So, i just finished the game and wantedto put do in writing some scattered thoughts and ask about yours.

The setting and lore i liked quite a lot. Writing has always been one of Obsidian's strong point, but even the environments (gorgeous, but i'm obviously a sucker for the IE style) did a fine job in transmitting the proper feeling (Gilded Vale being so bleak and dark informed me immediatly of how dire was the situation, for example). I don't know if creating an entire setting from scratch instead of using something like Forgotten Realms was a decision forced by economical needs at the time of the kickstarter or simply a creative one but it paid off; the focus on souls and these deities was very interesting to explore. The only true bad decision i think they made was to bind themselves on creating so many levels for Od Nua, I would have preferred to have a shorter Big Fucking Dungeon but a couple more smaller ones like Lle A Rhemen (the talking heads and spear one), or some work on the more empty areas (Pearlwood Bluff, i'm looking at you).

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Structure and gameplay wise most of the innovations on the old IE formula are good. Implementing various speeds was a really good decision (i spend half my time in BG and ID looking for boots of speed :D), so was to split endurance and health to avoid the classic problem with low levels (a goblin arrow crits you, you're dead). I'm a little less appreciative on the attributes, i understand trying to make everything viable for every class but they don't reconcile well with how scripted interactions and statscheck work; you easily end up with the majority of wizards that are able to cast aside huge boulders and bend steel bars with bare hands while maybe your fighter, who possibly has to wield tower shields (one shield is a freaking door, for fuck sake :D) and wear heavy armor all day has the strenght of a child. An heavier shift toward skills cheks instead of attributes would have been less immersion-breaking maybe?

The inventory design was optimal: no shifting through characters pages, no weight limit, no limited slots with the stash...perfect.

I have some criticism though: the first one is the way equipment bonuses work. I would rather have very few rare items that give you bonuses but stack, than having to basically play a fucking puzzle game to optimize my party equipment ("so, if i switch this cloak to him, i suppress the ring, but that i can give to her because her helm can go to this other one, wait no he has this gloves...fuck"). Second one is enchanting/forging. I want to feel that the old, legendary sword I got as a reward for defeating a powerful high-level enemy is way better than if i just stuck with a sword i got at level 3 from a bandit and just enchanted it. Also, very minor, if you have a truckload of different helms and hats (yeee tricorne :D) why the fuck the vast majority of the bonus bearing ones are just plain, brown, leathery hat? I only found a mail one +crit modifier and a plate +1 perc +1 res, so if you wear heavy armor get used to seeing a brown leather helm. At least let me hide it :(

Final one is about leveling. I reached the level cap a few quests in act 3 without going into Od Nua, i imagine if i did instead i would have reached it already in act 2. That's not very rewarding for who wants to explore the game the most

On combat I cannot say much, i played on normal/hard and it was fine, the challenge should be in Path of the Damned so i cannot say if it's properly tuned there. Only thing is pathing in combat is awful, but at least when you move through the areas outside of combat you don't have people bumping into each other and trapping themselves in various dead-ends which was awful in the old games :D

The stronghold was an ok implementation. I freed Maerwald, got a couple of prisoners (one escaped and one i released), Azzurro visited 5 times...not much else of relevant. I was very much excited when i got it, but it is nothing of a grand magnitude to me in the end. I like Talking Chair :D

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But of course the shining point of the game and what at Obsidian have totally nailed is questing. The variety of ways to complete scenarios (even the minor ones), the extreme influence of who your character is and how you behaved in the game on them (dispositions instead of static or a single/double scaling alignement was truly a masterful decision), the constant idea in your head that "there could be another way more to do it"...it is awesome. Builded and expanded on the past games while reminding you of that feeling, just what i wanted (i can say the same on the fantastic music score).

I have just one tiny complaint, and it's the companions' quests. Two are just checkpointed conversations (Grieving Mother and Durance), three are just random hunts with a blueballing at the end (Eder, Sagani and Kana), one is just...meh? (Aloth) and another one is just ridiculous (Pallegina; are you kidding me? Even the most minor side task in the game is more than that). The only one structurally fine was Hiravias', and at least with Grieving Mother and Durance you see them grow and expand as characters, but they all feel like they were developed separatly from the rest of the game.

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Last but definitely not least is story and characters. I played as a human paladin, reached high or top level in all dispositions but aggressive, deceptive, cruel and stoic (0 points in these four) so that will tell you how i played the game. Travellled with Eder, Durance, Grieving Mother, Aloth and a hired rogue (the other companions i used only for their quests). I liked the most Grieving Mother and Durance (i didn't like him at all at the beginning), because they have a nice character arch. Having Mother be so opposed in the end to Hylea's request was surprising.

