RPGWatch Feature - Pillars of Eternity Gamescom Presentation

Myrthos

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Last week I was at Gamescom and one of the meetings was with Josh Sawyer and Adam Brennecke for Pillars of Eternity. They walked me through the backer beta in 30 minutes. In this article you can find what it was they said about the game.

The backer beta starts in the village of Dyrford, it is a side area in the game and not plot critical. The village is built on top of an old settlement and comes with a dungeon below it. In the village there is a backer defined inn, named The Dracogen Inn, where we find the barman Dengler, named after one of their backers, to rent a room for sleeping. Compared to the Inifinity Engine games, sleeping works differently in PoE. They wanted to make sure the inns in PoE were a bit more compelling to use. As a result your party will get a long term buff when sleeping in one of the better bedrooms of the inn and the more exclusive your room, the better the buff. You can also sleep everywhere outside of an inn if you have camping equipment in your inventory. Sleeping outside is safe and will not get you attacked but will remove any buff you received from sleeping at the inn. They feel this makes sleeping more about the strategic choices of using limited camping resources and not about a random chance of being attacked.
As in the Infinitty Engine games, sleeping restores all your health and the spells you might have used.
More information.
 
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Argh!

I only have to be strong for a few more hours, and then I will have succeeded in not paying an extra $25 for a game I've already paid $25 for.

There is no possibility of my suddenly giving in to impatience at the last moment.

No... possibility...

Argh!
 
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Don't waste $25 on the current beta, unless you like buggy incomplete stuff (the beta is a chunk of the game). You'll get the whole game stable and not-so-buggy in a few months.
 
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Well the last update pretty much says the beta has nothing to do with the final product. I might give it a try just to see how it looks, and I hate playing Betas.

Backer Beta Content

The content of the Backer Beta encapsulates the village of Dyrford and surrounding wilderness and dungeon environments. You will begin by choosing basic difficulty settings (Easy, Normal, Hard, or Path of the Damned), optional modes (Expert and Trial or Iron), and building your character. In the Backer Beta, you have access to all character races and subraces, all classes, and all starting cultures and backgrounds.

You build a character at 1st level, but you will start the game with enough experience to advance to 5th. While we have very few Talents in the Backer Beta, you should be able to get a very good idea of the core functionality of all eleven classes. It is extremely important to us that the fundamentals of each class feel solid before we implement more Talents or move Abilities around.
In addition to the character you make, you will start with a list of four pre-made, intentionally (extremely) generic party members: BB Fighter, BB Rogue, BB Priest, and BB Wizard. The characters are lightly equipped with Fine (quality) gear and set to level 5. None of these characters are companions in the full game and they are under-equipped in terms of overall gear (rings, cloaks, booties, consumables, etc.).

The quests available in the Backer Beta have an artificially-inflated amount of experience points associated with them to ensure you can advance from 5th to 8th level assuming you do everything offered. We want you to advance your characters significantly within the Backer Beta so you get a sense of how the different classes change from level to level.

Other than exploration, conversation, combat, and loot-grabbing, there are other systems you can experiment with in the Backer Beta:

-Crafting and Enchanting - Crafting allows you to make consumables (food, potions, and scrolls). Enchanting allows you to modify weapons, armor, and shields. Even unique items can have additional effects added.
-Hiring Adventurers - If you speak with Dengler at the Dracogen Inn, you can ask to hire adventurers, allowing you to make additional party members.
-Camping Supplies and Inns - Pillars of Eternity primarily uses a resource-based rest system. While "in the field", you can rest using a limited number of Camping Supplies (the number in the corner of the campfire icon near the center/bottom of the main HUD). The number of supplies you can carry is limited by your level of difficulty. However, you may also choose to rest at the Dracogen Inn. Resting in the stables is cheap but provides no additional benefit. The more expensive rooms provide the party with long-term benefits in the form of buffs.

What's Missing?

First, nothing in the Backer Beta has a direct connection to the critical path/main story of Pillars of Eternity. We have intentionally excluded any spoiler content so our backers can play the beta worry-free. None of the quests are connected to the crit path and none of the pre-made companions are going to be in the final game.

Second, the stronghold mechanics aren't in the Backer Beta. The stronghold includes a lot of additional maps, characters, and content, some of which are part of the critical path. Including them would have been difficult and the scope would have increased a great deal.

Finally, no content above 8th level is in the Backer Beta. If some bits and pieces wind up in the Backer Beta data, they have not been a focus for us at all. You may, through the magic of h4x, find a way to access them, but they are out of scope for these tests.

Update: Thanks for the article Myrthos though we missed a few typos, and the complainers can go to hell on other sites. So keep up the good work.:thumbsup:
 
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In addition to the character you make, you will start with a list of four pre-made, intentionally (extremely) generic party members: BB Fighter, BB Rogue, BB Priest, and BB Wizard.

I mentally ran through a short but spicy list of "BB" phrases before realizing that this stood for "Backer Beta Wizard" rather than "Big Booty Wizard" or the like.
 
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I mentally ran through a short but spicy list of "BB" phrases before realizing that this stood for "Backer Beta Wizard" rather than "Big Booty Wizard" or the like.
I can see it happening but you must have a dirty mind. ;)

Either that or maybe you played to many Bethesda mods.:biggrin:

Hint: (Better Body mods)
 
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Good read, thanks! This explains a great deal about the content of the beta. I gave it a quick go the other day and was fairly confused. Perhaps they should've added some of the info from this article as a disclaimer the first time the backer beta is opened?

That being said: The engine is already very smooth and the areas look great. They should probably tweak the combat a bit, and perhaps add some ambient sounds so it doesn't feel quite as empty, but it is certainly well on its way.

Now I just have to spend some time figuring out the stats, classes and what not, as there are a lot of options.
 
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Argh!

I only have to be strong for a few more hours, and then I will have succeeded in not paying an extra $25 for a game I've already paid $25 for.

There is no possibility of my suddenly giving in to impatience at the last moment.

No… possibility…

Argh!

I've spent $77 and was soooo tempted today as well to spent another $25.... But then I told myself - finish some games that you have already in your GOG and Steam account and stop whinging... Plus XMas 2014 looks sweet already and there will be plenty of good games and spare time :)
 
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