Pillars of Eternity: A Look At Some Details

Posted by The Architect on May - 11 - 2015

317120_screenshots_2014-08-19_00002So I’ve been playing Pillars of Eternity. If you’re reading this, you probably have been doing so, too; if not, you should do, if only for reference. As it was the designers’ intention to bring the gaming feeling of the previous generations into our time, the game fits here quite nicely. I’ll do more postings once I get further into it, but for today there are just some details that got my attention:

Currency. The game has only one, copper coins, but when you find money in treasure troves or elsewhere, it is represented by various different coins, many of them with different values (meaning they add different amounts of copper to your stash). Each type of coin even has a different, small flavor description. However, all of them seem to be contemporary, even if the respective treasure hoards are hundreds, sometimes thousands of years old. If you go to that length, including a few “ancient” coin types which give you a feeling that this treasure is really, really old couldn’t have been that difficult.

Day & Night. So the sun goes up and down, but it’s always the same person at the merchant stand? They don’t even put on any lights at night (maybe so you won’t notice what crap they are selling you). Finding the balance between convenience and realism is always interesting, of course.

Grimoires. Wizards keep their spells in grimoires. Learning spells happens automatically whenever you level up, but you can only learn a limited number of spells from each level. However, by browsing the grimoires of defeated enemy wizards, you can still get access to the remaining spells. I had hoped that only every once in a while I might find a spell my wizard could not even have learned in theory just from leveling, but so far have been disappointed. There’s an ice elf sorcerer, and he doesn’t even have one special ice spell unknown to the rest of the world? Really?

Reputation. The game tracks not only how my reputation is with the various factions, but also whether I’m known as aggressive, benevolent, clever, cruel, deceptive, diplomatic, honest, passionate, rational or stoic. Wow. I’m not yet fully aware of all ramifications here, but there’s one thing that can be said: Pillars of Eternity is in many things the most detailed CRPG I’ve ever seen. And those details are independent of any technical specifications, meaning that for us toolkit developers there’s a lot to scavenge here. Thanks, Obsidian!

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Categories: Allgemein

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