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

[Duraframe300]

Update by Rose Gomez, Associate Producer

Greetings backers! In today's update, we've got some great new character, and area art for you to check out. Our artists have been hard at work creating beautiful new areas and lots of new armor for the game. Our next update will be the next chapter in the class series, all about chanters and priests, by Josh Sawyer.


Characters

Recently our character artists have been hard at work crafting as many armor types as possible. All of our armor types have a variety of quality levels: normal, fine, and exquisite. JD Cerince recently finished up the plate armor designs for the game, which you can see here.

Plate Armor.​

James Chea worked on the scale armor for the game. Below you can see a few varieties for female player characters. Cloth pieces for our armor sets can be tinted as in Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale.

Scale Armor.​

Areas
It's not all dungeons and darkness in Pillars of Eternity. Sean Dunny finished up the beautiful beachy area of Anslog's Compass. Wave effects and details are courtesy of John Lewis. Named for a rocky stretch of land which theoretically resembles a sundial, this lagoon provides decent fishing for both brave Dyrwoodans and a local contingent of xaurips. More than one ship has met its end upon the nearby reef, and debris occasionally washes ashore from the wreckage.

Anslog's Compass.​

Here you can see the Hall of Warriors done by April Giron. This large wooden structure is used as a meeting place for visiting warriors within Twin Elms. It is here that the Glanfathan hunters gather and tell stories of past deeds, discuss upcoming events and hunts, and conduct friendly contests of physical prowess (arm wrestling, tests of endurance, etc.). Sometimes, a visiting animfath will take residence in the hall when visiting the city.

Hall of Warriors.​

Here we have a section of a much larger dungeon by Sean Dunny. This is from Clîaban Rilag, an Engwithan ruin.

Clîaban Rilag Entrance.
​

That's it for this week. We hope you enjoyed this quick art update! Come back next week for a thorough update on chanters and priests by Josh Sawyer.

 

[deuxhero]

The yellow on the exquisite plate armor looks weird, but I think that's mostly because it reminds me of the (much worse) Ebony armor in Morrowind where the set didn't match itself in coloring

 

[Abelian]

The yellow on the exquisite plate armor looks weird, but I think that's mostly because it reminds me of the (much worse) Ebony armor in Morrowind where the set didn't match itself in coloring

The yellow on the exquisite plate armor looks exquisite

Spoiler

But, yeah, the first thing I thought when I saw it was TES.

 

[Roguey]

Update next week and not two weeks from now? A special announcement perhaps? Alpha in early May, beta in August, release in November?????????????? They owe us a a video too, though making that is now Paradox's job.

Eh, i was saying it had a distinctly American flavor in dragon age and mass effect, which was jarring. There's a long political divide in America defined by race, it's a different animal to the extreme far right fascist stuff you see in most places now or what we've seen historically. It's inclusion was off-key and boring. I'm not saying racism as a whole is peculiar to Americans.


Remember the noble savage pseudo-native Americans in dragon age?

No..? I do remember the elves were more like gypsies than anything else and the city elf thing was a rip-off of Braveheart. Neither of these things are American.

 

[Infinitron]

Roguey, why do you assume the game isn't in alpha already? Hint: Look at the update's title.

 

[Roguey]

Roguey, why do you assume the game isn't in alpha already? Hint: Look at the update's title.

Alpha at Obsidian means content and feature complete (so what does beta mean????????? I wish I knew), and in that recent interview with Patel she said they hadn't started writing companions yet. Yeah, that art's alpha quality.

 

[Infinitron]

Alpha at Obsidian means content and feature complete

Yeah, we'll see what sort of "completeness" Adam Brennecke had in mind when he said that.

 

[Roguey]

Well as of March 21st they were at 66% content completion. https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/447162407165513728

I'd guess it's somewhere around 80-90%+ now.

 

[Jaesun]

Damn those new pictures were fucking sweet.

 

[agris]

Well as of March 21st they were at 66% content completion. https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/447162407165513728

I'd guess it's somewhere around 80-90%+ now.

