- Location
- The Hague
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Controversial gaming opinion: video games are good.
What are controversial gaming opinions you have?
Hykal94
Orange Estus Kitteh
- Location
- Firelink Shrine
I can't believe Christianity ever became a major religion based on what i know of (some) its (more fringe) beliefs, but here we are.
And without knowing how earth gov works, i can't really say how realistic them taking over is.
Is rigging some voting machines enough?
Do they need to spend couple decades infiltrating the military and/or convertingtop brass?
Can they just kill everyone in one big room and steal control codes for the doom drone armadas?
Maybe thegames bungle the execution, but the concept is perfectly believable to me.
Unitology is like 300 years old. Christianity took 2000 years to be where its at. There are religions older than Christianity that have nowhere near its number. Scientology is just shy of 70 years old and it only has 3.5 million members. Assuming a steady pace of new members of 50,000 a year (which is unrealistic in itself), 300 years of Scientology would still put it at about 15 million followers. That's like three Norways worth of people, which still isn't much. Dead Space takes place in the 2500s, so we can also assume humanity is in the tens of billions.
That's the thing, we don't know! They don't say much at all! I haven't played the Remake, but I assume the game didn't go too deep into it either.
I can believe in eldritch alien gods that raise the dead but religious demographics is where I draw the line. It's just another aspect of scifi writers not being able to write scale well.
From the wiki:
By 2514, the Church of Unitology, led by Jacob Danik, appears to have overthrown EarthGov or, at bare minimum, severely weakened its structure. The exact nature of this coup d'état is never made clear, though it is known that the Unitologists took advantage of the general population becoming increasingly anti-EarthGov following the Titan Station disaster.[28] Events perpetuated by Danik suggest the targeted destruction of the various Marker Shrouds throughout EarthGov space played a large part in weakening the government.
Sarissa
OwO
- Location
- Washington, D.C.
It's just like, necromorphs should be a a threat in their own right like they are gameplay wise, not at the beck and call of sci-fi (or whatever because their beliefs basically are sci-fi) Scientology who sees the abominations that are necromorphs and are like "awesome".
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gyrobot
One China One Nation/Weeping for Concord
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The Unification Church, the evangelists in resource rich regions using the income extracted from locals prove otherwise (Yes people use Scientology as an example, but there are other cults out there that Visceral would use as inspiration). Earthgov was already on it's backfoot dealing with the destruction of the Kellian and Ishimura followed by Titan Station being overrun. People were giving their life savings and literal bodies to the church to create necromorphs and provide materials for the Marker along with the shattered psyche of people living a quite frankly terrible lifestyle of being space miners with everything negative associated with it (See Isaac's antipathy towards the CEC for example). It wouldn't be too hard for a series of well timed necromorph attacks to decapitate most of Earthgov that they can get their bretheren moon ritual in motion
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Hykal94
Orange Estus Kitteh
- Location
- Firelink Shrine
Even assuming Necromoprhs can take on militaries by surprsie, it can't take them all by surprise. This assumes every Scientologist ever, every single member, is a some sort of ISIS crazy person willing to blow themselves up/give their bodies to the cause. This assumes there aren't split sects of Unitologists with its own heresies. You telling me, after three hundred years of existing, there won't be heresies? It didn't even take one generation before Muslims started waging civil war against each other.
And we haven't even gotten to the abomination that was the microtransactions that was in Dead Space 3. That was the true horror of Dead Space.
One ship and one space station means nothing when EarthGov is in control of, you know, earth.
And we haven't even gotten to the abomination that was the microtransactions that was in Dead Space 3. That was the true horror of Dead Space.
One ship and one space station means nothing when EarthGov is in control of, you know, earth.
Tangential, but Christianity became the official state religion of the Roman Empire in under 400 years, which seems a more appropriate target than 'where its at', which seems pretty clearly down from its high-water mark of influence however you measure that.
(I'm fairly sure it never decapitated a world government though.)
Yes, the Moonies are a better example than the Scientologists; they have much more influence than Scientology ever had. And without alien zombie space magic to help them.
Heck, back in 2004 Moon had a literal crowning ceremony as the Messiah here in the US attended by US senators. Imagine something like that in a video game; people would laugh at how unrealistic it was.
- Location
- Finland
Which kinda points how realistic the idea is.
