Story Corner - Pillars of Eternity

Welcome to the first of hopefully many installments, in light of the Steam sale and for it's own special place in my heart I figured I'd bring you a piece about a more modern RPG. Pillars of Eternity is currently my favorite game in recent memory partly for nostalgia and partly for the interesting main thread binding it's story together.

A Look at the Lore

Now Pillars of Eternity may be a modern game but it's story is very reminiscent of the old Unity RPGs although mostly the Baldur's Gate series. At the very start of the game it casts you as a typical inhabitant of this world, known as Eora, and this is shown very clearly in your first encounters where if you aren't careful you can lose a good chunk of your health. This changes suddenly when you encounter a biawac, also known as a Soulstorm, that should have ripped your soul out but thanks to either dumb luck or the interference of a nearby Adra* spire instead just tore it a little bit enough for the experiences of your past lives to flood into you opening your eyes to the spiritual. This actually brings up one of my favorite parts of lore in Pillars and that is the fact reincarnation is the order of the day. Upon death you are released back into what is functionally a big pool of souls and when another person is born one of those is put into the body at random. This brings up a whole host of questions  such as are people inherently good/evil, is it deja vu or our past lives trying to tell us something and many more. Some of these questions are answered through the main story line others are found through lore collections be they books or bestiary entries.

As the story stands your motivation prior to becoming the grown up murder-hobo version of the kid from The Sixth Sense was to reach this frontier town as the lord of the town was offering pardons and land to all settlers. This generous offer comes about thanks to a curse commonly known as Waidwen's Legacy that seems to prevent infants being born with a soul leaving them functionally inanimate. Through the investigation of this beginning story you are introduced to some peculiar side effects of having your soul violated such as being able to look into a person's past lives and interacting with the lingering essence of the dead. This leads you to discovering half of the main story in that you are slowly losing your mind, being woken by night terrors and and often times losing track of your surroundings when communing with souls. This ties, thankfully neatly, into the second half which is finding and confronting the cultists who summoned the soulstorm that did this to you.

As the story progresses you encounter and acquire a host of unique companions who have a wealth of lore hidden throughout their random conversations and questlines. These range from the interesting insights into Sagani's culture to the terrifying knowledge of what exactly it takes to kill a living god in the form of the Godhammer. These offer a look into some of the civilizations that are not represented physically in game and also some concepts not discussed in books or quests and as such I'd suggest avoiding the custom Adventurers if you truly want the most in-depth look into Pillars.

Minor Spoilers Ahead!

Now where the story really starts picking up is towards the end of the second act where you learn the identity of the cultist who turned you into a Watcher* what exactly he's capable of and the scope of his involvement in the world. The order he founded known as the Leaden Key has been around for centuries learning the secrets of the soul machinery scattered across the land and their end game seems to be culminating in this era as this is the most active they've been in recorded history. This is revealed by a character known as Lady Webb who knew their leader personally for a time back in the fledgling days of his organization when he was coming to grasps with his power. The endgame for the Leaden Key was to bring back their Goddess Woedica, because apparently the gods in Pillars are a little flimsy, using the power of the souls stolen from newborns. You however interrupt this and are given the choice of deciding what to do with the souls ranging from doing exactly what the Leaden key wanted to simply tearing the souls apart weakening the Wheel of Souls. As the climax comes about, feeling very much like the Throne of Bhaal climax, and the ending rolls you are treated to a mix of Baldur's Gate and Dragon Age endings giving you, hopefully, satisfying insights into what your actions wrought and how the world and your companions dealt with them. To me it was a satisfying way to end my 40 odd hour trip through Eora learning that even what I thought were minor side quests had lasting effects on what would happen in this world.

I apologize for ending that on such a vague note but to cover the ending would take so much more space as their are nearly twenty variables to the final cutscene. Well that andthe trip itself is just as twisted with companion betrayal and character choice and ruining some of the surprises just feels rude to me.

Key Terms

*Adra - An opaque crystal-like stone with a natural link to souls able to store, distort and destroy souls with the proper know how.

* Watcher - One who has been awakened to the flow of souls, these individuals are sought for many purposes often by communing with whatever shreds of a soul remain be it murder victims or simply unfinished business.