Update #85: Hunkerin' Down and Hey, Wasteland 2 is Out!

[Darren Monahan]

Update by Darren Monahan, Fulfillment Fellow and Obsidian Co-founder

Hi everyone,

With the backer beta out now, and the *con season (Gamescom, PAX, Gen Con, et al.) coming to a close for the year, we wanted to give you an update on what we've been up to. We’re busy working on three big things: 1) getting everything on the fulfillment side ready to go, 2) working through many changes and improvements based on feedback from folks playing the backer beta, and 3) wrapping up the game proper.

Fulfillment
As of this week, we’re busy finishing and/or approving all of the final designs for nearly all of the physical rewards so production can begin. It’s very exciting to see this all coming together and often isn't part of the process we get to be involved in at such a deep level on our other projects. It’s one thing to have a playable game here in the studio that we continually maintain – it’s another to be able to really help design the look, feel, and content of every little bit of what comprises a game that ultimately will ship out to you.

Here’s a sample of what the collector’s edition box is going to look like for backers:

In future updates we’ll show some of the other goodies.

We’ve been working really closely with the great folks at Dark Horse who are putting together the finishing touches on the amazing Collector’s Book for the game, and the equally great folks at Prima are busy working on the strategy guide. We’re working with the same author from the Fallout: New Vegas strategy guide, which we’re very excited about!

Backer Beta Feedback
A very big THANK YOU to all of those playing the backer beta and providing feedback on our forums! We’re focusing on a lot of changes right now based on your feedback – big improvements to pathfinding and combat, some significant changes to scouting and stealth and how they work, and we’re doing a lot of reviews on the game’s UI and overall presentation to improve the experience. Expect to see a lot of changes coming in on the beta over the coming weeks. Again, thank you to all of you providing feedback – we really appreciate it. We have folks internally who are scouring every single post and thread daily to move bugs and other feedback into our bug tracking system internally.

Wrapping the Game Up
Over the next several weeks, the team is focusing on a couple key things: area and quest finalization and plowing through the many final tasks and bugs. To keep things “old school”, we’re even employing the Quest Whiteboard of Baldur’s Gate 2 and Icewind Dale fame, where all of the quests in the game are posted on a very visible whiteboard in the office, and designers and QA fight (to the death?!) to certify that quests are 100% done and clean, by removing the evil X’s in their respective department columns. In this case, two X’s enter, ZERO X’s leave. That’s the goal anyway. Here it is as it was finished being set up - note, each item on this board can have many steps and states that all have to be checked before the X can come off for the entire thing.
 

We’ll be back in a couple weeks with some more pics of other physical rewards and an update on how we’re doing. Have a great weekend!


Wasteland 2 is Out!


By the way, since today is Friday, September 19th – Wasteland 2 is now shipping!

Congratulations to our good friends and fellow ex-Interplay/Black Islanders over at inXile Entertainment on their release today of Wasteland 2! I know what I’ll be doing this weekend – hopefully you’ll be doing the same!

If you’re not familiar with Wasteland 2, it’s the modern follow up to the granddaddy of post-apocalyptic RPG’s, Wasteland; it’s actually one of the games that heavily inspired me to first apply at Interplay back in 1994. It’s exciting to see it come out and that so many backers, like many of you, were a big part of it being made in the first place.

Head over to the Wasteland 2 Steam page to check it out.

If you’re one of the folks who gets a copy of the game as a reward for one of your Pillars of Eternity tiers, the Steam version is available immediately, and for those of you who prefer to get the game on GOG, we’ll have an announcement shortly once we have those keys ready for distribution.

Again, congrats to the team at inXile!

[kozzy]

Keep up the good work! Loving Pillars so far and also enjoying Wasteland 2 also!

 

Glad to see you guys are checking the forums lots and checking out what the fans have to say, keep up the good work! What a good time to be an old shcool rpg fan!

[Ink Blot]

Love that box art. Really has that IE boxed game vibe to it. Good news on the Wasteland 2 GOG keys as well.

[Night Stalker]

The design of the collector's edition box looks suitible impressive. Would it be possible for you to share its (planned?) physical dimensions?

