With a track record like Obsidian’s it’s difficult not to have the highest of expectations when it comes to RPGs. KOTOR II and Fall Out: New Vegas to name only two of a successful RPG packed history. But there are very few original titles in this list. So for Pillars of Eternity the company became one of the ever-increasing group of games successfully funded by Kickstarter. It’s becoming more apparent as time goes on that Kickstarter isn’t just for small projects to gain funding but has enough power to fund even huge projects like Pillars of Eternity. The fans have spoken and Obsidian has no shortage of fans. And so with an insanely successful Kickstarter behind them Pillars of Eternity was born.
There’s only one place to start with any respectably in depth RPG and that’s character creation. I remember the team being particularly proud of its efforts in this regard back when I saw the game in development in 2014. It was difficult in that short session to really grasp just how intricate the character creation was. Well I can confidently say now it is nothing short of mind blowing. If there is a class, ability or race that you want it absolutely will be here.
For example it’s not enough to ask yourself if you want to be a mage or wizard without a series of follow up questions. Sure there is a ‘standard’ mage with conventional spell based attacks but there’s also a mage who starts with all the spells he can have and has the ability to turn into a beast to attack enemies. And there’s a priest that works as a support role who has literally no offensive spells. And there’s a FFX-2 songstress like class who uses phrases of music to create ‘spells’.
In fact there are 11 classes in Pillars of Eternity. There are also 6 race types each with at least 2 sub options and some with more. Then there are 7 home regions for your character and then there are around 10 backgrounds to choose from depending on your other choices. On top of deciding between one of the two starting abilities and allocating your ability points. Needless to say it took me a huge amount of time to decide I would be a female, wood elf, ranger with wounding shot and a bear companion who hails from the Deadfire Archipelago and was previously a hunter.
The options available are ridiculous and given this freedom I wager there are very few instances of a character being the same. In fact the only choice that doesn’t effect your stats is your gender. Everything else matters.
Getting stuck into the game after spending far too long on creating my plucky elf hunter I was presented with my first disappointment – a great big wall of text. Despite my years as an RPG enthusiast these days my heart sinks a little when I find I have god knows how many hours of text to read. But to my surprise the narrator kindly starting to dramatically set the scene and work his way through the script. And then I actually started to read everything.
I have to admit I often pay little mind to anything outside of the main quests and do as little reading as possible when involving characters like ‘lady with dog’ or whatever. But Pillars of Eternity is beautifully written throughout. The descriptive texts are at least on par with any quality novel. Suddenly I forgot all my reservations and even looked forward to reading on about the world’s intricate lore. To my surprise most of the main characters have well recorded speech anyway. Given that the writing is so good I had no problems reading but it’s still nice to have the recorded voices.
To put it simply – the combat is tough. Pillars of Eternity has already made a name for itself as difficult and it’s well deserved. I knew this before I started and so I paid particular attention to the descriptions given to the difficulties. Airing on the side of caution I went for normal and enjoyed the challenges that I encountered. Even easy isn’t easy and I certainly wouldn’t have been overconfident. For anyone who is successful at the top difficulty, and there aren’t going to be many, there’s always Iron Man mode with the added punishment that your save is deleted if you die – which is not a rare occurrence. Ouch.
Battles are handled via a great little UI bar that takes up the usual spot a the bottom centre of the screen. It’s small but there are a surprising amount of functions available. There’s a nice big, easy to hit, pause/play button which will likely become your best friend. Pillars of Eternity uses a real time system so pausing almost all the time is a must. It’s not excessive to pause before issuing every command and arguably is the ‘right’ way to play.
Given that you can end up with quite a large group of companions pausing and managing abilities is a must, especially for the tougher fights. Leaving the AI to handle things for you might get you by for the small stuff but almost everything in Pillars of Eternity should be considered dangerous and given at least a little respect. It feels like the UI is actually there to help which stops the complex combat from becoming tedious or awkward.
What doesn’t shine is the way Pillars of Eternity looks. It’s too glaringly obvious to ignore much though I wish I could. I know it doesn’t matter as much as all the great things on offer but it really doesn’t help. Paying homage to old classics is one thing but there is no attempt at all to inject any modern effects or elements. Animations are stiff and characters don’t hold up at all. I also found the camera a little limiting and too close like the old 1024 x 768 days. I like the top down look and I’m so glad Obsidian prioritised quests, speech and in depth levelling over visuals. But rather than mimicking those titles of old Pillars of Eternity just looks exactly like them. Side by side you wouldn’t tell the difference which means Pillars looks very very old and low res.
Pillars of Eternity is the best RPG I’ve played since Wasteland 2 and another great addition to my pile of top down RPGs. The character creation and skill trees are absolutely way beyond anything most games offer. If you want to make a fantasy RPG character you can do it here without compromise. Questing is fun and creative with backing from the best writing I’ve seen in as long as I can remember. The difficulty is tough but fare and rewarding. And there’s a good 60 hours or so of content.
Obsidian knew which boxes to tick to keep fans happy and they’ve yet again created an RPG that will be one of the greats because of it. The only thing that really lets Pillars of Eternity down are its visuals. An artistic take on the genre or some higher resolution character models would have gone a long way to making Pillars of Eternity look like something from 2015. Look past the surface and an expansive and immersive world awaits – and Pillars of Eternity does make it oh so easy to forget the looks and lose yourself in its world.
