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Game News First details about Pillars of Eternity II Seeker, Slayer, Survivor DLC at PCGamesN

Infinitron

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Tags: Brandon Adler; Josh Sawyer; Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire; Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire - Seeker, Slayer, Survivor

Obsidian are also at Gamescom this week to promote Pillars of Eternity II. The guys from PCGamesN met with Brandon Adler there and got the first details on the game's upcoming Seeker, Slayer, Survivor expansion DLC. While the expansion is a combat-focused experience with an emphasis on creative encounter design, Brandon is eager to clarify that it's more than just an "arena mode DLC".

Following Beast of Winter, Pillars of Eternity 2’s next DLC is Seeker, Slayer, Survivor, a completely different type of adventure that places players into a gladiatorial arena fighting for the glory of Galawain, god of the hunt.​

The Seeker Survivor Slayer DLC was shown off at Gamescom 2018, and we were able to discuss the ideas behind it with the expansion’s director, Brandon Adler.

“It’s heavily focused on combat, we’re trying to play around with that,” Adler says. But he makes clear that this isn’t just a standard arena mode: “The fights are not just ‘grab a bunch of creatures, throw them in an arena and have a fight’. One of the fights is two wizard brothers that are fighting each other, and they both cast different types of magic. They put giant wards on the ground to protect themselves from their brother’s magic, and so you jump between those wards whenever you’re trying to avoid spells.”

The DLC’s title is drawn from the three forms of fights that you’ll conduct within the arena: seeker, survivor, and slayer matches.

“All the fights have a little puzzle to figure out,” Adler explains. “In seeker type fights you have to find something special about the fight, like a set of spiders with regenerating properties where and you have to figure out which is the queen spider [who you must defeat] so you can take out the others.”

Survivor fights are, as the same suggests, about staying alive through a series of enemy waves. Slayer fights are tough in a different way: “they’re big hard creatures that kill you quickly and you have to kind of smash and grab,” Adler explains.

While arena combat is the focus of this DLC, don’t expect to be confined to the walls of a colosseum. “There’s still a lot to go and do,” Adler says. “There’s lots of other places you’re exploring to go and find artefacts to bring them back.”

These artefacts are sacrificed within the arena in order to summon each suite of fights, and so the exploration elements are just as vital to the experiences as the arena fights themselves.

“The DLC takes place on a pretty big island, so there’s all the random encounters and lots of scripted interactions and storybook scenes scattered around, too,” Adler adds. “It has a full story that you’re exploring just like Beasts of Winter.”

“The island itself has been calling competitors, and it’s made the animals and the natives full of bloodlust,” Adler explains. “And so the Watcher is trying to figure out what is going on and what kind of connection it has to the greater story of Pillars.”
The PCGamesN crew also ran into Josh Sawyer at Gamescom. It turns out that despite his formal resignation from Pillars of Eternity II development, Josh has been helping design the game's new god challenge modes.

Since work on the main Pillars of Eternity 2 base game wrapped, studio design director and RPG legend Josh Sawyer is no longer involved in the core creative direction of the game’s post-release content. But that’s not to say he’s not a key member of the Pillars 2 crew; while he’s not the captain of the paid-for DLC expansions, Sawyer is still a guiding hand on the game’s free DLC God Challenges.

Talking to us at Gamescom 2018, Sawyer explains the idea behind these top-level challenges: “They are special modes where, for example, in the Berath challenge, any character that is knocked out for six seconds dies.” Think of these as mutators or modifiers for your campaign that alter the core rules of the game, making progression just that little more tricky.

And Berath’s challenge isn’t the toughest by any means. “Magran’s challenge is even crazier. You can’t slow the game and you can’t pause the game, so everything has to be played with real time without pause and the AI system, which is really hard,” Sawyer says.

The game is soon to patched with the first two God Challenges in update 2.0.1 – Abydon and Skaen – and further gods, including Berath and Magran, will be added over time. “We’re planning on introducing a God Challenge for every god, and that’ll all be through our free DLC,” says Josh, indicating that there will be 11 challenges for the 11 gods in the Pillars pantheon.

For those who had been worried that Sawyer stepping away from the leading role would affect the game’s long-term quality, it appears that there’s little to be concerned about. “I’m the design director of the studio so I’m helping out on other projects, but I do wanna make sure Deadfire continues to get refined and features new content,” Sawyer says. “Even for people who don’t get the DLC, because I think people appreciated that in Pillars 1 that we kept supporting and trying to add things through our patches over time.”

Keep an eye out for the first challenges to be added to the game later this month.​

I imagine we'll get to see the first footage of the Seeker, Slayer, Survivor DLC soon - if not during Gamescom then shortly afterwards.
 

Wizfall

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Looking good.
Quite happy to have decided to wait for all the DLC to be released and the game to be fully patched to play.
 

MicoSelva

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The fights are not just ‘grab a bunch of creatures, throw them in an arena and have a fight
Not sure if this is an intentional jab at beamdog and their horrible "Black Pits", but it works really well as one. I still have PTSD from that thing.
 
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“Magran’s challenge is even crazier. You can’t slow the game and you can’t pause the game, so everything has to be played with real time without pause and the AI system, which is really hard,”

lel :M
 

jungl

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Who the hell wants to spend money on this shit. Obsidian nickle and diming their fanbase like paradox.
 

Electryon

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Who the hell wants to spend money on this shit. Obsidian nickle and diming their fanbase like paradox.

Yeah, because releasing 3 DLCs (which were announced almost immediately after release) as a package deal is the EXACT same as releasing dozens upon dozens of them. The only way to get "nickel and dimed" on this is if you are stupid enough to buy them individually.
 
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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Serpent in the Staglands Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
According to data miners this is the expansion where Ydwin becomes a full companion, but I'm just not seeing why that would be the case.
 
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All DLCs are supposed to be played before the main story wraps up, no? If so, I'm a bit worried about the level adjustment regarding these arena encounters, I've already massively outleveled most of the content in my only half-finished Deadfire playthrough (all scaling up).

Also, whereas BG2:EE Black Pits were indeed an overall pitiful experience, they've also proven the point that you don't have to slavishly follow _balance_ dogma for fighting mechanics to be enjoyable (e.g. they are soloable on insane with at least a handful of class combos, but getting there is a fun on its own; I'm afraid Josh-the-invisible-hand would push his "thou must've a _balanced_ party to beat this shit" agenda too hard on that one)
 

Grotesque

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Now I know why the Codex postpones the review of PoE 2.

The shills at the top of Codex are waiting for the game to be properly balanced, tweaked and cleansed of bugs so it will be acclaimed as the best RPG ever.
 
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Infinitron
Time and again you prove yourself as a shameless filthy cocksucking whore.

PE2 was, is and will be (much like its predecessor) a pile of jarring autistic shit and your copypaste shill reports won't change it newsjew.
 
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