https://gamestudies.

org/2004/articles/felczak

Dungeon Pirates of the Postcolonial Seas. Domination, Necropolitics, Subsumption and Critical Play
in Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire

by Mateusz Felczak

Abstract

This paper applies a postcolonial framework inspired by the ideas of Achille Mbembe to analyze Pillars
of Eternity 2: Deadfire, a cRPG which directly approaches topics of colonialism in the context of a fantasy
setting with strong historical inspirations. The article juxtaposes Deadfire’s gameplay formula which
stems from AD&D-based Infinity Engine games with the arguably self-conscious narrative structure
criticizing the colonial relations. Building on three elements of an interpretational framework: agonistic
domination, necropolitical subjugation and totalizing subsumption, the narrative potential for critical
play is mapped against the playful structure of more traditional, power-fantasy-inducing cRPG
mechanics.

Keywords: postcolonialism, Achille Mbembe, necropolitics, cRPG, critical play, exploitation, Pillars of

Eternity

1. Introduction

Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire  (Obsidian Entertainment, 2018) is a case of a relatively large-scale project
which consciously approaches the themes of colonial exploitation while retaining the traditional
gameplay framework of a computer role-playing game based on the core design principles of Infinity
Engine titles such as Baldur’s Gate  and Icewind Dale series. Thus, Deadfire  can be considered a hybrid
which implements traditional cRPG mechanics (mainly party-based and real time with pause combat)
with modernized graphic and unorthodox quest design.

The unique features of PoE2: Deadfire  and its three official expansions (Beast of Winter; Seeker, Slayer,
Survivor;  The Forgotten Sanctum) warrant a closer look on their own, but a detailed analysis of the
Pillars franchise may contribute to the ongoing debates in game studies, especially these concerning
imperial imagination and post-colonial tropes (Mukherjee, 2017; Mukherjee & Hammar, 2018).
Specifically, in this article I would like to open discussion on two broader research questions: 1) how can
a large-scale cRPG game depict a fictitious colonial world which claims to build on historical sources, all
while maintaining commercial ambitions for reaching broader audiences than its counterparts in the
serious games genre? 2) to what extent can Deadfire  be considered an example of consciously designed
critical play (Flanagan, 2009), and what does it bring to the current debates on postcolonialism in game
studies? To do so, I will analyze the chosen elements of PoE2: Deadfire  design using the theoretical tools
developed by Achille Mbembe and propose my own critical framework based on his works, which could
be used to assess other digital games dealing with postcolonial topics. Building on works of Frantz Fanon
and Michel Foucault -- influential and radical thinkers who engaged with the topics of both economic
and corporeal oppression, I would argue that Mbembe created a toolkit which can be especially useful in
assessing conflict-driven narratives of modern-day digital games. His study of the biopolitical law, driven
by the relentless “logic” of control and subjugation, aptly elucidates the intricacies of systemic colonial
exploitation. Such has also been the declared goal of the Obsidian development team, with colonialism
being in the center of the narrative of both Pillars  games (Miller, 2018). This kind of explicit approach is
still very rare outside the realm of small-scale independent game projects, and the in-depth analysis of
both gameplay and players’ reception of the Pillars of Eternity  games may provide an insight into new
interactive projects directly engaging with (post)colonial tropes. It may also inform how to understand
related games which aspire to employ elements of critical play. Thus, the rationale behind using
postcolonial theory to analyze these particular titles is a simple one. If, according to the popular
interpretation, all postcolonial theories “share a fundamental claim: that the world we inhabit is
impossible to understand except in relationship to the history of imperialism and colonial rule” (Elam,
2019), then I argue that the Pillars  games mirror this premise, and make it one of their core narrative
design elements with regards to the fictitious land of Eora.

I would argue that Pillars of Eternity  series in general, and PoE2: Deadfire  in particular can be treated as
breakthrough game design endeavors which try to directly address important -- albeit selected --
elements from the colonial history of the Renaissance era, and confront players with topics such as
racism, slavery, economic and cultural exploitation by implementing a multi-layered fictional narrative.
On the narrative level, the first game of the series established a network of colonial dependencies
between the major political forces operating in the quasi-medieval setting. Deadfire  plays with an
unusual set of references regarding its worldbuilding, drawing on the historical inspirations concerning
Polynesian and Maori (Morton, 2018) cultures, and constructing its main plotline around the conflict
involving several factions which battle over the economic, cultural and military superiority over the
titular archipelago. It can be argued that both RPGs are significantly different from the majority of digital
games building on the (post)colonial tropes and thus they can be analyzed in the context of a potentially
new creative avenue of game design -- one which strives to fulfill the ambitions of creating a
commercially viable product, while simultaneously presenting a critical view on the mechanisms of
colonial exploitation.

The overarching goal of the paper is to trace how a videogame which aspires to commercial success
makes the effort to incorporate colonial tropes into its design, and what tools it implements to
problematize the critical postcolonial stance in its gameplay. The article is composed of four parts. First,
I provide a brief overview of the Pillars  franchise and establish a connection between its core design
premises and the ideas introduced by Mbembe. Next, I elaborate on the three elements of my
interpretational framework, which I name agonistic domination, necropolitical subjugation and totalizing
subsumption. These are the labels I provide for particular elements of colonial-themed design in PoE2:
Deadfire, and each of them encompasses different subsets of mechanics and narrative which altogether
form a cohesive gameplay experience. Through such distinction, the creative vision and persuasive
design of the game are dissected and scrutinized through the lenses of postcolonial critique provided by
the author of Necropolitics.

2. Postcolonialism, Mbembe and dungeon pirates

There is a growing volume of game studies literature that uses postcolonial theories as a means of
critiquing of videogames. Literary theory and cultural studies tools are used to dismantle the
postcolonial themes of orientalism, race, empire, cartography, hybridity and identity in videogames (see
for example Magnet, 2006; Martin, 2018; Mukherjee, 2017; Mukherjee & Hammar, 2018; Murray, 2018;
Shaw, 2015) which can be traced in popular high-budget titles (with iconic examples of the Age of
Empires  or Civilization  series) as well as in independent productions. The rising awareness of such traits,
along with the success of crowdfunding campaigns which allow for large-scale independent products to
be shipped, leads to the emergence of titles that present a certain level of self-awareness when it comes
to the topic of postcolonialism.

