Thoughts/discussion/first impressions of Pillars of Eternity!
 

Hello all! :)

With the embargo FINALLY being over, I'm very excited to start this thread and share my thoughts and opinions on this game with you all! Hopefully this helps some of you who were wondering about the game. I apologize in advance that this is not better written by me, but I just wrote off the top of my head and didn't really edit or make this an article (it's more of a 'first impressions' sort of thing).

Feel free to post first impressions, thoughts and comments about Pillars of Eternity in this thread!

According to Steam I've played 50 hours, but a lot of that time has been idle time because I basically left the game running while I'd go and eat and have bathroom breaks and all that. Let's just say, the game ran ALL DAY for several days, because I have no life (ha!) but also because the game captivated me that much!

So, the question I'm sure you all have is "Is the game good?". Oh my god man. Yes, yes it is! It's not only good, it's legendary! Yes, I think it's that good.

Now, it's not a perfect game. No game is. But I will focus on what the vast majority of the game has to offer, and that far outweighed the small negatives for me.

Now, I'm sure you're all saying that this is just Fluent being Fluent and everything is awesome to him. You may be right, but this game is really awesome! :lol:

The game is basically Baldur's Gate 2015. That's the biggest compliment and most simple thing I can say about the game. This easily could have been Baldur's Gate 3 or a Baldur's Gate total overhaul mod (made by incredibly professional and thorough modders, mind you!). If you play it in long enough stretches, there are chances that you will actually think you are playing a Baldur's Gate game or an overhaul mod! It's that convincing.

That doesn't mean it's an exact clone, though. It has many nice ideas and quirks that make it fresh and brand new, yet still familiar to Infinity Engine and Baldur's Gate fans.

So, are you excited yet? :) Here are some more specific thoughts I had about the game, after playing a few dozen hours.

First of all, it looks beautiful. Sure, it becomes a bit muddled at nighttime, especially if you play on a screen that has a cool color temp (my suggestion is changing the temp to a warmer preset, or approximately 4000k if you have the option to manually set your color temperature.). I'm not a big graphics person so this is all I have to say about this aspect, really. It all looks beautiful and the art team did a nice job.

The writing is excellent. There is a ton of text dialogue to play with, many choices and consequences, skill checks and that sort of thing. One of the best parts of the game is how well-written the dialogue is. It really gives the game a fantastic atmosphere (along with the excellent music!). One really cool thing is that there are many, MANY optional encounters with special NPCs that will give you a few paragraphs of backstory about that character, or something that they have experienced in their lives. You'll see what I mean when you play. Most of these scenes are utterly brilliant writing at work. All of the dialogue in the game is great!

Next, there is so much content here, it's crazy. I've spent 50 hours so far and I haven't even explored the first major city fully yet! There are tons of quests and tasks to keep busy with, and all of them are inventive and creative. Much like Baldur's Gate, there will always be something to keep you questing. The quests are very well developed and interesting to play through, with good to great rewards at times. There are plenty of those "Wow! I didn't see that coming.." moments, and in general you can expect much of the same that you'd find in Baldur's Gate (did I mention the games are extremely similar?).

The games are similar, but Eternity adds some great features as well. There are stats and attributes out the wazoo here, with plenty of stuff to ponder and build on. Wait until you guys see and experience the character development and stat-looking-at in this game! (Hehe :D) The game keeps track of many things and lets you see and experiment with stats that help define your character builds. Excellent stuff here all around for us D&D-style RPG nerds! :) I'm starting to really love the system they have created here. There are many different damage types, 4 different and defined defense types, a bunch of other sub-stats to consider, afflictions, traits, skills, spells, etc. Everything you would expect from a massive game like Baldur's Gate is here!

Oh, and one of the greatest additions is the Bestiary! Pictures + stats + a paragraph or 2 of lore about every monster type you've encountered in the game! This blew my mind when I first discovered it. You can simply lose some time just reading the various descriptions of Forest Lurkers or Sporelings and looking at the pretty drawings! The art team did an excellent job overall in this game.

Simply put, the attention to detail is extremely high in pretty much every aspect of the game. I am incredibly impressed with Josh Sawyer's design ideas as well as Obsidian's raw execution in crafting this game. I was at my stronghold and saw the torches flickering in the moonlight, and even the various torch fires had a unique look and wasn't simply copy and pasted like you would expect. You can expect that level of attention to detail in pretty much every. Single. Thing. In the game. :) I can't believe the game only had a $4 million Kickstarter budget to work with. They crammed so much good stuff into this game, it's really mindblowing.

What else? Combat. It's fun, and challenging on Normal + Expert mode. I've had my entire party wiped out more times than I can count thus far, and just like the Infinity Engine games, a re-load with new tactics and strategies will pay off BIG TIME. You will get through tough encounters by the skin of your teeth, and when you see that last enemy drop you will be breathing huge sighs of relief that you managed to beat that challenge! It's very rewarding and fun.

