Pillars of Eternity

This game really tries to fit the western RPG model where you have complete control over your main character and there are lots of side quests to choose from. It seems though that in practice there is little exclusivity within the quests. Often the “choice” happens in the very last part of the quest and has no real meaning. For example, the hearing at palace was pretty cool with all those choices to indicate your personality, and in the end everybody gets killed. What the fuck? I might be happy even if it was only dialogue that I got to choose, but even that disappoints me. It feels like I’m forced to be a politically correct champion of good or “neutrality”. I definitely feel games like fallout, morrowind and baldur’s gate let you express pointed judgements and stand behind them. Even if it’s a simple Good vs. Evil, it’s nice when you get to choose between the two. But here it’s like “oh, everyone knows every choice has a drawback”, so adult! Escpecially when there aren’t even different shades of gray to choose between.

Combat is fairly interesting, but I don’t think I would give this game a second round. Story is interesting too, but I have a feeling I’m going to be disappointed in the end because I’ll be forced to take some option (Layden Key is evil and must be destroyed, and by the way happens to be the last boss).

I liked the stronghold building idea, but its implementation was lacking. Overall, the game seems to focus on smoothing edges of the baldur’s gate experience, and does that well. But I wanted some edges! At least in the story telling department. I wonder if anything in video game story telling will ever surpass the feeling I had when I discovered Fallout 2 had a whole another world of scripted interactions for characters with low intelligence score. That was direct love from the creators, man, I felt sure it. And to conclude, I really prefered Planescape Torment to this game because it wasn’t afraid to differenciate between the factions. Torment didn’t feel like a war between shades of grey you didn’t really care about. Torment was more about the protagonist itself, and the lore was just much more interesting. Wake up in a mortuary, follow the burned tattoos on your flesh to a war between undead and wererats, featuring wizarding “cranium rats”? A faction whose members aspire to become gods? It was just so unique. Playing Pillars, I couldn’t help but to notice the parts that probably were directly inspired from Torment, like the Sensate stones to the whole Watcher thing.

Still, I can’t say I didn’t hate the lack of polish on BG and Torment. With this kind of attention those games might have become truly legendary.

Playing more Pillars. There is a main quest where you have to choose a god to pray to in order to proceed. I chose not to and the game killed me. Apparently roleplaying an atheist is not allowed.

Turns out the vision quests given by said gods very pretty cool. I guess realness of gods is pretty integral to the lore of this universe. Besides, there was something like a neutral option after all, the ability to not make a pact with any of the gods. It remains to see if there will be some special ending besides the ones obvious from what the gods ask you to do. It seems I’ll need a day or two more to finally complete the game though.

Does this game ever end?

Phew. Finally finished it. I guess I got my atheist ending after all. Except that of all the possibilities I picked the one that left the big secret unsolved and (some) gods in great power. Read rest of the endings from a wiki. Pretty interesting, I’ve seen the same done with some other western rpgs (new Fallouts, new Deus Ex, maybe the Dragon Ages). A rather cheap way to add emotional content (the player is obviously pretty touched after finally beating the game). But it did sound a bit hollow, especially the part about the grand ending decision. It only changed a slide or two, having little effect on others. Amusingly the companion endings seemed pretty random - I remarked earlier the companion quests seemed all to have bad results. One companion’s quest I didn’t bother to finish (Grieving Mother), and it turns out that got me the happier sounding ending.

I think my time was well spent playing the game. I feel like I learned a lot of things, although I didn’t really stop to write much of it.

Started playing Pillars of Eternity 2. Seems okay, but a bit lacking I guess.

It’s not really keeping my interest. I don’t feel like there’s any roleplaying going on in this game. It’s like I’m going through the motions of playing an isometric RPG, it’s just work with little reward. I liked Tyranny, there were cool choices in that game, and the “center line” of morality was interestingly aligned so it didn’t matter so much even if I was rail-roaded a bit at times. There’s also the Numeria or whatever game that I haven’t played, but based on what I’ve heard none of these modern games including that one comes anywhere close to Planescape Torment. I mean I didn’t even like Baldur’s Gate 2, and probably wouldn’t have played BG1 if it wasn’t placed in front of me in the time before internet. But Torment was the shit.