Pillars of Eternity - Spirit of the PC Award

Aubrielle

Aubrielle

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PC Gamer may not be a popular name around here, but they've given Kickstarter poster child Pillars of Eternity their "Spirit of the PC Award" for 2015.

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<em style="background-color: initial;">Pillars of Eternity wins our 2015 Spirit of the PC award, which celebrates games that capture something fantastic about the PC platform, whether historical or modern. We'll be posting the rest of our awards and personal picks daily as we approach the end of the year, which we're collecting [/i]on our main GOTY page.

Andy Kelly: Steeped in RPG history—from Baldur’s Gate to Planescape: Torment—Pillars of Eternity takes the best of those old Infinity Engine games and gives it a modern sheen. With beautifully descriptive writing and brilliantly fun, tactical combat, this is one of the best PC role-players in years. The way your party’s skills complement each other makes battles a genuine thrill as yous stack and combine their abilities to cleverly outsmart the challenging enemies. And the world Obsidian have created gives the usual high fantasy tropes a dark edge, and it feels like it could have been based on some forgotten D&D campaign.

Tom Senior: Pillars could so easily have been a nostalgia trip that simply copied the Infinity Engine games of old. Instead, it improves them. Combat breaks away from the conventions of Dungeons & Dragons, allowing for clever new class concepts like the Cipher, who can manipulate the souls of enemies. It’s smartly written, too, using little text adventure skits to add flavour and detail that the elevated camera would otherwise be unable to show. Kickstarter backers are immortalised as NPCs, and each has a short story that you can read using your character’s rare psychic powers. It’s a fun reward for those loyal enough to fund the project, but it also makes the world feel rich and full of character.

It only works on PC, where players are able to read a lot of text up-close on a high-resolution screen. Pillars is part RPG, part fantasy novel. The choice to have characters voice only a line or two from each speech allows for more detailed exchanges, bolstered by descriptive interludes that pluck at the imagination. The result is a long, absorbing RPG that recognises the heritage of the great Infinity Engine RPGs without being subsumed by them.

Chris Thursten: Like going home at Christmas to discover that somebody has prepared all of your favourite food for days, the movies you watched as a kid are on and somebody’s unearthed a bunch of dog-eared fantasy paperbacks from your past. And a bottle of whisky. I want to curl up inside Pillars of Eternity and live there.
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More information.
 
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Drithius said:
Speaking of which, did they ever improve the pathfinding?
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It seems like I remember someone saying they did, and I think it might have been in one of the more recent updates. Though please forgive me, since I can't seem to find details about it anywhere.

I could be totally lying to you. But I really feel like I saw that recently.
 
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I think it was mentioned as part of the patch 2.0/The White March I release
 
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I have been in the mood to start my PoE playthrough lately. Just waiting for a sale on the steam controller :) Anyone has experience with the steam controller and PoE ? Or other point-and-click RPGs ?
 
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Aubrielle said:
PC Gamer may not be a popular name around here
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It's actually a good site but the taste of it's staff is... Kinda would work better if it was named Phone Gamer.
 
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joxer said:
It's actually a good site but the taste of it's staff is… Kinda would work better if it was named Phone Gamer.
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IMHO I think they simply kinda feared (I'm lacking a better word here) giving to the The Witcher 3 the major awards (Game of the Year, Best Singleplayer and Best Setting). Excuse me if I sound like a fanboy, which I am not, but TW3 is still ahead of MGS V. OK, MGS V is a good game, but to give it "Game of The Year 2015" is a bit too much to me.

Like some user noticed in one of the GOTY page's Comments section, PC Gamer's real worry is giving an award, at least one, to the major 2015 releases (MGS V, TW3, FO4, PoE). I don't know how an award is given, but I know it's not that way !
 
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W3 is a great game but its hardly the messiah of all games :p
 
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Gamespot gave Witcher 3 the GotY. There were quite a few comments saying that MGS5 should have gotten it.
joxer said:
It's actually a good site but the taste of it's staff is… Kinda would work better if it was named Phone Gamer.
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Oh please.

Honestly though, given how opinionated we are around here, can you actually imagine us giving a lot of credence to ANYONE else?? ;)
 
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joxer said:
It's actually a good site but the taste of it's staff is… Kinda would work better if it was named Phone Gamer.
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Yeah….. it's a good site from a web design perspective…. they are sellouts, they're just trying to appear less of a sellout than IGN and Gamespot…. That's why they are pumping new awards like crazy, because they want to please everybody (whether deserving or not), just like a real bitch. It's just a way of honoring industry veterans, even if they suck
 
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Dog-eared fantasy paperbacks and whiskey don't go well together.
Arkham Knight should be the winner here, though. :p
 
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And now PC Gamer came up with this award: "The 2015 Game of 2013 Award - GTA 5" (http://www.pcgamer.com/the-2015-game-of-2013-award-grand-theft-auto-5/)

As I said before, they're giving one award for each major 2015 release, leaving none out. They even created this silly category just to accomodate another major one. What about your reputation, PC Gamer ?

As an user in Disqus section commented: "The 2015 game of 2004 award is going to go to half life 2. Everybody is a winner at PCG"
 
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Said already IMO GTA5 is overrated NeedForSpeed with a (not bad) story and horrible helicopter controls. I woudn't put it even among top three games on my personal list.
But okay if PCGamer believes it deserves recognition, it's their (shit)taste. The only thing is... When did we start looking into 2 or more years old games? I mean, where was Valkyria Chronicles last year then?

Since Original Sin hit consoles in this year, will "ConsoleGamer" sites put some best 2014. RPG in 2015. award to it?
Riiiiiiiiiiight, they are all fighting over who'll do it first.

Instead of inventing awards, one by one, PCGamer could have put a list of, dunno, 10 best games on PC in 2015. without a particular order. It would have more merit than this idiocy they're making.
 
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Come on joxer, PC Gamer is simply trying to be imaginative but aren't trying hard enough! How about "Best Dressed Game of 2015"? Or "If This Game Was a Vegetable it Would Have Been The Best Carrot of 2015" Award?
 
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