Pilllars of Eternity

The Eastern Reach is beset by a terrible curse: children are being born without souls, becoming known as the Hollowborn. The arrival of a Watcher, an individual able to reach out and touch souls and discover their former lives, may hold the key to resolving the crisis. The Watcher must travel the length and breadth of the Eastern Reach, from the great city of Defiance Bay to the mountains of the White March, to discover why this is happening, and if it is possible to stop it.

Pillars of Eternity is a CRPG created by Obsidian Entertainment after a successful Kickstarter campaign and released in 2015. The game was a bit of a Hail Mary for the company which faced financial difficulties after games they were developing for Microsoft and Sega fell through, but critical acclaim saw the game sell well, allowing the company to recover and eventually be bought out and prosper (by the same Microsoft that got them into trouble in the first place, but that's a whole other discussion). Pillars of Eternity also became the first game in a franchise, with direct sequel Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire following in 2018 and then a first-person spin-off, Avowed, in 2025.

Mildly embarrassingly, I started playing Pillars of Eternity in the week it came out and got about 15 hours into the game before I was distracted by something else, and additional sidetracking took place for, er, eleven years. But in the last few weeks I managed to circle back and finally complete the game and its expansion, The White March, with all the benefits of eleven years of patching and extra additions to the game (including a much-requested turn-based combat mode).

Pillars of Eternity is a spiritual successor to the old Infinity Engine games, and Obsidian are well-placed to handle that. Before they were Obsidian, some of the same team were at Black Isle Studios (the internal development studio at Interplay before Interplay went bust in 2003) where they created Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale and Icewind Dale II, as well as providing additional dev support on Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II. This team is well-versed in the structure of these kind of games and what made them tick and so successful.

As with the Infinity Engine games, you view the game from a top-down perspective, controlling a team of six (from an eventual pool of eleven). You create your main character, the Watcher, and can then recuit additional named NPCs as the game continues. Intriguingly, if you find none of the NPCs are what you're looking for, you can also recruit random hirelings at inns, or create a whole party from scratch yourself. The named companion NPCs do have a lot of unique dialogue and banter, and each one has their own chain of side-quests, so there is value in bringing those characters along and interacting with them. There are numerous classes available, including the bog-standard fighters, mages and paladins, but there are some interesting classes like the chanter, a spin on the traditional bard. Being able to replay the game with a different class adds a lot of replayability. Not being based on a tabletop rule set, the game does have the advantage of not having to shoehorn awkward or barely-applicable tabletop rules into a video game, which can give a more focused experience.

The game has two modes, realtime-with-pause to replicate the classic Infinity Engine experience or turn-based, which was added to the game only this year, presumably to cash in on the success of the turn-based experience in Baldur's Gate III. Realtime with pause (RTWP) allows you to hit spacebar at any moment to pause the game and given fresh orders, very useful when you want your cleric to start healing frontline fighters or mages to use specific spells. I think the turn-based implementation in Pillars of Eternity is awkward at best, and doesn't mesh well with the absolute masses of combat encounters in the game. In BG3 it worked because each combat experience was tailor-designed to be interesting, with environmental factors and special skills to make each battle memorable. Pillars of Eternity has far too many random fights with easily-defeatable mooks and making each fight ten times longer does nothing other than make combat more tedious. RTWP makes fights more dynamic and fun, and much faster. RTWP can be horrible when badly-implemented, with Pillars of Eternity is one of the best implementations of the concept, so it works quite well. There's a solid variety of enemy types to fight, and some of the bigger creatures are genuinely imposing to face down.

Pacing-wise, the game starts with you investigating the Hollowborn crisis and discovering your Watcher powers through a linear, quasi-tutorial section before the game opens up into a wilderness area where you can travel to various small towns, caves and ruins. You acquire your first companions (I recommend getting six ASAP as the game's early difficulty spikes can be brutal) and pick up initial quests. These will eventually take you to the abandoned fortress of Caed Nua, which you inevitably end up taking ownership of. Repairing Caed Nua becomes the major subplot of the game, as you have to rebuild the crumbling defences, hire staff and manage the surrounding area, as well as clearing out the massive, 15-level dungeon below it, the Endless Paths, with huge rewards if you succeed. The Endless Paths are a significant challenge and are best tackled intermittently, with you periodically returning to them after levelling up a few times through quests elsewhere.

