Rumination Analysis on Pillars of Eternity

[@Microcosmk]

It has been a very long time since you've ruminated about a game I truly love. Thank you to whomever requested PoE, it is firmly placed in my top 10 of all time. Can't wait for Deadfire!

[@lsaacN7]

I'm glad you enjoyed it that much. When I started the game a while ago the writing kept me interested longer than any old school CRPG had before it, but the plot took too long to get started for me personally. Can you explain what the game did to impress you so much? I'm considering giving it another go.

[@Microcosmk]

Hmm, honestly I just think it was the right game at the right time. I had a huge itch to scratch and this game delivered on all fronts. The art and the music really captivated me, the story was well-written. The environs were interesting without being too generic. It was just exactly what I wanted to play at the time.

[@lsaacN7]

That makes sense and I agree with you that the game does all of those elements really well. I'm not expecting you to do this, but if you could reply to this comment explaining if Deadfire surpasses the first game and if playing the first game has a larger impact on Deadfire's plot let me know. When it comes out of course.

[@LocalDegenn]

sixteenbiticon dude me too!! I actually went out and purchased it. the Exploration was amazing!! The combination of TheLorerunner"s format and this game meshed perfectly

[@RealMisterDoge]

Your breakdowns of all the characters is so utterly fascinating, this video is a treat every time I come across it

[@jmk3178]

It took me three years to finally beat Pillars of Eternity, so now I can finally watch this.

[@perlichtman1562]

Wait, there are people that say The Legend of Zelda is a bad game that people only like because of nostalgia? That one is new to me because I’m used to hearing about games that are steps along the way to refining a great “next game.” But A Link to the Past was the most refined console Zelda without any competition at all for years. It was all about the refinement, honestly. :)

[@alexnieves]

No idea how I came across this video and your channel, but I love videos like this. Pillars of Eternity was a fantastic game and I'm currently replaying it.

[@ziodice6166]

I think your mistake is forgetting that tons of people *love* this combat system, and to many of them that is the meat of the game. You say that it's padding as if it's a poor game design choice, but I really think it's just a matter of you not enjoying this type of combat, and that's okay.

[@johngun7418]

I have a love hate relationship with this system due to the massive amount of micromanaging you have to do to not get slaughtered or just not have to rest after every encounter. Sometimes I enjoy it and other times I feel overwhelmed and annoyed when I have to pause every five seconds to cast spells, reposition my party members or target more enemies.

[@zoisantonopoulos7999]

The strongest aspect of this game is the rpg elements. These are phenomenal. Everything else around average. But if you love the genre , this is a must play. It's a proper rpg.

[@t3mpl3guardian]

On a side note, the story of Sagani and the white stag seems related to one of the books found in the game, The Great Western Stag: _"One day, Eothas was sitting on a wall, watching a cat play in the sun. A crystal, hung in a nearby tree, had fragmented a sunbeam and scattered small motes of light on the ground. They danced around the cat, sliding over him as he frantically batted at them. He spun in place, following one as it rushed past him, and leaped on it, trying to pin it down. Eothas smiled, amused at the animal's tenacity. The cat landed on a spot, placing his paws over it only to watch it flit away again. Eothas watched the cat's tail twitch and slap at the ground, annoyed that his prey could not be pinned._ _‘Why must you tease him?’ a voice said from behind him, accompanied by the crunch of sandals on gravel._ _‘I merely bring the dawn,’ Eothas responded. ‘I don't stoke the hunter's heart. That's your responsibility, isn't it?’_ _‘True,’ said a second voice, ‘but neither to you quell it. If the hunter could not see his prey, would he still hunt?’_ _‘So philosophical, Hylea,’ Eothas said and turned to greet the two gods that approached him. ‘Have you come to debate the parallel between sight and desire?’ He gestured to the wall, inviting Hylea and Galawain to join him. They sat in silence, watching the cat who continued to hunt the sun, fruitlessly swatting at another mote and then rolling onto his back._ _‘I have created the ultimate prey,’ Eothas said finally, breaking the silence. ‘It can be tracked. It can be followed. It can be seen. But it can never be caught.’ Galawain laughed lightly. ‘You don't agree, Galawain?’ Eothas asked._ _‘While it's true that your creation is elusive, it hardly can be considered the ultimate prey because it never can be caught.’ He paused, his brow furrowed in thought. ‘If that mote of light had substance, the hunter could subdue it. Otherwise, it's merely a dream - truly a fruitless endeavor.’_ _‘All creatures spend their lives chasing fruitless endeavors,’ said Hylea. ‘It is the way of mortality.’Galawain laughed again._ _‘I could create a creature - a living creature of flesh and blood - that could never be caught. I make your dream a reality.’ Now it was Eothas's turn to laugh._ _‘You propose turning a fruitless dream into a fruitless reality! How is this any better?’_ _‘A life spent in the pursuit of an attainable goal far exceeds any other.’_ _‘But you just said no one could catch this creature! This is not attainable!’_ _Galawain smiled. ‘Humanity has surprised us before. Indeed it could surprise us again. I will create a great white stag and I will set it free in the world. It will have grace, resilience, and tenacity. It will exist solely to be pursued for all its days, and it will never be caught. It will serve to inspire the hunt for generations to come. All those who wish for glory will invoke my name. All those who hear its story will ask for my blessing in finding it.’_ _Hylea shook her head, and threw Galawain a bemused look. ‘I do not believe this is possible. So I, too, make an offer. To the person who catches this stag - and they will catch the stag - I will bestow upon them its grace, resilience, and tenacity. Thrice blessed they will be. They will ask for my blessing on the hunt so they can obtain my boon.’_ _Galawain and Hylea took up arguing whose name would be invoked more when the hunt was on. Eothas sighed, a small smile playing at the edges of his mouth. He stood and looked to the sky. The sun had already started to hide itself behind the mountains. The cat, long ago tired of the stalking the motes, had fallen asleep beneath the tree. He turned and looked at the other gods, deep in debate, and sighed again._ _‘I merely bring the dawn,’ he repeated as he made his way down the path, ‘it is up to you to see what I reveal."_ And, to add a twist of irony, a fantastic hide armor for Sagani that can be found is none other than the Husk of the Great Western Stag. I doubt this was a coincidence and perhaps fate, not free will, is the name of the game and the name of the bearer of lessons, and perhaps the greatest lesson of all is this: Whatever you may do, whatever choices you believe you make of your own volition, you are nothing more than the pawn in the great game of the gods, as we all are. Well, perhaps all but the Watcher, the eye of providence. *EDIT:* Further into this mystery could be whether or not the death of Waidwen by the hands of the puppet of Magran was what Eothas had intended all along. After all, he was the herald of the new dawn, he who shines the light of truth into the darkest of places, and boy, the light that was shone in the proverbial ripple of this event laid all things of gods and men bare. Perhaps the rise of his avatar was nothing more than a tool to set these gears into motion. Who knows?

[@NoobFromRomania]

Thank you for your comment.

[@pheelmaker]

i always wanted the needledrop to start making videogames analysys, this is close enough

[@Ethica]

lol first video of his i've watched and said to myself...this is the needledrop of gaming lol

[@RealMisterDoge]

Christ

[@JoaoPedro-gt9qq]

I couldnt help but notice that your jacket have a very large zipper pull

[@KeyAndrew]

I really hope to see you do a rumination on "Pillars of Eternity 2 Deadfire".......

[@chrish9485]

Pallegina!! lol Good talk. This is one of my fave games. I guess your schedule is too full to delve into the White March, eh? Worth it if you ever have the time.

[@dadman3992]

you totally don't have to pledge yourself to a god to survive the pit, just talking to them will let you drop down safely (unless they patched that out, I made no promises when I first played back when the game came out). The gods want you to do as they ask but more than that they want Thaos stopped. good review, get the expansions because they're even better

[@postapocalypse0763]

Wait what? Con has some checks in the game?

