Obsidian's "Pillars of Eternity"

[Ingmar]

Careful, they're going to revoke your Codex login.

[rk47]

After D:OS TB combat, seeing this IE combat in action is pr. lackluster.
Maybe it gets better mid game but I'm just gonna wait for steam sales to pick it up.

[Sophismata]

While I usually agree with you, in this case I think there's room for both gameplay styles. The real-time "turn-based" approach works for me. My only worry is that they've given all the classes too many options; obstensibly a Good Thing but it might make combat too busy without an excellent AI/Scripting system (on par with FFXII).

[rk47]

While I usually agree with you, in this case I think there's room for both gameplay styles. The real-time "turn-based" approach works for me. My only worry is that they've given all the classes too many options; obstensibly a Good Thing but it might make combat too busy without an excellent AI/Scripting system (on par with FFXII).

Example of Good RTWP: Faster Than Light - It had the right elements. UI is precise. And gameplay definitely rewards intelligent play.
I dislike getting too busy in most isometric RPG- cause there's just no depth, you're just fighting with the interface.

[Lucas]

So, the "Backer Beta" is now available for those who pledged in a appropriate tier; here are the details (download, what's in the beta, known issues, etc.) :

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/posts/957143

In short:

- Download size: 2.9 GB
- Beta takes place in an area which is not critical to the main storyline, and should not contain any reference to it (but of course, through dialogues, you might get bits & pieces about the world). There is a village, wilderness and, from what I read, a couple dungeons. The companions you get in the beta are pre-made and very generic (infact, they're called "BB fighter", "BB rogue" etc.) Here's the quote:

nothing in the Backer Beta has a direct connection to the critical path/main story of Pillars of Eternity. We have intentionally excluded any spoiler content so our backers can play the beta worry-free. None of the quests are connected to the crit path and none of the pre-made companions are going to be in the final game.

- You create a level 1 character: all classes & races combinations are available. Then, you will immediately get more points in order to advance to level 5. Currently, if you do everything in the Beta, you should get to level 8.


More at the above mentioned post.

[Merusk]

Did anyone here pledge at the backer beta level?  I only did the digital copy $20 or $30 level for a cheap copy of the game. I'm interested in hearing some non-fanboish play reviews and I doubt I'll get it anywhere else.

[Ingmar]

I did, but I'm not sure I qualify as a non-fanboy. Planning to download it tonight.

[Lucas]

Yeah, I originally pledged in a beta tier; still have to try it out, tho.

[Zetor]

I tried it out. It's... messy, and feels like an unholy amalgamation of an early alpha and a late beta.

The content, atmosphere, flavor, etc all seem to be spot-on and basically complete. Dialogue/quest quality is very good -- not PS:T level, but better than BG1-2 imo. However, the basic gameplay has issues on the design and implementation levels.

• The stat system just seems inconsequential... for a 'no dump stat' philosophy, the three mental stats sure feel like second-rate stats. Why would I want to spend a point increasing my AOE sizes by 3% if I could spend the same point to increase my damage/healing by 3%? Maybe this can be fixed by tuning.
• Character customization seems very limited; fighter A is going to be like fighter B, etc. BG1/2 mostly differentiated recruitable characters of the same class by their unique equipment / exclusive innates / stats / multiclassing / kits; here stats and multiclassing are not going to work due to how the system is designed, but gear and innate abilities may help. We'll see.
• Lots of bugs. Bugs everywhere. Characters forgetting commands, pathfinding not working as expected, occasional stuttering, inventory disappearing, save/load system bugs, the works. This is standard beta stuff, but some of it feels like alpha-level shit.
• Some critical problems in combat. Specifically, the characters currently lack even a basic kind of AI, so you have to babysit all of them to attack a target every time. Yes, it's as tedious as it sounds. This is actually a bug that's on the shortlist to fix, but it makes the combat game borderline unplayable unless you're a masochist.

So overall, I dunno. Lots of promise, but I'm unconvinced about the system, and there are some crippling bugs that make combat basically a non-starter right now. I'll probably give it a second look after those are fixed.

[Ingmar]

It hits basically all the old Infinity Engine notes. Gorgeous area art, the old familiar textured interface, noises when you move items around, etc., etc. A lot of icon art isn't done, and the game system seems somewhat more complicated than the old IE 2nd edition AD&D stuff. Character creation has a lot of variables - gender/race/subrace/class/culture.

It is certainly buggy, in all the ways Zetor says. I'm not disappointed in what it looks like this game will become though, and they're certainly spraying nostalgia around with a giant hose.