Unitologists do not need to convert everyone, only those in power, or seize power for themselves, which does not take massive recruitment.
Also, Mormons have existed less than 2 centuries, has only about 16 million members, and US could easily have gained a Mormon president in the past decade.
Them taking over a government is not all that out there.
gyrobot
One China One Nation/Weeping for Concord
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This and not to mention life as a space miner would be terrible for a variety of reasons, especially when you are an improverished miner because your family donated their will to the church, leaving you peniless and slaving away at the same mining rocks that have Unitologists investing in the mining. So while you are working 18 hour shifts in a space suit, eating paste and barely edible rations with your meagre pay being used to cover what debt you have, some unitologist is eating well on your dime.
Hykal94
Orange Estus Kitteh
- Location
- Firelink Shrine
The US also has had two Catholic presidents and none of them answer to the Pope. Mormons also aren't a military power. Well, they used to be, but they haven't in a long time.
If a Mormon became the next president, are you saying they'll answer to the church? That's uh, a bit problematic, don't you think?
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cB557
voOOP
I don't think the necromorphs are at the beck and call of Unitology? Like they might try and use the markers to their own ends sometimes, but at the end of the day they can't actually control the necromorphs, and the necromorphs are just going to eat everything because that's what they were always gonna do regardless of whether Unitology wants them to or not.
- Location
- Russia
If anything, it's closer to say that Unitology is at the beck and call of the Necromorphs.
- Location
- Finland
Depends on the Mormon, are the especially devout and motivated by religious beliefs?
The point is that you do not need a huge majority to acquire seat of power.
A religious cult with money and willingness to spend decades, if not centuries, to get into power, could do pretty big things.
Hykal94
Orange Estus Kitteh
- Location
- Firelink Shrine
You might as well replace Mormon with Muslim in your post with how you sound right now. You're saying Mormons are a cult, right?
I'm not blind to the fucked up bullshit Mormons have done but this is pretty mask off. Because this is the same exact wording people use to paint Muslims too.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I mean, I'm not sure where you're going with any of this math? How popular a religion is depends on various factors. Christianity was, by a critical historians' estimation, a very small religion for a long time, until it wasn't. Scientology is a very small religion but it was also founded by a science fiction author and culturally is more than anything a punchline, so it's not surprising that it has a really small growth. You can't really expect like, predictable expotential growth when it comes to religions, honestly. A lot of it will depend on the circumstances of the world around it, exactly what its practicing compared to the culture, what exactly its sales pitch is and how well its people are at selling it, whether or not people are already culturally committed to some other religion, etc. etc.
- Location
- Northern Virginia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Don't Mormons and Muslims have pretty good religious relations?
It's also not a cult, and so doesn't have the same concentration of fanaticism. I mean, the Pope couldn't order Catholics to commit mass suicide and have more than a minority of them actually do it either, while cults have done exactly that; fanatics being the norm rather than the exception is a key distinguishing feature of a cult.
Hykal94
Orange Estus Kitteh
- Location
- Firelink Shrine
All the napkin math is me trying to show that Unitology as it is depicted in the series isn't very well written.
Of course there's no realistic way to actually guess how big a religion can grow. I'm saying, and maybe failing at trying to prove the point, that I find the games depiction of this one cult very hard to believe. I am unable to suspend my disbelief this one cult is able to take down a one world religion, despite the fact I am able to believe that eldritch alien gods that reanimate corpses do in fact exist.
Dead Space 3 would be better had it not bring the dumb coup in the fist place. They made Unitology a sort of super organisation that is very hard for me to take seriously. It barely says anything about other world religions. Did all the major religions just shrug and let them have their way? It legitimately makes Dead Space 3 a worse game, and I'm not bringing up the gameplay problems the game has, which is actually a bigger deal than how the villain faction is written.
I wouldn't know, I don't personally know any Mormons. I do feel very uncomfortable with how the post has been worded.
So it's a cult with billions of members all of whom are willing to give themselves to the cause? Like I said, it's a problem of scale. Dead Space wrote Unitology as both a cult and a major religion and I don't believe they thought it through.
- Location
- Finland
It kinda started out as one (just like christianity) couple hundred years ago, and retains some rather, unfortunate, elements to it today.
But you are dodging the point.
