Pillows of Eternity story is the result of a bunch of people meeting and on all those meetings not a single time there was someone that cared or knew how to do editting and was willing to cut bullshit... and ohh boy... the plot of this game smells like first draft that was ever analysed. The story is too unfocused and epic for its own good.
The first and second act try to be a low level DnD fantasy story about curses, politics, religious conflict and etc but when the game reaches 3rd act all of that is dropped like a rock and the game start talking about gods and you talking with gods and doing directly missions for the gods... the level of epicness just jump on a frightening pace but it when you go after some 2000 year guy that MADE the gods is when the thing reaches critical mass and explode on a mushroom cloud of epicness. Whoa... you actually defeat a 2000 year guy that can possess souls and MADE the Gods? What the plot of Pillows 2 will be? You saving the planet from Chuthulu monsters comming from the space wanting to feed on soul mashed potatoes?
It's hilarious to defeat superhuman demigods at level 10, at level 20 on Pillows 2 you will become a god at this rate. That is the kind of bullshit you do in Pillows. I know that Pillows needed to be "epic" but YOU ending the curse AND killing a 2000 year demigod was a bit too much. The act 3 is like someone was utherly bored of the stuff they did on act 1 and 2 and had the idea... "hey guys, can't we make Torment?" and dropped everything that happened on Act 1 and 2 like a rock.
Defiance Bay remain generic european city until the end and Twin Elms remain generic noble savage village until the end. Jeez... nobody cared into developing those places? Obsidian have you deling with demigods and gods before you even care about the basic setting of Not Forgotten Realms.
If they had sticked to the Legacy as a weird curse from the gods that nobody knew what it was and the brewing civil war on Dyrwood with Glanfanthans very happy to start another broken stone war to exploit the weakness and you having to navigate a really dangerous place soon to blow up and the act 3 was it blowing up it would be FAAAAAAARRRRRRR better than the parade of cliches and Deux Ex Machina Obsidian used on the main plot line.
I was yawning with "super awesome old civilization made super awesome stuff and disappeared.", that had been done quite a few times on books, tv shows, games and the list goes on and on. I expected they twisting a little to make it more interesting but they twisted the story indeed, the problem was that the twist is even more uninteresting "the gods were made by super awesome civilization." by some guy... right... anyone that truly get impressed by this bullshit must be 12 years old because only that explain people getting excited by so base cliches with nothing to make them fresh just plain and predictable cliches.
About the soul mashed potatoes thing, at that point soul magic became the writers hand wave to ANY bullshit the writers wanted to get away with. With no explanation how souls were supposed to work, there were no rules and limits to soul magic, you can even make gods with it. Soul power became the mass effect thing of Mass Effect, some bullshit to handwave how the setting worked and that was lazy as lazy can be. This kind of shit is one of the things that make people laugh of video game stories.
Obsidian just food for thought... how are we supposed to believe your bullshit world if we don't even know the rules? If it is anything goes and soul magic can create gods and the gods are fake... wait a moment? Are souls immortal? Are souls made of energy? What kind of energy? Is there a place they go after death? If the gods were created by humans, there must been a time where souls predated the gods, right? If that was the case, who created the souls? Are souls just another body that dies when someone dies? How babies souls can be prevented to appear on babies? Do the babies soul come from somewhere? Did people reincarnate before the gods were created? Is there a true god there suppervising this? What the fuck is going on? I'm going crazy... maybe I should have done as the fan boys and lowered my expectations so I could read all this trash and enjoy the shit on my mouth.
At least, on DnD gods depend on worshipping and if they have no worshippers... they can die and it was the believing of the people that gave them power... I would take that anyday to the cheap SOUL MAGIC of PoE.
I wouldn't go insane over this soul bullshit if they hadn't made this thing the major thing on the game. Dyrwood? Glanganthans? Defiance Bay? Nope, all of this is barely developed background for this soul bullshit. Look, I would forgive all of this and enjoy PoE as a cheapo fantasy romp with no pretention for anything serious if at least, there was a single NPC, antagonist or companion that were interesting.
NOBODY on this game do something or want to do something and even you don't even know what the fuck you are doing going after this Thaos guy. Sure, Obsidian take motivations out of their ass as skillfully as they deal with SOUL MAGIC but I stopped caring at their laughable attempts of IMPOSING motivations on the player.Common... nobody seems to have a life or desire or goal, no conflict... anything... even fucking Dragon Age 2 handled this better and tried to make your companions appear to have a life independednt of your will and having their own wills and I'm not singing the praises of crap like Dragons Age 2 but that is just how low Obsidian dropped. It is hilarious that Sawyer didn't play Mass Effect 2 because of the shit writing... ohhh God... the irony on this.
I would like to talk about imposing motivation on the player... this is BAD Obsidian, don't do this. If you failed into creating a beliavable motivation don't try to impose the ones you take out of your ass on me. I don't care and don't believe on them, stop it. Anyway... I missed the ole aligment system of DnD, yeah, it was bullshit but Obsidian Honest, stoic, agressive and cruel and their little reputation points that don't mean anything is worse. It is hilarious that I had to turn the dialog tooltips on to identify what was the honest, benevolent, cruel or rational responses were many times.
The ole Dnd system is bullshit but at least you had material for a replay with it by playing with a good playthrough and evil playthrough.
One last thing, where is the companion reputations, choices, unlockable abilities and conflicts involving companions on this game? Jeez... this is the most barebones Obsidian game on this aspect, worse than even New Vegas. Didn't Obsidian said they just wanted 8 companions to add more depth? Outside Durance and Grieving mother that are more verbose than having any depth to them, where is the depth? The companions have no mechanics attached to them and they have no conflict going on between them. Watching the banter between companions on this game is like watching paint dry.
Anyway... I'm tired of discussing PoE. As a policy, all next Obsidian games are going to be handleled as radioactive waste by me until I have enough proof they were actually well done.