Pillars of Eternity

A new twitch stream has been reported by TurinTur, and it’s worth checking out:

The backer-beta should go live early next week, and I’m eager to check it out. I don’t want to play it a ton or anything, but I am excited to see how the game “feels” in person. Baldur’s Gate/IWD are some of my all time favorite RPG’s and I feel like they have held up very well over the years, so this is potentially the game I’m most excited for all year.

I hope it isn’t as hard as it seemed in the video! It ends in lots of cheese in these type of games to overcome the difficulty.

Brennecke wasn’t being particularly careful in that video. He left party members idling several times, he was slow with the deployment of healing, and seemed to be focused on attacking the rock beetles instead of the wood ones. The wood beetles were the ones responsible for the poisoning which seemed to be source of the party wipes.

Those battles were on easy, by the way.

Oh man, even the UI is straight IWD/BG.

Holding off on playing the early access/backer betas is gonna be tough.

Looking good ! :)

Man, this is looking incredible. I’m only a little ways into the demo linked above, just past the party wipe, but it seems like just what I’ve been waiting for. I’m going to have such a hard time avoiding the backer demo I’m just going to admit right here I’m totally playing it the day it’s available. Eh, what can you do? At least it’s just a small slice off the beaten path of the actual game, and I would like an idea of what my first real character will look like so playing around with this will help inform that, I assume.

Beta for all backers next week? Cool, something for me to do while my backlog is floundering. Normally I wait for release for most early access / betas, but I’m pretty curious.

I don’t think it will ruin anything.

Yeah, it really looks like an infinity engine game. More than I expected. Excited for this.

Not for all backers, only for those who paid at least $110, or purchased the addon. You can still get in on it, by the way.

Thanks for the clarification. I will pass. This latest video looked better than the tutorial demo from a few weeks ago (could be imagining that) so I’m content.

Obsidian is on record as saying that the area they are releasing for the beta is not tied to main story. Its going to be a mid level side-quest area.

It’s kind of amazing just how close Pillars is.

I’m super excited for this. I was thinking about upping my pledge for the beta but I might just hold off until the full release. Is it still on track for this year? I hope people post impressions of the backer beta here!

It’s supposed to be out “Winter 2014” so … November, maybe? December? Not for sure on that. This year though, unless they announce a delay or something.

I’m hoping I can watch some of the beta on YouTube. I had no idea until gmonkey pointed it out up-thread that you have to have pledged $110. Being a backer of the lower tier, I just assumed it was for all backers. Ah well, probably for the best! :)

Yeah, I’m kinda happy about that. I know I’ll enjoy the final game more if I skip the beta but if I had access to it there’s no way I could resist trying it out.

This is my most anticipated game ever.

Have you guys all gone through the pledge management process at Obsidian’s site, by the way? You have until the 22nd to make changes to your pldges.

No, I haven’t gone. Not like I intend to make change to my pledge…

You still have to do it to confirm the pledge, shipping address and all that jazz.

Watching that video just brought home how much this is going to be like Baldur’s Gate. Ugh. I hate that game. Hate the real-time with pause combat too.

… But it’s Obsidian, so I still have faith. Back in the day, despite hating Baldur’s Gate, I still had a blast playing through Icewind Dale with my friends. And Planescape: Torment by myself. And then later, despite hating Neverwinter Nights, I loved Neverwinter Nights 2 despite it’s clunky interface and combat engine. And then later, despite not like the Dungeon Siege games, I had a great time playing through Dungeon Siege 3, and actually enjoyed the world building and story, despite it being set in the same crappy universe as the first game. The only Obsidian games I still haven’t been able to get into have been MoTB and Alpha Protocol.

My point being, yes, it does look very much like Baldur’s Gate. But despite that, I think if anyone can make it fun for me anyway, it’s Obsidian.

One thing I wanted to see, and I think we saw it very briefly during the stream, was that you can (instead of going full pause) go to a half-speed mode, which I think will be handy and fun to use for some of the medium-difficulty fights that don’t require full on pause but you can’t just select-all/attack, for.