one of the things that i really like about pillars is that the companions aren't just there for funsies and so you have people to help you in the combat encounters, they're actually integral to understanding the themes of the game as a whole. like, you cannot meaningfully talk about anything else happening in the game without also discussing what the companions have going on.
(obviously major spoilers ahead for... everything)
edér's entire companion quest line is, in some ways, a microcosm of the Whole Point™ of the game. he is a simple man from a farming town, born and raised into faith. all his life, he made choices that reflected what he believed his god would want from him—exactly as thaos teaches. and eventually, he finds out that maybe he was wrong. his brother, who he trusts, made a different choice, and it sends his entire life spiraling. his whole questline is trying to chase down answers that don't exist, because the question he's asking is was i wrong? did i make the wrong choice? and the only person who can answer that is him. not you, not eothas, not woden. just him.
aloth is a cautionary tale in and of himself. the stuff with iselmyr (which i could do a whole other post about lmao) isn't separate from the themes of his story with the leaden key—they're intertwined. aloth is someone who has sought an escape his entire life, and both iselmyr and the leaden key give him that, though only one is by choice. either way, his story is about abdicating control of his own life, allowing others to take the reins so that he doesn't have to bear responsibility for it, and refusing to ask the questions that might break the illusion of his own powerlessness until someone else does it for him. only then can he properly come into his own and decide what he thinks the world should look like.
durance is, as one would assume from his profession, extremely devout. his whole life is framed around his conception of magran and her teachings, and (despite how abrasive and unpleasant he is) it's super worth travelling with him and talking to him because he actually has a lot to say. as time passes, you learn a lot from him, and his exact role in the saint's war, the death of the god eothas, the purges of eothasian followers afterward, and how he ended up where he is. as we come to find out, his own goddess tried to kill him—she used him to create the godhammer and remove eothas as part of a conspiracy with the goddess woedica, and then she attempted to cover up her involvement by killing the priests who knew. for years durance has been aimless, feeling like he has displeased magran despite doing everything she ever asked... only to find out she had only ever intended to use him and then discard him.
you meet kana rua as he is attempting to get into caed nua, an ancient engwithan keep, so that he can descend into what are called the endless paths. he's a scholar looking for an original text, hoping he can use it to convince his nation to choose a path of peace and unity with their neighbours. but he quickly learns the hard way that the engwithans weren't necessarily people to emulate and sometimes, the answers to your questions only get you a difficult truth. there is no flawless past that you can point to as your north star.
pallegina is a really interesting case here because she is vocally against the gods... but that doesn't mean she is without an authority figure. she defines herself by her service to the ducs bels, the leaders of her home country. she is ordered by the ducs to make a frankly scummy trade deal on their behalf, one that will benefit her home country but completely fuck over the ailing dyrwood, and her companion quest is about whether she should make the decision to do what is right and face the consequences of disobedience, or if she should take the path of least resistance and do as she is ordered. thinking for herself and doing what she believes is right is punished severely, she is ostracized from her home and kicked out of her paladin order as a result, her entire life upended by it. but it's what she believed was right, not what she was told was right.
grieving mother is a direct mirror of thaos himself. like thaos, she believed it was better to have the people around her believe a comforting lie than a terrible truth. and like thaos, the cost of maintaining that lie grew and grew, and she had to take more and more drastic measures to make sure no one, including herself, could discover the truth. it's interesting that ultimately, the final choice for both grieving mother AND thaos involves choosing whether the path to redemption (if it is indeed possible) requires memory of the wrongdoing or not.
sagani has been sent on a mission from her tribe to find the reincarnation of one of their village elders. it's a sacred tradition for her people, but it's one that's not without cost. she's been away from her family and home for five years searching for persoq, and it hasn't been an easy journey. she's determined to see the tradition through and find him, but she struggles with finding meaning in the quest, and you can influence her and her priorities, or leave her dispirited at the resolution of the quest.
and while this one is a little more abstract, i think it still does play into the final reveals and the Whole Point™ because what sagani is doing is going on a quest to find a trusted authority figure, and at the end we find out he's been reincarnated as a stag. just an animal. one that is literally dying as we find it, the victim of local hunters. her quest is about cycles, but its also about disillusionment. what was it all for? and sagani has to figure out the answer to that. i think it's a reflection of the experience of finding out the truth; having to reckon with a world where there isn't the higher meaning you were expecting, and having to find meaning and purpose despite that.
hiravias is probably the most transparent example of this, since he directly talks about having to think for yourself, especially if you nudge him further towards wael. his story is an interesting one—he was a worshiper of the seeker god galawain, and while following his teachings to discover himself and his spiritshift form, hiravias was attacked by a beast and, in his own words, mutilated. but it worked: he spiritshifted for the first time... into the very same beast that attacked him, the autumn stelgaer, a cat-like monster that his village considers an omen. like durance, he did everything right. he did what his god told him to, and as repayment, he nearly died and was cast out from his home. the difference? he did something about it. he stopped worshiping galawain and instead turned his sights to wael, the god of mysteries, who encourages its followers to ask questions for the sake of it, and to accept that some answers aren't meant to be known. as a result, he is one of the least shaken companions by the revelation at the end of the game, because he has already been prepared for the idea that the gods are fallible and you are responsible for thinking for yourself.
and it's so crazy because as you're playing, you can see how these stories tie into what you're experiencing and into each other, but it isn't until you get to the end and finally learn that big, terrible secret that it all clicks. everything in the game was always about this: that terrible lie that thaos and the engwithans had been telling for centuries. the gods were created; neat and tidy fabrications to keep the world acting Right, to make people fear punishment for wrongdoing because they believed that without a threat hanging over their heads, everyone will just behave like animals.
but the thing is, it's not true. the gods can be cruel and capricious, just as their creators had been, and just as many people use the gods as an excuse for atrocities as they do a reason for righteous and pious living. it's a comfortable lie, that having something powerful and unquestionable to look at will somehow create peace and prosperity and order. it's always been a lie.
and once you know that, once you've seen that big reveal, once you've met iovara and talked to thaos, it's so easy to see how the threads connect. i love when a game fully and completely just knows what it's about. pillars so clearly had something to say, and it hammered that into every fucking second of this game.
