I’m not the biggest of PoE’s fans. I’m not even one. But it really, really baffles my mind that after all these years some of you people still debate most basic tenets of this game’s story, theme and lore, i.e. the gods and why their nature matter in the way it matters, the way you do. I mean... are some of you just stupid?
Game is overt, vulgar and obvious to the point of being insufferable with what it wants to say, it’s all spelled out loud like to little children in final confrontation with Thaos (that’s one of the biggest flaws of the whole thing if you would ask me: complicated themes put into a framework fitting for most average of a player, i.e. for an idiot). Engwithans chose to make two things: a) gods and b) mythology and lore of said gods. Gods are real in the sense that they exist, they are extremely powerful (but not omnipotent nor omniscient) and they are able to influence world directly (let’s not drag PoE2 idiotic additions into this). Gods are not real if you would judge them on the basis of the constructed mythology of the setting. Gods are supposed to be eternal rulers of the world. That's the orthodoxy which is fed to everyone. They are source of justice, law and social order. These things are reasons for which gods were made. Thaos tells a story about the world before the gods, Hobbesian misery in which everyone waged war against everyone else, which fits a setting with high magic (in such a setting natural human tendencies would grow exponentially, i.e. shitty human nature would become even more horrifying). Engwithans chose to impose order on this chaos and thus bring civilization and progress. It could not have been achieved as surely, in their opinion, if they shared that gods they manufactured were a work of craftsmanship. So they lied to everyone and left a guardian of this secret behind them. This is Thaos.
This is all a logical plan. Civilizations of this setting were founded on the unifying belief in the pantheon and its official orthodoxy, i.e. a lie which is mythology behind the gods. Engwithans predicted that peoples of the world could eventually grow to knowledge sufficient to see through the deception, so Thaos worked through his lifetimes to prevent progress in animancy and so on. If gods were created so they could be also unmade, and Engwithans knew that – and they could also have been killed. People need to believe that the gods are immortal and true in the sense in which an Abrahamic deity is true. What you seem to miss is that people of this world believe in this. If they would be told now that gods were just forged they would not immediately switch to a classic Greek or Roman mindset, or a mindset of a denizen of Faerûn. They would, in large, not accept it easily. It’s not possible. It’s much more possible that society would collapse, because most of the people would be presented with a reality in which there is no truth and no purpose beside the Wheel which grinds the souls to dust and oblivion (to quote Thaos). It’s a bleak reality, one for which this setting is not ready – or so Thaos believes. It's a reality in which chaos would destroy everything. Bombs can be made to nuke gods away, people can become immortal, everlasting liches and tyrants, kings would usurp gods as divine rulers of their societies and grow in power, some of them – at least hypothetically forever. Engwithan mindset is a logical conclusion of classical Conservative view of human nature: men are flawed and evil, so they must be restrained with chains of social order. Imagine if there would be magic with which you could make yourself imperishable, burn cities with fireballs and boil blood in your enemies’ veins, all with a single word. Engwithans feared that in a world with no objective truth and objective justice and with such means existing only the worst people, most ruthless and degenerate would hold power. And they were probably right.
Game uses the real world for some narrative tricks (or at least it tries), but you must not be fooled, it’s important that gods are not real in the way they say about themselves in-setting, not that they are not like an Abrahamic god supposedly is.
Idea is good. I would buy it if not for dogshit storytelling and awful delivery.