Pillars of Eternity 2: The endings are all immensely horrible. [Heavy Spoilers]

[JohnSmith24601]

There's absolutely no way to dissuade Eothas from destroying the Wheel.

In truth, one single unchangeable main ending is thrust upon the player, with all the other endings being slight variations of this ending. (Barring the traditional "everything dies" bad ending)

The endings slides about the four mortal factions become a mockery of the main ending because...none of it matters when everything could be coming to an end. (Rauatai controls the Lost City...yay? The pirates loot even more ships...okay, good for you?)

One might argue that the fate of the world might not be so grim, as the animancers might still come up with a solution. However, this argument would distract us from the real problem that the game fundamentally takes away player agency. From beginning to end, you are told that there's a catastrophe that is going to happen. In fact, one of the very Gods themselves brings you back to life to stop this catastrophe, but when you actually get to the end, you ultimately fail this task miserably regardless of what you do...

I have to say that I was immensely disappointed with this writing. I half expected that there's a way to dissuade Eothas from destroying the Wheel by telling him the actions that you've taken throughout the game. But in the end, he curiously asks you a few questions and then goes back to doing what he's doing.

I don't think I will come back to this game...probably ever.

 

[Taxnomore]

It was a great game.

 

[NJClaw]

He is a god and gods haven't exactly proven to be reasonable on Eora. Being the embodiment of an ideal, they can't come to compromises and need to keep following their nature. He wasn't afraid to kill thousands of people in a war, why would he care about the opinion of a single person (who, even worse, is a paladin of Berath, the god that represents that same thing he wants to destroy)?

From a commercial standpoint, they probably wanted to keep alive the hope in a possible sequel and to do that you can't start from two "world states" with such incompatible premises (wheel/no wheel).

But I have an honest question: why do you see a grim future? The wheel was a lie, why should its destruction affect humanity in a bad way?

 

[Rat King]

You only complain about the ending's writing? The entire game had garbage writing dude. I couldn't even make it to the end because of the garbage Tumblr-tier writing.

 

[JohnSmith24601]

But I have an honest question: why do you see a grim future? The wheel was a lie, why should its destruction affect humanity in a bad way?

When the Gods tamed the Wheel, they broke what was natural, so after the Wheel is destroyed this time, everyone and everything will wither and die off in a generation or so. The world will become a barren rock. Eothas himself actually explains this. He sets this up as a challenge to potentially unite the mortals and the gods, so that they may bond by tackling this crisis together. However, one generation is definitely not enough time to accomplish what Eothas thinks is going to happen...This clearly spells doom for Eora, or at least it's the most likely outcome.

 

[JohnSmith24601]

You only complain about the ending's writing? The entire game had garbage writing dude. I couldn't even make it to the end because of the garbage Tumblr-tier writing.

Haha yeah, it was definitely a bumpy ride. I got so bored half way through the game and decided to just hijack the ghost ship to finish the game "early". (I was at max level already, but then the game's level scaling is totally out of whack.) I was like tolerating the writing up to the last section because some other things in the game are actually pretty decent. But then, the ending actually made me drop my jaw. Like, can you imagine a DM in real life actually does that to his adventuring party? "Oh, Eothas destroys the wheel regardless of what you do. The most you can do is mitigate the damage." Everybody at the table would just walk away saying that the story sucks. And it does suck, so bad...Can you consider a game an RPG, if it doesn't really offer you any meaningful choices? Feels like the whole game you're just there to tag along. Kinda fitting when your character's "the Watcher", when you think about it ;P

 

[Lawntoilet]

It was a great game.

It wasn't but it could have been, I had fun with it. Most things I thought were improved compared to the first game, but the writing of the companions and the main story were pretty big .

 

[Tigranes]

In truth, one single unchangeable main ending is thrust upon the player, with all the other endings being slight variations of this ending.

The other pros and cons of the game/writing aside, I see no problems with this.

I'm not a fan of "play God" endings where you get to dictate exactly how things pan out.

I preferred the New Vegas endings where you must side with a faction to make a difference in the world, and in the process swallow some things you may not enjoy - as opposed to the "oh you found a gazillion killer robots in the basement now you can just tell everyone what to do".

MOTB's ending was better than POE2's for a million reasons, of course, but specifically, confronting the impossibility of just destroying the Wall and cancelling the whole thing made it all the richer.

 

[Lawntoilet]

In truth, one single unchangeable main ending is thrust upon the player, with all the other endings being slight variations of this ending.

The other pros and cons of the game/writing aside, I see no problems with this.

I'm not a fan of "play God" endings where you get to dictate exactly how things pan out.

