Following in the wake of Larian’s sequel to their Divinity: Original Sin and knocking it out of the park, Obsidian hopes to do the same with their own sequel, Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. Motivated by a strong desire to build upon what was established in the first entry, Obsidian had a lot to show off at their booth during PAX East 2018. The competition was kept alive on the show floor too, as the Pillars of Eternity II booth was right next to Divinity: Original Sin II. So how does Pillars of Eternity II build upon the first? My hands-on experience will hopefully give fans a small look into everything the new game will offer, plus some extra insight from the game’s director, Josh Sawyer.
It is important to note that players will not need to play the first game to enjoy the second. My experience started with character creation, but wanting to experience as much as possible in my short time with the game, I reverted to my default in these types of games: a dual-wielding dwarf ranger. For the ranger class I was able to select a companion animal, of which there is a nice variety to choose from. Then I was thrust into the game, starting a little ways into the story on an island investigating a mysterious storm, with a few different options. Traveling around the map between locations has a major change to it in that its actually travel. Before you could select one of various points and the travel would be done automatically. This update is a bit of a toned-down exploration of how the game works while in a location. The character portrait moves across a map, revealing locations as they are discovered. Items can be found and picked up, encounters, etc.
Not too long after starting Pillars of Eternity II was my first combat encounter. During the encounter, Josh Sawyer mentioned that the speed of the encounter can be adjusted. You can slow things down to have more time to make crucial decisions combined with pausing combat, strategies can be perfected. Yet for easier encounters you can speed things up and let the AI do its job. Once the it as all was over, Josh directed me to open up a menu where AI behaviors can be defined to an insane degree. He went on to explain, “Players can program their companions to whatever level they’d like. If they like to micro-manage behavior they can turn all of it off to control every single action a character takes, or if they’d prefer to focus on just their character and have a more hands-off approach they can set up each companion to behave in any number of ways in response to all sorts of situations.”
Following the combat encounter came a bit of a surprise: a story encounter. Coming across a wild boar and some babies, some choices are presented in how to handle the situation. I am excited to say that I walked away from this moment with a pet baby boar. There are pets in this game, and they actually have impact. Various effects are applied depending on the pet equipped. For example, my new baby boar gave my attacks a chance to stun. My journey ended as I headed back to the docks and boarded my ship, which is fully explorable and managed by the player. As players make their way through the game they will have opportunities to hire their crew, upgrade its capabilities, and participate in ship combat.
A few final notes of my time with Pillars of Eternity II at PAX East 2018: I feel like I barely scratched the surface of what this game will offer. There were so many things I could have done and much more I couldn’t for obvious reasons. Pillars is gorgeous. The use of color really helps draw out the atmosphere of each location. Textures looks great zoomed in, not just from a distance. Lighting effects, particularly those used in spell-casting, are put to great use. And, most notably, the animation is incredible. I noticed it most in the movement of my character animal companion. The movement of the boar was so well-done, and I found myself caring even more for my furry pal because of it.
I love this current age of gaming, where these RPGs are coming not only more frequently, but also getting better. The fact that this era exists because of fans supporting Kickstarter projects makes it even better; Pillars of Eternity II might not be here otherwise; 33,000 people supported the Kickstarter for Pillars of Eternity II to raise a total of $4.4 million, which was 400% of its initial goal. The developers are listening to their backers and implementing the feedback to build these games bigger and better than ever. Thanks, Obsidian, for showing me the game and to Josh Sawyer for walking me through it.
Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire is set to launch on May 8th, 2018 on Steam and Gog.com.
