GB Feature: Pillars of Eternity: The White March Part II Content Overload

Just as we did with The White March Part I, we’ve been busy putting together a plethora of content for Obsidian’s Pillars of Eternity: The White March Part II, including a full review and the usual smattering of spoiler information on our dedicated subsite. Included among the latter is a detailed walkthrough, a set of locations, new companions, additional bestiary creatures, and more.  Here are a couple of paragraphs from the review to set you off properly:

Along with the new locations, there are also 18 new quests. Four of these are for the main storyline, and the rest are optional. As is always the case for Obsidian games, the quests are well-written and they give you lots of options for how to solve them. For example, the new companion in the DLC is a barbarian named Maneha (who is gay but not transgender, thus saving Obsidian some controversy). Maneha’s soul has Awakened, which means she can remember some things she did in previous lives — including one terrible thing she did during a war hundreds of years ago — and so she asks you to take her to Ondra’s abbey so she can forget about it. However, once there, she starts having second thoughts, and you can convince her to go on with it or not, and she changes as a result of your decision.

The DLC also includes some new soulbound items, which grow stronger as you complete tasks for them. In Part I, there were only soulbound weapons, but in Part II there are weapons, a breastplate, and a shield. Nicely, while in Part I the item tasks were often tied to characters landing killing blows, which required a lot of micromanagement, in Part II the tasks are more about dealing damage, and so the items are less tedious to advance. The items are also tied in well with the quests and storylines, making them fine additions. My only pet peeve with the new soulbound items is that the shield can only be used by fighters and barbarians — does anybody actually run sword and board barbarians? — and not paladins, which would make more sense. My paladin was miffed.