Pilllars of Eternity

The Eastern Reach is beset by a terrible curse: children are being born without souls, becoming known as the Hollowborn. The arrival of a Watcher, an individual able to reach out and touch souls and discover their former lives, may hold the key to resolving the crisis. The Watcher must travel the length and breadth of the Eastern Reach, from the great city of Defiance Bay to the mountains of the White March, to discover why this is happening, and if it is possible to stop it.

Pillars of Eternity is a CRPG created by Obsidian Entertainment after a successful Kickstarter campaign and released in 2015. The game was a bit of a Hail Mary for the company which faced financial difficulties after games they were developing for Microsoft and Sega fell through, but critical acclaim saw the game sell well, allowing the company to recover and eventually be bought out and prosper (by the same Microsoft that got them into trouble in the first place, but that's a whole other discussion). Pillars of Eternity also became the first game in a franchise, with direct sequel Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire following in 2018 and then a first-person spin-off, Avowed, in 2025.

Mildly embarrassingly, I started playing Pillars of Eternity in the week it came out and got about 15 hours into the game before I was distracted by something else, and additional sidetracking took place for, er, eleven years. But in the last few weeks I managed to circle back and finally complete the game and its expansion, The White March, with all the benefits of eleven years of patching and extra additions to the game (including a much-requested turn-based combat mode).

Pillars of Eternity is a spiritual successor to the old Infinity Engine games, and Obsidian are well-placed to handle that. Before they were Obsidian, some of the same team were at Black Isle Studios (the internal development studio at Interplay before Interplay went bust in 2003) where they created Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale and Icewind Dale II, as well as providing additional dev support on Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II. This team is well-versed in the structure of these kind of games and what made them tick and so successful.

As with the Infinity Engine games, you view the game from a top-down perspective, controlling a team of six (from an eventual pool of eleven). You create your main character, the Watcher, and can then recuit additional named NPCs as the game continues. Intriguingly, if you find none of the NPCs are what you're looking for, you can also recruit random hirelings at inns, or create a whole party from scratch yourself. The named companion NPCs do have a lot of unique dialogue and banter, and each one has their own chain of side-quests, so there is value in bringing those characters along and interacting with them. There are numerous classes available, including the bog-standard fighters, mages and paladins, but there are some interesting classes like the chanter, a spin on the traditional bard. Being able to replay the game with a different class adds a lot of replayability. Not being based on a tabletop rule set, the game does have the advantage of not having to shoehorn awkward or barely-applicable tabletop rules into a video game, which can give a more focused experience.

The game has two modes, realtime-with-pause to replicate the classic Infinity Engine experience or turn-based, which was added to the game only this year, presumably to cash in on the success of the turn-based experience in Baldur's Gate III. Realtime with pause (RTWP) allows you to hit spacebar at any moment to pause the game and given fresh orders, very useful when you want your cleric to start healing frontline fighters or mages to use specific spells. I think the turn-based implementation in Pillars of Eternity is awkward at best, and doesn't mesh well with the absolute masses of combat encounters in the game. In BG3 it worked because each combat experience was tailor-designed to be interesting, with environmental factors and special skills to make each battle memorable. Pillars of Eternity has far too many random fights with easily-defeatable mooks and making each fight ten times longer does nothing other than make combat more tedious. RTWP makes fights more dynamic and fun, and much faster. RTWP can be horrible when badly-implemented, with Pillars of Eternity is one of the best implementations of the concept, so it works quite well. There's a solid variety of enemy types to fight, and some of the bigger creatures are genuinely imposing to face down.

Pacing-wise, the game starts with you investigating the Hollowborn crisis and discovering your Watcher powers through a linear, quasi-tutorial section before the game opens up into a wilderness area where you can travel to various small towns, caves and ruins. You acquire your first companions (I recommend getting six ASAP as the game's early difficulty spikes can be brutal) and pick up initial quests. These will eventually take you to the abandoned fortress of Caed Nua, which you inevitably end up taking ownership of. Repairing Caed Nua becomes the major subplot of the game, as you have to rebuild the crumbling defences, hire staff and manage the surrounding area, as well as clearing out the massive, 15-level dungeon below it, the Endless Paths, with huge rewards if you succeed. The Endless Paths are a significant challenge and are best tackled intermittently, with you periodically returning to them after levelling up a few times through quests elsewhere.

