Don’t expect Sea Of Thieves, though: this is still a point-and-click affair and, as such, sailing in Pillars Of Eternity 2 does feel a little clunky. Dedicated players could easily spend months here.Īnd if you do want to explore, you’ll need that ship.
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Every interaction enforces the world or the story (you’re on the hunt for a giant, by the way), or proves so interesting that you’ll actually forget about the main quest and become utterly enraptured by whatever you’re being asked to do.įollowing a short and tightly controlled prologue, you’re free to explore and take as much time as you want in Deadfire. It would take over a hundred hours to find every possible conversation across this huge archipelago, but it’s worth the investment. Obsidian has consistently proven itself as operators at the highest level of the game when it comes to branching dialogue and strong, character-driven writing – and this is some of the studio’s finest work. You click around the environments to move about, and almost all quests and moments of importance arise from conversations. There’s a system that allows the game’s AI to select all your party’s abilities automatically, should you rather concentrate on yourself, but the real magic comes from delving deep into every menu and conjuring up a concoction of powers that suits the specific encounter you find yourself in.īeyond combat, those familiar with the genre will know the score. This allows for both tactical depth and the frenetic pace of real-time, meaning combat can often sit between being thoughtful like a turn-based strategy game, and manic like Diablo.Īs is the style, you play as a member of a larger party, so you’ll need to be tactically astute in how you buff your party members and combine their various powers to succeed. But you can line up your attacks by pausing the on-screen action, and letting your characters go like a coiled spring. Pillars Of Eternity 2 uses a dynamic pausing system so, technically, combat plays out in real-time. Before that, however, you’ll need to get to grips with the core gameplay loops, the conversations, the questing and, of course, the combat. This time, the action takes place across a huge Deadfire archipelago, meaning you’ll actually be doing a fair bit of seafaring on your rather splendid vessel, The Defiant. While previous knowledge of the game’s past is helpful, you absolutely don’t need to have played the original, and while you play as a specific character, there’s huge variance in class choice, loadouts and personality traits. You play as The Watcher, the lead from the previous game who has the ability to speak to the dead. Like a great book, this is a layered, dense and challenging game. However, if you know what you’re getting in to, or like the idea of diving headlong into an enormous and life-consuming RPG that requires patience, dedication and concentration, then Pillars Of Eternity 2 Deadfire could well be the masterpiece you’ve been searching for. Those with a genuinely short attention span may struggle – there are long conversation trees, a deep roster of characters with interwoven and ever-changing relationships, a seemingly endless amount of guides, tutorials and systems, and a pace that may seem glacially slow if you’re used to action games.
It’s important to note that as good as Pillars Of Eternity 2: Deadfire is, it isn’t for everybody.
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And in Deadfire, the even-larger and somehow even-denser sequel, you can feel the passion and commitment Obsidian has to this series and genre in every pixel.
The original game went on to great success, re-establishing Obsidian as a studio in charge of its own destiny – rather than just relying on (admittedly often excellent) project work such as Fallout New Vegas and South Park The Stick Of Truth.
The original Pillars Of Eternity – a vast, complex and ocean-deep RPG from Obsidian – was crowdfunded by a global army of fans who were more than prepared to put their money down to prove that there was a clear appetite for a sub-genre that big publishers have, understandably, shied away from in the past decade. One of the truly beautiful things about gaming is the freedom that developers now have to source funding and to create the kind of projects they’re truly passionate about.
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