I liked the main storyline. Yes, it's the usual "you're the special one" but i'm fine in rpgs with that. Thaos was a good villain, it gave me a good sense of power, especially when at the end of act 2 he kills the Duc of Defiance Bay. A big "You know all you worked for to this point? Yeah, fuck it and fuck you". Considering the last rpg villain I battled against is the cartoon-like, smashing-into-mirrors-headfirst buffoon of Inquisition it was sooooo relieving. He seemed like a proper menace. As for the ending, I completeted all the tasks in the Council of The Stars but bound myself to no deity before jumping in the pit, and ended up picking Wael's choice (having a player character priest of Wael should be super interesting, since you meet him after the revelation about the gods). I would have liked a truly indipendent choice since i came to consider all the deities as antagonists, but if there even is one i was not able to find it. I would love if the sequel is about going after these "gods", expanding their lore and psychologies (Skaen being a double-agent is quite interesting...), exploring their powers and connections to the kith races...or if not just have it set in the Valian Republics :D

Also the various side stories were nice, you often find yourself in interesting choices and it's quite rewarding when you find again someone you interacted with before and seeing the ripercussions you had on them; even if very very minor like the father of the boy with the dagger scolding him, Serel in Brackenbury, the couple of Dryford in the inn in Defiance bay, or more meaty like having to kill Raedric again.

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In the end all i can say is that Obsidian made a fantastic game. The criticism i moved to it in this thread are quite minor in comparison of how I tremendously enjoyed the experience of playing it; they dissipated any worry i had and the fact that apparently they are already working on an expansion fills me with excitement.

PS: I just have the strange feeling that someone from the first Mass Effect worked on this game, between the "old ancient civilization that created these machines" and the "matron" from a spider-like race you can let escape to create a colony (rachni queen in fantasy setting, basically) :D

PPS: In the Crucible keep there is an altar to Abydon with which you can interact, has anyone found any use for that? It bugs me quite a lot

I just finished the game myself and I appreciated reading this post. It makes me realize there are things I did which I thought were inevitable, but which apparently were not? I found the kid with the dagger dead at the bottom of the bay and informed his mother. I didn't know you could save him. Also, Grieving Mother was all for Hylea's solution in my playthrough? Don't know why she wasn't in your playthrough, it seems to go against her entire background.

All in all, I loved the game. I agree with you, I wish the companion quests were more meaty. They were short, easy and often ended... poorly. I liked the companions themselves though, specially Edér. His voice actor did an amazing you. Durance and Grieving Mother were both fun as well.

I hope they make an expansion or a sequel!

Expansions and a Sequel have both been talked about, so we're likely getting both. Fingers crossed.

Anyway, I'm really shocked at how much Durance grew on me. I kinda hated him at first, but once you start to break down his barriers and get into his head, he becomes a deeply tragic and really sympathetic character. It's true that most of the companion quests ended anti-climatically, but I think that was kinda the point: there's an overarching theme in the game of "There are no Answers." Sagani, Eder and Kana's quests are all very deliberately long journeys that end with no answers. The Iovara conversation in Sun-in-Shadow was the epitome of this theme, where we learn that the gods themselves don't have all the answers. I'm not saying that this means that those companion quests were actually really good, but I do appreciate what they were going for. (Incidentally, I feel that Hiravias is the companion who best ties into this theme, and his reaction to the various revelations is really well-realized.)

I did really love the way the main story developed. The way that you unfold the contents of your past life is a really interesting twist on the traditional amnesiac story, and the two final conversations (Iovara/Thaos) were really powerful for me.

I also kinda like how they don't let your character ever become a big hero. They do it first in Defiance Bay, when your attempts to unite Dyrwood against the Leaden Key are brutally undercut by Thaos and the subsequent riots. Then, in the end, the epilogue suggests that your character never really gets credit for ending the Hollowborn epidemic. Both of these decisions ensure that your character never gets proclaimed as the ultimate champion of the world, which is an excellent choice.

