Project Eternity, Obsidian's Isometric Fantasy RPG

[TurboPubx-16]

Pepryi, you're right about the quests: Baldur's Gate always presented quests in such a way that mechanically you were fetching something but the circumstances made it interesting. There was always a twist, and then another, and by the time you finished the quest you could barely remember the Macguffin that got it started in the first place, but you did remember the characters you met and the places you visited along the way. Pillars of Eternity is the same way.

 

I'm usually the first person to rail against "theme-park" RPGs but I feel like I earned my reputation with the people by sacrificing other rewards. Every leader in this game is a charlatan with an angry mob waiting to overthrow his or her rule so if my character ended up being the supreme emperor of this land I wouldn't even be mad. It would be great to trick these dumb peasants into making me their lord   .

 

I've been poop-socking this game hard (34 hours in). I could type forever but I'll just point out one thing about this game that's awesome. You get to use your main attributes, like might, resolve etc. in conversations. The game highly recommended might for my rogue, which is unusual. Usually dexterity is what a thief should focus on, but then again rogues are not exactly thieves, and might isn't exactly strength.

 

Anyway, I found myself doing something I never do in these game: intimidation. "Brah, look at this chest, and tell me again how you're not going to open that door for me." I picked up a man by his throat, I ripped a necklace off a prostitute while covering her mouth, I even lifted a child above my head and threatened to body slam him if he didn't tell me a secret. Anyone who killed a couple of children in Dragon Age 1 knows that these actions were harsh, and it sucks that I had to do them, but I had really good reasons!

 

That's not the good part though! After using your main attributes in conversations you might get a personally trait, like 'aggressive'. Just recently I told a crowd of people, hey, y'all know me, I'm that bastard who goes around fucking shit up. Instead of choosing an alignment at the beginning I've earned my character's morality through actions. My PC is a person shaped by the world of Pillars. It's also a personality that I never play as in these games because Obsidian is free from DnD's old cliches. You can see my character sheet here. My favourite part is at the end: Honest: 2; Deceptive: 2 . 

[TychoCelchuuu]

I don't find any significant humour in the game. This is a world where 99% of infants are born are literally soulless. This is a crisis that effects everyone, making them confused, desperate and paranoid. I usually don't go for the totally serious and stern thing but it this works a lot for me.

99% of infants isn't really right - it sounds like a ton of infants in the Dyrwood are Hollowborn, but the problem is specific to that area - there are basically no Hollowborn in Eir Glanfath, for instance.

[Pepyri]

Pepryi, you're right about the quests: Baldur's Gate always presented quests in such a way that mechanically you were fetching something but the circumstances made it interesting. There was always a twist, and then another, and by the time you finished the quest you could barely remember the Macguffin that got it started in the first place, but you did remember the characters you met and the places you visited along the way. Pillars of Eternity is the same way.

 

I'm usually the first person to rail against "theme-park" RPGs but I feel like I earned my reputation with the people by sacrificing other rewards. Every leader in this game is a charlatan with an angry mob waiting to overthrow his or her rule so if my character ended up being the supreme emperor of this land I wouldn't even be mad. It would be great to trick these dumb peasants into making me their lord   .

 

The only reason I rail against this one, is that nothing else is really going on. No one comes to power, no one really does anything. You're in a world full of incredibly vibrant and diverse mannequins- it's alright here, but if I were to play an expansion and find it again I know I would get the "samey" feeling very quickly.

 

I also like that not every quest is interesting. There are truly some 'dumb' quests- which is exactly how it should be. It introduces doubt in the characters you meet sometimes. For example(DEFIANCE BAY TEENY SPOILER), there was a kid who said he saw people hiding a thing. I thought, "Oh, cool, it must be pretty good. Oh, this kid wants an expensive dagger? Shit, this must be really good." So, I go find the folks, expecting a big fight, a big issue. Nah, we talk for a minute, they're an adventuring group like us, they try to sell us the dagger for 2k, we argue them down to 1k, and everything's good.

 

I go back and give it to the kid, and he tells me the location of the stuff- I'd literally already found it just walking around with Tab vision on. I did the quest for nothing. I spent 1k gold and 20 minutes of my time for nothing. Then later on, the kid gets a talking to by his Dad, and I hang him out to dry. It was dumb, it was pointless, and it's the exact sort of quest that reminds you, "Hey, you're an adventurer in a group full of badasses. Why are you running some kid's errands?" Exactly what a game should do.

