Fiction for Existential Nihilists: Pillars of Eternity

[feotakahari]

The cycle of life and death has been broken. The souls of the dead vanish, and the living are born hollow and empty. Society decays without a new generation, while the survivors squabble over who or what caused this. But by chance or fate, you may have stumbled across the real culprit …

Pillars of Eternity is the best American-made roleplaying game I’ve ever played. Combat and character progression are balanced and satisfying, the main characters are lovable even when their flaws are on full display, and you’re given a wide variety of options to solve each challenge as you see fit. It’s also remarkably self-consistent for a game made by a large company, with a message that’s illustrated again and again in a wide variety of different contexts.

The first idea behind PoE is that there’s no absolute arbiter of good and evil. Slice your way through a sacrificial cult, and they’ll regard you as a heinous villain, while their enemies will respect you as a hero. Threatening a merchant for overcharging will get you a reputation for aggression, but so will killing a corrupt noble, and both will impress some people and alienate others. A choice that others see as selfless may be pointless or even cruel, and sometimes doing what feels like the right thing will make others see you as a liar or a fool.

The second idea is that even without an arbiter, you still have to make choices, and those choices will have consequences you’ll have to live with. Most of the conflicts in this game are between people who view themselves as decent folks, and you’re frequently given the option to help either, neither, or try to find a compromise. But what balance do you strike when selfishness, bigotry, fanaticism, or desperation come into play? Who needs your help most, or deserves your help most, or whatever metric you want to use? For that matter, who are you even capable of helping? If you want to be a good person, then what does “good” mean to you? If you want to be a hero, then what exactly does a hero do? And there’s always the risk that you may not know everything, and some things may not turn out like you plan. There are a few traps you can easily fall into if you only think about what you want and what you value, rather than what your actions are doing to the people around you.

PoE has a very well-thought-out world that goes beyond what “mature” usually means in video games. Because women don’t want to give birth to soulless children, the black market charges extortionate prices for birth control. Because nobles need to ensure the continuation of their lines, they try desperate, sometimes horrible methods to ensure their children will be healthy. There’s a sense that real people would actually do these things if they were in these situations, and that minimizes shock value and makes it easier to think about the issues in play. (For better or worse, this is definitely not Tales of Maj’eyal.)

If I have one complaint about this game, it’s that it hammers the “only you can decide” idea a little too hard. Organized religion takes a particularly harsh drubbing, treated mainly as a way to get people to stop thinking for themselves and follow rules set by others. I would have liked to see more done with the idea of positive role models who aren’t selfish or corrupt. Still, it brings up enough interesting questions that I can’t fault it too much for stumbling at the answers.

P.S. Also, this game has a midwife as one of the main characters. And it actually digs into the business of midwifery, the purpose a midwife serves, and all sorts of other things I never expected to see outside a feminist essay. Holy crap.