The  Pillars of Eternity  series began as a crowdfunded project aimed at reviving the mechanical and
graphical convention of party-based isometric cRPGs, especially from the period of Infinity Engine titles.
The keyword used in the marketing campaign for the first game was “spiritual successor,” which
suggested that the new Obsidian project would not only be inspired by the mechanical, narrative and
worldbuilding conventions of the aforementioned titles, but would also aspire to achieve something
more: a design approach that stemmed from one of the most successful digital adaptations of a
tabletop Dungeons & Dragons  system. Josh Sawyer, a director, lead designer and writer for the
first Pillars of Eternity, had extensive experience as a designer (Icewind Dale) and lead designer (Icewind
Dale II, Neverwinter Nights 2) on several successful games based on the Wizards of the Coast /
Hasbro AD&D  license. However, the Pillars  games did not acquire rights to this popular system, and
instead relied on a brand-new setting of a land called Eora; with its own rich and complicated history of
ethnic, economic and religious conflicts. Whereas the first iteration of the series explored well-known
tropes of pseudo-medieval, sword & magic and quasi-feudal power relations between the various
subjects and in-game factions, the second game, Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire, modified the setting quite
drastically. The focus shifted from yet another iteration of a fantasy neverland into a colonial- and
pirate-themed age of exploration, mixed with several droplets from the fantasy-like lore from the first
game. Both Pillars  games are party-based cRPGs with a top-down perspective and real-time combat
featuring a pause function, with Deadfire  offering an optional turn-based mode. The player-character is
called the Watcher, and the main plot of the second iteration of the series revolves around the hunt for
a god-inhabited statue wreaking havoc in the titular Deadfire Archipelago. To achieve the game’s main
narrative goal, players must navigate the complex environmental, military, political and cultural
landscapes actively shaped by the main four factions operating in the area.

To perform an in-depth close reading of Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire, I propose a framework inspired by
the works of a Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe, whose interpretation of key theoretical
concepts guides me through the three stages of colonial process presented in the Deadfire: agonistic
domination, necropolitical subjugation, and totalizing subsumption. These stages are tied to the right to
exercise violence and changes pertaining the authority which oversees this right.

Mbembe is perhaps best known for the idea of necropolitics, a theoretical concept that he succinctly
defines as “subjugation of life to the power of death,” which “profoundly reconfigures the relations
among resistance, sacrifice, and terror” (Mbembe, 2003, p. 39). It is important to note
that Necropolitics is the title of both Mbembe’s seminal essay introducing this term (translated to
English in 2003), and the newest English translation of his book Politiques de l’inimitié (2018). However,
the theoretical underpinnings of the latter work are more tightly connected to the ideas developed by
Frantz Fanon, and the focus of The Society of Enmity (which was the initial English title of an excerpt
translated for the Radical Philosophy journal in 2016) is slightly shifted towards the historical reflection
on Africa’s colonial past.
In the press material released prior to the game’s launch, Deadfire  was advertised as a title which
consciously and willfully confronts the history of colonial exploitation and weaves its elements into its
fantasy-esque setting. Sawyer explicitly stated that at Obsidian Entertainment, “we’re definitely trying to
draw connections to things like the East India Trading Company, and various Belgian and Dutch trading
firms as well” (Benson, 2017). The detrimental influence of colonization on European Renaissance in the
cultural and social fields has been noted by historians (W. D. Mignolo, 2016). The creators of
the PoE  franchise seem to be aware of the lasting consequences of colonization and wanted to acquaint
the players exploring the fictional Deadfire archipelago with them. In the interviews they explicitly
stated that for the second Pillars game “we're getting into the age of exploration and colonization and
the expansion of imperialist powers” (Ricchiuto, 2017). The settings of both games were largely built on
the premise of a violent clash between the military powers over a particular piece of land. As Sawyer
goes on to explain, “the Dyrwood has already been colonized and that was the setting for Pillars I, but
Deadfire is currently being colonized and sort of imperialist forces are moving in and either trying to set
up their own colonies or set up their own deals with the native cultures for you know whether its
shipping rights or access to resources or various things” (Ricchiuto, 2017).

Given the history of the franchise and outspoken ambitions of its creators, in this analysis I decided to
juxtapose two theoretical perspectives: one focused on how videogames can be designed “for artistic,
political, and social critique or intervention, in order to propose ways of understanding larger cultural
issues as well as the games themselves” (Flanagan, 2009, p. 2), and the other investigating “politics of
the living beyond humanism” (Mbembe, 2019, p. 2) in the modern postcolonial framework which can be
applied both to historic and present-day cultural discourses. To this end, I treat the term “critical play”
broadly, without many references to Flanagan’s examples of playful artistic interventions. Instead, I am
interested in the interplay between the critical (and, to some extent, self-conscious) game design and
the actual agency offered by the game to pursue certain ethical, political and military goals. I would
argue that the three key elements of the interpretative framework employed to analyze
the Pillars  franchise -- domination, subjugation and subsumption -- can also be applied to assess the
modern-day mid- and high-budget games which aim to utilize some critical elements to their
(pseudo)historical narratives. I also believe that the insight based on the in-depth reading of Mbembe --
whose strong stance on topics concerning the very core values of human dignity in the context of
broader socio-political analysis invited not only postcolonial, but also powerful decolonial (i.e. non-
canonical) readings (see Sithole, 2014) -- could become a meaningful contribution to the already existing
body of well-established postcolonial theories used by game studies scholars.

Thus, this article aims to contribute to the existing debates in the field by assessing the liminal case
study of a title which merges well-established narrative and gameplay conventions of Infinity Engine
games (and their significant cultural impact connected with Dungeons & Dragons) with arguably self-
conscious, critical design touching upon subjects such as race, social hierarchy as well as economic and
cultural inequality. I argue that reading Deadfire  through a postcolonial lens highlights how heroic,
power fantasy tropes in cRPGs can be intertwined with the game’s persuasive interventions aimed at
fostering critical reflection on historic and contemporary sociopolitical issues.