After pacifying Caed Nua, at least a bit, the game takes you to the great city of Defiance Bay, where there are an absolute ton of side-quests, factions to align with and enemies to find and defeat, as well as a legal challenge to your ownership of the castle (which can lead to a massive field battle). As with most RPGs, the big challenge is mixing this side material with following the main questline. Once you're ready to move on, the game takes you into additional wilderness areas to the east and eventually an elven city where you pick up the trail of those responsible for the Hollowborn. However, you can be sidetracked by visions of an encroaching threat, which takes you to the northern area of the White March and a series of lengthy quests involving the rediscovery of a magical forge. This is the game's main expansion which is now integrated into the base game, and both provides a lot of extra content and also adds additional weapons, gear and plot revelations relevant to the main quest. All-told, you can finish the game in around 50 hours, but completionists can probably push that past 65 hours by doing unnecessary-but-fun side-quests and exploring different endings and builds. This makes for a game longer than Baldur's Gate but still nowhere near the length of Baldur's Gate II or III.

Pillars of Eternity is a very solid and sometimes exceptional game. The writing is strong, and the game is dealing with philosophical concepts around life, death, souls and faith that is more interesting than many video game plots. The game tries to give you lots of ways to solve quests other than just through violence, and some of your companion characters are fascinating in their worldviews (whilst others are...there). As it's an Obsidian game, there is not a lot of outright goods vs evil choices, with you having to consider arguments where both sides have merits before coming down on one side or the other. Even by Obsidian's standards this can get a little out of control with moral murkiness absolutely everywhere, and sometimes you do wish for a few more quests where one side is obviously in the wrong. Even their New Vegas wasn't afraid to say that no, one side is a bunch of fascist slave-owning rapists, and it's fine to shoot up those guys, even if their opponents are stuck-in-the-past has-beens with questionable expansionist motives. Still, some of these morally grey areas are well-constructed and well-written.

The game's biggest problem is the tonal dissonance from these morality labyrinths where dialogue and diplomacy is key to the absolute shedloads of combat the game throws at you every five seconds. Every bit of wildlife in the game has a psychopathic need to kill you, spectres attack without warning, and the hostile native tribes of xaurips kill-on-sight (apart from one quest that hints that you can mollify them peacefully, and then immediately forgets about it). For a developer who has sometimes made it possible to do total pacification runs through games and who has included so many quests with a non-violent outcome, the focus on mass slaughter as you just walk around can be jarring, not to mention making turn-based mode almost non-viable unless you want to triple or more the length of the game.

There are also some UI weaknesses such as the lack of a customisable hotbar, which was pretty standard at the time, and some questionable gameplay decisions. Rationing the number of camping slots, forcing you to periodically abandon your adventuring to find somewhere to buy rations, is deeply stupid. Since overcoming this issue is fairly straightforward, since you can leave any dungeon or quest mid-flow and come back to resume it immediately even if three weeks pass, there was nothing gained by forcing this limitation on you.

Pillars of Eternity (****) is a fine-but-not-flawless roleplaying game with weaknesses that are not negligible, but they do not detract overall from the beautiful, hand-painted environments, great music, very strong writing, thought-provoking storyline and well-characterised companions. Managing your home base is fun, the Endless Paths is an enjoyable challenge, and the White March expansion is excellent, working as a good story in its own right as well as a homage to Icewind Dale (and arguably White March has a better story than Pillars itself). The worldbuilding for Eora is excellent, taking what appears initially to be a standard sub-Tolkien setup of elves, dwarves and trolls and quickly complicating it through the stuff about souls and faith. Combat can be superb, though there is too much of it, and the game may be a little bit overstuffed. But it's better to have too much to do than too little. The game is a fine spiritual success to the Baldur's Gate series even if it can't quite match that trilogy's overall very high standards.

Pillars of Eternity is available now on PC, Linux, PlayStation, Xbox and Switch.

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Obsidian Entertainment lift the lid on their new fantasy RPG, AVOWED

Obsidian Entertainment have revealed more about their new fantasy RPG, Avowed.

Set in the same world as Pillars of Eternity (2015) and Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire (2018), Avowed is a first-person game set in the Living Lands, an island located far to the north of the Eastern Reach and Deadfire Archipelago. The game will allow players to tailor their protagonist's specialisation, with them able to use swords, pistols, magic or some combinationthereof. The game will also have companion characters, and the game's first trailer introduces one of them, Kai, a Coastal Aumaua and former soldier turned adventurer.

