Exilian

Off-topic and Chatter: The Jolly Boar Inn => General Gaming - The Arcade => Topic started by: Clockwork on July 22, 2013, 05:36:41 PM

Title: Pillars of Eternity
Post by: Clockwork on July 22, 2013, 05:36:41 PM
For anyone that hasn't heard the good people at Obsidian are creating what is looking like an absolute gem of a game.

Based on DnD (Or maybe ADnD, idk tbh) and looking like it plays very similar to gaming legend Baldurs Gate we have this: http://eternity.obsidian.net/ (http://eternity.obsidian.net/). My one particular pet loathing of Baldurs Gate was how enemies would gleefully run past my full plate armoured champion with a sword so big it literally-couldn't-fit-through-any-normal-sized-doorway and instagib my academic, magic rune reading, smooth talking face class. This game adresses that with a very cool looking 'zone of control' mechanic whereby to run past said tin can champion you would risk a swipe from his colossal compensation item.

I have but one problem with this game. Why for the love of dragons did they create a 'monk' class?

Regardless, I'd urge any fan of Baldurs Gate, Knights of the Old Republic (or any of the older bioware titles actually) to check it out and see what they think.

Rob
Title: Re: Pillars of Eternity
Post by: Clockwork on March 01, 2014, 05:28:18 AM
UPDATE:

So much more to say on this game, I've been following it for a while and with ever-increasing interest. Set for a release Dec 2014!

Players create a character from the usual elf, dwarf, human but can also choose two races, Godlike and Orlans, which are Obsidian own brand fantasy(Though godlike has been used in other Obsidian titles).

It is a class based game with enough classes to keep everyone happy for a very long time so I won't list them all but rest assured there will be at least one you'll want to try out.

Being a crowdfunded game it doesn't have the budget that an A title has, however the team has been putting in 120% (apart from fridays) which you can tell from the beautiful artwork and hand crafted scenes.

If there was a single person on this entire planet that I would always trust to deliver an excellent game it's going to be lead creative director Josh Sawyer. Not only is this guy a true modern day polymath (like Bruce Dickinson, I need to write about him) and generally superb specimen of human kind but he also has a great number of games under his belt including Icewind Dale 2, Knights of the Old Republic 2, Fallout New Vegas, Neverwinter Nights and many more. Hypothetically my number 2 choice would be Chris Avellone...He's also making this game, I cannot forsee this game being bad. It's physically impossible. It also then has more to live up to than any crowdfunded game to date.


Screenies in spoiler box.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Pillars of Eternity
Post by: Clockwork on August 09, 2014, 01:37:48 AM
Update time!:

Here we have Josh Sawyer going through the demo with a reporter. From what I can tell, this is exactly the game I was hoping it would be.


This is a true RPG, where you shape your past through conversation, people take notice of your choices but without giving you a slider to tell you just how good/bad you are. Taking notes from the infinity engine games it nevertheless looks streamlined (in the true sense, not a PR way of saying: made for consoles, which this isn't) and sleek with UI and usability improvements. The best thing I saw in the video though was an intelligence build barbarian being completely viable. This is real multiclassing.
Title: Re: Pillars of Eternity
Post by: TTG4 on August 09, 2014, 12:34:20 PM
This sounds interesting, do you have any more info on release other than december? Sounds like a quick turn around from funding to release!
Title: Re: Pillars of Eternity
Post by: Clockwork on August 09, 2014, 02:41:11 PM
Well, it was kickstarted, so they were already starting to make it before they even got any money. Oct 17 2012 was when the KS had gathered enough to launch the game, so at a guess I would say they began development early 2012/ late 2011. Given that the team that made it were already really used to using the unity engine from other games (too many to list, check out the names from my second post :P). They also were parts of the teams that made all of the original infinity engine games (Icewind Dale, Baldurs Gate, Planescape Torment etc.), so each of them has a ton of experience both with the platform they're building on and with making a game in the genre and style. These guys are the pro-est of pros which is what I'm saying explains the quick turnaround in a roundabout way :)
Title: Re: Pillars of Eternity
Post by: Clockwork on January 03, 2015, 04:40:08 PM
Release is stated as Q1 2015 it got pushed back but this wasn't a surprise. One of the pre-order bonuses is a 'Giant Miniature Space Piglet' something is very wrong there but I still want one.
Title: Re: Pillars of Eternity
Post by: Clockwork on August 28, 2015, 04:00:44 PM
So I just bought Pillars as it was on sale and have played it for about 10 hours now. I haven't even left the first town yet because there are so many characters I want to create that I keep getting drawn back to the 'New Game' button. Within the game there is so much customization, it's actually pretty incredible so I'm going to talk about that for a bit.

