The original project scope for what became known as Pillars of Eternity would have likely seen the top-down RPG released around this April, but all those extra millions led to a much larger game.
Project lead Josh Sawyer confirms with certainty that it won’t be out in the first half of 2014. It went from a ”relatively modest” five-classed RPG, to a mouth-watering 11 classes.
Obsidian knew by the end of the Kickstarter campaign that their original release estimate was going to be missed but they couldn’t change it at the time.
”We foresaw needing a bit more time when the Kickstarter ended. It’s understandable that people don’t know this but when you start a Kickstarter, once it goes live, you can’t change that date. You’re not allowed to change to that date,” explained Josh Sawyer. Project Eternity asked for $1 million but ended up with over $4 million.
”When we started with a million-dollar budget and a relatively modest game with five classes, that was assuming if we get $1m we can make this game and we’ll probably get it done by April. We got almost four-times as much money and that’s a much bigger game, and that doesn’t mean that immediately we just dump four-times as many people on it and it also gets done in April. There’s a lot more stuff to do.”
”We knew that at that time,” he said. ”But until we get really close to releasing the game we don’t want a specific release window, because we’re not a publisher, we don’t have to! Virtually nothing good comes from us releasing a date before we’re very confident in it. It’s not going to be in spring; we’re going to be working into spring to get alpha done because it’s a big game.”
Sawyer reveals that ”more than half the content of the game is done,” achieving at least an alpha state.
Currently Obsidian is wrapping up work on South Park: The Stick of Truth, which will mean additional resources are freed up to assist RPG Pillars of Eternity, which currently has 20-25 devs. The project’s coffers continue to grow as Obsidian has their own crowd-funding options via their website.
They do plan for an early access version of the RPG. ”We are going to be having a section of the game that the players can play through to get a feel for all the mechanics and style of character interactions and all that kind of stuff,” said Sawyer. ”Yeah, that is planned.”
Obsidian Entertainment hope for Pillars of Eternity to start a whole new series of games. ”Whether it’s a direct sequel or something else… If we put in the time and the energy to not only develop the technology but also develop this world and the characters and all that stuff, it just makes sense for us to keep making games in it if people like it.”
The studio’s latest blog update for Pillars of Eternity looked at rogues and rangers.
