I'm about 21 hours into Pillars of Eternity, a game I was incredibly excited for when it was in development, followed since its announcement, read developer blogs, bought at launch, the works. Sadly, I was really disappointed by it just a few hours in, as it did not live up to the expectations the many months of anticipation had created by a long shot, so I solemnly put it down and didn't touch again until now. I dug it back up because my internet had gone off for a few days and I figured I might was well finish it since I bought it, then I decided I might as well also write a blog so that my "latest blog" won't be a dating advice thread from 2012. Here are my thoughts after almost 2 dozen hours.

Mechanics

Mechanically it works fine, the combat balance and inability to buff pre-battle is iffy and slightly annoying, and the characters' pathfinding skills are lackluster, but it works fine, hasn't crashed, feels stable, and tabbing out doesn't mess with it. So on a purely mechanical outlook, its okay and playable, I'm no coder or "hardcore" CRPG combat analyst so I can't really comment on it more than that. The art is rather nice and some of the sections are rather well done. The real problem comes from the writing, the setting, and even the color palette.

Story

So straight up, the game is really, really bland. Incredibly bland. The first town you get to is grey and lifeless, and the ruins, forests, even the sections with more color, continue to feel very grey and lifeless; very generic. The one exception so far is the main big town of Defiance Bay, which is so different it actually stands out too much and doesn't seem to actually fit. I'm sad to say nothing about the setting or story has caught my attention in a positive way, and the companions don't really stand out either. Durance, the priest, is entertaining to read for his vulgarity, but even he doesn't talk much, at least not in the time I've played. Without getting into too many spoilers, the main story is about you having "awakened" to your previous lives or some such thing, and so you can talk to ghosts and see visions of your past, but nothing about your past has really been shown to me, it gets mentioned that you have visions, but doesn't actually do anything beyond show some small purple instances of people in torture devices for a few seconds while you run around on the map. You're hunting down some guy who was operating a machine that made you "awaken" and looks evil, but he didn't know you were there and has nothing to actually do with you, you were just unfortunately there. It just seems like a big "eh" with no real motivating factor, similar to the beginning of Fallout New Vegas, where I also felt no motivation to chase down the bad guy beyond the game demanding I do.

Setting

Setting wise you're in the Dyrwood, a place that's supposed to be like colonial america. Thing is, its nothing like colonial america, which was home to many large cities, vast farms, and vibrant colors. Its just rather somber forests and ruins, with one big city in the middle. The people are said to be some freedom loving sorts but they're really just savages that are mostly dressed in rags or furs, with little actual good qualities to them. They keep mentioning a war that happened 15 years ago, and it actually sounds interesting, so every time its brought up my mind goes "wow, I sure wish I could have played that instead".

It has your fantasy staples, like dragons, dwarves, elves, ect, as well as some not-orcs and not-halflings they made up for the new world, but they're not very will integrated. Dwarves in particular are just there, serving no purpose, doing nothing, their sole reason for being in the game seems to be because players know what they are. Even their lore page is just "they're very well traveled and colonized a lot of places so they're around". The elves at least semi-fit in since there's some natives from the woods that are usually elves, but you could have made them into humans, or even the little not-halflings, and rip elves out of the game with no major problem. They're only really there to remind you its a fantasy game.

Now, the thing that was supposed to make the setting unique was this "soul manipulation" concept. The people of the Dyrwood have "animancers" that study souls, they can manipulate souls, you can stick your soul into an amulet made out of some rock that grows and supposedly contains soul-energy. There's a class called the "cipher" who's moves are all about "hardening the outer shell of the soul" or "sending a shock that disrupts the soul". This all sounds nice and all, but it falls flat on its face, honestly. The majority of the time its used so generically that its just an adlib that replaces "magic" or "mana" with "soul". "This item is infused with magic souls", "he was born without mana a soul so he's feral". It comes off as rather lazy writing, adding nothing new to the same fantastical concepts we've had in games for decades, instead it simply replaces old lingo with new lingo and hopes you'll accept that as innovation. The only time it seems to work is when your character talks to the dead, but even then, talking to spirits is a rather common thing in RPGs, where you can usually do it without any sort of explanation, and your party will encounter spirits in combat multiple times, so the idea that you're special for seeing spirits kinda falters when the dude next to you is sword-chopping 50 ghosts.

