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Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread
- Thread starter Perkel
- Start date
Lyric Suite
Converting to Islam
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2006
- Messages
- 58,271
Implying you aren't subject to that shit by the game itself.
ColonelMace
Educated
The lore itself isn't bad.
It's the delivery in the game that kinda sucks.
The whole saint's war aftermath makes for a good setting imo.
It's the delivery in the game that kinda sucks.
The whole saint's war aftermath makes for a good setting imo.
Lyric Suite
Converting to Islam
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2006
- Messages
- 58,271
Currently reading on the gods. So far it's actually not bad in so far as lore for a fantasy setting goes. I think the problem with it is precisely that without a good knowledge of it there's too much shit in the game that makes no sense.
DnD also has a lot of lore but you don't exactly need to know a whole lot about it, mostly because it's not important to understand the story in games like Baldur's Gate for instance or even Torment, where you don't need to know much more than what the game tells you, about Lady of Pain or what the Dustmen believe etc (which is laid out entirely by Dhall early on and what he says pretty much gives you all you need to know to understand what's happening in the game).
That said, there's something to be said about a game like Pillars compared to something like BG3, which seemed downright loreless to me. In both games i only made it almost to the end of act 1 so keep that in mind but all i remember when reading the books and lore in BG3 is a bunch of shit all about this or that person. There were refences about the world and mythologies but mostly it was about just a bunch of diaries, letters, daily musings of this or that fictional person and so forth. Looking at the full list of lore books you find in the game it seems it's like that through out the whole game:
https://baldursgate3.wiki.fextralife.com/Books+and+Lore
If i didn't have a passing knowledge of DnD i wouldn't even get some of the references.
DnD also has a lot of lore but you don't exactly need to know a whole lot about it, mostly because it's not important to understand the story in games like Baldur's Gate for instance or even Torment, where you don't need to know much more than what the game tells you, about Lady of Pain or what the Dustmen believe etc (which is laid out entirely by Dhall early on and what he says pretty much gives you all you need to know to understand what's happening in the game).
That said, there's something to be said about a game like Pillars compared to something like BG3, which seemed downright loreless to me. In both games i only made it almost to the end of act 1 so keep that in mind but all i remember when reading the books and lore in BG3 is a bunch of shit all about this or that person. There were refences about the world and mythologies but mostly it was about just a bunch of diaries, letters, daily musings of this or that fictional person and so forth. Looking at the full list of lore books you find in the game it seems it's like that through out the whole game:
https://baldursgate3.wiki.fextralife.com/Books+and+Lore
If i didn't have a passing knowledge of DnD i wouldn't even get some of the references.
AshenNedra
Educated
- Joined
- May 22, 2018
- Messages
- 76
Agreed. The gods-are-construct of an ancient civilization and reincarnation stuff are really bad for a game. It reeks of anti-theism and modern day cynicism. Both philosophies are actively robbing a fantasy setting of its inherent escapism value.
Therefore, its much less serviceable than cookie-cutter high fantasy like Dragon age 1. It's aggressively bad.
On a more player specific point of view, the past persona walls of text are immensely boring and never correctly motivate the player to actually WANT to discover the main story.
The faux Native American of part 2 are especially uninteresting, at least to me. I was skipping walls of texts -which I never do- like a maniac after Defiance Bay
Souls being the source of every magic and arcane powers is only interesting in the case of Cyphers, as it is somehow reflected in the mechanics of the class.
Pillars is technically a science-fantasy setting but almost nothing is implemented in the game to show that besides the creations of animancy.
In the first game they look basically like a Golem, which is an old esoteric Jewish legend. If you follow the lore, constructs are an advanced technical upload of one's vital energy that is progressively rediscovered.
In the case of the Devil of Caroc, the administrator of the Asylum and the Caed Nua castle's castellan, personalities. So, in fact the overused sci-fi concept of achieving immortality through uploading one's persona into a machine network.
Science-fantasy and mysticism-inspired fiction don't mix very well. It's grating.
The eponymous Pillars of Eternity are giant rocky wires for souls by the way. Yeepie. Such poetic writing. What a grand revelation!
