To take visuals as an easy example, Pillars' style is more grounded in its charms than other RPGs out there, even old-school ones, but everything is carefully done and with very effective details. Being spiritually rooted in the Baldur's Gate era may dictate much of its design, but it comes with the benefit of another 15 or so years of experience, as well as machines that no longer have to make the same trade-offs. Oh, this is really, really going to suck.īeing exactly what over 73,000 people stumped up four million dollars to play is hardly a sin though, and the obvious advantage of Obsidian knowing exactly what Pillars of Eternity had to be is that it's a far more polished, content-rich, and let's be honest here, finished game than most that have worn its logo. The few that stand out really show their potential. The occasional breaks from the action for Choose Your Own Adventure style storylets for instance sounded like a great idea for handling more complex encounters than the engine can offer, but in practice are typically "Try throwing a grappling hook? Okay, cool, it worked." I really wanted more of these, and more ambitious ones. At times, it almost seems to pull away from its own twists. It's absolutely the game that Obsidian's Kickstarter backers wanted and paid for, just lacking the company's usual flair for also giving us what we didn't know we wanted, or even the shake-ups to the formula supposedly made for the originally planned Baldur's Gate 3: The Black Hound. Pillars of Eternity however, while ambitious, plays things very, very safe. The same has always gone for Obsidian's designs, being noted for their subversions and risk-taking and willingness to try spinning things in new directions even with existing franchises. Part of what made Pillars' inspirations classics is that for their time, they were scrappy, adventurous, forging new terrain. Occasionally, that can be a mite underwhelming. And if any doubt persists, it's soon beaten over the head with the magic words "You must gather your party before venturing forth." To be sure, you can find the individual elements there in many RPGs, but in this case the particular mix leaves no doubt as to what you're supposed to be feeling nostalgic about. The progression through small towns suffering from a background threat (this time to children rather than iron) before entering a big city of politics and intrigue. Each Act beginning with a portentous narrated text scroll. The backgrounds, higher resolution and with nicer effects, but cut from the same cloth. Its new world is distinct from Forgotten Realms in detail rather than spirit, its engine and mechanics are patterned almost entirely after what BioWare and Black Isle were doing with the Infinity Engine back in the 90s. Pillars of Eternity isn't Baldur's Gate 3, but only because of a few technicalities like the name. Divinity Original Sin brought back the Ultima VII vibe, Wasteland 2 carried as much of Fallout as it did its namesake, and now Pillars of Eternity casts its resurrection spell on the classic that largely saved the genre from a descent into obscurity - Silver! No, wait. Pillars of Eternity is the Baldur's Gate 3 we never got, returning to the Infinity Engine style of role-playing with flair.Įasily the best thing about all these old-school RPG revivals has been remembering just how varied the classics truly were.
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