The game will see the player tackling underground dungeons, exploring bustling port towns and fighting undead.

Avowed is currently scheduled for release in 2024 on PC and Xbox, and via the Game Pass service.

PILLARS OF ETERNITY II: DEADFIRE formally announced

Surprising no-one, Obsidian Entertainment have formally announced the development of Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, the sequel to their successful 2015 isometric RPG.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire takes place on the Deadfire Archipelago, an island chain located far to the south of the Eastern Reach, the setting for the first game. The action kicks in when a long-missing god shows up, destroying your castle in the process, and then goes AWOL, leaving you to assemble a new party and follow a trail of clues leading to the Deadfire Archipelago.

Pillars of Eternity II has already been in development for a year, self-funded by Obsidian from profits from the first game. A crowdfunding campaign has been launched on Fig, a new service where crowdfunders can invest for a return of the proceeds.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire seems to be targeting an early 2018 release window.

Obsidian begins pre-announcing PILLARS OF ETERNITY II

Teasing announcements or pre-announcing things before announcing them or just plain announcing the announcement all seem to be the new thing, slightly tiresomely. The latest company getting in on the act is Obsidian Entertainment, who have begun pre-announcing Pillars of Eternity II, the sequel to their highly successful, Kickstarted 2015 computer roleplaying game.

Obsidian confirmed that Pillars of Eternity II was in development shortly after the game and it's two-part expansion, The White March, were released. However, that didn't officially constitute an announcement. They've now teased the game with a quote from the character Eder and some secret symbols in the game's fictional language. Sigh.

Pillars of Eternity II will, I strongly suspect, be an isometric, old-skool RPG like its predecessor. It's unknown if this game will be crowdfunded or not at this time. Their last game, the excellent Tyranny, was funded by a publisher, Paradox, so it'll be interesting to see which way they go this time.

I got about 20 hours into Pillars of Eternity (about halfway through the game) before I got a bit bored of it. I need to get back and finish it off. Unfortunately, the game suffered from being described as a "spiritual successor" to Baldur's Gate but featured inferior combat and a less-interesting story, both a problem when it's very easy to just go and play the updated version of Baldur's Gate instead. Tyranny showed more originality and flair, so hopefully Pillars II will be closer to that level of quality than the first game.

Obsidian Entertainment are working on three games

Obsidian Entertainment have confirmed that they currently have three titles at varying stages of development.

A screenshot from the forthcoming Tyranny.

First up is Tyranny, a roleplaying game that they are developing for Paradox, due for release later this year. This game is set in a world where the bad guys have already won and the dark lord is in control of the land.

Second is Pillars of Eternity II. The original Pillars of Eternity (which I really need to get back to) was a big success and made Obsidian a solid amount of profit. A sequel is a no-brainer. However, this is in a rather early stage of development and Obsidian are still considering going back to Kickstarter for the sequel.

Most intriguingly, they have also got a third game under development in secret. This third game is, specifically, being worked on by Tim Cain, the creator of Fallout and former head honcho at Troika, Troika being the company that worked on Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines using the then-cutting edge 3D Source Engine. The new game is using the now-cutting edge 3D Unreal 4 Engine, and Obsidian's new partners-in-crime Paradox recently gained the Vampire licence when they, er, bought the entire company lock, stock and barrel. Fans are already running around screaming in hope that Obsidian and Paradox may be collaborating on a new Vampire game with some of the same team who made Bloodlines working on it. Paradox also recently bought the specific Bloodlines trademarks and rights, which would allow them to make a direct sequel or remake the first game. There is also the possibility that this new game might be related to Obsidian's recent partnership with Paizo Publishing to make video games based on the Pathfinder RPG system.

Chris Avellone leaves Obsidian Entertainment

Chris Avellone, one of the best-known writers in the CRPG field, has left Obsidian Entertainment, the company he co-founded a dozen years ago, for pastures new.

"What can change the nature of a man?"

"Being reduced to a floating, disembodied skull."

"Oh, right."