@anund: I can only guess it's because during her quest i convinced Grieving Mother that using her powers to cast an illusion on the mothers of hollowborns wasn't the best solution and life should keep going and let it sort by itself (and i'm a total hypocrite, during the skaen cult quest i was all "wipe the mind of the elf girl"), so in the end she came to really oppose Hylea idea of what to do with the souls. She was very very vocal in expressing her opposition. By the way Eder completely cracked me up when I found the part of the banner of the battle his brother fought in, and upon choosing to give it to the Grieving Mother he went all "I appreciate your initiative, but i doubt that asking random peasant women can help us when we need a cipher"; or when you ask Hiravias about her and he has no idea who she is or why she is with the party :D

Regarding the kid you are mistaking which one i'm talking about: there is the kid in Copperlane who wants a dagger for revealing you a secret, if you give him one when you go back to that area his father is taking the dagger away from him and scolding him. It was relieving to see that scene (and partecipate in it) because after giving him the dagger a town crier was saying "kid looses all his finger playing with a dagger! Have this be a warning to give only wooden swords to children" and i thought he was talking about him and i felt really bad.

The second kid, the one you're talking about, is the one killed and dumped in the harbor of Ondra's Gift for defending a prostitute from rapist thugs and that used the dagger of one of them to stab him in the leg. He's dead from the start, you can only choose what to do with his assassin (i slaughtered him with great pleasure) and if you want you can make his dad go back home from the brothel where he's drinking himself to death.

Apparently they are already at work on the expansion, they say they plan it to be roughly the size of Tales of The Sword Coast :)

By the way i'm curious, which of the gods' solutions did you choose for the ending?

@moonshadow101: I guess I understand and somewhat agree on your view on the companions quests, but I really think also that they are, except for Hiravias', somewhat lacking in structure and "substance".

I'm with you on Durance. The scene in the final of his quest when he lets out that scream is fantastically written, you can really feel him shattering under the realization on Magran. For a man who dedicated his entire life on a single entity like him it must have felt like being torn apart, and Chris Avellone (he's credited as his write) made an amazing job in painting it.

I went with Hylea's solution. The hollowborn issue seemed to be the biggest problem in the game and returning the souls to their rightful hosts seemed like the right thing to do. I liked the description of events at the end as well, I feel good about that decision.

This game had voice acting? I turned the voices off as soon as the opening started in the camp site. Dude's dialogue was fucking awful, and he kept droning on about Effigies and Glandfathers while I was trying to read the rich prose peppered throughout the dialogue box.

I would like to say that I spent about 40 hours with Pillars (on Easy, because I fucking suck at these kinds of games), and I enjoyed it immensely. It was deeply engrossing and I spent more than a few nights playing it until 3 AM. Time flew by and it was probably the best damn thing I've read in quite awhile.

I also cannot express the unbridled anger I felt by the end of the Skaen Cult quest. I can't believe that there's a modern RPG out there where murder is arguably the best outcome for a quest.

You turned off the voice acting? Darn I tought that the voice acting was pretty good. Especially when the characters in the party talked amongst themselves.

All in all I must say that I found the end of the game a pit puzzling. The last image that I had off my player character was him lying on floor in what seemed a pool of his own blood. Was also a bit weird to have the narrator tell the tale of how the characters in the party lived their lives after the ending withouth mentioning anything what happened to the player character.

My choiche of god was Wael. I kinda liked his suggestion of letting the souls end where they may. The damage was already kinda done so maybe it was for the best to leave the choice to chance.

Really? I got a slide dedicated to what my character did afterward (not much, essentially; he wandered) either before or after learning what became of my friends. Maybe it had something to do with your background/choices throughout the game?

As for my ending, I chose to use the essence to strengthen those who remained. For some reason, that choice felt the most right to me. Putting the Hollowborn back together would likely have unintended, horrific consequences (this is the same studio that did Mask of the Betrayer), and the others felt like... I don't know, playing into the hands of Thaos or dancing to the tune of the not-gods. The way I saw it, I was giving a helping hand to those who survived the Waiden Legacy, and that their new-found determination would see them through to a better future. As far as the ending slide goes, I think I made the right call.

The more I'm hearing about other people's playthroughs, the more I hear about other people's endings, I think that this game is turning out to be an interesting rorschach test in a way. The final choice is interesting because it plays into the myriad of feelings the player might be having, as well as accommodating a wide variety of outlooks or philosophies on life. Like for me, my ending choice was about not trying to fix what was broken, but to find the strength to carry on and get past it. Letting go, in a way.

I wish I had the heart to play through it again. I might even turn the voices back on. Maybe it was just that first NPC that talked that rubbed me the wrong way, but I wouldn't trade all the reading I did for voices, I don't think. I can't imagine the Grieving Mother or Durance sounding anything like how I pictured them. Eder might be close, but I found the characters and quests to be deeply personal in a way because I read it instead of listened. Like the first time you meet the Grieving Mother was beautiful to read and imagine. I don't know, maybe I just like reading.

