Sacred 3: If Someone Asks If You Are a God, You Say Yes!

[Yahtzee Croshaw]

Sacred 3: If Someone Asks If You Are a God, You Say Yes!

When you know a god actually, physically exists, does wanting to be one change from megalomania to just wanting a better lot in life?

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[Evonisia]

It seems like the villain here had the right idea, and exploiting everyone else to reach that point was just being clever. I wonder whether coming up with plans and having ambition makes you evil in a fantasy universe? Be it modern or past setting.

 

[Thanatos2k]

The gods tasking you to stop someone else from becoming a god doesn't even make sense. Why don't they just stop him themselves!? Wave your hand, whatever.

Even more nonsensically, if as a god you don't want people to be able to become gods, you definitely wouldn't tell others it's possible. You'd wipe Winker Watson off the map and make everyone forget what he was even trying to do.

So what you're saying is that Sacred 3 has bad writing.

 

[CaitSeith]

Ghostbusters reference!

OT: It's funny how the description of the fantasy world is very similar to how some religions describe the real world. Also, a society without middle class where the superior class was born with the ultimate level of privilege and the underclass have no power or deserve any? Pretty much the western society in the middle ages (which lasted 10 freaking centuries!)

 

[Kuredan]

One thing that stuck me is: if there are gods in a game and they are interventionist gods, why would you want to join them? That just seems like an immortal lifetime of celestial maintenance. "Oooh Our Terrance is god, inne? He's the one whats 'oldin up the firmament. Never comes to visit his poor ol mum anymore do 'e?" It's not like you can ever take a break; you're not some deist creator that has left the watch ticking, you've signed on to be an interventionist. Doesn't seem worth it.

 

[stringtheory]

One thing that stuck me is: if there are gods in a game and they are interventionist gods, why would you want to join them? That just seems like an immortal lifetime of celestial maintenance. "Oooh Our Terrance is god, inne? He's the one whats 'oldin up the firmament. Never comes to visit his poor ol mum anymore do 'e?" It's not like you can ever take a break; you're not some deist creator that has left the watch ticking, you've signed on to be an interventionist. Doesn't seem worth it.

I see a pantheon going either two ways. The first way is that the gods are all together and are relatively friendly (see the Greek Pantheon) and it's just a horrible bureaucracy with arguments over jurisdiction and everything takes an incredibly long time to get done. The other way is the D&D way with gods being 'good', 'neutral', or 'evil' and/or having their own celestial realm to rule over. In this version the gods are always trying to outmaneuver each other, taking petty slights way too seriously and the mortals getting shit on by all this. Yeah, my pantheons aren't usually too helpful to the mortals...

 

[Webb Myers]

I believe OOTS explained it well: http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0669.html

 

[Falseprophet]

Unless you go the route of, say, Raistlin in the Dragonlance Legends trilogy [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonlance_Legends], who knew the gods were real, had helped restore belief in them after centuries of divine abandonment, and had even talked to one or two of them personally, but still thought he could do a better job than they could. Then again, the gods of Krynn weren't the sharpest tools in the shed, so he might have had a point there.

Spoiler

His brother time travels to the future and learns that he couldn't: Allegedly, divine power without divine wisdom just leaves the world devoid of life.

That's not universal to all Dungeons & Dragons-based settings, though: most of the other ones had at least a mortal or two who achieved apotheosis without ending the world, though it might have felt otherwise at the time [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_of_Troubles_(Forgotten_Realms)].

 

[Robyrt]

Yahtzee is making a common mistake here by confusing polytheistic, lowercase gods with a monotheistic capital-G God.

In a polytheistic system, which is what most video games use, there are a variety of gods with limited power, especially over each other. "Becoming a god" is a reasonable life goal in this context, but the existing gods have a vested interest in keeping evil, selfish or destabilizing potential deities out of the pantheon, so it's also perfectly legitimate for them to conscript you to stop this from happening. It's like preventing ISIS from getting a seat on the UN Security Council: you can't fault them for trying, but you can't complain that James Bond was sent to stop them, either. Crucially, the afterlife is usually pretty depressing, so there is a big ethical incentive to stay alive, not kill people, etc.

In a monotheistic system, God has infinite power and wisdom, and is either a neutral-aligned embodiment of the universe or a Lawful Good interventionist deity. "Becoming God" in this context is something that only a bad guy would attempt, almost by definition, and any amount of force to keep that from happening is justified. The afterlife is usually great, but there are rules to discourage mass suicide.

