Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth is nearing the release of its first 'book'. Spanning from the world of Ken Follett's 1000+ long 1989 novel, this upcoming adventure game is set to turn the tale of a 12th century village on its head by enabling the narrative to branch off as a consequence of player interaction.
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Daedelic Entertainment have described Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth as the largest game they've ever worked on "by far". And that's no small feat. Split into three of these 'books', the full game will need to cover 1000+ pages of story while throwing in fragmented plotlines needed to call it a 'retelling'.
With a month to go until its August release, we're dumping our knowledge of what's to come into this easy-to-read article.
The Plot
Presented as a vastly more interactive retelling of classic literature, Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth tells the story of Kingsbridge - a small town struggling in the desperate times of the 12th century.
Aiming to secure their future by erecting a grand cathedral to be the centrepiece of their otherwise insignificant village, the monumental task causes numerous lives to becoming connected as the construction of one of England's largest religious constructs begins to take shape.
Once a small-time Monk of the similarly small town, Philip is to become the prior of what's to come. Pulled from his sheltered life out in the wilderness, Jack becomes an apprentice stonemason tasked with lending his hand to the ambitious build. Then there's Aliena, the disgraced noblewoman aiming to regain her name. Together, they're the focus of a bigger tale wrapped around the ankles of the Kingsbridge settlement across a 30 year narrative.
The Gameplay
Optimised for either mouse or gamepad use, Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth is more commonly described as an casual indie adventure game. Like any good game of its kind, we're to expect 200+ exceptional backdrops that bring the world to life; with equally compelling characters moving the story along on top.
With the original novel first released in 1989, we're told this video game adaption is unlikely to cover the events of its more recent 2007 sequel - World Without End. Given its set to receive another - Pillars of Fire - in the near future, here's hoping stellar sales will encourage Daedelic to work on the Ken Follett's continued narrative. The difference here, however, is that your actions in-game can alter the events of the game. Meaning even those who've read the 1000+ long source are likely to find some new tales here should they know how, where and when to influence plot through the interactive dialogue choices.
Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth is a big book covering 30 years of war, romance and conspiracies surrounding the small Kingsbridge village. Because of that, we're to expect powerful performances not just by the full-voice efforts of Glen McCready (Philip), Naomi Sheldon (Aliena) and Cody Molko/Alex Jordan (young/adult Jack), but through the work of Prague's FILMharmonic Orchestra who're providing a strong orchestral soundtrack to the game's 12th century plight.
System Requirements
Predominantly being a simple enough adventure game, Pillars of the Earth isn't planning on being majorly taxing on your rig of choice. So long as you're rocking a GPU with at least 1GB of dedicated memory and 4GB of RAM ready to hold things up, you're probably good to go.
Minimum
- CPU: 2.8 Ghz Dual Core CPU
- Memory :4 GB RAM
- GPU: AMD Radeon HD 6670, GeForce GTX 200 series with at least 1GB
- DirectX: Version 9.0
- Storage: 11 GB available space
Maximum
- CPU: Quad Core CPU
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- GPU: AMD R7 200 series, GeForce GTX 500 series
- DirectX: Version 9.0
- Storage: 11 GB available space
Release Information
Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth has big shoes to fill. The source material is a series of very heavy novels, and with the video game adaption adding a bit of flexibility to the story, there's likely a lot of work going into this.
Due to that, Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth will be split into 3 'books'. Like the episodic format of adventure games as of late, they'll be released in a staggered fashion with the first set to arrive on August 15, 2017. With Gamescom happening soon after, we're told to expect the release date for the second to be announced at that time.
