England, 12th century: Philip the monk becomes Prior of the small abbey of Kingsbridge. At the same time, a boy called Jack is raised by his outlawed mother in the woods. His apprenticeship as a stonemason paves his way to become a great architect. Soon, his steps lead him to Kingsbridge where he will build one of the greatest cathedrals England has ever seen. Aliena and Richard have to survive on their own, after the sibling's father, the Earl of Shiring, has been incarcerated and murdered. Aliena vows to make her brother the rightful heir and Earl of Shiring. Like Jack, their way leads them to Kingsbridge. Aliena puts her expertise as a tradeswoman to good use, supporting the cathedral's construction and falls in love with Jack. But Kingsbridge and its people are in grave danger. Philip's rivals, Bishop Waleran and Wiliam, a vengeful noble rejected by Aliena, see the town and its rise to importance as a thorn in their flesh. They want to see Kingsbridge burn. The game-adaption of the world-bestseller "The Pillars of the Earth" is the first co-operative project of Daedalic Entertainment and Bastei Lübbe. This game will be more than just complementary media to the book and will instead retell the story in a new, interactive way. A team of about 20 people works to create a multi-platform adaption of this bestseller. The writers are also in contact and co-operation with the Follett Office and Ken Follett himself. Daedalic is the only studio at the time adapting such an epic reading-experience into an interactive format. The game itself will be released in 2017, at the same time the third novel of the Kingsbridge-Series will be published. The game will be internationally available for PC, Mac, Linux, PS4, Xbox One and mobile devices.
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How is any of this relevant to The Pillars of the Earth? It brought back that same feeling. That impression that I take more interest in other culture's history and landmarks than my own, this especially hit when I had to look up to see if King Stephen in this story was a real monarch (He was). You see this game is a work of historical fiction based on the novel by Ken Follet which much to my chagrin I also haven't read. It's set in 12th century England about the building of a cathedral, the clergy and monks, lords, politics and ordinary people around it over several years. There is a surprising amount of content included here with the game split into three sections called books where the characters vary as the story gets told from different perspectives. The characters are all extremely well written and the dialogue and pacing of the story wrapping everything together works far better than I had anticipated it would though it's very slow and mundane at times. It's not super thrilling or action packed but feels like a very mature and often disheartening story as I would expect based on the original source.
What really brings the characters and world together though is the games superb cast. The voice acting for each character just feels like perfect casting and considering the bulk of the game is these conversations it was imperative they got that right and I couldn't find a single fault. The games entire presentation is stunning actually. The game is 2D art and almost every scene just felt like a stunning painting with carefully calculated backgrounds and prominent character art and colours. It's often bleak in setting but gorgeous in visuals and sound. I never got tired of looking at it and I don't think I can praise it's presentation enough.
Whilst not admiring the vistas or enjoying the conversations, Pillars of the Earth from a gameplay perspective is a point and click. It really doesn't get much deeper than that, you pick up key conversations or items that you can use on characters to progress various quests or unlock more information. The items have a wheel or you can quick select on the d-pad. I appreciate there isn't anything bonkers like the Discworld games. Everything here is fairly straight forward and logical for the most part. It's clearly more about pushing the flow of the narrative of the source material rather than in engaging or challenging puzzles. The overall story is set but small actions you make or don't can have impact on aspects of it even if they seem small initially. Each chapter will highlight these decisions for you at the end.
Whilst I've been positive overall I did have some technical issues like once when loading my game I couldn't move my character at all, completely frozen meaning I had to restart a couple of hours of content as well as a crash and some audio issues which brought my enjoyment of the game down slightly. Despite that though I would really recommend it. It's like no point and click I've played or seen. The visual and audio quality are sublime mixed with an interesting period of history I really should learn more about.
+ Stunning artwork.
+ Great voice acting and casting.
+ Engrossing story.
- A few technical issues.
- Can feel slow at times, especially playing a lot it one sitting.