Pillars of Eternity

[Clockwork]

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/. 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

[Clockwork]

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

http://media.obsidian.net/eternity/media/updates/0068/pe-wilderness-01-580x326.jpg
http://media.obsidian.net/eternity/media/updates/0065/pe-orlan-cipher-580.jpg

[Clockwork]

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.

[TTG4]

This sounds interesting, do you have any more info on release other than december? Sounds like a quick turn around from funding to release!

[Clockwork]

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 ). 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

[Clockwork]

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.

[Clockwork]

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

[Clockwork]

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.

[Clockwork]

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.

[Splashy]

-I'm not the brightest of the bunch-

[Clockwork]

I think you're thinking of the other POE, Path of Exile. Pillars is a successor to Icewind Dale, Baldurs Gate and such

[Clockwork]

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???

[Jubal]

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.

[Clockwork]

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


I may do that later on though, it'd be cool to use more Inuit words in his backstory, thanks for the pointer

[Jubal]

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)!