I preferred the New Vegas endings where you must side with a faction to make a difference in the world, and in the process swallow some things you may not enjoy - as opposed to the "oh you found a gazillion killer robots in the basement now you can just tell everyone what to do".

MOTB's ending was better than POE2's for a million reasons, of course, but specifically, confronting the impossibility of just destroying the Wall and cancelling the whole thing made it all the richer.

You're right about MOTB, but the rest of the ending was all about your personal choices, and the story itself was more personal to your character than the antagonistic just going "lol got your nose soul!"
There was more room for those sorts of choices at the end (and throughout the game) with various faction stuff but it was so completely separate from the Eothas plot that it's just jarring. It's like they just mashed a rough draft of FO:NV and a very very rough draft of MOTB together, threw it into a pirate setting, and called it a day.

 

[Tigranes]

Sure. POE2's plot suffered the entire way from the inability to mesh Eothas arc, factions, and all its other elements together in any coherent way. And that leads to how none of the decisions you take end up feeling meaningful whether in terms of in-game C&C or just the feelz. That's really the game's problem, and not the fact that you couldn't overrule Eothas. With the rest of the game as it is, I would have found it incredibly silly if you could convince Eothas at the end and overrule him.

The whole Eothas arc involves the tragic irony that the final liberation of the races from the long historical burden of the Engwithan Gods - has to be performed by one of the Gods themselves. It's really one of the few places where the game actually communicates an interesting theme in a clear way, and the conversations with Eothas are written really well. The game isn't improved by allowing you to roll a Speech 20 and the giant God who gave up his own immortal life and his entire raison d'etre to push the button, decides to say "oh ok you're right it was dumb i'll just go home now".

One thing that might have been useful is if there was some concrete thing the factions were disagreeing over, and you had a say in how it goes. Perhaps it's the slums area exploding into colonial tensions and civil war as you arrive, and you have a say in the distribution of rights and the settling of grievances, perhaps even a tribunal where the aggrieved natives are bringing some colonial adventurer to court. Instead, you just generally help them do stuff until none of it matters because Eothas.

 

[jac8awol]

Annoying what ifs and could have beens. The player character is like an ant following a lion in this game. What's he going to do when he catches up? I like the idea of the PC not being an all-powerful chosen one, but at the same time, you have to have some agency. I feel that the major problem is giving you a strict quest compass that is very illogical. Players with half a brain are already questioning what they are going to do when they finally catch up with Eothas, but the game doesn't let you develop a plan to deal with him. How about building another godhammer bomb to take with you? Reading summaries of the plot and lore of these games is head-bashingly frustrating.

 

[Drowed]

My problem with POE2 is not the end of the story, but the plot as a whole. The story doesn't make sense, which in turn makes the characters' motivations and behaviour meaningless.

The great revelation is that Eothas aims to destroy the Wheel, which is the mechanism that allows the "recycling" of souls by the gods (and also allows the maintenance of the status quo, and their control over the world). Without that, it is implicit that the world would somehow end. The problem is the gigantic obvious question that comes from this plot: the Wheel is an invention of the Engwithans, and its absence obviously did not prevent their rise, the development of their ultra-advanced "soul-technology" and the literal creation of "gods". Well, they seemed to be doing just fine in the pre-Wheel era, right?

The curious thing is, at Pillars' launch, that was a point that wasn't even explored in the game. I mean, at all! You couldn't even comment about it when talking to Eothas, and none of the gods commented on it at all. After several people questioned on the forums and the internet about the omission of information about literally the central point of the plot, Obsidian released a patch with extra dialogues to try to solve the issue. But unbelievably, they simply didn't solve it. They added several extra dialogues with the gods and, in particular, with Magran Woedica who turned into your supervisor to whom you "call" from your spiritual cellphone to give updates about your performance. When you approach her on this issue, essentially all she says is that "well, yeah, there was reincarnation before Wheel, but it was worse, it's bad, trust me, now go do your job". And that's literally it.

I mean, even her making up an excuse or lying to you would be preferable to that non-response. The way the plot turned out, as far as I understand, Eothas may be doing a favor and in fact the world can become a much better place without any great harm to anyone other than the gods. And you might even argue that this is actually the case, that Eothas is actually doing a favor and the gods are just lying and using you - which would make perfect sense - but as the storytelling progresses, there was no build-up to this. In general the feeling is that it was lazy and improvised writing. It's as if they didn't even notice the plothole they created and then tried to plug the hole with a lot of extra dialogue without first reflecting on the idea.

