Pillars of Eternity a return to the Baldur’s Gate-style RPG
By Gieson Cacho | Contra Costa Times (MCT)
Platforms: Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux
Developer: Obsidian Entertainment
Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Genre: Role-Playing
Mode: Single-player
Old genres don’t really die out. They just fall out of vogue and lay dormant, waiting for their time to come again. A new generation of gamers could rediscover it or older fans may decide to pour money into a project that brings back a piece of their childhood. Either way, a style of game you thought was forgotten has a way of coming back.
And that’s what’s happening with Obsidian Entertainment’s Pillars of Eternity, a Kickstarter-backed game that aims to bring back the Baldur’s Gate-style RPG of yesteryear. It’s a 2D isometric title where players control a band of adventurers and guide them through the fantasy world of Eora.
Players can choose either gender from among six races — Human, Godlike (altered humanoid), Orlan (a short furry species), aumaua (aquatic beings), dwarf and elf. Each race also has sub ethnicities. For example, humans can come from meadows, savannas or the coastal and their appearance will reflect that. There’s also a choice of culture that fills in part of the character’s backstory and tweaks the starting gear. After that, there are 11 different classes, the standard barbarian, fighter, paladin, ranger, wizard, druid, monk, priest and rogue. The chanter is essentially a bard and the cipher is an interesting character that must use the soul of a target to use their attacks. It’s unusual and requires expert point-and-click dexterity.
The character process is flexible allowing players to choose a number of things including their background.
FLEXIBLE CHARACTER CREATION: What Obsidian tries to improve on is how players distribute those statistical points. Project director Josh Sawyer said they wanted to make every stat important to all the classes. Instead of dumping all your points in strengths for a barbarian, Pillars of Eternity makes it feasible to have a smarter version of that class. Players who invest intelligence points in barbarians will see that they’ll have a larger area of effect for their carnage attack. It opens up the game to a wider variety of characters and playstyles.
The secondary goal of this character creation system is that they want players to be happy with how they designed their avatars. The team built it so the process isn’t so intimidating and no high-impact decisions are made early on. It lets players get a handle on their character as they venture forth in the campaign.
At the start of the story, players are part of a caravan that stops to rest near ruins when they’re attacked by Fanatics protecting the area. Early, on they’ll see that, choices have an impact in how the plot unfolds. Players can choose to help Sparfel, a lazy traveler, and grab a water skin, which comes in handy later on. Further on, they can choose to let a wounded ally rest or press forward. (This will determine if a party member leaves.) Elsewhere, during storybook-like cut scene, they can choose to toss a weapon at hand to help a friend but lose that piece of equipment forever.
In terms of combat, Pillars of Eternity is similar to older Infinity Engine titles. Players can pause the game and set up a strategy. It’s always smart to have the fighters wade into foes first to protect ranged damage dealers. Players can also switch out weapons on the fly. That’s important when choosing a weapon with more range or damage type. In the demo, I watched a barbarian use an ability to rush forward and take out a mage. Unfortunately, players don’t have many of these Wild Sprints. They’ll have to rest to refill them.
Players will encounter puzzles like this trapped floor. They’ll have to explore the environment to figure out how to get through.
ADDING DIFFICULTY: And that brings us to another important element of Pillar of Eternity. The team wanted to add the right challenge and prevent players from just saving and reloading if an encounter fails. They do this by fixing how the combat system tallies up damage and such. Suffice to say, if you’re weak or unqualified, don’t expect to get two or three lucky rolls to get the situation moving your way.
The other part is that players can’t just rest anywhere now to regain health and abilities. The team limits those by requiring players to have camping gear to rest in the field. The problem is tents and other such gear are rare, and players have to use them sparingly to succeed because they can be few and far between. Inns also do the same thing, plus they give players certain boosts depending on the room. That adds another layer of strategy as they have to figure out which space is the most beneficial to their character.
If players or comrades’ hit points fall to 0, they will get knocked out and be maimed. It’s a status punishment where the characters lose accuracy or other stat points. For those who want a hard-core mode, some allies can die if they are defeated.
Like its other RPGs, Obsidian offers players the opportunity to avoid combat in Pillars of Eternity. Not everything can be solved with steel. For those situations, players with certain stats can pick special responses not available to characters who don’t reach certain stat requirements. This could lead to beneficial interactions or dialogue branches that can mess up a dicey scenario.
From what I’ve seen, Pillars of Eternity has promise, but we’ll see if Obsidian makes good on it when their Kickstarter-funded project is released this fall.
