Development Info Josh Sawyer's GDC Next Presentation Video

[Infinitron]

Tags: J.E. Sawyer; Obsidian Entertainment; Pillars of Eternity

Back in November, Josh Sawyer gave a presentation about Pillars of Eternity (still known as Project Eternity back then) at the GDC Next conference. The presentation slides were released soon after that, but the video of the presentation remained locked behind a paywall at the GDC Vault website...until today, that is, when they released it for free. Yay!

The presentation is half an hour long and covers a variety of aspects of Eternity's design, such as difficulty modes, graphical style and user interface, and the game's textual nature. There is also a large emphasis on the technical challenges of rendering the game's large prerendered levels and combining 3D characters with 2D environments. I think I can also claim some responsibility for Josh's answer to the question he gets asked at the end.

 

[Excidium]

Any highlights?

 

[Cosmo]

Any highlights?

Sawyer's balding and he looks like a 45 year old middle school teacher.

 

[Excidium]

Yeah I'm seeing it now. Holy shit the audio is low.

 

[Tigranes]

What I found interesting, though may be old news:

• Difficulty settings will replace creatures with certain tactical threats with creatures with a more complex set of threats and possibly alter their positions
• Options will allow toggles / etc. on tactical difficulty (above), game modes (expert mode, ironman, new game+), permadeath or maiming, highlighting AOE target area, auto-pause, skill rate display in dialogue, quest objectives with explicit or implicit goals, etc

 

[Excidium]

Yeah old news.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

After a wave of new interviews I dont think that there will be anything new there. But nevertheless will watch tomorrow .

 

[ColCol]

Tags: J.E. Sawyer; Obsidian Entertainment; Pillars of Eternity

I think I can also claim some responsibility for Josh's answer to the single question he gets asked at the end.

Yes, yes, let the brofists flow through you.

 

[cherry blossom]

Roguey was there, obsessively taking good long shots of Sawyer:

 

[Gurkog]

Enjoyed the video, but I wish his speech was longer and more in-depth. Looking forward to flailing about like a beached whale in Pillars.

 

[Morality Games]

I find it sort of unbelievable that a game of Project Eternity's scope can be out in 2014.

 

[jagged-jimmy]

I find it sort of unbelievable that a game of Project Eternity's scope can be out in 2014.

Yeah, it sounded pretty ambitious. Big cities, exploration areas, mini text adventures, NPC interaction, etc... Hope they are the pros, who can pull this off with some passion.

 

[Diggfinger]

Hope this turns out decent - really hope they make it short and sweat rather than super long and buggy etc.

 

[Oesophagus]

Hope they are the pros, who can pull this off with some passion.

Hope they can avoid a bugfest, Obsidian needs to break the charm

 

[MicoSelva]

Finally got the time to watch this. JES is not as good at this stuff as MCA, but still it was pretty cool. Great to hear there will be some focus on wilderness exploration, BG2 was severely lacking in this aspect (not to even mention IWD). Basically, I liked everything that was shown/told.

If the game lives up to the expectations it might actually be more than just a nostalgia trip (good for what it is, but inferior to the originals, like Wasteland 2 appears to be atm), but an actual improvement over them. And that would be true .

 

[Roguey]

Great to hear there will be some focus on wilderness exploration, BG2 was severely lacking in this aspect (not to even mention IWD). Basically, I liked everything that was shown/told.

The focus on wilderness exploration depends entirely on meeting their additional stretch goals for it since at the moment they have fewer of those maps than BG2.

 

[J_C]

Hope they are the pros, who can pull this off with some passion.

Hope they can avoid a bugfest, Obsidian needs to break the charm

They already broke it with Dungeon Siege 3.

 

[MicoSelva]

at the moment they have fewer of those maps than BG2.

Not from what I've seen.

 

[Roguey]

at the moment they have fewer of those maps than BG2.

Not from what I've seen.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/64736-stretch-goals/?view=findpost&p=1396148

The current wilderness area scope (specifically) is a little under BG2. The exact number by which it would increase would likely depend on funding.

 

[Minttunator]

Nice presentation! I'm pretty happy with more or less everything he talked about - even the wilderness areas, which I wasn't a huge fan of in, say, BG1. They could actually be cool if the Obsidian bros can make them more diverse and interesting (higher content density) than they were in the IE games.