Every place they are traditionally set in, from Middle Earth to Greyhawk, do as well. The many races of standard fantasy, including some of the ones unique to Pillars, are naked representations of different parts of Western Europe. The Dyrwood felt like any provincial pseudo-European Renaissance setting one splashed with pointy-eared people who can sling fire with their minds. Knowing that different sorts of people may worship the same gods different ways, and that this may be something you have to leverage with diplomacy, is a great way to make every new assortment of people you meet immediately interesting, outside of just being a named NPC who clearly has a quest for you.ĭeadfire sheds some of the more bland parts of the original game’s world building as well. Regional traditions are just as important as the top line racial qualitatives that often sink fantasy into a tropey quicksand. Even when it’s at its most tropey, Deadfire ’s setting still makes things interesting. The world is a much more dynamic place because of it. Inspired heavily by the Age of Sail and pirate myth, Deadfire is elves and dwarves and swords and sorcery shotgunned across Caribbean/Polynesian history and culture. The journey of following his enormous footsteps around the Deadfire is one worth remembering, if mostly because of how well realized the Deadfire is.įantasy settings, like CRPGs broadly tend to care more about resembling the iconic versions of it than taking elements of it and creating a new vision. You’ll continue to answer for those choices as you land haphazardly in the Deadfire Archipelago, on the trail of a towering god who’s single-minded purpose is putting countless lives in jeopardy. The Watcher would gather a party of unlikely allies and challenge the gods themselves in order to put a stop to the crisis.įor returning players, Pillars II knows everything your Watcher did in the first game (should you provide a previous save or fill out a compulsory questionnaire). You’re unique ability to speak directly to souls, living and dead, played a key role in a calamity that was causing newborn babies to be born without one. In fact, the best things about Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire, the highly anticipated sequel to one of the most highly regarded RPGs of this era, are when it is the most different from its Infinity Engine and Tolkienesque fantasy trappings.įor the uninitiated, the original Pillars of Eternity centered around a generic protagonist called The Watcher. Obsidian has done decent work in this area, too. Things that worked 15-20 years ago just don’t anymore. The best of these games know when to look at what is, and reinterpret and re-imagine. Obsidian has made a career doing just that. Many of them bathe in this reverence to The Games That Came Before. If you ever run a Dnd-style game in the Deadfire Archipelago, perhaps you can consider including her in the world.Modern CRPGs quite often walk the line between “piece of gaming individual of itself” and “living monument to history.” Almost all of them take heavy inspiration from games that have come before them. This episode features the story of a pirate named One-Eyed Molina, and how she became that person. If it's something I can sustain for a long period of time, then it can become the new regular :) However, I've grown in my skills/efficiency in podcasting so I'm going to start my journey toward weekly episodes by putting out bonus content on (what has been up until now) the "off" weeks.Īs "bonus" content, I am not guaranteeing it'll be up time, but I am endeavouring to make that a pattern. I'm aiming to move toward regular *weekly* content, but cannot commit to full length episodes each week (usually I record one week, edit the next). This episode will (hopefully) be one of many bonus episodes I put out. The World of Eora is a news/lore podcast about the Obsidian Entertainment original fantasy world used in the Pillars of Eternity games, as well as their upcoming release: AVOWED.
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