"Pillars of Eternity: RPG funded by Kickstarter"

Kickstarter and PayPal Stats

So as of about 1:30 PM PDT, here’s where we stand funding-wise:

Kickstarter
Backers: 73,986
Pledged: $3,986,929

PayPal
Backers: 3,681
Pledged: $176,279

Totals
Backers: 77,667
Pledged: $4,163,208
 
Awesome, glad to see they hit the $4M mark. I'm more excited about this game than anything else on Kickstarter!

There's a note on their homepage that says if they hit 40,000 likes on the Obsidian facebook page, they'll add another level to the Endless Stair - that'll bring the total to a nice, round 15. Make it happen, people.
 
jomiyo said:
^Ask that in April 2014, when they delay it tentatively :p
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If that's ends up being the case I won't mind. I'd rather obsidian actually spent the necessary time to make it right. I'm pretty confident (completely unfounded) once released, that this will be epic!
 
SS-89 said:
If that's ends up being the case I won't mind. I'd rather obsidian actually spent the necessary time to make it right. I'm pretty confident (completely unfounded) once released, that this will be epic!
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That's the beauty of them not having publishers harassing them for early release, only to have an embarrassing release and day one hot-fixes :)
 
SS-89 said:
If that's ends up being the case I won't mind. I'd rather obsidian actually spent the necessary time to make it right. I'm pretty confident (completely unfounded) once released, that this will be epic!
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Yep, I'm actually wanting a delay to late 2014 or even early 2015, given they handle things well...aside from obviously using the time wisely, not sweating profusely etc. when giving us updates, for example.

This is about tied with Wasteland 2 as my most anticipated Kickstarter game, fingers-crossed for epicness indeed :cool:
 
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I see there's some rather heated debate going on over at the Obsidian forum on inclusion of romance. Looks like not everyone agrees with the Sawyer\Avellone take on it :p

Personally I would rather see something like the Planescape approach, which I fully expect Obsidian to do since for the most part they've stuck to it (excepting Alpha Protocol's Bond-like encounters).

Speaking of Planescape Torment, this is what Chris Avellone had to say about the writing:

MCA said:
Something that set Torment apart – we had a good chunk of the story, dialogues and the flow of the narrative laid out before production began. This was key. If I had the power and funding to sit down for a year and script a spiritual successor out, then we built from there, I would do that, but that process is something no publisher would agree to – you're constantly under the gun, either as an internal or external developer (Josh Sawyer had to write the Icewind Dale 2 storyline over the course of a weekend, for example – he did a great job, but that's not an ideal way to write a story). Generally, you have two-to-four weeks.
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Slightly off topic, but are you lot going to be getting the enhanced edition of Baldur's Gate? I'm a little concerned by the lack of previews and gameplay footage (all I could find on YouTube was slideshows of screenshots).
 
$4 mill, nice.

I might pick up Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, never played it before but has an excellent rep and I quite fancy a slow paced game.
 
Shall we just turn this in to the official thread?...Some interesting info coming out atm, with some good interviews with Josh Sawyer. Lets get some more interest going in this!

(Or if someone wants to make a proper official thread, we can put the info in that?)

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2014/07/24/pillars-of-eternity-seems-to-push-all-the-right-rpg-buttons - Ugh, IGN

http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2014/07/24/to-infinity-and-beyond-with-pillars-of-eternity/

I like these bits in particular:

While your created character is a major point of divergence at the start of the game, your conversations with the other characters in the game are what will define you. There will often be myriad options open to you, depending on your stats and previous actions, with each showing how it will affect your reputation and personality, whether it’s honest and diplomatic or aggressive and cruel. As your reputation starts to precede you, other characters in the world will start to react to you differently, but it’s something that seems to go far beyond the rather binary morality systems that are commonly seen.

...With ten fairly distinct personality types, the various effects of character design and the branching nature of the story, I wondered how it is that every option is catered for and managed. Josh replied that “There’s a person on the team who we call the Karma Police, and their job is to make sure there are enough options of any given personality type and enough reactions to each type throughout the game. We have done stuff like this in a lot of our games, so it’s really just building on our previous experience with it.
“The way I talk about the system with the narrative designers is to say not to try and force options of every type in every conversation. I tell them to just look at the conversation, look at the circumstance the player is in and then think about the things that players would naturally want to do, and then map personalities to them.”
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The world of Eora is a fantasy one, but the time period quite intriguingly takes inspiration from 16th century Europe, with expansionist colonial powers and the tensions that result from this. For example, The Free Palatinate of Dyrwood was once a part of the Aedyr Empire – a union of elves and humans – but the mixture of humans, elves and dwarves that colonised the land rebelled, with the help of the indigenous and still maltreated orlans, to gain independence.