Just now

We are in our Alpha phase right now.

We are currently going through all of our previously created areas and revising anything that we think needs more work - both art and design.

Programming is nearing feature complete. We are tracking to be feature complete in a couple of weeks. This means that we are feature locked and most of the programming team will be diverted into bug fixing, feature polish, demos, etc.

Narrative will have a full pass done in a few weeks, as well. We are almost completely finished with the first pass on our crit path narrative.

Audio and VFX are still a ways off and won't be finished until July or August. They come onto the project later than the other teams because they require that content exists in a locked down form before they can do their work.

Character Art is working on creature variants, armor variants, and other miscellaneous items. Soon they will be adding in unique armors and weapons. Also, they will be creating head and hair variants in the next few weeks.

Animation is finishing up the last remaining A priority tasks and is moving on to some of our B priority animations (special attacks and whatnot).

UI/Concept Art has most of the UI in at an Alpha level. Kaz is finishing up things like Scripted Interaction slides and special UI screens. Also, he has a ton of portraits and areas to paint in the near future.

Production is figuring out project finalization, localization, Kickstarter rewards, convention plans, expansion planning, and a ton of other small things.

EDIT: The 'update next week' thing was a typo, it's in 2 weeks.

 

[Sensuki]

I recall Adam saying that he needed to do another pass on the fog of war system a while back. They also weren't sure if flowing capes and hair was going to be in.

J.D. Cerince - new Character Artist re-hired for PE in February (laid off in 2012)

http://www.linkedin.com/in/jdcerince

John Lewis

http://www.linkedin.com/in/jlewlotr

Profile says Artist at Obsidian, might have ended up doing the FX Artist spot on PE.

 

[Zed]

damn! this game looks fine. the hut interior could use a pass on the cloth hanging over the 'doorways' (could spot a repetitive pattern instantly), but other than that they look very good.

 

[Infinitron]

Well as of March 21st they were at 66% content completion. https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/447162407165513728

I'd guess it's somewhere around 80-90%+ now.

Just now

We are in our Alpha phase right now.

We are currently going through all of our previously created areas and revising anything that we think needs more work - both art and design.

Programming is nearing feature complete. We are tracking to be feature complete in a couple of weeks. This means that we are feature locked and most of the programming team will be diverted into bug fixing, feature polish, demos, etc.

Narrative will have a full pass done in a few weeks, as well. We are almost completely finished with the first pass on our crit path narrative.

Audio and VFX are still a ways off and won't be finished until July or August. They come onto the project later than the other teams because they require that content exists in a locked down form before they can do their work.

Character Art is working on creature variants, armor variants, and other miscellaneous items. Soon they will be adding in unique armors and weapons. Also, they will be creating head and hair variants in the next few weeks.

Animation is finishing up the last remaining A priority tasks and is moving on to some of our B priority animations (special attacks and whatnot).

UI/Concept Art has most of the UI in at an Alpha level. Kaz is finishing up things like Scripted Interaction slides and special UI screens. Also, he has a ton of portraits and areas to paint in the near future.

Production is figuring out project finalization, localization, Kickstarter rewards, convention plans, expansion planning, and a ton of other small things.

EDIT: The 'update next week' thing was a typo, it's in 2 weeks.

Roguey Told you! Once again, your "a quote did or didn't say this so I'll disregard all common sense" methodology leads you to make mistakes. There was no reason to believe they hadn't entered alpha - they just didn't reveal it. Obsidian have a history of not revealing the exact phase of development until it's well underway, so I was expecting that.

 

[Infinitron]

Also,

Alpha at Obsidian means content and feature complete

Yeah, we'll see what sort of "completeness" Adam Brennecke had in mind when he said that.

We are in our Alpha phase right now.

Programming is nearing feature complete. We are tracking to be feature complete in a couple of weeks.

Problem, Brennecke?

 

[Duraframe300]

Profile says Artist at Obsidian, might have ended up doing the FX Artist spot on PE.