Pillars 1 and 2 are much more enjoyable if you don't look too closely at the lore imho. As it is for mechanics, Sawyer tried too hard to reinvent the wheel. Pun intended.
Technomancer
Liturgist
- Joined
- Dec 24, 2018
- Messages
- 1,523
I remember it well, the first time with pillars. Caravan master Odema just starts laying it on me: engwithans, biawic, glanfathans, hut dwellers, soul butchers, defiance bay, animancers, adra and that's like first 3 minutes of the game. I was like wtf? I mean, part of me prefers when there is no overused to death amnesiac MC and you learn stuff from books or from the world itself. But part of me finds it strange when character acts like he is native to the world and knows stuff but you as a player don't. Since I wrote lore summary years ago and never used it for anything, might as well share and post it. This is information many people in the world know or heard about due to how important the events were or because it is relatively common knowledge.
So the world is called Eora and basic lore for pillars is like this, there was this ancient and legendary super-nation of precursors called Engwithans, they were like Atlantis, super-advanced and world-spanning magitech society. All races were part of it but at that time there were still primitive tribal people living near them as well, ancestors of current civilized nations. Long story short they stopped existing one day and it is a huge mystery why this happened exactly. Engwith nation left countless ruins throughout the world filled with ancient wonders and hidden truths.
What is known about them is that people of Engwith were masters of so-called Animancy. A special field of arcane science revolving around tapping and using souls as an energy or power source as well as a catalyst for various other reactions and effects. Since in the world of pillars souls are tangible and can be detected and used, this science got huge in modern society. Unlike say Elders Scrolls which setting hardly goes beyond soul gems, in this world it is more grounded and pragmatic, basically most powerful nations are competing in this scientific pursuit discovering new ways to harness this resource. Its like a space race, prestigious and potentially very beneficial economically if some breakthroughs in magitech are made (pillars2 hinted at network of instantaneous portals being possible in the future of animancy and its obvious to see the benefits of this to any power). It gets wacky and dangerous fairly often though...like necromancy is part of that science and recent "immortality" discovery was dumb and reckless. They figured a way to bind the soul of a mortal to their body so even when they die soul stays pinned to bones and so those who want to live forever keep on "living" after passing. Living as a flesh-eating parasite-vampire (Fampyr) that needs constant infusion of living flesh (not mere blood) still containing traces of soul essence of other living beings. Miss a few meals and you rot further into a zombie who forgets most of his mind with only traces of memory remaining, a bit more - into an animalistic ghoul who understands only hunger. The rot is irreversible so chances are, eventually hapless immortal will end up becoming a skeleton reduced to nothing else but mindless killing instinct. This means that in pillars lore all undead have souls (why instead of undead, the term 'vessel' is more commonly used to describe such creatures) and in case of skeletons even when they get destroyed, soul is still cursed to be bound to the remains or bone dust for eternity unable to reincarnate, the animancer artificial binding is that strong. There are many more retarded experiments like that but there is good too. Ultimately, it is a highly experimental opportunistic science that doesn't care much for morality of things or patience.
The game takes place in the Dyrwood, small and relatively young colonial country. You are a settler from one of the major big countries that surround it. Dyrwood is pretty special, they proved to be a fiercely independent nation. They were an oversea colony territory of one of the biggest countries of the world - Aedyr Empire (think British Empire made from coalition of human and elf people), they fought in a huge independence war against Aedyr and earned their freedom. Though it was inevitable because sea is infested with horrible and powerful monsters so controlling and supplying oversea territory is very expensive. Born in the fires of war this proud new country called themselves Free Palatinate of Dyrwood while naming their new capital and a seaport-city as Defiance Bay in memory of this victory. Most Dyrwoodans still dislike Aedyrans, or foreigners in general because of future wars.
