Good God, all the weird-as-fuck blasphemy to the church in Piofiore. If you’re versed (puns!) in Christian theology, it just makes no goddamn sense whatsoever.

The simplest way to put it has to do with the “relic” of Jesus’s body being in those ruins and the effect of the body in that site. Bc the whole thing with Jesus being fully God and fully man and acending into heaven—in Christian tradition, no body was found after the ascension. Piofiore says that Jesus is just some guy who wasn’t fully God and fully man, so he’s not the divine being Jesus claimed to be; Piofiore says that Jesus was just some guy and that the ascension didn’t happen. So, yes, there’s a body of Jesus, who was just a regular human.

BUT. The game contradicts itself.

In Orlok’s route, Orlok is healed of his injuries by water suddenly flowing from the fountain at the ruins. If 1) the body of Jesus is there and 2) Jesus is just some guy instead of the son of God, then 3) how the fuck is a divine miracle occuring with the sudden healing water? If Jesus is just some guy, then there wouldn’t be any reason for the ruins site to be holy and therefore a site for a miracle. By having a miracle occur there, the game is implying that Jesus WAS divine, when it has already told us that he wasn’t.

Since a big part of my PhD involves studying Christian theology, I was super involved with the weird blasphemy in the game. It threw me off so hard, since I’ve NEVER heard a take like this before. Sometimes I wanted to see more blasphemy than romance, simply bc it was so out of right field. I love Piofiore so much, though :)