3. Agonistic domination

The first framework to assess the gameplay in PoE2 encompasses ways of achieving control of the
gameplay through exploiting competitive aspects of the game mechanics -- hence the name agonistic
domination, which builds on Roger Caillois’ famous notion of pursuing success in play through direct
rivalry (Caillois, 1961). Mbembe identifies domination among the two other conditions which
characterize an enslaved subject: natal alienation and social death (Mbembe, 2003, p. 21). An “absolute
domination” is tied to “loss of a ‘home’,” and thus signifies spatial detachment from a place which has a
name and concrete location. Agency in Deadfire is primarily negotiated along this framework, which
requires liberal application of violence resulting in a separation of the in-game subjects (player
characters, recruitable companions and various NPCs) from any stable cultural identities. The game
world is full of exiles, economically or racially discriminated individuals or misunderstood characters
with ambitions and life goals which go against the social dogma.

In Deadfire,  the main quest is inextricably tied to one of the four major factions fighting over the control
of the Archipelago. Each has its own interest, and most implement some sort of colonial violence --
whether in the form of military occupation, aggressive trade or exploiting techno-cultural domination.
There is a meaningful discrepancy between the amount of freedom to exert violence in the territories
controlled by the game’s factions and in the areas located outside their interests. While tampering with
the islands under the influence of Huana, Royal Deadfire Company, Príncipi sen Patrena or Vailian
Trading Company has serious narrative consequences (for example, many quests are mutually
exclusive), violent free-roaming in West Wakara Reef, Razai Pasage or The Burning Shoals goes largely
unnoticed by the game’s political and military forces. Using the terminology introduced by Shoshana
Magnet, one can say that the peripheral islands which constitute the vast portion of the Archipelago can
be labeled as gamescapes, as they are “dynamic and require the active involvement of the player in their
construction” (Magnet, 2006, p. 143). Conversely, the “civilized” parts of the Deadfire remain -- perhaps
paradoxically -- largely agnostic to the players’ actions and retain their political and structural properties
throughout the game. For example, players can help the starving families in the Gullet (the poorest
district of Neketaka) or resolve peacefully the inner tribal conflicts in Tikawara, but this does not
expound the inherent structural problems with social hierarchies, inequity, defunct laws and political
turmoil in the Archipelago. Social and political landscape, contrary to the gamescape, cannot be altered,
which leads to numerous concerns expressed by the players on the official game’s Reddit and forums.
Players’ dissatisfaction pertains mainly to the inconsequential agency; as the user ThePatrician25 notes,
“if you go to Ukaizo alone without the help of a faction, the Deadfire Archipelago is thrown into chaos
and war regardless of what you did during your playthrough; you cannot affect this in the slightest.
You'd imagine that the Príncipi sen Patrena would be severely weakened if not exterminated altogether
if you wipe out their entire leadership and hunt down literally hundreds of their ships, but apparently
that's not the case, and it's nonsensical.” [1] Failing the players’ expectations in that regard and
deliberately signaling critical flaws of each and every faction directly subverts the heroic tropes of epic
gaming narratives. Even if the players decide not to team up with any of the Deadfire’s major political
forces and reach the final destination through their own means, the game’s epilogues still are far from
delivering a happy ending. PoE 2  tries to escape the pitfalls of perpetuating the colonial image of “good
natives” posed against their aggressive counterparts, although the game’s main plot -- a search for
legendary place named Ukaizo, a lost city of the Huana -- nevertheless capitalizes on the colonial
fantasies of an exotic, yet hidden, paradise. As noted by Richard Grove in his book on “green”
imperialism, “tropical environment was increasingly utilized as the symbolic location for the idealized
landscapes and aspirations of the western imagination” (Grove, 1995, p. 3), and both graphic and
narrative elements of the second Pillars  game are in line with that trope.
“Imagine how many Rauataians we could feed with plantations here” [2]

In the players’ journal, quests are clearly divided into several categories: the main storyline, factions
(four separate instances), each of the three expansions, generic quests and tasks. Through such division,
the game discloses a hierarchy of actions to be performed in order to advance towards the game’s goals.
The main storyline and the most rewarding quests are tied to factions which are synonymous with
political and economic powers fighting for the control over the titular Archipelago. Sawyer discloses the
agonistic principle of such a design by stating that “each of the colonial cultures has a different interest
in the area. They overlap a little bit, and they are in direct competition” (Benson, 2017). The subsequent
analysis of the game’s quest design would be directly linked to the analysis of the right to use different
measures to solve particular tasks, usually in accordance with the values and interests aligned with one
of the factions. The framework which can be applied to the aforementioned game’s logic essentially
revolves around exploiting resources -- from the excavation of valuable ores to establishing trading
outposts and supervising laborers. The interconnection of human and non-human subjects forced under
subordination of the competing factions in Deadfire  resonates with Mbembe’s concept of colonial
plantation. According to him, it is “not merely an economic measure,” but also represents an effort to
transform bodies “into an available reserve or stock” (Mbembe, 2019, p. 10). This goes in line with the
biopolitical premises which can be identified in VTC and Royal Deadfire Company’s questlines. The in-
game dialogue involving the representatives of these two factions strongly echoes the colonial epistemic
division between the humans and the “nature” (W. Mignolo & Walsh, 2018, pp. 153-154), which must
be tamed and taken care of in a proper manner and preferably only by people with a fitting, “civilized”
background. Rauatai’s Fleet Master Okaya explicitly says that “we have as much right to this land [i.e.
Deadfire Archipelago] as they [the Huana] do. If they plan to do nothing with it, it’s our duty to steward
it for them.” To this end, players’ character can express either contempt or acquiescence, with the latter
option stating that “Rauatai’s intervention will be a net good in time,” which is flagged as a “diplomatic”
choice and makes the particular chain of quests more accessible through the dialogue options. Again,
following the logic of compliance with colonial rationale brings not only profits measured by the
potential experience points and items acquired through new quests, but also enriches the gameplay
experience through the acquisition of epistemic power. Those who are willing to brave the walls of text
rationalizing colonial exploitation without any interruption are rewarded by getting a better
understanding of game’s narrative as such. Non serviam  is not a viable option; the potential to resist
joining in the colonial fray is signaled in the dialogues, but never truly fleshed out through the allowed
in-game actions.