There were several. To explain some context for it, in the world of pillars there are gods. Actual physical gods which seem to have some sort of policy of non-intervention with the world of mortals but otherwise are active (and they do have basic physical incarnations or heralds (some of them monstrous) that stir shit up in mortal realms. Gods represent very specific ideals and forces, not always good but defining a certain order of things. And order part works well, whole world is for once united at least in theology - all nations worship the same pantheon of divine beings. One of them gods was called Eothas - a rather kind and nice entity that genuinely loved mortals like no other god, he is a god of compassion, forgiveness, redemption, life and light, the only one of them who is ultimately good. 15 or so years before the start of the game something extraordinary happened, event that no doubt rippled across the globe. There was this small country near Dyrwood called Raedceras and as the tale goes, one day Eothas spoke to a simple farmer called Waedwen and chose him as a vessel for his divine power. Just like that, non-interference be damned. Things escalated quickly from there, en-fleshed god mobilized Raedceras in a mad religious frenzy (what nation wouldn't be fluttered to be chosen by god?) and in no time declared war on Dyrwood.
This made no sense, it went against the very idea of Eothas, it broke the pact of gods, some even believed that this Waedwen guy was not an avatar at all but just a powerful sorcerer tricking everybody with his head made of light. And yet, he was unstoppable in his onslaught. Things got so bad that even the god of war, Magran got involved. When Dyrwood almost lost they finally rolled out their trump card. With the help of war goddess, as well as other expert parties, Dyrwood people build an unseen before weapon - the Godhammer bomb. They lured Waidwen-Eothas into a trap and then detonated it. It exploded with a soul blast so powerful and concentrated that it burned the god straight out of him, perhaps from existence entirely. And that was it, the Dyrwood people killed a god. Or so they say. But Eothas actually went silent since then and not a single prayer was answered in all these years after the war and destruction of Saint Waedwen. The clergy of Eothas can no longer sense their god (unlike DnD in this setting Priests and all other people capable of superhuman and supernatural feats draw the magics from the power of their own soul, so Priests of Eothas never lost their abilities because no priest in pillars channels them from divine source). Needless to say, worship of Eothas is banned in Dyrwood since then. Raedceras became a weird theocracy and even though they lost, this whole God-chosen people situation likely went to their heads. Questions still linger, why Eothas enacted his will upon the world in such a manner, what reason this kind of god could have?
Seconds before detonation of the Godhammer:
Their independence preserved once more, it seemed like it would be the time to rebuild. But this was not the end of trouble for Dyrwood, you are a settler for one reason - Dyrwood needs people, badly. It's dying out. After the war, strange soul plague started to ravage the country, they named it Waidwen's Legacy - many locals believe it is a petty curse of a mad and vengeful dead god, some think it is a divine punishment from higher powers for slaying the god of life and rebirth, some think it after-effects of the godhammer nuke, almost like a radiation if you think about it...but in the end it affects everyone and all in the country - children born there, are born stripped of souls. In this universe souls are not just a source of life but of spiritual might and mind itself, it allows you to think and create, to have that spark of creation in you. They also act as a power source so that is how some people learn to amplify themselves and do wizardy stuff even if they are monks or ciphers, most people have weak shattered and fragmented souls and are stuck forever being peasants unable to slay that dragon or become great warriors. Since souls also act as storage for memories and personalities even keeping them sometimes through reincarnation, without souls people are born to "live" like plants, motionless, dead-eyed and empty. These Hollowborn things only have enough in them to breathe but nothing else. Animancers tried to "fix" it with another dumb idea by placing animal souls in them, can easily guess the results of that unhinged experiment.
I did say 'wars' so you should also know about Glanfathans. You see them from the begging and they are a major local power, yet another belligerent kingdom. Glanfathans are tribal neighbors of Dyrwood, they are not complete savages and have advanced astrology and mathematics but overall they are primitive people that wear skins and live in huts. Mainly they live in a ruined regional capital of extinct Engwithans. They claim to know them from ancient times and say that they are bound by a covenant with them to protect their sites. Since all the good animancy tech is hidden in these ruins and people of Dyrwood love raiding them to sell the thingies to animancer-scientists, this leads to constant conflict. They had a ridiculous and bloody war with Dyrwood not long ago because some dyrwoodan farmer toppled an engwith era pillar to make space for his crop field (or perhaps it was an accident). Since all things engwith are sacred to the tribes and because of how many trespassers there were, things finally boiled over. In this war Glanfathans surprised Dyrwoodans with some of their specialist warriors who could form soul blades and cut souls of soldiers from their bodies or directly affect them with their minds, these are called Ciphers but tribals have their own weird name for them. They are basically psionics with powers over souls. Because of an overlap with what Watcher does, there is a confusion between Cyphers and Watchers but they are different things that dabble in the same. In any case, the war proved to be too costly for both sides, as Dyrwood for example started to burn whole forests down to gain tactical ground. War ended eventually, at this point Dyrwood and Glanfathans coexist relatively peacefully, cooperate and trade, after of course Dyrwood outlawed looting the ruins to please their neighbors. Still...this law is often ignored by adventurers and weakly enforced by the government, engwith tech and money are just too good to rot in the ruins. Some factions in tribal society long for another war because of that.