There are 6 races which unfortunately include Dwarves but also have these shark-people and fawns which are really cool but the highlight has to be the godlike race which take on an aspect of death, fire, nature or moon and have disfigurements attuned with their aspect...Weird but awesome. Even the relatively plain human/elf/dwarf/shark-people/fawns have different nuances within the race, for example the dwarves can be either boreal or mountain and so have a different RP and slightly different stats. So there's some differentiation there which is not usual for modern day RPGs (yeah I know IceWindDale and BauldersGate both had this type of thing but hey). After selecting what you are, you choose a class. The DnD classes mostly make an appearance with Wizard/Priest/Paladin/Fighter/Rogue/Druid/Barbarian/Ranger/Monk being more or less as you'd expect. The other 2 classes (chanter and cipher) are a little different with the chanter being a soul-calling bard who imparts the emotion or wisdom of certain souls into the party to make them braver/better fighters etc whilst the cipher directly attacks an enemy's soul with a kind of innate magic that few possess. This talent also begets fear and superstition which is probably not all that unexpected.

After that you choose where in the world you're from with each area having different customs and trials (snow areas make a character hardier, the bight metropolitan capital makes them smarter etc)
 but it's all a matter of a single point, not enough to make a huge difference but something to make the choices matter a little.

As a nice break away from common procedure, any class can use any combination of weapons and armour which is the part about this game I love most. There's no skill requirement or strength requirement, heavier armour makes you more durable but slower and lighter armour lets you move about more but doesn't do well at resisting certain types of attacks.

Also, each class uses every attribute. You can make a combat Wizard with high str/con who uses spells to buff him/herself and ignore the usualy intellect, or you can use an intellect build Barbarian who uses his wit to find weakness in the enemy defense and increases the area and potency of his/her auras and shouts and buffs to make a really effective support character.

The thing about magic in this game is that it's all like a science, or at least it's discovered with methodology and experimentation as opposed to direct willpower like some other games. I'm quite ok with this, it fits the rest of the world nicely and works in tandem with the more material technological advances like gunpowder and advanced masonry.

One last thing, the druid is usually my least picked class, I don't know why, I just don't like them...Actually it's likely because they remind me of hippies....Anyway, shapeshift in this game is so well done. I chose stag as my animal spirit and so I can turn into a stag and do battle as that, I was thinking 'how the hell is this going to help me at all?'. Well it actually turns you into a minotaur-like creature with stag horns and little else resembling the mostly docile four legged cervidae.

This game is a must buy for anyone who likes smart, high minded, socially and culturally aware RPGs or you can ignore that stuff and just turn into a deer-otaur and kill everything.

11/10
Title: Re: Pillars of Eternity
Post by: Clockwork on January 22, 2016, 12:15:15 PM
The bad thing about PoE.


Well, not bad per se, just not to my taste.


It's so damn serious. I thought there might be some sort of comic relief character but there isn't.
Title: Re: Pillars of Eternity
Post by: Clockwork on September 23, 2016, 01:02:49 PM
Found that my new favourite thing to do on this is immediately create a party of custom adventurers, write backstories, give traits and each an individual style (or not as the case may be) and see my enemies broken before me until the story slows and the number of enemies drops off to give tighter, tougher challenges.
Title: Re: Pillars of Eternity
Post by: Splashy on October 31, 2016, 04:21:46 AM
-I'm not the brightest of the bunch-
Title: Re: Pillars of Eternity
Post by: Clockwork on October 31, 2016, 01:58:40 PM
I think you're thinking of the other POE, Path of Exile. Pillars is a successor to Icewind Dale, Baldurs Gate and such :)
Title: Re: Pillars of Eternity
Post by: Clockwork on August 02, 2017, 09:44:15 PM
Kallack is the wanderer-king, the sentinel without a border and the rage of a conquered people. Descending from a line of warrior-kings who carved a land out of the hostile Deadfire Archipelago many years ago his people originated somewhere on the Ixamitl plains now lost to memory.


