Pillars of Eternity

[Ffrog]

Late to the party as usual, I’m considering buying Pillars of Eternity. I’ve got a free weekend coming up, and I fancy a chunky RPG. And i just read about the development in Blood, Sweat, & Pixels, which reminded me that Pillars was a thing.

Just one question - does it take itself too seriously? A story about children born without souls sounds bleak, which is fine for a while, but are there lighter moments?

[LarsWestergren]

In general the tone is bleak and realistic. I think the first hour or so is probably the worst, when in quick order you get introduced to the hollowborn children, ghostly memories of a past inquisition, ritual suicide, and the genocidal purge of a village currently in progress. After you get past the hanging tree, it calms down to Baldur’s Gate levels I think.

There are humorous moments though, especially through party banter. Some of the more cheerful companions include Eder, Sagani, Hiravias, Kana Rua though their personal quests can be serious matters. Aloth and especially Durance should be included in your party too. Even though they aren’t barrels of laughs they are well written and offer unique insights into the main quest.

But there is nothing of the silliness of the Divinity: Original Sin games or the dark humor of the Fallouts. Obsidian have said Pillars 2 will be, while still serious, not as depressing and grim as some players found the first one.

[Ffrog]

Hmm, I don’t mind a bit of bleak and realistic, but I think I’d struggle with 40+ hours of it. I might keep looking then. The other possible I had on my list was Tides of Numenera, but my impression is that is even less fun than Pillars.

[Wednesday]

I have this installed but really struggle to get past the opening stages. It’s horribly dry and character creation is extraordinarily bland. Perhaps for someone with a deep love of old fashioned CRPGs it’s some kind of trove, but it does nothing for me.

Compare it with Mass Effect’s. You essentially get two choices of three options, where you grew up, and your career, but they both immediately give you far more to play with. The background options in this are just dull. Yes ME’s character is a much more prescribed, restrictive thing, but I just can’t roll anyone I could give a fuck about. Then, nothing grabs me in the opening hour and I just give up.

For the record, I’ve played some of the oldies and absolutely adore BG2

[Internet]

It takes itself very seriously, but it’s not grimdark and there are lighter moments. If you buy it, buy the complete edition; the White March addition tells a better story and generally has a better atmosphere. Generally the humor is limited to companion interactions, some of which are genuinely endearing.

TToN is a pretty fun romp early on, but the game manages to both drag on too long and feel incomplete in the end. It more goes for surrealism than humor too.

[Ffrog]

I decided to go for it and bought PoE (it was going cheap on Fanatical, which forced my hand).

I’m a few hours in, and i’m enjoying the story. Not really sure what I’m doing in the combat yet though. My character is a moon godlike rogue. On the first level up I chose to specialise in bows, but i’m currently regretting it - melee with a couple of daggers seems much more effective. I’m glad I can pay to respec at the inn.

Still figuring out the AI instructions. Already with a party of three it’s too quick to micromanage. Haven’t actually had any problems with fights yet, but I am playing on easy.

[Internet]

As you play longer with a rogue, you’re probably going to want to go for heavier armor if you go melee. Pillars breaks DnD stereotypes by letting rogues wear plate, and some of the later fights practically expect it.

[Serenegoose]

Yeah, the key thing with pillars is that armour is not damage avoidance, like dnd, but damage mitigation. You wear cloth armour? Great, you can cast spells and hit things faster, but it won’t do a thing to stop a hit landing that was already landing, and that means if you’re centre of enemy attention, you take a lot of damage. Of course, knowing this is half the battle and lets you plan buffs or debuffs to stop characters getting hit accordingly, but it is a vital mental leap to take.

[LarsWestergren]

Streamers have access to the full game now, here is one currently live. He is past character creation and have started the game itself so if you care about spoilers, avoid.

https://m.twitch.tv/cohhcarnage?desktop-redirect=true

They accidentally released the release trailer for 30 mins too, it was pretty great but we probably will have to wait until the 8th to see it again.

Edit: A better link, where you can rewind to the beginning.

[Aerothorn]

Still figuring out the AI instructions. Already with a party of three it’s too quick to micromanage.

Note that you can A. adjust combat speed, and B. set up all sorts of auto-pause criteria. This makes managing parties a LOT easier.

In Deadfire news, I’ve spent so much time trying to figure out my player character, not to mention my party - I’m tempted to just multiclass everything but it’s probably not a good idea and may overwhelm me with ability options. But I’m gonna be playing a seer (cipher/ranger) purely for noncombat purposes - I like reading people’s minds (was a cipher in the first game), and I want an animal companion, damnit.

That said, I was really, really tempted to do a Berath chanter and summon absurd numbers of minions.

[Internet]

Even though I backed the kickstarter I’m probably going to go through Pillars one last time with a cipher. On Deadfire I’ll probably turn him into either a cipher / barbarian or a cipher / fighter. Even though I like the sound of a witch (Ascendant / Base Barb) I’ll probably go with Soul Blade / Devoted.

