2015’s Pillars of Eternity is a love letter to the Baldur’s Gate school of classic isometric RPG, presented in the classic sword-and-sorcery style: a dark and thought-provoking adventure with elves, dwarves, plate mail, and fireballs. Deadfire, on the other hand, strikes a bold contrast and ditches most of these tropes for a less common style. By minimizing castles and forests in favor of a beautiful ocean and boats, and the sword-and-shield aesthetic for sabers and blunderbusses, Deadfire’s 40-hour campaign almost feels like it takes place in a completely different world from the original despite the fact that it stars the same Watcher of Caed Nua character we originally played as.
You can even import your old save file or simulate one with a text-based Mass Effect-style quiz that gives you the character history you want (not necessarily the one you deserve). The consequences of certain major decisions in the original are very acutely felt in Deadfire, starting with the very first conversation as the gods themselves offer an accounting of your character’s past actions.
Gone is the static, painted overworld of the first Pillars, replaced instead by an atmospheric open ocean map upon which you sail your customizable ship freely from island to island and quest to quest. This interactive overworld is littered with scripted events and treasures to find, springs crew interactions on you at random. You can also be attacked by pirates, or privateers from rival factions, though the turn-based naval battles are so basic as to feel shoehorned in and not much fun. Those lengthy interruptions made sailing times stretch on longer than I’d like, and the expensive upgrades, like new sails for my ship, barely made a perceptible difference when it came to outrunning threats.
The main story of the voyage you embark upon in Deadfire is similarly prone to moments of feeling rudderless. You’re on a quest to chase down the newly revived god of light and retrieve your soul, something you’re given little incentive to do beyond simply being told it is necessary. The plot waits far too long to add enough context to your chase to give substantial motivation for partaking in it, considering you seem to be getting by just fine without. Fast progress, and the answer to the all-important question of “why is this important,” are gated behind enemies and areas so challenging that they demand you and your party be of a certain level that is usually far beyond where you currently are when you first encounter them.
However, that need to get stronger drove me to pursue the sidequests and tertiary plots, and this is where the writing of Deadfire truly began to shine. The main plot is surrounded by the intriguing and thoughtful open-world flavor of a region entering the crucible of historical change. At first, it was the tempting XP rewards that compelled me to seek out and explore the different islands, but after spending time among their people, appreciating the distinctive architecture of each village, learning about their different cultures, and hearing about their visions for the future of the diverse island chain, I found myself drawn into and invested in these small local problems much more than I was with the big one looming over my head.
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Obsidian’s writers seem to have gone out of their way to deny us moral certainty and create meaningful decisions, because matter who you side with some people will benefit and some will get hurt. This hits even harder when you’re exposed to the consequences of your choices first-hand. The existence of the Huana cast system isn’t an simply an entry in the codex; it’s a reality for many poor and destitute Aumaua who turn to you for help. The ethically dubious land acquisition of the Vailians isn’t just something heard about in a conversational aside, it’s a problem its victims seek your aid in resolving. Deadfire’s writing of these situations is a sterling example of the “show, don’t tell” maxim. Because I was given the pros and cons of my allegiance with faces, names, and stories, the impact of my decisions was never far from my mind.
Faction quests aren’t the only place to find compelling and complicated situations in the Deadfire Archipelago. While plenty of NPCs are simply background decoration, many residents of this dangerous land are fully voiced and fleshed-out people with pressing tasks and problems stemming from the major events happening around them. Whether it’s reuniting a lost family member with his loved ones or trying to save (or condemn) a poor refugee family seeking a better life, the stories are varied and carry real emotional heft. This is aided in no small part by the tremendous feat of roleplaying immersion Deadfire pulls off; this world, and its people, have long memories, and they interact with you through the lens of a past your character may have had a substantial role in. People I helped early on either showed up later to vouch for me or sang my praises to other characters I hadn’t yet encountered. Something as simple as helping a stranded missionary fix his broken wagon early on had effects that echoed throughout my entire playthrough. A seemingly innocuous conversation about the gods that I had with another individual turned out to be a defining moment for an entire group’s worldview.
Similarly, in typical Obsidian RPG fashion, dialogue choices are heavily influenced by character stats, making which ones you choose to invest in feel like an important choice no matter how you play. My skills list and my character's reputation came up in nearly every interaction, with unique dialogue options available if I was good enough at an activity like diplomacy or sleight of hand, or had a good enough reputation with a certain group or just as an individual, or was from a particular place or race. So deep and varied are these opportunities for diverse roleplaying that they offer tremendous replayability just to see how these experiences might diverge if a totally different Watcher stars in them. At one point, I got out of a situation that seemed destined for conflict because my Watcher possessed a silver tongue and a gift for reading other people. Would a happy ending have instead turned to bloodshed if I played a crueler, more coarse character?