What else from the fundamental things. The name of the game - Pillars of Eternity and the desktop icon refers to adra, strange crystal-like pillar formations that grow through the earth in clusters all over the world. The rock is a hollow shell that functions as a soul gem and a conduit, because this material is strangely reactive to souls, it can even house an active soul-mind as a talking statue if it is big and whole enough. they say these adra crystals grow right down to the core of the planet made of adra too and if the roots are cut, surface clusters die out, get dark and dull. Basically it exist to function as a death-life reincarnation machine. People die, get their sous sucked into adra and travel through it to the realm of the gods for their souls to break down and get mixed up with other soul-splinters to get sent back to be born into a new life.
So yes, that's how souls work in here. They get into a soul shredder after death. Rare few souls are too heavy to get splintered and return unaltered but it almost never happens. Souls and minds in this universe are one concept, and they act as hard drive disks for data, information is stored and recorded over and over on them, on top of previous data. They store the memories and personalities of people and when they splinter and mix with other splinters to reincarnate, some people literally seek their soul mates with the help of animancers, apparently actually sharing a soul from a previous life is pretty good for any sort of relationship because of that strong sense of affinity and unity it brings. Which leads to the main plot of the game, the Awakened. People who get triggered by some sort of PTSD or another random memory from former incarnations and remember their past life from their soul memory bank. For example they got burned on the stake in past life and accidentally remember this agony in a new life by looking at the fire in a certain way one day. These past lives awaken in your mind and start taking turns of your body to live again. At first it's just weird flashbacks and visions but it inevitably leads to complete madness because this waking multiple personality syndrome is too much to handle for human psyche. This condition is permanent and there is no cure but it is fine for quite a while and awakened people get some special perks, namely they see and feel souls with naked eyes and develop other soul related senses, for this reason they are called Watchers. People fear and mistrust them but since they are very rare and useful they are tolerated. To be clear, Ciphers are psionic mind readers that also get glimpses of soul memories (even as a residue on items) through different means.
And finally, biawic is a soul sucking storm unleashed to harvest souls, some say by the gods but more likely by engwithan machines. Could probably tell about other gods too but I don't think it is that important at the start. There are also Godlike races, mortal people with weird looks that represent aspects of the gods in mortal flesh and carry some ounce of god power in them. Like when the souls go to their reincarnation machine, gods drop something extra into the mix from time to time resulting in Godlike children. They are all sterile. As for the gods, beyond Eothas the important one is Woedica, the Queen-that-was and the Broken Crown, she was head of the pantheon long ago but got kicked down by other gods hard so that they all would be equal. And while she is the god of merciless justice, binding covenant of a promised word, law, order and memory, she throws these things away if it means restoring her crown. As game foreshadows from the very first screen:
What is known about them is that people of Engwith were masters of so-called Animancy. A special field of arcane science revolving around tapping and using souls as an energy or power source as well as a catalyst for various other reactions and effects. Since in the world of pillars souls are tangible and can be detected and used, this science got huge in modern society. Unlike say Elders Scrolls which setting hardly goes beyond soul gems, in this world it is more grounded and pragmatic, basically most powerful nations are competing in this scientific pursuit discovering new ways to harness this resource. Its like a space race, prestigious and potentially very beneficial economically if some breakthroughs in magitech are made (pillars2 hinted at network of instantaneous portals being possible in the future of animancy and its obvious to see the benefits of this to any power). It gets wacky and dangerous fairly often though...like necromancy is part of that science and recent "immortality" discovery was dumb and reckless. They figured a way to bind the soul of a mortal to their body so even when they die soul stays pinned to bones and so those who want to live forever keep on "living" after passing. Living as a flesh-eating parasite-vampire (Fampyr) that needs constant infusion of living flesh (not mere blood) still containing traces of soul essence of other living beings. Miss a few meals and you rot further into a zombie who forgets most of his mind with only traces of memory remaining, a bit more - into an animalistic ghoul who understands only hunger. The rot is irreversible so chances are, eventually hapless immortal will end up becoming a skeleton reduced to nothing else but mindless killing instinct. This means that in pillars lore all undead have souls (why instead of undead, the term 'vessel' is more commonly used to describe such creatures) and in case of skeletons even when they get destroyed, soul is still cursed to be bound to the remains or bone dust for eternity unable to reincarnate, the animancer artificial binding is that strong. There are many more retarded experiments like that but there is good too. Ultimately, it is a highly experimental opportunistic science that doesn't care much for morality of things or patience.
