Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity [BETA RELEASED, GO TO THE NEW THREAD]

[Infinitron]

http://www.polygon.com/2014/3/18/55...al-built-from-mutual-respect-says-paradox-and

The recently-announced partnership between Paradox Interactive and Obsidian Entertainment to publish Pillars of Eternity began with mutual appreciation.

Paradox CEO Fredrik Wester already knew designer Chris Avellone, co-founder of Obsidian, after a meeting at a conference a few years prior. Obsidian head Feargus Urquhart also knew several members of Paradox's team, and through them the two companies began murmuring about a role-playing game partnership.

"I'm an old-school PC game player," Urquhart told Polygon. "The old games and the old RPGs. I've always seen the stuff Paradox has done and played the games they've made, and I've always been impressed.

"If someone asked me 10 years ago as everything was going console and publishers were getting bigger and suddenly there were less publishers: could a PC business survive in a world of big console games, where Activision has three brands? And I just didn't know," he added. "So it's awesome to see what Paradox is doing and that's what pushed us to go to them. They care about everything. A lot of times when we go to publishers we're not the big game, we're the little game off in the corner. So it's good to go to people who care."

When Urquhart and Obsidian began discussing the possibility of joining with a publisher for Pillars of Eternity, Paradox immediately came to mind. When the developers learned the company was interested, a "little dance" began between Obsidian and the RPG publishing powerhouse, as Urquhart puts it, before the two came to a mutual agreement and forged their relationship.

"I took over Paradox in 2004 when no one else wanted it because everything was going console," Wester told Polygon. "I sat with people day and night and tried to make a console project. I couldn't make a profit, it was impossible — everyone wanted to go console, we wanted to go console. But we couldn't make the money. The money just wasn't there. So we started building digital distribution direct."

Paradox began teaming up with digital PC platforms like Steam to bring downloadable games to consumers. Ten years later, Wester said, it seems like PC is steadily become a universally preferred platform with a guaranteed wide audience.

"That is awesome to see," he said. "Companies like Riot Games came out of nowhere, and not to mention Minecraft started on the PC."

Urquhart said that following the Kickstarter campaign, producer Brandon Adler was torn: he had to not only contribute to development on Pillars of Eternity but he had to think about marketing and Kickstarter backer rewards as well. He could see Adler wilting under the need to "have two brains," essentially doing two jobs at once and preventing him from focusing on the game.

"That was the pressure on our side to be open to the idea of talking to someone about marketing and distribution," he said.

Paradox will support Obsidian through publication of Pillars of Eternity as well as all the game's DLC and expansions. As for people criticizing Obsidian for partnering with a publisher after going through Kickstarter to avoid doing so, Urquhart expressed that he is bracing for this criticism and wants backers to know that no money was lost — but partnering with Paradox will allow the team to focus less on things like shipping rewards and more on making the game the absolute best it can be.

"It's very important to me that everyone understands this is a decision that we made together," he said. "Could we have done this ourselves? Yes, we could have farmed out backer fulfillment. We did not need to do this, but we think it's best for the game and ultimately for our backers."

According to Urquhart, Adler and the team are relieved they can now zero in on finishing Pillars and Paradox can take charge of the t-shirts. The team is sincere in reaffirming every dollar from backers has gone into the game and "everything we said we'd do, we'd do."

Paradox and Obsidian will remain independent companies but will continue to foster their mutual relationship. Urquhart said he feels he can "call out" Paradox if something is uncomfortable, and both company heads are confident that lines of communication will be open and strong.

"This is a partnership between two strong independent companies that remain strong and independent," Wester said. "That's the reason we're doing this. We also want to build a new genre within the RPG genre as well, and we will work long-term with Obsidian to build that new genre and grow a community."

"You can feel independent even if you're owned by someone else," he added. "We are both privately held and centered around small ownership groups, and because of that it's much easier to get along. We've eliminated a lot of the initial threats to the relationship not working. We can focus on the thing that matters, and that is the game."

 

[Copper]

BTW, where's the sperging about a Inn with only two rooms and five beds?

