History VideoGame / PillarsOfEternity

* InfinityPlusOneSword: St. Ydwen's Redeemer is a soulbound greatsword dropped by a random mook outside Durgan's Battery. Soulbound weapons evolve as you fulfill various conditions, but even in its base form the Redeemer has a 25% chance of instantly destroying Vessel-type enemies on contact. [[spoiler: BonusBoss Concelhaut is a Vessel. So are the massive Eyeless who appear at the end of the White March storyline, and the giant Guardians of Woedica that Thaos animates in the final battle.]]

* BonusBoss:
** A number of them in the Endless Paths. [[spoiler: Most prominent among them is the Adra Dragon, the final boss of the dungeon, and the toughest boss in the game. [[BraggingRightsReward Killing her allows you to loot its hoard of rare items, as well as enchant one set of armor to Superb quality.]]]]
** "The White March Part I" adds the legendary mage Concelhaut as well as an Alpine Dragon.
** "The White March Part II" adds the Menace of Mowrghek Ien, [[spoiler:the mage Llengrath and her two dragon allies.]]

** Being a Watcher can also considered this. Maerwald went insane due to the guilt caused by being able to clearly see the atrocities he commited in his past lives and Adaryc clearly mentions hating it. The player character can go along with it, even claiming that their motivation for finding Thaos is to try get rid of this condition, or [[DefiedTrope defy]] it and claim that it's a blessing.

** The "Buried Secrets" is supposed to be completed about at the moment you arrive to Gilded Vale, since some dialogues don't make sense if you do it after advancing enough in the game. One dialog with a dead spirit provides the option to ask you party something like "are you seeing this, too?" (the Watcher and their companions get eventually used to those visions). Also, at the end of the quest, you can [[spoiler:threaten the quest giver to denounce him to Lord Raedric, even if you completed Buried Secrets after killing Raedric.]]

* ForDoomTheBellTolls: Very early in the game, a third toll of a bell bad news. It is only later as you get involved with the story that you learn [[spoiler: that the local ruler's wife gave birth to a Hollowborn, and he killed her, having gone mad with grief.]]

* FinalDeathMode: In the Expert mode, when characters die (have their Health reduced to 0) in combat, they are gone for good.

* EarlyGameHell: While the game is more forgiving than the original ''VideoGame/BaldursGate'', Act I can be more than a little tough for new players. Your characters are rather frail, you don't have a decent equipment yet, you can cast only so many spells before you need to rest, just traveling between areas can be a problem since some of your characters may not have a single point in Athletics and, as a result, will suffer from a major debuff because they are exhausted just from traveling from one area to the other (leading you to use camping supplies, which are sparse and relatively costly at this point of the game), and, most of all, you will encounter ghost-type enemies, which deal rather high endurance damages, can stun you with each attack ''and'' can teleport directly on your most frail characters (and there are a mandatory encounter in Od Nua, a dungeon you must complete in order to gain access to the rest of the map and begin Act II).

* BladeOnAStick: One-handed spears and two-handed pikes are available as weapons.

** Sagani, a boreal dwarf ranger from the [[NorthIsColdSouthIsHot icy, far southern]] island of Naasitaq, who comes to you dressed in [[BareYourMidriff midriff-baring]] furs and hides.

* NoPronunciationGuide:
** If you know enough Italian to know that a double-"c" or "ch" is pronounced with a hard K sound unless it's followed by an E or and I (in which case it's pronounced like the "ch" in chair) and can remember that a Mayan X (as in Ixamitl) is pronounced "sh" as in share, you shouldn't have much trouble with most of the foreign languages. The common tongue of Aedyran, on the other hand?
** Aedyran is seemingly based on a combination of Old English, Gaelic, and Norse, but this trope is actually averted with an in-game book called ''Aedyran Dialects''. You're gonna need it. An excerpt:
--->''Ea creates an "ey-ah" sound that sounds like the colloquial salutation "heya!"''\\
''Eo sounds like "ey-oh" - this sound is still used in the modern word "Eora."''\\
''Ey is pronounced as "ey-ee" such as in "wraith."''\\
''Ue and ü both create long "oo" sounds, as in "loop."''\\
''Y sounds like a "ee" sounds as in "bee."''\\
''Gj sounds like the consonant "y" as in "you."''\\
''Sc sounds like sh, so you'd pronounce scop like "shop."''\\
''Cg sounds like the "dge" end of a word like "hedge."''
** Not listed: the Ae in Raedric, Wael, and Skaen is pronounced as an "a" sound, as in "cat", or "hat". An A by itself, meanwhile, is pronounced more like "ah" or "aw", like in "law" or "father" (the latter still being the default pronunciation of A in most of the Romantic languages).
** F is usually pronounced with a V sound, like in "of". One of Eora's two moons, Belafa, is pronounced ''beh-LAW-va''. It means "beloved", fittingly enough. This also means that fampyrs are that much closer to being vampyrs, and like many of the oddly spelled words in the game, is deliberately a step in the direction of the word's real world roots.
** The accent over the second E in Edér means it's pronounced eh-DAIR, not ED-er. (His last name, never brought up in-game, would be pronounced tey-LEDGE (Teylecg).)

