Obsidian Entertainment design director Josh Sawyer has said that he'd be well up for making a new Pillars of Eternity RPG, given a budget on par with Baldur's Gate 3. Specifically, he'd like to build on Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire's combat system, and use a "scripted 3D camera" that avoids some of the fuss of exploring the world and navigating the interface of Larian's game.
]]>Fancy your RPGs a little slower, a little fiddlier, and a little more isometric than today's big release? Two stellar Obsidian adventures, Pillars Of Eternity and Tyranny, are this week's free giveaways on the Epic Games Store. So if you're not feeling up to jacking into your cyberware just yet, there's a good week of free high-fantasy plundering and moustache-twirling villainy ahead before the free games lineup rolls over once again next Thursday.
]]>As though we didn't already have several massive new games to get through this month, next week we're getting a bunch of RPGs thrust upon us, too. Epic Games have revealed their free games for the week starting December 10th are two big Obsidian romps, Pillars Of Eternity - Definitive Edition and Tyranny - Gold Edition.
It just so happens that they're free on the very same day that Cyberpunk 2077 launches. So, will you go for a new futuristic RPG that's gonna cost you upwards of £50? Or two known very good fantasy RPGs that are completely free?
]]>Whether you prefer wizards, sword-and-board warriors, the irradiated wasteland, vampires, or isometric text-heavy stories, the RPG is the genre that will never let you down. Accross the dizzing number of games available where you can play a role, there's something for everyone - and we've tried to reflect that in our list of the best RPGs on PC. The past couple of years have been great for RPGs, so there are some absolute classics as well as brand spanking new games on this list. And there's more to look forwards to, with rumblings of Dragon Age: Dread Wolf finally on the horizon, and space epic Starfield in our rear view mirror. Whatever else may happen, though, this list will provide you with the 50 best RPGs that you can download and play on PC right now.
]]>Paradox Interactive are pitching in on Covid-19 coronavirus relief efforts with a sale on several of their big management games and RPGs until Friday, April 3rd. You can snag some mighty hefty discounts on things like Cities: Skylines, Pillars Of Eternity, and BattleTech. Paradox are committing proceeds from the sale to the World Health Organization's Covid-19 Solidarity Response Fund.
]]>Sales of Pillars Of Eternity 2: Deadfire were disappointing enough that Obsidian Entertainment would need to "re-examine the entire format of the game" before making a hypothetical third, game director Josh Sawyer has suggested. Writing in response to a fan asking after a third game, Sawyer explained that the sequel sold worse than the original, and he'd need to understand why before they were to do another in the same style. He makes clear that whether Pillars 3 happens is not a decision he himself has control over, but this does sound like the series is at least taking a break.
]]>Pillars Of Eternity 2: Deadfire didn't set the charts ablaze the way I'd hoped, but that hasn't stopped Obsidian from giving the piratical RPG some top-notch support. Released yesterday, Patch 5.0 is set to be the final major update for the game, marking the end of beta testing for its turn-based combat mode, overhauling the ship interaction UI and adding some new story stuff. They've even gone as far as roping in the original voice actors to provide new dialogue to help flesh out the main plot arc. Below, a video overview of the changes, plus a challenge for only the maddest of players.
]]>I have to admit, I’m not the best at every video game, but I’m just awful at Western RPGs. I never wrapped my head around Neverwinter Nights’ D&D style of play. I built my character incorrectly in Knights of the Old Republic and it made my playthrough excruciatingly difficult.
I’ve passed on playing other popular WRPGs like Planescape: Torment just for the fear of having to deal with difficult to understand battle systems and poorly explained skill systems. Having grown up with JRPGs, I can easily figure out how to dispatch a sentient pile of thunder goo, but understanding the damage calculations on a Magic Missile was beyond me. But Pillars of Eternity is different.
]]>According to sources close to the deal, Kotaku report that Microsoft are just shy of sealing the deal on acquiring prolific RPG studio Obsidian Entertainment. According to Kotaku's sources, things have proceeded far enough to make it "a matter of when, not if". Obsidian are recently notable for the Pillars Of Eternity series - a throwback to Baldur's Gate style party-based roleplaying - but have produced some excellent games over the years. While rough, Fallout: New Vegas remains my favourite Fallout game, and I'm curious what Microsoft could have planned for the studio.
]]>You look a little tired, friend. Let me just adjust this slider for you. There, wide awake. Now you’ve got some energy, how about listening to the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show? This week we’re talking about character creation. Which games spoil us with choice? And why do we always end up creating the same sneaky elf?