[Zetor]

Yea, my post may have seemed a bit more negative than I intended -- overall I found the game to be quite promising, and something that can definitely live up to the legacy of the better IE games. A lot of systems which would probably help on the customization front (like traits) just aren't implemented yet; also, the stat system will probably be overhauled before launch. The IE feel is definitely there, and the content itself is really good / professional quality; it's just that combat currently is a bit... yeah.

[lamaros]

Character stuff sounds blegh. I quite liked BG2s system and I'm sure ill miss it.

[Jeff Kelly]

Maybe it will all come together in the end but I'm somewhat disheartened to see that the Obsidian guys have basically not learned anything in the last ten or fifteen years making such games.

They way you describe it makes it sound like basically every other game those Black Isle guys have made from Baldurs Gate and the original Fallout to Icewind Dale and Fallout New Vegas. Games with lots of style, athmosphere and great stories that are bug infested messes featuring half thought out and broken game mechanics and systems.

BG was basically a game demo. The 1.0 Version of Fallout was literally unplayable due to a save file corruption bug and even the final version was still broken enough that the community had to fix major stuff by means of reverse engineering the game and supplying unofficial patches. It took them more than a year after release to get Fallout New Vegas to anything resembling a working status and even in its final state it still manages to crash in a way that I have to hard reset my XBox every few hours.

Until now their justification for that has alway been that those issues came from publisher interference. That they can't do great work when budgets and deadlines are forced on you externally and you have to ship regardless of the game being done or not. They also said, that this would no longer be the case with Pillards of Eternety due to the kickstarter model and the 'when it's done philosophy'.

We'll see if this is shown to be true or not.

[Merusk]

Until now their justification for that has alway been that those issues came from publisher interference. That they can't do great work when budgets and deadlines are forced on you externally and you have to ship regardless of the game being done or not. They also said, that this would no longer be the case with Pillards of Eternety due to the kickstarter model and the 'when it's done philosophy'.

We'll see if this is shown to be true or not.

Game developers are known liars and unprofessional, undisciplined man children.  This has been known for a while. The inability for any of them to move past the point of their original 'groundbreaking' projects only adds to this perception.

[rk47]

Avellone can't even figure out Arcanum and refuses to read the fucking manual. 
Vidya Game Writers mang.

[NowhereMan]

Sounds like a disappointing start, sounds like 'Publisher interference' may have been just designers blaming the fact that they actually have a schedule and deadlines as part of the production process rather than things actually being unrealistically rushed in the past. Which means when you've got finite time and money resources you're game is going to have problems and that ain't the publisher being a jackass.

I will still buy this though, even if combat is kind of shitty, because Obsidian game plots tend to make me excited in my pants despite the horrendous execution of the game.

[rk47]

I know several Japanese games that excites me in my pants too. 

[Cyrrex]

I must be living in a parallel dimension from some of you.  I rarely or never experienced these horrendously game breaking bugs (either on console or PC).  Also, I will note here below a list of all the Obsidian games I've played that I didn't find either really good or amazing:

[Jeff Kelly]

Deadlines keep you honest and they force you to prioritize what you actually want to do. Budgets force you to also be efficient at implementing the things you decide to do. If you have neither a budget nor a deadline stuff like Duke Nukem Forever happens.

Then there's the issue of 'cool' and 'uncool' things that you can do. As a SW developer myself and after a few years of experience as a project manager I can tell you that it's incredibly hard to get engineers and designers to do the 'uncool' stuff, to get them to do it well and to get them to keep on doing it until it's done. Uncool stuff includes but is not limited to: testing, writing test specs, writing test cases, fixing bugs when there is still some cool design or development work to do, doing lots of iterations on a module with iterative fixing and testing and so on.

That's why testing is so often outsourced or done by entry level staff even though it's probably the most important part of every SW development project. The idesigners and implementers shouldn't be the ones doing or even designing the tests but you need professional test engineers.

[Jeff Kelly]

The Fallout Wiki has a pretty extensive list of bugs and patch notes for Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout New Vegas. I haven't looked if there exists similar info for Baldurs Gate 1 and 2, Planescape Torment or Icewind Dale 1 and 2 but I suppose there will be.

Since many of the Obisdian guys have at one time or another been involved with most or all of the listed games (as part of Black Isle or the original Bioware) especially Josh Sawyer and Chris Avellone it's a good track record of their existing work.

All of the games mentioned still had critical bugs in the released versions that could corrupt save games or prevent you from finishing the game. Even worse in some cases patches released to fix certain game breaking bugs actually introduced new game breaking bugs and failed to fix the old ones. In the case of Fallout: New Vegas I'm not even talking about the PC version where I could somehow understand the issues because of the huge amount of different hardware but the XBox 360 version. In fact Fallout, Fallout 2 and New Vegas still include game breaking bugs that were never fixed (unfinishable quests, crashes etc.). I never played BG so I don't know for sure but I assume it's the same there.