Quite possibly.

Might also have done a pass over the area considering (and details)

 

[Sensuki]

Profile says Artist at Obsidian, might have ended up doing the FX Artist spot on PE.

Quite possibly.

Might also have done a pass over the area considering (and details)

Yeah I was going to edit my post with that as well considering the sand detail etc. The Dungeon Area also looks like it's final.

By the way as per the Production Screenshot released a ways back, there was work for a press demo scheduled for Production 6 which will have passed by now. Maybe that was delayed (or maybe not) but soonish we should probably get a slew of new articles if not a video of something.

 

[Roguey]

Roguey Told you! Once again, your "a quote did or didn't say this so I'll disregard all common sense" methodology leads you to make mistakes. There was no reason to believe they hadn't entered alpha - they just didn't reveal it. Obsidian have a history of not revealing the exact phase of development until it's well underway, so I was expecting that.

Yeah I guess the lesson here is to be suspicious of anything anyone says at Obsidian who isn't Josh.

It still looks like their alpha is going to be better than Wasteland 2's beta in a few weeks though.

 

[catfood]

Damn those new pictures were fucking sweet.

Too bad about the combat eh?

 

[sea]

Those new areas look fantastic. Really excellent art direction.

 

[Akratus]

-update-

 

[Abelian]

It still looks like their alpha is going to be better than their Alpha in a few weeks though.

Fixed

 

[Sensuki]

Couple of forum updatum:

These areas have not had a paintover yet. We want to lockdown all of the geometry before we do any of that. We should be starting the paintover process in a few weeks if everything goes well.

As for characters blending into the environment, Adam has been hard at work coming up with a solution. Maybe we can convince him to do an update about it.

We do have dynamic cloth, but we are probably not going to do dynamic hair.

Actually I think I recall Josh already mentioning that.

The hut is a xaurip hut.

So character blending is one of the features that isn't complete yet.

 

[Jedi Exile]

What is a xaurip?

 

[Sensuki]

kinda like a PE Kobold or Tasloi.

SA forums got some Moon Lore from Josh

As far as most people know, there is one moon, Senn Beläfa (or Ondran Beläfa, "Ondra's Beloved", but most people just call it "Beläfa"). It is smaller than Earth's moon but closer to the planet and has a faster orbit. Tides in some coastal areas are more extreme than on Earth. Though uneducated people are unaware of it, there is also a second moon called Cawldha Dev (Glanfathan for "Black Runner"). It has a very fast and irregular orbit. When circumstances are right (wrong), Beläfa and the Cawldha Dev create what the Glanfathans call "Lovers' Tides", which are catastrophically destructive. During the Dyrwoodan revolution, the Glanfathans predicted a Lovers' Tide and helped the colonists use it to their advantage when the Aedyran navy attacked Defiance Bay (then New Dunryd). A huge number of Aedyran ships were destroyed and the ancient adra levee facing the Pearlwood Gulf was broken, creating the still partially-flooded district now known as Ondra's Gift.

Enough Lovers' Tides have happened that they are a known catastrophic event that happens every few hundred years. The Aedyrans recognized what it was after the fact but they didn't know that the Dyrwoodans had forewarning of it until much later

This one's from Obsidian forums but it's not really new info. Some people asked about why the armors didn't look fantastical (and we know why).

Mostly realistic, but with some features exaggerated. Due to the size of characters, we have to exaggerate some elements or they just disappear. E.g. the scales on the scale armor are pretty large and the same is true for the rings on our mail. We tried doing strictly realistic proportions at first and it didn't read well at all. The sizes we use now look a little oversized in inventory but read nicely in the game world. We were consciously trying to capture a late 80s-late 90s AD&D aesthetic with a lot of the pieces.

 

[Abelian]

kinda like a PE Kobold or Tasloi.

Or maybe like a xvart.


You're right, though. The only reference I found was to Tasloi-like creatures that the animators were LARPing modeling a month ago.