Goonhub
12-07-2024, 10:35 AM
My thoughts here are my personal thoughts and not meant to represent the entire dev team:
I think the chaplain as they're designed now is meant to (by default) represent a pop-culture film-y version of a priest. Somewhere between "wise old guy healer" and "anti-demonic clergyperson". They're not really meant to *accurately* represent Christianity moreas they're meant to play into media tropes surrounding Christian religious leaders. (See: the hollowed out Bible they carry around that they keep a *gun* inside). A lot of the mechanics centering around this are silly and poke fun at these tropes, and I think because Christianity is so dominant culturally for much of the development team and these tropes are common in Media it doesn't really *feel* like punching down or like we're making fun of people who hold the faith or just being outright disrespectful.
My point there is that our implementation of Christianity is very joke-y and silly. It's not meant to be like a serious, thoughtful piece of representation. I feel pretty strongly uncomfortable extending that representation to other religions because culturally poking light fun at them in the same way is just *not* the same thing. And I think trying to implement them in a way that's wholly respectful to them is difficult in a game like this. Like, you're not really supposed to even put the Quran on the *ground* as far as I'm aware, so in a game where items frequently are coated with vomit and blood I think it's basically impossible to give them a respectful representation either. Both of these possible ways to represent them make me uncomfortable so I don't wanna go for either.
Tldr of the above two paragraphs is that I consider the way we make light of Christianity to be OK and funny but if we applied the same thing to other religions it would be very uncomfortable, and we can't feasible respectfully implement other religions because the game lends itself so strongly to disrespecting items and places with copious gore and messes.
As for the Holy Text change, I think it's far less Funny and iconic compared to what we have with the Bible now. Informing new players that you die if you fart on a "Holy Text" is genuinely just... not even close to as funny to me. The Christianity lean in the chaplain is very deep atm (Their default jumpsuit has a clerical collar, coffins/morgue slabs have crosses on them, they use holy water, they have confession booths, most chapels have a cross carpet design built in, faith has a cross on it, etc etc) that I think changing the default doesn't *really* change much while taking away pretty much all of the humor on the item. I wouldn't mind it being an alternative item you could get somehow though as a generic catch-all for chaplains who don't wanna be Christians. TBH with the design being almost identical to the Bible itself sprite-wise it could probably maintain the mechanics without harming much (and also it's much better in my eyes to have two books that do the same thing than ten). Though the fact that it's meant to be non-denominational but it still has a *cross* on the cover is potentially questionable?
Also this is unrelated to my critique but the PR includes a Theory Of Evolution book which is very funny and possibly should be given to chaplains who have the atheist trait even if this PR doesn't work out.
I think the chaplain as they're designed now is meant to (by default) represent a pop-culture film-y version of a priest. Somewhere between "wise old guy healer" and "anti-demonic clergyperson". They're not really meant to *accurately* represent Christianity moreas they're meant to play into media tropes surrounding Christian religious leaders. (See: the hollowed out Bible they carry around that they keep a *gun* inside). A lot of the mechanics centering around this are silly and poke fun at these tropes, and I think because Christianity is so dominant culturally for much of the development team and these tropes are common in Media it doesn't really *feel* like punching down or like we're making fun of people who hold the faith or just being outright disrespectful.
My point there is that our implementation of Christianity is very joke-y and silly. It's not meant to be like a serious, thoughtful piece of representation. I feel pretty strongly uncomfortable extending that representation to other religions because culturally poking light fun at them in the same way is just *not* the same thing. And I think trying to implement them in a way that's wholly respectful to them is difficult in a game like this. Like, you're not really supposed to even put the Quran on the *ground* as far as I'm aware, so in a game where items frequently are coated with vomit and blood I think it's basically impossible to give them a respectful representation either. Both of these possible ways to represent them make me uncomfortable so I don't wanna go for either.
Tldr of the above two paragraphs is that I consider the way we make light of Christianity to be OK and funny but if we applied the same thing to other religions it would be very uncomfortable, and we can't feasible respectfully implement other religions because the game lends itself so strongly to disrespecting items and places with copious gore and messes.
As for the Holy Text change, I think it's far less Funny and iconic compared to what we have with the Bible now. Informing new players that you die if you fart on a "Holy Text" is genuinely just... not even close to as funny to me. The Christianity lean in the chaplain is very deep atm (Their default jumpsuit has a clerical collar, coffins/morgue slabs have crosses on them, they use holy water, they have confession booths, most chapels have a cross carpet design built in, faith has a cross on it, etc etc) that I think changing the default doesn't *really* change much while taking away pretty much all of the humor on the item. I wouldn't mind it being an alternative item you could get somehow though as a generic catch-all for chaplains who don't wanna be Christians. TBH with the design being almost identical to the Bible itself sprite-wise it could probably maintain the mechanics without harming much (and also it's much better in my eyes to have two books that do the same thing than ten). Though the fact that it's meant to be non-denominational but it still has a *cross* on the cover is potentially questionable?
Also this is unrelated to my critique but the PR includes a Theory Of Evolution book which is very funny and possibly should be given to chaplains who have the atheist trait even if this PR doesn't work out.