Pillars of Eternity - Backer Beta Preview Video

[Couchpotato]

Eurogamer posted a new video preview of the Backer Beta of Pillars of Eternity.

Pillars of Eternity - Let's Play the Backer Beta - And Die! - Eurogamer

Imagine a world in which a beetle - nay, a nasty mob of beetles - could utterly and completely destroy your party of armed adventurers, some capable even of using magic. This is that world: Pillars of Eternity. And man, can this game be challenging.

It's all as intended by developer Obsidian Entertainment, of course, because this is a game for old-school RPG fans - fans of Baldur's gate, Icewind Dale. Those are the people who funded the game on Kickstarter after all.

The game is in Backer Beta form now, which means you can play it if you backed the game with your money. You can't buy in, as with an Early Access program.

There's loads about the game that will still change. This process of allowing people to play is intended to reap lots of feedback, and to alter and hone the game based on it.

Pillars of Eternity, the full version, has a winter 2014 release date.

More information.

 

[fatknacker50]

Epic Rage Quit I larfed

These guys should stick to The Sims

 

[HiddenX]

Quote of the day:

Why didn't they just go turn-based?

+1

 

[rjshae]

I wonder how the pro-RTwP faction feels about D:OS? Haven't heard a peep about that.

 

[ds77]

Why didn't they just go turn-based?

I think this was because they wanted to keep it in the same vein as BG2. BG2 was pause based combat. Not a bad thing, but it all depends on how you like the play.

 

[you]

I kind of prefer turn base but rtwp with pause can be ok. I loved the slow motion stuff in the video though I wonder how it actually plays when enabled.
-
D:OS had some bugs and story element issues but the actual game play was fantastic.

 

[booboo]

Wow, are they really terrible players, or is the backer beta poorly balanced? They were pausing every few seconds - I never had to pause that frequently in BG (except for the odd high level fight, when things had gone pear-shaped) , and I'd be really unhappy if that level of micro-managing is now required. Casting times also seemed glacial.

 

[blatantninja]

I wonder how the pro-RTwP faction feels about D:OS? Haven't heard a peep about that.

I haven't played it yet, but given the reviews definitely will. That said, I am leary because of the combat system.

 

[Sacred_Path]

Wow, are they really terrible players, or is the backer beta poorly balanced? They were pausing every few seconds - I never had to pause that frequently in BG (except for the odd high level fight, when things had gone pear-shaped) , and I'd be really unhappy if that level of micro-managing is now required. Casting times also seemed glacial.

Micromanaging will certainly be reduced overall in the finished product, because a lot of fights are harder now than they're intended to be. But for a good number of fights, lots of micromanaging will still be required. But then, I remember quite a few fights from BG2 that had me do a lot of micromanagement - early fights against other adventuring parties, for example.

 

[booboo]

Micromanaging will certainly be reduced overall in the finished product, because a lot of fights are harder now than they're intended to be. But for a good number of fights, lots of micromanaging will still be required. But then, I remember quite a few fights from BG2 that had me do a lot of micromanagement - early fights against other adventuring parties, for example.

I hope so - I was more alarmed by the speed with which their health ...erm..stamina...bars decreased, even with micromanaging. Everything seemed too slow to help (attacks, spells..) That said, casting web on a spider is a bit silly - I was thinking WTF!? Spiders...web...doh! Not surprised they ran all over him.

 

[blatantninja]

I can attest. My first decent battle outside the town, I got slaughtered in what seemed like seconds. It was ugly. Combination of the game needing better balancing (which they are working on) and frankly me just not being good at combat. One of the issues of the beta backer is that you are thrown in as a mid-level party, and face mid-level or greater opponents. So you have no build up of experience (user, not xp) in fighting rats or whatever as a level 1 noob. Its kind of like having your first time driving a car be on the freeway.

 

[Fanest]

thank god its not turn based, because there is so many crpg i play today that are turn based so this change will be welcoming

 

[ChienAboyeur]

Wow, are they really terrible players, or is the backer beta poorly balanced? They were pausing every few seconds - I never had to pause that frequently in BG (except for the odd high level fight, when things had gone pear-shaped) , and I'd be really unhappy if that level of micro-managing is now required. Casting times also seemed glacial.

Neither.
Video makers try to put themselves in conditions close to streaming. This is by far the most productive setting.

