Pillars of Eternity: An Astounding Open World to Explore

Pillars of Eternity

It seems a travesty to review Pillars of Eternity in only three articles, but that's all the schedule can contain to complete the year of 2018. The first article examined Pillar's characters, companions, and combat. This second article will review Pillar's open world, its dialogue, and the Endless Paths of Od Nua.

Divinity: Original Sin was almost entirely composed of three incredibly vast areas, aided by a few smaller ones. In contrast, Pillars is constructed from thirty-two locations, connected by a map screen. To move from one area to another, the protagonist and party must exit off an edge of the current area, which opens the map. In the beginning, the areas are locked, but the player unlocks them by exiting off the side of the map closest to the restricted location. Once unlocked, these locations can be accessed any time the player uses the map screen when exiting an area. Unlike Divinity, this method of travel involves loading screens, but they offer unusually insightful information for playing the game.
To travel the player highlights the heroes. Drag and and collect. But if the player wants to select one hero, they can be clicked on. Unintuitively, clicking on the body of the character has no effect. In Pillars, selecting a character requires clicking precisely on the feet. This is an odd choice, which generates frustration for the average gamer, because they have been condition by the majority of similar games to click on the body. Pillars contains other frustrations in the crucial aspect of travel. Unlike Divinity which allowed the player to split the party, traveling on different maps, to encourage creative thinking, Pillars insists all heroes remain in the same area. They can't be separated to allow one hero to scout an area, which makes stealth useless as a tool to avoid combat or search for non-violent solutions. If a quest requires entering a house, the whole party must enter, and immediately encounter the hostile enemies within. Instead of stealth and diplomacy, Pillars offers extended options to kill everyone. 

Still, stealth is useful for scouting large maps, except for its limitations.  Stealth slows movement to a crawl, so Pillars compensated by allowing the player to chose from three speeds: slow, normal, and fast. Slow is useless, but in fast mode a stealthed character moves at normal speed (but with a silly animation). Pillars also encourages the player to maintain stealth at all times, because it is a part of the Scouting mode which exerts two effects. One, if not in Scouting mode, enemies attack immediately when they spot the hero. Scouting prevents this. Enemies notice the hero and move closer to inspect, allowing the player time to retreat. Two, in Scouting mode the hero sees hidden objects (if their Perception Attribute is high enough). Hidden objects can not be seen in regular mode, no matter how exceptional a hero's perception. Similar to Scouting, Pillars requires the player to constantly hold the shift button. This allows the player to see all containers visible to their characters. With Shift, containers are highlighted; blue for regular, and purple for secret. One might believe this inconvenience unnecessary, but they will miss the many small or oddly shaped containers.
Traveling the world of Eora is a matter of navigating the areas successfully. They are beautifully crafted, though many in the countryside seem somewhat empty. In contrast, every building in the cities, even those which are empty initially, are used for a quest. A few maps are effected by the passing of time. Nighttime may unlock terrain which was impassable during the day, but most are the same. Unfortunately, for the quests where the time of day matters, there is no method for the player to choose the time. Instead they must wait patiently. Resting, described in the last article, is not an option in most cases, because it would either waste a scarce Camping Supplies, or is forbidden because the area is in a town, where resting on the street is prohibited. The passing of nights and days are recorded, but have no effect. Pillars of Eternity is divided into four acts, and just before the conclusion of Act 1 the protagonist acquires a stronghold. The player can purchase additions to Caed Nua, which are built with the passing of time, but these offer insignificant benefits.

Aside from the restriction on unlocking locations, the player is free to roam wherever they will. Pillars includes few (figurative) signposts (though the missions are clearly defined in the journal), indicating where the player must go. Monsters do not display their level prominently above their head, unlike in Divinity, because they are not blocking the player from proceeding until they've attained a particular level. I almost never found an area too difficult (on medium difficulty – same as my play-through of Divinity), though sometimes a collection of foes required a second or third try. Only a few times did I leave an area where I was clearly underleveled. The most difficult battle in Pillars was The Battle of Yenwood Field, an incredible clash between two forces, fielding at least twenty-five soldiers each. I abandoned it after the tenth attempt, to train my soldiers and acquire enough experience to reach level seven. Upon my return, I vanquished the foe on the first try. This massive battle was one of the coolest experiences in the game, and the developers should have included more of them. I hope they did in Pillars of Eternity 2. On the other hand, there was also a few times where I found an area too easy. This did not render them significantly less enjoyable.
Before The Battle of Yenwood Field, Pillars includes a section like a choose-your-own-adventure. The screen changes to resemble a graphic novel, where some text describes a situation, and offers the player choices. These occurred fairly regularly throughout Pillars. Often the text required the player to take a risk, and if they did the game considered the relevant Attribute or Skill. A success allowed the story to proceed as normal, while a failure often Maimed the hero. 