You called? Beds are lazy criticism anyway, it's an frontier inn, not a hotel, commoners can always kip in the common room. The fact that the entire middle of the room looks like an Entangle spell has just gone off is a little bit less of a low-hanging fruit though, as is the lack of any fireplace or stove - yeah, it's a tree, but it's also in a cold climate, and how warm do you think a single layer of planks is going to be?

 

[Owlish]

Probably they cast spells to keep themselves warm, the perks of magic.

 

[Cyberarmy]

The rock in middle seems like some kind of magical heat source.

 

[Roguey]

So did posters itt forget that locations in RPGs, like everything else, are an abstraction? There's no fun in having a dozen or dozens of empty rooms.

The inns of Icewind Dale: http://d2mods.info/resources/infinitum/thumbs/images-iwd1-ar1008_lg.jpg
http://d2mods.info/resources/infinitum/thumbs/images-iwd1-ar2114_lg.jpg http://d2mods.info/resources/infinitum/thumbs/images-iwd1-ar2115_lg.jpg

 

[Copper]

So did posters itt forget that locations in RPGs, like everything else, are an abstraction? There's no fun in having a dozen or dozens of empty rooms.

The inns of Icewind Dale: http://d2mods.info/resources/infinitum/thumbs/images-iwd1-ar1008_lg.jpg
http://d2mods.info/resources/infinitum/thumbs/images-iwd1-ar2114_lg.jpg http://d2mods.info/resources/infinitum/thumbs/images-iwd1-ar2115_lg.jpg

Nope, it's a non-issue, for the same reason nobody with any sense has ever complained about environments having way too much open space to be 'realistic'. Nobody is complaining about the fact that a stage is a stage, but I can point out that the stage direction has issues that have nothing to do with abstraction.

 

[PlanHex]

Yeah Paradox isn't funding or directing our development in any way. They're handling things that would be very hard/time consuming for us: physical fulfillment and general distribution. Over half of our backers are in Europe. I'm not sure why anyone would want us to spend their money and our time personally handling fulfillment. It was heartwarming to see Stoic figuring out how to get thousands of Banner Saga posters out of their house and shipped out to people but that's not really what developers are built to do.

Ok, let's put this talk to rest.

This is the greatest news ever, because it means I probably wont have to pay a fuckton of extra taxes if my box is sent from within the EU.

 

[DalekFlay]

Oh man we're debating the number of beds in an inn now. These developers have no idea what they have bitten-off with this crowd funding shit.

 

[Abelian]

I didn't realize PoE will include a visit to Lothlórien.

Spoiler

 

[Dorateen]

I was also thinking the Inn of the Last Home, from Solace.

 

[hiver]

Its only for selected clientele, kind of a place. Peasants.

 

[Ninjerk]

I was also thinking the Inn of the Last Home, from Solace.

I pretty much learned how to read on Dragonlance.

 

[Shadenuat]

RPS: After all this time and so many missteps, do you feel like you owe fans any sort of apology? Do you feel responsible, or perhaps like you’ve damaged your players’ trust?

I...huh...wat.

RPS: After so many missteps over the years with bugs,

Guess they fixed it?

 

[Akratus]

"RPS: After all this time and so many missteps, do you feel like you owe fans any sort of apology? Do you feel responsible, or perhaps like you’ve damaged your players’ trust?

Here to answer this question is: Literally any other developer in the world."

 

[Duraframe300]

Yo New Interview of the SAWYERZ

http://www.ausgamers.com/features/read/3424047

 

[Xeon]

A pretty good interview, Thanks!

 

[Roguey]

Instead of trying to rely on a marketing group or focus group to figure out what the fans want, then listening to the fans and hearing them say something completely different to what the focus group says, we can just talk directly to the fans. We don’t just read what the fans are saying on the Obsidian forums, but also on places like NeoGAF, RPG Codex and Something Awful and stuff like that. So it’s good to get their feedback on things. They hear the reasoning that goes into why we like certain things or don’t like certain things, and overall I think it’s been a very positive experience. So, it’s great.

