Why does the Mercenary say "Keep your paradise"?

Now the religious guys that are on Arastus Island are clearly fanatics. They are probably the type that have big cathedrals, a 'hidden city' that nobody is allowed to enter, and they tell you that you have to pay to enter into their paradise and they are the only way to get there. Then they try to control the masses with rituals and don't translate their book into the commonly spoken language for 100's of years to keep it hidden from the public.

However don't you think it's possible maybe there's another island somewhere where there isn't a religious cult that actually follows what their religion says? Where they preach to love your enemies, to forgive if you want to be forgiven and that the paradise awaiting us is open to everyone? No matter how bad you've been? That forgiveness is there for you too?

Isn't it possible that this paradise the fanatical freaks preach is also the same place the loving people preach as well? Can we not have the Mercenary denying paradise? Because the only other option is burning for eternity.

Is that too much to ask?

Two words: Worldly cynicism. ='[.]'=

You do realize this is exactly a copy of Catholicism right? Just look at history and you got your answer.

Paradise through the words of men is not paradise it is submission.

You want a game series that has always been extremely transparent about its stance on the fallibility of divinity and the potential -- even likelihood -- of religious institutions being prone to corruption and malintent to suddenly... not do this.

Instead, you'd rather this series abandon its -- again, well-established! -- stance to arbitrarily shoehorn in a transparent analogue to a saccharine, sanitized storybook version of a real-world religion.

...This is a bit, right? It's got to be.

Could be a reference to Paint you're wagon where the old man says keep you're civilization and dont love thy neighbor leave the poor bastard alone.

The idea of "Utopia" is a paradox to begin with because the only way to get everyone to behave in a uniform and "utopian manner", which would allegedly bring about a utopia, is through the continuous implementation of what practically end up being very non-utopian authoritative activities.

"Do what I say and you'll be protected from what I'll do to you if you don't do what I say" just doesn't fly, even if you're trying to get people to do something that's beneficial to them.

The people will go full rage-against-the-machine which causes conflict, which then escalates the aforementioned non-utopian authoritative activities in a positive-feedback loop.

So by enforcing the idea of Utopia, they actually create Hell.

That's why the Mercenary tells them that they can "keep their paradise" (Paradise = Utopia).

"If there's a Soul Core, there's a soul door!"

i imagine similar complains were the reason his VA was changed at Act2 caravan... shame

You want our characters to be sympathetic to a totalitarian theocracy, which sentenced us to death? I assume you just don't know the lore, otherwise, you're asking for something appauling.