The game takes place in the Dyrwood, small and relatively young colonial country. You are a settler from one of the major big countries that surround it. Dyrwood is pretty special, they proved to be a fiercely independent nation. They were an oversea colony territory of one of the biggest countries of the world - Aedyr Empire (think British Empire made from coalition of human and elf people), they fought in a huge independence war against Aedyr and earned their freedom. Though it was inevitable because sea is infested with horrible and powerful monsters so controlling and supplying oversea territory is very expensive. Born in the fires of war this proud new country called themselves Free Palatinate of Dyrwood while naming their new capital and a seaport-city as Defiance Bay in memory of this victory. Most Dyrwoodans still dislike Aedyrans, or foreigners in general because of future wars.
There were several. To explain some context for it, in the world of pillars there are gods. Actual physical gods which seem to have some sort of policy of non-intervention with the world of mortals but otherwise are active (and they do have basic physical incarnations or heralds (some of them monstrous) that stir shit up in mortal realms. Gods represent very specific ideals and forces, not always good but defining a certain order of things. And order part works well, whole world is for once united at least in theology - all nations worship the same pantheon of divine beings. One of them gods was called Eothas - a rather kind and nice entity that genuinely loved mortals like no other god, he is a god of compassion, forgiveness, redemption, life and light, the only one of them who is ultimately good. 15 or so years before the start of the game something extraordinary happened, event that no doubt rippled across the globe. There was this small country near Dyrwood called Raedceras and as the tale goes, one day Eothas spoke to a simple farmer called Waedwen and chose him as a vessel for his divine power. Just like that, non-interference be damned. Things escalated quickly from there, en-fleshed god mobilized Raedceras in a mad religious frenzy (what nation wouldn't be fluttered to be chosen by god?) and in no time declared war on Dyrwood.
This made no sense, it went against the very idea of Eothas, it broke the pact of gods, some even believed that this Waedwen guy was not an avatar at all but just a powerful sorcerer tricking everybody with his head made of light. And yet, he was unstoppable in his onslaught. Things got so bad that even the god of war, Magran got involved. When Dyrwood almost lost they finally rolled out their trump card. With the help of war goddess, as well as other expert parties, Dyrwood people build an unseen before weapon - the Godhammer bomb. They lured Waidwen-Eothas into a trap and then detonated it. It exploded with a soul blast so powerful and concentrated that it burned the god straight out of him, perhaps from existence entirely. And that was it, the Dyrwood people killed a god. Or so they say. But Eothas actually went silent since then and not a single prayer was answered in all these years after the war and destruction of Saint Waedwen. The clergy of Eothas can no longer sense their god (unlike DnD in this setting Priests and all other people capable of superhuman and supernatural feats draw the magics from the power of their own soul, so Priests of Eothas never lost their abilities because no priest in pillars channels them from divine source). Needless to say, worship of Eothas is banned in Dyrwood since then. Raedceras became a weird theocracy and even though they lost, this whole God-chosen people situation likely went to their heads. Questions still linger, why Eothas enacted his will upon the world in such a manner, what reason this kind of god could have?
