PoE. Edgar Allen PoE. Pea, Pie, PoE. Oh, hi there – you’ve just caught me trying out the acronym that’s going to sustain dedicated RPG forums for the next decade. Eternity is no longer a Project – a pipe dream, a pitch to resurrect the style and form of Baldur’s Gate from many of the men and women who developed it. It’s now a real game, with a title like those found on on four-disc boxes in the mid ‘90s (beneath an ‘AD&D’ header, of course): Pillars of Eternity.
The name seems flexible enough by design that Obsidian can apply it to a string of sequels: Shadows of Eternity, Burrows of Eternity, Eternity Goes to the Shops, etc. Sensible.
The trailer is flint and steel to the coals of nostalgia. Its character portraits have the vim and character about them that Icewind Dale’s did; the world map has the same vaguery of scale about it that Black Isle’s used to; and the game on the ground is the Infinity Engine reborn, for better or worse, replete with the spiders, party formations, and unmistakable magic missiles:
I said “for better or worse” up there, despite the tingling sensation in my nerve endings that research suggests indicates happiness. Because although for many Eternity will be exactly what’s been missing from contemporary RPGs, this will the point of divergence: where everyone else begins to realise Obsidian’s latest might be a little too arcane, in all senses of the word, for them.
Do you think it’ll be for you?
Thanks, VG247.