Across the whole world that Obsidian have created, these tensions between nations will play out in front of you. At the start of the game, you’re quickly embroiled in the squabbles over the ruins of an ancient empire, which locals seek to protect from looters. As your caravan stops nearby, due to a felled tree, the locals attack the group for trespassing, with your impromptu party then made up of the survivors.

Combat is handled in real time, but with the ability to pause the action to issue commands. It steps away from the modified Dungeons & Dragons base of the Infinity Engine games, shifting to a system more suitable for real time combat, with ability cool downs and effect lengths measured in seconds rather than trying to translate player turns into real time.
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- LAst bit is about Pillars of Eternity, but it is all pretty good.

The release date is still 2014 atm, so a beta probably isn't far off if that's your kind of thing.

Edit- 18th August apparently- http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/gaming/news/a584735/pillars-of-eternity-beta-to-focus-on-side-content-exclusive-to-backers.html#~oL7ULbhmVpt1Xq

Launching on August 18, the beta will focus on a side area of the game outside of the critical path, allowing fans to experiment with the game's systems, combat and mid-level characters without fear of story spoilers.

"We decided very early on we won't use the critical path for this," project lead Josh Sawyer told Digital Spy.

"It's not going to have any of the story companions, because that's a big part of the story for people, is meeting those companions and experimenting with them.
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Really looking forward to it. Divinity: Original Sin has revitalized the genre in a way for me. Never been the biggest fan of Isometric RPGs, but there are some good looking ones on the way.
 
Here is an informative article about the game. http://www.pcgamesn.com/pillars-ete...e-dream-game-people-who-infinity-engine-games

Pillars of Eternity is a game out of time. More than a decade since the release of the last Infinity Engine game, Icewind Dale II, Obsidian’s Kickstarted RPG is simultaneously a step backwards and forwards. It’s like looking at a game from the 90s, if games in the 90s had been really, really, ridiculously good looking.
I’m not saying Pillars of Eternity is outdated. I’m saying I’ve been starved of sprawling, reactive RPGs for years. Obsidian are bringing them back to the table. At some point publishers decided I wanted more expensive cinematic and, as a result, linear stories. Pillars isn’t that.
It’s going to envelope your RPG-starved brain.


The basics of Pillars will be familiar. It’s a party-based RPG where you collect a group of six adventurers to explore a world of beautifully painted environments, tearing kobolds a new one in realtime combat, and following a story that reacts to your choices, who you befriend, who you antagonise, and who you kill.
Where Pillars departs from the RPGs of the past decade is the sheer range of choices. Obsidian’s $4 million budget has been spent on system that present stories simply (and cheaply). Voiceover has been replaced with consequence.


Here’s a good example: my party was forced to stop for the night because the caravan I was travelling with had come across a downed tree on the road. While looking for water I discovered a man stumbling out of the forest with arrows in his back. He had been shot by the natives for trespassing on their sacred ground. The whole scene was presented as a storyboard vignette; a parchment scroll with charcoal illustrations and text descriptions.
These vignettes peppered the half hour I spent with the game and, project director Josh Sawyer assured me, will be used throughout the game.
By returning to the less visual and more literary style of Infinity Engine RPGs, Obsidian’s been able to build quests which can diverge and respond to your character and your choices. You’ll get a stack of different dialogue options based on your stats and abilities. When you talk to friends who have played Pillars, too, you’ll find there were companions you never encountered or who could leave you depending on how you interact with the world. Whole chunks of Pillars will open or close to you based on how you play. In the opening half hour of the game alone you’ve a companion who you can be executed, caught up in a soul-destroying storm, or abandon you in the night all based on how you behave.
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It looks great, but I am getting a little sick of all the smugness that seems to accompany people who talk about these types of games tbh...."You are all stupid for liking modern games because they don't feature more text than an average novel"! Personally, I would love a more cinematic approach, so I could actually get immersed in an RPG rather than watching a screen filled with numbers, and I could see what is happening rather than be told.

The one thing I am sure will be epic though is the choices and consequences you will get in the game. Nobody does it half as well as Obsidian. Just thinking of the incredible intricacies in Fallout New Vegas being expanded is mind-boggling.

Can't wait for the game!
 
So today is the day! As much as I want to help development in terms of finding issues a part of me doesn't want to spoil it before the final product is released :/

Edit:

Having just read the backer beta email, there is nothing storyline critical in it so will be giving it a whirl! :D
 
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