A Story worth Playing

A while ago I mentioned that I started playing Pillars of Eternity(PoE) and I liked it, but that it was very story-based. Well, this is true, and I just finished it recently actually because it required some commitment to follow all the quests and explanations and all that.

It was an amazing experience and I want to review it.

As I mentioned before, Pillars of Eternity is an old-fashion RPG with isometric perspective like Baldur´s Gate. You have a main character, that you can customise at will, and you can get a number of companions with different personalities that assist you in your quests and travels. If you´re not convinced with the named companions, you are free to hire random Adventurers that fill the space and help you with fights and such things, but I'd say it's really worth to travel with characters that have their own plots and personalities.

The game is similar to D&D but uses its own classes, lore, skills and rules for combats and interactions. And it's based around quests. You see, killing enemies in PoE doesn't give you experience, so there´s no grinding possible, you only advance by making quests. There´s lots of them, and they're quite varied and with lots of options and possible resolutions, really using the different skills that you may have. Not many require to kill enemies, and the ones that do tend to be about one single big enemy, no need to bring back 10 wolf pelts and similar stuff.

From the start, you can feel the game is heavily story-based. Shortly after beginning, you find a moment where the game explains a situation with narration and text, where you can choose a course of action, but where your skills points and previous experience can change the outcome or the options. This is really immersive and opens thousands of possibilities outside the normal game mechanics, where having high intelligence or good athleticism does matter and can get you the best results. For example, you find some kind of mechanism next to a closed door. If you have good strength, you can break the mechanism. If you have good mechanics, you understand how it works and operate it. If you have a high intelligence, maybe you recall a previous mural and understand the steps to use it. All are different options that result in the same, opening the door, but unless you have the required attribute they will not even appear to you, or will fail if you try them. This moulds your character a lot more than what I´ve seen in other games.

Similarly, the concept of morality, good or bad, has been developed here much further than other rpgs. Things are not as simple as good or evil, with good points or evil points. Here you have reputation. And reputation includes lots of things. You may have a reputation from being clever, diplomatic, honest, cruel, violent, benevolent, tricky, misleading, rational, etc. This depends on your conversations, on what you say and on what you do, and having a high reputation in one of those aspects does not mean you cannot use a completely different action in a certain situation....but it also opens chances to use this reputation for your advantage. For example, being honest allows people to trust you at your word. Then again, because people trust you on your word, if in certain moments you lie people don't expect it and trust you anyway. Or if you´re rather diplomatic, then new conversation options will show up that will help you resolve conflicts differently. Or if a certain town or faction has a good impression of you, their interactions will change. You may get more rewards, more information, better prices, etc....At the same time you can gain bad reputation with cities, factions, etc. At some point of the game, for example, you need to choose between some factions, and good reputation in one will probably be obtained because you will get bad reputation with another.

In general these details add a big layer of complexity to the gameplay when you interact with others, and allows you to really shape your character. You´re not limited to the goody two-shoes or the evil psychopath with more moderate behaviours being punished by not having special interactions. Here you can develop a benevolent character that lies and still will fight at the drop of a hat. Or you can be cruel but honest. In general, you can really, really personalise the way your character is perceived and interacts with others, and there's no out-of-character, you could be honest most of the time and still trick people sometimes, or be diplomatic and once or twice straight up murder someone who´s being  a total idiot. The level of flexibility you have in this is amazing, rewarding and really interesting. And this same reputation changes conversation options and also these scripted-text only interactions where you choose different actions, so it manages to expand your choices and the way you resolve problems.

