Interview by Rock Paper Shotgun

[Sonntam]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/07/24/freedom-and-fantasy-pillars-of-eternity-interview/#more-222703

 

Some new information, a little clarification on the Saints War. It's also confirmed that there will be conflict between companions.

 

Good interview, lots of good questions and answers.

 

[Aslinng]

Thank you, this article give some details about the setting of the beginning of the game.

[ManifestedISO]

Yeah, that was good. Plus more tomorrow.

[Leferd]

Drat. 30 hours later and looks like no part two yet.

[Mannock]

Part two of the interview is up at RPS now:

 

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/07/29/expert-speech-skill-pillars-of-eternity-interview-part-2/

[Valmy]

Fewer maps than BG2?!  NOOOOOOOOOO *gasp* OOOOOOOOO

 

Well alright I guess that is ok.

It was a publisher thing. Somehow it was decided that people didn’t want those kind of games anymore. I don’t think there was ever any sales data to prove that – people stopped making them, which kind of makes the argument prove itself. Make zero games of that type and there are zero sales!

 

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. That often happens with retailers and publishers though. Even at Black Isle after we stopped making Infinity Engine games, we were working on Van Burin, which would have been Fallout 3 for us, and those were 3d games but essentially still isometric. The publishers decided, even at Interplay, that people weren’t into that kind of game anymore. They wanted to go full 3d.

 

 

Oh god that drove me crazy.  It was getting positively absurd by 2002 when IWD2 was released.  The press was screaming about the 'archaic infinity engine' and I was like 'really?  But we have only had five titles total and it is only about five years old' I mean heck Bioware's engine from Mass Effect has been going on eight years now and nobody is demanding it be shut down forever and no games like it be made again.  I will never understand why they couldn't just have made a new engine that made games like the IE games but with the all the updated nonsense instead of just declaring the who genre dead and forcing us fans to self-fund them.  Thanks industry.

[IndiraLightfoot]

A cool excerpt for all of us Europeans:

"Sawyer: Part of it is being based in Europe, where trends are different and PC is so big.

Adler: A good majority of our fans are European.

Sawyer: Our backers and fans in general. We got a lot of love here. Germany and France in particular.

Adler: And Eastern Europe too.

Sawyer: That’s true. For whatever reasons, they really dig our stuff."

 

The PC and Obsidian certainly rock my world, so here's one fitting that bill.

Edited July 29, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[Valmy]

The eternal alliance between France and Germany once more bears fruit.

[Leferd]

I'd like to see the breakdown of backers by country.

[Aslinng]

RPS: You mentioned during the presentation that it’s possible to see the dialogue options that your character can’t choose for whatever reason, but that the visibility can also be disabled. Can you turn off the indicators that tell you what the result – reputation-wise – of a choice will be?

Sawyer: Almost anything in the UI can be switched off. You can turn off combat HUD elements. You can even turn on Big Head mode, which I love.

 

That's a good thing, give players some options to disable some stuff they don't like in the "UI" is cool.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Josh Sawyer: "For whatever reasons, they really dig our stuff."

 

That's because we share that Old World Blues! 

[Gilgalad2012]

Good stuff! Avoided watching the intro of the game because I hate spoilers, but saw the character creation segment and some combat. Looks pretty  

[MasterPrudent]

I think that interview may just have inspired me to redownload FO:NV and try a run with Sawyers mod. This:

 

RPS: You slowed it down, right?

Sawyer: I slowed advancement down. I changed the balance on a lot of stuff. It’s a significantly harder game overall. The weight limitation is much much stricter – like a third or a quarter. I designed the game to be played in hardcore from the start and you do have to pay a lot more attention to water. It’s a lot less common, kinda scarce actually.

I kind of made it a little more simulationist overall and more challenging. I dealt with stuff that I wasn’t able to address with the commercial release.

basically fixes all the (minor) issues I had with the game.

 

EDIT: Oh, and they buried the lede: BIG HEAD MODE CONFIRMED!!!

Edited July 30, 2014 by MasterPrudent

[redneckdevil]

Big Head Mode.........drops mic and walks off stage

[Hiro Protagonist II]

I'd like to see the breakdown of backers by country.

 

Same here. Be good to see some stats like that.

[Leferd]

Big Head Mode! Hahaha!!

 

I can already hear the play by play commentary:

 

"He's on Fire!" - on burning effect.

"Boom-Shakka-Lakka!" - on critical hit.

Edited July 30, 2014 by Leferd

[Sensuki]

We don't know if fewer maps includes area re-use.

 

BG2 used the same area art for different interiors such as houses and whatnot. Those areas are included in the overall area count (which is over 275). If PE has 150 unique maps, that's pretty darn good. We already know that PE environment art has a lot of asset re-use, but I'm not sure if they fully use the same area art for two different levels.