Pillars of Eternity - More Previews & Screenshots

I left the small cubicle and out of the convention center entirely and into the sweltering heat of downtown Los Angeles after the demo concluded. I wished it was winter. Not because it was too hot out--even though it was--but because Pillars of Eternity is smack in the middle of beta and won't be released until the end of this year. I got the sense that Sawyer and his team were walking a thin line between simplifying a complicated genre while still retaining the depth that made it a beloved genre in the first place. As brief as the demo was, I felt that they were walking that line just fine.

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Pillars of Eternity is certainly shaping up to be something special. The game is pegged by Obsidian as being a similar scale as Baldur’s Gate, which means there’s a huge game being made here, and from a technical point of view, it looks stunning – especially when you add that it’s being made in Unity, with very reasonable system requirements and will ship on Windows, Mac and Linux. I’ve worked with Unity as a developer and played a lot of games made with it and frankly I’ve never seen anything look this good from that engine – throw your preconceived notions out of the window about what a Unity game is.

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Pillars of Eternity will feature hundreds of beautiful handcrafted environments, a robust combat system and a completely adjustable story filled with unique characters to recruit. While we were only privy to a small slice, it made us crave the entire pie. There’s so much to explore in this world and so many branching paths to be taken that Obsidian Entertainment may just have one of the most sought-after experiences on the market. While there is still no given release date, expect to play Pillars of Eternity sometime later this year on PC and Mac.

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The Obsidian representative said that they modeled Pillars of Eternity after PC RPGs of the late 90s, in particular, Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale. Players have a top-down view of the scenario before them, and like the original Baldur’s Gate, all combat is done in real time, but the player can pause the game before doling out orders to the party. They have also assured us that there are numerous dungeons and secrets scattered throughout the handcrafted world, and they emphasized that exploration will be crucial. In other words, this game has my name written all over it.

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