Conclusion

As of now, I'd say the game is a solid 2 out of 5. The only way I can describe my thoughts of the game so far is as that feeling when you're having to read a book that you know is pretty decent but there's just one part that's really slow and boring so you have that thought of "hey maybe I should read more of that" and then get really reluctant when you remember that one part since you still have to trudge through it. This is the game equivalent of the Sansa and Caitlyn chapters in the ASoIaF books.

As a man who used to count Obsidian as one of the top positions in his personal "best developers ever" list, I can only hope that the other half of the game, and the expansions The White March 1&2, which I also plan on making a blog about and have heard solve a couple of the problems of the main game, do better and succeed in changing my opinion.

Yup, this is totally another girl advice thread, or at least related to it, but bear with me for a moment.

I've been attracted to this girl for a while and have yet to ask her out. I'm about 60lbs overweight, haven't been able to get a form of job outside of household chores yet, and while I'm old enough to get a license, I've never even touched a steering wheel.

I'm not naive enough to believe I'm in love with this girl, but I do believe she deserves better then what I'm able to currently offer, so I decided to try and get my act together before I go for it. What do you guys suggest would be the best course of action to start me on my road to bettering myself? Do you have any tips on weight loss, driving, or how to land a job? Are there any sites with information on working out or dieting that would help me?

The way I see it, if she doesn't say yes I'll still have gotten something out of it.

After a good 6 and a half hours with the Tera beta, I can safely say, its an MMO.

The combat is better then, say, World of Warcraft or SWTOR, where you only press buttons, introducing a more interactive experience by allowing the mapping of moves to the mouse buttons and having to aim your shots, but it has a very spammy feeling to it, where you find yourself hitting the left mouse button so many times you think you're going to get carpal tunnel. And from my time with the different classes, there wasn't that many different moves, maybe later on, but at low levels they all seemed to have the same kinds of moves, just they flashed different colors.

The quests are the usual "Go get me 18 bear arses" and you'll find yourself turning in a quest about killing ents, only to have a new one given to you where they want you to go get some ent claws, which of course means you have to kill more ents. The mobs are almost all the same throughout the area, just with a different tint and an adjective added to their names. This isn't new for MMOs, but seriously, you can't create more than 5 mobs for the starter area, the first thing everyone is going to see?

The graphics looked really nice and the character models looked really well done, though I'm not sure if it was a problem with my computer or the game, but there was some very clear texture pop-in on many occasions. The animations were strange sometimes, very fluid and solidly done, but the females ran with their arses in the air all the time and constantly moved their hips when in combat mode, I know this is intentional, but kind of off-putting.

And the clothes, oh the clothes, so very well crafted and put together, and so extremely revealing too. Have fun trying to find an outfit that didn't show off your female's underpants, and in the case of some of the more exotic species, had any sort of pants at all. I tried out most of the races, including the Baracka (big golem looking dudes) the Popori (fat little animal dudes) and the Aman ( reptile-dinosaur looking dudes) and many of their outfits had no pants at all, you could just see their crotch clear as day, sure there aren't any dangley bits, but once again, its very strange to look at.

All in all, it was a fairly average experiance for me, with some cool things, but many stale ones. The Beta isn't done until monday, so I'll keep playing a bit later, since I know that 6 hours isn't really a full MMO experiance, but for the most part, I think that Tera will get a farily big release audiance and then get forgotten by most, the way Rift and DCUO did, eventually going F2P in a year.

TL;DR: Spammy combat, generic quests, texture pop-in, hip swaying and pants-less outfits.

Dillard's

I finally did it, I reached 1000. I can't even remember what most of them were, but I did it. I'm special.