"lightbringer" and Lucifer

[Red Star, Blood Moon]

So just about how much of this game is literally working for Satan, without like a major spoiler? Because it's so obvious yet somehow I'm supposed to be a good guy that the whole narrative ark is already kind of killing my joy of it and I'm only like 2 hours into the game. I saw the Ember Mother card in my inventory and I'm just like, eh...why am I even pretending that this thing isn't an evil demon again? It's pretty blatant the whole way through so far that these are supposed to be like fallen angels or something. Do I have any amount of choices in this game? Can I ally with the darkbringers?

[Sufferin' Pup]

First of all, the game has no connection at all to real-world religion. There are no angels or demons or devils or anything like that. The name Lightbringer is literal, you bring light to the Embers via mysterious magical powers (explained via the lore as you play and read the books).

The story is really about the Embers, and what they really are, what people are doing with/to them, and how you deal with it.

I don't want to spoil anything, but we made it obvious what the Ember Mother's deal was on purpose. We felt that the fun of the story was figuring out what she really is, why people seem to be okay with it, and to see how you can change the status quo (or not!). Most of the big choices are late in the game, but they can change how things turn out in major ways.

[Natacha Gronlova]

Originally posted by BlackSun:

So just about how much of this game is literally working for Satan, without like a major spoiler? Because it's so obvious yet somehow I'm supposed to be a good guy that the whole narrative ark is already kind of killing my joy of it and I'm only like 2 hours into the game. I saw the Ember Mother card in my inventory and I'm just like, eh...why am I even pretending that this thing isn't an evil demon again? It's pretty blatant the whole way through so far that these are supposed to be like fallen angels or something. Do I have any amount of choices in this game? Can I ally with the darkbringers?

If you can be a Darkbringer
I passed the game in all its difficulties and I read all the books
I found the secret way to be a hidden Darkbringer.

The form you discover for yourself if it does not ruin your story

The developers achieved an excellent job

This is a spoiler so stop reading if you do not want to be spoiled
There is a hidden dagger in a mountain which allows you in short to eradicate humanity and be a whole Darkbringer if you understand the definition of Darkbringer
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=841018636
Good luck in your choice.

[Red Star, Blood Moon]

Originally posted by Sufferin' Pup:

First of all, the game has no connection at all to real-world religion. There are no angels or demons or devils or anything like that. The name Lightbringer is literal, you bring light to the Embers via mysterious magical powers (explained via the lore as you play and read the books).

And yet I'm very early in the game and I see crosses and angel statues everywhere, the language often seems incredibly almost direct at times, and I mean just look at the background. Hearing this it's like, yeah yeah yeah okay so you want to play coy while seemingly deliberately using all these motifs, including having a "race" of magical energy beings falling from the sky, and doing absolutely everything in your power to make absolutely sure people form just that exact connection including just look at the background behind this page. That is quite clearly a demon. Knowing full well that in Western culture at least "Lucifer" which literally means "lightbringer" is associated with Satan, if you didn't want that connection, you wouldn't have gone completely out of your way to specifically render the "mother of 'lightbringers'" as a female demon. Or have routinely used tons of assets just in my first 2-3 hours clearly depicting these as angelic beings in the same sense of Western depictions of angels and demons.

Look I don't mean to rag on you but it's just seemingly disingenuous to act like you don't see how people would find it impossible not to think this, and it'd been starting to really remind me of one of my biggest issues with PoE. This is a pretty fantastically done game so far, and I like lots of background story and lore, but it just keeps reminding me of Pillars of Eternity and animancy. You see, the problem with animancy in PoE wasn't just that it was necromancy, or that the devs hadn't even bothered to try and make it sound less like necromancy, or even trying to portray necromancers as the good guys. The problem with PoE is they made the most basic mistake that in storytelling it's all about show don't tell, and in PoE what we were shown consistently time and again was that a) this was indeed necromancy, b) it was in fact even worse than necromancy because you're mutilating people's immortal souls to do it and proving souls are very real and it does work, c) building the whole game's narrative--not just the side quest or some secondary thing but the entirety of the main story--based on this while showing us very specifically time and time again that these are at best negligent or reckless people spelling disaster for those around them and while finally d) continually trying to push in complete bewildering dissonance to exactly what we've just been showing telling us some narrative about how animancy is a "science" and acting like anyone who disagrees with you is a superstitious peasant.