Which is, that a religious group that began couple hundred years ago, from one dude making some pretty unbelievable claims, now has 16 million followers world wide (most of them in the US), almost got one of their people on the highest seat of government of the most powerful nation on earth.
The basic concept of unitologists somehow taking over the government is not unbelievable.
Even if the details might be, i don't know the details, i have not played the game.
- Location
- The Hague
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It's unlikely that a 'modern' religion would ever grow to the size of one of the big three, though that's mainly due to very different cultural, political and economic circumstances between modern and pre-modern periods. Whether it's passing it down from parent to child over generations or just straight up colonialism, a religion founded today or in the future does not really have the same tools to spread and basically has to get by almost based on conversions, and anything new will lack the cultural cachet that older religions have, so they will typically be viewed more sceptically (it's telling that 'new religion' is a phrase that typically invokes suspicion).
After a couple of hundred years of persistence it's likely that Unitology would not be viewed that way, but while on paper it's not impossible for a three hundred year old religion to have billions of adherents, it would basically need to sustain a rate of conversion similar to or higher than the Pentecostals for all of its history. I'm not sure I'd personally buy that, but then again I've seen less believable shit in science fiction
After a couple of hundred years of persistence it's likely that Unitology would not be viewed that way, but while on paper it's not impossible for a three hundred year old religion to have billions of adherents, it would basically need to sustain a rate of conversion similar to or higher than the Pentecostals for all of its history. I'm not sure I'd personally buy that, but then again I've seen less believable shit in science fiction
Jensaarai
Sing Victory Everlasting
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I think Unitology is fairly unique decently grounded by having its inception point be a practically-open secret about incredibly advanced alien life existing, and one man proclaiming that they mean to bring humanity into a glorious paradise through unity, all happening some time in the future... IIRC
Along with the fact that, from what we learn in Dead Space 2, they perform neurological conditioning and... maybe modification of some sort? They also have extensive psychological profiling for most everyone in the religion, and probably important people outside of it too, so they can place those people where they'll do their best, while also staying out of the way of anything too vital to the ultimate cause. To not even mention the immense wealth and political power they wield, maybe with some help from a Marker- or mundane-induced brainwashing or three.
Suffice to say, I think Dead Space's religion of Unitology functions within the full cyberpunk/sci-fi breadth of the setting rather well.
Along with the fact that, from what we learn in Dead Space 2, they perform neurological conditioning and... maybe modification of some sort? They also have extensive psychological profiling for most everyone in the religion, and probably important people outside of it too, so they can place those people where they'll do their best, while also staying out of the way of anything too vital to the ultimate cause. To not even mention the immense wealth and political power they wield, maybe with some help from a Marker- or mundane-induced brainwashing or three.
Suffice to say, I think Dead Space's religion of Unitology functions within the full cyberpunk/sci-fi breadth of the setting rather well.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
Doom Eternal is one of the best first person shooters I've ever played, with probably the best combat I've experienced in any video game.
…but do people actually like the lore in this game? It seems like the developers just mashed together a bunch of random high fantasy and sci fi tropes. Worse, the lore mostly serves the purpose of appealing to the player's ego by constantly talking about how EPIC and BADASS the Doom Slayer is. I honestly couldn't tell if the game was being satirical or was actually sincere about this stuff. It just didn't interest me at all, and I largely avoided reading any codex entries.
Anyone else agree? Disagree?
…but do people actually like the lore in this game? It seems like the developers just mashed together a bunch of random high fantasy and sci fi tropes. Worse, the lore mostly serves the purpose of appealing to the player's ego by constantly talking about how EPIC and BADASS the Doom Slayer is. I honestly couldn't tell if the game was being satirical or was actually sincere about this stuff. It just didn't interest me at all, and I largely avoided reading any codex entries.
Anyone else agree? Disagree?
- Location
- Russia
It makes more sense when you stop considering it from the point of view of serious lore, and start considering it as the conceptual storyline behind a Power Metal album.
Being a Super Badass has always been part of "Doom like" games, and in fact is exactly what the gameplay shows. The Doom Slayer genuinely slaughters his way through hordes of demons, one man against an army and the army loses. He doesn't sneak and stealth his way through the game, he bulldozes his opposition. It's supposed to be a power fantasy.