Normally, a change of career for a video game staffmember would not be news-worthy, but Avellone is one of the most critically well-regarded writers in the genre. He started out at Interplay, in particular its Black Isle RPG development team, where he won early acclaim for directing the development of Fallout 2. Following that he worked on what is widely regarded as the greatest CRPG ever written, Planescape: Torment. He proceeded to work on Icewind Dale and its sequel before leading development of Project Van Buren, the code-name for the original Fallout 3. During the development of Van Buren Black Isle was abruptly shut down due to financial issues and Interplay effectively ceased to exist as a games development company.

Avellone and several of his Black Isle colleagues regrouped to found Obsidian Entertainment in 2003. BioWare, who had produced the Baldur's Gate series for Interplay and worked alongside Black Isle, gave Obsidian their first break by convincing LucasArts to hire them to make Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, with Avellone taking a key writing role. Although hamstrung by budget and time constraints, Knights of the Old Republic II won critical acclaim for its subversive deconstruction of the Jedi and the simplistic black/white morality of the Star Wars universe. Obsidian subsequently developed Neverwinter Nights II, Alpha Protocol and Fallout: New Vegas, the latter of which re-used some of the old Van Buren ideas. Avellone worked on all of these games, gaining kudos for his key work on the Mask of the Betrayer expansion for NWN2 and Old World Blues for New Vegas.

More recently, Avellone has been allowed to branch out and outsource work to inXile Entertainment (made up of other ex-Interplay and Black Isle staff), contributing quests, dialogue and characters to both Wasteland 2 and the upcoming Torment: Tides of Numenera. His last big project for Obsidian was working on the hugely successful crowdfunded RPG Pillars of Eternity.

Avellone's writing is noted for being rooted in character and thematic development, philosophy and internal realisation, unusual for a medium which is usually more story and action-focused.

According to Twitter, the break with Obsidian was wholly mutual. Avellone's next project is unknown, but speculation is rampant that he may team up with inXile, who recently regained access to the Van Buren trademark. Although it won't be a Fallout game (the rights for which reside with Bethesda, who recently announced Fallout 4), there is speculation that Van Buren will be re-tooled either as a whole new post-apocalyptic franchise, or may form the basis for the inevitable Wasteland 3.

Early thoughts on PILLARS OF ETERNITY

Obsidian Entertainment's latest computer roleplaying game, Pillars of Eternity, was released three days ago and has attracted blanket critical acclaim from the gaming press. Pillars hits the sweet spot of nailing the nostalgic feel for the RPGs of yesteryear whilst also bringing some modern sensibilities on board. It's not flawless - in fact I'm rather surprised that some of its more glaringly obvious interface and presentation flaws have been brushed over by reviewers - but it's a pretty excellent game so far.

Obsidian was formed out of the ruins of Black Isle, Interplay's in-house CRPG development studio which created the Fallout franchise and worked on the Icewind Dale series, as well as creating the single greatest CRPG of all time, Planescape: Torment. They also published the Baldur's Gate series (developed by a nascent BioWare before they were swallowed by the EA machine) and helped with the development of Baldur's Gate II. After the collapse of Black Isle, the reconstituted Obsidian developed games including Neverwinter Nights II, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, Dungeon Siege III, Fallout: New Vegas, Alpha Protocol and South Park: The Stick of Truth.

However, as an independent studios working on-hire for big publishers, Obsidian found themselves at the mercy of publishers changing contracts, altering terms and conditions and drastically cutting development time at limited notice. On no less than three occasions, Obsidian games were released buggy (Fallout: New Vegas), not-quite-complete (Knights of the Old Republic II) and apparently in a barely tested beta build (Alpha Protocol). On all three occasions the publishers were to blame: Bethesda did not run sufficient QA on New Vegas* (something they have a reputation for on their own titles, with Daggerfall and Oblivion in particular released in a buggy state, with even the mighty Skyrim suffering from problems); LucasArts reversed a deadline extension for KotOR II at the last moment*; and the people at Sega who had commissioned Alpha Protocol had left and their replacements just wanted to get rid of the game ASAP to save money*.

This left Obsidian with a reputation for, depending on your POV, either extreme misfortune or simply an inability to release a game that worked properly. On games where they had much greater development time and all of the agreed promises were kept, such as Dungeon Siege III and South Park, the games were delivered in a good state. However, what is remarkable is that Obsidian's laudable commitment to intelligent game systems, player choice and top-quality writing have shone through even on their most buggy games.