After pacifying Caed Nua, at least a bit, the game takes you to the great city of Defiance Bay, where there are an absolute ton of side-quests, factions to align with and enemies to find and defeat, as well as a legal challenge to your ownership of the castle (which can lead to a massive field battle). As with most RPGs, the big challenge is mixing this side material with following the main questline. Once you're ready to move on, the game takes you into additional wilderness areas to the east and eventually an elven city where you pick up the trail of those responsible for the Hollowborn. However, you can be sidetracked by visions of an encroaching threat, which takes you to the northern area of the White March and a series of lengthy quests involving the rediscovery of a magical forge. This is the game's main expansion which is now integrated into the base game, and both provides a lot of extra content and also adds additional weapons, gear and plot revelations relevant to the main quest. All-told, you can finish the game in around 50 hours, but completionists can probably push that past 65 hours by doing unnecessary-but-fun side-quests and exploring different endings and builds. This makes for a game longer than Baldur's Gate but still nowhere near the length of Baldur's Gate II or III.

Pillars of Eternity is a very solid and sometimes exceptional game. The writing is strong, and the game is dealing with philosophical concepts around life, death, souls and faith that is more interesting than many video game plots. The game tries to give you lots of ways to solve quests other than just through violence, and some of your companion characters are fascinating in their worldviews (whilst others are...there). As it's an Obsidian game, there is not a lot of outright goods vs evil choices, with you having to consider arguments where both sides have merits before coming down on one side or the other. Even by Obsidian's standards this can get a little out of control with moral murkiness absolutely everywhere, and sometimes you do wish for a few more quests where one side is obviously in the wrong. Even their New Vegas wasn't afraid to say that no, one side is a bunch of fascist slave-owning rapists, and it's fine to shoot up those guys, even if their opponents are stuck-in-the-past has-beens with questionable expansionist motives. Still, some of these morally grey areas are well-constructed and well-written.

The game's biggest problem is the tonal dissonance from these morality labyrinths where dialogue and diplomacy is key to the absolute shedloads of combat the game throws at you every five seconds. Every bit of wildlife in the game has a psychopathic need to kill you, spectres attack without warning, and the hostile native tribes of xaurips kill-on-sight (apart from one quest that hints that you can mollify them peacefully, and then immediately forgets about it). For a developer who has sometimes made it possible to do total pacification runs through games and who has included so many quests with a non-violent outcome, the focus on mass slaughter as you just walk around can be jarring, not to mention making turn-based mode almost non-viable unless you want to triple or more the length of the game.

There are also some UI weaknesses such as the lack of a customisable hotbar, which was pretty standard at the time, and some questionable gameplay decisions. Rationing the number of camping slots, forcing you to periodically abandon your adventuring to find somewhere to buy rations, is deeply stupid. Since overcoming this issue is fairly straightforward, since you can leave any dungeon or quest mid-flow and come back to resume it immediately even if three weeks pass, there was nothing gained by forcing this limitation on you.

Pillars of Eternity (****) is a fine-but-not-flawless roleplaying game with weaknesses that are not negligible, but they do not detract overall from the beautiful, hand-painted environments, great music, very strong writing, thought-provoking storyline and well-characterised companions. Managing your home base is fun, the Endless Paths is an enjoyable challenge, and the White March expansion is excellent, working as a good story in its own right as well as a homage to Icewind Dale (and arguably White March has a better story than Pillars itself). The worldbuilding for Eora is excellent, taking what appears initially to be a standard sub-Tolkien setup of elves, dwarves and trolls and quickly complicating it through the stuff about souls and faith. Combat can be superb, though there is too much of it, and the game may be a little bit overstuffed. But it's better to have too much to do than too little. The game is a fine spiritual success to the Baldur's Gate series even if it can't quite match that trilogy's overall very high standards.

Pillars of Eternity is available now on PC, Linux, PlayStation, Xbox and Switch.

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VERY STRONG RUMOUR: Obsidian Entertainment to develop a new FALLOUT game

As has been widely reported elsewhere, Microsoft have embarked on a massive restructuring of their video game business. Thousands of staff are to be laid off and around five studios are to be sold or spun off into independent businesses. Even the company's more successful studios are being reconfigured, with Obsidian Entertainment re-tasked to help Microsoft focus on its most successful IP. To this end, according to highly reliable industry insider Jason Schreier, Microsoft have commissioned Obsidian to make a new game in the Fallout series.

