in my last post i said the next one would be about the anxiety dreams. this has, since the time of posting, become a lie. this post is about kalan, chorism, the chapel, and the rebellion. the next next post is going to be about anxiety dreams, unless i lie again.
there's something so striking about the presentation of kalan that didn't start to hit me until my second playthrough: it just comes off as completely real. the presentation of the chapel is so seamless that instead of it feeling like plot development or worldbuilding it's just fact. kalan is a country shut away from the rest of the world both in culture and market and the chapel rules with an iron fist (or rather an invulnerability gauntlet). this is half because everything prior is so well constructed that the world is already believable, but it's also propped up by how well the actual in-game levels are designed both in art and gameplay.
right from the moment you step into the streets of kalan, everything looks different. different to the NCR, different to liboli, even different to the train you hopped on to get here. the streets are empty except for the chapel thugs and their remarkably matching purple clothes. it definitely helps that this area and the train preceding it have brand new mechanics the enemies use that show how tough the chapel can be, act 3 in my opinion does the best work at intertwining gameplay with narrative. the main team shortly meets with dall and then are temporarily inducted into the rebellion.
now that the game is in the thick of the kalan plotline i need to explain how seamlessly perfect the art direction of act 3 is. from the moment you arrive in kalan, everything the chapel touches is splattered with their colors, purple black and gold, and their iconography, the three vertical lines. it's everywhere, impossible to spot in all its forms on a first run, and that's if you even realize it's there. the grip the chapel holds on kalan runs deep, piercing the people and the media and even affecting the buildings. chapel enemies wear the logo on their chest plates and helmets, sure, but it presents itself everywhere else, too. in the corners of braziers, the hinges of doors, light fixtures fashioned into I|I, it nearly runs as deep in the level design as it does in its enemy ranks. and every building is absolutely drenched in the sickly poisonous purple of their control and manipulation. seriously, every single chapel level has secret logos hidden in everything like their architect was trying to make it inescapable. because they were. and it still piles on more worldbuilding! the wider, 'full' logo is included in pieces like body armor of course, but a modernized version of the logo is found as well, mostly in propaganda pieces and more technological presentations of the logo, such as the lights in the broadcast station which would logically be a more modern building.
on the other side of the coin, the rebellion churns in the underbelly of the country. wherever they can extend to, they make posters that are anti-chapel, fashioning their recognizable and simple logo into the jaws of a shark, or bars of a cell. they twist the icon of the power into a reveal of the darker truth. and it's so good how the chapel logo gets used in all these ways, embedded in everything the chapel owns and misconstrued into a revolution piece by the rebels.
the core of the kalan plot, the driver behind everything that happens in the country, is its beating heart of a religion, chorism. dall explains it simply to jen in one of my favorite chats in the game: it's the belief that when someone passes on they join the 'pantheon', a collection of all those who have passed on, which ties together and unites the living. and that those we loved in their lifetimes we can still speak to once they're gone.
(there's no yellow color. please excuse green jen.)
Okay, so it’s more like you imagine talking to them?
That’s a very Southern way of looking at it.
You’ve been raised to devalue the impression someone leaves on you, the part of them you still carry when they’re gone.
To you that’s a static thing, a footprint, so any signs of life you get from it must be imaginary.
To us, it’s a real part of them. And the closer you were, the more you love them, the more of them you carry with you.
this is the original belief of chorism, and the one dall (and the other chorists in the rebellion) follows. the chapel instead twists this to be more favored to their power. they tell kalan that only their high priests can speak to the dead, and that they can hear the pantheon as one clear voice, giving them guidance. they weave the lie and use it to push their own motives, on the supposed behalf of the pantheon. even on a micro scale, the chapel uses it to tell its subjects to do whatever benefits it under the guise of it being the guidance of their loved ones. it's a sickening deception, and the game does an incredible job driving the message deep with the severity it deserves, without this even being the main plot. every time i come around to act 3 i completely forget about liv and her plans because kalan is absolutely captivating with how well it is presented.