The sad thing is that, mechanically, I prefer POE2 to POE. But the plot of the game was so meh that it was one of the few games that I abandoned halfway through without being able to motivate myself to finish it.

 

[Fedora Master]

Doo doo
Per pee
Pillars is a bad series

 

[JohnSmith24601]

Annoying what ifs and could have beens. The player character is like an ant following a lion in this game. What's he going to do when he catches up? I like the idea of the PC not being an all-powerful chosen one, but at the same time, you have to have some agency. I feel that the major problem is giving you a strict quest compass that is very illogical. Players with half a brain are already questioning what they are going to do when they finally catch up with Eothas, but the game doesn't let you develop a plan to deal with him. How about building another godhammer bomb to take with you? Reading summaries of the plot and lore of these games is head-bashingly frustrating.

OMG yeah!! The Godhammer bomb lol...I didn't even think of that one. It's kind of weird that nobody even mentions building another GH bomb before confronting Eothas...It's nuts, I tell ya.

 

[JohnSmith24601]

My problem with POE2 is not the end of the story, but the plot as a whole. The story doesn't make sense, which in turn makes the characters' motivations and behaviour meaningless.

The great revelation is that Eothas aims to destroy the Wheel, which is the mechanism that allows the "recycling" of souls by the gods (and also allows the maintenance of the status quo, and their control over the world). Without that, it is implicit that the world would somehow end. The problem is the gigantic obvious question that comes from this plot: the Wheel is an invention of the Engwithans, and its absence obviously did not prevent their rise, the development of their ultra-advanced "soul-technology" and the literal creation of "gods". Well, they seemed to be doing just fine in the pre-Wheel era, right?

The curious thing is, at Pillars' launch, that was a point that wasn't even explored in the game. I mean, at all! You couldn't even comment about it when talking to Eothas, and none of the gods commented on it at all. After several people questioned on the forums and the internet about the omission of information about literally the central point of the plot, Obsidian released a patch with extra dialogues to try to solve the issue. But unbelievably, they simply didn't solve it. They added several extra dialogues with the gods and, in particular, with Magran who turned into your supervisor to whom you "call" from your spiritual cellphone to give updates about your performance. When you approach her on this issue, essentially all she says is that "well, yeah, there was reincarnation before Wheel, but it was worse, it's bad, trust me, now go do your job". And that's literally it.

I mean, even her making up an excuse or lying to you would be preferable to that non-response. The way the plot turned out, as far as I understand, Eothas may be doing a favor and in fact the world can become a much better place without any great harm to anyone other than the gods. And you might even argue that this is actually the case, that Eothas is actually doing a favor and the gods are just lying and using you - which would make perfect sense - but as the storytelling progresses, there was no build-up to this. In general the feeling is that it was lazy and improvised writing. It's as if they didn't even notice the plothole they created and then tried to plug the hole with a lot of extra dialogue without first reflecting on the idea.

The sad thing is that, mechanically, I prefer POE2 to POE. But the plot of the game was so meh that it was one of the few games that I abandoned halfway through without being able to motivate myself to finish it.

Oh now I see why 9 out of 10 people I talk to don't get why the Wheel breaking is such a bad thing...The ending explanation from Eothas was actually patched in later after release!! So I'm guessing as a relatively "new comer", I saw the post-patch explanations of how the Gods broke the natural cycle when they first tinkered with the Wheel. So now they can't go back to the way before the existence of Gods when the Wheel is broken. In any case, I agree that it still doesn't solve anything.

Also, one tiny detail that I want to point out -- It's Woedica that's on your magic phone, not Magran.

For people saying that "Oh, of course you can't change Eothas' mind! He's a god, and he's too powerful!!" Well, maybe as writers of a Role Playing Story, DON'T push the player into such
a corner that he can't make any meaningful choices at all? Other commenters really have an important point. By the time the ending rolls in, it's already too late. The way the story develops is so disjointed, and the build up is mega disappointing. You spend like, what, 20 minutes tops in the lost city of Atlantis and then that's it, time for Eothas. The final "boss fight" was actually the one with the dragon guardian thing, and I didn't even realize it until the credit rolls up. Also, like I said in the OP. Who cares if the leaders of Port Maje get killed, or the Pirates are sinking Vallian ships...None of that really matters on the grand scheme of things.

 

[Duraframe300]

MOTB's ending was better than POE2's for a million reasons, of course, but specifically, confronting the impossibility of just destroying the Wall and cancelling the whole thing made it all the richer.

Eh, ok. But wasn't the reason that you couldn't destroy the wall because WOTC wouldn't let them? Not because they intended to do so narrativly?