It takes practice to be able to play a game without saving and reloading for over twenty minutes.

Usually, video makers also want to produce a lot of series.

All this leads to very careful ways of playing. Very few video makers want to risk losing twenty minutes recording because they went off track a bit.

After trying the beta, without pushing too far, the game could be played real time with no problems. There is largely enough time to implement decisions. Reworking a whole strategy takes to pause.

 

[JDR13]

thank god its not turn based, because there is so many crpg i play today that are turn based so this change will be welcoming

+1

So tired of the "Why didn't they make it turn-based?" comments.

 

[rjshae]

I haven't played it yet, but given the reviews definitely will. That said, I am leary because of the combat system.

It's been pretty decent thus far. The fights have been an almost consistent challenge. At least for me. I actually haven't minded doing some of the fights over multiple times because of the different tactical variations I can try.

 

[azarhal]

I hope so - I was more alarmed by the speed with which their health …erm..stamina…bars decreased, even with micromanaging. Everything seemed too slow to help (attacks, spells..) That said, casting web on a spider is a bit silly - I was thinking WTF!? Spiders…web…doh! Not surprised they ran all over him.

Balance isn't 100% done yet for both enemies and classes. They could have steamrolled all the encounters with a cipher using a single ability if they had wanted to...

 

[Hexprone]

Myself, I'm really pleased that the combat has some meat to it and requires some attention rather than being something you can get through on autopilot.

 

[booboo]

+1

So tired of the "Why didn't they make it turn-based?" comments.

Indeed, I want my BG RTwP experience..also there would have been a shitstorm of epic proportions if they'd done that.

 

[HiddenX]

Some prominent people think otherwise:


Matt Chat: Turn-Based Combat Making a Comeback?: About Damn Time

…
Baldur’s Gate was released a few days before Christmas in 1998. Significantly, Blizzard’s Diablo had been out for two years, shattering sales records and dramatically closing the gap between computer and console RPGs. Essentially, Diablo was an effort to make a Legend of Zelda style game for computer gaming adults, and it worked. Of course, it also helped that CRPGs as a whole had been declining, with mostly derivative titles that, for a variety of reasons, just didn’t capture the imagination the way the earlier Gold Box titles had. The few standouts, such as Fallout (1997), were saddled with “B-grade status” and improperly funded even by publishers who should have known better (Interplay, in this case).

Bioware naturally wanted to duplicate the success of Diablo, but recognized that the sophisticated rules of D&D just couldn’t be reduced to clicking a mouse on the bad guy and quaffing potions. The result was the kludge called RTwP, which tried to capture the “excitement” of Diablo but that would still let you pause the game at any time to pop open the hood and make adjustments.

Bioware was mostly successful with its compromised solution, though it’s debatable whether the game would have been worse off with a more traditional turn-based engine. I’d like to think that the game’s excellent production values and great story would have been enough to quell dissent that the game wasn’t enough like Diablo. In any case, I doubt any publisher would have been interested in a turn-based game anyway given that title’s success.

I think many gamers who were fans of the older turn-based style were probably put off by Baldur’s Gate RTwP. However, it really had been a long time since we had a CRPG with such excellent production values, and it was “good enough” to keep us playing–hey, at least it wasn’t Diablo. Eventually, once you got into the game, you quickly forgot (or were willing to overlook) how often RTwP combat can be painful, tedious, and awkward. Was getting to see some flashier spell animations really worth all this constant pausing and fighting with the AI?

In short, I don’t think turn-based combat is boring or tedious at all. Rather, it’s just that Diablo was so successful that publishers (and many gamers who hadn’t experienced anything else) were suddenly convinced that it was a throwback. That prevented the natural development we’d expect to see in interface and AI design. We’re just now finally starting to see what a modern CRPG with turn-based combat might look like, thanks mostly to X-Com and Shadowrun. However, neither of these games comes anywhere close to the raw passion and craft we got in Baldur’s Gate.

If anyone is in a position to update turn-based combat and make it fun again, it’s Torment’s developers. Fortunately, we are finally back to a position where gamers can and have overridden the publishers to get a new turn-based game that won’t suffer from lower production values. I, for one, am excited to see what the team eventually comes up with.

I agree

 

[JDR13]

Matt is welcome to his opinion, but I don't think he speaks for the majority when it comes to PoE.