The weapon types and various unique weapon attributes are stellar as well. The game has several types of guns, bows, crossbows, axes, maces; everything. They all have a reason for using them and a various strategy you can employ with your character build. Have your Fighter specialize in fighting with a Stiletto, give him a huge, enchanted shield and let him go to work with a fast weapon yet still have some defense with the shield. There are so many possibilities that your imagination is the only thing limiting how you put together your party of adventurers.

Simply put, I could go on and on, but you all just need to play this game right now. This game is a 10/10 for me. If you love Baldur's Gate, you will adore this game. There is so much love and attention to detail in this game that it absolutely boggles my mind that they managed to cram this much detail into this game. I was not expecting this at all.

If you have any questions feel free to post them! If not, go get the game and start playing! :party: :celebrate:

Could you post the Cultures and Backgrounds of all companions?

Are there any games that you dislike? :devilish:

I've only met 6 so far, and one of them is at my stronghold and I won't be able to check his race or background until later (I'm going to be busy today until 3 PM Eastern time).

The other 5 I have in my party currently are:

A Meadow Folk Priest of Magran from the Dyrwood
A Boreal Dwarf Ranger from Naasitaq
An Island Aumaua Chanter from Rauatai
A Wood Elf Wizard from Aedyr
An Avian Godlike Paladin from The Vailian Republics

Edit - i think the other is a Meadow Folk Fighter from Dyrwood. :)

Every time I read a Fluent's post I get this into my head. It's not a bad thing, because it cheer me up.

They technically didn't have that much after KS/Amazon's cut and backer's rewards and they spent more than they had left because of the delay. Still, this is a game made by like 20 people in 2 years with 4 environmental artists and a single one that was permanent.

PoE2 will have more artists.

It's fine to have overly positive people - as we have a lot of overly negative people too :)

I do notice, though, that the overly-positive people get more crap than the overly negative ones. Being overly negative seems to be taken as just the way it goes, and when someone's ("overly") positive, their opinion doesn't seem to be as valid somehow. ;)

In all seriousness, if the game has deep RPG elements that I can sink my teeth into, most likely I will love it. I love RPGs, what can I say? They are a big part of my life and have been for over 20 years. It's a serious passion of mine, and thus I'm quite passionate about them. :)

Still, I don't absolutely love every RPG I play, but more times than not I do love them. As long as they have their core attributes fully in-tact, I'm a happy man. :)

PoE is amazing, though, no matter how you slice it. Of course, it's all subjective, but if you adore Baldur's Gate and that style of isometric RPG, I really can't see any way you could dislike PoE…

Sounds like your imagination running wild again :)

Not everyone is against you or "positive people".

In fact, I think Fluent is getting a lot of positive feedback for his otherworldly attitude towards games in general.

I get a ton of crap, but I don't mind - and I don't see a conspiracy. Joxer gets a ton of crap - as do others that are largely considered overly critical.

Probably more balanced than you claim.

In this case, though, I just hope Fluent and the reviews are right. I do smell a lot of nostalgia-power, but since I already like PoE - it seems likely that it's very good indeed overall.

I keep seeing reviewer's comments which suggest that something have been missing for 10+ years. So I don't think it's just nostalgia, people were starving for something and PoE is delivering the required meal.

It will be very interesting to see what people who haven't played BG/BG2/etc think of the game though.

Funny, that's almost the exact same thing I came close to writing in another thread a moment ago.

I didn't want to stir the pot though. ;)

Ohhh, I'm just teasing him a bit for being super positive for most games. I certainly do not mean any harm at all. Now the overly negative people I have on ignore (but they mostly post political stuff just to get a rise out of people and I'm here for gaming thoughts not political thoughts) so I never see them anymore.

As long as this doesn't end up being another Kingdoms of Amalur ;). (I'm quite confident it's not)

Since you obviously didn't finish the game, would a ME3 type ending ruin your day?

Hmm, so could it be that someone who didn't like BG 1 and BG 2 could like this? I sure hope so, because theoretically I should like that kind of games!

It probably depends on for what reasons you didn't like BG1 and BG2

No Combat-XP and "gamey" Stats are big downsides for me; I wait and see - and wait for a review from the codex to get an opinion closer to my own preferences :)

Hey, Kingdoms of Amalur has an 81 on Metacritic, including a perfect '100' score from Guardian and a 90 from IGN. So, others think that was an excellent game as well. :)

As for the idea that nostalgia is influencing this, I played Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 less than a year ago for the first time ever, and I don't feel any sort of nostalgia over this game. I simply think the game is a breath of fresh air. Incredibly deep, beautifully presented, otherworldly attention to detail. It's just a beautiful experience. :)

No Combat XP is actually a great thing as well. I was skeptical at this as well, but it turns out to work very, very well.

Which is precisely why I'd advise caution and scepticism in this case :)

Ok, sounds great! :)

Come on now - let's not turn a friendly joke into a bashing.

Read: "There's a lot of nostalgia power, but since I like it, then it's alright."

Right? ;)

6 hours till I can play….this is gonna be a long ass day…but then I have four straight days…to sink into a gaming haze.

Nostalgia is completely natural, so that wouldn't be "not alright" in any case. Emotions always dominate upon release of a game - and with hyped or long-awaited titles, you usually have to wait weeks or even months to get rid of all the things people want the game to be - or thought they wanted it to be - and then you finally arrive at what it's really like.