@oldirtybearon: Do you mean killing the elf girl or murdering lord Harond? Because if you are talking about the former if you are a cipher or have one with you like the Grieving Mother you can just mindwipe her and then set her free.

@nardak: What do you mean? The last ending slide should tell you about your character being able to finally sleep without more visions and facing a journey ahead (with or without the infant)

Speaking of which, has anyone else taken the orlan baby from Twin Helms (without sacrificing her, of course) with them?

@cagliostro88: Once G-Mom rolled into my party she never left; I mind wiped the elven lass and I slit the lordling's throat. Was kind of unsettling how badly I wanted to murder him.

@oldirtybearon: I understand, i felt similarly about butchering the killer of the boy in Ondra's Gift. Especially since they give you insight into the kid's thoughts when you connect to his soul, and i found them touching.

...best souls game (ok... ok... game about souls at least) of 2015!

Some other post-completion thoughts.

Probably the best game of its type that I have played and was significantly more satisfying as an overall experience than Divinity last year.

There's an awful lot of great writing, characterization, and mechanisms for meaningful character and party development. It is a long, long game (perhaps fractionally too long?) and requires a very significant time investment in order to get the best return. That said, I was surprised about the ending of the game when it came as I'm so used to games these days displaying a message to let you know when you pass the point of no return.

So on that front, if you're about to drop into a big hole in act three, then don't do it if you have unfinished quests to complete.

I just finished the game. Here are my thoughts on it.

Game Length

I wouldn't call it a great game, in my opinion it was OK, and I'll explain why.

I think my biggest issue was just the overall pacing and length of the game. I had fun playing it, but it just felt so LONG, and the number of darn loading screens everywhere is a big turnoff (I'm running on an SSD too, though I suppose have more than 4 gigs of RAM and a faster CPU would help too). This is not a game that I would replay the whole way through a second time, it's just too long.

For comparison, I played Shadowrun Returns: Dragonfall Director's Cut, another recent C-RPG for PCs, and that game had excellent pacing, it was exactly the right length, and it never felt like it was too long...well, except for a certain point at the very last mission (you'll know what I mean if you get there), but that was the only exception. It also had much fewer loading screens. I actually ended up replaying that game the whole way through 3 times, because I kept finding things that I missed on my previous playthroughs. (It also has an excellent story with interesting characters, and I highly recommend it).

Game Play

As other people already mentioned, the pathing for characters in this game can get annoying, especially during combat. Sometimes party members aren't smart enough to be able to figure out how to move around other members or enemies in order to reach a certain spot. I've had party members walk back and forth in the same spot while trying to figure out how to reach an enemy on the other side of the battle.

I also hate how the default behavior of party members who have just finished using an ability is to just stand around and do nothing, instead of auto-attacking a nearby enemy. I can understand that sometimes you may not want a party member to automatically start attacking a random enemy (a rogue that just turned invisible, for example), but there should at least be an option to toggle auto-attacks on or off (I would have kept mine on).

I know that there's an auto-pause option to pause after any party member finishes an ability, but after using that for a large portion of the game, I decided that I actually prefer it to be off, because it tends to break the real-time flow of combat too much (breaking immersion), and it can makes even simple, easy fights feel like they drag on longer than they should.

Voice Acting

I found most of the voice acting to be really great and high quality. I loved the voice actors for the majority of characters (even Durance's voice actor). The only voice actor that I didn't really like too much was the one for the Grieving Mother, the way that she spoke didn't really match how I thought the character should sound like in my head.

However, as much as I found the voice acting to be of good quality, I also found it to be really distracting in a game that's so heavily based on reading. If I knew that I could turn off the voice acting before hand, I might have actually done it. It was very annoying to be reading descriptions of what characters were doing, while the voice actor/actress would just skip those parts and narrate only what the characters were saying.

Characters & Story

@moonshadow101@cagliostro88

I love the companion characters in this game and how they interact with each other with banter in between areas. Well, actually, I love all the companion characters except for one--I still hate Durance. Seriously, F that guy. When I first met him, I was half-expecting him to kill me, and then his quest description made it sound like I had to keep him in my party all the time, so I had to put up with him constantly judging me and talking bat-$**t crazy nonsense for the whole game :P I was actually glad in my ending that he finally learned to shut the F up for once.