 

TurboPubx-16, on 05 Apr 2015 - 06:55, said:

 

I've been poop-socking this game hard (34 hours in). I could type forever but I'll just point out one thing about this game that's awesome. You get to use your main attributes, like might, resolve etc. in conversations. The game highly recommended might for my rogue, which is unusual. Usually dexterity is what a thief should focus on, but then again rogues are not exactly thieves, and might isn't exactly strength.

 

Anyway, I found myself doing something I never do in these game: intimidation. "Brah, look at this chest, and tell me again how you're not going to open that door for me." I picked up a man by his throat, I ripped a necklace off a prostitute while covering her mouth, I even lifted a child above my head and threatened to body slam him if he didn't tell me a secret. Anyone who killed a couple of children in Dragon Age 1 knows that these actions were harsh, and it sucks that I had to do them, but I had really good reasons!

 

That's not the good part though! After using your main attributes in conversations you might get a personally trait, like 'aggressive'. Just recently I told a crowd of people, hey, y'all know me, I'm that bastard who goes around fucking shit up. Instead of choosing an alignment at the beginning I've earned my character's morality through actions. My PC is a person shaped by the world of Pillars. It's also a personality that I never play as in these games because Obsidian is free from DnD's old cliches. You can see my character sheet here. My favourite part is at the end: Honest: 2; Deceptive: 2  . 

 

I've yet to find systems that don't interact with conversations. Seriously, I've seen it all:

 

• Race
• Class
• Combat Stats
• Secondary Stats
• Items
• Choices made in earlier quests
• The KINDS of choices made throughout the game
• Whether I inspected something in the environment

It's absurd. And this is why it's acceptable that the game is a theme park- because it isn't a theme park for you, or a theme park for a friend of mine, or a theme park for people just like me- it's a theme park for ME. ME ALONE. Every choice I have made, from the large to the small, from 20 hours ago or 2 minutes ago, will both come back to haunt me AND come back to help me. It's so consistently on top of treating MY behavior in the game with respect and priority, that when combined with the bloody brilliant writing it is impossible to be that disappointed in the lack of background movement. It's just remarkable.

 

Also, the fact that it's entirely possible to have a "Kill everyone" run of the game is great. I'll never see this, but when I got an assassination mission at one point in the game, and had no way to kill the guy by default(like I was expecting), I had to remind myself "Oh right, I can manually kill him." And that suddenly became a potential future for everything again. Squeeeeee and a half.

 

 

In defense of Divinity, if you come at it knowing that you should just skip through all the text without reading, it makes for an amazing hack and slash RPG. It has balance issues, in the sense that all abilities aren't exactly on equal footing, but you have so many tactical options that each fight is interesting, and if you enjoy trying to break and optimize a system, it's great fun. I couldn't say which is better, because their strengths are in very different places.

 

I agree with what Pepyri said, the writing in PoE is actually worth reading (a rare thing), though I've had some frustrations with combat: the melee classes have few activated abilities, so most of their time is spent walking up to the enemies and basic attacking until someone's dead, and the pathfinding in a many-person melee is awful, like really really bad.

 

Regarding Wasteland 2, blech. I found the writing bland and the combat blander, they managed to make the combat system significantly simpler than the not-exactly-complex Fallout 1. Either DoS or PoE would be a much better place to spend your time.

 

As to Divinity, it's honestly a place where the balance of abilities and how you structure an area makes it impossible to recommend even as a hack and slash. You don't know what all you're going to encounter over your 50+ hours of gameplay, and the fact that you can be forced to go through a very sudden lesson in fisting that is also going to last 5+ hours each time you encounter it is pretty bad. Despite being 2 levels above one section, for example, I still, after 5+ tries, couldn't defeat a group of enemies required to progress. Once again, because of lack of fire. I had to restart the game, guarantee I had some fucking fire, and go back.

 

When you can see that, and compare it to PoE's combat- which even with its flawed pathfinding, and relatively few options for melee(though I guarantee you this isn't universal or permanent, depending on how you play those melee characters) allows for huge variety in party makeup, and still makes even the common battles riveting affairs(there are several instances of "I can't imagine I'll survive this" leading to real moments of teamwork and heroism that I'm sure I'll remember by the end of the year in the first 15 hours alone, let alone some of the epic set pieces I've had since), it's hard not to look at Divinity and say, "Why in God's name would I ever play this while I haven't exhausted Pillars?"

 

It was timed well, for sure. I also see a rich future of mods making Divinity a much better game, and more ambitious mods making other worthwhile experiences, eventually, which Pillars will never have. That's commendable on its face, if it even gets half of the content of something like Cities: Skylines has in its first month.

