No sooner have I found a way to convince the chief snake person of my unique soul-seeing powers as a Watcher than I am touching the mountainous glowing crystal he was guarding and talking with a god, the one everyone is after – the one who has occupied a titan previously buried under my castle and is now crashing across the Deadfire Archipelago on some unknown mission, sucking the souls of thousands of people as he goes. What is it he wants?
Pillars of Eternity 2: DeadfireDeveloper: Obsidian EntertainmentPublisher: Versus EvilFormat: Played on PCAvailability: Out now on PC, Mac, Linux, and coming to PS4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch later in 2018
My feet barely touch the deck of my ship before I’m whisked away again by the other gods, a strange bunch, who want to know what their trampling brother is up to. And they’re not the only ones. I need to sail my report back to the queen of this Caribbean collection of islands to fill her in, lest her many rival powers discover a weakness they can exploit for further gain. I’m like the piggy in the cosmic, and not-so-cosmic, middle – everyone wants a piece of me. Then as if to compound the issue, I’m attacked by pirates. Twice.
To say there’s a lot going on in Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire would be an understatement. By taking the sequel to sea, Obsidian has found not only a sunny and ebullient new setting – refreshingly based in a non-white, non-human culture – but a way to spread the whole world out. There’s an ocean’s worth of places to explore, and sealing them on all sides by the sea makes these places discrete little pockets of adventure with their own styles, stories and themes.
What’s so marvellous about the way Pillars of Eternity 2 handles the quantity is the way it breaks proceedings up and varies them. Take the string of events outlined above: getting to the snake chief involved lots of typical RPG battling and exploration, but talking to the gods happened via a kind of storybook mechanic combining narrative and illustration. Naval warfare is handled in a similar way. Instead of pushing little boats around I instead choose orders listed on a page of a book – full speed ahead, turn to port, fire cannons, etc. Meanwhile drums thump, sailors shout and cannons roar – it’s a story brought to life.