Príncipi and Huana’s routes conversely “thrived by excreting those who were, in several regards,
deemed superfluous, a surfeit within the colonizing nations” (Mbembe, 2019), even if -- as in the case of
Huana -- the racial and class politics are identified as intrinsic to the “indigenous,” hierarchical tribal
structure. Forceful imposition of a preferred social and economic structure over a given territory also
belongs to the recurrent themes of the game, and factions provide a cohesive narrative scaffolding to
such policies.

In some aspects, Deadfire  shares many traits with games exploring settler colonialism tropes, especially
in its depiction of “a continual process in which settlers seek to expand their territory at the expense of
indigenous lives and their ancestral connections to specific places” (Euteneuer, 2018, p. 4), as settler
colonialism is defined. Thomas Lecaque observes that in one of the most successful mainstream RPG
games, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim  (Bethesda Game Studios 2011), “all of the factions and groups the
player can interact with are, on one level or another, settler societies established through the
destruction of the native cultures,” and the second iteration of Pillars of Eternity  is not much different in
that regard. In the Deadfire Archipelago only the native Huana somehow struggle to adopt the agonistic
modes of social and political interaction imposed by the other factions, and even they have to face
divisive forces within their own ranks, as is proven in the players’ confrontation with the Wahaki tribe.
The entanglement of slavery and agonistic exploitation -- themes which are central in the whole Huana
questline -- echo Mbembe’s observation on the colonialism as something which “posited the issue of
contingent human violence” (Mbembe, 2001, p. 13). What is more, the connection between
“cultivating” and overseeing livelihood of Deadfire’s indigenous inhabitants and the exploitation of
resources of the land is not limited to agriculture, minerals, ores and livestock. The urge to drive other
party away from the land -- the chief premise of settler colonialism -- can be identified as a predominant
driving force behind the politics of Rauatai, that is Royal Deadfire Company faction. Throughout the
course of main storyline, the player must reclaim territories previously occupied by the RDF (especially
the Hasongo island, which is crucial to the main plot). Even though the outcome of these actions may be
alleviated by not siding with Rauataians, player’s support for the territorial expansion favored by RDF is
inevitable. The logic of agonistic domination is exerted in the fashion inherited from the mechanics of
Infinity Engine games -- to bring peace on a given land, players must eradicate all the opposing forces,
only later (optionally) learning about their right to be there in the first place. Vailian Trading Company
very much follows “the [settler colonialism] idea that the land and its resources belong to those who
seek to improve it” (Euteneuer, 2018, p. 9), albeit with a scientific twist. The narrative portrayal of this
particular faction bears some resemblance to historic colonial strategies employed by Hispanic
Monarchy during its conquest of the Americas. As noted by Yolanda Fabiola Orquera: “Spain imposed its
cognitive paradigm over local preexistent communities, using 'scientific' reasons to refuse the validity of
their forms of thinking and converting them into residual knowledge” (Orquera, 2007, p.
168). Deadfire  echoes this approach in its take on the Trading Company, mixing it with a number of
ibero-romanian cultural traits -- VTC employees speak with a distinct, Italian/Spanish-esque accent and
use equipment modelled largely after weapons used by the Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors.
Ignato Castol, head of the VTC, wishes to conduct experiments on the unique natural resources
scattered among the indigenous lands in order to pursue rapid advancements in medicine, technology,
and animancy, which stands for a magic-like ability to communicate with souls. However, during the
course of VTC missions it is revealed that the Company’s Congress, operating on terms similar to modern
capitalist supervisory boards, merely wishes to strengthen the Company’s military power. As a result,
Castol becomes a subject of several power plays and intrigues which, left to the players’ discretion, may
even lead to his dismission and prompt banishment. Positioning even the major NPCs as commodified
bodies in the high-level diplomatic power games in Deadfire subverts the players’ heroic agency and
points towards the next important aspect of game design: the necropolitical liminality of the interactive
subjects inhabiting the Archipelago.

4. Necropolitical subjugation

In the center of post-Foucaultian philosophy of Mbembe lies necropolitics, which can also be
understood as “symbiotic co-presence of life and death” (Haritaworn, Kuntsman, & Posocco, 2014, p.2).
In Deadfire  lives of the others are weighted on the scales of profit, oftentimes measured against the
interests of the living. The main narrative gives players a suitable excuse for drastic measures (the party
is chasing a gigantic god-operated statue which wracks havoc across the whole Archipelago) but the
actual quest design is largely detached from the heroic tropes. To eventually become saviors of
humankind, players need to accumulate certain amount of resources, which is nearly impossible without
exerting extreme violence towards the inhabitants of the Deadfire Islands.

“Everyone is rich, no one is hungry!” [3]

An important element of gameplay in Deadfire  are the so-called bounties -- a lengthy series of
assassination mini-quests commissioned by various agents. Some are directly tied to one of the factions,
but many are simply orchestrated personal vendettas. All bounties have similar quest structure: players
are provided with approximate geographical coordinates and vague description of the targets, which
helps to assess the difficulty of the upcoming encounter. The mechanics behind bounties is in fact the
model example of Deadfire’s  quest design: most offer non-violent solutions, but they require a specific
check, usually measured against numerical value of a passive skill, oftentimes belonging to the
diplomacy-bluff-intimidate triage. There are also certain benefits coming from the origin, race and
profession (class) of the characters, albeit all of these measures finally serve one purpose: to convince
the others to subsume to the will of one of the factions whose questline players currently pursue. The
open-ended narrative design in Deadfire  warrants that it is profitable to pursuit quest of the competing
factions up to the point of mutual exclusivity. The lives of those that need to be killed are sometimes
referred to as obstacles in the omnipresent rule of the market. Commissioning the bounty to kill Urnox
Breinth, a Goldpackt knight named Okauro explicitly says that “we have forged a coin bond to see him
killed,” and “the coin does not wish him to stifle trade.” Bounties can be taken from all factions without
influencing the “Relations” tab, even though they serve conflicting interests of the key parties fighting
for the control over the Archipelago. In the end, players’ parties function similarly to the unsupervised
military forces, “armed formations acting or not behind the mask of the state,” with “the right to wage
war” and eventually transforming “war and terror (…) into modes of production” (Mbembe, 2019, p.
36).