But, true, since I like the game myself - I find it easier to believe it's a 9/10 or 10/10 for real - though I remain sceptical.

Are you going to claim you're not guided by your emotions now? Because you and I both know that would be an utter lie :)

As for Fluent, he's clearly a person who gets high on his extra energy - and as refreshing as that is, I can't say I find a high amount of energy a reliable source of criticism. Sorry :)

KoA has a critic score of 81 but a user score of 6.5

Fwiw, I don't think it's a "bad" game. It's just extremely average, and it's the epitome of mainstream.

I find any game that offers 300+ hours of high quality content much more than "extremely average". The lore, story, exploration, quests, atmosphere, combat, loot and crafting were all done in a way that offered playability long after other games would have become stale. It's rare that I spend 200 hours with a game and not even see all the areas it has to offer. Not only that, but some of the questlines in the game were simply the best I've experienced in a game, such as the House of Ballads and the Dead Kel DLC. Not only just good content, but some of the best-ever (for me) content in those 2 questlines. :)

Anyway, this thread is not about KoA, so let's get back on topic. ;)

Why did I click that link?!?!?!? That song is now replaying over and over in my head and will be for the foreseeable future. My kids have watched that movie about a 100 times in the past few months. It has been seared into my brain.

Great write up fluent. Just guessing, but my opinion of the game will probably be pretty close to yours. Unlike you, though a lot of that WILL be due to nostalgia. The IE games were a huge part of my formative CRPG gaming years.

One question: Have you encountered any major bugs? Obsidian has their reputation for buggy releases and that's one of the reasons I was initially hesitant to play it at release.

A few bugs, but mostly minor things. A few queued actions didn't activate. Sometimes an enemy would be killed and my party would just stand there instead of attacking the next enemy. Casting a Priest spell on a companion by clicking their portrait rather than their character caused my Priest to bug out and act weird without ever casting the spell. Viewing the details about a chant of my Chanter caused text boxes to appear on my screen that couldn't be closed until I restarted the game. Some pathfinding issues as well. A few times my party members couldn't figure out how to get around a small obstacle to surround an enemy.

Nothing major, and there were workarounds for pretty much everything. For example, casting the Priest spell by clicking the character in the battle rather than their portrait fixed that bug, and so on.

It's entirely playable right now and I can say that in 50 hours I have no witnessed any major bugs that I couldn't handle, so I'm happy about that. I usually haven't had problems with bugs on this Alienware laptop for whatever reason. Even Skyrim had limited bugs on this computer. :)

I'm just teasing you, Dart, poking fun at that casual, easygoing arrogance so many of us have grown to love. The Watch would be empty without it. XD

Now now, using charm on me is unfair ;)

Fluent what are your system specs and how is the game performing?

System specs are:

i7 3630qm processor
8 gb ram
amd radeon 7970m 2gb gpu
256gb ssd

It runs well, but when I zoom out in large city areas, the camera is not as smooth when I scroll the screen. I haven't used FRAPS yet to see my framerate, but I imagine it dips during those times. It's not terrible, but it's noticeable, because the game is usually 60 FPS most everywhere else.

When zoomed in more it's buttery smooth in most areas, very smooth and fluid. Hopefully my new computer, whenever it gets built, will be able to keep the game super smooth even when zoomed out in city areas! :)

Hey Fluent…

How long did this take you to install? I'm kind of wondering if my installation is stalled. It's kinda stuck at the 10%-ish mark and my computer's orange light is staying on…^.^;;

I've been reading on the Steam forums this has been taking a very long time so you may be OK.

Ah, whew…thank you. :) I'm so glad it wasn't just me.

The game is super compressed. It's a ~7gb download that convert into basically 18gb.

waiting for eternity…
 

Tried to log on to eternity web site and got:

"waiting for eternity.obsidian.net…" :biggrin:
And I'm still waiting…grr..to log on!.

On Steam:

I thought had "preloaded" now its sucking down another 1.6 GB and taking a very long time for some reason. Most annoying. Is this the extra stuff (DLC) I got as a backer? I see a list of DLC on steam, it says "acquired" but not installed…
but when I peaked in the download folder steam is using I can see some of the PDFs there…

Can already see some people ranting on Steam forum about how terrible the game is … not a brilliant game like DA:I etc etc…

The DLC and other items took some time to install on Steam for me also. As for the comments on the Steam forum I'm not surprised as people love to troll on them.

It's the main reason why I take nothing written on Steam as serious anymore.
Wasteland2 was compressed the same way If I remember correctly. A few developers can learn from InXile, and Obsidian on how not to release 30 GB uncompressed games.

IMO Steam comments have equaled Youtube comments in maturity and relevance.

I don't disagree, but for this game even Steam is overwhelmingly positive - reviews and forum. The one long rant about not being like DA:I is joking.

Played for an hour or so - excellent so far. Having 1-2 characters makes combat much easier than a full party :)

Maybe the solution to no AI is to have a small party…. Hmmm…

Playing on Hard/Expert and the game isn't too hard so far.