The problem with that is it makes the devs themselves sound like some kind of a sinister dystopian faction that remains unseen yet a palpable force of evil. It was like they went out of their way to at once shoehorn some really weird fedora crap about animancy in a way making the player feel browbeaten about it while specifically showing us time and again how completely evil the practice of animancy really is.

I bring this up because just early on in the game that's exactly how it often made me feel. I never played through it but I do know the story of Baldur's Gate enough I could also easily start to surmise that I am also something like the devil's chosen one or some kind of spawn of Satan just like you pretty much found out you were in BG 1 & 2 but at the same time the narrative structure so far is just so bizarre and I often feel like my first sidekick's prayers to "the goddess" are in reality to that hideous Satan thing and that the darkbringers probably did us a favor.

Again, I'm a new player who knows nothing about the background or lore of this game except what I've played and read since getting into Radiance, so make of it what you will.

The story is really about the Embers, and what they really are, what people are doing with/to them, and how you deal with it.

I don't want to spoil anything, but we made it obvious what the Ember Mother's deal was on purpose. We felt that the fun of the story was figuring out what she really is, why people seem to be okay with it, and to see how you can change the status quo (or not!). Most of the big choices are late in the game, but they can change how things turn out in major ways.

Okay. Well like I said and it's a really ♥♥♥♥ move on my part to ask players about what could very reasonably be a common sense obvious seeming thing on the surface of a major plot twist with the added unreasonable demand of no spoilers, but that's just how my reactions to the game have been so far. Tbh part of it really is just a bad taste in my mouth from PoE still lol. Riddled with some of the worst game breaking bugs I've ever seen years after release and multiple irritating as all f%& central story segments to the point of making me think "oh god I hope this doesn't wind up like Poe"

Otherwise all the other stuff has been really fun so far and super well done to the point I couldn't even tell if it was a big team or just a small indie project of a couple of guys but with the amount of content I'm seeing I've been leaning more towards a very large team of people. Only thing I'd been uncertain of so far is the amount of choices in dialogue and whether there was like a hidden morality system or something, hence also asking about whether I'm given the option of siding with darksiders.

Thanks!

[Sufferin' Pup]

We were a pretty small team, maybe about 20 people at its highest, usually much smaller. We really didn't intend any of this to reflect anything in any real religion, if you are seeing connections we didn't mean them at all. But since I'm a developer you'll just have to trust me. Hopefully someone else that played the game can chime in and back me up. :)

Like the Assassin's Creed games say at the start: "This work of fiction was designed, developed and produced by a multicultural team of various religious faiths and beliefs."

[Red Star, Blood Moon]

Originally posted by Sufferin' Pup:

We were a pretty small team, maybe about 20 people at its highest, usually much smaller. We really didn't intend any of this to reflect anything in any real religion, if you are seeing connections we didn't mean them at all. But since I'm a developer you'll just have to trust me. Hopefully someone else that played the game can chime in and back me up. :)

Like the Assassin's Creed games say at the start: "This work of fiction was designed, developed and produced by a multicultural team of various religious faiths and beliefs."

...yet within just the first few hours it's been nonstop very specific signs and symbols that no one with even dim awareness of Western culture and mythologies would be confused about

Honestly the developer response so far has basically just been confirming things I was suspicious about after starting to play it. Like Diablo for example had pretty much nothing to do with Abrahamic religion directly but wasn't so lacking in self awareness to take issue with a game called Spanish for devil where you fight Hell's legions. You're asking me to somehow consciously overlook blatantly demonic portrayals for example of this "ember mother" and all the other stuff I mentioned for reasons I can only guess at.

[Red Star, Blood Moon]

Originally posted by BlackSun:

Originally posted by Sufferin' Pup:

We were a pretty small team, maybe about 20 people at its highest, usually much smaller. We really didn't intend any of this to reflect anything in any real religion, if you are seeing connections we didn't mean them at all. But since I'm a developer you'll just have to trust me. Hopefully someone else that played the game can chime in and back me up. :)

Like the Assassin's Creed games say at the start: "This work of fiction was designed, developed and produced by a multicultural team of various religious faiths and beliefs."

...yet within just the first few hours it's been nonstop very specific signs and symbols that no one with even dim awareness of Western culture and mythologies would be confused about

Honestly the developer response so far has basically just been confirming things I was suspicious about after starting to play it. Like Diablo for example had pretty much nothing to do with Abrahamic religion directly but wasn't so lacking in self awareness to take issue with a game called Spanish for devil where you fight Hell's legions. You're asking me to somehow consciously overlook blatantly demonic portrayals for example of this "ember mother" and all the other stuff I mentioned, and to not call or think of very obvious angel statues and demons on the cover art or to think of them as somehow not-demons, for reasons I can only guess at.