It would help if I knew whether or not carnage builds focus / is affected by soul whip. If so, that would turn the witch into a threshing machine.

[Aerothorn]

As someone playing on normal difficulty, I am just trusting in the “all builds are viable” philosophy - ranger/cipher is probably not optimal (though apparently Ghost Heart makes it better, but I don’t know if I want a dead summon-only animal because half the fun is having them follow you around outside of combat, right?).

[Ffrog]

Note that you can A. adjust combat speed, and B. set up all sorts of auto-pause criteria. This makes managing parties a LOT easier.

I’ve actually turned off the AI now and I’m trying to micro-manage instead with lots of pausing. Mainly since I’ve gained both a wizard and a druid to the party, and it seems more important to use their abilities at the correct time because they are per-rest, not per-encounter.

I have a technique that’s working quite well at the moment - creep up to the enemies with stealth, open with ranged attacks from rogue and fighter, then switch to melee weapons with those two while wizard and druid fire things in from the back.

But I’m still not sure I can tell the difference between someone winding up an attack, and just standing there doing nothing.

[LarsWestergren]

Review thread:

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire - Review Thread

Another review thread:

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire - Review Thread • r/Games

Launch trailer:

[Viral_Frog]

Without even looking at the article itself, I knew the RPS review was done by John (by looking at the excerpt on the reddit thread). There’s no other explanation for how the review is so at odds with the majority of the other reviews for the game. Looks like one to stick on my wishlist, then.

[LexW]

Yeah I feel like the “John Walker doesn’t like good games” squad are pretty much flatly correct at this point. I used to think that they were overstating it but no. The whole arms length thing is 100 percent John, 0 percent the game, that’s obvious from the first few hours even.

It is a rather stunning game, actually, I mean the first thing that strikes you is how visually improved it is, and how much better the UI is and the story and presentation are immediately fun and engaging.

[Viral_Frog]

I like all of John’s writing except when it comes to Wot I Think articles. I really think they need to stop asking him Wot He Thunk about games. At first it was funny to see him being such a contrarian, now it’s just annoying.

I think John falls victim to completely unrealistic expectations of video games. I think he expects them to do things that the medium just will never be able to do. A lot of this he blatantly expresses in his writing. I feel that he expects games to evoke the same emotions and feelings as film, or a well written novel, but it just doesn’t work like that when you have any level of control over the experience. Pacing will always be an issue with this form of media, no matter how finely tuned it is. Allowing the player any agency at all mucks with pacing, which impacts the overall delivery of the game’s story and writing.

Beyond that, he’s pretty well stated that he is not good at a lot of video games. I believe this also contributes to his negative outlook on so many video games. Mechanically they don’t click with him like they would with other people, so he just doesn’t get the appeal.

[gordianblot]

I haven’t gotten around to reading John’s WIT yet, so I won’t comment on that. We disagree on a lot of games, although I kinda like that if the reviewer does a good job of getting their opinion across. I think that’s usually the case with John but ,yeah, there is the odd ball here and there. Like his point that Rime doesn’t hold your hand was pretty baffling. I’m not necessarily for or against hand holding, but Rime very clearly does it and I’m not sure John played the game while at some reasonable level of sobriety.

ANYWAY, I’m installing PoE II now and I’m undecided on what class to pick. I’ll likely multiclass because that’s a thing now. I did like the rogue class before but I’m not sold on a combination for it beyond fighter and I’m dead set on using Eder as fighter/rogue. I’m thinking barbarian/monk because it’s a little preposterous on the surface level but it might be alright from a mechanics point of view. I’ll still have to look around at skill trees.

[LexW]

Yeah one very nice thing about character creation is, unlike almost any other game, you can view the full skill trees whilst doing it, no need for alt tabbing to build sites or any of that nonsense. In general the level of polish compared to Pillars 1 is fairly hilariously high.

[Sihoiba]

So I backed and finished the first one, but it very much left me never wanting to play it again, because I found the gameplay too monotonous for the length of the game, and the writing badly in need of an edit. On that basis I didn’t back the second one. I do like CRPGs though.

From those playing the game have they improved:

1. The clarity of combat: particularly have they turned down the spell animations so you can see what’s happening on pause, have the they reduced down the multitude of different status effects to a more coherent list? e.g this: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=654970348
2. The combat encounter design: have they reduced the number of enemies that have engagement escape abilities (so many damn wraiths in PotE1) or does it still rely heavily on physical choke points?
3. Is character creation less wordy, or is still a small novella worth of text to read to understand what all the choices they present to you mean in world and in game?
4. Do non player NPCs have better writing? Do they have personalities now? Or are they still lore dump conversation trees? (The Glanfathan NPCs in Act 3 were the worst “Grr we hate outsiders they are all scum, but please sit down outsider so we can explain our culture, customs and history to you in endless detail”)