]]>What's your favourite paradox? My current one is 'how can the many awesome games in The Humble Paradox Bundle 2018 cost so little money?'. Wait, that's not a paradox - it's just a really good deal. Looks like I need to finish this news post then head back to paradox school.
Fortunately I won't need to enrol to enjoy the games on offer here. This bundle has 8 in total, with highlights including Obsidian's RPG Pillars of Eternity and the surprisingly funny wizard brawler Magicka 2. This is Paradox though, so best of all is the selection of sprawling strategy games. Let's dive in!
]]>Since its foundation in 2003, Obsidian Entertainment has worked with seven different publishers. Commencing with LucasArts on Knights of the Old Republic II, Obsidian has since signed contracts with Atari, SEGA, Bethesda, Square Enix, Ubisoft and most recently, Paradox Interactive. In fact, up until Pillars of Eternity [official site], every single game Obsidian had made was funded and distributed by a different publisher.
This is a highly unusual state of affairs, and has proved precarious more than once in the company's history. But it has also provided Obsidian with a unique insight into how the world of publishing works, and how the relationship between developer and publisher has changed in the last couple of decades. This topic is especially pertinent today, as new methods of funding and distributing games have seen a significant shift in the power dynamic between developers and publishers.
I spoke to CEO Feargus Urquhart about how it all works (and doesn't).
]]>When Obsidian Entertainment started work on Pillars of Eternity [Official Site], the studio had two goals in mind. First, it wanted to recreate the style and tone of the classic Black Isle RPGs – particularly Baldur's Gate. Second, it wanted to modernise that style, taking advantage of today's technology, and avoiding mistakes made the first time around.
]]>Dungeons are sometimes great and I guess dragons are OK every once in a while, but if I'm going to spend hundreds of hours in a fantasy world, I want to explore a big old city and mingle with its inhabitants for at least a few of those hours. Perhaps I haven't been paying enough attention to Pillars of Eternity II [official site], but I thought its archipelago setting might mean smaller settlements and monster isles without any talkative inhabitants whatsoever. How pleasing it is, then, to see precisely the kind of big old city I want to visit in the latest update video. It's called Neketaka, a name I will always enjoy saying out loud but will almost certainly mangle the vowels of every time I write it down.
]]>At the Paradox Convention last month, I was hoping to see something new from Paradox Development Studio, the internal team responsible for the company's core strategy titles. There were new expansions for Europa Universalis IV [official site] and Hearts of Iron IV [official site], and the hiring of Jon Shafer is an interesting move, but no actual games were announced. I sat down with creative director Johan Andersson and CEO Fredrik Wester about the possibility of a Crusader Kings [official site] sequel, the expansion model, and what the future holds for the development side of Paradox.
]]>Kickstarter's been pretty good for RPGs. We may not have seen the next big leap yet - Divinity: Original Sin 2 is looking pretty damn special, mind - but it's certainly breathed new life into the classics. Wasteland and Pillars of Eternity are both returning. Numenera went down well, despite a little over-promising. Divinity was superb.
Have I left anyone out? (Oh yeah, don't forget Taz.)
Oh. Yes. Tyranny. If you thought that game kinda landed and faded quickly, you're not alone. Despite being a very solid half of a game, even Obsidian/Paradox have admitted that when it came to it, "everyone was hoping that it would do better." I think it deserved to. The thing is, I'm not sure this should have been a huge surprise.
]]>Obsidian Entertainment today formally announced the sequel to Pillars of Eternity, their 2015 throwback fantasy RPG which John enjoyed so. Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire [official site], for that is its name, is set across the Deadfire archipelago, obvs. A god has unexpectedly returned to life and gone a-wandering there, which may cause a few problems. Better go ask him politely to knock it off. As with the first game, Obsidian have launched a crowdfunding campaign to collect pennies.
]]>'Project Louisiana' is the name of oft-revered RPG studio Obsidian's next game, they've revealed, along with a graphic implying farmlands and a quote about facing up to some grim reality. Now, last summer rumours flew that a 'Fallout: New Orleans' was in the offing, based on an unverified and subsequently removed European trademark registration.
A whole mess of people looked at Obsidian expectantly, given that they were behind - don't mention the war - well-received Fallout 3 spin-off New Vegas. They all but shot down the idea - but now they've pointedly codenamed their new'un after New Orleans' home state.
