Pillars of Eternity II - Game Footage

Pillars of Eternity 2 is set to show off some new things at E3. In the meantime we can see some of the new systems they are working on.

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Join Katrina Garsten, Producer on Deadfire, as she walks us through video footage that Josh Sawyer has been putting up on his social media feeds along with some news on Backer Surveys going out!

More information.

lol, Josh Sawyer has a pink bike?

Anyway, looking pretty good so far! I like the combat log filter, especially.

Nice, a lot of smart improvements. Hopefully they're iterating on their Q/A process as well !

That combat filter is a pretty slick idea, and will make processing combat results much easier. The spell retargeting capability is a nice addition as well. Good stuff.

Uggghhhh why have they uglified the UI so much? I really hope that is placeholder art. I liked the UI art style in PoE much better.

Originally Posted by Moriendor
Uggghhhh why have they uglified the UI so much? I really hope that is placeholder art. I liked the UI art style in PoE much better.

Looks better than the UI in ELEX at least.

Is this using Unity like the first game?

Originally Posted by JDR13
Looks better than the UI in ELEX at least.

Is this using Unity like the first game?

Yes but Unity engine version 5.4 so an upgrade compared to the original PoE and also enhanced by a new streaming technology which should hopefully cut down on the loading times (or even loading requirement of locations) massively!

Originally Posted by Moriendor
Uggghhhh why have they uglified the UI so much? I really hope that is placeholder art. I liked the UI art style in PoE much better.

I tend to agree, but on the other hand I don't think it is that important.
I really love the small features like combat log, and retargeting area spells.

They even managed to slow down the pace of combat compared to Tyranny.
At first looks, it can definitively be played mouse only.
Plants rooted on the spot for dozens of seconds, delivering the odd blow every two or three seconds. Going to be animation work to give cinematic depth to that stuff.

Despite all the efforts that downgrade any RTwP purpose and ambitions, players wil keep spamming the pause function.

Put in connection with Battle Brothers, one of the high demand mods is one to speed up the resolution of turns. Players can less and less bear how slow it is to go through turns with 30 characters involved.

Maybe this will meet at some point: ugoigo players demanding that RTwP products are slowed down so they can play and ugoigo players burdened by the inherent ugoigo slow pace that demand ugoigo products to be sped up.

Have they talked about improving pathfinding, ZoC, AI scripts and such?

If not, then I don't see how these changes will make combat more playable than PoE.

Originally Posted by NewDArt
Have they talked about improving pathfinding, ZoC, AI scripts and such?

If not, then I don't see how these changes will make combat more playable than PoE.

I think improved pathfinding would be a biggie…probably not something they can easily do if PoE II is based mostly on the PoE I codebase? I think they'd need to overhaul quite a bit to allow 'squeezing' for example, which I think would fix many problem (for allies at least). I can't remember is 'improved pathfinding' was part of their campaign.

Originally Posted by booboo
I think improved pathfinding would be a biggie…probably not something they can easily do if PoE II is based mostly on the PoE I codebase? I think they'd need to overhaul quite a bit to allow 'squeezing' for example, which I think would fix many problem (for allies at least). I can't remember is 'improved pathfinding' was part of their campaign.

It would be pretty trivial to implement a less rigid ZoC. Just allow characters to "squeeze" through allies, as you say. They could implement some kind of penalty or slowdown while doing it - so you can't exploit it.

But having your characters completely blocked off - even when there's obviously plenty of room - was a terrible decision in PoE.

Literally every other fight in a dungeon had one of my tanks running back and forth forever - because he couldn't fit through 3 feet of space between two of the party members.

Even worse was when one of the vulnerable characters decided to break formation and end up on the front lines - and then being unable to get behind the others for the same reason.

I don't understand how people put up with that, but it certainly ruined the game for me.

Which is unfortunate, because I really liked it for the most part. Sort of a lesser BG - but still very good.

I'm liking the changes, and can't say the new UI bothers me. When is this scheduled to be released? Might be time to add a replay of PoE to the backlog.

Originally Posted by tomasp3n
I'm liking the changes, and can't say the new UI bothers me. When is this scheduled to be released? Might be time to add a replay of PoE to the backlog.

Early next year (Jan/Feb) was the estimate, we will probably know more when the backer beta start next Fall (or August, I believe POE1 beta started in August).

Eh, I'd go for better enemy AI/variety and encounter design. Feels like the game already had more than enough spells/abilities than it should.
Combat in this type of game works best in party vs. party encounters, throwing variety of class combos into fray.
More toned down, Weimer mods, if I remember right.

Yes. Early access is scheduled for Q1/2018.

Since this is an Obsidian project, I am guessing:

- Early access bug-o-rama hell (borrowing a bit of joxer terminology here ) = September 2018
- Release = May 2019
- The actual playable version (fully patched GOTY) = Q4/2020

I'm liking some of these changes they are implementing. The combat Log changes are especially nice. I like PoE and played through it twice. I'll probably do one more run through when this comes out next year.

Originally Posted by booboo
I think improved pathfinding would be a biggie…probably not something they can easily do if PoE II is based mostly on the PoE I codebase? I think they'd need to overhaul quite a bit to allow 'squeezing' for example, which I think would fix many problem (for allies at least). I can't remember is 'improved pathfinding' was part of their campaign.

Yes, in the original pitch, Adam Brennecke said they had done a complete overhaul of the pathfinding system, among others. See the 4:12 mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln_plWALAoI

Imagine a new ToEE with that looks…

Day one buy, bugs and all for me.
like the first game day loved it second play through with all the updates and expansions