Wednesday, 5 November 2025

Replaying Pillars of Eternity for the second time this year

Third playthrough, all three in the same year. Every time I play the Pillars games I can't decide which one I like the best. When I playe PoE1 I feel like that's the best one, then I play PoE2 and I feel like that's the best one. Both are just too good. 

This time I decided to check out mods, but most of the stuff on Nexus relates to character portraits which I don't really care about. I did get an achievement enabler though and set out to complete the game on Path of the Damned difficulty with console commands as backup in case things got too hairy. The dragons were mad annoying on PotD though... The Llengrath fight took AGES

Just like last time, Aloth didn't leave my party even once. This time, however, I tried really hard to get to know Hiravias better. I still think he's crude and uncouth, but okay, he may be growing on me. Curiously I struggled with Durance's quest this time. It just wouldn't progress no matter how many times I went through his dialogue tree and rested after I completed each of the subquests given by Council of Stars. Then suddenly it just did and I have no idea what made it click. I had a similar issue with Grieving Mother: the prompt where she falls into trance after a rest just wouldn't pop, until suddenly it did. Which was after Durance's thing had popped. idk... I didn't have either of these issues on my first two playthroughs this year. 

There's always such a homey feeling going through Act 1 and 2: the prologue, the wilderness, Raedric's Hold, Caed Nua, Dyrford and Defiance Bay, like all of these places just make me feel nostalgic and content and somehow homesick all at once. I think it's because there's less sense of urgency in Act 1 and 2. Yeah you have your objective and you'd prefer to do it before you go mad, but you have to find out where to look first. So you can set your own pace, because you can't rush finding things out. Then Act 3 comes along and even if you, from a gameplay perspective, are still in charge of the pace and can do whatever you like in whatever order you like, there's suddenly a sense of urgency. Now you know where you're going and who you're after. Once Act 3 starts I always start to feel a little stressed so I leave the Dyrwood and fuck off to The White March for a while, in an attempt to recapture the feeling of the early game (and completely failing, I'm still stressed).

Getting to Act 3 comes with a sense of woe as well, because I never want this game to end, and once Act 3 begins that end is just around the corner. 

I'm still discovering pieces of the lore as I go (mainly from dialogue and events because I suck at reading books in-game), but the more I find out the more fascinating it becomes. I'm still intrigued by the whole souls exist as quantifiable, measurable, and tangible things, and the entire world is influenced by this fact. It's fascinating and intriguing, and after PoE2 and Avowed I can't wait to see where they go with it, and I really, really, really want need a Pillars of Eternity 3. Pretty please? I don't need it to be my Watcher, just a PoE3. 

No comments:

Post a Comment

What's the first thought in your head after reading this? Let me know!