Pillars of Eternity GDC 2016 Video

Josh Sawyer's GDC 2016 presentation was released in video format today.

Link - http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1023481…tribute-Tuning

Pillars of Eternity was a crowfunded game inspired by A/D&D classics like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment. To stay true to backers' expectations, one of their early constraints was a classic six attribute spread - a constraint that doesn't always play well with different classes and character concepts. In the classic games, it was easy to build a non-viable character - even if the player didn't realize it until they were 10 hours deep. Conversely, in Pillars of Eternity, the team often deviated too far from convention for player tastes. This talk will explore the specific RPG mechanic as it was in the classic games, as they developed it through the Pillars of Eternity beta, and how they continued to use player feedback to tune it post-launch. The talk will also take a look back across the project as a whole to see how the design of attributes influenced other game systems and the player experience in the long run.

Presentation Slides - http://media.obsidian.net/eternity/m…-and-dumps.pdf

Thanks for the post.

Originally Posted by CelticFrost
Thanks for the post.

Glad you enjoyed watching it.

Now I just have to find time to replay Pillars of Eternity with both expansions.

It's on my list too

Low strength fighters work pretty well in BG2 actually. You just throw them gauntlets of Ogre strength or a girdle.

Originally Posted by bjon045
Low strength fighters work pretty well in BG2 actually. You just throw them gauntlets of Ogre strength or a girdle.

With both gauntlets and girdle you can wield a hammer of thunderbolts. Just like Thor My dwarven fighter did that.

My Vicky did that. Yes she ain't a fighter but was better than fighters.

Thanks for the video, Couch, I quite enjoyed checking this out in small segments over the day. It's handily chopped up into chapters and Josh is an articulate and interesting speaker.

It's well worth a look to those seeking to understand more of Josh and Obsidian's overall rationale for the way the attribute system works in Pillars of Eternity and also for comparisons to AD&D 2/3.0 in general.

Very curious to see what changes would be envisioned in a possible sequel; that would have been a question I'd have liked to have come up in the Q&A at the end.