His father, Tulimak Mourneyed, presided over their final defeat. Those that survived were absorbed into a neighbouring kingdom and as custom the Kings remaining family were exiled but as the toll of battle was realised only Kallack and his wife remained from that once populous bloodline. A wanderer-king without a people; Kallack looked to his ancestor spirits for guidance and had an epiphany: he must walk as they walked, fight as they fought and found a new kingdom. Now he journeys south through Raedceras and into the Dyrwood where civil strife emboldens fate for those with the will to strive.


TIL - Finding Inuit names I have a hope in hell of pronouncing is hard. Why so many double a's and q's guys???
Title: Re: Pillars of Eternity
Post by: Jubal on August 02, 2017, 10:17:36 PM
Have you looked for a pronunciation guide? Often with languages that use things like "qq", that's because that two-letter combination stands for a sound we don't have in English and so can't be transcribed into the latin alphabet easily - but some of them aren't always terribly hard sounds, they're just ones we don't use so much like back of the throat noises.
Title: Re: Pillars of Eternity
Post by: Clockwork on August 02, 2017, 10:35:04 PM

I did have a glance but decided that since I can barely say diphthong in english much less know what it means or how it pertains to phoneticism I'd have to actually learn how to learn it and right now, it's too late for that :P


I may do that later on though, it'd be cool to use more Inuit words in his backstory, thanks for the pointer :)
Title: Re: Pillars of Eternity
Post by: Jubal on August 02, 2017, 11:06:49 PM
Give me a shout if you'd like help on working out pronunciations, I'd be quite happy to have a go (and goodness knows I should be used to working out different phonologies given I'm working through learning Georgian and Austrian German at the moment)!
Title: Re: Pillars of Eternity
Post by: Clockwork on August 03, 2017, 10:31:42 AM
Thanks my dude!




Re-wrote it, first draft was boring, this one hopefully has a hook. BTW most of this is represented in-game through conversation options and the like.


EDIT: Wait wtf, how has this thread got 2.5k views nearly? You got any stats on that?
Title: Re: Pillars of Eternity
Post by: Jubal on August 03, 2017, 11:47:12 AM
I've just trawled the google analytics, it's not coming up with anything I wouldn't expect for this thread and I don't even think the thread's even been google-registered, all the pages from which people navigated here are what you'd expect (via posting, via recent unread posts, via the forum structure). I think older threads like this tend to rack up the views via things like search engine crawlers over the years; the OP was in 2013 so this has had plenty of time to do so.
Title: Re: Pillars of Eternity
Post by: Clockwork on August 03, 2017, 02:43:00 PM
Thank you!


I guess that makes sense... Just wondering what it was that makes this more clickable than say, Cyberpunk 2077 or Dragon Age.
Title: Re: Pillars of Eternity
Post by: Jubal on August 03, 2017, 08:36:58 PM
Yeah, I have very little idea, and I don't know much about the trawler/human ratios either for these hits. Part of the trouble is that Google Analytics only gives you a subsample of the data, so their numbers are always orders of magnitude below those picked up by the board software.
Title: Re: Pillars of Eternity
Post by: Clockwork on August 26, 2017, 07:02:52 PM
Deima looked down the length of his Valian-made arquebus one eye closed, mouth slightly open with a silent prayer of concentration on his lips. As he neared the end of his phrase a blue flame flickered from his eyes. At a precise moment he squeezed the trigger and exhaled, the ball roaring from the end of the barrel glowing a deep azure, leaving a faint trail in it's wake.


