![]() It makes no attempt to be cinematic, in stark contrast to that other grand reinvention of Baldur’s Gate, Dragon Age. Y’see, Pillars tells its many stories with a most humble box of tricks. You’ll be disappointed if you’re hoping for significant deviation from the standard Tolkien-esque bullshit, but Obsidian’s strength has always been in its writing, and PoE exemplifies that. It’s part video game, part choose-your-own-adventure novel, where the extensive lore not only provides background colour, but gives context to the minute-to-minute proceedings. But one thing is immediately apparent – there’s a lot of reading to do. By the time you actually pick your character class, you’ll have already made half-a-dozen agonising choices about your character’s mind, body and upbringing. Then, there’s a selection of homelands and backgrounds, again coming with lore-specific stats for each. Numbers fans are well catered for there are six races to choose from, all with at least two variants, offering alternate stat-boosts and skin colour. For those who take the “role-playing” part of RPG seriously, this is a rare treat in 2015. It immediately hits you with a character creation screen so brimming with possibilities that it’s perfectly possible to notch up two hours of playtime before ever setting foot in its world. It’s arguably the most pure cRPG of the last fifteen years. Or so I resolutely believed, until I got a few hours into PoE and started wondering if the genre has evolved to a point where it has lost something vital. Beloved as they are, the Infinity Engine titles of old – Baldur’s Gate etcetera – are very much products of their time. Its stated goal is to revisit a distant past where, before your KOTORs and your Dragon Ages, cRPGs were rickety, glacial affairs composed of 2D backdrops, awful sub-Babylon 5 CGI cutscenes, and rulesets lifted wholesale from tabletop games (which work fine on tabletops, but computer screens aren’t tabletops). It’s a product of the Kickstarter boom that happened a few years back, a fad which has seen more than a few reckonings since. But that feature of Deadfire can be a bit overwhelming to anyone thinking they can jump into this game expecting a more casual adventure.On paper, Pillars of Eternity is fraught with danger. ![]() Veterans of old school pen-and-paper tabletop role-playing games should feel right at home with this sort of core mechanic. Sorting through classes, subclasses, party members, ship skills and crew, and other details is a complex, detail-oriented task, and the game falls a bit short in helping ease players into it. There are a lot of nuances involved in the game's actions, with a lot of emphasis on character stats, modifiers, etc. While Deadfire is a unquestionably rewarding to fans of the genre, it's not exactly welcoming to newcomers. All of this makes for an even richer and deeper role-playing game which, thanks to a continued focus on freedom of choice, crafts a more personal story for the player. Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire handles this tricky balance with both style and substance it takes the core mechanics that players loved in the first game, adds a seafaring ship and crew to the experience, and tosses all of that into an open world which players can explore pretty much as they see fit. This sea-based role playing game deciphers the mystery of just how to improve on the original without losing sight of why it struck a chord with the audience to begin with.
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