Let's Play Pillars of Eternity [20] - Maerwald Madness

More Pillars of Eternity gameplay, for those who want it. We're finally starting to make some progress in the story now that we're out of Gilded Vale and in Caed Nua. Or maybe it would be more accurate to call it Od Nua, since we're technically in the dungeon underneath Caed Nua, which is called The Endless Paths of Od Nua. Quite an ostentatious name, but I mean it's 15 levels of dungeon crawling gameplay, which is kind of a lot. The Endless Paths have their own separate story and quests. Well, separate from the central narrative of Pillars of Eternity anyway, but right now we want to focus on the main story, since that's what brought us to Caed Nua.

We were looking for the Watcher Maerwald to guide and advise us, like some kind of pointing device that tells us where to go to progress the narrative and find more gameplay. And we finally manage to find him this episode! Sweet! The only problem is he's a little absurdly insane. The dude is a legit mad wizard. Come on Pillars of Eternity, I thought you were better than using that old cliche character archetype. What's his back story? Oh. You mean it's actually quite interesting and ties into the plot and setting in a meaningful way? In fact, Maerwald's story also ties into the cure of Caed Nua and the narrative of The Endless Paths of Od Nua as well?

Well damn, I guess I can't complain about the story, then. I will complain that the gameplay is to easy. The combat encounter with Maerwald was a stomp in my favour! He's supposed to be a crazy wizard with magical abilities that can turn all my followers into frogs, and then feed me those frogs without me knowing that they're actually my faithful companions! Also, he could at least use some cool high-level Watcher abilities. I complemented Pillars of Eternity on giving the player some unique Watcher abilities to use, even if they're not actually very useful (unlike the Slayer transformation on Baldur's Gate II, which was actually kind of over powered). However, I figured mister Maerwald, the thousands of years old Watcher (I don't actually think he's thousands of years old, but roll with it) would have some really sweet Watcher combat abilities that we'd get to see in our battle with him in order to give us a preview of the kinds of powers we could unlock in the future. That would have been cool, and would also have helped to marry the story to the gameplay, because it makes sense for a Watcher like Maerwald to be able to do cool Watcher-like things in battle.

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