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.