[SPOILERS] What are they guilty of?

[RadioMars]

So I finished the game with both endings, and I still have no clue what the hell did they do? The woman who created Mea Culpa? The Penitent One? What have they done? It doesn't seem that guilt means anything plotwise in this game. It's just a word that sorta connects the plot. Did I miss something?

[AveFerrum]

I've been puzzling a bit over the lore in this game, but as far as I can tell the Penitent One takes part in a cycle, since at the end an individual appears to pull Mea Culpa from the Penitent One's petrified body, similar to the very start of the game. I do not think the woman at the start of the game created Mea Culpa, but was one of it's (many) bearers.

The cycle seems to involve an individual (first the unnamed petrified woman, then the Penitent One, lastly the woman that pulls the sword from the Penitent One's body) that collects and atones for the collective guilt of Custodia. The goal of this seems to be to counteract the influence of the Grievous Miracle.

To be honest, Blasphemous is very cryptic, but I think the lore is quite rich. It takes some time and thought to put it all together coherently. I'm curious what others have put together so far.

[Xavi-Da-Imp]

Originally posted by RunsWithBears:

I've been puzzling a bit over the lore in this game, but as far as I can tell the Penitent One takes part in a cycle, since at the end an individual appears to pull Mea Culpa from the Penitent One's petrified body, similar to the very start of the game. I do not think the woman at the start of the game created Mea Culpa, but was one of it's (many) bearers.

The cycle seems to involve an individual (first the unnamed petrified woman, then the Penitent One, lastly the woman that pulls the sword from the Penitent One's body) that collects and atones for the collective guilt of Custodia. The goal of this seems to be to counteract the influence of the Grievous Miracle.

To be honest, Blasphemous is very cryptic, but I think the lore is quite rich. It takes some time and thought to put it all together coherently. I'm curious what others have put together so far.

In the comic Penitent One is not the first one that tried (or were forced to tried - its hard to tell who the Penitent Ones suppose to be). Most were killed by that golden lady - even the PC was gutted by her and dumped down. Also we can see ingame mountains of bodies with that weird helmets. As far as I can tell the good ending is actually breaching the cycle, since we see normal people praying to the throne and not all those abominations. I think the bad ending was somehow what other Penitent Ones did before him - meaning being unworthy and adding to the pile of ash.

And that lady pulls out that sword from him, becouse she is a stupid zealot that wants nothing more then making the Penitend One to be forgoten and not worshiped by the mass, which propadlly was a great afront for her. And as every stupid fanatic she fubared up everything hard.

And for WHY are they guilty? When churches outnumber everyone 2 to 1 it is hard NOT to be guilty of not adequate worship. That Miracle thing is kinda of a curse after all :)

Hey but that is just a theory. A BLASPHEMOUS THEORY! ;)

[RadioMars]

A lot of people see the pulling of the sword in the beggining as the same to the one in the end, but in fact it's the exact opposite. It rhymes, but it's not the same act at all. Here's why:
The one who pulls the sword in the end is Crisanta. She's the one who fights you before the final boss. She is also the one who is partly responsible for the massacre of the Brotherhood of the Silent Sorrow. She is also the one who throws you in the pit in the beggining of the game. The Penitent One survives because just before he claimed Mea Culpa, which is reincarnaton of the Sword of The Father, as it is said in additional comic. The nameless woman forged it as an act of surrendering to The Miracle, but she didn't seal anything within it. She just shaped the sword itself. Crisanta is also a penitent one, and it is said in the comic that her vow is blindness. That is symbolic, because she can't see the truth and she tries to stop the Penitent One from performing the communion with the sword. It is also said that her penance is the opposite of the main character's. Her goal is the opposite. The Penitent One claims the sword for the very specific reason. As you said, it is to counteract the influence of the Miracle. Crisanta on other hand act in the opposite direction. It is not clear if she wishes for the Miracle to be eternal, or otherwise, but it is clear that her goal is to stop The Penitent One. In the end she pulls the sword from his body, not because she wants to become the next martyr, but because she wants to "erase his name from history". She's basically mad at him, because in her words, their next battle would end with a "second kneeling" of the Penitent One, while in reality she got her ass kicked and even the pope himself was dethroned. By the time she pulls the sword out, it is filled with the collective guilt of Custodia, like you said. Basically the Penitent One is a Jesus figure. He claims all the quilt around and stabs himself with it. Crisanta is not having it at all. There is no way her actions in the end are driven by self sacraficial will to absorb the sins. There is no reason for her to undo the act of Penitent One. It would be stupid. I don't think there really is a cycle in this game. It's not Dark Souls. The only reason the horrors of Grievous Miracle will repeat is because of the foolishenss of Crisanta who just couldn't stand the fact that her beliefs were wrong

[RadioMars]

It still seems that the guilt in this game is not an actual guilt. It's not like the Penitent One ate a baby or something. He's just guilty because reasons, and that goes for every single character. It's almost like they seem to THINK they are guilty, instead of actually being guilty of some horrible deeds. Like an exaggerated version of the original sin, that is supposed to make people sinfull by default. Now that I think of it, maybe it's supposed to be an analogy for exactly that?