Obsidian Entertainment were founded in 2003 but many of the key founders had previously worked for Black Isle Studios, formerly the internal development studio at Interplay. There, several staff had worked on Fallout (1997), Fallout 2 (1998) and the original Fallout 3: Van Buren, which was cancelled when Interplay collapsed around 2003. The IP was sold in full to Bethesda Game Studios, who proceeded to develop Fallout 3 (2008), Fallout 4 (2015) and the multiplayer-focused Fallout 76 (2018). However, Bethesda partnered with Obsidian to develop Fallout: New Vegas (2010), often (but not universally) cited as the best game in the series.

In the meantime, the Fallout franchise has acquired a substantially more massive fanbase, with the arrival of the Fallout TV series on Amazon Prime Video in 2024. The show has already produced two seasons and a third began shooting this week. There have also been new tabletop games. Aside from the ongoing development of Fallout 76 through expansions, Bethesda had admitted they were still years away from starting work on Fallout 5 due to their prior commitments to Starfield (2023) and its DLC, and the in-progress Elder Scrolls VI, which will be the sequel to the 60 million+ selling Skyrim (2011). Also according to Schreier, The Elder Scrolls VI is not expected to be released before 2028 at the earliest, likely punting off any Fallout 5 to the early-to-mid 2030s, by which time the TV show will almost certainly be over.

The only Fallout game on the horizon is Fallout 3 Remastered, which has not been formally confirmed but reliable leaks suggest it is in development as a co-production between Bethesda and Virtuos Studios, who previously handled The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered (2025).

Obsidian were acquired by Microsoft in 2018 and have since released The Outer Worlds (2019), Grounded (2022), Pentiment (2022), Avowed (2025) and The Outer Worlds 2 (2025). Grounded 2 is currently in Early Access.

Obsidian's regular release cadence has been extremely impressive by modern standards, especially compared to other Microsoft studios (in the same timeframe, Bethesda have only released Starfield). However, these games' critical and commercial success has been mixed; Pentiment was a critical darling but a low-key release that sold only moderately. Grounded is Obsidian's most successful game in its history, acquiring over 20 million players in a couple of years (shading even Fallout: New Vegas's success), but has largely gone unrecognised due to its perceived children's focus and not being in Obsidian's usual core RPG wheelhouse. Avowed did reasonably well (over 6 million players in its first month on sale) whilst Outer Worlds 2 was a major commercial disappointment, with both games reviewing only moderately. Grounded 2 has picked up some major plaudits in Early Access, but is largely being developed by an external partner studio.

As part of the strategic shift, work on Avowed 2 has been downgraded, with a small team to continue work whilst most shift to the Fallout game. An unannounced major new RPG project, claimed by ex-Obsidian founder Chris Avellone to be set in the Shadowrun universe, has been paused, again with the team expected to be redeployed to the Fallout game. Work on the DLC for The Outer Worlds 2 is expected to be completed shortly.

The new Fallout game will apparently be headed by Josh Sawyer, who was previously the director of Fallout: New Vegas. New Vegas writer John Gonzalez, as well as Fallout co-creators Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky, are all working at Obsidian and may work on this new project as well.

No information about the game's setting or title is known, and may still be in flux as apparently this strategic decision may have only been made this week. Microsoft are likely to want to call the game Fallout 5 to capitalise on interest in the series and the length of time since the last mainline release, but whether that's the case remains to be seen.

More on this when it appears.

Early thoughts on PILLARS OF ETERNITY

Obsidian Entertainment's latest computer roleplaying game, Pillars of Eternity, was released three days ago and has attracted blanket critical acclaim from the gaming press. Pillars hits the sweet spot of nailing the nostalgic feel for the RPGs of yesteryear whilst also bringing some modern sensibilities on board. It's not flawless - in fact I'm rather surprised that some of its more glaringly obvious interface and presentation flaws have been brushed over by reviewers - but it's a pretty excellent game so far.