 

But the combat angers me so much. My issue is, I am one of those people. I was one of the best Enhancement Shaman on my server in WoW, and spent thousands of hours perfecting everything I possibly could. Similarly, my favorite part of many games is slowly tuning myself to such a ridiculous point of power that I'm able to break the game in other ways- it's what has defined me, to friends in the past. It's something I even do when I program.

 

But the trick, is to allow for a wide variety of ways to get there. PoE also manages to achieve this fantastically, by making it truly impossible to fuck yourself up too badly. My Monk is high resolve, and only middling everything else. This might be one of the most sub-optimal ways to actually make a Monk- Monks thrive off of taking small amounts of damage, that stack upon one another, to kill people. My monk is built to effectively never get hit by anything unless it might take a third or more of her health in that hit. Yet, I was able to combine it with high DR armor to create a potent tank and debuffing monk.

 

Even then, if I really fucked up her or any other character, I could always just make some more at the Inn. They let me have that. That's pretty nice too.

 

I know I'm bashing on Divinity a lot- which is funny, because I actually really liked the game. But it's more just because when stood up next to Pillars, it's hard to remember why I liked it, really.

[Ninety-Three]

As to Divinity, it's honestly a place where the balance of abilities and how you structure an area makes it impossible to recommend even as a hack and slash. You don't know what all you're going to encounter over your 50+ hours of gameplay, and the fact that you can be forced to go through a very sudden lesson in fisting that is also going to last 5+ hours each time you encounter it is pretty bad. Despite being 2 levels above one section, for example, I still, after 5+ tries, couldn't defeat a group of enemies required to progress. Once again, because of lack of fire. I had to restart the game, guarantee I had some fucking fire, and go back.

 

I never had trouble with needing a damage type, because I made sure I had access to all schools of magic. Spending just one skill point to gain access to the school's low-level buffs is very worth it, and it usually left me with one spell of that school left over so I could have Flare, Bolt, Oil and so on to set basic environmental effects, and those sufficed when I ran into the rare enemies who need a particular damage type to kill them. After I figured out the party I wanted (two Lone Wolf rogues dipping into magic for self-buffs and environmentals), I never ran into a situation where it felt like it would be way easier if only I were specced differently.

 

I can imagine DoS being frustrating if that were the case, but I don't know how you were playing, and all I can say is it wasn't an issue for me.

 

To respond to something slightly more on topic, I've never been a fan of the "You can't fuck up too badly" school of character design. While other people find it reassuring, I always hear "You can't optimize and break the system too well". If a designer brings the weak builds closer to the strong ones, it's not just reducing your ability to fuck up, it's reducing your ability to do well.

[Pepyri]

To respond to something slightly more on topic, I've never been a fan of the "You can't fuck up too badly" school of character design. While other people find it reassuring, I always hear "You can't optimize and break the system too well". If a designer brings the weak builds closer to the strong ones, it's not just reducing your ability to fuck up, it's reducing your ability to do well.

 

I wholeheartedly disagree. Getting rid of trap builds merely gets rid of trap builds- it makes no difference in what sort of skill ceiling you have. In fact, oft-times having trap builds or trap playstyles in fact introduces *less* ability to a game, because you spend so much time figuring out how to simply not be bad that it takes the community longer to figure out how to actually think ahead or strategically.

 

Not to mention, here we have a game that with Path of the Damned shows that it's entirely possible to have both.

[juv3nal]

To be clear, I think you can, while not necessarily messing your character up in terms of combat effectiveness, definitely miss out on a lot of interesting dialogue choices by picking a "jack of all stats, master of none" main character.

[brkl]

So far being intelligent has been largely useless and when there is a conversation option it tends to be dumb.

[Dr Wookie]

Gah! 

I'm suddenly locked out of 

the dungeon in the stronghold. Also, the crazy lady chair won't talk to me!

[Jammy]

Just started playing recently, without really looking into it too much because I wanted everything to be a surprise. First thing that struck me, I was not expecting the game's tone to be so grim! Baldur's Gate was serious at times, but I remember a bit of winking at the camera too. PoE seems a lot more po-faced (Sorry). Although I haven't played much, so maybe there's a lot of humour and I just haven't got to it yet.

 

It does remind me of BG in a bunch of other ways, though, like how the difficulty wobbles a bit from area to area, or how at low levels bears will ruin your day. Despite my grumblings I'm loving the game so far, seems super cool. My character is an elven thief scholar, because.

[Pepyri]

Just started playing recently, without really looking into it too much because I wanted everything to be a surprise. First thing that struck me, I was not expecting the game's tone to be so grim! Baldur's Gate was serious at times, but I remember a bit of winking at the camera too. PoE seems a lot more po-faced (Sorry). Although I haven't played much, so maybe there's a lot of humour and I just haven't got to it yet.