[AveFerrum]

Originally posted by RadioMars:

snip

I hadn't even noticed that the figure that pulls the sword from the Penitent One in the end is Crisanta, but you're right. Same voice, same line of dialogue ("And thus shall your name be erased under the heavens.")

Interesting... But also puzzling.

Then perhaps the events in Blasphemous aren't part of a cycle, but rather an ongoing struggle.

On the topic of guilt... I'm not so certain. Like you say, the Penitent One resembles a Jesus-figure in many ways and it seems to me that he sacrifices himself for the sins (the guilt) of the inhabitants of Custodia.

One thing that continues to return in Blasphemous is the worship of saints, like His Holiness Escribar, Melquiades, The Exhumed Archbishop and Our Lady of the Charred Visage. To make
parallel to the real world, this (among other things) is a practice that was frowned upon in certain branches of Christianity because man would worship the earthly instead of the heavenly. They saw it as a corruption of the faith. Perhaps this constitutes a theme in Blasphemous aswell.

[Gwyn]

I think RadioMars closest here about lore. About guilt - as I see it, Penitent One marked as guilty, simply because he is nameless heretic, who're trying to undeservedly occupie High Pontiff throne. But his real intend was to take the throne and nail himself with mea culpa to it, so all religious ambitious people stoped drowning in the mountain of ash and turning into beasts, while trying to reach the throne. And about Twisted One, Nameless Lady and maybe some others - I think they felt themself deeply guilty, because they were silent and helpless against violence, injustice and horrors of their own church inquisition, which were burning whole villages even before first miracle.
I may be wrong in that understanding tho, because I could have missed something or misunderstood - just interpretation.

[Gwyn]

And no, Penitent One doesn't resembles anyone.) Penitent One is a silent machine of destruction, ripping off guts, crushing bones and spilling liters of blood of his enemies, even though many of them are not humans anymore. Just because he sacrifices himself, like so many other characters in this game, doesn’t mean much. The game in general doesn't refer to any real religious aspect, just borrows esthetics, gothic/cathedral artstyle, rumors, legends and superstitions, tone of stiffness of the inquisition and basic moral/spiritual principles and based on them creates it's own fictional world.

[azhi.dahaka]

In some Christian views, especially when inspired by Saint Augustine, and in an accentuated manner by the Counter Reformation, one of whose central pastoral principles is to incite the faithful to very regularly look within for sinful thoughts and intentions, sin is an overpowering force, constantly renewed by the fact that the original sin is in everyone and the gifts of God can only point the faithful in the right direction but can never fully counteract their natural tendencies to commit faults. A great many daily actions no one would even notice nowadays are sins, sometimes mortal ones in the traditional Christian view. The world of Blasphemous is a world where that kind of view of sin has been demonstrated to be the right one by the Miracle. The High Wills, presumably knowing all of the sinful actions and thoughts of the world's inhabitants, and on the occasion of the Father asking for punishing pain, unleashed such pain on the whole world, in the form of the Miracle, poetically castigating everyone in proportion of their guilt, but also granting those who ask for them blessings, also in the form of pain (not their own, but that of others they protect; presumably it is because of the ever suffering Mother that the Anointed Legion kept their sanity and autonomy relatively intact, their burden shouldered by her). What differentiates damned from saints is that the former suffer unwillingly and often bestially, while the latter suffer willingly and rationally. The main fault of the Inquisition and the Church, as I understand, is to have confused saints for sinners, for instance in the case of Tertudia. The Penitent One's quest has as its goal both to correct this injustice and to free some of the damned from their punishment as well as allow the saints to pass away after having meritoriously suffered, at the cost of his own suffering; indeed a completely Christic figure. What happens to all on the other side of the Dream is anyone's guess.

[RadioMars]

Originally posted by azhi.dahaka:

In some Christian views...

Great insight! Makes perfect sense