Obsidian was formed out of the ruins of Black Isle, Interplay's in-house CRPG development studio which created the Fallout franchise and worked on the Icewind Dale series, as well as creating the single greatest CRPG of all time, Planescape: Torment. They also published the Baldur's Gate series (developed by a nascent BioWare before they were swallowed by the EA machine) and helped with the development of Baldur's Gate II. After the collapse of Black Isle, the reconstituted Obsidian developed games including Neverwinter Nights II, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, Dungeon Siege III, Fallout: New Vegas, Alpha Protocol and South Park: The Stick of Truth.

However, as an independent studios working on-hire for big publishers, Obsidian found themselves at the mercy of publishers changing contracts, altering terms and conditions and drastically cutting development time at limited notice. On no less than three occasions, Obsidian games were released buggy (Fallout: New Vegas), not-quite-complete (Knights of the Old Republic II) and apparently in a barely tested beta build (Alpha Protocol). On all three occasions the publishers were to blame: Bethesda did not run sufficient QA on New Vegas* (something they have a reputation for on their own titles, with Daggerfall and Oblivion in particular released in a buggy state, with even the mighty Skyrim suffering from problems); LucasArts reversed a deadline extension for KotOR II at the last moment*; and the people at Sega who had commissioned Alpha Protocol had left and their replacements just wanted to get rid of the game ASAP to save money*.

This left Obsidian with a reputation for, depending on your POV, either extreme misfortune or simply an inability to release a game that worked properly. On games where they had much greater development time and all of the agreed promises were kept, such as Dungeon Siege III and South Park, the games were delivered in a good state. However, what is remarkable is that Obsidian's laudable commitment to intelligent game systems, player choice and top-quality writing have shone through even on their most buggy games.

Pillars of Eternity was an attempt to both change that reputation, with Obsidian in total control over every aspect of development and QA, and also to bring back some of the classic feel of the old Black Isle days. The game is a homage to the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale series, but isn't quite as old-school fantasy as it appears. Whilst classic elves and humans and wizards are all present and correct, the game throws some curveballs into the mix, such as arctic tundra dwarves and the ability to assess non-player characters by gazing into their souls. It's a big game - at a reported 50-60 hours in length it's bigger than any Black Isle game bar the monstrously huge Baldur's Gate II, and bigger than any game Obsidian has developed before - but also one that focuses on the moments and the details.

I'm now seven hours into the game and am rocking a five-member team of adventuring nutters around the Dyrwood. So far we've fought a crazy giant bear, fought off a horde of mushroom men, laid to rest dozens of zombies and almost been slaughtered by, erm, a pack of boar. My team consists of stalwart dwarven fighter (my main character), a posh elven wizard named Aloth with a nice line in sarcastic invective, a religiously-minded warrior named Eder, an enigmatic priest named Durance who likes to think he is Kreia from Knights of the Old Republic II but is actually The Sphinx from Mystery Men, and Kana Rua, a 'chanter' who sings inspiring ballads whilst unloading shots from his mobile hand cannon (did I mention the game has occasional moments where it goes randomly steampunk on the rest of the setting's epic fantasy behind?). They're a memorable, crazy bunch of characters who it's fun to go delving into dungeons with.

The game mixes up tricky side-quests (complete with trademark Chris Avellone-penned morality labyrinths) with a series of interconnected main storylines revolving around your character's newfound ability to gaze into souls, resulting in him/her becoming known as "The Watcher". There's also the interesting ability to gain control of a ruined castle and rebuild it into your own personal stronghold. You can retire to the castle between quests to re-arm and resupply. Your unused-in-the-current party NPCs can chill out there or strike out on solo, off-screen missions and you can fortify the place so it looks more impressive. Oh, and there's also a (wholly optional) 15-level mega-dungeon directly underneath the castle if you feel like an extra challenge.

The game does the usual Obsidian thing of emphasising roleplaying alongside combat (although, unlike some of their other games, you can't avoid combat altogether) and you can use intelligence and wits to overcome problems as well as homicidal ultraviolence. There's also some nice ability-based effects: give your beserker barbarian some high intelligence and he or she will engage in combat more tactically and do extra area-of-effect damage to groups of enemies.