This was the signal Kallack had been waiting for and he leapt from the shadows into the path of the now oncoming wichts and Yura lit up the right flank with a ray of the sun's own fire.
Title: Re: Pillars of Eternity
Post by: Clockwork on August 30, 2017, 05:29:13 PM
Once again Kallack stood defiant before a God. Within him was the power to sway the fates and, with presence of mind, thought back on his life. He knows he lives with surety and righteousness, his memories are no burden - even the pain serves it's purpose; testing his mettle and hardening his spirit. But his memories are not those at stake here, even in their immense power and longevity the Gods may overstep their reach and lose perspective. Just as Ondra had, Abydon asked Kallack on the importance of memories - painful memories, ones which cause fear, jealousy, shame, regret; are we not better off without them?
Title: Re: Pillars of Eternity
Post by: Clockwork on November 16, 2017, 05:39:52 PM
HYACHA! A White March Review!





This product is interesting to review. On the one hand, it's a masterfully crafted standalone piece of isometric RPG but on the other, it's not supposed to be standalone.


Pillars of Eternity is the definitive return to isometric RPGs moreso than the other kickstarted products from ex-black isle employees because it's a new IP but still very familiar feeling to 'old' infinity engine gamers with it's high-fantasy setting intertwined by low-fantasy character. An example of the low fantasy is that everything is timed, there are hours and minutes in the day, travelling takes time even though very few quests actually use this aspect of the world. Looking at it there is the infrastructure of urgency and what looks to be intentional mechanical and narrative design choices to portray that the player is on a schedule. This is unfortunate because The White March Part 1 is wholly narrative adjacent and as such going out and doing it feels like it should be done once the main villain of the base game is dealt with but due to how the multiple endings work that's not possible.


Cohesive storytelling aside, the expansion is truly awesome. The locations are few but each is incredibly detailed with a frozen tundra to explore in place of the forests, villages and city of the main game. Interstingly for an expansion, there are a lot of new item models in the form of unique 'soulbound' weapons which, if you've been paying attention to the base game, provide something of a clash of gameplay and lore. What does binding your soul to equipment mean for your soul? Given that the premise of the base game is that you're trying to stop your soul fragmenting, is binding it to an object really a good idea? Mechanically; yes because those items are the most powerful in the game and I've no doubt that it won't have any effect on the story but it feels a little off.


On lore and setting however, White March generally does an amazing job of fleshing out heretofore lesser known parts of Eora such as Raedceras, the Mountain Dwarves and the Mages who crafted the Wizard spells in-game. This is a brilliant addition and for me at least is the reason to head up to Stalwart and The White March. For everything else though - see the base game. It's a lot more of the same and that's great but in the back of my mind I'm sort of looking for a gimmick in every expansion. What I mean by that I'll demonstrate with another game by the fabulous J.E. Sawyer; Fallout: New Vegas. The DLCs for that game all had a gimmick, Dead Money had the red haze poisoning you if you stepped into certain areas, Honest Hearts was a survival game with hefty carry limits and so many things to bring back, Old World Blues had those incredible robot personalities to find and collect and... well I haven't played the last one but it probably does.


All in all I think that it's a very solid addition to the base game with superweapons to use against the hardest fights in the game for the powergamers, an abundance of world lore for us loremasters and an engaging and tonally in-keeping story for everyone.
Title: Re: Pillars of Eternity
Post by: Jubal on November 16, 2017, 10:37:24 PM
...I should actually look at this game sometime, shouldn't I?
Title: Re: Pillars of Eternity
Post by: Clockwork on November 16, 2017, 10:39:57 PM
I think you'd really get a kick out of the lore and setting, yeah :)


In really broad strokes, it's a little bit native american mixed with classical fantasy mixed with progressive-ism thinking and parallels to modern social issues. It wears all that on it's sleeve but underneath there is so much more and so much nuance that I think it's a really cool piece of art, work of literature and entertaining game all in one.


The backgrounds and setting are cool to give just a sample:



The Glanfathan people are kind of tribal, look after the land and kill anyone who hecks with it. They're kind of fighting everyone because everyone wants their land, they're slowly losing. They're also kind of trading with everyone because they need it.


Vailians are basically renaissance Italians, Old Valia is a former empire now kingdom I think and Vailian Republics are states that have broken away from the empire.


Aedyr is an empire which still has slavery, everyone hates them and the main game is set is one of their colonies that broke off called the Dyrwood.


Deadfire Archipelago is sort of the Caribbean, has a load of pirates but also trading and merchants from Vailia.


