the_dunk_tank
It's the dunk tank.
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What was up with the Innocents in the game? (Like Dolores Dei.)
I get the idea that their importance was inflated but does the game actually talk about them in detail? I found the bit in the church where you can learn about their history after looking at the glass portrait but I never got anything that cuts through the facade so to speak.
I don't think the game goes into it particularly much but the Innocents can essentially see the future and then implement the shit they see there, like a global reserve currency or interisolary travel
This makes the Pale grow faster and it's implied that Harry is a Magpie, someone who's not as powerful as an Innocent but can still see things in the Pale that show him glimpses of the future (like Revachol getting nuked)
spoiler
In the moralist vision quest, apparently through the radio you can hear dialogue that happens in the future. I think some people have dug through all the game text and there is at least the theory out there that the pale can allow some people (like Dolores) to see/hear the future.::: spoiler spoilers there's a theory i buy into that dubois managed to forget his memories because he put his head into the tiny ball of pale in the church to erase his memories while drunk after jumping his car over the bridge and then managed to stagger back to his room in the whirling in rags (as opposed to just drinking until he forgot almost all of his memories) and in the process he gained a load of information from it (which is why
and 
can tell you so much info that you have no way of knowing, including stuff from the future)
Isn't it
spoiler
High up in the building, to the point where you need to climb to get up there?::: spoiler spoiler
i could see dubois being able to get up to it given the level of agility and athletic ability he's shown to have through the game, like that one time he "teleports" up the rickety ladder with his eyes closed
This is just a personal interpretation but I think of them as just regular people who are painted as idealism for the era of history they represent. In Dolores Rei's case, there is a lot of heart warming, loving, and empathetic wording involved with how she makes people feel. Even Mr. DuBois sees Dolores Dei as this ultimately heart warming figure that immediately has him bring out feelings for his ex but we learn why that is such a delusion (in the case of his ex). Our encounter with the Dolores Dei in her church invokes these sort of idyllic feelings. The church is also completely dilapidated and falling apart.
From what I gathered, Dolores Dei is intentionally depicted as shining and radiant because if she were to no longer have that light, the truth around you is exposed by said lack of light. Every single feeling that she makes people feel are ultimately as weak as a ray of light that you can move your hand through. It's just as easy for said light to re-emerge.
If you look at her depiction, on the glass, she is showing her usual rays of shining hope while a small figurine is held between her fingers, a soldier figurine, to be exact. I see this not as a bait-and-switch interpretation but more of how idealism can blind anyone and anything to the ugliness of the world.
Her own bodyguard killed her for seeming "un-human". It's also implied that she may have carried out several military operations during her period of history.
Deification of our ideal history, not our real history.
I thought she was basically implied to be the global leader of colonialism, an intentional contrast to her deified image because the people she conquered and converted almost certainly don't see her the same way as those who benefitted from it.
I'm pretty sure it's said somewhere that the image of Dolores Dei invokes fear in some people (probably the colonized). If you're stats are high enough in the church HDB gets a bad and sinister feeling in the church too.
You are right on the money. I admit I haven't played the game in a long time and I was just going off my memory so I had to look it up. It's time for another play through I think lol
She also was an advisor to Irene the Navigator, who is a direct copy of Portuguese prince Henry the Navigator, who financed and organized colonial expeditions in Africa that discovered Volta do Mar in particular.
The main takeaway I got from them was sorta just as a satire on liberal idolatry of imperialist figures and nigh deification of them.
But I didnt really get a sense of if it was satire insofar as in universe they are bullshit, or if the satire is they are actually godlike unlike in real life. I would imagine that would be a topic for future stories if they ever get written.
The Innocences seem to be the catalysts for switching to new forms of production - instead of Slavery -> Feudalism -> Mercantilism -> Capitalism, you instead have eras embodied by a figure that introduces a new form of production then disseminates it both by religion and at the point of a sword.
They seem to be simultaneously the outcome of a self-interested political system and also genuine prophets with mystical abilities. There's a sort of scale where people can have innocent-like abilities (this is made explicit in the question about Pasternak in the Greatest Innocence), with two very good candidates for potential Innocence's in the story being Raphael and Egghead, but it's still fundamentally the guys at the top who pick who gets to be one. The implication with Sohla being unwilling (or possibly unable) to change anything, despite revolution being an Innocence's job, seems to indicate that capitalism is now no longer able to reform itself, instead choking off any avenue of advance (her ascension coincided with the Centennial revolution).
Edit: Also, as opposed to the rest, Dolores Dei may be an actual time-travelling robot. Her mystical abilities (glowing center, golden filaments, becoming incredibly hot) are very similar to how radiocomputers seem to work.
spoiler
Supplemental lore tells us that, in the world of Elysium, there exist people known as Magpies. These people have the ability to perceive and "decode" information from the Pale, the entroponetic phenomenon that pervades Elysium, and which has the potential to convey information, such as memories, from the past and present. I personally interpret Harry's Shivers and Inland Empire abilities as evidence of him being one of those, as they often provide him (and us) with information that he either has not yet learned, or cannot possibly know. At any rate though, the Innocences are people who are able to do this to a degree that they can radically alter history. It is heavily implied that Dolores Dei's assassination resulted from her ability to bring ideas from the future into her time, which one of her bodyguards caught onto and saw as evidence of her being some kind of inhuman abomination