There is a quest involving slave traders on an island named Crookspur. Players have the option to either
support the traders, free the slaves without resolving to violence, or simply eradicate all the people
involved in the process, which effectively means leaving an island with one single person alive -- the
“neutral” merchant near the sea shore. There is also an interesting legal aspect of the quest -- players
can learn that in the Deadfire archipelago the slavery itself is not illegal; only the human trafficking and
trading is frowned upon and punished according to the common codes of conduct. This distinction
partially resonates with the historical pirates, which by no means presented a unified stance towards
slavery. Peter Leeson succinctly sums up the (pop)cultural image of pirates as progressive and inclusive
when it comes to ethnicity or skin color: "some pirates participated in the slave trade. Others granted
equal rights to blacks and whites aboard their ships" (Leeson, 2009, p. 21). While on several occasions
the in-game narrative ridicules slave owners, there are virtually no long-term consequences associated
with players taking their side other than the automatic failure of one chain of quests associated with
Huana faction path. The balanced approach to the game’s mechanics, which theoretically makes all
playable races and character stats equally effective during gameplay, trickles down to the game’s
narrative, effectively flattening the consequences of players’ actions in favor of the seamless gameplay
experience.

There is a discrepancy between the rewards for choosing “good” (free the enslaved) and “bad” (aid the
traders) paths, although the difference measured in experience points is negligible. This is yet another
difference between the Infinity Engine games and the Pillars of Eternity  series: the “correct” path
in Deadfire  is not as disproportionately more beneficial than the “evil” path, as is the case in Baldur’s
Gate  games. Players can decide whether to back Principi in their business endeavors which along with
exploring ancient ruins to obtain artifacts leading to great treasures also involve slave trade. Although, in
congruence with the Deadfire's leitmotiv, the pirate faction covers both sides of moral spectrum: while
captain Furrante wishes to support Crookspur slave traders, captain Aeldys offers the party a possibility
to directly dismantle the operation and ruin Furrante's exploitative economic scheme. Deadfire’s quest
structure also touches upon racial discrimination, albeit in a peculiarly light-hearted way, especially
given the weight of other sensitive topics explored elsewhere in the narrative. Master Kua, the head of
Crookspur, belongs to the race of Orlans, who due to their physique and hobbit-like demeanor are
openly mocked by numerous characters in Deadfire -- including the good-inclined “canon” companion
from the first game, Edér Teylecg. This element highlights the other aspect of necropolitical subjugation,
which is the specific use of humor and satire to mask a particular inequality produced by the oppressive
colonial system. Mbembe elaborates on the racial outcasts employed in the machinery of colonial
exploitation, noting:

Side by side with humanity’s other rejects (those expropriated after the enclosure of the commons,
peons and deported criminals, impressed sailors on board military and commercial marines, reprobates
of radical religious sects, pirates and buccaneers, those absent without leave and deserters of every
name under the sun), Negroes are located throughout the length and breadth of the new commercial
routes, in ports, on boats, everywhere that forests must be cut back, tobacco produced, cotton grown,
sugar cane cut, rum made, ingots transported, and furs, fish, sugar, and other products manufactured
(Mbembe, 2019, p. 158).

Deadfire factions, barring few borderline cases, are not racist in terms of employing manpower on
proto-capitalist terms. Players can find Humans working for Aumana-dominated Royal Deadfire
Company, the Vailian Republics employ Dwarves among their ranks, and Principi are historically a mixed
bunch -- although their canonical heritage suggests a certain level of privilege for white-skinned
Humans. The ethnic tensions are presented predominantly as a problem tied to caste systems of races
indigenous to the Archipelago. However, the critique of the social hierarchical structure of the Huana,
despite being signaled in the narrative (especially during the players’ optional investigation of the
“disaster relief” housing in Sayuka), remains on the margins of the actual gameplay. The tensions
between the inhabitants of the “Huana longhouse,” who come from different casts and are unable to
resolve the structural societal inequalities in the context of an emergency are only a narrative backdrop
optionally explored in the dialogue. This dialogue almost stands in direct opposition to the critical
underpinnings of key postcolonial notions, stating the need to give voice and agency to the subjugated
and oppressed. Here, the subalterns -- to use the famous term employed by Gayatri Spivak -- truly do
not speak, as their underprivileged predicament, conditioned both by the colonial subjugation (in this
case: by the Rauataians owning the town of Sayuka) and the petrified state of the inequal societal
relations effectively alleviates any form of meaningful in-game agency that could alter their state. The
vast majority of the gameplay is framed in terms of economic, proto-capitalist exploitation, which
presumably remains blind to the biological features. Interestingly, this is also true for subjects which fall
into the fantasy category of the living dead.

“What the goddess of Death has marked, I will leave untouched” [4]

Mbembe notes that necropolitics pertains matters of both the living and the dead, and the function of
the latter is to remind the living about the universal laws imposed on them by the various regimes of
power. In Deadfire,  all cities are characterized by the set of metadata, which are displayed in a separate
section of the visual interface of a schematic, hand-drawn mini map. They include the following
categories: population, religions, imports, exports, government, ruler and races. Such data serve two
purposes. First, players can assess the political situation beforehand and use that information to their
benefit during the quests. Second, these categories put a certain city on a geopolitical map -- for
example, the goods listed in the imports/exports sections can assist players in their long-term decisions
whether to support a certain faction or not. However, there is one city hub (a mockery of the game’s
own economy, placed in the remote region of the map), the city of undead named Splintered Reef which
has question marks in the place of economic statistics. It has a top-down architecture, mirroring the
capital city of the Archipelago - Neketaka. Similar to the main urban hub of the Archipelago, its
uppermost parts are initially unreachable; players must battle their way through the sequence of
districts to finally confront the vampire Menzzago, an ominous ruling figure which oversees the
premises with his governmental authority. After resolving the quest’s plotline, players can recruit one of
the undead inhabitants of the island into their crew.