In fact as far as Fallout and Baldurs Gate are concerned the versions you probably encounter today or which are recommended for playing involve fan made patches and fixes. In case of Fallout 1 and 2 the list of fixes and improvements the fan patches made possible is extensive and Baldurs Gate enhanced edition started off as a fan project.

Don't get me wrong I played the shit out of those games, that's the only reason I know just how many issues those games had and still have. The defense by those guys has always been though that it was never their fault but their publsihers that the games ship in such a broken state. That it was always an issue of unreasonable deadlines and budget constraints. When they still were a part of Interplay they regularly threw them under the bus by claiming that it was Interplay's fault for forcing them to release a broken game and with Fallout: New Vegas they did the same to Bethesda (probably the reason why you'll never see another Obsidian Fallout as long as Bethesda holds the license).

The whole mission statement for Project Eternity has always been that they can do what they want and finish when it's done with reasonable deadlines and budgets and enough time to fix, finish and polish everything to their liking and not when some publisher tells them to ship it.

The fact that they released a Beta that should have been called an Alpha release due to the state core game mechanics are still in indicates that this might be just bullshit.

It's a testament to their writing and design work, that most people - including me - still remember those games fondly and still want to play them. The quality of their coding has always been shoddy though.

[Cyrrex]

Facts and stuff.  Can see trees, but not forest.

If it means that they will still deliver games to me that are among my favorites of all time, then I will gladly take their bugs and shoddy QA processes.  Let's go ahead and say the same thing about Bethesda while we're at it.  If this Pillars game is as shitty as all their other stuff, then it sounds like a Day 1 purchase.

Not meant as a dig on you, Jeff, I think I can tell from your posts that you are a probably fan of these games as wll and are just armchairing a bit. 

[Yegolev]

Sounds like a disappointing start, sounds like 'Publisher interference' may have been just designers blaming the fact that they actually have a schedule and deadlines as part of the production process rather than things actually being unrealistically rushed in the past. Which means when you've got finite time and money resources you're game is going to have problems and that ain't the publisher being a jackass.

I've had this opinion for a long time.  Grown men with jobs understand budgets of time, money, etc. and know or learn how to manage their work (and life).  Man-children whine about how life is unfair and if only they had no grown-ups telling them what to do, the world would be awesome.

[Jeff Kelly]

Not meant as a dig on you, Jeff, I think I can tell from your posts that you are a probably fan of these games as wll and are just armchairing a bit. 

I own all of them.Sometimes several copies for different systems.

It's just sad to see that their methods haven't changed. Especially because they've burned a lot of bridges and publisher goodwill by being shoddy developers and constantly blaming others for that. When Fallout New vegas came out they basically blamed Bethesda for the game being as broken as it was then. Since it was Bethesda probably even justifiably so. Obsidian is first and foremost a thrid party developer being hired by license holders and publishers to develop their properties though and they lose more contracts than they gain with that attitude.

[Ingmar]

New Vegas ran close to flawlessly for me. MUCH better than, say, Fallout 3.

The only Black Isle/Obsidian games that ever presented significant issues to me were Fallout 2 (so long ago as to be basically irrelevant, but yes it was badly broken at release) and the ending of KOTOR2 (mostly not their fault, at a minimum.) I guess you could argue that Alpha Protocol had a bad PC port in terms of controls (hacking minigame especially).

I think this reputation they have is pretty overblown and based mostly on one game (KOTOR2).

(These guys were not particularly involved in BG 1/2, that was Bioware, who originally shared the same publisher - Interplay. Black Isle did publish BG2 but did not develop it. So experiences there are not especially relevant.)

[Zetor]

Yep, the "Bugsidian" rep is a bit overblown. I understand that NV was pretty buggy right after launch, but then so was every other game with that engine. I played it ~6-9mo after release and had pretty much zero issues. Their last IE game (IWD2) was done on a ridiculously short schedule and still ended up decent-ish. NWN2... well... the engine was terrible, so I didn't get past the prologue (though I heard good things about MOTB). Alpha Protocol wasn't anywhere near as fun as Deus Ex, but it was still an interesting game to play.

My problems with Obsidian games are mostly related to them making games I'm just plain not interested in (lately: Dungeon Siege 3, South Park, and they're also apparently working on a World of Tanks clone). Pillars of Eternity looks like it's right up my alley, though, despite my preference for turn-based combat!

e: also, the Pillars lead designer shares his philosophy on RPGs here, it's an interesting read (WARNING: KOTAKU LINK) I guess the main takeaway is that balance > all, even in single-player games. It certainly explains some of the design choices I've seen -- and in that case, IMO the main challenge PoE will be to make sure that the different archetypes / options are actually distinct enough despite being "balanced" against each other.

