Pillars of Eternity - Ready for Release & Expansion

I'm sure there has been a few presales so they might have some indication upfront on budget but obviously the future oft he IP depends on sales. Divinity did massively well so if this can come close to that they will be in good shape (though paradox gets a cut).

you said:

I'm sure there has been a few presales so they might have some indication upfront on budget but obviously the future oft he IP depends on sales. Divinity did massively well so if this can come close to that they will be in good shape (though paradox gets a cut).

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D:OS had well done cooperative MP mode, but PoE has a more known developer and a more serious RPG setting/story. We will see how well PoE does.

People avoiding spoilers about the game, I suggest being real careful starting Monday.

Reviewers got their keys yesterday and they have a review embargo that drops on March 26th, but reviewers/streamers can start to streams on the 23rd.

@azarhal - do you know if there will be a PDF manual for the game? That game manual was something I loved about the old IE games...and these are new rules that I am not familiar with at all.

@booboo I remember a manual being mentioned during the KS and well, everyone should have access to the manual so a PDF version should exist.

I'm going a bit off topic with this, but I hope someone can answer. In the recently released documentary, they mentioned that they were screwed over by a publisher and almost had to close doors. It was mentioned that something had to happen by a certain date or they would be finished. Did the 4+ million from kickstarter and other donations give them all the operating capital they needed to keep the doors open to this day?

I'm not trying to take a shot at Obsidian, I'm just curious. I'm not sure how big they were in the past and if they hired back any of the people they lost, but four million dollars doesn't seem like that much money to stretch over two plus years. Also curious what sales numbers would they need to hit after release to remain afloat or is that business all in the past now?

I'm betting it was sega who screwed them over in the aliens rpg.

rune_74 said:

I'm betting it was sega who screwed them over in the aliens rpg.

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Definitely Sega for deciding to fund an FPS game with Gearbox, and cancelling the Alien RPG. Also Microsoft is to blame for cancelling their RPG called Project North Carolina.

On March 14, 2012, Obsidian cancelled a "future next gen project", resulting in the layoff of approximately 20-30 employees both from that project and the upcoming South Park: The Game team.

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As for funding they have a few different things going on right now.

1. Contract work for an MMO game called Skyforge.
2. Their working on a F2P game called Armored Warfare.
3. Licensed their tech for Unity to various Kickstarter developers.
4. Pathfinder card game & Possible future CRPG game.
5. Pillars of Eternity and future sequels & expansions.
6. Another possible kickstarter this year or next.

(All the information is found easily on Google, and our news section archive.)

I probably missed one or two things, but the future looks bright for them now.

rune_74 said:

I'm betting it was sega who screwed them over in the aliens rpg.

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No. They were working on an unannounced Xbone exclusive which simply got cancelled (so I'm not sure where the "screwing over" part comes in?).
As for their financials, well, who knows... they are always working on several projects simultaneously. They are getting some income from their back catalogue, milestone payments if they are working for a publisher and then there is PoE pledge money.
One thing is for sure: They're not small so they got quite a bit of operating expenses to cover. They once had 130+ employees back in 2008 and the layoffs in 2012 were in the region of 20 - 30 people so their employee count is probably fluctuating around the ~100 mark or so.
Their current projects besides PoE include that Armored Warfare tank game (WoT clone) and a Pathfinder RPG plus.... ???... maybe an unannounced publisher project (like a sequel to South Park or Dungeon Siege?).

It just astounds me how small some of these developers are. But perhaps not, considering the massive size of my backlog...

spiraling69 said:

I'm going a bit off topic with this, but I hope someone can answer. In the recently released documentary, they mentioned that they were screwed over by a publisher and almost had to close doors. It was mentioned that something had to happen by a certain date or they would be finished. Did the 4+ million from kickstarter and other donations give them all the operating capital they needed to keep the doors open to this day?

I'm not trying to take a shot at Obsidian, I'm just curious. I'm not sure how big they were in the past and if they hired back any of the people they lost, but four million dollars doesn't seem like that much money to stretch over two plus years. Also curious what sales numbers would they need to hit after release to remain afloat or is that business all in the past now?

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I'm not gonna pretend that I know the answer as to what happened at Obsidian, but it sounds like they at the time had trouble landing something with another publisher so a lot of people were left floating around with nothing solid to work on (which obviously costs a lot of money as they have to support the workers with salaries but no publisher to keep pouring money into Obsidian). That, and it seemed like morale was really low, likely making it harder to get something solid together to pitch like they say. Like Feargus mentions, it becomes a downwards spiral as publishers would see that OEI is doing bad and thus they would be less interested in investing a lot of money.

One of the OEI workers made a guess that 400k copies sold would be consider a success for the project on another forum, but he's not directly involved with PoE so… That would be an informed guess I suppose.

Obsidian seems to have a few balls rolling now. Armored Warfare (which contrary to popular belief is their game), providing additional development for Skyforge MMO, the Pathfinder card game, Pillars of Eternity (who are now in the process of gradually rolling over to the expansion I guess) as well as an unannounced RPG.