What’s more, the Splintered Reef is a good example how cities operate in Deadfire  mainly through their
mechanical façade: even after complete eradication of all the island’s inhabitants (barring the token
survivor) players can access the special interface menu available in “The Pickled Eel” tavern which allows
for selling and obtaining supplies, re-training NPCs and recruiting new team members as mercenaries.
The basic economic and mechanic premises of the city function with or without the people. Although it
may be a simple oversight on the developers’ side, this unusual fact is in line with the colonial logic of
material subsumption. In their spatial analysis of cities in selected single-player fantasy RPGs, Daniel
Vella and Krista Giappone observed that they “reflect a particular cultural understanding of the lived city
space” (Vella & Bonello Rutter Giappone, 2018). The common denominator for cities in those titles was
identified as a specific type of pre-industrial neomedievalism, which manifested in the specific use of the
cities by the players: “it is the experienced functionality of the in-game city space, then, that carries
semiotic significance.” Deadfire’s Splintered Reef city thus fulfills its purpose -- and retains the meaning
of being a city proper -- despite the status of its inhabitants. The chief premise behind the economical
raison d'être of a city does not vary according to the location, ownership or the type of business
supporting a particular city. Players are free to pursue their goals in the form of trading and exchange
regardless of their actual actions or moral choices. The merchants on Crookspur’s beach will commence
business as usual even if the players decide to slay every slave trader on the Island, and the tavern in
which players killed all the undead is still able to offer something to the party -- for a fixed amount of
coin, of course.

Another aspect of necropolitical subjugation in Deadfire  manifests in the narrative entanglement of

scientific, magical and economic interests connected with a special resource called adra. This organic
material crystalline [5], especially in its luminous form, is a powerful resource able to shift the scales of
dominance over the whole archipelago. The conflict centered on the issue of how to make use of adra
constructs one of the most important conundrums for key political and military forces in the game. VTC
concentrates its efforts on its efficient extraction in order to conduct scientific experiments on the
mineral’s special abilities, which may ultimately enable to build ultra-mobile war fleet. Deadfire  plays
with the trope of a natural resource which is simultaneously poison and medicine, a pharmakon  of sorts
(Mbembe, 2019, p. 6) -- the abundance of luminous adra can boost the economy of the Archipelago, but
also ignite conflicts regarding the control of the deposits and methods of its usage. The interplay
between the economy, life and death lies at the core of issues explored in the Pillars of Eternity 2:
Deadfire.

One of the most important deviations from the Dungeons & Dragons  formula and Infinity Engine games
in the Pillars  series is how experience points are earned. Classic isometric RPGs usually rewarded every
enemy killed with a fixed experience gain. The occasional departures from this rule were made in direct
relation to maintaining game balance -- for example, Icewind Dale II  introduced diminishing rewards for
eradicating monsters which have too low level relative to the level of players’ parties. Instead,
the Pillars  series incentivizes exploration and completing quests, which are the two main activities
yielding significant experience gains. However, both Pillars  games grant experience for killing up to a
certain point, measured by the in-game encyclopedia (named “cyclopedia”). The mechanism is quite
simple and goes well with the historic (and colonial) notion of sampling, collecting and processing
knowledge as well as material artifacts harvested from the extinguished creatures. Each type of enemy
creature has a separate entry in the cyclopedia, which is filled with information every time a certain
species is killed by the party. When the indicator reaches 100%, the party no longer receives any
experience points for dealing with additional enemies of a certain type. There are two main things to
take into consideration. First, all enemies in the Pillars of Eternity  series are treated as subjects of
algorithmic control (see Švelch, 2013) -- they are quantifiable objects existing in the ready-for-death,
necropolitical state. The AI animates them only in the presence of players, and (with small exceptions)
they do not respawn, eagerly awaiting the conquering strike of the players’ party. Second, the
encyclopedia of monsters includes “Kith” category, which stands for six playable humanoid races. This
discursively equates human enemies with other monstrous creatures as a potential resource of
experience points and items, further strengthening the proto-capitalist biopolitics arc in Deadfire. Third,
the notion of gradually filling the catalogue of slayed creatures with new knowledge corresponds with
the colonial (and post-Enlightment) sentiment of collecting, preserving and cataloguing “foreign
curiosities” for the owner’s pleasure (Pomian, 1990).

5. Totalizing subsumption

The term “subsumption” has been extensively used in Marxist thought to describe the ways in which
capital takes over the economic process (Fumagalli, 2015; Vrousalis, 2018). Here, I propose to join this
meaning with the postcolonial discourse of appropriation and achieving ownership of both human and
non-human subjects. In Deadfire’s  gameplay, this manifests in the mechanics that allow seizure over
large areas of land along with their resources and inhabitants. The first one involves a well-established
trope of a treasure map -- or, at least, an effort to subsume the newly explored territories to the logic of
economy and material exploitation.