Pillars of Eternity was an attempt to both change that reputation, with Obsidian in total control over every aspect of development and QA, and also to bring back some of the classic feel of the old Black Isle days. The game is a homage to the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale series, but isn't quite as old-school fantasy as it appears. Whilst classic elves and humans and wizards are all present and correct, the game throws some curveballs into the mix, such as arctic tundra dwarves and the ability to assess non-player characters by gazing into their souls. It's a big game - at a reported 50-60 hours in length it's bigger than any Black Isle game bar the monstrously huge Baldur's Gate II, and bigger than any game Obsidian has developed before - but also one that focuses on the moments and the details.

I'm now seven hours into the game and am rocking a five-member team of adventuring nutters around the Dyrwood. So far we've fought a crazy giant bear, fought off a horde of mushroom men, laid to rest dozens of zombies and almost been slaughtered by, erm, a pack of boar. My team consists of stalwart dwarven fighter (my main character), a posh elven wizard named Aloth with a nice line in sarcastic invective, a religiously-minded warrior named Eder, an enigmatic priest named Durance who likes to think he is Kreia from Knights of the Old Republic II but is actually The Sphinx from Mystery Men, and Kana Rua, a 'chanter' who sings inspiring ballads whilst unloading shots from his mobile hand cannon (did I mention the game has occasional moments where it goes randomly steampunk on the rest of the setting's epic fantasy behind?). They're a memorable, crazy bunch of characters who it's fun to go delving into dungeons with.

The game mixes up tricky side-quests (complete with trademark Chris Avellone-penned morality labyrinths) with a series of interconnected main storylines revolving around your character's newfound ability to gaze into souls, resulting in him/her becoming known as "The Watcher". There's also the interesting ability to gain control of a ruined castle and rebuild it into your own personal stronghold. You can retire to the castle between quests to re-arm and resupply. Your unused-in-the-current party NPCs can chill out there or strike out on solo, off-screen missions and you can fortify the place so it looks more impressive. Oh, and there's also a (wholly optional) 15-level mega-dungeon directly underneath the castle if you feel like an extra challenge.

The game does the usual Obsidian thing of emphasising roleplaying alongside combat (although, unlike some of their other games, you can't avoid combat altogether) and you can use intelligence and wits to overcome problems as well as homicidal ultraviolence. There's also some nice ability-based effects: give your beserker barbarian some high intelligence and he or she will engage in combat more tactically and do extra area-of-effect damage to groups of enemies.

It's not perfect. Obsidian didn't quite catch all of the bugs and there's a few minor ones knocking around that are fairly irritating. There's also some very curious UI decisions. There's a "Stash" option which means you have no inventory limit and never have to worry about weight limits. This is good, because weight limits are extremely irritating and games enforcing them only serves as pedantic busywork. However, the game then doesn't allow you to rest at will to recover between fights. You have four campfires and can only rest four times before having to resupply. So you go into tough areas, make some progress, rest, make some more progress, rest, etc until you run out of campfires and have to run back to the nearest inn or store to buy some more. Which is pretty much just pedantic busywork. Obsidian giveth and Obsidian taketh away...

Far more annoying is that certain commands, including most buff spells and abilities, are not available until combat starts. So you can't cast a few bless/fortify spells upon spotting trolls in the distance before wading in. You have to trigger the fight and then cast the buffs (if you have time before the enemy close the distance) which is pretty ridiculous. For these reasons, whilst Pillars of Eternity approaches the quality of the old Infinity Engine games it doesn't quite match them in terms of user-friendliness and playability.

Still, it's the best of the recent retro-nostalgia-crowdfunded RPGs (certainly more engaging than Divinity: Original Sin and Wasteland 2, both fine games, at least so far), it's huge, it's fantastically well-written and it's easily the best traditional fantasy RPG to appear since at least Icewind Dale II in 2002 (it knocks the first two Dragon Age games into a cocked hat, that's for sure). It might all go pear-shaped in the next 43 hours, so my full final review will have until then, but for now I can firmly recommend the game.

* Allegedly.

PILLARS OF ETERNITY and GTA5 release dates

Obsidian have confirmed that their computer RPG Pillars of Eternity will be released on 26 March. The fantasy game, a spiritual successor to classic Infinity Engine RPGs like Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment, was partly funded through Kickstarter just over two years ago.