[@dreamermagister8561]

Gods?

[@MidnightSt]

nitpick here, but... can't help myself: if it's three opposites (yes, such a thing can exist), then it's trichotomy, since the "di" in di-chotomy means "two".

[@JayTohab]

Dude! You're the first person I've seen to describe story vs. plot the way I see it!

[@Cyber1zed]

Please do a Rumination on Tyranny or Torment: Tides of Numanera?

[@TheRPGChick]

Revenge of Newton All his ruminations are chosen by his Patreon members.

[@LEdungeonmaster]

One thing I really liked is that none of the other character's can actually SEE the Grieving Mother. In fact, several times they will ask who the hell you are talking to when you engage with conversation with her.

[@lucaschilds9241]

This is wild to me because I loved the combat and found it fairly challenging and engaging at many points but I did also play with a party of 5 and tried not to lean too heavily on resting. The loot was sorta uninteresting to me, but it was also blessedly not stressful and generally in RPGs of this size loot juggling is something that feels extremely superfluous and generally acts like a persistent nag always popping in to make sure I'll never get immersed.

[@trewr5609]

Nice, been looking forward to this one. Would be amazing to see Obsidian get another crack at Fallout or do a first-person Vampire: The Masquerade as a spiritual sequel to Bloodlines! New Vegas was just a gem.

[@FelixDaleth]

One major disagreement. You don't have to bend the knee to get into the pit. They offer you a blessing if you promise to do their will, however you don't have to accept. All you need to do is run their small errand(s) to be allowed to descend. And they allow you to descend with no strings attached because in the end most of them are opposed to Woedica's power grab. In the end you are entirely free to do whatever you want with the souls with no retribution. I'd also add that world aside the game failed to convey the sense of urgency of hero's personal quest. I was pushing forward much more to stop the hollowborn curse. Aaaand there's that detail of despite gods being man made, they do exist now, and they seem to manifest attributes of divinity and divine power. Was the Engwithan ritual a suicide of a people or maybe a collective ascension to godhood? Other than that, interesting rumination. In the end the most succinct way to summarize the game's themes in my mind is uncertainty and dealing with it on your own terms. It applies to pretty much all character side quests. We're in the minority of people who like Sagani. :) Aloth is an interesting case. He used to be one of my least liked characters, because in general I dislike spineless people. But hey, apparently we can help them grow and rise up. There's probably a lesson to be learned somewhere in there. In a computer game. Amazing stuff.

[@yugen]

Also it's worth being said that Josh has shown on Twitter than the gods will remember each and every pledge you made to them, including contradictions :) It will be very interesting to see what happens in Deadfire.

[@Mrityugata]

I'm pretty sure that combat in Pillars of Eternity is what it is, not just because Infinity Engine games had that kind of combat, but because there's a lot people who consider it to be awesome, and keep replaying IE games mostly for that reason. Of course it's gameplay in general, not just combat -- and one of the reasons why it's so compelling is because IE had no clear segregation between combat and non-combat activities. You could have had one character shopping, three characters fighting an epic battle in a tavern (against a band of other intrepid adventurers), an the remaining 2 characters getting drunk in another tavern, all at the same time ...which isn't true in Pillars, unfortunately. The game doesn't stick to the past as much as you say, it does have that annoying tendancy of locking you in combat similar to, for example, Dragon Age ("We fight or we die" seems to Bioware motto now :)). Also, Pillars has left the turn-based foundations behind, so instead of "attacks per round" it has delay between attacks -- and the game measures time in seconds, not rounds and turns. And by the way, it's real time with pause, not real time. You made it sound as if pausing game is optional, which might explain why you dislike that system.

[@shifterx]

Mrtyugata No, you can disable the autopausing. You can play the game fully real time.

[@jakeand9020]

@@shifterx Yes, but that's not the default and not how it's intended to be played, wich is the point. More specifically "with pause" isn't "optional," strictly "real time" is the optional.

[@Greatdictator]

I played a priest , and worshipped Woedica at first......boy did i MISJUDGE what that god was kinda all about. Playing as a mostly good charachter had a very , passive agressive relationship in the sequel

[@Geraduss]

I personaly loved the combat in Pllars and even more in Tyranny, and I can't stand the turn based combat such as in Divinity to a point that I can't even play those games.

[@yugen]

Same here, I love it. I set my auto pause to pause whenever an enemy casts a spell, whenever one of my characters has finished an action, whenever one of my characters has killed an enemy, etc. And I put it on slow motion, so it's very similar to turn based except you don't have an initiative list.

[@perlichtman1562]

I feel what you said about the combat. I’m playing it now and I felt when I beat BG1 that I would have preferred turn-based to real-time with pause. I often enabled most automatic pauses to make it more like turn-based most of the time… unless I was trying to level-up quickly.

[@t3mpl3guardian]

Isn't "kneel or game" over a reflection of their IRL realization concerning the nature of pursuing one's dreams and being at the whim of either publishers or backers? Perhaps it was their way of ultimately accepting the reality that all have to bend a knee to something in order to truly accomplish? Is this not the nature of sacrifice?

[@vladtheinhaler9744]

enjoyed this very much Hope you will do this for the 2nd Game, Deadfire. If you didnt enjoy the combat, then maybe the new turn based mode will be right up your alley

[@davidhalseyhiller4955]

It's interesting that you don't like the combat. I started with normal because I was mainly interested in the story, but I enjoyed the combat so much that now I play with Path of the Dammed - and every combat is a real adventure taking a lot of skill to get through.

[@hundun5604]

Your analysis made me real curious about the game. I haven't played it yet. Can't wait to put some time in it. 👍🏿

[@RealMisterDoge]

You confuse the Engwithans with the Glanfathans (at about 22:00) The Glanfathans are the native tribes that protect and revere the ruins, artifacts, and technology left behind by the Engwithans

[@quicksilvertongue3248]

"the veins of the world"... sounds kinda like the Pipes of the Cosmos, or the Cylinders of Existence, or maybe even the Columns of Spacetime. I wonder if there's another name like that out there somewhere....

[@ThatMans-anAnimal]

I come to these games for the party-based RTwP combat specifically. I felt that the best thing about the game was the character attribute system and the class system, which improved considerably on previous iterations of the D&D formula, making useless stats not useless, etc. The possibility for different character builds was of great interest to me, and in PoE2 this will be even more so with the addition of dual-classing.

[@johngun7418]

I really like obsidian games but thank God there's always a story mode for the combat. also have you tried age of decadence? I just bought it and I'm really liking their philosophy when it comes to combat and interactions with npcs.

[@eydn77001]

@Lorerunner do you think that something or rather someone (hey there Eothas) pushed the correct buttons in order for us to become The Watcher? I'm curious about your opinion on that thing. I had this strange feeling that the sickness at the beginning wasn't a coincidence.

[@Amonny]

I think 90% of the players do not want every game to be like Original Sin.

[@AnaPradosA]

I have the same problem with this game, I'm really liking the story and environment. But the combat and the interface are really annoying.

[@terbentur2943]

Doesn't the invention of gunpowder weapons speak against a medival stasis trope?

[@v1zdr1x]

Could you go into detail about why you didn't enjoy Pillars of Eternity's combat but you enjoyed Dragon Age: Origins? I feel the same way in that I consider Dragon Age: Origins one of my favorite games including the combat but for some reason I don't enjoy Pillar's nearly as much. I would think I'd really enjoy both of them but there's just something about PIllar's combat that just doesn't work for me. I enjoyed Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 to an extent but again didn't really enjoy Pillar's.

[@st2rseeker]

Fascinating rumination, as always. Thank you.

[@jakeand9020]

The reason is, lots of us enjoy the combat :) Just because YOU don't like it, doesn't mean it's BAD or WRONG, it just means it's not to your personal taste. Real-time with pause such as Pillars (and Balders Gate series) is, personally, my second favorite system. My favorite is the turn-based tactics, such as FF Tactics, which you also don't like. This is different from basic turn-based, like Fallout, because of the importance and emphasis on terrain and positioning.