Seconds before detonation of the Godhammer:
Their independence preserved once more, it seemed like it would be the time to rebuild. But this was not the end of trouble for Dyrwood, you are a settler for one reason - Dyrwood needs people, badly. It's dying out. After the war, strange soul plague started to ravage the country, they named it Waidwen's Legacy - many locals believe it is a petty curse of a mad and vengeful dead god, some think it is a divine punishment from higher powers for slaying the god of life and rebirth, some think it after-effects of the godhammer nuke, almost like a radiation if you think about it...but in the end it affects everyone and all in the country - children born there, are born stripped of souls. In this universe souls are not just a source of life but of spiritual might and mind itself, it allows you to think and create, to have that spark of creation in you. They also act as a power source so that is how some people learn to amplify themselves and do wizardy stuff even if they are monks or ciphers, most people have weak shattered and fragmented souls and are stuck forever being peasants unable to slay that dragon or become great warriors. Since souls also act as storage for memories and personalities even keeping them sometimes through reincarnation, without souls people are born to "live" like plants, motionless, dead-eyed and empty. These Hollowborn things only have enough in them to breathe but nothing else. Animancers tried to "fix" it with another dumb idea by placing animal souls in them, can easily guess the results of that unhinged experiment.
I did say 'wars' so you should also know about Glanfathans. You see them from the begging and they are a major local power, yet another belligerent kingdom. Glanfathans are tribal neighbors of Dyrwood, they are not complete savages and have advanced astrology and mathematics but overall they are primitive people that wear skins and live in huts. Mainly they live in a ruined regional capital of extinct Engwithans. They claim to know them from ancient times and say that they are bound by a covenant with them to protect their sites. Since all the good animancy tech is hidden in these ruins and people of Dyrwood love raiding them to sell the thingies to animancer-scientists, this leads to constant conflict. They had a ridiculous and bloody war with Dyrwood not long ago because some dyrwoodan farmer toppled an engwith era pillar to make space for his crop field (or perhaps it was an accident). Since all things engwith are sacred to the tribes and because of how many trespassers there were, things finally boiled over. In this war Glanfathans surprised Dyrwoodans with some of their specialist warriors who could form soul blades and cut souls of soldiers from their bodies or directly affect them with their minds, these are called Ciphers but tribals have their own weird name for them. They are basically psionics with powers over souls. Because of an overlap with what Watcher does, there is a confusion between Cyphers and Watchers but they are different things that dabble in the same. In any case, the war proved to be too costly for both sides, as Dyrwood for example started to burn whole forests down to gain tactical ground. War ended eventually, at this point Dyrwood and Glanfathans coexist relatively peacefully, cooperate and trade, after of course Dyrwood outlawed looting the ruins to please their neighbors. Still...this law is often ignored by adventurers and weakly enforced by the government, engwith tech and money are just too good to rot in the ruins. Some factions in tribal society long for another war because of that.
What else from the fundamental things. The name of the game - Pillars of Eternity and the desktop icon refers to adra, strange crystal-like pillar formations that grow through the earth in clusters all over the world. The rock is a hollow shell that functions as a soul gem and a conduit, because this material is strangely reactive to souls, it can even house an active soul-mind as a talking statue if it is big and whole enough. they say these adra crystals grow right down to the core of the planet made of adra too and if the roots are cut, surface clusters die out, get dark and dull. Basically it exist to function as a death-life reincarnation machine. People die, get their sous sucked into adra and travel through it to the realm of the gods for their souls to break down and get mixed up with other soul-splinters to get sent back to be born into a new life.