]]>I've played a million beginnings and around a thousand endings, or at least that's how it feels. Imagine having seen the first act of Romeo and Juliet a hundred times but never having seen how it ends. That's my experience with all manner of games, from big story-driven RPGs to some of my favourite strategy epics. I've founded so many starter cities that have never birthed a civilization and met so many characters whose fate I don't know. And this isn't a case of starting a game and then abandoning it; these are the games that I play again and again, sinking days and weeks into them, restarting but never finishing.
Diablo III is the latest.
]]>Evil in Tyranny [official site] is so ordinary. That’s why it's successful, I think. In a medium prone to cartoonish overexaggeration, where villains are barely more than mustache-twirling caricatures, Tyranny tells a bleaker story. It’s the evil of numbers, the evil of tax collectors and bureaucracies and negligence and “I was just following orders.” A real-world sort of evil. The type that’s much harder to stomach.
The type that, when you’re given the chance to go hands-on with Tyranny’s first few hours, leaves you unsettled.
]]>Maybe it's safe to assume that any remotely successful game has a sequel in production, but it's still nice to hear confirmation. Obsidian's trad-fantasy RPG Pillars of Eternity, which John enjoyed so much, has a sequel in very early production, says the company's CEO.
]]>I must confess, since finishing Siege of Dragonspear the other week, I've not actually fired up any RPGs. It's not for want of them to play. I'm particularly looking forward to finally trying Final Fantasy IX, which I missed back in the day, and Beamdog's recently announced interquel, Planescape Torment: The Nameless One And A Half. (It's very similar to the original, only now whenever someone asks "What can change the nature of a man?" a furious little goblin pops onto the screen to yell "#notallmen!")
The problem has simply been timing - not having a nice satisfying chunk of time to really settle down for an epic experience. So instead, I thought I'd take a look at a few speed-runs, and see how fifty hours suddenly becomes a minute and a half... provided you don't include the hundreds of hours to get to that point. Here's a few of them I dug up to make your completion times look like crap, from RPGs old and new.
]]>Update: There's a trailer below now.
When Obsidian partnered with Paradox to release 2015's best RPG, Pillars of Eternity, I hoped there might be further collaborations. Obsidian's major releases, Pillars aside, have been spread between six publishers and the studio turned to Kickstarter knowing that a "day of doom" was approaching. Perhaps the relationship with Paradox and the success of Pillars has brought some stability because moments ago, Obsidian announced their next game at Paradox's GDC press conference. It's called Tyranny and it starts where you might expect a game over screen.
]]>If you happen to be awake and free from work at 5PM Pacific Standard time, you'll be able to watch a live stream of the Paradox GDC press conference, which is taking place over in San Francisco as part of GDC. I'll be there and I'm excited to hear the latest about lovely Stellaris but even more excited to hear from Obsidian.
Over on their Instagram account, Paradox just announced that they'll be revealing details of a new project in collaboration with the studio behind Pillars, Fallout: New Vegas and Alpha Protocol. EXCITEMENT.
]]>The second part of the Pillars of Eternity [official site] expansion The White March is out today, as promised, and developers Obsidian Entertainment are continuing to tease that more fantasy RPG fun may be still to come. Another expansion, maybe? A sequel? They're not saying. But for now, hey, the expansion is out and so is that big patch. You've got plenty of Pillars to play for now. Enjoy that and then worry about what's coming next, okay? Take it easy. Take a deep breath. You've got this. I believe in you.
]]>The second part of the Pillars of Eternity [official site] expansion The White March is due on February 16th, and so is Update 3.00. That free patch will bring new features and content for everyone, whether they've got White March or not. "What sorts of things?" you may ask, if you haven't been read forum posts and whatnot. I'm glad you asked, because this post continuing is kinda contingent upon reader curiosity. Now we've established that we're doing this together, let's peep at a new video showing off some of the fancy new things, from fun at your Stronghold to 'Story Time' difficulty.
]]>If your January is shaping up anything like mine - and I assume everyone is a less-good version of me, so you certainly aspire to follow my life - you'll be spending a large part of it wavering between despair and bloody fury. So hey, good news: this mood needn't sour your first taste of The White March Part 2, the second half of the Pillars of Eternity [official site] expansion. It had been slated to arrive in the period of "late January", but a new trailer pegs it to a firm date: February 16th. Come watch!