[@HughRose84]

Have you played Torment: Numenera? Would love to hear your thoughts! :D

[@TheRPGChick]

Hugh Rose He hasn't had time yet. Hopefully next month, I believe he said.

[@HughRose84]

Ah I see. Looking forward to it :D

[@HughRose84]

Sorry to hear you didn't like it... I would say I'm enjoying it but it is mainly because of the setting and excellent writing. The combat is a bit weak and the crisis system is interesting but has never reached its full potential for me. I am a bit confused about how they spent all the money, and why it spent so long in development!!

[@TheRPGChick]

Hugh Rose I actually adore that game. The story and sense of wonderment in exploration is just magnificent.

[@RealMisterDoge]

I heard a lot of people hated it Glad to know people appreciate it, I bought it recently but won't start it until I've finished Pillars

[@t3mpl3guardian]

I am delighted you seemed on the cusp of arriving at the same conclusions as I near the end ... *On the nature vs nurture and the follower vs leader relationship:* Perhaps the whole story revolves around the way these two ideas intertwine. Perhaps, each of the characters in this game represents some combination of these in place of the classic lawful vs chaotic spectrum and good vs evil spectrum of alignment. Perhaps Obsidian created an alignment system that reflects more complex truths about the human condition. Perhaps the greatest message they have for us is the idea of the Natured Leader, the Natured Follower, the Nurtured Leader, the Nurtured Follower, and the various points in between classically occupied by the concept of Neutrality? Just a thought.

[@sunbather1576]

Background from Skyrim?

[@stealthswimmer]

loved the game and loved this rumination. 😃

[@quicksilvertongue3248]

"Who do you support?". Oh god, it's Balon vs Harrimont all over again. But at least there's a third option this time.

[@thinking-ape6483]

Play Tyranny and ruminate please!

[@yugen]

Did you even watch it? He said he beat Tyranny before he spent 2 hours in PoE.

[@Wlerin48]

Regarding your (almost) final point (SPOILERS for ending of both Pillars and the video): Even if you don't consider the different deities to be separate choices, there are three final choices, not just two. Jump (and Die), Kneel (and Fulfill your oath), or Kneel (and Break your oath).

[@zoisantonopoulos7999]

An interesting thing is that theos means god in Greek. It's written exactly as you would write it in Greek only with English characters as well.

[@SacrumImperiumRomanum517]

i can't play these games due to the combat, i just personally can't stand the real time pause after play divinity and games like that. And it's funny co syou go on those videos and people say they can't stand the turn based.

[@Imjustaguy123]

Jumped out after the spoiler warning. This rumination really makes me want to go back and play it though! I stopped after a few hours the first time, also not a big fan of the combat.

[@adyy78]

I would have loved much more a review with samples from the game and examples.

[@Mr9TalesFox]

Blood state? I can't find information on it.

[@quicksilvertongue3248]

The concept of Tyranny sounds like the literal opposite of what I like.

[@OrroHelhammer]

Imagine typing multiple comments and just getting ignored 😂

[@quicksilvertongue3248]

"Plants, animals, and trees? Wait, that's redundant. Plants, animals, and people!". That's still redundant, Lore... much as they want to pretend otherwise, people are animals.

[@StandingNomad]

Great stuff. The ruminations are your best content. !!SPOILERS!! I personally had no problem with making a deal with one of the "constructs" and let it help me get to the bottom of the pit, I don't see why this is a problem. You can't just jump down a pit and expect to live. Constructs or not, they still have power. Thaos is right when he argues that for all intents and purposes the constructs really are Gods. Doesn't mean you have to agree with him overall, but he does have a lot of valid points too. For the record I choose to align myself with Berath, and choose to return the souls to the wheel to be reborn in new vessels. Seemed like the most natural course of action overall. Favorite characters were Durance and Kana, even though Sagani really grew on me towards the end of the game when you begin to see the wisdom in why she's doing what she's doing. Eder was nice but like you say he's the everyman, you're supposed to like him. I found Aloth a bit bland to be honest, despite his dual personality. Pallegina and Hiravias didn't really do much for me. Palleginas story has been told many times before and Hiravias was a bit crude for my taste. In the expansions Zahua is fantastic, a stoic warrior monk who likes drugs and who has to deal with loss. Lots of love and wisdom put into that character, my favorite next to Durance and Kana. The Devil of Caroc is interesting but she's ultimately not a good person, and she doesn't really grow as a character either, so she got ditched. Maneha is fun and can be a real powerhouse with dual-wield, life-stealing weapons and that red armor-set.. she makes a great high-DPS front-liner. Too bad you didn't like the combat in the game.. I quite liked it, even though I admit D:OS has it beat.

[@alroth1035]

Hey there, Lorerunner! New to the cannel here, and really liked the video. I had a pretty different read of the game than you, I believe, but all the same I think you raise many interesting points and make many great observations. I like the way you approached the aspect of adra in the game and can agree with your hypothesis. On the other hand, I had pretty differing thoughts on certain aspects and characters... To touch two specifically, my interpretation of Durance was quite different, I think the way we meet him in the present time is affected by years of resentment after feeling used and empty following the detonation of the Godhammer bomb... I actually thought he was intriguing as a kind of Robert Oppenheimer whose guilt would have manifested into self-hatred and a zealous desire for "atonement". The other case I'll touch on is with regards to seeking a god's favour to descend a pit: I think that at that point in the game there is no real indication yet that the gods may not exist, on the contrary we have more evidence of the opposite, so asking for their permission or aid in a task is something I reckon wouldn't go against our character's beliefs or our understanding of the setting up to that point. My thoughts on this anyhow. As for my own thoughts on the game, here's my own review on it, I hope you find it an interesting read and would love to hear your response: September 2012 saw a flip in fortune for the then-declining developer Obsidian Entertainment: with the studio threatening bankruptcy following the cancellation of their latest project codenamed “North Carolina”, a crowdfunding campaign proposed by Fallout: New Vegas creative director Josh Sawyer was launched in hopes to stymy the company’s downwards decline; in the following two months the campaign would see a record-breaking U$S 4 million from over 73.000 donators for a then-titled Project Eternity. In early 2015 it would see the light of day as Pillars of Eternity, a new isometric RPG in the style of the old Infinity Engine games that first gave the team their fame back in the late 90s and early 00s, and which echoing much more their 2007 Neverwinter Nights 2 expansion Mask of the Betrayer, seems to likewise turn these familiar elements, aesthetic and setting on its head to deliver an experience that feels wholly fresh, memorable and unique, eluding a slavishness to its roots that so many games sold primarily on nostalgia are victims of and which is willing to follow and expand on its own concept and ideas, at times with an approach so detailed and nuanced so as to bring new and interesting perspectives into the discussion, at others so blunt and direct so as to stunt these same altogether. I’ll attempt to outline the premise next. On your journey to a new land, you stumble across a cult performing a ritual on an ancient and unknown machine, which triggers a memory from a life your soul had formerly lived: your soul has been 'awakened' to the experiences of a past life, you are seeing things before you that have happened centuries ago as if they were happening in a present time, and soon you find out that unless you can resolve the why to this 'awakening', you will be driven mad by these visions, memories and irresolute conflicts. All the while this is happening the region you’ve reached is undergoing an almost apocalyptic crisis: for over a decade every child has been born soulless, in a completely unresponsive and vegetated state; every solution has failed, and desperation and hopelessness only grows amidst the country’s inhabitants. Many see in this a form of divine punishment following the country’s response to the crusade led by a saint seen by its followers as the reincarnation of their god - this same saint and his war meeting their demise with a bomb engineered by twelve priests from the now-afflicted region. I mentioned before that I feel Pillars of Eternity echoes Mask of the Betrayer over the actual Infinity Engine games, and to me the parallels start with the above: as we’re introduced to the world and our part in the story we’re about to play through, we first understand the conflict on a scale that is much more personal and involved with ourselves: whereas in Mask of the Betrayer we soon learn we’ve been possessed by a soul-eating affliction that obliges us to feed on others’ spirits lest we are consumed by that hunger ourselves, here we are awoken to memories of a past life and are thus forced to face the threat of insanity. These matters are directly pertinent to our characters and they define above all else why they, and by extension we, should care about the journey we are to face. In the meantime the conflict that affects the world on a grander scale first makes itself aware to us as part of the background or context our characters inhabit, and it is not until later in the story, when we slowly piece together more of these issues and contexts and how we come to play inside them, that we realize they are not just mere colour for the overall journey but in fact the hearts of the conflicts to each story: in Mask of the Betrayer we learn that our affliction is all that remains of the “Betrayer” Akachi and we are to take over his part in the Crusade to bring down the Wall of the Faithless, and likewise in Pillars of Eternity the reasons to the Hollowborn plague are intrinsically tied to the answers and the 'truth' that disturbed us from our awakened past. Whether a deliberate choice on behalf of the authors, a byproduct of their instinct for a satisfying narrative pace, or simply a similarity and observation that is only curious to me, this confluent narrative structure is something I find immediately satisfying: it is not uncommon in games of this genre and scope that the grander ambitions neglect the reason to why we on a personal level should care so much about resolving them; on the other hand, by framing them first as personal conflicts that then slowly tie into a grander, more impersonal arc, we have a much stronger reason to why our character should be involved in this overall arc beyond carrying or being the McGuffin. It also helps to ease the player into very lore-heavy conflicts, allowing one to absorb the information pertaining to the history driving to a certain issue at a gentler pace, and so that by the time one is forced to take action in it one is reasonably aware of how things came to be. We are thus spared of any immediate information dumps in the form of an overlong and cumbersome introductory narration, if some characters later in the game are nevertheless a tad too expositional. A common complaint I have heard across several reviews is that the story is 'weak'. I cannot agree with this remark myself but I can understand what may lead to such an impression, given that a structure like this can take its time to reveal the exact ultimate goal; it is not something I mind however, and I am willing to embrace the mystery and see where it leads me. (cont.)

