Pillars of Eternity Moved into Early 2015

Pillars of Eternity has entered the final stretch of development, but that final stretch is a little bit longer. Obsidian Entertainment announced today it's delaying the throwback CRPG until early next year.

"Feedback through the beta process from those who backed Pillars of Eternity on Kickstarter has been extremely helpful," said the studio. "The development team are listening to the feedback and are incorporating changes to ensure fans absolutely get the best game possible. This short delay will allow Obsidian to produce the quality of game that they can be rightly proud of."

I'm not too upset about the delay. Obsidian's not known for the most polished games in the world, and I'd rather the company get it right. Plus, the great time I had with Divinity: Original Sin suggested Pillars of Eternity would be up my alley, and moving into 2015 means I might actually have a chance to play it.

If you missed it, project director Josh Sawyer joined Brad and Matt to demo the game recently.

As expected then.

@morningstar: Yup. Doubly glad now I didn't jump into early access like my lower brain stem wanted to.

As someone who has messed around with the backer beta, I can say that this delay is not a surprise.

I am fine with this, I am currently in the middle of tons of games. Wasteland 2, shador of mordow, elite: dangerous, dark souls 2 plc, path of exile (the other PoE). Bayonetta 2 is coming later this month, so is dreamfall. There are too many games I can't keep up.

Good, the beta is a mess.... but the game shows a lot of promise.

I'm glad they are doing a proper test for this game.

So we get Divinity and Wasteland 2 this year, Eternity and Torment next year. This seems like an ok spacing out of these games riffing on what CRPGs from the '80s and '90s could be like today on a modest budget.

Seems more important for the sustainability of these (kinda) throwback titles that they all launch to acclaim rather than being rushed out. Really hope we continue to get solid CRPG releases and this generation of them sparks off another one to follow.

I definitely had doubts they would keep on schedule, especially with all the content stretch goals they met with no extension of the original deadline.

Either way, it definitely makes sense to get out of the way of all the other CRPGs that came out this year (never thought I'd get to say that line in 2014).

Good

Sounds about right for an Obsidian game. I kinda expected them to push it to mid next year honestly. Oh well, still excited for it.

GODDAMMIT.

Oh well.

Maybe they'll add co-op?

A man can dream.

As long as they get to finish it. Obsidian's not great with deadlines but I'd rather they get more time than another KotOR II scenario.

Not surprised because from everything I've seen and read of the backer beta it's kind of a mess right now. Wasteland 2 wasn't looking at all good around the same development time and that's turned out pretty all right, so I still have hope.

Good news for me.

I also don't have the time to play it this year, and more polish could only be a good thing.

2015 is going to be a hell of a year. For both movies and games. Which is awesome, because the last couple years have been kinda slow on both fronts. At least in terms of quantity of quality.

I doubt I'll have time to play it till the Summer so doesn't really affect me.

=(

Good on them for taking the time to give this the polish it deservers, but still....=(

Well, doesn't come unexpected and since it's definitely gonna help the quality of the game I don't much care.

This has been a good year for old school CRPGs anyways, since Divinity and Wasteland 2 are both really great.

Yeah, this isn't unexpected, based on what I've seen of the Kickstarter comments and suchlike. Hope they get it right, I'm rather excited for the game.

I still need to get through Wasteland 2 and Divinity so this is good news for me.

God fucking damn it. I've been waiting for this.

Obsidian being known for making great games that are also totally broken.. yeah give them all the time they need.

I actually forgot they were trying to release it this year--I just assumed it would be out next year from the get-go.

I'm perfectly OK with this since I'm still working on Divinity and am now playing Wasteland 2 as well.

Can't say it's unexpected, but I'm still a little disappointed. Oh well, add another amazing looking game coming out in 2015 to the list.

I don't mind that much, but as a backer I would have expected to get some sort of communication through a Kickstarter update before having to read it on every news site....

Good decision. The beta isn't a disaster in the context of real betas (as opposed to Blizzard-style demos posing as betas), but it definitely needs more than two months of work.

Its been such a phenomenal year for turn base and PC it doesnt matter to me, plus its Obsidian. They can take all the time in the world and i know, in the end, it will be worth the wait.

For speculatory fun, im wondering with all of these great games that have come out, they felt POE was under wellming and saying to themselves , "Yo, we have to step up our game". Or maybe they saw somthing that inspired them to say, "Yea we could implement that into our sytem with a few more months". It just seems funny they would drop a delay just a few weeks from when J Saywer was doing the last bit of preview rounds with every site. Like i said, dont matter to me because whatever, and whenever im there.

Patrick, you realizes this delays frees up time that you could be playing Planescape Torment, right?

This is a great excuse for me to grab Wasteland 2. I was worried I'd be burnt-out with the genre by the time PoE was originally scheduled to come out.

Still have hopes for PoE, regardless.

They've garnered quite a bit of a reputation about that haven't they? But keep in mind that even the kotor II scenario was less about obsidian's ability to deal with deadlines, than it was about lucasart cutting the development short. Even the famed bugginess of their products falls to the feet of the QA department. And you can guess who's responsibility that usually is..

@longestsprout: Yeah that's true.

It's definitely in response to feedback from the backer beta, which I'd describe as "pretty rough" for something that was supposed to come out this year. As someone who has access to said Beta, I think that the combat is sort of a mess right now (it's too fast and doesn't give enough feedback) and everything else could use another coat of polish. Nothing unfixable, though some die-hard fans on the backer forums already seem to think the game is doomed because it's not exactly like the Infinity Engine games.

Reminds me that I need to play Baldur's Gate II. I bought it a few months ago, and it's such a legendary game I really need to give it a go.

Yea, that reputation is really unfortunate considering most of it has been quite out of their control. If this were a publisher deal, they would have been forced to throw it out to market as is for the holiday season.

This is in contrast to EA that releases broken games constantly despite having nearly 100% control over production and deadlines.

I can wait.

I'd say Obsidian has had a pretty good track record lately. I seem to remember them publicly saying that they would avoid shipping games like before, and considering South Park and Dungeon Siege 3 it seems like they've succeeded. Those games may have had their issues(I fucking loved Dungeon Siege 3, though, and am super sad about not having been able to play it co-op), but they were far from buggy.

I'm with @PatrickKlepek on hoping this with help Obsidian "get it right." I can wait.

As someone who is not a huge fan of Infinity Engine based games, this game for some unexplicable reason has really gotten my attention, and if it means the game will be more polished and playable, i am more than happy to wait the extra few months to play it early next year.