The story itself is rich and detailed. PoE creates a different world, with lots of races, factions and interests, that sometimes it's a bit hard to follow from scratch. It immerses you in a complicated zone with conflicts and troubles, where a plague is making children to be born without a soul, not dead but not moving or reacting to anything. In this world souls can be fragmented, used, reborn, split and manipulated, they can be ripped apart or be eroded, and a big part of the lore is around these things. There are gods that oversee the world with different skills and responsibilities, but they seem far from the daily lives (at least in the beginning). All the world has also ruins of some ancient civilisation that manipulated souls at will, with strange machines of unclear purpose that can provide light and power or just as easily convert to dust all the people nearby. As the main character, from an initial moment where you don´t have any clear purposes, you get inflicted with what seems to be some curse/blessing that may drive you mad, and in your travel you're searching for a solution to your problem, while helping others, influencing the local politics and trying to find clues about the plague that the region is suffering. Things start slow but turn into epic proportions after a while, unravelling a complex plot and discovering several refreshing takes on the fantasy genre.

The named companions you can get help you along the way but also have their own motives and stories, and you can help them resolve their issues and know them better, gaining their trust and learning about them. There's also a sense of familiarity created as you travel with them and they talk with each other and interact also with people you talk with. Some of them are less interesting or do not fit quite as well with your style, but all of them are worth exploring, and most of their quests are really interesting, although sometimes you need to wait to advance a lot in the game to complete them. The shame is that you're limited to 5 of them, and also that, of course, they need to adapt to your class to combine well as a party, so you usually have a strong core of characters that must be with you at all times and then one or two slots where you can change things and explore different options.

Apart from the stories and conversations, there's combat of course. The fights can be challenging and intense, with a lot of micromanagement needed to succeed, but also very rewarding. You can also keep doing quests, go up levels and make your life easier by reaching top levels early on, and this way have a kind of god-like strength. Combat is based on endurance, which indicates how tired you are, and once you run out of it you pass out. This means you can still win the combat with other characters, or even restore yourself with some healing skill. However you will be hurt and will need to rest afterwards to recover. You also have life, which cannot be restored really except with one or two excepcional skills, so when  it's low you also need to rest. Characters that run out of life are dead for real and cannot be recovered, and if your main character dies or all your party becomes unconscious, it's game over. However there's lots of autosaves every time you enter a map, so you're never that far behind after this happens. Even with top level, some fights are really really hard, but also some of those have Pacific ways to resolve the issue or avoid conflict, although it may depend in a lot of other factors.

I played the main game and 2 expansions, and made sure to left the end boss for last.  All the storylines were really great and it was extremely satisfying to reach the last boss extremely overpowered and manage to defeat them with ease, by that point you're really involved and want to finish them. I played as mostly good, and I'd like to try the opposite in another playthrough, but I dont know if i'll do that or just play the second part that seems also very very nice.

All in all a great experience, really immersive and interesting, and I highly recommend it.

Repeating Andorra and Amsterdam

So in December, thanks to the holidays, shifts and vacation days I could not take before, I didn't work at all.

Since December 1st until January 7th I had vacations. So that was very nice.

I spent most of it in Barcelona with a close friend that was visiting, and it was pretty awesome. However, I did a couple of trips worth mentioning.

First, during the first week, we all went to Andorra. Not sure if I mentioned before, but Andorra is this little country on the Pirinees, quite isolated, where people go to ski in winter mostly. Other seasons it has amazing trails and mountains, but in winter it's like a huge ski resort. So we went to spend some time there.

The place was nice and we had fun, but the previous time I had visited was in summer and it was soo much better, because of the lack of people. Andorra is pretty tiny and in the middle of huge mountains, so the cities, the streets, the roads, etc, are rather small. The main road has one lane in plenty of sections. The towns are narrow and steep. So, the moment it's a bit overcrowded, massive lines are formed everywhere and it's really hard to move, to park, to do anything really...

The place we were staying in was really good, and what we visited was nice, but as a driver the feeling I got was that for most of the trip I was stuck in the car or having to keep controlling the gears and waiting for cars to move, in steep narrow roads. It was a bit stressful.