]]>As the year draws toward its final frosty furlong, I'm slightly surprised that one of the games I'm most looking forward to playing is also one of my favourite games from 2014. It's Divinity: Original Sin, a game that I adored when I played it last year and that I expect to lose myself in again when the Enhanced Edition comes out next week. It's not the only RPG that I'll have revisited this year - both Pillars of Eternity and The Witcher 3 sucked me in at release and then lost me for a while when I realised they were going to require weeks of attention, but I used their expansions as an excuse to pick up where I'd left off. Here are five reasons to love digital expansions.
]]>What is the best RPG of 2015? The RPS Advent Calendar highlights our favourite games from throughout the year, and behind today's door is...
]]>As the dragons finally return to their nests to hibernate and the ghosts don their chains to help remind misers of the meaning of the season, we approach the end of another year. As is tradition, that is time for we at the guild-house to award both quests and questers the ceremonial Scrolls of Honour™. (Chorus of affordable angels)
Scribed upon only the finest vellum in ink taken from a particularly recalcitrant octopus from the Abyssal Depths, they are a testament to skill and imagination and occasional disappointments that mean exactly nothing whatsoever except that I have a column and so I can hand out whatever made-up crap takes my fancy. Lo! We begin!
]]>Lawks a lummy, I swear everything's episodic today! I tell you, not one word of a lie, I bought a Bounty bar the other day only to find even they're now episodic - one half (Bounty: Episode 2) comes in a tough photodegrading wrapper so it cannot be eaten until a couple of months after you first open the wrapper. In this topsy-turvy world, it's perfectly natural that video game expansions should be episodic too. Pillars of Eternity [official site] was partially expanded in August with The White March - Part 1, and today developers Obsidian have announced Part 2 will arrive in late January 2016.
]]>It's been nearly half a year since we devoured Pillars Of Eternity. Now Obsidian are back with another great big chunk, in the form of the first half of The White March [official site]. Does the expansion give good reason to return to the Dyrwood? Here's wot I think.
]]>It's been five months since Pillars of Eternity [official site] was released, which is categorical proof that the wheel of time has spun completely off its axis and is careering down a hill toward a cliff edge. Before we're all plunged into the abyss, there's another big chunk of RPG from Obsidian to delve into, in The White March Part 1, a snowy expansion for the main game.
]]>Pillars of Eternity is a big game. Enormous might be the right word, actually. Gigantic. Sprawling. Obsidian don't think it's quite large enough, however, so they'll be adding new everything with the upcoming White March expansion. I spoke with lead designer Josh Sawyer at Gamescom and he explained that the studio has created so many new things - from companions and spells to quests and locations - that they'll be splitting the expansion into two parts. "The first part ends cleanly, there's no cliffhanger", he said, "and part two will introduce even more new areas." It looks superb, improving the game for those who haven't finished as well as those who have. Part one is out August 25th.
]]>A few months ago, Obsidian Entertainment teased out a total non-release date for its first expansion to the RPG Pillars of Eternity [official site]. With only a "Coming Soon" label tagged on to the end of its announcement trailer in June, things have been fairly quiet in the time since. Until now, anyhow. The White March - Part I will be coming out on August 25th, the team announced at Gamescom this week. As we mentioned before, it's bringing with it a level cap increase, new companions and abilities, new areas to explore, and a new storyline.
]]>One of the most gratifying things about the recent-ish RPG revival is that they've almost all done well enough to warrant developer interest after release. (Oh, if only the adventure one had been as... no, no. Wrong column.) Call them Enhanced Editions, Director's Cuts or whatever else, they give their creators a second chance to fix mistakes or expand their worlds - and that's pretty cool for fans. But what are the main ones on the way? I put together this quick list of ones to look forward to.
]]>The main reason I stopped playing Pillars of Eternity is because I'd need a month-long holiday to make meaningful progress through it, but though I liked it, a host of minor annoyances played their part too. Retro-for-retro's sake UI, a conscious aversion to brevity which I felt sometimes undermined rather than supported its world-building, overly micro-managey combat, and most of all, janky stealth. I always play a rogue if I can, mostly because I'm a kleptomaniac in RPGs, but in Pillars stealthing one person involved stealthing the whole party, whether or not they were any good at stealth. It looked silly, it got fiddly, it wasn't very effective in combat and it felt wrong.
Fortunately, stealth is one of several areas of Obsidian's RPG which is due for an overhaul in the upcoming 2.0 patch, which adds some of the White March expansion pack's features to the core game.
