Game News Pillars of Eternity Kickstarter Update #80: State of the Project - From Alpha to Beta

[Infinitron]

Tags: Brandon Adler; Obsidian Entertainment; Pillars of Eternity

Although the guys from Obsidian are currently at E3, it looks like they've found the time to release a Pillars of Eternity Kickstarter update this week. It's a comprehensive status report, with the usual assortment of eye candy to go along. Have a snippet:

Hey, everyone. Due to E3 crunch we are going to push off Josh's next class update for a couple of weeks. Instead, I will give an update about the general state of affairs for each department on the project now that we are getting ready to head into our Beta period. The next update will feature Josh's final class update along with info from the Eternity E3 presentation. Let's get into it.

Area Design

All of the areas have been in the game for about a month now, and the area designers have been revisiting each area to make sure everything is in order. They're using specially crafted Alpha checklists to make sure that none of the major items are missed. For example, designers are checking that the area has a proper navigation mesh, ambient sound effects are placed, and scene transitions are working as intended.

Josh (Project Director) and Bobby (Area Design Lead) are heading up meetings to review all of the quests in the game. Each quest is played through by the team and analyzed. We ask basic questions like "Why is this quest fun?", "Does the player care about this quest?", and "What hooks the player into starting the quest?" If anything is lacking, the design team spruces the quest up to make it a memorable one.

Over the Beta period the designers will continue fixing bugs and polishing content.

Narrative

The narrative team finished up the critical path a few weeks ago and now they have their focus on completing side content in our various regions. Eric (Lead Narrative Designer) has been tweaking and polishing the E3 demo areas, while Carrie (Narrative Designer) has been hard at work finishing up some of our companions. Narrative is also polishing up the areas that will be used in for our Backer Beta.

Over the next few months narrative will finish our companions, and we are going to start finalizing and locking down on the writing to prepare for localization and voice over.

VFX

The team is continuing to crank away at VFX. It is one of the areas of the game (along with narrative and audio) that are not at an Alpha level, which is intentional. The later on the project that you can bring the VFX team on, the lower the amount of rework that they will have to do on assets that may get changed.

We have added VFX on a little less than half of the spells and abilities, on all of our VFX creatures (creatures that are VFX driven instead of our normal creature pipeline), and on all of the critical path areas. We are scheduled to be finished with VFX in a couple of months.



Overall

Overall, the project is coming together nicely. We have a ton of work that still needs to be done, but the team is starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. There are no major roadblocks ahead of us at this point and now it's a focus on getting as much polish done as we can before our final release candidate.
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I wonder if that narrative content that's being polished for the Backer Beta will actually be unique, to prevent spoiling the final game.

 

[StaticSpine]

top comment on youtube:

John J. Rambo

You guys did an awesome job for Fallout New Vegas, in fact i think it's as good as Fallout 3!

 

[MicoSelva]

Assuming we‘re not being fed lies here, everything seems to be on schedule to make one gorgeous isometric RPG.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Hope much of the C priority list will make it into the game.

 

[Dr Schultz]

Well, definitely good news. Maybe we're gonna play this one in 2014. I mean, for real.

 

[Excidium]

Kickin' It Forward - Witchmarsh

This art style is the brown n' bloom of indie games now or some shit

 

[Delterius]

John J. Rambo

You guys did an awesome job for Fallout New Vegas, in fact i think it's as good as Fallout 3!

That's a step up from public perception of F:NV.

 

[crawlkill]

That's a step up from public perception of F:NV.

because the public thinks the huge, bland spaces that are the hallmark of Bethesda products are better than actual decisionmaking power and dialogue that can wake you from your stupor. they're stuporseekers. good writing is really counter to the point for them.

nothing PE has released has made me at all dubious so far (except for the goddamn fantasy bullshit naming conventions, if I never see another imaginary apostrophe I'll die a happy man), which is more than I can say for Wasteland. was it just the million dollar budget difference that's making PE look exquisite and unique and Wasteland like a much-loved but still obviously budget-constrained and prefab-based project, or is there some other factor that I missed? I guess we won't know until we have them if Wasteland does look like it really has had a lot more narrative flexibility than PE. that would certainly be a good excuse.

 

[Excidium]

I like PE mainly because of the graphics, I won't lie

 

[Roguey]

"Pillars of Eternity will be delayed into 2015"-- some ignorant fuckers, possibly idiotic too.

 

[Decado]

Kickin' It Forward - Witchmarsh

This art style is the brown n' bloom of indie games now or some shit

It is so fucking bad.

 

[jdinatale]

If you don't think this will have a Summer 2015 release date, you are fooling yourself.

 

[SophosTheWise]

If you don't think this will have a Summer 2015 release date, you are fooling yourself.

So, how come?

 

[Kem0sabe]

Video looks nice, but i think they could have done better with the water, the color is too greenish.

 

[Excidium]

Video looks nice, but i think they could have done better with the water, the color is too greenish.

It's the algae

 

[markec]

Video looks nice, but i think they could have done better with the water, the color is too greenish.

It's the algae

Yeah the game is set in China

 

[jdinatale]

If you don't think this will have a Summer 2015 release date, you are fooling yourself.

So, how come?

For a game that's allegedly coming out within 6 months, we haven't seen any real gameplay footage such as a combat encounter or quest sample. Let's face it, the only thing in game we've seen is a few characters running across the screen and casting half-baked animated spells.

 

[J_C]

If you don't think this will have a Summer 2015 release date, you are fooling yourself.

So, how come?

For a game that's allegedly coming out within 6 months, we haven't seen any real gameplay footage such as a combat encounter or quest sample. Let's face it, the only thing in game we've seen is a few characters running across the screen and casting half-baked animated spells.

So you are ignoring the fact that every location is in the game, it is feature locked and basicly it is in beta? Maybe ..you know....they just don't want to show gameplay, until the game is 100% looks as they wanted. And they said in the update that the visuals and audio part needs some work.

 

[MrBuzzKill]

If you don't think this will have a Summer 2015 release date, you are fooling yourself.

So, how come?

For a game that's allegedly coming out within 6 months, we haven't seen any real gameplay footage such as a combat encounter or quest sample. Let's face it, the only thing in game we've seen is a few characters running across the screen and casting half-baked animated spells.

I'm guessing they're saving that for E3.

 

[Ramireza]

If you don't think this will have a Summer 2015 release date, you are fooling yourself.

So, how come?

For a game that's allegedly coming out within 6 months, we haven't seen any real gameplay footage such as a combat encounter or quest sample. Let's face it, the only thing in game we've seen is a few characters running across the screen and casting half-baked animated spells.

I'm guessing they're saving that for E3.

Agreed, i am sure the 20 Minutes E3 2015 Gameplay presentation of PoE will blow us away!

 

[Delterius]

Who cares about release dates, I'll need more time to finish D:OS.

 

[Roguey]

So you are ignoring the fact that every location is in the game, it is feature locked and basicly it is in beta? Maybe ..you know....they just don't want to show gameplay, until the game is 100% looks as they wanted. And they said in the update that the visuals and audio part needs some work.

He's a shitposting idiot.

 

[Johannes]

Hope much of the C priority list will make it into the game.

what is that

 

[Sensuki]

A Priority shit is stuff they must do, B priority stuff is stuff that's not critical, but they're going to plan to do. C Priority stuff is stuff they'd like to do, but they're not going to plan (budget) to do.

The monster list might be impressive (up there with BG2 is what I would consider a job well done).

 

[Surf Solar]

Damn these guys sure do know their shit. Last year I spent weeks trying to get a similar animated ripple/wave effect to prerender and it doesn't nearly look as good as this. Wish they could share this technique!