon inspection, the reasons for their exile were mostly trumped up. For example, the Marauder was defending his home from Orathian empire and was punished for fighting back (see also, every island nation that Britain, France, Spain, or the Netherlands turned into a slave colony).

Notably, the Templar was exiled because he was speaking out against the corruption and injustices of the church.

Seeing the church do these horrible things brings the player closer to the player-character. You already knew that you were punished unjustly, but to also see under the veil of the church authority into what kind of people they are makes it easy to murder them in return.

Finally getting to kill Dominus after seeing what all he did (or what he ordered Piety to do) should be cathartic.

Pneuma,

I am not sure what to say now. I guess thank you for the patience and the long explaination. :)

Talking about the other lore: it doesn't feel like one epic story. You have the Merveil story, you have the Vaal story, you have the piety/dominus story, you have the act4 arse thing again with Piety. It might be my problem, but in other RPG's things are more clearly connected and the lore experience is more fluent.
I play the game for the mechanics and will continu to do so until the choosen lore drives me finally away from the game. I don't want to play a game that I feel embarrassed to show to my wife or (young) children. I avoid enough places already in the game.

Merveil is just in the way. She's a quick side-story. The only reason you're going through the Coves and her lair is because the overland route was blocked off by Piety.

Similarly getting into Sarn itself is a bunch of side content. You shouldn't have to care about the baleful gem and the spear, but "the tree roots block your way". Helping the bandits out is one step above "I need you to kill 6 snow moose". The pyramid rising up into the outskirts of Sarn is one of my least favorite parts of the storyline, actually. It just seems extremely implausible.

The story, in a nutshell, is basically Piety. You get exiled, your ship wrecks, and you're on the beach instead of in the back of a cart headed directly to the experimentation chambers. You wander a bit, listen to the locals, and head to the Prison. There you meet Piety. You follow her, you follow her, you follow her, you find out what you were going to be used for (and how fucked up the church is) and then you kill her. For good measure, you kill Dominus too, when you find out he's nearby.

Act four kinda goes off the rails. Piety is still involved, and the reason that Dominus (and the church and everyone) is so evil is because of Lucife-I mean Malachai.

So you kill the eternal embodiment of evil by shooting arrows at it. ¯\(°_o)/¯

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The writing for PoE was intended to be "out of the way". Lots of games forcefeed you the storyline, but they wanted most of the story of the game to be in flavor texts of uniques, random lore spots on the overworld, and snippets of dialogue from someone in town that is never required to read. It was a rejection of the "overloring" that most other games find themselves in and because the game was meant to be replayed so much.

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The game was, I believe, never rated outside of New Zealand. It was rated 16+ there (iirc), which is at least M in the States, possibly even NC-17 due to Lunaris alone. The targeted audience is certainly not children nor PG-13.

Does Steam have any content warnings on it?

As someone who suffered through catholic private education, I can tell you that the religious overtones to the game are well placed. In fact, from the crucified bodies on the beach, to Dominus the evil-pope, to Voll's crusade... it's all pretty spot on and appropriate. For a dark fantasy game like PoE it doesn't feel misplaced at all to me.
Which brings me to my point: Dark Fantasy. Dark. This isn't Barbie's Funhouse. This isn't Hello Kitty's island adventure. It's Path of Exile. The recurring theme in the story is that powerful people (Atziri, Chitus, Dominus, Malachi, Piety) are prepared to grind thousands of humans into a thin paste if it serves their needs and they'll justify it to themselves any way they can. Because of this I see the Josef Mengele type of experimentation going on in act III to be appropriate. I see the holocaust imagery as not only appropriate, but vital to show the scope of crimes that Dominus and Piety have committed. These aren't just bad guys. They didn't kidnap the princess and hide her in a castle on world 8. They committed genocide. The big bad boss at the end of the game corrupted the whole continent, turned thousands upon thousands of people into hideous monsters. Killed countless people... All so he could have a jolly good time using the world as a Lego set.

TLDR
Shit's dark, son. Appropriately dark.

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scale_e wrote:

As someone who suffered through catholic private education, I can tell you that the religious overtones to the game are well placed. In fact, from the crucified bodies on the beach, to Dominus the evil-pope, to Voll's crusade... it's all pretty spot on and appropriate. For a dark fantasy game like PoE it doesn't feel misplaced at all to me.
Which brings me to my point: Dark Fantasy. Dark. This isn't Barbie's Funhouse. This isn't Hello Kitty's island adventure. It's Path of Exile. The recurring theme in the story is that powerful people (Atziri, Chitus, Dominus, Malachi, Piety) are prepared to grind thousands of humans into a thin paste if it serves their needs and they'll justify it to themselves any way they can. Because of this I see the Josef Mengele type of experimentation going on in act III to be appropriate. I see the holocaust imagery as not only appropriate, but vital to show the scope of crimes that Dominus and Piety have committed. These aren't just bad guys. They didn't kidnap the princess and hide her in a castle on world 8. They committed genocide. The big bad boss at the end of the game corrupted the whole continent, turned thousands upon thousands of people into hideous monsters. Killed countless people... All so he could have a jolly good time using the world as a Lego set.

TLDR
Shit's dark, son. Appropriately dark.

+1, I couldn't agree more.

Scale_e hit it right on the head. The game is intentionally dark, mature, and full of references and symbolism.

Also, not all parts of a game are necessarily meant to be entertaining. Spec Ops: The Line has a narrative that very vividly showcases some of the effects that war and violence can have on a person's mind. It is not an entertaining game.

An interactive medium like video games offers possibilities for storytelling that noninteractive ones like movies and books can't provide. (Likewise, books, movies, and other noninteractive media have certain things that just wouldn't be feasible or possible to do in a video game).

It is a legitimate opinion to find the images and story unsettling and distasteful. That's exactly what they're meant to be. Whether you're up for experiencing such content is up to you, and I wouldn't fault you at all for avoiding it. If it's more disturbing than interesting then by all means do what works for you.

But do keep in mind it does have content that is a commentary on real life events (in addition to exploring new possibilities), and it's meant to make people think and ponder over those things. It's not for everyone, but it is meaningful and there are people who have gotten something beneficial out of it.