GGG, could you tell us what is going on with the Nazi-reference in act 5?

OMG!
NAZIS!
AAAAAAHHHHH!!!
TRIGGERED !

Low hanging fruit concern trolling right there.

This empire symbolism was one out of two things related to art I loved most about the big announcement. You can guess what was the other.

Of course people will get triggered once again, but trying to hide it behind "immersion" this time, well, whatever. PoE is a fantasy game, it takes inspiration from pretty much anywhere, that is how pop culture works. You can look in the history and make a movie about Hitler or you can just take bits and pieces of history and put them in different setting in an imaginary world. But everything that comes from our heads is somehow related to reality, the only problem here is in consumer's insecurity and a problem with distinguishing between fantasy and reality.

That is why things like this are not considered suitable for children, they still may have problems with mixing reality and fantasy, but if you're playing PoE you should be old enough to be able to separate them properly and appreciate the concepts and ideas rather than get confused and possibly damaged.

Ok, it seems that this thread again starts to gather all sorts of comments from people with...questionable reasoning abilities, so I will just start ignoring these more obvious one-syllable screams into the void that revolve around the same five internet buzzwords like a crowd of hungry dung flies.

To answer to wiggin, who at least was able to formulate an actual (kind of) argument:

"

This empire symbolism was one out of two things related to art I loved most about the big announcement. You can guess what was the other.

Of course people will get triggered once again, but trying to hide it behind "immersion" this time, well, whatever. PoE is a fantasy game, it takes inspiration from pretty much anywhere, that is how pop culture works.

First of all I would advise you to stay away from hollow internet phrases if you are trying to make a serious point. People being "triggered" is something that apparently sounds really cool the more it gets repeated over mindless internet posts, but it does not help your case due to it's sheer vagueness.

To put it more bluntly: The person who brought forth this point in this case is me, I do not do this on a regular basis (so why the "once again"?) and if by "triggered" you mean that I feel that GGG is making a poor design choice imo and I would like to know why, then yeah, that is it. You go to a "I feel that BV is OP!!!" post and tell them that they are triggered as well?

So no, I do not try to hide it behind "immersion", but actually talk about that, and in quite a length as well.

"

You can look in the history and make a movie about Hitler or you can just take bits and pieces of history and put them in different setting in an imaginary world. But everything that comes from our heads is somehow related to reality, the only problem here is in consumer's insecurity and a problem with distinguishing between fantasy and reality.


That is why things like this are not considered suitable for children, they still may have problems with mixing reality and fantasy, but if you're playing PoE you should be old enough to be able to separate them properly and appreciate the concepts and ideas rather than get confused and possibly damaged.

Whoa, strong tobacco there my friend. You open up a whole box of statements that are like unfitting pieces of a puzzle you try to shove into the open spaces of my argument, nonetheless they are not only misfitting, but also sound quite...off to me.

Firstly, "insecurity" is certainly not the word to just throw around in that context, since it plainly is just a buzzword you did not think two seconds about. Insecure about what? I am very secure about firstly what I think is good design and what not, and secondly what I like to experience from a game with such a generally high enjoyment as this one. Not more or less.

And in regard to the distinction of reality: Is it not more so that your concept of fiction and reality is just plain black and white, while mine is more nuanced? For you things are either fictional or not, even when you give in that the fiction is always inspired by real world events. Now I would argue that actually there is a scale on how closely this fiction is modeled after said reality, and how "meta" the connections are. To put it in perspective of PoE: Thus far PoE has been it's own self contained fictional universe, which borrows heavily from cultural influences of the Maoris, greco-roman aesthetics, a up-until-victorian-times middle european influence, some slight steam punk, as well as a general allusion towards a totalist group around a leading figure. And then suddenly you put in a very clear connection to the Nazis, without even trying to let it blend into the fictional universe. A little 4th wall break, you could call it. But why? And that is where my questioning comes into play...

"

AeshMezareph wrote:

snip

I am saying that people (but I apologize, because it probably really sounded like I meant "the OP") are getting triggered* once again because there has been such sentiments in past. Swastika shaped dungeon crossroad, dead babies, piles of bodies in Lunaris, globe ladies, divination card art... Your arguments are based on the fact that it resembles real world events but there is many other things in this and other games, almost everything comes from somewhere else, be it old stories which are based on real world or on the real events themselves. It doesn't hold as an argument alone. Because of that I admit I assumed that there must be more to that; if there wasn't then there wouldn't be any problem at all.

You don't like it, but I don't mind it at all, I think it works great in the trailer. That is what your feedback says: "I don't like it." But there is no objective reason why is it "wrong", although there was some effort to make it sound that way. Seems like a simple matter of taste to me.

Insecurity was, I think, the right word to be used in this case - getting emotinal about a piece of fantasy. The so called nazis could arguably be reference to other big empires in our history, or not. And it probably is again multiple sources influenced art. And as you say, PoE borrows from here and there, then it borrowed from something you feel emotinoal about and suddenly wall of text...
Personally I think it fits smoothly, we have seen what Piety and her people did. But this is really just based on the trailer, I'd rather judge how well it fits in the story after playing it.

For me the reference itself doesn't matter, it simply uses some symbolism and principals of totalitarian organisation to depict one - clearly. For an ordinary adult it cannot get close enough to reality because they would be aware that it is all happening inside a video game. The distinction is clear because of context inside the game, too. Even movies that are describing history are not showing the history itself, they are actors replaying some version of history.

Not sure if trolling or just a modern weakling.

"

MinasMorgul wrote:

Not sure if trolling or just a modern weakling.

Looks like debate club practice.

First it was a guy who was offended by demons and symbols in a fantasy game, now this. Stop ruining games you dark age witch hunting assholes!

Symbolism as a form of creativity and expression is used worldwide in literature, art, movies, games, etc. if it gets you triggered your problem lies elsewhere, seek professional help.

First world problems be like this thread here.

"

sidtherat wrote:

time heals wounds they say

for many Europeans it wont heal these wounds ever.

seeing someone - probably young and never soiled by war (were there any wars in new zeland ever?) - using such cheap tricks to convey a message is just sad

No... just no. As a european the best thing that can happen is that those symbols pop up and create a discussion about and if just one person looks things up and informs himself about what happen it is already a good thing.

Path of Exile in general shows some very dark parts of our history. They have put the thing on religious fanatism, because there are a lot of similarities to the inquisition (although they actually burned real witches) and Theopolis during its time seems to have gone through all the bads our world has brought up, from roman decadency to a theocratic dictatorship right into facism (the symbolism and all that is not just present in germany, italy and other facistic regimes used pretty similar symbols because they all compared themself to the roman emperors.

Considering that I come from the country that was the origin of all that, we still learn an incredible amount about this in school, which is very important. But this might not be the case in other places of the world. And while you cannot use most symbols in germany this is not true for many other countries. And if you look around you should remember how the NS regime came into existance. It wasn't by overthrowing the democratic government, it was by being elected.

So look around if someone tries to reign in media, judicary systems or other checks and balances most democracies have their might be trouble.

I can't say how the story in PoE unfolds and how much they have taken care to create a bit of thinking inside their players (if they care, if they just run around killing the badguys, they won't notice much). And I cannot check that without having the game here. If done right it helps, not by much, because I assume many people don't really dig too deep into the story. It is kinda hard to even get younger audiences to learn about those things and games could help, but it isn't too easy to do it right, but this doesn't mean you shouldn't try it. Books or movies already did that, so why shouldn't games be able to do the same.

Oh noes!
Someone got offended over something on the internet.

Someone intruding on your world wide web safe-space?