At the conclusion of The Battle of Yenwood Field I expected to take Lord Gathbin prisoner. The protagonist can order the construction of a dungeon at his stronghold, and it was one of the first parts I built, to avoid killing so many enemies. But Pillars didn't offer this option, and Gathbin died on the field. Unfortunately, most quests offered insufficient resolution (unlike the companion quests which were great). Quests offered a binary choice with no nuance for outside the box thinking. For example, in the Old Queen and the New King, the player is forced to fight either one foe (the Queen) or another (the King), instead of tricking them into a duel. In another quest, the protagonist rescues a teenage girl who was raped by her uncle. When she asks the protagonist where she should go, Pillars allows the player to reply: the city of Defiance Bay, to a nunnery, back to her uncle, or travel the open road. It does not allow the player to offer the safety and security of their massive stronghold. The game seemed unable to offer the protagonist subtly,diplomacy or mercy as choices. The Stronghold of Caed Nua contained a dungeon, but the game insisted on a trail of bodies, left behind an otherwise calm and peace-seeking protagonist. In fact, through over forty hours and at least a hundred human bodies, Pillars only allows the player to take seven people prisoner. Not seven at one time, but only seven distinct named characters can be imprisoned throughout the entire game.
Oddly, Pillars insists on a few restrictions to its preferred solution of kill everything. Killing one particular NPC immediately ends the game in defeat. At least one NPC is invulnerable to death, and is needed to complete an essential quest. There are also a few restrictions on the open world. Even though the player can unlock ninety-nine percent of doors with a high Mechanic Skill, a few require the proper key. It should also be mentioned, that in this open world game, there are almost no puzzles, unlike Divinity which contained many frustrating, obscure, search for the correct object or the hidden switch puzzles. No puzzles beats poorly constructed puzzles, but loses to good puzzles.

When the player enters Defiance Bay and begins Act II, they encounter the many factions competing for power in the Dyrwood. Most are only relevant for this Act, but it is the longest section of the game. The factions represent the establishment vs the upstart, the good vs the evil, the chaotic vs the orderly: the usual sort of stuff. Also in the city, the player encounters the multitude of Golden Heroes. Obsidian's Kickstarter included many tiers of support. Of the 77,000 supporters, one hundred and twenty-four backers paid enough (minimum $1,000) to name and design an NPC. While I am grateful for these souls supporting the project so generously, after I realized why some NPCs displayed golden names, I no longer talked to them, because they contribute nothing to the experience.
 
These NPCs don't have dialogue options, only a description, but dialogue is a key component of Pillars of Eternity. Many of the important dialogues contain excellent voice work, which enhances the already stellar writing. Oddly, a conversation may contain both silent and spoken lines. For example, the first paragraph of dialogue might be spoken, but after the player chooses a response, the next paragraph will be silent, only for the third paragraph to be spoken again. This breaks the immersion of the player. Another aspect of the dialogue was confusing. Sometimes the player was asked to respond to a question about their past life (more on this next article) even though the player doesn't know anything about it. These questions allowed the player to construct their past life, but because the answers are irrelevant, the whole aspect is strange and disturbing.
Offering a piece of advice here. In Defiance Bay the player should go directly to the Temple of Woedica, because many side quests are restricted until the protagonist initiates this investigation. In the city, the protagonist's behavior earns additional relevance. Pillars records the protagonist's choices, both as they define the character and their effect on the various factions. The first is called the character's Disposition, or personality, and includes traits such as Aggressive, Benevolent, and Clever. The second is termed Reputation, and records how each faction regards the player. It is difficult to know how much these matter, except for the few occasions where Disposition unlocks dialogue options.

A few other facts about the world. A big issue with the map: the player can not mark it for later. With so many areas, it can be difficult to remember where there are unresolved quests. Pillars is also without a quick save button, a requirement in a RPG, where the player needs to save before and after every battle.
When one tires of the main quest, and longs for a break, they can seek treasure underground. Beneath the stronghold of Caed Nua traverse the tunnels of the Endless Paths of Od Nua. Fifteen levels of increasing danger and death. At the very bottom resides the Master Below. Everything within the earth is irrelevant to the main quest, but does some world-building for the game above. There are two methods to completing the Endless Paths. Complete it bit by bit while doing the main campaign, or do it all once when the heroes have attained a high level  The Master Below offers the most difficult fight in the game. I tried ten times, and then discovered a solution. I lied to the Master, agreeing to be its friend. Then I walked past it and killed its allies. Afterwards I was able to position myself spread out around the Master.  With this strategy I defeated it on the first try. Was it worth it? I am not sure. The Endless Paths were interesting but not nearly as great as the rest of the game. If you want a dungeon crawl, sure, but otherwise consider skipping it.

Next week Awkward Mixture will conclude its review of Pillars of Eternity, with a look at the lore, themes, and ending.

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