[Sensuki]

I pity the soul who's made to watch my hour long videos! apologies in advance, they will be split into segments in the future

 

Love the box art

[Labadal]

I like the look of that box.

[Volourn]

Define 'shortly'. L0L A few hours or a few days is a HUGE difference.

 

 

Otherwise, decent update.

[Flow]

Quick, somebody capture that white board pic and run it through the Blade Runner image processor.

 

Enhance!

[TheRealDrMcCoy]

What about GNU/Linux support?

Is that still coming for the beta or only at release now?

 

Not that I personally care that much about the beta test; I don't have a beta key anyway. But it would be nice if other beta people could test on GNU/Linux before release.

[Hormalakh]

so describe what you mean by steps and states when it comes to quests, please. I counted 95 quests. Is the "main quest" one singular quest, for example?

Edited September 19, 2014 by Hormalakh

[Sensuki]

Does that White board also include Tasks? (I hope not anyway)

[Flow]

What about GNU/Linux support?

Is that still coming for the beta or only at release now?

 

Not that I personally care that much about the beta test; I don't have a beta key anyway. But it would be nice if other beta people could test on GNU/Linux before release.

 

They've said an OS X beta is on the way. I'd be pretty surprised if the same isn't true for Linux.

 

FWIW, I'll be testing the Linux version once it appears.

[CR88]

Thank you for all your hard work! That box preview looks beautiful, I'll be incredibly jealous of all those who had the money to reach the "physical rewards" tier.

I'll be waiting anxiously for the beta updates! :D

[ManifestedISO]

How groovy, the actual whiteboard used for Icewind Dale ... the provenance for that thing, nice.

 

A Prima stategy guide ... great news, thank you.  

[Ink Blot]

If you’re one of the folks who gets a copy of the game as a reward for one of your Pillars of Eternity tiers, the Steam version is available immediately, and for those of you who prefer to get the game on GOG, we’ll have an announcement shortly once we have those keys ready for distribution.

I hate to be a whiner and a pain, but is there any word on this? I was really hoping to grab the GOG copy today so I could play through the weekend.

[The Mist Devil]

Can't wait to see that box in person. It looks quite cool!

 

Sensuki, pretty sure those are only quests, there doesn't seem to be enough of them to also be including Tasks.

[Sensuki]

Yeah that's what I thought, since tasks are pretty much the 'fetch quest' and the like short objectives.

[Forlorn Hope]

The box looks sweeeet.

[Beholder]

Thank you ! Gorgeous box indeed, i'm eager to have a look at the playing cards set too ).I wish i could participate in the beta with my feedback but all my money gone to both digital and physical versions of the game and the community seems to do pretty well with bug report and overall feedback.So thanks to the community ! Please God of the software, make this one a holy software !

Edited September 20, 2014 by Beholder

[Kabraxis]

Has anyone successfully changed their adress? I submitted the change about three-four month ago, got a response two month ago.. but it is still the same in my backer profile.

I know people are super busy but should I write another message? It's getting closer and closer to the finish line now.

[Ieo]

Aw man, I wanted to participate in the beta properly, but IRL stuff conflicts and I can't give it due time. Oh well, I'll just trust things will work out. Thanks for the hard work.

[Keyrock]

Man that collector's box looks great.

[milczyciel]

Has anyone successfully changed their adress? I submitted the change about three-four month ago, got a response two month ago.. but it is still the same in my backer profile.

I know people are super busy but should I write another message? It's getting closer and closer to the finish line now.

I did - after I've moved to the UK in June and got that update notification about finalizing all the info (in July I guess?).

Got a response from the support pretty quick - can't remember how fast it was exactly, but I bet it took them less than a week. I'd try again if I was you - better to "waste" maybe 10 minutes of support's time now, than wait til it's too late.

 

Box looks lovely - can't wait to put it on the top shelf, next to those other few "important" games

Edited September 20, 2014 by milczyciel

[JFSOCC]

That's more quests than Baldurs Gate II. That's very encouraging, especially when Josh said earlier during development that the quests he's seen are some of the most reactive he's ever seen. I'm very curious to see how it turns out.

 

Holiday Greetings from Milan

[Zebra3]

That box art looks great