SHIP SHAPE

Command a ship and explore exotic islands in Pillars of Eternity II : Deadfire, a deep, rewarding seafaring RPG.

In 2015, Obsidian took the best parts of beloved classic RPGs such as Baldur’s Gate and Planescape: Torment and built one of the best modern RPGs on PC. Pillars of Eternity plundered the genre’s deep combat, rich dialogue and reactive stories, and made its own mark with an incredibly well-realized setting. Now Obsidian is taking us to a new corner of its world: The Deadfire Archipelago, a chain of islands far to the east of the relatively green and pleasant Dyrwood. You are the Watcher, a hero who is either, depending on who you ask, cursed or blessed with the ability to peer into the souls of the dead and talk to them. After the events of the first game you’ve decided to hang up your sword and shield and settle down in the fortress of Caed Nua. But then a giant crystal colossus buried under the castle is possessed by the god Eothas, bursts out of the ground, destroys your home, and leaves you for dead. You survive, of course, thanks to the intervention of a sinister benefactor, and learn that the giant has been spotted stomping across the Deadfire Archipelago. And so you give chase aboard your ship, the Defiant, which dramatically sets the wheels of the plot in motion.

If you didn’t play the first Pillars of Eternity, that’s fine. Deadfire not only neatly summarizes the events of the original game in the intro, but gives you the chance to create a history for your character, essentially simulating an imported save. The sheer number of choices and decisions you can make is daunting, however, which is where Obsidian’s selection of premade histories might come in handy. These let you quickly decide whether your character was benevolent, tyrannical, or something in between. There’s even one history that supposes you got the worst outcome of every quest. And you will know when your history—whether it was created or imported from an old save— affects something in the new game by a symbol that appears next to certain lines of dialogue.

If you’ve played an old school-style RPG before, the fundamentals will be familiar. You move around by pointing and clicking on the isometric map, talking to folk, fighting monsters, and looting dungeons. There are towns and cities and temples and jungles, all stuffed with long quests, interesting characters, and tough moral quandaries to wrestle with. You’ll be swept up in the lives of the people you meet around the Deadfire, from pirates and priests to smugglers and queens. You’ll level up, unlock new abilities, recruit new party members, and find magical items with evocative descriptions. It’s the stuff of dreams for anyone who loves those old Infinity Engine RPGs, although the number of similar games released since Pillars made its debut, be it Divinity or Tides of Numenera, does blunt the nostalgic edge somewhat.

But what makes this sequel different from other RPGs inspired by Infinity Engine is the focus on seafaring. Traveling between the islands of the Deadfire, which is huge, requires a ship. And to run a ship you need a crew, which is where the nautical management aspect of the game comes in. As you sail around the map your crew—who can be hired from taverns or met while adventuring—will drain your food and water resources. And the quality of what you provide them will affect their morale and performance in battle. Give them water and hardtack, a miserable long-lasting biscuit notorious in the Age of Sail, and you might have a mutiny on your hands. But ply them with rum and fresh fruit (which is much more expensive, naturally), and they’ll love you.

If you didn’t play the first Pillars of Eternity, that’s fine

TROUBLE AT SEA

There are other issues to deal with too, including injuries, pirates who want to steal your ship, and drama such as fights and arguments breaking out among the crew. This adds a nice layer of interaction and roleplaying to journeying between locations, which is normally quite uneventful in these games bar a few bandit ambushes. The problem is that the actual act of sailing isn’t very compelling. You move around the disappointingly static map simply by clicking, and I never really bought into the illusion that I was at the helm of a ship battling the elements. Keeping the galley stocked and the crew happy becomes a routine, and leaves the nautical portions of the game feeling a bit gimmicky.

Ship combat is more successful. It’s turn-based and takes place on a separate screen with a dedicated interface. A circle shows you which way your ship is facing relative to the enemy, and you command your crew by selecting actions from a menu. You

Deadfire isn’t afraid to set you free and let you carve your own path

can use a turn to reposition your ship, speed up to get closer to the enemy, slow down to create some distance, or fire your weapons. Your cannons are only effective at specific ranges, though, which makes good positioning vital. A sketchy illustration showing the enemy ship, its distance, and its current level of damage is an at-a-glance way to see how the battle is going. Your crew can get injured during ship combat too, and losing someone important like a helmsman or surgeon to cannon fire can seriously limit your effectiveness in battle.