In addition, the PC version of Grand Theft Auto V has been delayed to 24 March. Rockstar, still smarting from the poor conversion of GTA4 back in 2008, has assigned the same team responsible for the excellent PC port of Max Payne 3 and has given them some extra time to polish the release. The PC version will be mostly the same as the recent PS4 and XB1 versions, complete with first-person mode, but will come with an added video playback editor and vastly superior graphics, with resolutions available up to 4K. The modding community is also getting ready to let rip on the game after it arrives.

PILLARS OF ETERNITY delayed, ELITE: DANGEROUS on track

2014 will go down as the year of the big Kickstarter games starting to be released and turning out to be pretty good: The Banner Saga, Shadowrun: Dragonfall, Divinity: Original Sin and Wasteland 2 (amongst others) have all shown that this is a viable route for creating compelling video games on a smaller budget.

There are two more big crowdfunded games due for fairly imminent release: old-school RPG Pillars of Eternity from Obsidian and massive space sim Elite: Dangerous from Frontier Developments.

Pillars of Eternity has, regrettably, been delayed. Obsidian are keen to make sure they have time to integrate all of the suggestions from the beta phase the game is currently in and to work on bug-fixing (something they don't have the best reputation for, sometimes fairly and more often not). Currently 'early 2015' is the target date, although it's unclear if they are thinking a modest delay to January or February or a more substantial one to say April or May.

Elite: Dangerous, on the other hand, is much closer to release. A third stage of the game's beta has just been released, adding yet more star systems and game mechanics (such as mining), and Frontier Developments have announced a launch party for 22 November, at which time the game's release date will be confirmed. They are still saying that the game will launch before the end of 2014, making a December release likely.

Bad news for Pillars of Eternity, although hopefully this does mean that when it comes out I should have enough time to actually play it. I'm currently about halfway through Wasteland 2, which is quite unfeasibly massive (and pretty good) RPG.

Obsidian and Paizo collaborating on a PATHFINDER project

Obsidian Entertainment, one of the best creators of CRPGs in the world, have teamed up with Paizo Publishing to do something using the latter's highly successful Pathfinder pen-and-paper roleplaying game.

The above picture from this year's GenCon is pretty much all we know so far, but the smart money would be Obsidian making a roleplaying game set in the Pathfinder world. Whether this would be a big-budget, 3D RPG funded by a major publisher or a smaller, lower-budget affair similar to Obsidian's Kickstarter game, Pillars of Eternity (due out before the end of this year), remains to be seen, although I suspect the latter is more likely.

Obsidian and Paizo have expressed their mutual admiration in the past, with Obsidian also suggesting that their Pillars of Eternity world could become a Pathfinder pen-and-paper campaign setting. This is a very good fit, and it'll be intriguing to see what form the project takes.

Update: Obsidian and Paizo Publishing have entered into a long-term licensing agreement. First up is a digital version of the Pathfinder collectable card game. This will be followed by a 'proper' CRPG at a later date.

Obsidian Entertainment, the developer of Fallout: New Vegas, South Park: the Stick of Truth and the Kickstarter phenomenon Pillars of Eternity, announced that they have entered into a long-term licensing partnership with Paizo Inc. to produce electronic games based on its popular Pathfinder Roleplaying Game intellectual property.

Obsidian's first licensed product will be a tablet game based on the highly successful Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, a cooperative game for 1 to 4 players. Players each have a unique character composed of a deck of cards and a set of stats. Characters have classes such as fighter, rogue, wizard and cleric, as well as numbers that define attributes such as strength, wisdom and charisma etc. Players will be able to customize their deck to better suit each individual's vision of their character.

"At Obsidian we have a long history of working with the greatest RPG franchises, and we're thrilled to get to play in the Pathfinder universe now," said CEO Feargus Urquhart. "We're huge fans and can't wait to bring what we do in the electronic gaming world to Pathfinder fans everywhere".

In the world of Pathfinder, players take on the role of brave adventurers fighting to survive in a world beset by magic and evil. The Pathfinder RPG is currently translated into multiple languages, with hundreds of thousands of players worldwide. The Pathfinder brand has also been licensed for comic book series, graphic novels, miniatures, plush toys, apparel, and is being developed into a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game.

"Obsidian is a video game developer at the top of its game", said Paizo CEO Lisa Stevens. "Being able to bring that type of experience and passion to Pathfinder can only mean great things, both for our loyal Pathfinder community and for all fans of great CRPG's."

