As its first foray into crowd-funding, Pillars of Eternity was always going to be an important title for developer Obsidian. A new documentary reveals just how important its Kickstarter success was.
In 2012 Obsidian had just had a major console project cancelled, and if the team couldn’t think of something to replace it fast, the studio was staring closure right in the face.
Road to Eternity: Part 1 from Obsidian Entertainment on Vimeo.
“We had a date in mind, where if we passed that date, we were basically screwed,” recalls executive producer Adam Brennecke, “because we’d just run out of money.”
Backed into a corner, and having no luck pitching games in the traditional way, the team started to look at other methods of bringing a game to market. Given that Double Fine was raking in squintillions of cash with its crowd-funding campaign for a new adventure game (which would eventually turn into Broken Age), it’s not surprising that the team turned to Kickstarter.
Brennecke and Pillars’ director Josh Sawyer hammered out a last-minute pitch, and the studio heads gave it the green light. A wise decision, in hindsight, given that the campaign raised just shy of $4 million.
Road to Eternity is a documentary looking at the making of the upcoming fantasy RPG. This is part one, released by Obsidian as a preview for the full video – no word on when that’s coming out just yet. What we do know, thankfully, is that Pillars of Eternity is finally set for release on March 26.
