14 DAY TRIAL // Pillars of Eternity starts, as any successor to Baldur's Gate worth its salt, with a character creation system, and my advice to any gamer who gets the new title from Obsidian is to spend at least half an hour perusing its options, clicking next and back alternatively, before making the final choices for their protagonist.
The first obstacle players will face is represented by races, some of which are familiar and some entirely new, linked to the history of the universe that the developers have created.
For my first campaign, I went with a human, but I am very interested in seeing how people react to an aumauma or a godlike. The latter are creatures that are part of other races but have been given a spark of divinity before they were born.
For each race, gamers will have to deal with subtypes and with a choice related to the region of the world where they hail from, both designed to add some bonuses.
Then there are the classes, 11 in total, each of them with its own set of options, including five deities for priests and five potential allegiances for the paladins.
I suspect that entire hours would be required to make a truly informed choice for a first playthrough, so I chose a Paladin, who belongs to the Goldpact.
Character stats are different but familiar
Once the preliminaries are done, gamers will have to allocate points for the six core character attributes: Might, Constitution, Dexterity, Perception, Intellect, and Resolve.
Even for those that sound familiar, the effects are very different from what we saw in Dungeons & Dragons, and again gamers are well served by reading a little about them.
Pillars of Eternity makes a clear distinction between health, which is only recovered by resting and a limited number of talents, and endurance, which is the short-term ability to take part in an encounter.
For a Paladin, for example, Resolve and Perception are marked as the most important characteristics, with Might designated as secondary.
Obsidian has obviously put a lot of work into its system, although for newcomers it will seem a little opaque, but this cannot limit the joy linked to the character creation process from Pillars of Eternity and the variety that it offers.