]]>What are the best Steam Summer Sale deals? Each day for the duration of the sale, we'll be offering our picks - based on price, what we like, and what we think more people should play. Read on for the five best deals from day 7 of the sale.
]]>Pillars Of Eternity [official site] looks set to live up to its name with even more playable hours being added to the game in the near future. An expansion, titled The White March: Part 1 is "coming soon" according to its announcement trailer, was revealed last night. Set after the events of the first game, it not only begins a new storyline but also includes new companions to recruit.
]]>RPG maestro and human stretch goal Chris Avellone probably isn't planning to go solo but earlier today he confirmed that he'll be leaving Obsidian. The studio's most recent title was the superb Pillars of Eternity, on which Avellone worked as a narrative designer, but both he and Obsidian, the company that he co-founded, have a proud back catalogue. Obsidian is still home to some of the finest minds in the RPG business, not least Eternity lead Josh Sawyer, so my main interest here is not what happens to the studio he's leaving but what Avellone does next.
]]>As wonderful as RPGs are, some tropes and cliches and just general bloody annoyances really do spoil the fun. Some of them might only crop up occasionally, others just won't go away. Some, you might think, are just petty irritations. But no! All these incontrovertible sins must be destroyed at once! Here's a few of my least favourite offenders. What others would you add to the cursed list?
]]>Once at primary school I tried to convince my teacher that we needed a new word - or at least that we needed one that might exist already, but that we’d somehow forgotten. This is going to be a piece partly about words, and “fantasy” was one that I was never totally happy with. It lacked, as I saw it, the generic precision of “science-fiction,” and I wanted a more specific description for that strand of fantasy storytelling and world-building that (I did not really know at the time, but would have pretended to if asked) has flowed from Tolkien’s consolidation of elves and dragons, dwarves and orcs. I wanted to be able to pin, with a single word, that mixture of magic and folklore, that particular set of imaginative boundaries with which I was so often engaged and so thoroughly obsessed. The best I could come up with was “fantamystical”, which, if you’ve been paying attention for the last twenty years, did not catch on.
Luckily it’s been a very kind twenty years for this area of fiction, to the point where we hardly need the word fantamystical at all (although I am willing to give it one last push if you guys are). A combination of, among other things, Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, and screen retellings of The Lord Of The Rings and A Song Of Ice And Fire have made my adolescent anxieties about the ambiguous categorizations of fiction redundant, leaving me with merely dozens of other anxieties, and us with Tolkien-fenced fantasy imprinted on our culture, and our games (this is being written in the gap between the arrival of Pillars Of Eternity and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, with Dragon Age: Inquisition still questing, exploring and adventuring in the background).
]]>I take roleplaying seriously. That's not to say I have a cupboard full of lucky dice or a handcrafted elven tunic - what I mean to say is that when I play an RPG, I try to make all of my decisions based on my character rather than the systems. I'll pass up a huge pile of loot if I don't think that taking it would be in-character. Roleplaying is a performance of sorts and Pillars of Eternity [official site] encourages my particular approach to the genre by combining a huge, tightly scripted plot with systems that go some way toward mimicking the best qualities of a human Dungeon Master.
]]>Pillars of Eternity is out. You might have noticed. I'm not terribly far into it myself yet, but in between a spot of bear-bashing and wolf-wounding, I was struck by how very RPG Inn the first inn I visited was. Truly, the Black Hound Inn in the town of Gilded Vale is the archetypal RPG inn. I knew, the second I stepped foot in it, what it was, what I could do in it, what every part of it signified. There would be no surprises and no menace, but it would be as comfortable as cotton wool slippers. It felt like every RPG inn ever, because it is every RPG inn ever. Let me show you around the place.
]]>Selina Scott and Jeff Banks were right all along: dress wrong and you're nothing. This is the lesson of Pillars of Eternity, a howler of a newly-disclosed bug in which will permanently strip your characters of buffs if you happen to use the inventory a certain way.
]]>Now that people have had a weekend to spend with Pillars Of Eternity, it feels a bit more appropriate to offer thoughts on parts of the game that would otherwise have been spoiling revelations or moments within the opening few hours. Not core plot events, or twists that may occur, but just the basics – basics I wanted to leave out of my review because it felt like stealing. Stealing the blank slate experience I had from you, in my effort to describe the game.
So here are a first couple of extended chunks I would have liked to have included when expressing and explaining my enthusiasm. Assume big spoilers for themes of the game.