So yes, that's how souls work in here. They get into a soul shredder after death. Rare few souls are too heavy to get splintered and return unaltered but it almost never happens. Souls and minds in this universe are one concept, and they act as hard drive disks for data, information is stored and recorded over and over on them, on top of previous data. They store the memories and personalities of people and when they splinter and mix with other splinters to reincarnate, some people literally seek their soul mates with the help of animancers, apparently actually sharing a soul from a previous life is pretty good for any sort of relationship because of that strong sense of affinity and unity it brings. Which leads to the main plot of the game, the Awakened. People who get triggered by some sort of PTSD or another random memory from former incarnations and remember their past life from their soul memory bank. For example they got burned on the stake in past life and accidentally remember this agony in a new life by looking at the fire in a certain way one day. These past lives awaken in your mind and start taking turns of your body to live again. At first it's just weird flashbacks and visions but it inevitably leads to complete madness because this waking multiple personality syndrome is too much to handle for human psyche. This condition is permanent and there is no cure but it is fine for quite a while and awakened people get some special perks, namely they see and feel souls with naked eyes and develop other soul related senses, for this reason they are called Watchers. People fear and mistrust them but since they are very rare and useful they are tolerated. To be clear, Ciphers are psionic mind readers that also get glimpses of soul memories (even as a residue on items) through different means.
And finally, biawic is a soul sucking storm unleashed to harvest souls, some say by the gods but more likely by engwithan machines. Could probably tell about other gods too but I don't think it is that important at the start. There are also Godlike races, mortal people with weird looks that represent aspects of the gods in mortal flesh and carry some ounce of god power in them. Like when the souls go to their reincarnation machine, gods drop something extra into the mix from time to time resulting in Godlike children. They are all sterile. As for the gods, beyond Eothas the important one is Woedica, the Queen-that-was and the Broken Crown, she was head of the pantheon long ago but got kicked down by other gods hard so that they all would be equal. And while she is the god of merciless justice, binding covenant of a promised word, law, order and memory, she throws these things away if it means restoring her crown. As game foreshadows from the very first screen:
Last edited:
Lyric Suite
Converting to Islam
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2006
- Messages
- 58,271
Oh yeah, i remember having that impression too. In fact, i think i said something similar then. Fucking Sawyer.
The one positive i'd give the writing of this game so far is that it is written by people who at least read books. Bizzare as it sounds, that isn't always a foregone conclusion when it comes to video game writing.
BTW, in the tutorial, when the axe wielding guys are holding the merchant hostage, there's a line now that's unlocked where you can question their "beliefs" to get an opportunity to save the thief guy and is the most braindead Fedora shit imaginable. "So if your god told to jump off a cliff, would you?". I get it's all a ruse to give your character an opportunity to rush at them but fucking hell man.
Also, i'm pretty sure i got some cruel options already as i had the opportunity to be a dick a few times. At least i think they are the cruel options. Considering a lot of the "benevolent" options are seeped in l1brul faggy morality i may enjoy this Bleak Walker playthrough. The first quest i see that involves lovers who can't get married because of muh strict traditional parents i'm murdering everybody in the room.
Lyric Suite
Converting to Islam
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2006
- Messages
- 58,271
I don't see people speaking any better of Deadfire or Tyranny.
Maybe that's just the best they could do.
Last edited:
IHaveHugeNick
Arcane
- Joined
- Apr 5, 2015
- Messages
- 1,870,558
After the first game nobody even bothered to read any of that drivel anymore.
Lyric Suite
Converting to Islam
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2006
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- 58,271
Heh, when i got out of the ruins in the starting area and the whole sequence with the machine sucking the souls out of those priests with the guy with the winged headress. It's amazing what difference it made now that i know WTF he was talking about. But what's annoying is that the reaon i know is not even that i read the lore in the journal section, but that i'm reading the lore and guide books, which go on a lot more details about the gods.
Gotta shake my head at how boneheaded development of this game was.
In either case, i'm having a much easier time than the last since i now know what it is that i'm getting into and i also resigned myself from making a comparison with their past games.
Gotta shake my head at how boneheaded development of this game was.
In either case, i'm having a much easier time than the last since i now know what it is that i'm getting into and i also resigned myself from making a comparison with their past games.
Lacrymas
Arcane
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2015
- Messages
- 18,732
I vaguely remember telling you once not to get into the lore and only to skim dialogues because nobody says anything important. That still holds and you'll actually be able to complete the game this way unless the combat grinds you down (which is a very likely possibility).