[@alroth1035]

(continued from above) Themes and ideas likewise find certain parallels between both games: these two deal with cyclical and rhyming motifs in their respective histories, seeing in their protagonists characters who are retracing and reliving a life or journey that has been lived before by another, a former incarnation of theirs either in a literal or figurative sense (in this regard Mask of the Betrayer makes a point in recognizing Campbell’s monomyth at play, and seeing in its protagonist another “mask” that walks the same path all heroes do; this repetition is made less evident in Pillars of Eternity, but there’s still some ground to it, not least when understanding that most belief systems that involve the concept of reincarnation have a cyclical understanding of time, and thus these new lives lived by each soul are nothing if not a reiteration of the same within new time cycles - a motif that is also repeated in the game by Ondra, a goddess who in Shaivist fashion brings forth the world's destruction to start it anew). But perhaps more relevant are their respective humanistic concerns surrounding religion. With Mask of the Betrayer we’d seen Obsidian tackle the issue of a religion’s rejection of the non-believer’s place in the 'Afterlife'. It’s a small and succinct idea that nevertheless gave plenty of room with which to develop an interesting, thought-provoking and ultimately very engrossing story. Pillars of Eternity is more ambitious in its reach, but seems to also carry on in the spirit of what we’ve seen in the aforementioned game, taking the chance with a new original intellectual property to recreate a Renaissance in a fictional setting, and in it portray a cultural turning point away from a more theocentric conception of the world, into a more humanist and anthropocentric one instead. To this extent it is interesting to note the role that genre expectations play in the development and portrayal of these themes, and why above all else the same would likely not have worked with a stricter historical context. Now, I’ll have to make a general assumption here, but I would guess that in the context of high fantasy it is not strange for people to accept the existence of gods and the potential of their power at work, so long as deities are mentioned within the diegesis and so on; therefore as the game first presents us with the world of Eora, and mentions the likes of Eothas and Berath, we assume these gods are real entities and not just product of a faith that may be questioned or assumed to be mythical/metaphorical, and thus also accept that the gods govern the laws of nature and existence, physical or otherwise, and by consequence also the lives of 'kith' (i.e. the civilized species). We understand how, in this context, a pandemic (especially one dealing with soul-related ailments) threatens a region because “a god wills it”, and how in appeasing the gods may 'They' put an end to the affliction. In a fictional world where things we usually categorize as fantasy or supernatural are an everyday occurrence, we are as unfamiliar as to the laws that truly govern this context as its people are, and whereas with a historical setting we’d likely understand what drives people to assume an otherworldly reason for the bubonic plague but at the same time know better, here we can probably assume divine punishment to be as true a cause as any. It is only later in the game, and heard first from a very questionable source of information in the shape of a mad 'scientist' (animancer, in this context seen as the people who study matters relating to the soul) that’s been reanimating corpses to and fro, that the cause to this plague may not be a matter pertaining to gods, but to a much earthlier one instead. Animancy becomes the primary stand-in for a science in its fledgling, flourishing states, at once guilty of many cruel and unethical experiments in the name of progress and enlightenment, but showing in that same ambition a desire to stray away from an understanding of the world gated by religious dogma and see for humanity a new agency and value within the world they inhabit: they are the ones who are first offering a mortal solution to what is perceived to be divine retribution, and thus meeting the “will of the gods” with their own human means. As we reach into the second act, the conflicts surrounding animancy begin to play a major part in the story, as the study finds itself at odds with the masses for reasons ranging from ethical, to historical, to outright superstitious: in light of the Hollowborn plague, animancy’s quickest reaction was to attempt to “revitalize” the soulless babies by infusing them with animal souls - this leading to disastrous consequences as the children grew to become rabid and beastlike. The repeated failures and atrocities committed for the sake of finding a cure to the plague is only fuel to the fire, to an increasingly hostile opposition that affirms that not only are their acts monstrous, but are also likely helping the plague to proliferate. The main argument, though not the only one, centres on the perceived fields of kith and gods alike, and to what extent are the animancers dabbling with things they should not; but this is not a subject I find all that interesting myself, as seeing this conflict from a largely rationalist perspective I find myself immediately at odds with the more zealous and superstitious arguments at play here, whereas the no-holds-barred approach to experimentation on behalf of the animancers feels like a somewhat flimsy attempt at evening the field in an argument that, to my mind, is clearly more sensible from one of both sides. The game also does not entirely avoid the trap of presenting its antagonistic force, led primarily by religious motivations, as fundamentalist and fanatical (we’ll come to this later); however, it does a great job at painting a much greater and more rounded argument than I’ve seen practically any other game do, so as to not make of the conflict between progress and tradition, or reason and superstition, one that entirely (or correctly) encompasses the divide between science and religion. In doing so, the game touches on a subject that is far more fascinating to me, which is more about the views under which religion and science (as understood in the modern sense) were conceived, and the extent to which one does not act as a replacement for the other. This, perhaps, opens a can of worms which I’m in no way qualified to address, but all the same I can’t help thinking of the matter: what is religion, and what is its function in society? Some view it as superstition, some as philosophy, as ideology, as a collection of traditions, beliefs and values, as a system of rites and customs, as a moral code, as a cosmogony and way of perceiving natural order, and more… Were one to look it up on Wikipedia, the way it describes it is as a cultural system that relates humanity to an “order of existence”. Whether or not this description may be viewed as accurate in the realms of theology, anthropology and else, I like it all the same because it observes religion as a multifaceted thing that cannot be easily categorized largely for the sheer ubiquity of its presence in our culture, for matters of faith, morality, philosophy or otherwise. But why categorize it, or look for a concrete definition at all? The need to pigeonhole religion into a greater category, or to define its boundaries and limits, are largely a symptom of the modern era, and it too is not the only means by which our approach to the subject is affected: so has our reading and understanding of scripture changed, to become more literal, or alternatively as straight-up allegorical. It is a mistake to disregard the historical intention behind, say, the events as depicted in the Bible, but the concept and approach to history back then was not a rationalist one, or one aimed at outlining facts. It aimed, nevertheless, at outlining truths; yet the question of how 'true' these myths and parables are is up to each respective reader, and their nature differs greatly to the rational understanding of what is true (in these, value plays a greater part than accuracy or authenticity when defining what is true); all the same, in that difference, and in the distinction between truth and fact, lies the root to the conflict that exists today between both areas and their respective accounts. Hiravias alludes to this strongly in a number of occasions: it is frequent that he’ll interject in a conversation involving the gods where he’ll say that it is futile to make sense of what they think, for they do not think like kith do. This may be seen as an affirmation on his part that the gods’ plans and logic are out of the reach of mortal understanding, thus supporting the notion that they are superior; but personally I like to read it with regards to what is explained above, seeing in the gods an older logic that differs greatly to our modern, rational one, and that frequently fails to make sense because they respond to pure ideals and values instead (this is also echoed by Iovara in our encounter with her near the end). (cont.)