]]>Oh thank goodness. After 77,000 backers, $4 million raised and nearly three years in development, Obsidian’s Pillars Of Eternity [official site] is here, and it’s just stunning.
This is the RPG I’ve been craving since Planescape: Torment, the first to win my absolute love since Dragon Age: Origin. It’s a vast, deep and wonderfully written game, malleable to how you want to approach the genre, replete with companions, side-quests, an enormously involved combat system, and lasts a solid 60 hours. Here's wot I think:
]]>I have spent most of the last week doing little else but play Obsidian's Pillars Of Eternity [official site]. But I cannot yet tell you wot I think, as such brainthoughtss are under embargo. I can, however, stream or "let's play" the first fifteen hours of the game. But I'm not going to do that, because it would be the most awful shame for you to have such things spoiled.
Instead I've videoed and chatted over the first half hour, from the character creator to the opening scenes, stopping right before the plot kicks in. Because you don't want to know the story before you play an RPG, because you're not a complete clot.
]]>Pillars of Eternity [official site] is so close I can almost touch, smell and see it. I've already spent some time with the backer beta and spoken to lead designer Josh Sawyer about the game at great length, and now I just want to play. I'm hoping it'll be the kind of life-consuming RPG that I can hibernate in for a couple of months. The game went gold today and Obsidian's responses to questions in an Ask Me Anything session surfaced yesterday. There is discussion of an expansion, among other things.
]]>“We don't want to be a cult.” Shams Jorjani is VP of Acquisition and Portfolio Strategy at Paradox Interactive. He's the guy who reads through and listens to a thousand MOBA pitches and occasionally finds a Teleglitch hidden behind them. He laughs at the cult line as soon as its out there. This, after all, is a company that frequently dresses its employees in coloured wizard robes, faces concealed.
Cultish maybe. Cult adjective rather than cult noun. Bruce Campbell's career rather than Tom Cruise's alternate career.
]]>What are adventurers' bags and coats made of? I ask because watching an hour of Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity (which now has a release date: March 26th), I notice an awful lot of tongues being ripped out of dead monsters' mouths and wings ripped from backs then stuffed into pockets, pouches, packs, and purses. I'd give a wide berth to anyone dripping with, and reeking of, old blood and flesh. You'll see a whole lot more of isometric RPG adventuring in that hour, sure, but I can't stop thinking about reaching into my pocket for my wallet and pulling out an old tongue.
]]>The beta of Pillars of Eternity has been available to backers of its hyper-successful Kickstarter projcet since August last year, but now the frugal wait-and-sees (like me) know when the game will be finished: March 26th. There'll also be a livestream from project director Josh Sawyer tomorrow at 9pm GMT/1pm PST to show some of the recently added and revised content.
]]>After publishing my thorough conversation with Pillars of Eternity lead designer Josh Sawyer, I realised that I hadn’t actually expressed an opinion about the game. I was curious and hopeful but hadn’t had a chance to play it, and see how well all of the elements came together. The backer beta, which launched yesterday, is a huge relief. Pillars is shaping up to be worthy of its inspirations, and intelligent and bold enough not to be bound to them.
]]>In the second and final part of a conversation with Josh Sawyer of Obsidian (part one), we discuss how the design of Pillars of Eternity differs from Fallout: New Vegas. That involves a discussion of New Vegas' post-release support, official and otherwise, and the pros and cons of traditional RPG systems. Of particular note - why Pillars of Eternity does not have a Speech skill, or any other skill of that sort.
With contributions from executive producer Brandon Adler, we also discuss the role of Paradox as publisher and the benefits of digital distribution, and end with a tribute to nineties RPG, Darklands.
]]>Pillars of Eternity was, briefly, gaming's most successful Kickstarter, at least in terms of funds raised. Like many crowdfunded games, particularly in the early days, it's a project driven partly by nostalgia. A party-based fantasy RPG in the style of Baldur's Gate and the other Infinity Engine D&D games, it has a strong heritage to live up to. Obsidian's Josh Sawyer is the director of the game and I spoke to him late last week about theology, flagellant monks, freedom from licensing and respecting player's choices. We also talked about his desire to make a historical RPG and his previous work, particularly the design of Fallout: New Vegas.