It's not perfect. Obsidian didn't quite catch all of the bugs and there's a few minor ones knocking around that are fairly irritating. There's also some very curious UI decisions. There's a "Stash" option which means you have no inventory limit and never have to worry about weight limits. This is good, because weight limits are extremely irritating and games enforcing them only serves as pedantic busywork. However, the game then doesn't allow you to rest at will to recover between fights. You have four campfires and can only rest four times before having to resupply. So you go into tough areas, make some progress, rest, make some more progress, rest, etc until you run out of campfires and have to run back to the nearest inn or store to buy some more. Which is pretty much just pedantic busywork. Obsidian giveth and Obsidian taketh away...

Far more annoying is that certain commands, including most buff spells and abilities, are not available until combat starts. So you can't cast a few bless/fortify spells upon spotting trolls in the distance before wading in. You have to trigger the fight and then cast the buffs (if you have time before the enemy close the distance) which is pretty ridiculous. For these reasons, whilst Pillars of Eternity approaches the quality of the old Infinity Engine games it doesn't quite match them in terms of user-friendliness and playability.

Still, it's the best of the recent retro-nostalgia-crowdfunded RPGs (certainly more engaging than Divinity: Original Sin and Wasteland 2, both fine games, at least so far), it's huge, it's fantastically well-written and it's easily the best traditional fantasy RPG to appear since at least Icewind Dale II in 2002 (it knocks the first two Dragon Age games into a cocked hat, that's for sure). It might all go pear-shaped in the next 43 hours, so my full final review will have until then, but for now I can firmly recommend the game.

* Allegedly.

Icewind Dale II

A band of adventurers are among the mercenaries called in to help defend the remote settlements of Icewind Dale after they come under attack by an army of monstrous creatures. Investigating the causes of the raids, the team embark on a lengthy trek into the hostile Spine of the World mountains.

Icewind Dale II was released in 2002 and was the fifth and last game to use the Infinity Engine. Originally used for Baldur's Gate in 1998, the Infinity Engine had powered a whole series of classic roleplaying games and was arguably the last great 2D engine before most games switched to 3D technology. At the time of its release, Icewind Dale II was heavily criticised for using old tech, made even more apparent by it coming out just a month or so after BioWare's Neverwinter Nights, with it's all-singing, all-dancing 3D engine.

Played without regard for such concerns, Icewind Dale II emerges as an enjoyable, solid roleplaying game much in the vein of its predecessor. The Icewind Dale games are very much the 'brainless action movie' branch of the Infinity Engine tree, where combat is emphasised over roleplaying. There isn't anything too wrong with that, especially since Icewind Dale II also puts more emphasis into puzzle-solving, quest-resolving and occasional bursts of proper roleplaying. You still spend 80%+ of the game hacking enemies apart, but there's a little bit more story and character to proceedings this time around.

As with the previous game, you create a party of six adventurers from scratch. Balancing melee combat characters with ranged ones with magic users (and a rogue to help open all of those locked chests of loot) is key to completing the game effectively. Unlike the other Infinity Engine games, Icewind Dale II uses the Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition rules which gives your characters much greater choices of weapons (no more arbitrary restrictions by class), classes (no more arbitrary restrictions by race) and skills and feats, which improve your combat abilities.

You start the game in the town of Targos which is under goblin attack. After dispatching the attackers you find yourself running around town getting to know people and finding out more about what's going on. This being a game by Black Isle (which splintered apart shortly after this game's release, the remnants reforming as Obsidian and Troika), with such CRPG luminaries as Josh Sawyer and Chris Avellone working on it, the game features some amusing meta-commentary about the genre. One soldier recounts how he started his adventuring life by killing rats for ages because it was 'character-building', whilst running around town doing trivial odd-jobs for pitiful amounts of money. This was funny at the time, but is slightly tragic in 2014 given how many modern RPGs still insist on using the same structure.

The game is linear, with your team moving from objective to objective without as much ability to go off and do some exploring by yourself (although there a few optional side-quests). This makes sense in the context of the game - you are a mercenary party on a military commission to halt an invading army - and also given the time restrictions the game was made under, but it does feel a little constraining at times. The game is also pretty relentless and, in the midgame especially, becomes something of a grind. The environments are beautiful, ranging from palaces made of ice to spectacular underground caverns and windswept mountain passes filled with snow. However, too often there is little to do in these environments rather than bludgeon lots of things to death and search for loot. There are a few moments of satisfying roleplaying - doing a side-mission near the end of the game makes the final battle considerably easier, whilst you can completely skip a lengthy and lethal battle in a mind-flayer fortress by convincing their relentlessly logical leader that it's just safer to let you pass - but the focus is very much on fighting.

