Showing posts with label Pillars of Eternity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pillars of Eternity. Show all posts

Thursday, September 3, 2015

Pillars of Eternity: The White March Pt.1 - Review
















The White March - Part 1 is the first of at least two planned DLC-sized expansions for Pillars of Eternity, Obsidian Entertainment's recent isometric RPG. See my review of the base game here (short version, I liked it a lot). This expansion introduces a new region of the world map with several explorable areas, a bunch of new quests, new enemies, new types of equipment, and a couple new companions. The new content takes place roughly in the middle of the main campaign, once you've begun the second of three acts and have gained access to the player stronghold, Caed Nua, but before moving into the game's final dungeon.  

It certainly makes sense for Obsidian to put the DLC in the middle of the game -- it wouldn't really work if it took place after the base game, since the ending specifically talks about your companions going their separate ways and describing their lives in the months that follow your adventure -- but it's a bit of a nuisance in practice. For anyone who's already completed the game, that means you have to load a save from before the "point of no return" and sort of pretend like you didn't already beat the game, and for anyone playing for the first time, the DLC will feel like a huge deviation from the careful narrative pacing and mechanical balancing of the base game.

Sunday, August 23, 2015

Pillars of Eternity Review
















I consider Obsidian Entertainment to be one of the best developers of modern role-playing games. That should come as little surprise, considering all of its founders were former leaders of Black Isle Studios who worked on games like Fallout, Planescape: Torment, and Icewind Dale -- some of the most influential and iconic RPGs of the late 90s. Their latest game, Pillars of Eternity, is not only one of the best RPGs of the past decade, it's one of the best RPGs ever made.

Successfully kickstarted in 2012, Pillars of Eternity (then known as "Project Eternity") set a record for the highest-funded video game ever on Kickstarter, bringing in nearly $4,000,000 from project backers. Faced with budget cuts and layoffs as the result of a cancelled project, the outpouring of support for "Project Eternity" allowed Obsidian to stay in business and take its time creating what would arguably become its magnum opus, while also playing a key contributing role in the recent revival of "old school" RPGs. Pillars of Eternity is a brand new intellectual property (only the second original IP Obsidian have ever released) that plays like any classic RPG from the 90s, complete with the isometric camera angle and mouse-driven interface, aided by some crucial updates and a lot of modern polish.