]]>If I were to explain how I feel about my gaming diet right now using an extremely overwrought simile, I would say it's akin to swimming in a giant pool of alphabet soup where the only letters are R, P, and G. 2014 has been extremely generous on that front, and while Divinity: Original Sin and Shadowrun: Dragonfall are splitting my time right now, I've got Wasteland 2 and Pillars of Eternity on the horizon. The former has been in beta for quite some time, but the latter will finally be set out to cool on the windowsill next month. The only downside? It's backer-only, for now.
]]>Writing music for an RPG must be such a tricky thing. Especially when you're working with a project as potentially massive as Obsidian Kickstarter darling Pillars of Eternity, you've got to breathe life into lilting melodies that rise and crash at the perfect moments, but drift and meander gently throughout. I mean, these songs are going to be on loop for upwards of 50-60 hours. If one is too loud or too fast or too insistent on taking center stage in an area where the player's just doing their thing, it can easily break the whole illusion. Fortunately, Obsidian's got plenty of experience with this conundrum, and it's debuted a region's entire song as a proof-of-concept.
]]>Sound the unexpected announcement alarms and check to make sure over-jerked knees are covered by your insurance plan. Paradox has announced that it's publishing Obsidian's notoriously independent old-school RPG Pillars of Eternity, a big, (not, by most definitions) bad publishing type dipping its pinky toe into the brave new world of Kickstarter. "...Er, why?" You might ask. "Also didn't Obsidian get oodles of cash from backers? What happens to the game they paid for if Paradox decides all bets are off?" Well, good news is, Paradox can't actually do that. I quizzed Paradox CEO Fred Wester and Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart about their new partnership, creative control, what this means for backers, why the two companies struck a deal in the first place, whether Paradox is interested in pursuing other classic RPG revivals like Torment, and how South Park ended up glitchy despite Obsidian's allegedly renewed QA efforts. It's all below.
]]>When Obsidian put Project Eternity up on Kickstarter in September 2012, they dared to ask for a million dollars to make a classic RPG in the 90s BioWare style. And they hoped they'd be finished in a year and a half, in April 2014. People went and gave them four million dollars, and so accordingly their ambitions grew much larger. A release in April started to seem less realistic, and indeed it's understandably not going to be anywhere close.
]]>They say that history often repeats itself. People feud endlessly over similar issues, trends ebb and flow, and you already are your parents (THERE IS NO ESCAPING IT SEARCH YOUR FEELINGS YOU KNOW IT TO BE TRUE). But it's not all bad. Sometimes, for instance, classic game genres are reborn in glorious blazes of phoenix-like beauty, and you're like take that dad you had to play Dungeons and Dragons with pens and paper I'm totally different please let me be different. And so, as it was in the days when games like Baldur's Gate and Planescape Torment swapped genetic material, so too shall it be soonish with Pillars of Eternity and Torment: Tides of Numenera. Torment will borrow Eternity's gorgeous engine tech, allowing for hyper-detailed backgrounds that ooze and skitter with intoxicating weirdness.
]]>Have you read our recent mega-blowouts of Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity? Then congratulations: you know everything about Pillars of Eternity except what the pillars of eternity actually are. But Obsidian's not planning to dip a furtive pinky toe into classic CRPG waters and then leave its legacy behind again. This time, it's in control of its own destiny, and no one knows that better than CEO Feargus Urquhart. He wants to push the classic Black Isle mold further than it's ever gone before, into worlds so immense that the classic Infinity Engine never would've been able to handle them. But that was then, and this is now. His company has new-old tech and new-old ideas. Hear all about Urquhart's grandest plans below.
]]>Do you want to know almost everything ever about Obsidian's newly renamed Kickstarter opus, Pillars of Eternity? Then click that link for impressions and more new information than you can shake a stick of truth at. But still, somehow, thousands of words later, there is more. What follows is an interview snippet concerning Eternity's development progress, what's been left on the cutting room floor, the game's size/scope, party members, and of course, the Dungeoniest Dungeon To Ever Done Dungeon A Dungeon.
]]>It's official! Project Eternity finally has a real big boy name: Pillars of Eternity. On its own, that's hardly the most exciting news in the world, but it also means that Obsidian is finally ready to take the wraps off more than, like, three screenshots and precious little else. I had the good fortune of traveling to Obsidian to witness plenty of gameplay and conduct multiple eternities-long interviews, and The Artist Formerly Known As Black Isle sent me away with some video to boot. See, hear, read, and - I guess if you want - taste and touch so very, very, very much of the newly rechristened Kickstarter darling below.
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