The Defiant can be heavily customized to make surviving these encounters more likely, with faster sails, a stronger hull, and more powerful cannons among the upgrades you can buy. Or you can buy a whole new ship altogether if you have a few thousand coppers to spare, but a bigger ship means more crew, more food, more booze, and more wages, so it’s a purchase you should save until you have more money to invest. If trading cannon balls from afar isn’t your thing, however, you can always charge the enemy at full speed and board their ship. Here the game switches to the familiar isometric view and you fight the crew using regular combat, leaping across to their deck like a classic Hollywood swashbuckler. When you defeat a ship your crew gets a big morale boost, and you can salvage supplies from the wreckage, choosing whether to share the money with the crew or keep it all to yourself. Remember, nobody likes a selfish captain.

Dock the Defiant at one of the many islands littering the archipelago and the wind really hits Deadfire’s sails. When the game slips back into its comfy old roleplaying boots it’s among Obsidian’s finest work. The Dyrwood was a wonderfully drawn setting, dripping with culture and history, but the Deadfire Archipelago is even more fascinating and alien. There’s a whole new world to discover out there: Of strange rites and rituals, water-shaping priests, ancient sea dragons, and centuries of conquest and division. I loved drinking it all in through long conversations, books, and inscriptions, eager to learn as much as I could about the history of this absurdly rich setting. Although, admittedly, the vast quantities of lore being constantly hurled at you can be a little overwhelming at times.

WATER WORLD

The Deadfire is a wilder, more lawless place than the Dyrwood, with uncharted islands untouched by civilization and pirates stalking the waterways. But you arrive there in a period of change, with foreign factions encroaching on the archipelago, looking for ways to exploit it. Like some of the best fantasy, Pillars mirrors our own history, and it’s clear the turmoil in the Deadfire is an analogue of the colonization of the Pacific. Factions include the native Huana, whose way of life and ancient culture is being threatened by the arrival of groups like the Vailian Trading Company. And as the Watcher, you can decide whose side you’re on—if you want to pick a side at all. Some Huana welcome these outsiders, while others despise them, and this makes for some interesting, complex drama.

BIG CITY

The Deadfire isn’t all remote villages and trading outposts. Neketaka, its largest city, is the game’s equivalent of Athkatla from Baldur’s Gate II or Torment’s Sigil: a massive urban sprawl split into unique districts and brimming with quests, conversations, and distractions. It’s also the finest showcase of Obsidian’s beautiful background art, with intricate architecture reflecting the culture and customs of the region. Incidentally, Deadfire is a much prettier game that the original, with vastly improved character models and real-time lighting that makes its environments feel much more dynamic and alive. It still has that distinctive Infinity Engine aesthetic, but everything just feels more solid and refined.

While your main goal is hunting Eothas, Deadfire isn’t afraid to set you free and let you carve your own path through the archipelago. When the prologue is over you can sail pretty much anywhere, and there’s a lot to find out there, including a seemingly neverending parade of quests. At the 20-hour point, my quest log was overflowing with tasks. It’s one of those games where you’ll talk to some random, innocuous NPC loitering in the corner of a tavern, and the next thing you know you’re fighting a sinister cult in the belly of an ancient, sunken pyramid on a remote desert island. There are plenty of quests with lower stakes too, including helping a theatre director cast a play and finding a way to make a suffering pirate puke up a gemstone he swallowed in a moment of panic. The variety is impressive, and you’re never, ever short of things to do, both grand and menial.

With questing, inevitably, comes fighting. Deadfire uses a classic real-time-with-pause combat system, and how involved you are is up to you. You can turn party AI on and let

the computer decide which spells and skills your party members use. Or you can take control of them individually, with fine, granular control over everything they do. On harder difficulty settings, the latter tactic is essential. This is a tough game, and you’ll need to make use of your party’s huge array of buffs, debuffs, spells, and attacks to survive encounters with powerful enemies. But if you’re only here for the story, you can knock the difficulty down a few notches and breeze through most battles with a single click. This freedom to customize your experience is very much in the spirit of classic RPGs, and you can even change the game’s difficulty on the fly if you need a break or want more of a challenge.

