Fantasy as a genre has changed a lot since the PC RPG heyday. But while Pillars is about complexity and had the fortune (and guile) to launch its Kickstarter in September 2012, just a few months after the wrap of Game of Thrones season 2, it’s Lord of the Rings to which Urquhart says the team owes the most credit (particularly Peter Jackson, and “his belief in Lord of the Rings as not just something that the nerds love”). In fact, around eight years ago, Obsidian actually
turned down the opportunity to do the first Game of Thrones RPG.
“I don’t know if the project would have ever happened,” says Urquhart, candidly, “but we were approached by a big publisher, and they had the Game of Thrones licence at the time. And I love Game of Thrones – it’s an incredibly rich story and world and obviously the characterisation is amazing. But, there’s a couple of things about it that are challenging if you want to make a roleplaying game.
“Part of it was very interesting to us because of the focus on characters, and that’s kind of what we do. But if you think about the world, it’s so much about the politics and it’s so much about the linear story of what’s going on. Then you tie that to magic playing a very little role, and to be honest, [the story is] mostly [about] people. There’s not a lot of standard role-playing fantasy things, [like] putting an adventuring party together and going to find the abandoned ruins full of zombies and witches and ghosts and spectres and ghouls and all that kind of stuff.
“My recommendation at the time was that it would make a better RTS [real-time strategy game], or something like an RTS. Again, a geopolitical, war simulation-type game.” (Something which, incidentally, now exists: in the form of
this mod for medieval RTS Crusader Kings 2).