We did manage to ski, and this time I tried skis. The snowboard last time was a bit frustrating, I didn't manage to control it at all, so this time I tried the skis, with no class or anything just to see how it was. After the experience I can say that it's harder to brake, which means it's more dangerous, but at the same time it was easier to grasp some basics and I managed to go down with them as I wanted, so that was really good. I have to say though that the boots were horrible and hurt a lot, but oh well. Actually after this trip I went back to another mountain and finally managed to control better the snowboard, and I think using skis also helped to understand better how to move around snow in general.

The tracks were pretty amazing, and the mountains looked really pretty, but also it was not that cold nor there was a lot of snow, which is normal for the time of the year.

Apart from skiing we visited the towns, went to caldea (the local spa, very nice ) and enjoyed our time there, it's just that we spent a lot of it on the car.

Special mention to the trip back, which was nightmarish thanks to stupid Spanish border control just allowing one lane to go out, which means a big big traffic jam before reaching that point, for kilometers and kilometers.

So, after Andorra, which was more like a family trip, I went to Amsterdam (which was not).

I've been to Amsterdam 2 times before this one. The first one was with my high school and it was a...mind-opening trip, let's say. It was really awesome and we had tons of fun. Also, the high school banned trips to Amsterdam afterwards, a clear sign of a good trip :p . After this one, I went back there with some Erasmus people while I was in Sweden, and at that time it felt weird and not as fun, but it was ok.

Anyway Amsterdam always felt really beautiful, really friendly and with a special magic atmosphere of freedom somehow, so when deciding what to visit someone proposed this city and I loved the idea.

It was my third time and I was not disappointed. The streets and channels, the little houses that cannot be made very tall, the Christmas lights, the atmosphere, it was beautiful. We just walked around without visiting anything special, and just enjoying  the city, and it was pretty awesome. We were staying in a very centric and cosy place, and we ate and drank and just relaxed, without hurries. It was really cold though, but its normal for these dates too.

One of the nights we went out with a local friend and it was one of the best nights I've had in a long time. We first spend time at his place, then a little walk on the red light district (he lives there so we just walked around his house), and then went to a weird club that had an underground area, dark and foggy and with threatening electronic music...the visuals were like something out of Silent Hill, and the music was electronic but dark and heavy and thick. It was spectacular and we had a lot of fun. We left late, and just then it started snowing, adding to this eerie feeling that was great

It was so good that we'd definitely like to go back (but when it's warmer please).

Exploring Buenos Aires

I have some trips in the backlog, so I'll start with this one that I did in September/October. I was in Argentina in the Iguazu area only, so I consider this to be the first time I really visited.

This time I went to Buenos Aires, for a month, to help with the Youth Olympics.

For starters, in this trip I was working, and because there were not enough people I worked a lot. I only had 1 single free day every 4 or 5, which means that this free day you need to do a lot of things together that you could distribute better if you had a full “weekend” or 2 days in a row. Also, this meant I would only visit the city, a trip further away would be complicated. And there was one more thing, one of my best friends was working there and I was going to visit her too and do things together, which means less time overall to do touristic things.

Nevertheless, I managed to get some impressions from this city and country and to see a bit of the things that were around me.

Buenos Aires seems…European. Maybe it´s the architecture or how the streets are organised, but the centre of the city reminded me of Madrid, or Paris a bit maybe, and also some Eastern European cities. It looked very different from Rio, but then again, I did not visit any other big city in Brazil, so maybe it´s not that different. The only thing is that you do notice the poverty, in the fact that buildings and streets look dirtier, more abandoned, less maintained.

I was staying in the centre of the city, in a massive square that contained the parliament, and where there were daily protests for any topic. However, this was the norm, so I never felt the protests were a problem or disturbed me. The hotel itself was like 2 minutes from work, which was great because I had morning shifts starting at 6:30. However at this day and age, there´s a thing that any hotel that wants to be respected must have: good internet coverage while in the room, be it cable or wifi. Sadly, my room didn’t have. The wifi lost signal plenty of times or it was too weak to use, to the point of not being able to send whatsapp messages. Especially when travelling this is a big deal breaker, and even after warning about it they said they could not do anything.