“Were they easy to find, they’d be called the charted islands” [6]

Deadfire  employs two main visual perspectives. First one is nearly identical with isometric view used in
the Infinity Engine games, with top-down camera and RTS-like control over the players’ party. The
second one is an overworld map, where isometric approximation is replaced with schematic icons
travelling through a simplified world map. There, party members are represented by a portrait of the
main protagonist, and naval exploration is depicted by a ship icon moving through the game’s titular
archipelago. The overworld mode employs mechanics which equate colonial presence with spatial
ownership, manifesting in the automatized process of harvesting goods and claim-naming the newly
“discovered” islands of the Deadfire Archipelago. This mechanism is affiliated with the notion of flag-
claiming, which in the context of videogames Souvik Mukherjee juxtaposes with British colonial practice
of labeling and (re)naming the conquered land as means of exerting forceful legal domination
(Mukherjee, 2018, p. 5). The islands of the Deadfire Archipelago are studded with icons representing
ponds (source of water) and blossoming trees (source of fruits) -- the only thing needed to claim and
transfer them to the players’ ship inventory is to appear in their vicinity; “harvesting” is automated
through the means of spatial proximity. This transformative production of the in-game space mirrors
Mbembe’s take on colonial occupation:

The writing of new spatial relations (territorialization) ultimately amounted to the production of
boundaries and hierarchies, zones and enclaves; the subversion of existing property arrangements; the
differential classification of people; resource extraction; and, finally, the manufacturing of a large
reservoir of cultural imaginaries (Mbembe, 2019, p. 79).

However, contrary to Mbembe’s take on the spatialization of the colonized landscape, the “charted”
territory of Deadfire  remains uninhabited regardless of the players’ efforts to catalogue and subjugate
the conquered lands. “Named” islands do not get claimed in any way that would be substantial from the
standpoint of the game’s mechanics or balance of powers. Players are spared the projected
consequences of damages to the natural environment and harm to the indigenous inhabitants of the
freshly acquired lands; no ancient ruins are purged to make way for the factories, no natural wonder is
erased to make way for pasture lands or mines. In that regard, on the map interface
level Deadfire  resists even the playful “moments of gaming actions” (Lammes & Smale, 2018, p. 4) that
players can exert in other games inviting postcolonial reading, such as Civilization VI.

In that context, it is important to note that the abundance of resources necessary to maintain ship travel
quickly makes exploration of smaller islands less profitable. To incentivize players not to leave any piece
of Deadfire untouched, there is a special quest chain named “Mapping the Archipelago.” In the game’s
main city hub, Neketaka, there is an NPC named Sanza, who eagerly pays significant money (and grants
experience points) to the players wishing to embark on a journey to discover and name the uncharted
islands. Each of the five mapping quests is completed upon fully exploring the given region, which
usually means that in order to name the key location and complete the quest players need to enter,
plunder and kill all the enemies in the mini-dungeon located somewhere on the main island. Thus,
exploration is rewarded predominantly when paired with violence: a small amount of experience points
rewarded upon entering a new location is negligible. Deadfire  also plays with the common cartographic
trope in videogames: maps display only functional objects and places, and players are the sole agents
who are capable of a successful exploration. In the second iteration of the Pillars  series this game design
practice goes in hand with the discourses of sovereignty and power -- even though key forces of the
Archipelago are aware of the treasures and goods laying in the unexplored territories (the main quest
and axis of the conflict between the factions revolves around the search for the quasi-mythical Ukaizo),
only selected groups are capable of achieving the goal of exerting agonistic domination over the given
territory. As Majkowski puts it, “the knowledge of the indigenous population means nothing: only the
protagonist (and the player) has the ability to make discoveries, as the act is directly related to marking
newly-located places on the map that only the player can access” (Majkowski, 2016, p. 56). The
originality of the narrative in Deadfire  lies in the fact that players have the same goal as all the factions:
to seize the Ukaizo also means to finally confront a superpower which in the game’s narrative exposition
destroys the lands acquired by the protagonist in the previous iteration of the series.

The territorial discourse permeating the quest design in Deadfire  has also been identified as a deliberate
design decision. According to Sawyer, “each of the colonial cultures has a different interest in the area.
They overlap a little bit, and they are in direct competition” (Benson, 2017). Thus, mapping the
uncharted islands is only one of the games’ side quests, but the division between the “landscape”
exploration of the city hubs and “gamescape” conquest of the peripheral islands persuasively delineates
the borders of player’s agency in Deadfire. In this regard, the second Pillars  game shares some traits
with Here Be Dragons  (Red Zero Games, 2019), in which a whole game is a living map, and the player
bears the task to help Christopher Columbus to conquer the New World. In both cases, the map is also a
synecdoche of success and fulfillment: the more is visible and known, the less there is to do in Deadfire.
Politics and the effort to govern the conquered is far less interesting than the act of exploration, as it
inevitably follows the exploitative politics preferred by one of the factions. It is especially visible in the
game’s ending, where players are shown a sequence of slides. If we did not manage to sail to the
vampire island or resolve a local conflict, the consequences are dire; after the players’ party departure
from the archipelago the state of the world consequently follows the once established scenario. Thus,
there is a distinctive discrepancy between the level of players’ agency declared by the narrative and the
actual agency expected from the title which operates on the high political and heroic undertones
suggested by several elements showing its Dungeons & Dragons  legacy. One of the most important
aspects of the critical game design in Deadfire  is that virtually none of the factions holds moral high
ground above the other. Each has their agents commissioning a series of murders (that is bounties), and
each also requires that the player put up with structural social inequality (Huana). All factions impose
cultural and economic domination (RDF), usurp land and resource ownership to pursue economic goals
(VTC) or are complicit in slave trade and plunder (Principi). Discussions among the players’ communities
reveal that the dilemma of choosing the sides remained a divisive topic, although the general consensus
favored the progressive Vailian Trading Company [7].