Living Lands is, afaik, jurassic park without the park and more monsters.


It's so rich. You have to like reading though, there is a *lot* of reading. Well, for a guy like me it's a lot ;)
Title: Re: Pillars of Eternity
Post by: Phoenixguard09 on January 18, 2020, 05:43:25 AM
I've been thinking about grabbing this, but then I saw the sequel, Deadfire, has come out on PC now, with a console release to come soon. I might just grab the second, as I understand it is possible to play and understand without playing through the first.
Title: Re: Pillars of Eternity
Post by: Jubal on December 04, 2020, 01:51:45 PM
Having now played and enjoyed this, but been un-recommended Deadfire, does anyone know if a third game is planned at all?
Title: Re: Pillars of Eternity
Post by: Clockwork on December 04, 2020, 02:28:16 PM
First one is free on Epic Games Store next week (10-17) along with Tyranny.


No, definitely not planned. All the developers were burned out after finishing deadfire to lukewarm player reception and lower sales than D:OS2 and Kingmaker. https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/188915786456/will-there-be-a-pillars-3 (https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/188915786456/will-there-be-a-pillars-3)


The second is possible to play without playing the first and I'd actually probably recommend doing so as imo the second game follows on badly from the first one but is sort of better mechanically.


If you like pirates, get 2 if you like knights get 1 I guess is the most accurate advice I can come up with! :P


EDIT: Also Jub, sorry I didn't mean to give quite such a negative spin to deadfire! :P It is mostly decent and the combat and levelling up is better if slightly more confusing due to the amount of potential, albeit transparent because you can see all the pre-requisites now. (omg portugal that last sentence, what even is it??? I think you'll get the gist though so I'm leaving it so you can see how badly I failed english right now.) It's just the setting is so stark in contrast to PoE 1 that continuing a character over is really strange feeling. And like I said before, the factions are all mostly arseholes. Pirates seem reasonable, despite the, y'know, piracy.

If you're wanting more PoE Jub, I would entirely without reservation recommend White March 1 and 2, imo the best bits of PoE 1.
Title: Re: Pillars of Eternity
Post by: Jubal on December 04, 2020, 06:15:42 PM
I think I can only deal with doing about one game per quarter of a year at the moment, and the current one is Skyrim, but I could see myself trying White March or Deadfire sometime in 2021.
Title: Re: Pillars of Eternity
Post by: Clockwork on December 05, 2020, 01:38:01 PM
And I totally forgot about Avowed, coming out whenever, it's a first person RPG set in the Pillars world!


https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/avowed-release-date-gameplay-trailer-pillars-of-eternity/
Title: Re: Pillars of Eternity
Post by: Jubal on December 05, 2020, 02:35:35 PM
That does sound a bit like "Pillars, minus a lot of what I like about Pillars"... I think one thing I'm very much learning as I delve more into RPGs is that I'm more a tactical, party-driven RPGs person by instinct, though I get the impression given the relative popularity of different RPGs that I might have a minority view there.
Title: Re: Pillars of Eternity
Post by: Clockwork on December 06, 2020, 03:13:54 PM
Don't think it's a minority, D:OS 1+2, Dragon Age Origins did very well in multi million sales, Tyranny, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Wasteland 2 + 3 did million plus sales well each, Baldur's Gate 3 is hotly anticipated. All data from steamspy. Mutant year zero did well too but that's mainly tactics with a dash of rpg. Elder Scrolls, [/size]Fallout and Mass Effect are absolute killers in the industry but they're the only big first person RPGs to my mind. Deus Ex as well actually. Dark Messiah is fun as heck and since it's release has sold well but that's over a lot of years now (released 2006) and was actually the game I got steam for :)

I'd think it's about even. While the very biggest RPGs are first person, there are a lot of very well done and well-selling tactical RPGs.
Title: Re: Pillars of Eternity
Post by: Jubal on August 13, 2023, 05:03:11 PM
I finally played through Deadfire! It's... fine? It's pretty much what I expected from it? I will confess to not being blown away but it was fun enough. Spoilers ahead!

Things I liked:

Being a guy with a lil tricorne pirate hat tootling around trying to explore the Deadfire archipelago. I liked the exploration quests a lot. I got to name islands!