The goldfish analogy is pretty apt here: imagine the universe as God's fish tank, where he has developed a sentimental attachment to us fish and occasionally reaches in to help us out. From the fish's perspective, his purposes are pretty much unknowable, but we can at least make a little happy dance in the water when the food is distributed to say thank you. The fish philosophers could reasonably conclude that the universe behaves in chaotic, random ways, but it isn't true.

 

[Zombie Badger]

If you had a Christian-like system where heaven was a perfect, wonderful existence then the most noble, heroic thing anyone could do would be to murder as many innocents as possible, to get them into heaven before they could offend God enough that he wouldn't want them anymore. A moment of pain as the knife enters their throat before an eternity of happiness, pleasure and fulfilment. What more could anyone ask for?

Also, how did you forget to reference this:

"The need to be observed and understood was once satisfied by god. Now we can implement the same functionality with data-mining algorithms. God and the gods were apparitions of observation, judgement and punishment. Other sentiments towards them were secondary.

The human organism always worships. First it was the gods, then it was fame (the observation and judgement of others), next it will be the self-aware systems you have built to realise truly omnipresent observation and judgement. The individual desires judgement. Without this desire, the cohesion of groups is impossible and so is civilisation.

The human being created civilisation not because of willingness but because of a need to be assimilated into higher orders of structure and meaning. God was a dream of good government. You will soon have your god, and you will make it with your own hands."
- Morpheus, Deus Ex

Edit: Isn't the whole godhood thing in Sacred 3 basically the same as in The Lawnmower Man?

 

[TheArchbishopJubilee]

If the proposition that "the world in which we live is...the result of random chaotic fluctuations" (and thereby disproves God), then this thought itself is also just the result of "random chaotic fluctuations," and therefore is true and false at the same time; is contradictory and self-refuting.

 

[Jorpho]

I found this vaguely profound. Moreso than anything in Mogworld, I daresay.

 

[Thanatos2k]

One thing that stuck me is: if there are gods in a game and they are interventionist gods, why would you want to join them? That just seems like an immortal lifetime of celestial maintenance. "Oooh Our Terrance is god, inne? He's the one whats 'oldin up the firmament. Never comes to visit his poor ol mum anymore do 'e?" It's not like you can ever take a break; you're not some deist creator that has left the watch ticking, you've signed on to be an interventionist. Doesn't seem worth it.

I see a pantheon going either two ways. The first way is that the gods are all together and are relatively friendly (see the Greek Pantheon) and it's just a horrible bureaucracy with arguments over jurisdiction and everything takes an incredibly long time to get done. The other way is the D&D way with gods being 'good', 'neutral', or 'evil' and/or having their own celestial realm to rule over. In this version the gods are always trying to outmaneuver each other, taking petty slights way too seriously and the mortals getting shit on by all this. Yeah, my pantheons aren't usually too helpful to the mortals...

Don't forget the Banner Saga version where the gods have apparently all murdered each other and died, dooming the world to slowly wither and crumble.

 

[-Dragmire-]

I remember liking Jade Empire's gods. They were completely self absorbed and all had their assigned tasks to do.

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

If you had a Christian-like system where heaven was a perfect, wonderful existence then the most noble, heroic thing anyone could do would be to murder as many innocents as possible, to get them into heaven before they could offend God enough that he wouldn't want them anymore. A moment of pain as the knife enters their throat before an eternity of happiness, pleasure and fulfilment. What more could anyone ask for?

For you to be good. God doesn't ask of you to go around and kill everyone that you judge as innocent so that they can enter His Kingdom sooner (which is silly anyways, because what's 80 years max of waiting against eternity). He asks that you follow His laws and treat your fellow man with justice (that includes mercy as the main component), and trust that He will take up His children in His own time. In that way, you serve your God, your fellow man, and yourself.

OT: Perhaps we should draw a line between "becoming a god" and "obtaining god-like power", because villains are almost always aiming for the latter, even if they say they want the former.

 

[Thanatos2k]

If you had a Christian-like system where heaven was a perfect, wonderful existence then the most noble, heroic thing anyone could do would be to murder as many innocents as possible, to get them into heaven before they could offend God enough that he wouldn't want them anymore. A moment of pain as the knife enters their throat before an eternity of happiness, pleasure and fulfilment. What more could anyone ask for?

For you to be good. God doesn't ask of you to go around and kill everyone that you judge as innocent so that they can enter His Kingdom sooner (which is silly anyways, because what's 80 years max of waiting against eternity). He asks that you follow His laws and treat your fellow man with justice (that includes mercy as the main component), and trust that He will take up His children in His own time. In that way, you serve your God, your fellow man, and yourself.

OT: Perhaps we should draw a line between "becoming a god" and "obtaining god-like power", because villains are almost always aiming for the latter, even if they say they want the former.