My Watcher became adept at socializing and skullduggery, but his lack of survival skills made him a fish out of water in the uncharted terrain of Deadfire's islands. Party members can lend an assist with skills of their own, but this is usually only enough to get over a hump; it doesn’t fully compensate for a complete lack of competence in any one area. This opened new encounters and outcomes to me and closed others entirely. An encounter with a reclusive tribe of xaurips can either end in a fight, or an amicable parting with some loot. A Watcher who is unable to intimidate a group of thugs into backing down might make a stubborn enemy. Sometimes, it stuck in my craw to see a situation spin out of my control, or end in a way I was desperate to avoid simply because I’d invested in the wrong skills, but this was more than balanced out by the feeling of satisfaction I received from solving an intimidating problem with my core competencies. This is an RPG that’s unafraid to take the character you’ve chosen to build and make you stand by them.
Obsidian’s writers’ talent for writing characters is on full display once again as Deadfire debuts a handful of new party members and carries over a few from the original (assuming they’re still around in your story), all of whom are all extremely well written and developed with complex and often conflicting motivations for tagging along. Returning companion Eder is as charming and sympathetic as ever, resuming his role as the group’s moral compass, and the furry blue brigand Serafen is positively oozing with personality, always ready with one-liner or savage insult. They aren’t going to agree with every decision you make, or with each other. If tensions between party members rise high enough, fights can break out between companions, full-on arguments with “them or me” undertones. I never found myself unable to juggle the personality clashes that arose between my companions, but these conflicts were handled in such a way that I truly felt pressured to closely manage my parties’ relationships with each other, not just with me. I actually felt like the leader of this motley bunch, not because the story simply dictated it, but because I had to participate in the work of keeping a group together.
It was rewarding to see my influence bleed over into my relationships with my companions and then see the changes I had wrought in their worldviews and personalities play out with each other. When one character who possessed a tremendous faith in the gods had a heated religious argument with another companion I’d steered away from their faith in the first Pillars, it struck me that the dialogue choices I clicked had real consequences. It was this exchange that gave me the sense Obsidian’s writers are on the verge of something truly special with writing these characters and fitting them into its stories.
They fall just short in Deadfire, though, with the lack of control afforded to you over the timing of these revelatory moments of character development. Too often, important conversations would begin immediately following another conversation in a way that felt awkward and unrealistic — or, in the worst cases, right after a major fight when the entire party was severely injured and/or in the midst of a dangerous eldritch dungeon, making a confession of growing affection or a heated debate about metaphysical ethics come off as entirely inappropriate, even humorous. I was left painfully aware that, no matter how artfully it was done, the companion relationship system was still reducing my relationships with my party members to a number that existed outside the context of anything that might be going on.
Those dungeons, islands, and luminous other machines sure look pretty, though. Deadfire is a very, very good looking isometric RPG, presenting a gorgeous fusion of 3D and 2D elements to create memorable scenes of a quality you don't often find in games that use this perspective. The monster design is fantastic, from smooth and oily-looking krakens to the gorgeous and varied elemental dragons. The water textures and lighting are some of the best I've seen in isometric RPGs, and the jungles and deserts are so well done that when my companion character complains about sand getting into unmentionable places, I believe them. I was never jarred out of my enjoyment on entering a new area by low texture quality or a graphical hiccup, which is often an issue in similar engines.
Deadfire's pausable real-time combat is its most fun, challenging, and energetic element. Enemy parties and the opponents themselves present almost a puzzle of sorts — a maze of resistances, proficiencies, and damage types that you and your party must navigate in order to effectively counter them. A key tool in doing so is the single best quality-of-life fix that Deadfire introduces to the established Pillars formula: the extensive AI scripting allowed for each character. Reminiscent of the system from Dragon Age: Origins, you can set up a complex list of AI priorities that ensures that your companions and even your own character respond the way you want them to when a given situation arises in a fight. Though combat can always be paused in order to click from character to character and give orders, battles feel much smoother, and are much more fun, when you can count on your priest to deliver timely healing or your wizard to unleash his most devastating spells you’ve been saving for a tight spot, instead of forgetting to perform said actions and watching a winnable battle end in defeat.
Though the scripting does have some notable limitations — I couldn’t figure out a way to script a Cipher to build up enough focus for some of their best optional subclass abilities, which seems like a significant oversight — it adds a new layer of depth to an already smoother, better balanced, and better animated combat system, making each encounter a treat to take on. In many cases, I didn’t mind losing a particularly tough battle because it gave me the chance to make any number of tweaks to strategy, scripting, and loadout in an effort to alter the outcome. Replaying a tough boss battle became less a chore and more of a charm.
The Verdict
Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire improves upon the Pillars of Eternity formula in nearly every way, creating an RPG loaded with both strong combat and important, character-defining choices that frequently have an impact on your numerous and deep side-story adventures. A refreshingly different island setting makes it feel dramatically distinct, though travel can be laborious because of unavoidable and repetitive nautical encounters. From a long list of quality-of-life upgrades to a new and impressive attention on companions and their relationships and an astonishing commitment to immersive storytelling and roleplaying, this sequel takes a strong step forward past its predecessor and presents exciting possibilities for the genre going forward.
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