Or am I misremembering things here?

 

[JohnSmith24601]

I posted the same topic on the game's own forum, and I'm getting mobbed by fanboys lol...Like, you wouldn't believe the mental gymnastics that these people do in order to justify the bad writing. I mean, everybody here up to this point still sounds pretty reasonable, including people who have a different opinion than mine.

 

[NJClaw]

Annoying what ifs and could have beens. The player character is like an ant following a lion in this game. What's he going to do when he catches up? I like the idea of the PC not being an all-powerful chosen one, but at the same time, you have to have some agency. I feel that the major problem is giving you a strict quest compass that is very illogical. Players with half a brain are already questioning what they are going to do when they finally catch up with Eothas, but the game doesn't let you develop a plan to deal with him. How about building another godhammer bomb to take with you? Reading summaries of the plot and lore of these games is head-bashingly frustrating.

OMG yeah!! The Godhammer bomb lol...I didn't even think of that one. It's kind of weird that nobody even mentions building another GH bomb before confronting Eothas...It's nuts, I tell ya.

That bomb killed a man, not a huge adra statue. But I'm not saying that they couldn't come up with another plan, on the contrary: I think it's embarrassing that all the gods decided to do was to send some guy on a chase to find out what Eothas was up to.

"Ehy guys, our rebellious brother that we killed not long ago is heading for the archipelago where we stored the big machine that gives us powers and keeps us alive, but it's fine, we shouldn't do anything"

Half the gods already proved to be murderous psychopaths willing to sacrifice thousands to reach their goals, but yeah, let's just see what the big green boy is up to.

I posted the same topic on the game's own forum, and I'm getting mobbed by fanboys lol...Like, you wouldn't believe the mental gymnastics that these people do in order to justify the bad writing. I mean, everybody here up to this point still sounds pretty reasonable, including people who have a different opinion than mine.

Give us a link, mental gymnastics is my favorite sport.

 

[Taxnomore]

I just finished Mask of the Betrayer and it felt pretty much like an inferior clone of POE2.

Thematically wise also.

I am not even sorry.

 

[Lawntoilet]

I just finished Mask of the Betrayer and it felt pretty much like an inferior clone of POE2.

Thematically wise also.

I am not even sorry.

 

[Roguey]

"Nothing matters" -- Josh Sawyer

Eh, ok. But wasn't the reason that you couldn't destroy the wall because WOTC wouldn't let them? Not because they intended to do so narrativly?

Or am I misremembering things here?

They never thought to ask because they thought they'd say no (they ended up destroying the Wall with 4e anyway).

 

[onemananadhisdroid]

"Ehy guys, our rebellious brother that we killed not long ago is heading for the archipelago where we stored the big machine that gives us powers and keeps us alive, but it's fine, we shouldn't do anything"

That's not entirelly true though, is it. First, there seems an argument between the Gods whether kith should be allowed to shape their own destiny finally (with the whole process of the apostheosis once having taken place for building a better society). Second despite the constant bickerings all throughout the game, both Margran and Ondra try to stop Eothas before the final chapter by making a volcano erupt as well as sending a tsunami.

 

[NJClaw]

"Ehy guys, our rebellious brother that we killed not long ago is heading for the archipelago where we stored the big machine that gives us powers and keeps us alive, but it's fine, we shouldn't do anything"

That's not entirelly true though, is it. First, there seems an argument between the Gods whether kith should be allowed to shape their own destiny finally (with the whole process of the apostheosis once having taken place for building a better society). Second despite the constant bickerings all throughout the game, both Margran and Ondra try to stop Eothas before the final chapter by making a volcano erupt as well as sending a tsunami.

I haven't played the game recently so maybe I'm forgetting something, but I see two problems:
- why do they wait until the very last moment to make a move against Eothas? They know the wheel is in Ukaizo, so shouldn't they suspect that he wants to do something with it as soon as he moves towards the archipelago? They ask the watcher to find out his goal, but why are they giving him the benefit of the doubt?
- why is their response so weak? Ondra dropped a moon on the planet just to hide the truth behind the gods and this time around she relies on a couple of high waves to stop a guy that threats to reveal that same truth AND kill all gods for good... it doesn't make any sense.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Pillars of Eternity 2: The endings are all immensely horrible.

Given the rest of the game's writing, this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.

 

[Delterius]

"Ehy guys, our rebellious brother that we killed not long ago is heading for the archipelago where we stored the big machine that gives us powers and keeps us alive, but it's fine, we shouldn't do anything"

It's actually worse.

They go about for 20 days WONDERING WHAT HE'S GONNA DO.