I think PoE will be huge for the company even though it may be a fairly "low-budget" title by comparison to AAA titles. Unless it bombs *completely* (which it's not gonna do), well… It's gotten a huge amount of attention and it's *theirs* to do with as they wish. Now that so much groundwork has been lain with the development of setting, ruleset, engine and so forth, they should be able to keep that ball rolling.

I present Exhibit A: as to why crowd-funding is valuable... nay, essential.
Not only will we soon have a massive, old school RPG in the style of Baldur's
Gate 2 and Planescape:Torment, but it also essentially saved Obsidian from
going under! People forget that these are developers, not the rich publishers
that intentionally mess with their customers (if any company does), they are
not well off, and most are one or two projects away from bankruptcy because
of the way the industry functions.

The con projects are very few... heck, most of the failed ones or those that
stop communicating started out intending to have a finish product, not run
off with the money. Making games, especially RPGs, is not easy.

Well, I imagine South Park, and whatever uptick in fame and popularity the Project Eternity Kickstarter gave them the extra finances needed, in addition to the 4 mil.

And I can see some members forestalling their own pay in harsh times. Those that can afford to, for the most part. This is only assumption, but going by that article, it didn't sound like they were overstating or making it up.

spiraling69 said:

I'm going a bit off topic with this, but I hope someone can answer. In the recently released documentary, they mentioned that they were screwed over by a publisher and almost had to close doors. It was mentioned that something had to happen by a certain date or they would be finished. Did the 4+ million from kickstarter and other donations give them all the operating capital they needed to keep the doors open to this day?

I'm not trying to take a shot at Obsidian, I'm just curious. I'm not sure how big they were in the past and if they hired back any of the people they lost, but four million dollars doesn't seem like that much money to stretch over two plus years. Also curious what sales numbers would they need to hit after release to remain afloat or is that business all in the past now?

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Great game thus far. It's basically Baldur's Gate 2015 with high-res graphics and modern slickness.

I'm in love. <3

So combat isn't a micro managing hell?

It depends on too many factors to just say yes or no. The difficulty level factors in a lot, as does how you build your character. Some classes have choices where you can either build your character with passive abilities, or more active abilities if you wish.

Combat is more active than the BGs I'd say though.

Starwars said:

It depends on too many factors to just say yes or no. The difficulty level factors in a lot, as does how you build your character. Some classes have choices where you can either build your character with passive abilities, or more active abilities if you wish.

Combat is more active than the BGs I'd say though.

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It's unfortunate if you have to design your party around a lousy and lazy AI implementation.

Morrandir said:

So combat isn't a micro managing hell?

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That's one of the aspects I don't quite understand about their concept.

Personally I prefer TB games (and it seems big parts of Obsidian want to make turn based games either if you check the first Video from Pax) that is because maximizing combat on a turn based game feels much more fluent and satisfying than doing it on a RTwP game.

But I can see that this isn't attractive for lots of people who only play on easy or hard and just see the combat as a "necessary evil" so to say.

So I would understand if Obsidian said: Well, we will cater to the second group then.
But they just don't.
-You have 6 Characters in your party, which is as much as in BG, but less than in NWN2 or DA:O where you only had 4.
-There seems to be either no option or no visual feedback of queueing up multiple spells at once (like character A cast this spell first and this spell after that)
-There is no AI scripts for your party members whatsover. So each and every option needs to be manual. Only exceptions are auto-attacks and non-one-time-casts which get interrupted which will be started being auto-cast again.
-There are TONS of active spells, not just for casters but also for melees

Now in both Q&A sessions of PAX they were asked "How to manage all the stuff, do we get an AI?" and the answer both times was "Not at release, maybe in a patch or expansion. What you can do though is to chose passive talents instead of active ones on level up".

So they are basically not catering towards the maximizers/perfectionists and neither to the players who enjoy watching the fight unfold on it's own.
So I guess the majority of the players will be rather unsatisfied with the combat.

There is one video of the player Enverxis, who is posting regular mechanics videos on youtube and introduces his combat tutorial video with
…people who are more of a casual gamer and aren't as familiar with the inifity engine games, are claiming that the game's combat is really frustrating and its just not fun. Now those are both points I agree on. The combat isn't that fun and it is a bit frustrating as well and there are a bunch of other reasons I dont like it, but I am making this video to try and help you be able to suffer through the combat

Personally of course it doesn't really change anything for me. I expected this to be RTwP and I wouldnt have used the AI anyways, pressing pause every 0.3 seconds average…

I'll be playing it anyway and I will adapt, because I like the rest of the game. But why they thought this particular approach was a good one, is a puzzle to me.

It's terrible, really.

But maybe you have to be a RTwP fan to appreciate it.

DArtagnan said:

But maybe you have to be a RTwP fan to appreciate it.

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Well, I'm a RTwP fan and I don't appreciate it. Unlike Kordanor I don't fancy using pause every 0.3 second. But, like you, I will adopt