But if you went on a killing spree, wouldn't it be "their time"?

His point was that by letting them live, you risk them damning themselves sometime before their eventual death, and thus preventing that possibility could only be a good thing.

It's exploiting one of those things about religion that doesn't make any sense when you really think about it.

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

If you had a Christian-like system where heaven was a perfect, wonderful existence then the most noble, heroic thing anyone could do would be to murder as many innocents as possible, to get them into heaven before they could offend God enough that he wouldn't want them anymore. A moment of pain as the knife enters their throat before an eternity of happiness, pleasure and fulfilment. What more could anyone ask for?

For you to be good. God doesn't ask of you to go around and kill everyone that you judge as innocent so that they can enter His Kingdom sooner (which is silly anyways, because what's 80 years max of waiting against eternity). He asks that you follow His laws and treat your fellow man with justice (that includes mercy as the main component), and trust that He will take up His children in His own time. In that way, you serve your God, your fellow man, and yourself.

OT: Perhaps we should draw a line between "becoming a god" and "obtaining god-like power", because villains are almost always aiming for the latter, even if they say they want the former.

But if you went on a killing spree, wouldn't it be "their time"?

His point was that by letting them live, you risk them damning themselves sometime before their eventual death, and thus preventing that possibility could only be a good thing.

It's exploiting one of those things about religion that doesn't make any sense when you really think about it.

The thing is that by killing them you are assuming that you are a perfect judge of character, that you can tell when someone's soul is innocent and that you know the right time, when they are most pure in the Roman Catholic sense, to kill them. That's a massive amount of arrogance by declaring that your personal judgement is correct. Technically, whenever they die is their time, whether by your hand or by cancer, but you do not have the authority to do so. Instead, God gave you instructions to serve your fellow man and work with them to create the best society possible in which you can venerate Him, so disregarding those instructions (by declaring that God wants souls now, instead of realising that God is giving you the opportunity to worship Him and has the claim to all souls wherever they are) is selfish and blind.

Also, killing is wrong by the commandments of God, and by doing so you are damning yourself with your own hand rather than using that hand to help everyone, including yourself, be worthy of Him.

 

[90sgamer]

Brilliant analysis, Yahtzee!

 

[Zombie Badger]

Also, killing is wrong by the commandments of God, and by doing so you are damning yourself with your own hand rather than using that hand to help everyone, including yourself, be worthy of Him.

But isn't self-sacrifice to help others considered a good thing? I may burn for eternity, but so many others will have an eternal future of bliss assured for them.

 

[Thanatos2k]

If you had a Christian-like system where heaven was a perfect, wonderful existence then the most noble, heroic thing anyone could do would be to murder as many innocents as possible, to get them into heaven before they could offend God enough that he wouldn't want them anymore. A moment of pain as the knife enters their throat before an eternity of happiness, pleasure and fulfilment. What more could anyone ask for?

For you to be good. God doesn't ask of you to go around and kill everyone that you judge as innocent so that they can enter His Kingdom sooner (which is silly anyways, because what's 80 years max of waiting against eternity). He asks that you follow His laws and treat your fellow man with justice (that includes mercy as the main component), and trust that He will take up His children in His own time. In that way, you serve your God, your fellow man, and yourself.

OT: Perhaps we should draw a line between "becoming a god" and "obtaining god-like power", because villains are almost always aiming for the latter, even if they say they want the former.

But if you went on a killing spree, wouldn't it be "their time"?

His point was that by letting them live, you risk them damning themselves sometime before their eventual death, and thus preventing that possibility could only be a good thing.

It's exploiting one of those things about religion that doesn't make any sense when you really think about it.

The thing is that by killing them you are assuming that you are a perfect judge of character, that you can tell when someone's soul is innocent and that you know the right time, when they are most pure in the Roman Catholic sense, to kill them. That's a massive amount of arrogance by declaring that your personal judgement is correct. Technically, whenever they die is their time, whether by your hand or by cancer, but you do not have the authority to do so. Instead, God gave you instructions to serve your fellow man and work with them to create the best society possible in which you can venerate Him, so disregarding those instructions (by declaring that God wants souls now, instead of realising that God is giving you the opportunity to worship Him and has the claim to all souls wherever they are) is selfish and blind.

Also, killing is wrong by the commandments of God, and by doing so you are damning yourself with your own hand rather than using that hand to help everyone, including yourself, be worthy of Him.

Sure, it's "wrong," but you may indeed be helping others given the presuppositions involved. Funny how that works out.

I once asked my college roommate (who held Bible study in our dorm room for others) if it was possible to go against God's Plan. His answer was no, and the mental gymnastics involved justifying it were a sight to behold.