[@alroth1035]

(Continued from the second post) Deferring to religion for the literal and factual understanding of history or science is a mistake, and in time we’ve learned to see the value within scripture more in forms that are divorced from truth or fact, hence our modern understanding of these as myths and parables. With the Renaissance came new questions, concerns and anxieties to which religion could not offer a satisfactory answer; but the value of their knowledge and therefore its existence, though changed, remains. I enjoy the touch of having the gods themselves be some of the greatest advocates in the game for science and secularity, arguing that it is the destiny of humanity to carve its own path and not live in the shadow of the gods. This to me speaks of the need for independence and coexistence between both elements, in a way that is all too often ignored, either by way of religious fundamentalism or militant atheism. Our journey to 'Enlightenment' concludes with a revelation that shatters all previous conceptions of Eora’s natural order and great chain of being: from the mouth of Iovara we learn that the gods aren’t 'real', and that they were created by a now-defunct culture so as to fill the void they found when looking for them. Upon reaching this moment, I have to admit I was not all too convinced by it - in fact, in my first run through the game I felt the remainder entirely soured by it. In retrospect I’m still in two minds about it, but I feel I’ve grown to appreciate it more, and the reason is this: tying into the shift towards modernism and humanism that is at the heart of Pillars of Eternity’s themes, the acknowledgement that the gods were created by kith marks a rotund inversion in power, where Man is no longer made in the likeness of God but vice versa. With this, kith are truly independent to forge their own path and reach their own understanding of the world, no longer requiring 'permission' from the gods to do so. It’s a fitting conclusion to the central conceit, but I can’t help feel it goes about it in a manner that isn’t particularly elegant, nor does it leave much room for interpretation and differing points of view. For starters, Iovara is all too eager to serve these revelations to us in very expositional fashion, going to great detail about the way things happened and what led to the gods being created; we are also left with little choice but to accept this as is told, despite having interacted with the gods before and having empirical evidence in-game to their existence (if not their origin as such). To the best of my memory I also cannot recall any indication prior to our meeting her that what she speaks of might be thus. Her words are absolute, and backed by little more than a martyr's fallacy: her suffering in the face of an age-old Inquisition, her death in defense of her ideals, and the seeming selflessness of her actions all readily make her an authority of truth that I can’t help question in the same way I would the usual zealot. Likewise it threatens to simplify and reduce the more nuanced depiction of religion as seen above to an almost villainous ploy whose function is only to act as a deliberate mantle from a truth that is perceived to be dangerous; in turn I can’t help feel the theme outlined in the above paragraphs loses much of its strength, or is invalidated altogether. This also comes in conflict with a theme that links all of our companions and their respective arcs, which is to do with the inaccessibility of the past, with its immutability, and having to face things that cannot be changed, or that cannot be known. Edér hopes to find a reason to his brother’s enlisting to Waidwen’s army, Kana hopes to find an ancient piece of scripture valuable to his culture, the Grieving Mother hopes to find peace in the denial of the past… Every character eventually faces a moment of impossibility in their quest, and they have to come to terms that things won't be as they want them to be. Whether Edér’s inability to know what his brother thought at the time, Kana’s discovery that the tablet he was after has been destroyed, the Grieving Mother’s request for her memory to be erased not changing the events that happened, these and more all mark a sensation of bittersweet dissatisfaction that links all of their stories, and they are much more interesting for it: with every uncertainty and impossibility, what matters is ultimately the approach each character takes and the way they deal with these instances. The conclusions that each character, and the protagonist, arrive to are worthier than the answers that would have otherwise been given, and it is what in the end makes each of these quests fulfilling, and enriching. Why, then, is it that when every character is denied of an answer and comes out all the wiser for it, we, the protagonist, get to find the answer we seek? How much more interesting would it have been for me if the answer had been implied instead: maybe Iovara, despite all her selflessness, could have resented in her dying hour and in the eternity spent in that adra prison the man that handed her over to her fate, and ended her quest to enlighten the world; if so, maybe she could have *denied* the answer from the protagonist, and left him to his suffering. Maybe we’d have to make do with what we could gather from the vision that followed Thaos’ demise, and seen at that moment the suggestion to the gods not being real. The question here is more important, the seed of doubt as powerful as the statement of the gods’ falsehood; the conclusions and questions we make to ourselves after the fact, likewise, more personal and lingering than the answers served to us. There is one exception to all of the above in our encounter with Iovara, if somewhat obscure: with a high enough perception attribute we point out to Iovara that she too has stayed behind all this time waiting for confirmation on her claims. This could be enough to shed some ambiguity to her words, and with it make her words less a statement than yet another facet to the ways in which the game can be read. Unfortunately, they are confirmed once more through Thaos, the leader of the cult we’re after, in a scene where we see him pretty blatantly admitting it all to our protagonist’s former self. I dislike this for a number of reasons, the first being that I’m not too sure why someone as cunning and determined on his mission, who’s kept the secret hidden for centuries, would suddenly reveal it all to a conflicted follower, a fault made worse if said knowledge would outright deny the basic motives and beliefs of his cult, and his person. In admitting to it, Thaos loses much of his power and intrigue: he becomes the stereotypical videogame cult leader, the one in charge of fooling the world with lies to keep them from a knowledge that would “threaten civilization”, all readily revealed in his villain’s monologue; the secret that he hides and the truth that he protects us from feel disappointingly banal, and in some way so does our quest and the conflict the game set us out for. With all this in mind there’s perhaps some grounds to say that the ending is handled a little clumsily and feels as if it had been rushed to a close, with characters being introduced or acting out of their ways so as to funnel the plot into one big reveal that might scrappily tie things together in some form of conclusion. This, however, hardly accounts for the fact that through the nine tenths’ worth of content prior to this point, the game was anything but rushed or simple-minded, and was in fact a very detailed, nuanced and multifaceted experience, gently and carefully fleshed out so as to best work on all the above themes as well as creating a living, breathing setting in which it may all play out. As with the Infinity Engine games, the world is vast, the conflicts numerous and frequently more than the customary fetch/slay quest; a lot of attention has gone into fleshing out this region as a place with its own culture and lifestyle, itself backed by a lore and history that never feel gratuitous, like a set of names and events that exist only as the most superficial imitation of an actual mythos and cosmogony, but which act instead as a discourse and narrative built upon an actual philosophy or ideology. At the heart of the events that transcur through the game is the death of the reincarnated god Eothas at the hands of the inhabitants of the Dyrwood: the Hollowborn plague is widely seen as a reaction to this event, while the stories of characters like Edér and Durance revolve strongly around this war; but once again relevant to all the above themes is the fact that this could very well mark the first time that kith act against the will of a god, or respond to a god’s wrath in kind. In a game so related to the shift towards humanism, the act of mortals killing a god holds its own special significance. (cont.)