Obsidian will be at Gen Con 2014 showing off an early prototype of the digital Pathfinder Adventure Card Game in the Paizo booth (#203) and in their own booth (#2151) featuring the first consumer hands on for Pillars of Eternity.

Will Obsidian and Red Eagle put a WHEEL OF TIME RPG on Kickstarter?

Yesterday, Rock Paper Shotgun interviewed the guys at Obsidian Entertainment about their upcoming plans. Their latest big-budget game, South Park: The Stick of Truth, is due to launch in April 2014 and their Kickstarted, overhead RPG Pillars of Eternity should follow soon after. Obsidian are already looking at ideas for a new Kickstarter project.

They talk at length about ideas for a much more open-world style of game using the Unity Engine (which they are using for Pillars of Eternity), but they also drop hints to what the next Kickstarter should be. One of the ideas they are actively discussing is a licensed game as part of a pre-existing franchise. This, to me, hints that they might be talking about their long-delayed Wheel of Time RPG.

Backing up, about three years ago Obsidian signed a development deal with Red Eagle, the rights-holding company which controls the rights for Wheel of Time video games. This deal was to make a single-player RPG set in the Wheel of Time universe and world. Obsidian seemed excited by what they could do with the game, and fan response was positive, especially when it was revealed that Obsidian's best-known writer, Chris Avellone (the creative force behind Fallout 2, Planescape: Torment, Neverwinter Nights II: Mask of the Betrayer and Fallout: New Vegas - Old World Blues, several of the greatest RPGs ever made), would be working on the project.

However, nothing has happened with the idea since. Red Eagle was in charge of securing the funding for the game, and failed to do so. Electronic Arts signed a speculative distribution agreement for the game, but chose not to fund and formally publish it. With Triple-A RPG budgets heading towards $100 million (Skyrim, for example, cost $80 million and the Mass Effect trilogy not far off that per game), Red Eagle proved unable to come up with the cash themselves.

Last year, both Red Eagle and Obsidian launched Kickstarters. Red Eagle launched one to make a Wheel of Time casual strategy game for tablets and smartphones, Banner of the Rising Sun. They asked for $450,000 and raised $3,000, a hugely disappointing failure. Obsidian launched one to make an isometric, 'old-skool' RPG with impressive graphics but a much tighter focus on story and character. They asked for $1.1 million and instead raised over $4.1 million, an absolutely massive success.

With both Red Eagle and Obsidian willing to use Kickstarter to achieve their goals, it makes sense that they might consider joining forces to do the same for a Wheel of Time game. The viability of this depends on the deal with EA. If this has expired, there's nothing stopping them doing this. However, if EA retain the distribution rights the project will likely not be viable: Kickstarter is for games that otherwise wouldn't get off the ground, and the involvement of a massive company like EA would be toxic for any such campaign. Provided there are no obstacles, the combination of Obsidian's Kickstarter and game-making experience and Red Eagle's Wheel of Time licence could be highly appealing.

Obsidian will announce what their next project is in the spring, so we have a few months to find out if this is the direction they are going to go in.

PROJECT ETERNITY becomes PILLARS OF ETERNITY

Obsidian's forthcoming, Kickstarted RPG has got a final title. Known as Project Eternity throughout development, the game's final title will be Pillars of Eternity. Obsidian have a detailed preview video featuring actual gameplay below.

Pillars of Eternity is a 'spiritual successor' to the Baldur's Gate series, set in a traditional fantasy mileu but with a few twists based around the concept of souls and soul magic. The game is also set in a colonial society rather than the traditional European imperial fantasyland.

As Obsidian, the same team was responsible for Fallout: New Vegas and Knights of the Old Republic II, two of the most interesting RPGs of the last decade (not to mention Alpha Protocol, Neverwinter Nights II, Dungeon Siege III and the forthcoming South Park: The Stick of Truth). In their former incarnation as Black Isle they also created Planescape: Torment, the Fallout and Icewind Dale series and provided technical assistance on the Baldur's Gate games from BioWare. As giants of the RPG genre, it'll be interesting to see what they pull off with this game, which eschews complex (and ultra-expensive) 3D graphics in favour of deeper gameplay, more immersive combat and stronger writing.

Pillars of Eternity is expected in mid-to-late 2014, and is one of my most eagerly-awaited games of next year.