Your thoughts on the theme of "There are no answers" are uber-enlightening, I never caught on to that theme in the story, but now that you mention it, it makes sense.

I thought that Eder's story arc was bittersweet. It sucks that he'll never truly understand why his brother ended up fighting for Readceras instead of Dyrwood, but in all of his endings, he finds a way to move on with his life and take it in a positive direction anyways.

I didn't notice the fact that your character isn't really celebrated as a savior in any of the endings, but now that you point it out, it makes sense too, and I agree, it is a cool way to tell a story.

I also found that there was a lot of potential for a big emotional impact in the story arc involving your past life and Iovara and Thaos, but the way that you "create" the story of your past life over the course of the game was a little awkward, in my opinion. It was difficult for me to make the story decisions without knowing how they all tied together beforehand.

For example, I would have loved to choose my character's story so that Iovara was my sister or lover, and I ended up betraying her to Thaos because I actually believed her to be a heretic (or something like that), but I didn't know how all the story pieces would fit together in the end, so I ended up choosing them really conservatively in my playthrough, like having my character and Iovara just be acquaintances, which doesn't have nearly as much emotional impact...though I did choose my character to be an F-ing coward in his past life by betraying her out of fear of Thaos, so that was kind of interesting.

Speaking of the Iovara and Thaos story arc...

Plot Holes?: if the gods aren't real, then who the F are these guys?

So I'm not sure if I just missed some important dialogue in the game or not, but this really bothers me about the end of the game's story. If you believe Iovara, that the gods aren't actually real, then who the F are these guys giving you visions and stuff? You can't be crazy and hearing voices in your head that aren't really real, because your entire party experiences them too...unless you want to believe that you're all suffering a shared, mass hallucination...stop smoking so much svef people! :P

Plot Holes?: what does the big adra machine in the final level do?

So I get that it collects and feeds souls to Woedica, but that's what it currently does. Right after you beat Thaos, however, you look into Thao's past life for when the machine was turned on for the very first time, 2,000 years ago. What was the purpose of that? Why was Thaos collecting souls back then, and why did people seem to be willing to give them to him willingly?

Was Thaos using souls to actually create the goddess Woedica, out of nothing? Is that what the gods actually are, just manifestations of the essence/souls of people who wanted to create gods, who didn't want a godless world, so they sacrificed their lives to will gods into existence?

And if that's the case, then isn't that the interesting plot twist and reversal of traditional roles and power? Instead of the gods creating kith, it's actually kith that created the gods...?

It's not really explained in the story, or at least I didn't get it :P

Plot Holes?: why did Thaos want animancy to fail?

Maybe this is just something else that I also missed. I didn't get why Thaos was so against modern-day kith discovering the secrets of animancy. Why was it such a threat to him? Was it because people would be able to figure out that he's been constantly reborn as the same person for 2,000 years, with the same memory, and that he's been manipulating the entire course of Eora and its civilizations for millennia? Did he fear that people would be able to use the knowledge of animancy to stop him? Did he fear that animancy would lead people to discover that the gods weren't really real, just as the ancient Engwithians did 2,000 years before?

The Endings that We Choose

So in my playthrough, I ended up wiping Thao's memory before returning his soul back to the Wheel, because this particular character was supposed to be a close approximation of me in this world, and if I were in my character's shoes, I would have been benevolent, and not just destroy his soul completely. I wouldn't have returned Thaos to the Wheel with his memories intact, because I thought he was too dangerous to let that happen, he'd probably just come back in the next life and start causing really nasty trouble all over again.

I chose to return the stolen souls back to the Wheel (Berath's choice), because I felt like it was the natural order of the world. I didn't choose Hylea's choice of returning the souls back to the Hollowborn, because of what someone said, that the souls would return to damaged bodies, or that the bodies would be alien to them because they're empty vessels that have grown and "lived" without them...like sticking the mind of a newborn inside the body of a fully grown person.

I didn't choose Galawain's option of destroying the souls and using them to empower the people of Dyrwood, because I thought that the souls deserved a chance at life, a chance that they had stolen from them because of Thaos. Same goes for Rymrgand's choice of just destroying the souls completely, though it's interesting that in the lore of Pillars, the Wheel and the ultimate fate of souls of being ground to nothingness and "becoming part of existence" is sort of like real life Buddhism. So having your soul fade into nothingness and exit the cycle of life, death, and rebirth is sort of like Nirvana in Buddishm.

