4.5/5 ★ – snappydresser61's review of Pillars of Eternity.

In 2012, Obsidian Entertainment was in dire straights. Despite a string of critically aclaimed titles to their name, the veteran RPG studio was forced to enact a series a layoffs while it faced the possibility of closing its doors. It needed a new project to bring them out of their predicament. Seeing the great success Double FIne had using crowdfunding to fund their latest project (which ultimately became Broken Age), Obsidian decided to take to Kickstarter to raise the money needed to make one more game. Upon launch, Project Eternity blew the doors off all of Obsidian's expectations, becomes the fastest Kickstarter game to achieve their goal, hitting the initial 1 million dollar goal in 27 hours. When the campaign ended, a total of 4 million dollars had been raised from 77,000 backers, setting a new record at the time. The game that would become Pillars of Eternity then entered full development. Pillars of Eternity is a throwback to a then nearly dead genre, the isometric computers RPGs of the early 2000s, which brought the world such classics as Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment. Essentially a pen and paper Dungeons and Dragons game brought to life, these games relied on complex narratives and lore, in-depth RPG mechanics, and the necessity for patience and careful decision making, all played from a top down, isometric viewpoint, features hand-crafted, pre-rendered backgrounds and environments. Pillars keeps to this aesthetic and design philosophy, but uses it as the basis for Obsidian's first truly original work. For years, Obsidian has been the studio relegated to making sequels to someone else's games. Knights of the Old Republic II is one of the most brutally deconstructive, thoughtful, and overall beautifully written takes on Star Wars lore, but it continues to exist in the shadow of BioWare's still excellent, but more successful and traditional original. Fallout: New Vegas is now widely regarded as the best Fallout game, but, like KOTOR before it, was developed under a considerable time crunch and released in a buggy state. Not until Pillars of Eternity did Obsidian have a new IP they could call their own, and the amount of affection they have for their creation is evident from the word go. With a direct sequel released in 2018 and an open world, first person game set in the Pillars universe called Avowed in the works, a great effort has clearly been made to develop this into an ongoing franchise. Pillars of Eternity is set in the fantasy world of Eora, primarily in the nation of Dyrwood. The recent discovery of the scientific existance of souls has sent the land into an uproar. Whats more, a plague is sweeping the Dyrwood. Children are being born without souls, and the Hollowborn curse has give rise to distrust and fear of animancy, the study of souls. The player character, after an exhaustive character creation process, is part of a caravan than encounters trouble. The entire company is wiped out and a mysterious storm drives the player into a cave. Emerging from the other side, the player witnesses robed cult members performing a strange ritual near some kind of machine. The ensuing events transform the player into a Watcher, someone able to interact with souls and percieve the past lives of others. After a disturbing encounter with another Watcher driven insane by the awareness of his past self, the player sets out on a quest to discover what is behind the Hollowborn curse, along with a group of recruitable companions. Right off the bat, Pillars wears its unabashedly old school inspirations on its sleeve. Though there is some voice acting for important story moments and character interactions, the bulk of the scripted moments and dialogue scenes are delivered through large blocks of text. The player will do A LOT of reading in this game. It's unavoidable. The writing is uniformly excellent throughout, though perhaps a little too verbose and flamboyant at times. It really pulls you into its world. This also extents to the extensive lore created for Eora, it's people, politics, language, and regions. Strange new places and people are name dropped fast and frequently, and it might be worth taking some notes, though it does eventually gel into a cohesive, understandable whole. Between this and the old school approach to storytelling, lorehounds will love this game. But others will find it utterly impenetrable. One of the stretch goals that was added to Kickstarter was the stronghold system. The player eventually gains access to Caed Nua, a keep the Watcher can upgrade by spending money to improve the walls, gardens, and training facilities, which grants security against bandits and resting bonuses from sleeping there. Underneath Caed Nua is a massive 15 level mega-dungeon called The Endless Paths, which comprises the game's largest sidequest. Combat in Pillars of Eternity uses the real time with pause system, wherein the combat plays out in real time, but the player can pause at any time to issue commands to party members. An enormous list of skills, spells, and talents are on offer to upgrade the party, which comprises the Watcher plus five others at any one time. A degree of skill and tactical intelligence is required for most fights in this game. Leaving encounters on auto-attack with likely result in you getting decimated, especially against tougher foes. There are two major cities in the Dyrwood, the modern Defiance Bay and the more wooded settlement of Twin Elms. Each is seperated into districts. The quality of the writing extends to the abundance of side content in the game. Each side quest is more often than not, filled with surprises and nice touches usually afforded to main story content in other games. Tasks are less involved side quests that often comprise more fetch quests and simpler objectives. The game was designed for PC but brought to consoles later. The Switch port I played provides the ability to bring the game everywhere I go, and portability is a huge win for big games like this. The frequent, long load times spoil the fun a good amount though, though I imagine this is less of a problem on a PC equipped with a fast SSD. There was also some noticable slowdowns when the action gets intense, and a few remaining bugs dont seem to have been squashed, even after the enormous patch released recently that brought the file size from 18GB on Switch up to 29. Overall, Pillars of Eternity is a meaty, hearty RPG worth sinking a hundred hours into. The story and characters will keep you invested, so long as you dont mind reading and the insometic perspective isnt a deal breaker. The Complete Edition released for all platforms also includes the two part The White March DLC expansion, which adds a further substantial chunk of worthwhile content to the base game. It certainly won't be for everyone, but for those looking for a deep experience they can sink their teeth into, they could sure do a lot worse.