 

It does remind me of BG in a bunch of other ways, though, like how the difficulty wobbles a bit from area to area, or how at low levels bears will ruin your day. Despite my grumblings I'm loving the game so far, seems super cool. My character is an elven thief scholar, because.

 

It gets a lot less grim after the first town/area. Defiance Bay and on is only grim for occasional major sidequests and the mainquest.

[lobotomy42]

Just started playing recently, without really looking into it too much because I wanted everything to be a surprise. First thing that struck me, I was not expecting the game's tone to be so grim! Baldur's Gate was serious at times, but I remember a bit of winking at the camera too. PoE seems a lot more po-faced (Sorry). Although I haven't played much, so maybe there's a lot of humour and I just haven't got to it yet.

 

It does remind me of BG in a bunch of other ways, though, like how the difficulty wobbles a bit from area to area, or how at low levels bears will ruin your day. Despite my grumblings I'm loving the game so far, seems super cool. My character is an elven thief scholar, because.

 

I think that's the biggest difference between BG and PoE. It's hard to remember now, because it has embedded itself so firmly in our consciousness as an "epic" RPG, but Baldur's Gate (especially the first one) was almost more comedy than drama.  If you read all the flavor text, talked to all the characters, etc., then it felt like a downright parody of RPG tropes.  The journal entries, in particular, were written in this first-person sarcastic voice.  BG2 tuned this way down and generally took itself a lot more seriously (like, moody teenager seriously, to be honest.) 

 

I don't particularly mind the change -- PoE is much more, um, "Obsidian"-feeling than Bioware-feeling -- but I can see how some would.

[Gormongous]

Bummer! First broken quest for me. Warning: if you want to complete the Parable of Wael, do it before you attempt any part of the Theorems of Pandgram. There's a broken trigger in the latter that turns everyone in that location hostile on all subsequent visits.

 

So I ended up taking about ten days off from this game, first to wait for the patch that might fix this bug, then in disappointment that the patch didn't fix it. I started it up last night with the vague feeling that it might be like Shadowrun: Dragonfall, where a minor bug broke the flow of the game for me and I never came back, but I quickly found workarounds for The Theorems of Pandgram bug (enter the hall stealthed, it avoids the broken trigger) and then for another bug I encountered just afterward (open the console and enter anything into it to jumpstart a stalled dialogue string). Both of those done, I put another five hours into it and it felt really good. There definitely is some kind of magic with this game, my experience here shows as much.

 

It does remind me of BG in a bunch of other ways, though, like how the difficulty wobbles a bit from area to area, or how at low levels bears will ruin your day. Despite my grumblings I'm loving the game so far, seems super cool. My character is an elven thief scholar, because.

 

Fantasy games in which bears fuck your shit to pieces will always be my secret favorite thing. I remember the place you're probably talking about, right off from the starting area, where I probably died a half-dozen times before admitting to myself that I probably wasn't meant to be able to solo a bear at level 2.

[Ninety-Three]

Fantasy games in which bears fuck your shit to pieces will always be my secret favorite thing. I remember the place you're probably talking about, right off from the starting area, where I probably died a half-dozen times before admitting to myself that I probably wasn't meant to be able to solo a bear at level 2.

 

Funny, I legged it straight to town at the first chance I had, rolled in there with a full party (of level 1s, plus myself at 2), and stomped them flat. My experience with the start of the game was mostly "Wow, they let me, but they did not intend for me to customize a full party at this point".

[Jammy]

 

I don't particularly mind the change -- PoE is much more, um, "Obsidian"-feeling than Bioware-feeling -- but I can see how some would.

 

I don't really mind the change much, I was just surprised! Was expecting a bit more silliness, and That Tree was something of a shock. I'll be interested to see if Pepyri is right and it cheers up a bit later on.

 

Fantasy games in which bears fuck your shit to pieces will always be my secret favorite thing. I remember the place you're probably talking about, right off from the starting area, where I probably died a half-dozen times before admitting to myself that I probably wasn't meant to be able to solo a bear at level 2.

 

That's the one! I was delighted when it killed me, 'cos it's been so long since I played an RPG with scary bears. But then I went and got a couple of party members, rolled back in there and killed it. Was still tough, mind.

 

Don't know if you guys have heard but turns out this game is quite fun.

[YoThatLimp]

 

 

I don't really mind the change much, I was just surprised! Was expecting a bit more silliness, and That Tree was something of a shock. I'll be interested to see if Pepyri is right and it cheers up a bit later on.