[@alroth1035]

(continued from the third part) The way this task is carried out is not to be overlooked either: with the help of war goddess Magran, twelve engineers craft a bomb powerful enough that it would kill a god. The imagery here is tinged by a much more contemporary event - that of the atom bomb - and its association, however loose, is hard to ignore. For decades since its invention and use, the atom bomb has been the symbol to the destructive - and self-destructive - power of mankind, evidenced at its purest in the many post-apocalyptic scenarios that have emerged in fiction since; and despite the quasi-historical look of the setting in Pillars of Eternity, here too we sense a distinct dystopian feel that is further supported by such touches in its diegetic history. Whether a product of these elements or just my mood at the time of playing the game, the tone exhibited through the early stages of the game couldn’t help reminding me of the more spiritual brand of apocalyptic science fiction the likes of Neon Genesis Evangelion and Children of Men, as it too shares some themes and motifs with these, whilst indulging in some metaphysical conundrums of its own, courtesy of the role souls play in the game as well as the protagonist’s ability to read into them, their history and the “between”. At the later stages of the game, the god Rymrgand presents itself to us as the Beast of Winter, a massive aurochs that that trudges the world of Eora relentlessly, bringing with it cold and bitter winds, all life withering around it; in the game he represents the ongoing and unstoppable process of entropy, the decaying of souls as they split apart into tinier, weaker fragments of what they once were, until eventually they’ll altogether cease to be. There will likewise come a time when the last remaining consciousness will consign itself to the void, and if so, what will be left in the Universe but giant masses slowly drifting in a vacuum towards a Great Attractor? All of the above may paint a picture of the game as grim and impersonal, food for thought but not for the soul, but I would disagree. Sure enough, the game’s a serious experience with few moments of levity scattered across, but throughout it are also many scenes that have awed me, that have touched me and moved me in ways I haven’t felt for the medium in a long time. Much of this relates to the companions that eventually join us in our travels: some may respond to the themes above in a more interesting yet impersonal fashion, as with Durance, one of the twelve engineers of the Godhammer bomb, or the Grieving Mother, a midwife and cipher (a kind of psychic) who has to come to terms with her actions upon first encountering the Hollowborn plague; yet others, like Edér and Sagani, are treated with a worldliness and naturalness seldom seen in such games, and come across as the emotional anchors that so perfectly complement the 'freaks' that accompany us. Touches like Edér’s love for animals or Sagani’s casual, maternal insight offer a break of relatability in what may otherwise be a very grey-mattered affair: a lovely moment comes when, upon being asked of her people (the Naasitaqi, a loose equivalent to the Eskimo in this setting) and her past, Sagani says she’s up to answering anything and adds that if she doesn’t know an answer, she’ll “make something up”. It is this relatability to her that lends her quest such gravitas, so that by the almost Miyazaki-like revelation at its end I was subjected to one of the most hard-hitting, memorable and devastating moments in any game I’ve so far played. We’ve mentioned above the events, concerns and quasi-anachronisms that contribute to lending the region of the Dyrwood such a unique and unexpected atmosphere, but we have yet to touch on the other half of its overarching tone that contributes to making this world so engrossing. As per all of the above, we can expect a world that feels at times bleak and somewhat desolate, particularly in the less urbanized areas; however, running alongside this is a sense of longing that pervades this region, not in the most classical form of nostalgia that one would expect from a game ostensibly inspired in nearly two-decades-old material, but as a yearning for a brighter future. Of course, a future is what is being denied of the Dyrwood, but as with Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men, a condition of global infertility manifests itself not only as the fear of humanity’s extinction (or that of a country’s population at least), but as a growing feeling of stagnation that comes alongside an aging society, devoid of the presence of youth (and as with Children of Men, this infertility is not physical but spiritual and ideological - it is not out of chance that it ends with the Enlightenment). Though this issue is portrayed to an extreme by the Hollowborn plague, it too is echoed to a much earthlier degree in the community of Stalwart, part of the White March DLCs: here we too see a stagnation and longing emerging not from a supernatural plague but from the exodus of the younger generations to what are perceived to be more prosperous communities, perhaps in the shape of other larger cities. The village’s mayor urges the protagonist to find a way into the forge not out of an appeal for riches or a threat looming on the horizon, but for a desire to stop that stagnation and see a waning community once again in motion. Key to all of this is Justin Bell’s wonderful musical score: in a time where incessant and characterless drones of orchestral (and pseudo-orchestral) clusters seem to be the norm in fantasy epics, Bell’s soundtrack seems almost chamber-like beside them, dynamic and nuanced and lending the world an intimacy that would have lacked with a grander, more pompous approach. To my eyes Pillars of Eternity isn’t perfect: the stronghold could have been implemented differently so as to make it more personal to the player and more relevant to the overall story; some voice acting, particularly involving a few of the less relevant characters (Urgeat, some of the Glanfathans and Dozens for example), is middling or outright poor; and as with my complaints about the ending, some encounters and dialogues can feel overly expositional and rob a scene of its impact (see our exchange with Wymund at the end of the Blood Legacy quest as another notable example); but for all its flaws none appear to come from a lack of trying, and that is something I can admire greatly even in the game’s creakiest moments. Originally pitched as a throwback to the Infinity Engine games of old, this could have limited itself to being a nostalgia vehicle following some familiar beats in the style the Black Isle fanbase were long yearning for, and would have likely met moderate success all the same; the game outright refuses to be just that, however, and to see it only as a throwback would be to seriously underappreciate the content within and ignore a set of themes that are entirely divorced from these inspirations. Even the top-down isometric aesthetic chosen for the project, to my knowledge exceedingly rare for games of its ilk at the time the project was crowdfunded, is not approached in the form of aesthetic revisionism or primitivism, utilizing the visual language consequent of the system limitations of the time as a stylish and nostalgic throwback to a bygone era, but instead as an alternative every bit as legitimate and contemporary as the far more common (to my awareness at least) third-person three-dimensional approach. The latter aesthetic is a subject of much controversy between my friends and I: coming from a background of film and television, the third-person perspective holds a great appeal for myself and my peers in its inherent cinematic qualities, in no small part for the innate appeal of the tracking and sequence shot and the means in which this perspective largely functions as this very technique; but as it is so cinematic, and cinema is the dominant audiovisual artform as well as the one we are most attuned to, it (as well as the first-person three-dimensional perspective) is seen as the superior video-game aesthetic and the one-and-only way 'ahead' for the medium, all stemming from a notion that the game will inevitably be better the more cinematic it is. All other aesthetic approaches are irrelevant. This attitude irritates me to no end for the reasons that, firstly, I see value in all styles and approaches regardless of their proximity to cinema or photorealism (I for one disagree to seeing either as the goal of all visual or audiovisual expression); and secondly because just as I’ve seen cinema still fight the stigma to this day of being a “lesser” art form to literature or theatre, and see the value in a film that finds a way to approach its subject that is entirely personal to its medium, so do I think that a game that does the same for its own medium is just as worthy of praise. Now, it is undeniable that games employing a third-person perspective and aiming for a photorealistic aesthetic can be masterful (one doesn’t need to look further than the likes of Fumito Ueda’s games to find an immediate example), and Pillars of Eternity may at times rely more heavily on text than the usual game to approach a subject or illustrate a scene; but it is all the same a strength to the game that it can be so arresting as an audiovisual experience, filled with beautiful and awe-inspiring sights and locales, whilst conserving an aesthetic and approach that is unique of the videogame medium. (cont.)

