Game:

Pillars of Eternity (2015)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 35:59

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Let's Play Pillars of Eternity [56] - The Hermit of Hadret House

More gameplay from the one and only Pillars of Eternity. And by gameplay, I of course mean narrative progression because this episode covers the climax and conclusion of the main story of Pillars of Eternity. It's a pretty great break from the toil of killing all of the world's creatures in the name of being a Watcher.

Anyway, Pillars of Eternity has been leading up to this hearing on animancy because Thaos and The Leaden Key seem to dislike it for some reason. Everyone else is also pissed off because of the hollowborn epidemic and are looking for someone to blame. As we found out from our sneakings and killings in Pillars of Eternity's main story up to this point, The Leaden Key has been silently encouraging this kind of behaviour. And only one person can stop them. The Hermit of Hadret House. You thought I was going to say DingleBingle didn't you, but no, this is about more than just the main character. It's about old Lady Webb and her Dunryd Row agents who are the only intelligence network in the world capable of hearing even the slightest bit about Thaos's doings.

We talking to her, and after a long and expository dialogue (at least it had voice acting), we are told to go to the animancy hearing and convince Duc Aevar that the animancers are innocent. To be honest, it seems like the only major faction in Defiance Bay (besides The Leaden Key, who's not at the trail) who want animancy abolished are the Dozens. Seems like the Doemenels and the Knights of the Crucible and Dunryd Row and the animancers themselves all approve of animancy. I guess it's possible that the people of Defiance Bay are scared of animancy. Although Pillars of Eternity is not an 11/10 on the cynicism scale like some games (looking at you, Age of Decadence), it can still be pretty cynical at times. In fact, I think the writing and plot in Pillars of Eternity it best when it is a little grim.

That's why I like how the story in Pillars of Eternity (at least the Defiance Bay part) implies that the people lack the knowledge to make the decisions that are best for them, and that they need someone-- a Duc, a Knight, a Lord, a Dozen, a Cipher, or indeed a Watcher-- to tell them what is right and what is wrong. It's a very sad way of thinking, but I think it makes a certain degree of sense in a setting like that of Pillars of Eternity where bad things are happening and the most intelligent people in the world are working furiously to stop it, but cannot. The common man reacts by blaming those people because his son was killed by a cuthroat who dumped the boy's body into the harbour, and his daughter was born soulless, dead before she even lived, but still alive enough that killing her would be to kill a child, so he needs someone to take responsibility because that's how these things have always worked before in the system that his self-styled betters have set up.

And look at this. I am a guy who mostly doesn't care about the whole lit-crit side of game critique, and prefers to focus on the mechanics and the gameplay. Yet here I am pontificating about Pillar's of Eternity's narrative themes and the ideas it evokes through its writing. Pretty solid stuff.

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