Pillars of Eternity

Pillars of Eternity is a 2015 role-playing video game developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Paradox Interactive for Windows, OS X, and Linux. The game is a spiritual successor to the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale series, along with Planescape: Torment. Obsidian started a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter for it in September 2012, raising over US$4 million. The game uses the Unity engine.

The game takes place in the fantasy world of Eora, mainly inside the nation of Dyrwood. The infants in the Dyrwood are plagued by a recent phenomenon in which they become "hollowborn" upon birth, meaning they are born with no soul. During the beginning of the game, the protagonist experiences an awakening of power due to a disastrous supernatural event, discovering they are a "Watcher": a person who can see past lives and interact with souls. The objective of the game is to find out what caused their awakening and how to solve the hollowborn problem.

Pillars of Eternity received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised the game for its world and immersive writing, along with the strategic combat, and also said that it is a worthy successor to the games it was inspired by. The game also won various awards and accolades, including best RPG of 2015. It had sold over 700,000 units by February 2016. A two-part expansion pack, The White March was released in August 2015 and February 2016, respectively. A sequel, Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, was released in May 2018. A game set in the same shared universe as the Pillars of Eternity games, Avowed, was announced in 2020 and released in 2025.

Pillars of Eternity sees players assume the role of a character defined as a "Watcher" – a person able to see and interact with the souls of people, viewing the memories of those deceased or communing with those who linger – operating on role-playing mechanics that include party-based real-time-with-pause tactical gameplay. The game is played from a fixed isometric viewpoint consisting of 3D models against two-dimensional pre-rendered backdrops, in a similar vein as its spiritual predecessors  – Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment.

New games begin with players creating a character, with the choices they make on the character's race, background, stats, and class  – except their appearance  – impacting what choices can be made in dialogues with non-player characters (NPCs) or interactive objects. Each class of the eleven available  – fighter, rogue, ranger, barbarian, monk, paladin, wizard, druid, priest, chanter, and cipher  – benefits from certain prominent stats in the game, and features a set of abilities unique to them, which can be used in battles with hostile enemies and creatures: for example, the cipher can use the soul of an enemy in order to attack them, and druids can shapeshift into a beast and cast spells. In addition to these, the character may make use of five skills  – Stealth, Athletics, Lore, Mechanics and Survival  – which confer bonuses in various situations, such as unlocking containers and gaining bonuses when resting outside inns. The character classes and game mechanics are similar to Dungeons & Dragons, but are a proprietary system created for the game. Characters level up upon acquiring experience points from completing quests and certain situations  – battling enemies does not reward experience, meaning conducting non-violent approaches can be just as rewarding.

Exploration of the game world involves visiting locations as they become unlocked, with some only accessible after progressing the main story whereupon players can freely explore the location to find enemies, items, and objectives for quests they are on. Most locations feature a fog of war effect, a dark, black one for regions not explored, and a lighter effect for areas that have already been explored and have been moved away from. Alongside the main story quests of the game, players can engage in optional side quests which feature fleshed out supporting characters and multiple outcomes, most of which are not typical "fetch quests" in role-playing video games. To assist in their adventures, players can create a party of up to six characters with the help of both companions  – characters found in certain locations, each with their own personal story and quest, and unique personalities and appearances, who will join when they offer assistance, of which the player can recruit up to eight to make a party from  – and player-created characters  – these can be made at inns, for a fee based on the level the player wishes their creation to be at.

During the course of the game, the player will build up a reputation with various factions, depending on the decisions they make in conversations and with resolving quests. This system effective denotes how NPCs of that faction will react to them and how traders will treat them when buying items. In addition, such choices will also impact the outcome of events when the game is completed. Players can enter scouting mode with certain characters or the whole party, which, impacted by a character's skill in Stealth, allows them to sneak around enemies as well as spot hidden items and traps, the latter of which can be disarmed (per a character's Mechanics skill) and be later used against enemies. After making some progress in the game's main story, the protagonist will take over a stronghold, which acts as a base where players can improve it with new buildings.

Battles in Pillars of Eternity focus on a system in which each enemy in the game has a set of different defensive stats. Alongside a general defence bonus, they have different resistances to certain weapon types and element types, which impacts how much damage they take, as well as certain status resistances that impact the effect of spells and abilities. Thus, players will find it useful to sometimes equip characters with different weapon types and use different spells to take advantage of enemies with weaker defences against certain types. For example, an enemy who can resist harm from piercing weapons would be better attacked with a different weapon type. A bestiary is provided which records information on creatures and enemies encountered, and adds more information the more they are encountered, effectively allowing players to see their stats during combat and determine how best to combat them. When an enemy attacks and damages a character, it impacts both their endurance and health: while characters will be knocked out when they are drained of all their endurance, which regenerates after combat is over (to a certain level based on damage to health), being drained of all their health effectively causes them to die permanently. To recover lost health and endurance, as well as certain abilities, players can either rest by setting up a camp or buying a room at an inn.