[@alroth1035]

(continued from fourth comment) Even the tool of cinematic cutscenes, also present in the original Infinity Engine games, are here replaced by scripted interactions that further cement the complete divorce between the aesthetic in this game and film: these instead occur as a series of lithographies accompanied with text, sound effects and music, all to illustrate the scene or action to a very essential degree. In their apparent simplicity, these sequences not only present an elegant solution to many complex scenes and interactions with the environment that would have otherwise often been portrayed in the form of another conversation, but also seem often strategically placed so as to enhance the mood of a particular quest or sequence, their minimal use of sound effects frequently capturing the emotional ‘accent’ of the scene (another expression may exist for this, but I refer to a moment in a scene or sequence where the tone, rhythm or idea either peaks in intensity, becomes clear or faces a sudden or unexpected change as an accent - this point may come in any form within any medium and be as big and important as a turning point or as small and irrelevant as a random object moving at the edge of the screen). A case in point to this may be the very first scripted interaction we witness, where the hunter Sparfel’s death is illustrated by the sounds of his irregular footsteps, his heavy breath and eventual collapse, revealing the arrow on his back; likewise, in The White March, the sound of Abydon’s hammer falling onto the giant anvil as he gives shape to the Eyeless is itself a striking aural image; but also very appealing to me are the more familiar and frequent sounds of vines stretching and tightening as we attempt to climb them, grapple hooks finding a rock to latch onto, or the sound of a hammer and chisle against a wall as we attempt to weaken it, as well as its eventual collapse. To me it is with details like these that the game shows it is not just attempting to ape the isometric RPGs of old, but instead actively expanding on that language and seeking to be the next step forward in the subgenre’s evolution. The end experience is, to me, incredibly rich, detailed and dynamic, where every aspect to the game - mechanical, aesthetic or else - seems to want to add its own unique twist to its preceding iterations. As one last example there’s the introduction of soul-bound items with the White March expansions, these being the equivalent to the “legendary” items of old, and instead of being merely powerful weapons involve objectives of their own that would allow these to grow in power as you reach each goal. Possibly my favorite amidst these comes in the shape of the Unlaboured Blade, a seemingly ordinary but decent dagger which loses power with each damage milestone reached, right until the very last objective, where its full stats are unlocked and the phrase “weather, die, and be born anew, free of old labours” appears etched on its side - a concept that to my mind recalls the process of nigredo in alchemy, whereby all things must reach a state of blackness before attaining a transcendent, wholesome or enlightened state. ‘Passion’ is a term I hate to use when discussing art, as it is usually meaningless and vague and serves only a purpose to emphasize how good the piece in question happens to be. Defining just what is meant by passion and where one can see it in action is a dicey subject, but if I were to take the plunge and find the quality closest to how I understand the term, it is that of the affinity for detail and the ambition to take one’s work a step beyond what is deemed satisfactory. I mention the term because whilst playing the game, this is the word that kept popping to my mind, and the above two reasons are largely why: with every encounter, with every scripted interaction and detail to the themes and aesthetic I couldn’t help but find it a game that felt almost enthusiastic about what it was doing, always willing to do more and share more than what was necessary. Despite the game’s considerable length and amount of content, it never feels like it is sacrificing depth or settling for base expectations in its place. Pillars of Eternity isn’t perfect, but in the end I can only appreciate a game that feels ambitious in all the right ways.

[@QbertTehKiller]

I don't really have any issues with what you typed, but please for the love of fuck tell me you didn't type all this on KZbin comments. I'm getting claustrophobia just thinking about it.

[@Malchus13]

Woedica is a them/they. :P You sounded like Mr Smith when you said "Criminal enterprises" XD I always remember Pallaginas name cause it has half the word Paladin in it. I love this game, your words wants me to play through this again and go with the mafia. I get alot of Baldurs Gate Nostalgia in this game. I love the combat style, its probably my favourite style. Each to their own. I press pause so much. Them: Truth - Amor Fati One of the best discourses on POE ive seen. They are few and far between.

[@MrX-po2kj]

I think this game is a personal tastes situation, I for one actually loved every second of the combat as this is my favourite type of RPG combat, I can't stand typical turned based combat as it is generally too slow and boring for me. Your point about the loot made me raise my eyebrow a bit as this is not a loot driven game. Also this is coming from a huge fan of games like Baldurs gate and Planescape etc, but I actually thought the writing and plot was underwhelming, and felt convoluted. IMO

[@Mrityugata]

I was also confused by that loot comment (sounded as if Arch was talking about some Diablo clone), but I do agree there a problem there. Items are simply boring, they lack distinctive features. Weapons of the same type mostly differ in numeric values, game lacks really unique items like Blackrazor or Carsomyr from BG2.

[@xthebumpx]

I like the method of combat (pausable real-time), buuuuuuuuuuut I think there were way too many abilities to handle with a 6 person team and op abilities that made fights very swingy based on whether they hit or not, and don't even get me started on Vancian spell casting in games . . .

[@klarnorbert]

Turn based slow and boring? Least there developers can make better animations. Just look at Divinity: Original Sin. Animations are awesome in that game. You can see what is happening, but in PoE, combat is about pixels. But: I really like PoE, just not the lack of character animations.

[@Eunostos]

The Baldur's Gate games maintained challenge throughout (because D&D is a brutal system full of save-or-die bullshit at mid levels :p), and Planescape Torment was a faceroll where losing was barely possible. This one couldn't make up its mind, starting out with the challenge of BG and then throwing XP and abilities at you until by midgame you could ~literally~ afk through path of the damned. :/ I wish that was hyperbole, this is one of the only games I have ever beaten by doing chores like ironing and dishes while the party AI auto-attacked through most encounters from halfway into act two. (Obviously it was hands on out of combat and during noteworthy difficulty spikes, but there were less of those than there were trash encounters.)

[@mygaffer]

Pillars is awesome, the combat is awesome, and I don't get complaints about loot. It is much better to have hand crafted items than the regular "+2 sword" and armor with +5 random stats. Pillars is easily my favorite game since it's release.

[@ShamanKish]

Durance is obviously a kind of Rasputin.

[@huckmart2017]

Fair arguments about the combat. I'm not super big on it either. Its somehow both too easy, and too punishing (at least on normal). I essentially use the same strategy in every fight. But that strategy still requires thought and focus, so I cant fall asleep at the wheel like I might be able to in other games. It's very rare I need to deviate from that strategy, and its exciting when it happens. But it's rare.

[@t3mpl3guardian]

I was a bit disappointed to hear your monologue concerning simple and complex facts. The simple fact would be "I am evil" and "I am good." The complex fact would be "I am the equal and opposite reaction to you" and "I am the equal and opposite reaction to you" and "we are both what the universe is doing in this very place and time, objects within a complex self-correcting algorithm designed to navigate the future by stumbling blindly down the dark hallway and bouncing off walls to stay on the most advantageous and harmonic course perceivable." The framework of good and evil is simply a tool created by those whom have taken it upon themselves to be the arbiters of classification based on their limited understanding of this thing dubbed reality by those analyzing the data stream within their own reality tunnels. "I don't know what I am" and "I don't know what I am" seem more likely to be examples of a complex mystery, one born of ignorance of the complex truths which exist within the margins of this particular complexity of variables. Now that I have typed my mental diarrhea onto your comments sections, I ponder the wisdom of the cancel button as preemptive action against the perceived rolling ball that might uncover other complex truths that I did not wish to share on this profile. But alas, let's just bounce down this dark hallway and perhaps a door might open in the distance ... Great video by the way and I look forward to hearing more of your ruminations. - M.A.D.

[@OhManTFE]

What's a dialogue boss?

[@El_Donahuego]

A confrontation that has to be maneuvered around or solved through talking.

