With the launch of the Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Fig campaign (visit their Fig page here!), I decided to take a look back at the the first Pillars of Eternity, including it’s White March expansions. While I absolutely love Pillars, some other seductive game had come along after about 80 hours of play and lured me away. Seeing a Fig for the sequel got me salivating for some of that good old fashioned isometric role-playing and I found myself back in the loving arms of Pillars. Once again I’m lost between its character sheets and intoxicated by its story lines. The ruleset they’ve created is clever, slick, and most of all, fun to use and learn. The characters are deep, interesting, believable, and marvelously well written and voice acted throughout. After booting it up after my hiatus and casting my gaze across all that the game has to offer, I must say, I couldn’t be happier to be striding the lands of Eora again.
The team over at Obsidian have achieved a remarkable feat here. All at once they have created something quite new and different, while driving it home with the marionette strings of nostalgia. For anyone who grew up loving the old Infinity Engine games like Baldur’s Gate or Planescape: Torment or even for those who somehow missed the boat, I wholeheartedly recommend diving in and not coming up for air for a long, long, time.