Yeah I think we’ll have beta access at some point before release, and that’s good, because it will get a lot of eyes on the game and people can give feedback. People do have a tendency to be extremely negative during betas, but that’s ok [laughs]. I’d much rather get their feedback at that point, so we can just fix it, or see how they respond, rather than come out with the game and suddenly have them all going “Oh, I hate this UI; I can’t do any of this stuff”; Oh whoops, I wish we’d have seen that earlier. So we are planning on having a beta beforehand.

Looks like they gave up on "no beta spoilers" in favor of more feedback. Oh well.

Also looks like Obsidian has been paying attention to the Codex's Wasteland 2 feedback.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

Yo New Interview of the SAWYERZ

http://www.ausgamers.com/features/read/3424047

AusGamers: Now I don’t know how specific you can get on this but, how many separate projects are in the works at Obsidian now? Even with South Park wrapped, it seems like there must be a few? Has the team expanded significantly in recent years?

Josh: Recently it did expand, because South Park was winding down, so we’ve wrapped up on that, and of course we’ve just had our announcement about Armored Warfare, which there’s a lot of folks at Obsidian working on that. Then we always have other projects that are in progress -- things that we’ve started up and are working on in the background. So we always try to be a two or three project studio, and that will probably continue for the near future.

Kickstarter is great and all, but I like that there may be hope that another New Vegas experience in the future.

 

[Morgoth]

Wasn't there once talk that Obsidian signed a deal for a Next-Gen project? Is that Armored Warfare, or still something unannounced?

 

[Akratus]

Well I wouldn't call armored warfare 'next-gen' exactly. Although as it is going now with the new consoles and games coming out for them it seems the term is meaningless.

 

[Duraframe300]

Wasn't there once talk that Obsidian signed a deal for a Next-Gen project? Is that Armored Warfare, or still something unannounced?

It's armored warfare.

Though, yes that is misleading.

 

[Morgoth]

Okay.

I think I will just accept that. I'm too old for getting butthurt over stuff like that. Why not, driving a tank maybe makes Morgy happy once in a while.

Are we sure there's no big CRPG in development?

 

[Nebuchadnezzar]

I'm going to have to stay away from everything PoE when beta hits.

 

[Abelian]

AusGamers: And I have to ask, is there any loose goal or intention to incorporate multiplayer as a potential future feature for the game or series?

Josh: It’s not really a big focus for us. It’s something that we know -- historically at least on the Infinity Engine games -- it was a feature that many people asked for, and virtually no one played and used. It’s a huge amount of work, really a very large amount of work to get that working in the first place, and especially because of the tight budget constraints of this project, we didn’t really want to mess around with that stuff.

I wouldn’t say that we’re never going to do it, but we know that it’s a very expensive feature to implement, and that traditionally, despite how much people say they want it, it doesn’t wind up getting used a lot.

I have to agree with this one. I think I've only played BG2 in multiplayer three times.

 

[Jedi Exile]

Josh is answering questions again:

I am so pleased that shape shifting made it into the game! Even more that the idea of hybrid shape shifting also made it in the game! A few questions from someone who loves to play shape shifters…

1. Will we be allowed to cast spells when shifted?
2. How long will we be allowed to be shifted?
3. Will buff spells and abilities remain when changing shapes or when shifted for the first time?
4. If items will not merge when shifted what will make shape shifting unique? The abilities+ buffs or will it just be for role playing?
5. Will there be any shapes that are ranged in nature, for example like medusa with bow and arrow?

1. Yes.
2. Shifting lasts for the duration of combat or until you choose to shift back.
3. Yes.
4. All spiritshift forms have unique passive abilities that complement some aspect of fighting in melee.
5. Currently, they are all melee-oriented. In the future, we are more likely to branch out into "weirder" spiritshift forms.

Will there be specific magic items for shifted forms, like collars for a druid in wolf form, etc?

That is not currently planned. Sorry.

Sounds interesting. Maybe druids will be less dull than they are in IE games.