Fortunately the fighting is pretty good. As usual you can pause the game to issue orders and battles soon become a frenzied rush of arrows, swords swinging and spells flying past. As the game progresses enemies become more likely to use magic, so it becomes necessary for your party to use magic to buff your characters or summon small armies of monsters to act as cannon fodder. Unlike, say, the Dragon Age games, which have a seriously tiny spell selection (presumably for simplicity's sake), Icewind Dale II offers a large range of spells, weapons and combat options which can tend towards over-complexity, but also give the player a satisfying choice of tactics to pursue. Many seemingly-impossible battles can be won by simply changing tactics or even just the positioning of your characters: bottlenecking large enemy forces in narrow passages is a simple but often decisive tactic.

So the combat is good, the choices for character development are better than any previous Infinity Engine games and the story is moodily and effectively told through animated storybook cut-scenes. For its time, the 2D graphics are impressive (if inevitably a little pixellated on modern machines) and the music is splendid, though there isn't a whole lot of it. The game is pretty long (clocking in at well over 20 hours) so you get a lot of content for your money. The game gets grindy and repetitive at times, but it's worth persevering for the satisfyingly epic conclusion.

Icewind Dale II (****) is a worthy follow-up to Icewind Dale and a decent conclusion to the Infinity Engine era of roleplaying games. You can get the game now from GoG, where it has been optimised to run well on modern machines, or you can also get it as part of a triple-pack with the original Icewind Dale and its expansions (UK, USA).

PROJECT ETERNITY smashes funding goals

As covered previously, Obsidian Entertainment have been working on a brand-new, 'old-school' RPG with the working title Project Eternity. The game is heavily influenced and inspired by their own classic games (when they were working as Black Isle), such as Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale and the early Fallout games, as well as those of their associated companies, such as BioWare's Baldur's Gate titles. To help fund the title, Obsidian requested fans to pledge $1.1 million via the Kickstarter crowdfunding website.

Click for massive version.

A month later, the Kickstarter has come to an end with Obsidian having raised $3,986,929 via the website, plus an additional $140,099 in PayPal contributions. The result being that the game achieved all of its planned stretch goals and will now be radically enhanced as a result. This includes the game now shipping on PC, Mac and Linux platforms, in multiple languages and with several added areas (including a whole new city and a major, 14-level dungeon complex).

The game is tentatively set for release in April 2014.

Creators of the greatest RPGs of all time collaborate on new game

Obsidian Entertainment have announced their next big RPG: a fantasy game called Project Eternity (working title). This game will be an isometric, old-school RPG that draws heavily on their old D&D games using the Infinity Engine (the Icewind Dale series and the legendary Planescape: Torment).

However, tired of working for publishers who either don't do proper Q&A on their games (resulting in the bug-filled mess of Alpha Protocol), rush them out in an incomplete state (Knights of the Old Republic II) or refuse to pay them a bonus by failing to hit a ludicrously arbitrary Metacritic score by one point despite selling millions of copies (Fallout: New Vegas), Obsidian have decided to take this one to the fans. Via Kickstarter, Obsidian are asking for $1.1 million to help fund the game. They're already at $300,000 less than a day after starting the project.

The creative forces behind the game include Chris Avellone, the writer of Planescape: Torment; Tim Cain, the creator of the Fallout franchise; and Josh Sawyer, the project lead on the excellent New Vegas (who infamously disapproved of the game being somewhat 'softened' for console players and released his own, more hardcore mod for the PC version of the game). They hope to release the game in early 2014.

Kotaku interview Avellone here about the project, whilst GameBanshee talk to Obsidian studio head Feargus Urquhart here.

UPDATE: As of 24 hours later, the amount raised stands at $1,083,000, and should hit the target within a few hours (with 31 days still to go). Obsidian have already said that any money they make over the $1.1 million will go to making the game even more impressive, and some projections are now suggesting they could make upwards of four times the amount they asked for.