I like the way Deadfire does think at least a bit about settlements as well as people, and I thought the Gullet quests/plotline in Neketaka was especially a good example of that.

I liked having a boat! I'd have liked having more to do on the boat honestly - friendly duels or something? Could there have been an on-ship merchant after a certain quest?

I liked my custom built side character possibly more than my main character - I got a trap-finding rogue early in the game and kept her as a core party member, because she was the scout I was kinda working with her more than any other party member. Obviously not many interactions got to involve her, but I may steal the character concept from myself at some future point :)

The sneak mechanics work OK, with the exception that the game does not give you any tutorial/prompt on distractions, so I didn't realise until the late game DLCs that a lot of things that I thought were impossible for stealth missions were actually pretty easy and I just needed to throw spark-crackers.

The Forgotten Sanctum DLC was quite probably my favourite part of the game, excepting its arbitrarily difficult and unclear boss fight mechanics. But I got to go round a big wizardy library and do some sneaking in a way that was actually mostly fun and I finally met a character in this game who I actually liked (in the form of Bekarna, who's great). Generally the DLC's plotline is good as well: I found Tayn and Llengrath much more interesting colleague-rivals than the faction leaders in Neketaka.

Things I disliked:
The faction choice quest/mechanic stuff is incredibly annoying and reductive, and more generally politics is pretty badly represented. I kind of had that priced in when I started the game as a likely problem but it irked me regardless.

More generally they have some fairly good character writing and voice acting which they honestly end up under-using as a general wider part of the world, characters comment on the world on occasion but rarely interact with it, and most of the companion quests are fairly eh. Xoti's was good and made sense, a lot of them were kinda just puzzle hunts though. I got spoilered for Maia's, didn't do it, and she got a good ending anyway, so that seems to be optimal given completing her quest makes a bunch of endgame outcomes worse for other people you might care about.

Order of quests is a bit weird. The game has a ton of simple pass-the-bar skill checks in it, but it's very, very easy to lock yourself out of good outcomes simply by doing a thing a level or two early. I think some randomisation around the skill checks might actually have helped. It's also often unclear when you'll get watcher-only checks or when companions will be able to help or do a check themselves.

The designers seem to assume the game is much more built for people who want to learn a really finicky combat system and want the "puzzle" of running through a combat a bunch of times and re-speccing their party in a ton of ways to find a good combination. I think there are just too many options in the combat system for this to be working well except for a slightly obsessive core of players, I still have no idea how half the game's mechanics work: there's four core stats and four defences, but then there's also armour and penetration as a separate set of mechanics, and a concentration mechanic, and separate elemental damage mechanics, and a list of different inspirations and afflictions which also fit into certain categories, and that level of complexity just about works in tabletop and turn based systems but it's a bit much for pause & play.

On the same note, a ton of time spent making arbitrarily hard combat challenges should just have been spent on more plot, even tiny bits of tasks etc. Also, a lot of the time spent on the plot should have been spent on other bits of plot. I feel like I got a bunch of very, very verbose commentaries on a lot of areas where I'd have been much better being given a task quest to highlight the bit of world-building in question. Also some bits could have been conversations: I think spinning half of the very long final ending scene into a shipboard "one year later" where you can talk to people about what happened would have felt much better, the endgame had a lot of narrator voice even for my relatively pro-narrators taste.

Missed opportunities:
I thought there could have been much more imagination in the design of monsters/enemies/culture. Most random opponents were still undead, xaurips, two headed giants, etc. Did nobody think to open like east Asian or Polynesian folklore books given they're basing a whole game on those sorts of cultures?

A few touches could have made the generic (tavern-bought) companions a lot better. Even if you're not going to give them dialogue lines for the most part, there were times when the game could have easily acknowledged their presence and that would have made them a lot more fun to use.

I really don't know how you'd do a third game after this because the end of this game felt so world-shattering and lore changing that it might be quite hard to do a story continuation. Also why does the Watcher sail home at the end automatically? To sit in their rubble garden?


Anyway, that's adventures in Eora done for now. Not sure if these are games I'll revisit anytime fast but I'm glad I played them.