FINE TUNE

The customization options don’t end there. You can fine-tune how the auto-pause works, selecting which events will trigger it—from the start of a fight to encountering a trap, which is handy for avoiding accidental stumbles into tripwires and mines. You can increase the loot radius so you spend less time plundering dead enemies, turn off sea motion if it’s making you feel queasy, and choose from six different interface layouts. Obsidian’s dedication to making sure you have exactly the experience you want is one of its most admirable traits as a studio, and Deadfire is perhaps the most effective realization of that goal to date. And masochists will be glad to hear that Path of the Damned returns, an extreme difficulty mode with smarter, more aggressive enemies thrown at you in great swathes.

As well as returning characters, including easygoing soldier-turned-farmer Edér, dutiful elven wizard Aloth, and godlike paladin Pallegina, there are some new faces to adventure with in Deadfire. Maia Rua is an aumaua ranger accompanied by a red-streaked bird of prey named Ishiza, and she’s a mean shot with a rifle. Xoti is a priest who worships Gaun, an aspect of Eothas, and uses a strange, magical lantern to capture aimless souls. Tekehu is a marine godlike chanter. And Serafen is a wry, wise orlan sailor loyal to a pirate faction called the Príncipi Sen Patrena, and my favorite of the lot. They’re an interesting bunch, and watching their relationships develop over time, both with the Watcher and each other, is entertaining. And yes, you can now romance certain party members if that floats your galleon.

You also have to consider the personalities of your companions, who will react positively or negatively to certain actions. Xoti, for example, might not look kindly upon you showing any anti-religious sentiment. And if you do something that harms the Príncipi Sen Patrena, Serafen won’t be pleased. You can keep track of what each person thinks of you on your character sheet, as well as your disposition, which is shaped through the way you talk to people and handle certain situations. Shady, rational, passionate, honest, aggressive, stoic, and diplomatic are just a few of the personality traits you can pick up, and people will react accordingly. This makes for some deep roleplaying, allowing you to create a character with a nuanced personality that has an effect on dialogue and how people perceive you, opening up and closing off opportunities.

When Serafen joins your crew, he reveals the location of a pirate leader who you have a special interest in killing. The cur is holed up in a place called Fort Deadlight, and it’s here where one of Deadfire’s best quests takes place. If you’re feeling brave you can fight your way through the fort, but it’s much more fun to slip in undetected and blend in with the other pirates there. Talking to them reveals clues about your target’s routine, his weaknesses, and suddenly you’re playing a Hitman level. There are numerous ways to locate and kill him, and the sprawling, maze-like fort is filled with alternate routes, hidden paths, and NPCs. It’s a brilliantly designed quest, but not quite as reactive as I’d have liked. When guards see through your ruse they blow a horn and alert the target, so I thought I’d pickpocket the horn to stop them. But even when I did, they produced one out of nowhere and blew it anyway. That aside, it’s a superb piece of design.

BIG SHOT

Pillars of Eternity II is another fine RPG from Obsidian, brilliantly showcasing the studio’s knack for strong world-building, intelligent, expressive writing, and varied quest design. It’s a big, deep, wordy RPG in the classic mould, but with enough new ideas to feel like more than just a throwback. The sailing aspect is the only thing I didn’t really engage with, feeling somewhat half-baked compared to the rest of the game. But if it’s a fantasy RPG filled with pages and pages of brilliant, descriptive dialogue you’re after, and a huge, open world to explore, the Deadfire Archipelago delivers all that and then some. We’re more spoiled for choice when it comes to RPGs like this than we were in 2015, which makes Deadfire feel a little less special than the first Pillars of Eternity game. But that’s a minor gripe in light of the fact that this is another great game from one of the best studios in the business, offering hundreds of hours of quality roleplaying.

The sailing aspect is the only thing I didn’t really engage with