[Sufferin' Pup]

Only reason I responded to this thread was to reassure anyone else searching this specific thing (on google for instance) that we didn't intend anything in the game to be related to any real-world religion. Any parallels or imagery in the game that might be similar to a real religion are coincidental.

[Natacha Gronlova]

It's more than logical that he's just a troublemaker
What he says is irrational
If religion were your premise
He would have to be angry with 80% of the existing games

This publication does not make sense.

[Red Star, Blood Moon]

I wasn't really asking about playing lawyerball and again I just find all the handling of this question completely bizarre. It's not just any one thing. It is a consistent enough thing that I seriously cannot imagine the devs intending anything else than to draw the obvious association with lucifer and demons. Which again I also bring up the case of Diablo. The game clearly wasn't about the IRL Satan or Christianity and I don't think people would think that, despite the fact you've got a character literally named Mephisto, and the very title of the game being Spanish for "devil" and in the second game having an angel and Seraphim etc
https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/Angel

So if all of a sudden Blizzard started acting really bizarrely obtuse and slippery about it yeah, I'd find it incredibly. My only other conclusion here would have to be the devs wanted to push a very specific kind of agenda or narrative and are afraid of being called out on it, rather than just making a videogame about demons or angelic beings or whatever which are pretty common fantasy tropes.

In which case what tends to bother people is more the dishonesty of it than the message itself, since no one cares if a story is done well and "demons actually the good guys" is also a well known trope. But definitely to rag on PoE again, it's also kind of like how they bizarrely had the big reveal that the gods aren't real which was another case of tell, don't show, because the entire game had proven for a fact the gods are very real with concrete knowable powers in that universe baked right into stat changes causing a massive narrative/story dissonance. I mention this because again it's like, why these things were all done intentionally by the creators, meaning if it was a large instead of small team at best there's an internal communication failure somewhere in storyboarding and scripting scenes and dialogue.

Anyway whatever I think you pretty much answered the question in the first post about
>I don't want to spoil anything, but we made it obvious what the Ember Mother's deal was on purpose. We felt that the fun of the story was figuring out what she really is, why people seem to be okay with it, and to see how you can change the status quo (or not!). Most of the big choices are late in the game, but they can change how things turn out in major ways.
So some type of a succubus type thing

[Red Star, Blood Moon]

Originally posted by Owl and The Wyvern:

It's more than logical that he's just a troublemaker
What he says is irrational
If religion were your premise
He would have to be angry with 80% of the existing games

This publication does not make sense.

If a game like ember causes you outrage
At the moment of playing pillars of eternity and reaching the first city
I imagine you with torches chasing the staff of Obsidian Entertainment

I ask the developers to close this publication.
Many of us are subscribed to the forum to help new players in this beautiful game.

Alerts by a troublemaker are not welcome at all.

I asked a pretty simple question and it was the way the story got conveyed so far. Clearly you didn't even bother reading one bit of the thread and just came for no other reason than trolling then since you didn't bother reading my posts where I specifically mentioned the multiple design choices of PoE I found incredibly irritating purely from a storycrafting perspective and that this game kept giving me this weird feeling I'd end up with something similar but couldn't figure out why. It also has nothing to do with doctrines of any religion and I can't imagine how incredibly dumb or dishonest you'd have to be. Like I said in every post you obviously didn't read you can't specifically design something to show the player one thing, and then tell the player the opposite thing and not expect the player to be aggravated. The main story of PoE failed pretty hard in this area by, like I said, continually showing how horrible animancy was, and then simply telling the player without really showing them why it's supposedly a good thing. At the very best it's just pure laziness on the part of the writers, or complete failure to communicate a coherent story. You can tell any story just about any way you want to so long as you do it well.

[Natacha Gronlova]

Is it the first time you play a game with the characteristics of Ember ?

Try playing these titles and tell me how you feel religiously

Pillars of Eternity
Divinity: Original Sin
Bloodborne
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Dark Souls
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Tell me in these genres how many symbols offend you

Because if you do not get offended by any of these games

I really do not understand why this is so scabrous.

Now if the game you do not like do not play it

I have a question for you cultural lord

Are you a video game developer?

How many titles do I create?

Because it seems someone with a lot of experience ;D
To criticize a developer without having the slightest experience !

You make a comparison of Ember RPG
With Diablo and PoE games ARPG

Funny.