Development Info Obsidian & Stoic RPG Panel + Pillars of Eternity II Streams at PAX East 2018

[Infinitron]

Tags: Aarik Dorobiala; Carrie Patel; Josh Sawyer; Matt Rhoades; Mikey Dowling; Obsidian Entertainment; Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire; Stoic Studio; Versus Evil; Zeb West

Obsidian are at PAX East this weekend to promote Pillars of Eternity II. Their publisher Versus Evil has been running a daily stream for the duration of the event, and today they put together a panel featuring Josh Sawyer and Carrie Patel along with The Banner Saga's Zeb West and Matt Rhoades, entitled "Role Playing - Our Lives Depend on It". It was just a generic RPG Q&A, only interesting for learning a bit about Carrie's background while watching Josh keep it real. Oh, and it ends with the announcement that the cast of Critical Role, voice actor Matthew Mercer's roleplaying web series, will all be doing voice acting in Pillars of Eternity II. Which is a big deal for somebody, apparently. You can also watch Mikey Dowling announce that here (but you really shouldn't).

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As for Versus Evil's daily stream, Josh was on it yesterday along with loyal sidekick Aarik Dorobiala to show off the new version of the Pillars of Eternity II beta and talk about the game's combat mechanics, including ship-to-ship combat as well as regular battles. Despite the familiarity of the content at this point, it was a pretty entertaining watch, especially when Aarik got his ass whooped several times by the new upgraded Engwithan Titan.

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There was also a Pillars II stream the day before that with Mikey Dowling and Aarik, but it's not the same without the Sawyer.

 

[thekdawg21]

Just as I was scrolling through the 8 hour stream, I check the codex and here is everything I need. Thanks Infinitron

 

[toro]

Anything interesting besides Josh PR talk?

 

[vonAchdorf]

In the beginning, they define what's an RPG

 

[Xeon]

Didn't watch a lot of it since I didn't want fillers with the hosts and Stoics. Carrie Patel seems the opposite of Jennifer Hepler I think? Hepler said something about combat skip mode or something so only story is important but Petal seems to say challenges are important too or something so that's something.

Hope the story will be better than PoE1, also someone said she wrote all the characters as well, that's a lot of writing for one person I think.

 

[Sentinel]

All this talk of "PoE2 is even bigger than PoE1" makes me even more worried. The bigger the game is the more space there is for bland shit or extremely bad pacing issues. I seriously hope the crit path is short like F:NV.

 

[oldmanpaco]

Can anyone tell me when they talk about the PS4 port? That's what I'm waiting for.

 

[thekdawg21]

Ugh that presentation was fucking awful. Host interrupts with twitch-style comedy, the player doesn't know what he's doing and loses multiple fights on easy level, they don't describe anything that's happening, and Josh is still revising a ton of things a month from release.

I thought it'd be passable as a dungeon crawl with an OK story, but I'll be very surprised if this is anything but mediocre/bad at release.

 

[duanth123]

I can't wait to fight an "Engwithan Titan" after sailing my Earth history pirate ship to an actual desert island.