[rk47]

Guy's full of it.
Despite his 'visionary balance' take on all stat points, we still get dump stats cause..hell, even mages can dump INT. LOL.

[Megrim]

Yep, the "Bugsidian" rep is a bit overblown. I understand that NV was pretty buggy right after launch, but then so was every other game with that engine. I played it ~6-9mo after release and had pretty much zero issues. Their last IE game (IWD2) was done on a ridiculously short schedule and still ended up decent-ish. NWN2... well... the engine was terrible, so I didn't get past the prologue (though I heard good things about MOTB). Alpha Protocol wasn't anywhere near as fun as Deus Ex, but it was still an interesting game to play.

My problems with Obsidian games are mostly related to them making games I'm just plain not interested in (lately: Dungeon Siege 3, South Park, and they're also apparently working on a World of Tanks clone). Pillars of Eternity looks like it's right up my alley, though, despite my preference for turn-based combat!

e: also, the Pillars lead designer shares his philosophy on RPGs here, it's an interesting read (WARNING: KOTAKU LINK) I guess the main takeaway is that balance > all, even in single-player games. It certainly explains some of the design choices I've seen -- and in that case, IMO the main challenge PoE will be to make sure that the different archetypes / options are actually distinct enough despite being "balanced" against each other.

ugh, he is one of those people.

[Jeff Kelly]

Character balance in RPGs is a fool's errand. The most recent example of how spectacularly that can fail is D & D 4th edition.

[NowhereMan]

Guys, guys, guys! I think we can all agree there's a very good chance that this is going to be released with some show stopping bugs that will affect a small percentage of players and that the mechanics will probably not achieve anything like the results the designers are promising and won't be 'totally revolutionary' but will hopefully present some options with regards to different playstyles. Basically I'm expecting a generally competent game, albeit one that is nowhere near the level of coding quality expected of a major developer, with some not-broken if not very exciting mechanics.

Andif the writing is anything like Obsidian's normal standards it will be a day 1 purchase and eat my free time for a couple of weeks.

[rk47]

They shd just do a visual novel.

[Lucas]

First beta patch is out, 1.7 GB:

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/68200-backer-beta-build-278-is-live/

[Lucas]

...And another beta patch is out: 2 GB

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/68689-backer-beta-build-301-is-live/

Fixing, polishing, toying around with certain game systems (primary and secondary attribute interdependence, naming, stealth). Onward.

[lamaros]

I had the misfortune to read the beta forums. For a bunch of serious fans they are a pretty pessimistic lot.

I really don't understand why games developers try to do so much. Why have 500 different race combos when you can't even get a solid idea on how your stat system will work?

Give D:OS decent writing and world detail and you have a good to very good game.  Obsidion are just trying to do too much crap, especially as they're not good as doing much of that crap in the first place. Why can't people recognise their limitations and focus that extra money/whatever on fixing those things?

I still have hopes this will be a great game. But it might take years of player patches and mods to get there.

[Jeff Kelly]

I'm in the new X-Com camp on this one. Do a few classes/combos but do them right and make sure synergy and tactical options fit. Then do the itemization for those classes. Once you have the holy trinity down then think about how you can extend/broaden the class system. What usually happens is that you have lots of classes that are indiscernable from each other and an itemization that stinks.

I doN#t get why so many developers fuck this up. Most of your game emchanics in rpgs/tactical combat sims is combat, so get your initial classes down, get your combat system down, get the itemization down. Then extend. 80% of my gameplay will involve that so it be better good and tight.

new X-Com had this down. The limited base classes hurt its replay value a bit but what they had was lean and tight.

[Malakili]

I'm in the new X-Com camp on this one. Do a few classes/combos but do them right and make sure synergy and tactical options fit. Then do the itemization for those classes. Once you have the holy trinity down then think about how you can extend/broaden the class system. What usually happens is that you have lots of classes that are indiscernable from each other and an itemization that stinks.

I doN#t get why so many developers fuck this up. Most of your game emchanics in rpgs/tactical combat sims is combat, so get your initial classes down, get your combat system down, get the itemization down. Then extend. 80% of my gameplay will involve that so it be better good and tight.

new X-Com had this down. The limited base classes hurt its replay value a bit but what they had was lean and tight.

This is one of the reasons I place such a high value on combat mechanics, smoothness and how much fun it is to actual just plain fight stuff in these sorts of games.  I like other parts of the games more, but given that so much of my actual gameplay is going to be spent on combat, it just can't be clunky or else most of the game is going to be an absolute chore to play.  I'm not going to stick around for your cool crafting system and deep dialog trees if getting past any combat makes me want to turn the game off.