I didn't choose Woedica's option because WHY WOULD I DO THAT??? :P

I didn't choose Wael's because I thought it was really irresponsible to just toss the souls out there and just not know what the consequences to that would be. Berath's choice was the safe, known choice. The souls would rejoin the Wheel, just as they had always done, just as it has always been.

HOWEVER, out of all the god's preferences for the fate of the stolen souls, I did find Wael's suggestion to be the most interesting. If I didn't want to be a pawn in the schemes of the gods, I could just say "F them" and release the souls to who knows where, and that not even Wael itself would know what would happen.

So I reloaded my last save game and tried Wael's option. The ending narrator said that the Legacy had ended, and people didn't really understand why, it remained a mystery, and perhaps this was what Wael had always intended. I felt totally played, used, and duped. Maybe Wael tricked me. Or maybe it didn't. But I'll never really know, because Wael is the god of mysteries, that's just its nature. F Wael :P

Oh, here is another complaint I have about the game, though I suppose it's kind of a minor one. The default starting equipment and abilities for the Grieving Mother are awful (e.g. close range ability such as Mind Blast, and slow, ranged crossbow). Having never used a cipher before in the game, her default equipment and abilities didn't really help me figure out how I should use (and build) a cipher character. I had to figure that out through trial and error, and for a long time I wasn't using the Grieving Mother optimally because of it.

You can build ciphers to be either close range melee fighters or ranged damage dealers, but in all cases, you want the cipher to be using a weapon that will let them hit enemies quickly, so that they can quickly regain Focus to use with their abilities.

So, for example, good cipher weapons would be a rapier (melee) or a hunting bow (ranged), because they both have fast attack speed. Apparently a blunderbuss works wonders too because of the number of projectiles that it spits out per shot. You also probably want to stick with light armor to reduce your recovery time so that you can attack more, though melee ciphers would probably want to wear heavier armor than their ranged counterparts (or equip a shield).

When you first get the Grieving Mother, however, it's not obvious how best to use (and equip) her. She has a close-range ability like Mind Blast, which has a very short range. But she's wearing light padded armor and has poor deflection by default, so she'll often get torn to pieces at melee range with her default set. But then at long range, she's given a crossbow, which is really slow, so it won't help her recover Focus quickly when her reserves are depleted.

With the default set of abilities for the Grieving Mother, it would have been better to give her equipment to help her survive close range melee fights, such as leather or scale armor and/or a shield, though of course for story-telling purposes, having a 40ish year old peasant midwife armed to the teeth wouldn't have really been in-character. Alternatively, give her a hunting-bow as a primary weapon, and give her cipher abilities that she can use at long-range (so, not Mind Blast).

She just means that they are artificial. They are not real deities in the sense that they did not exist in the "natural order", their creation is the direct result of when the Engwithians found no "true" gods but only the Wheel. But they have very real powers and can manifest themselves like in the Council of the Stars, where all your party can see them (almost all the other voices and visions in the game have nothing to do with gods but only souls, and as such you're the only one who see/hear them since you are a Watcher)

Thaos wants animancy to fail because it would lead to the reveal of the nature of these deities. Animancy is basically the "infant" modern equivalent of the Souls' science the Enghwitians developed, and as such it would lead to the same conclusions about existence. He thinks that if the world discovered that the gods are the creation of a mortal race it would plunge into total chaos, and wants to prevent that.

What it's actually really curious is that some of the gods have a favorable view on animancy (Galawain in particular)...

@darthpizza said:

Plot Holes?: what does the big adra machine in the final level do?

So I get that it collects and feeds souls to Woedica, but that's what it currently does. Right after you beat Thaos, however, you look into Thao's past life for when the machine was turned on for the very first time, 2,000 years ago. What was the purpose of that? Why was Thaos collecting souls back then, and why did people seem to be willing to give them to him willingly?

Was Thaos using souls to actually create the goddess Woedica, out of nothing? Is that what the gods actually are, just manifestations of the essence/souls of people who wanted to create gods, who didn't want a godless world, so they sacrificed their lives to will gods into existence?

And if that's the case, then isn't that the interesting plot twist and reversal of traditional roles and power? Instead of the gods creating kith, it's actually kith that created the gods...?

It's not really explained in the story, or at least I didn't get it :P

If what is described in that vision is the exact moment of the creation of Woedica it's a very nice ipothesis

It's not explained which process the Enghwitians used to create these gods; that collective sacrifice could very possibly be the actual way.

The big plot twist is exactly what you are suggesting, but it's clearly stated in the various conversations in the Sun in Shadows :)