Anyway, being so centric allowed me to be near several nice spots, one of them being the same square I mentioned. It was big and usually sunny and felt quite relaxing. I also was at walking distance from the Obelisk, a big monument in the centre where there was celebrations and protests, and that looked nice too.

Apart from those scenic places, I did the tourism I enjoy more, which is to just randomly walk around and get a feel of the city.

As I said the centre reminded me of certain cities in Europe, but there was a lot more poverty, and you could see clearly homeless people. However, you didn’t feel the insecurity of Rio. Later I learned that this might have been not entirely correct (I heard shootings, twice, once right next to the office while we were on the roof of the building and some coworkers saw the shooter shoot against a house and leave), but in Rio a lot of the homeless people looked like on drugs, while here they just looked homeless.

Close to this hotel there was a big street filled with theatres. A friend that also lived in the city meet with me one day and showed me this area, and it was shocking the amount of shows and actors and events that were on display. I had heard lots of Spanish actors and musicians toured south-america in general a lot more than Spain, but before seeing this I may not have understood the true scope of such things in Argentina at least. Maybe in Barcelona or Madrid there are as many theatres, but in here the way they accumulated so many in such a small area was quite surprising. A bit further there was another beautiful section, Puerto Madero, next to the sea. I saw it at night, and with the lights it had it was very nice. 

My friend lived in an area called Palermo, so when we coincided we walked around there too. This felt more similar to Ipanema actually, had amazing restaurants and bars and was less centric-looking and more relaxed, very nice. We went a couple of times to a nearby restaurant strip that had very nice food and amazing cocktails, and we could see the night atmosphere, with people ready to go out. However, with the limited time we had, we didn’t really go out while in there, or at least no to clubs: It seems most places in Argentina were just playing “cumbia” music, and after seeing some examples we agreed we both despised it, especially her considering she had spent there some months already before me. Only one night we tried to go out, and the place we tried was busy with a private event and told us anyway we had to dress up more nicely, meaning a suit and a dress (and after that we hated it and would not like to go back there).

We worked too much these days to do much more, but we did have the chance to use a bit the fact that we work for such events, and we visited several stadiums around the Sarmiento park and Tecnopolis. This area was used to hold several competitions, and it looked curious. I'm unsure how Tecnopolis is used normally, seemed to me some type of science museum/exposition area, but it had funny statues and structures. Of course we had full access and we skipped queues and restricted areas, which makes you feel a bit special and good^^. This event is smaller than a normal Olympic of course, but it was organised in a way that there were plenty of people following the different competitions and it had a very nice and friendly atmosphere.

All in all, the month passed too fast because of work, and didn't get to see much, but what I saw was nice. It did had its problems though, of bad service sometimes, bad taxi drivers, massification in the centre, poverty, some lack of general maintenance of public things and other issues, but for a visit it felt like a relaxed place and I enjoyed it (when I had free time).

Ah! I cannot finish without mentioning a couple of things: Yes, the food was...weird. The beef they have there is really really good, but the cooking style is a bit weird, a bit too well-done for my taste. And they have a lot of fat food, heavy, with butter and sauces and oil. Or sweet, that's the other thing, they eat a lot of sweet things in the morning (facturas), and the alfajores and dulce de leche are awesome but they're digestive bombs (that didn't stop me from coming back with close to 6kg of the things). And the last thing: Argentina and elevators had a weird relationship. Lots of them are old, badly maintained and fragile-looking. I was stuck in an elevator, twice, in this month. It has never happened before in my life I think and here it happened twice. One of the times we even had to get out forcing the doors open while it was stuck between two floors, which was a bit scary but also a bit funny.

It was a short and busy visit overall, but I'd be curious to see more some other time if there's another chance.