![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Afterward, the kid ran off, and I never really heard anything about him again until the game’s epilogue. I ended up having to chase down the boat Eder’s not-son was on, confront him before the cult leader convinced him to kill himself, and hear him tearfully explain that he was doing this because he felt that, by dying, his mom had abandoned him. Worse, the kid decided to join a death cult whose members planned to sacrifice themselves to Eothas. Then it turned out that the kid didn’t belong to Eder, and-to complicate matters further-that his mom had died. It’s a decidedly un-epic way for an epic fantasy game to approach the idea of fatherhood, and it really took me by surprise. He proceeds to go through an arc of being worried, then kind of excited about the prospect of being a father. Then he finds out that she had a son, and apparently begins to wonder if the child is his. Initially, he wants to make sure she’s OK, given that there’s a mountain-sized titan who slurps up souls as naturally as we breathe on the loose. In Pillars II, his personal quest involves searching for a woman he was involved with back in the day. But other side stories, including many of the companion quests, ground to a halt just when things were getting good.įor example, there’s the story of Eder, a farmer-turned-fighter who was also a companion in the first Pillars of Eternity. Some, like the exploding pirate harpsichord and spider-faced merchant quests, revealed layers: alternate routes on top of alternate routes and surprising, enigmatic characters. However, as I passed the 50-hour mark and started to deliberately make real headway in the main quest, I realized that many of Pillars II’s high points were fairly short-lived. I can name so many characters and storylines that dazzled me during the game’s earlier hours: the aging crime boss caught between the plight of his people and his own ambitions the jerk-off high-ranking pirate I blew up by throwing a rager of a party and wiring his harpsichord to explode the party member I got to romance while his mom-who, by the way, was a god-said he deserved better the legendary dragon who was supposed to be a boss fight, but who I convinced to book it when apocalyptic god Eothas showed up the black market merchant with a spider’s face who respected that I let him read my mind and uncover a plot to murder him (a plot in which I happened to be complicit). Neketaka is a generously stuffed sandwich of intrigue, and it’s just one island in a sea that’s chock full of them. (One quest lets you make a mess of his posh palace, if you so choose-but there are consequences.) Each area is full of mini-stories that often feed into larger arcs involving the native Huana people, foreign interlopers trying to reshape Deadfire in their image, and the push and pull between those forces. In between them, there’s a locale dedicated to both science and religion, as well as my personal favorite, Periki’s Overlook, which is home to a popular bathhouse that serves as a secret entrance to the manor of a world-renowned asshole archmage named Arkemyr. Pillars II’s biggest hub city, Neketaka, is a model RPG hub city, with multiple, varied districts like the palace-dominated Serpent’s Crown and the destitute Gullet nearby. It took me tens of hours to really recognize this fact, because at first, I was happy to just sail around, do quests, and inhabit the game’s lively, well-realized world. ![]()
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