Lyric Suite
Converting to Islam
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2006
- Messages
- 58,271
The first time i tried this game there were two things i disliked about the lore. First, the setting felt too dreary. Second, the lore itself had an obvious secular bias (i suppose it truly does work better if you pretend the game is sci-fi and not fantasy).
That said, the first time i played this game i had all the past Infinite Engine or Black Isle games in mind so Pillars faired very poorly in that respect. Right now i'm looking at Pillars from the perspective of BG3 and some other modern RPGs i've seen which makes Pillars seem a bit better. At least the NPCs aren't trying to fuck you, and there's no muh rapefugees and other modern politics shit shoved in your face. Also, the writing, dry and stiff it may be, does have a bit of that old school quality to it, albeit i do remember a few reddit tier lines here and there (the one i mentioned earlier being a case in point).
That said, the first time i played this game i had all the past Infinite Engine or Black Isle games in mind so Pillars faired very poorly in that respect. Right now i'm looking at Pillars from the perspective of BG3 and some other modern RPGs i've seen which makes Pillars seem a bit better. At least the NPCs aren't trying to fuck you, and there's no muh rapefugees and other modern politics shit shoved in your face. Also, the writing, dry and stiff it may be, does have a bit of that old school quality to it, albeit i do remember a few reddit tier lines here and there (the one i mentioned earlier being a case in point).
TheDarkUrge
Educated
- Joined
- Aug 21, 2023
- Messages
- 232
The Grand Inquisitor in the game is a bastardization of the one in The Brothers Karamazov which is definitely not a cynical book. That's why it feels bad. Sawyer is a hack and tried to emulate one of the best writers in the world and made some hideous frankenstein failed imitation.
It's a shame because I really liked the game until it was "confirmed" gods were fake. I think it would have been fine if it was open ended, maybe it turns out to be in POE2, but I just instantly stopped caring about the game after that machine scene
luj1
You're all shills
What level of lore tho?
Reading about the distant past, gods and that shit... okay maybe (I liked when they blew up that god with a bomb)
But encountering lore during gameplay, all the races, creatures, naming conventions, etc..... all is ripped off from somewhere quite blatantly... it's very boring and banal
luj1
You're all shills
oh yeah... and the central part of lore (a "doomed" world where people are born without souls) is very poorly implemented... I never had this feeling while playing the game, it felt like generic tolkinesque fantasy
ColonelMace
Educated
I consider the lore of the game to be everything that supports the setting and events of said game.
It's the immediate backstory of the Dyrwood which I find good, ie. the conflict with Readceras and the blowing up of Eothas. I think its delivery in game pretty terrible though (with some exceptions, and I suspect the Godhammer seems more compelling simply because Durance delivers his story about it in a most endearing fashion).
If every character was on Durance level, the whole setting would feel a lot more immersive, simply because its inhabitants would read and sound as they actually lived through that shit.
It's just not the case for most of the characters. Even Eder, who's above average for PoE, didn't give much depth to the Saint's War (despite it being its very purpose).
luj1
You're all shills
The problem is that even if every companion were a masterpiece, you would still have to sit through banal shite such as fampyr = vampire and ghul = ghoul... or obvious Welsh/Gaelic naming conventions which are boring af (also godlikes are literally a copy paste of planetouched from DnD)
you had games with good lore before companions existed you know... they can help but are in no way essential to good lore at all
ColonelMace
Educated
who cares
luj1
You're all shills
well then Idk why you want to talk about good folklore at all...
In theory I should agree with you, but I actually found the gods being fake in these games pretty cool, not in an "Atheist" way, but rather in the way that they seem like the kinds of "ultimate superheroes at the edge of the universe" that you'd get in some of the epic crossover series in DC and Marvel, or by Grant Morrison or whatever.
Particularly the bickering and bantering they do, reminds me of a team of old superheroes from a modern graphic novel, who've taken it on themselves to make a great sacrifice for the benefit of others, and who've known each other for so long that they both love and hate each other.
I dunno if that's intentional (maybe Sawyer & Co did intend to make some dorky atheist statement), but they really have that flavour to me, that's how they are in my headcanon while I'm playing the game, and it makes the whole setup kinda cool. (Plus also, there are some hints that there are "real gods" around anyway.)
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