When Mbembe writes about the “territorialization of the sovereign state,” he refers to “the
determination of its frontiers within the context of a newly imposed global order” (Mbembe, 2003, p.
23). Consequently, establishing a frontier in the colony has nothing to do with a peace treaty after a war,
as the indigenous inhabitants of the colonies do not, according to colonial mindset, possess a status that
warrants equality in the time of war. Deadfire’s exploration interprets peace as an eradication of all the
subjects located in the particular area, albeit the side quests involving plunder and exploration are all
located beyond the scope of the factions (including the indigenous Huana). The occasional local trading
outposts and hostile human inhabitants located in the uncharted territories are detached from the
political, ethnic and military conflicts in the Archipelago. What lies outside the key inhabited hubs in
Deadfire is thus “savage” and has different, inferior status, regardless of its proximity to the lands
claimed by one of the main factions. What’s more, there are some special locations marked on the map
which trigger a separate event presented in the form of a static paragraph novel. The interaction in such
instances is limited to dialogue choices (sometimes accompanied by skill check) and is illustrated by
static images. Once resolved (peacefully or otherwise), such locations just disappear from the charts and
cannot be interacted with for the second time. The same happens with generic locations marked as
“burial sites,” “old battlegrounds,” “abandoned villages,” “ruined towers” or “shipwrecks.” After the
area is “searched,” the spoils (usually items) are automatically put into inventory, and the map icon
vanishes in the same fashion as in the case of paragraphed mini-adventures. Interestingly, this method
of plunder and acquiring resources takes time -- selecting a dialogue option prompts further
investigation of the premises, and players are informed about the passage of the in-game time. This
connects the act of charting the unmapped territories and appropriating their resources with the logic of
colonial investment. More importantly, it also signifies the crucial transition: in the age of colonial
conquest, time becomes a valuable, quantifiable resource, which is further amplified in the developed
capitalist economy (Crary, 2013).

“We can tame and transform this place” [8]

Relentless, non-stop exploration is a viable strategy, as it is possible to gain unique character bonuses
which stack up and do not disappear until resting. Unlike in Dungeons & Dragons, fatigue builds up very
slowly, and on normal game modes has only minor effect on exploration. Even though it is treated as a
detrimental status effect which supposedly builds up over time, most of the time players are only
affected by it occur during paragraphed events. When a party member tries to perform particularly
taxing action and fails, this status effect can be applied automatically; a similar penalty is connected with
injuries.

The pace of the game is also dictated by the slightly changed -- from the traditional AD&D  approach --
system which constrains the use of magic. While the first iteration of the game used more conventional
per-rest refresh of the available spell casts, in Deadfire  the system has been changed into per
encounter. This effectively means that during each fight characters which have the ability to cast spells
or use special, magic-like abilities have a fixed number of their uses which gets refreshed with every new
encounter. Such a change drastically influences the game’s pace and flow, as there are very few abilities
which can be used only for a fixed number of times in between “rests.” In Deadfire, camping and resting
in the taverns is incentivized by providing additional bonuses to the party’s abilities and attributes,
although in most of the available difficulty settings it is largely irrelevant to the game’s mechanics.
Juxtaposed with prevalent conventions of magic use in fantasy settings, the Deadfire  resource
management system uncovers its clear departure from the so-called “Vancian” magic. It can be
characterized by the three core rules: strict categorization of spells, a coherent system of “preparing”
and invoking spells for a fixed number of instances, and measuring the power of magic users by the
number of spells that they are capable of successfully use in a given period of time [9]. The term Vancian
comes from Jack Vance, an American fantasy & science fiction writer and author of the Dying Earth  book
series. It has been a major inspiration for many pen & paper as well as digitalized RPG systems, and
abandoning it in Deadfire  for the sake of a significantly different alternative makes the continuous
exploration less cumbersome for the players; arguably diminishing the need for strategic gameplay
pacing.

Conclusion

The case study analyzed in this paper occupies an interesting spot between the “casual” treatment of
colonial tropes and a more radical, “critical” approach. While Deadfire appropriates at least some
colonial tropes for “recreation and entertainment” purposes (Harrer, 2018, p. 2), during the gameplay
players are repeatedly confronted with racism, economic exploitation, social inequity and almost
omnipresent violence. Even though Deadfire  offers plenty of opportunities to voice concerns in such
matters, the core gameplay mechanics inevitably follow the traits leading to establishing (neo)colonial
domination and/or fossilizing structural inequity among the inhabitants of the Archipelago.
Although Deadfire  has not been a financial success (Partleton, 2019), the legacy of Pillars of
Eternity  series proves that there is a potential for digital games to reconcile at least some elements of
the critical stance towards colonial tropes while staying true to the playful, adventure-driven roots
of AD&D  inspired cRPGs. The game also disproves one of the key solutions offered by Mbembe to break
the (post)colonial condition -- the “ethics of the passerby,” a mode of living one’s life through constant
openness to the Others while not forgetting about own struggles and idiosyncrasies. Mbembe’s
argument that “becoming-human-in-the-world is a question neither of birth nor of origin or race”
(Mbembe, 2019, p. 187) is directly contradicted by the Pillars  narrative: it is exactly the birth, origin
story and race that matter, as every other character feature is just a marginally significant (thanks to the
game balance) backdrop against the diverse, but somehow flat ethics governing the imaginary world of
Eora.

At their core, both Pillars  games remain rather conservative takes on the classic, party-based RPG
formula. Counter-colonial readings of the Deadfire’s plot -- albeit heralded by the developers and
possible to explore through the various elements of the narrative expositions -- remain unrealized on
the mechanical level. The application of the interpretative framework built on the works of Achille
Mbembe highlights focal points of the game as illustrations of agonistic domination, necropolitical
subjugation and totalizing subsumption. However, the potential to perform a truly critical playthrough of
the game is impossible without getting involved in colonial activities. To conclude the main quest
of Deadfire  and accumulate enough wealth to obtain (or steal) a ship required to sail to the end point of
both the Archipelago’s map and the game’s narrative, players’ party must submit to the exploitative
logic of dungeon privateering. This time, critical narrative was not enough to establish paths for critical
play.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the Game Studies reviewers who helpfully provided feedback that improved this article.

Endnotes

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/projecteternity/comments/f07s9k/your_least_favorite_part_of_poe2/

[2] Hazanui (Admiral) Karū, commander of RTC forces in Deadfire. All quotations used as subsection
titles appear in the game.

[3] Aenia, one of bounty commissioners in Queen’s Berth district, Neketaka.

[4] Lucia Rivan, captain of the Floating Hangman, addressing the player character.

[5] https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Adra

[6] A quote from a play presented during the final cutscene of “A Tidy Performance” quest.

[7] https://www.reddit.com/r/projecteternity/comments/aef665/
spoilers_my_analysis_of_the_best_faction_to_side/

[8] Injured soldier in Hasongo during “A Distant Light” quest.

[9] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VancianMagic .

  

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