* FourTemperamentEnsemble: The player can recruit eight companions, and two of each has one of the four temperaments. Kana and Hiravias are Sanguine (friendly and people-oriented), Durance and Pallegina are Choleric (extroverted and task-oriented), Aloth and the Grieving Mother are Melancholic (introverted and task-oriented), and Eder and Sagani are Phlematic (reserved and easy-going). [[spoiler: Aloth's LiteralSplitPersonality Iselmyr is more Choleric.]]

* SturgeonsLaw: The quality of the vignettes for the backer-written {{NPC}}s varies. There's some legitimately interesting gems to be found, but a significant percentage are pretty cookie-cutter: unstoppable badasses, perfectly cunning rogues, et cetera.

** The RPG rules for the game are an interesting case. The Infinity Engine games licensed their rules from ''Advanced TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'', slightly modified for real time with pause gameplay. In the years since, even D&D itself had moved away from the complex, often counterintuitive rules of 2nd edition (D&D was late in 4th edition at time of development, a much more transparent system that was criticized for being too much like a video game). The system developed for ''Pillars of Eternity'' seems to take most of its inspiration from D&D 3.5, the previous, crunchier system. Both games share approximately the same classes (with [=PoE's=] Chanter and Cipher replacing D&D's Bard and Sorceror, respectively), rely on the same 4 defenses (VS physical strikes, bodily intrusions like poison, area of effect spells, and mental attacks), roughly analogous systems of SkillScoresAndPerks, and tendency to limit class abilities per day (in contrast with 4th, which explicitly labelled all abilities as per day, per encounter, or at will).

* HarderThanHard: The Path of the Damned mode removes all LevelScaling limitations (in other words: you get maxed out enemies regardless of your level) and cranks up the combat mechanics. And then there's the Triple Crown Solo achievement, in which you must [[UpToEleven complete the game on Path of the Damned with Trial of Iron and Expert activated without the help of any companions]]. Understandably, the picture for the achievement is [[TrollingCreator project director J.E. Sawyer with a smug smile on his face]]. With Part 2 of the ''White March'' comes the "Frozen Crown Solo" achievement, which is to do the same including the expansion (the picture is J.E. Sawyer with a smug smile, in a padded winter hat). [[SarcasmMode Since that wasn't hard enough for some]], [[UpToEleven yet another]] achievement named "The Ultimate" has been added, which requires you to complete the main game and both parts of the expansion on Path of the Damned with Trial of Iron and Expert, while defeating all dragons and both archmages, and collecting all bounties, all without the help of any companions. The picture for this achievement is J.E. Sawyer with a look of terror on his face.

** Of course, if we're talking about a [[WarIsHell Bleak Walker Paladin]] or a [[TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized Priest of Skaen]], a little hypocrisy can be a good thing...

** Of course, if we're talking about a [[WarIsHell Bleak Walker Paladin]] or a Priest of [[OmnicidalManiac Rymrgand]] or [[TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized Skaen]], a little hypocrisy can be a good thing...

* AdultFear: The game could probably pass as an adult horror game.
** The hollowborn plague in general is this. Imagine spending 9 months in fear and desperation wondering if your baby will be born soulless, and no matter how much you pray to the gods or try other medications, you will most likely give birth to a soulless husk forever incapable of independent thought or self preservation.
** A mother in Ondra's Gift begged you to find her missing son. [[spoiler: The son turns out to be dead, killed by outlaws and his body is dumped in front of brothel's pier. Even worse, he died because his deadbeat dad was supposed to take him fishing, but made him wait outside while he grabbed a "quick pint" that lasted for hours, and he was killed because his dad wasn't watching him. Depending on your choices, the mother can fall into despair while raising her other hollowborn child and the father wastes his life away drinking in sadness.]]
** In Defiance Bay, news about a child losing his fingers appears [[spoiler: after you bought him a very sharp knife. You can also choose to beat the child up.]] You can avert this by using the Survival skill to warn him about how dangerous it is.
** The moment when Maerwald[[spoiler:'s previous incarnation, the Soldier, asked his mother about who his father is. The Soldier's father wasn't a colonist who died in a raid, he was actually one of the raiders who raped his mother. The Soldier's mother then [[AmbiguousSyntax dodged the question]], all at the same time holding back her fear and anger.]] Not only that, but[[spoiler: the Raider was Maerwald in a previous incarnation -- who ordered her henchman to rape Soldier's mother. No wonder Maerwald is insane.]]

It has a website [[http://eternity.obsidian.net here]]. In the wake of the game's success, Obsidian has announced that they are working on a number of things to expand the new franchise: a traditional ExpansionPack (''The White March''), a sequel, a CollectibleCardGame (''Lords of the Eastern Reach''), and a TabletopGame.