[@MattyPGood]

I have one major disagreement and one quibble. Quibble: The combat, in most cases, is a part of the setting. The world is bleak and hopeless, and you are fighting manifestations of that hopelessness, particularly when you fight vessels in the wild. Major Disagreement: There is a difference here between the gods being "fake" and the gods being man-made. The gods in this universe do not exist per se, but they do have real power (as evident with Eothas' war and Magran's Godhammer). It is entirely conceivable that the constructs/gods were incorporated as a way to protect the underlying knowledge. Only one that buys the lie can be trusted with the secrets in that dungeon.

[@slipknotpurity00]

I really like your analysis on the lore and the story. I couldn't disagree more about the combat though, I love the tactical nature of it. I think at harder difficulties it shines and being forced to use situational buffs on your team and against your enemies having to use crowd control and abilities and spells to lower defenses feels pretty rewarding when you do it correctly. I don't think it has anything to do with nostalgia either, they've made a lot of modern refinements to the system. It's waaaay better than the old BG days.

[@RitamBuchwald]

Jordan Peterson's views on religion kind of reminded me of Thaos.

[@DrLynch2009]

That night was really long.

[@Turtle1631991]

I am surprised you did not make one point about the story. And that is pacing. When the end came when you have to jump into the pit I expected about 15 hours of gameplay more and I was like "what?!". It felt like playing, playing, playing... BOOOM! END!! So while I loved the story overall. I really feel like someone wrote really complex, long story and found out 70% into it they have to close it somehow. Tyranny was even worse this way. You spend most of the game activating first 2 towers and then you just sprint through the rest so fast it is ridiculous. Deadfire was bit bitter but even there I could feel that the end just came bit out of the blue without proper introduction into the flow of the story.

[@5-sf]

I enjoyed your video. I find it funny though because I played this game kind of opposite from you. I play RPGs and played this game specifically mostly for the combat. I enjoy the story and writing a decent amount and was more invested in it than I have been in other games, but I also just skipped reading large chunks of dialogue to get the the next section of combat.

[@HadesWTF]

Don't toy with my emotions about Witcher III ruminations.

[@FinneousPJ1]

FO3 or Oblivion are not by Obsidian

[@blackvial]

if you payed attention you will notice he called them Bethesda games

[@convict66]

Great video man :)

[@domanz1]

It seems like you're trying to find a good reason why you don't like combat in those games. Most people seem to love that kind of combat so it seems safe to say the combat is there first and foremost because most of the target group wants it.

[@yugen]

Yep, loved the combat. Definitely wasn't padding to me, I always looked forward to it and it was quite challenging at times.

[@Maren617]

domanz1 nah, most people don't like that kind of combat, most people who BUY these exact types of games love this type of combat. Most players play games with other combat types and prefer those. My own opinion is just like Lorerunner's: I loved Baldur's Gate game type of story and characters, but have always slogged through the combat thinking "sigh, if only there was less of this!" In Pillars, there was eventually SO much of it and it was so repetitive and meaningless, that I couldn't continue playing after the "breaking into the castle" section. Maybe I should have just cheated my way through the small fights, but cheating destroys my immersion.

[@XEmiyaArcherX]

i absolutly agree that the way Iovara/Thaos was handeled was the best thing about the game's narrative, a lot of people seem to view Iovara as the good and thaos as the evil but i completly desagree with that, it's mroe about optimism and faith in people VS Pessimism and a more grounded or for lack of a better term "realistic" view on them. i think you put it best when you said Idealism vs cynicism. Ps: sorry if i butchered some of those words.

[@kdot8433]

Obsidian got there chance now 👏🙌👏🙌

[@RealMisterDoge]

TOOK HIM 21 MINUTES TO INTRODUCE HIMSELF LMAO

[@michiganjack1337]

That is a large zipper. lol

[@TheDarkrein]

The combat has always been the main reason why I've never been able to enjoy these types of games. You are way too limited in your movement and it isn't interactive enough for my liking. There is zero flow to combat and engagements drag on way too long because of the systems limitations. I understand that this is a design choice and that some people do like this type of system. However, for me this combat system is an instant turn off and therefore, I'm unable to enjoy the game proper. Perhaps this has something to do with the budget Obsidian has behind their games, hopefully they offer more variety in their future games. I still bought Eternity and Tyranny since I want to support Obsidian since I like them as developers although I will never play either of these games.

[@yugen]

You can play this game in "Story Mode" which makes the combat quite easy so you can just enjoy the rest of the game without stressing too much about the combat. Personally, I love the combat within the game.

[@abc4781]

Perhaps you would enjoy legends of sword coast. The combat is more akin to Dragon age origins .

[@oce1989]

Durance and Chris Avellone did absolutely nothing wrong. Josh Sawyers writing will never, ever come close.

[@ShamanKish]

Fighting happens too fast. No experience from combat sucks, at least should give exp for fighting traits of character. Since one can create many characters there is no way to play with them because there are no random encounters, and so on. And yes, disengaging is totally unrealistic and a relic which needs to be removed from games. Many dialogs and monologues (especially Durance) are complicated and not convincing if not stupid. Comparing this game with Fallout, well, it lacks depth and insight of Fallout. Some races are too OP.

[@V3rthiss]

That was an amazing video, I'm really amazed. Could you say a few more words about why didn't you enjoy combat? I mean I get that there were a lot of "trash mobs" and that loot was really bad most of the time, but saying that this whole system is bad and that it is there only because of nostalgia factor? This is CRAZY for me. Is it real time with pause that you hate so much? Was it class system? Or maybe it was sheer amount of combat that you had to go through?

[@yugen]

Agreed. Also, I have my auto-pause to activate whenever a character is finished with their turn, whenever an enemy casts a spell, etc. So it is very similar to turn based.

[@rodsprinckmoller1291]

pillary fantano

[@EasyGameEh]

21:17 you lost me here :)

[@Dexyu]

You could do witcher in a week easy!

[@thebanished87]

Bro... Bro ... Bro.

[@LordHog]

I have always liked this as the explanation of story and plot: nofilmschool.com/2014/07/martin-scorsese-difference-between-story-plot

[@Petey0707]

I prefer Tyranny, but even that is a bit corny, Pillars is still decent though.

[@ivanjovanovic1858]

rts with pause for long rpg turn based 2 hours simple fight never

[@rickyroyce8162]

You, sir, are very creepy!

[@zoisantonopoulos7999]

Why tho

[@TheRevanchists]

En-gwith-in's, Arch.

[@purpleboye_]

This game has no plot and I kept asking "when does the story start?"

[@dzikripratama3776]

It starts after Sparfel died

[@randomusernameCallin]

Alright so he want to remove all game play from this game. Dialog and "moral" choices are not apart of game play. Story is not apart of game play.

[@shifterx]

So playing a role is not part of the gamplay in a Role playing game... Nice logic.

[@abc4781]

Dude he didn't fucking like the combat lol why the hell do you care?

[@87Julius]

This is insane, the combat is 90% of these games... you're weaving yourself an illusion by pretending that the rest is worth slugging through it all to get to the "essence" of the expérience. If anything, combat is the essence, the narrative is just an afterthought, pure appearence, entirely superfluous. Of course, in art, the role of appearance and what is "superfluous" can matter a great deal. But still, I still figure that you're largely wasting your time. You have to play these games for the combat ; you can also figure out that the combat is not worth your time and play something else, like Divinity that you mentionned liking. A new game like Torment Tides of Numera shows a rpg that is entirely not focused on combat ; these are quite rare... if anything only the Torment "franchise" (because it's now a franchise I suppose) did an honest attempt at moving away from the war game roots of crpgs - putting combat aside.

[@Mrityugata]

And the original Torment didn't entirely manage to do that. It did have a lot classical dungeons filled with enemies, which at times felt like they were there just because it's expected of that genre (particularly the dungeon under the government district). But the original Fallout games are also relatively non-combat focused. Doing a pacifist playthrough is not only viable, but even fun.

[@shifterx]

87Julius Obviously not...