Yes, linking the religious leadership of the inherently strongly hierarchical belief systems with these belief systems sounds very reasonable to me.
I have an impression we agree on the reasoning, just not on the details and the conclusions from these details. At this point we’re arguing the semantics of whether the religious people rejecting their religious leadership still belong to the same religion or rather they invented their own religion distinct from the original one. In other words, whether the leadership is an inherent part of their religion.
Do I have that right that apart from the above we’re pretty much on the same page?
If she still considered herself a Muslim, then what happened to her was perfectly in line with her claimed worldview. She can only ever see herself as a victim by rejecting her religion. She probably wasn’t conscious of it but at this point I’d say she was already an ex-muslim, it’s a matter of a therapist making her aware of it (assuming she’d be rescued in time!).
The combat is… unusual. Yes, “unusual” would be the best word. Not exactly great but it has its nice quirks. Things like traps and magic really shine. Melee is workable, but nothing amazing. It can be played in coop making traps and magic even more interesting, but it’s perfectly viable as a solo experience (that’s how I played it 90% of the time).
In terms of the polish I’d compare it to how the Gothic games felt back in the day. Low budget but with lots of heart. In addition to that, at first it felt weirdly empty, especially compared to the behemoths like The Elder Scrolls, but in the end I don’t mind having only these 8-10 dungeons per map (there are 4 maps in the base game with 2 more in the DLC) with each one being memorable. Doubly so considering the limited resources of this developer.
Not exactly linear, but the progress is apparent. There are no character levels. Instead you improve your equipment, learn new food recipes (powerful and very important buffs) and learn new skills. The various types of magic are particularly interesting. One of my favorite magic systems in games ever.
Outward! A relatively low budget but very enjoyable action RPG with surprisingly non-annoying and actually fun survival elements.
Whenever you die in Outward, a random “defeat scenario” occurs. Sometimes you wake up rescued by a stranger, sometimes someone brought you to the nearby town. And sometimes you wake up as a prisoner in a local thug camp and need to figure out how to escape.
Are screenshots even still considered evidence? They should be absolutely trivial to manipulate.