 

 

That's the one! I was delighted when it killed me, 'cos it's been so long since I played an RPG with scary bears. But then I went and got a couple of party members, rolled back in there and killed it. Was still tough, mind.

 

Don't know if you guys have heard but turns out this game is quite fun.

 

Oh man, loved being absolutely destroyed by that bear. 

[juv3nal]

agggh not having enough mechanics for a thing is the worst. What I get for playing on easy maybe as the combat difficulty would have gated me earlier.

[dibs]

I love the little modernizations that this game has made, like my top mechanics guy will automatically go and open the lock instead of me having to select him and send him in.

 

Also, if you only need a point or two, maybe try resting in an inn for a bonus. The first inn in the city (no names, sorry) has a bonus on one of the rooms.

[Gormongous]

agggh not having enough mechanics for a thing is the worst. What I get for playing on easy maybe as the combat difficulty would have gated me earlier.

 

I'm also most of the way through Act 2 and have yet to find a lock more difficult than Mechanics 7. There appear to be several traps that are at least Mechanics 9, but that's it.

[elvaq]

There are absurd Mechanics checks later but you're usually meant to just find the key.

 

Finished the final boss last night and whee-oo that is one fantastic piece of video game. As is the tradition in BG games, that final boss is a really, really good fight. Difficult but not impossible. Took me about 8 tries maybe?

 

RPS had a article a few days ago about one thing that this game does incredibly well (at least compared to every other crpg), actual roleplaying! http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/04/07/collaborative-storytelling-in-pillars-of-eternity/

 

Also I have been planning/dreaming of my second playthrough since about Act II and while I am super excited to jump right back in and do everything differently/more completely, I will probably wait for a few more patches, if not the first expansion. There's so much there already to do differently that it's tempting to start now, but yeah, a couple major bugs in Act 3 made me wary.

 

goat: possible

[mikemariano]

I am level 2 and my entire party still gets wiped out by spiderlings.

[TurboPubx-16]

I don't really mind the change much, I was just surprised! Was expecting a bit more silliness, and That Tree was something of a shock. I'll be interested to see if Pepyri is right and it cheers up a bit later on.

 

That tree was a big deal for me. I love it when a developer isn't afraid to use their Mature rating early to convey just how serious a situation is, not with something necessarily violent or bloody, but just by showing the aftermath of some fucked up thing that happened. It's rarely done well, just look at 99% of Mature rated games. Obsidian did the same thing in Fall Out New Vegas:

I think it was about 30 minutes in when I saw a whole lot of crucifixions.

 

Another example is the film version of The Road:

Pretty early on you see a basement full of human cattle. That's the setting of this movie, folks! If you weren't already engaged and taking this seriously you sure are now!

[BusbyBerkeley]

That tree was a big deal for me. I love it when a developer isn't afraid to use their Mature rating early to convey just how serious a situation is, not with something necessarily violent or bloody, but just by showing the aftermath of some fucked up thing that happened. It's rarely done well, just look at 99% of Mature rated games. Obsidian did the same thing in Fall Out New Vegas:

I think it was about 30 minutes in when I saw a whole lot of crucifixions.

 

RE: that New Vegas bit

 

Nipton! That was when I felt the game was something special. Stumbling upon the aftermath of the short story The Lottery was not at all a thing I was expecting to happen. Boone's initial quest line is what cemented the game as one of my all time favorites.

[YoThatLimp]

What do they call the Hollowborne down at the docks?

 

Bouys

 

Damn PoE, that is kind of a fucked up joke, hah.

[RoutineMachine]

That tree was a big deal for me. I love it when a developer isn't afraid to use their Mature rating early to convey just how serious a situation is, not with something necessarily violent or bloody, but just by showing the aftermath of some fucked up thing that happened. It's rarely done well, just look at 99% of Mature rated games. Obsidian did the same thing in Fall Out New Vegas:

I think it was about 30 minutes in when I saw a whole lot of crucifixions.

 

Another example is the film version of The Road:

Pretty early on you see a basement full of human cattle. That's the setting of this movie, folks! If you weren't already engaged and taking this seriously you sure are now!

Reminded me of waking up in a mega-mortuary in Planescape: Torment

[Ninety-Three]

I can't do it, combat is just so boring. I just spent a minute, literally sixty seconds, watching my guys basic attack the enemies until dead, and the only input I gave during that time was telling my team to attack a new target when their current one died, because on their own initiative all they did was pick their noses. Every fight, I micromanage my team into position (how is the pathfinding this bad?), I fire off my per-encounter clickies then spend way too long just watching basic attacks fly. I've heard people in this thread saying it gets better/more tactical/etc, how far in is that?