I had never heard of Ken Follett or his massive 1989 novel, “Pillars of the Earth” before playing the first episode of a new Daedalic Entertainment adventure game that shares the name. Daedalic has made a name for themselves over recent years with some high quality point and click adventures, and their prowess in that genre, and especially in the presentation arena, is evident here.
The first episode of this adventure tells the story of two men, and how their apparent vastly different lives are intertwined into something much larger. The setting is twelfth century England; civil war and unrest abound as King Henry I has died and his children are bickering over who should rule. As intense as things are becoming in old England, the pace is slow and deliberate, as is the gameplay. That’s not necessarily a bad thing of course, and certainly not unusual for the genre — but take note that Pillars has a large story to tell and it’s going to take good time to do it, while still (at least in this first episode) remaining mostly intriguing throughout.
Before getting ahead of myself, let’s take a look at the mechanics of the game, which is mostly standard fare for point and click type adventures. Players walk with the left stick and interactive objects are easy to discover and have a brief name attached to them. You can ‘look’ at these by pressing Square, and I really liked how your character’s thoughts in short-hand, lowercase form appear on screen as you do this, along with a brief, perfectly ambient ‘thud’ sound as each brief thought appears. To better explain what I mean, perhaps an example is due: one of the two main characters you will play as is Phillip, and while doing an annual visit to the Priory at Kingsbridge, he finds part of the cathedral in a dilapidated state. If you press the ‘look’ option on part of it, his thoughts will be ‘such a disgrace’ and ‘rubble should be cleaned up,’ you know, short phrases like that, typically you will get two to four of these per object. It’s less formal but actually more immersive than the character breaking the fourth wall or talking to themselves.
Other interface options include to ‘use’ by pressing Circle and to interact with an inventory item with Triangle. Interestingly, inventory items aren’t your run of the mill objects that you find and collect. Well, there are some of these type of items too, but you will also discover topics or clues that you can bring up with NPCs to get their feedback. Conversing with NPCs is sometimes a bit long-winded, but the quality of the voice-acting is excellent, and I like that your responses are typically left to three — two speaking options, and the option of simply being silent if you wait ten seconds or so for the time meter to run out. If you’re silent, the NPCs respond to this silence accordingly. This adds an interesting element of replay value and story development, especially when combined with how each chapter shows a summary of all of your choices that you made along the way. Nicely done.
Puzzles within this first episode of Pillars of the Earth are fairly straight-forward, but are sometimes a little vague, as is to be expected with the genre. There are sometimes brief interactive elements to puzzles to that require a little bit of timing, but in any event, I have yet to encounter a puzzle that had a game over or fail condition, which is a plus. You can save your progress at any time and in multiple save slots too I should mention. While a bit slow at times, the story so far is interesting, but another reason I am compelled to check out the next two episodes is the impressive presentation quality Daedalic brings. The artwork is really good — character animations can be a little bit stiff at times, but the environments and camera angles used is excellent. Voice-acting is top notch with well-written dialog to boot. Music is minimal, but good when present; Daedalic did a fine job establishing twelfth century England. One of the few elements I would have liked to have seen would be a ‘the story so far’ kind of synopsis that you could optionally view each time you continue a save game.
Ultimately, there’s far more to like about Pillars of the Earth than not, making it pretty easy to recommend for anyone looking for an interactive novel with strong point and click adventure design and excellent presentation quality.
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