Pillars of Eternity – updates, expansion and a new Kickstarter campaign on the way
We've had a chance to talk about Pillars of Eternity with Feargus Urquhart, CEO of Obsidian Entertainment. Among the discussed topics was the success of this classic cRPG, as well as its future in the form of an upcoming expansion and another Kickstarter.
Even though we all expected that Obsidian Entertainment would put together an at least good cRPG, Pillars of Eternity still turned out to be an incredible success. The game has met with great reception from regular gamers (92% of the two thousand reviewers on Steam gave it a “thumbs up”) and critics alike (the average score from 27 reviews on Metacritic amounts to 91%). We're no different in that respect – our editor Gambrinus gave the game an amazing 9.5/10 in his review. Furthermore, Pillars has a solid place on bestseller lists, and it generates substantial profits – in the last three weeks Pillars of Eternity and Cities: Skylines brought a revenue of $18.5 million. For this reason, we decided to follow the trail of success of Obsidian's latest role-playing production, and gain some new information about its future from the developers themselves.
When answering the question on whether the developer expected such a warm reception of the game, Feargus Urquhart, CEO of Obsidian Entertainment, had the following to say:
”It has been incredible to see the reaction that everyone has had [to Pillars of Eternity]. We have all been playing the game, and really felt it was good – but you always worry that you are feeling that way because it's your game. I'll always remember Chris Parker, co-founder of Obsidian and Black Isle's producer on Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II, sitting around a day or two before the first Baldur's Gate came out and saying that we would be happy if it sold 200K or 300K units. I don't know what Baldur's Gate has sold now, but it's probably something like 10 to 20 times those numbers.”
The future of Pillars of Eternity
Of course, at the moment the creators are focused on improving their production with subsequent patches and updates. However, the developer does not forget about the future of the brand and – what's most important for us – is willing to share its preliminary plans. As it has been already known for a long time (in fact, since the Kickstarter campaign in 2012), an expansion to Pillars of Eternity is already in the making:
”The expansion is next along with continuing to support and update the core Pillars of Eternity game. We have some cool ideas for new features along with talking with all our backers and the community about what they like and don't like about the game. After that? We'll see, but I bet you can guess what we are thinking… As for news on the expansion, I bet we'll be releasing first bit of info within the next month. The main focus right now is hearing from everyone, and making sure that everyone is having the best experience they can with Pillars.”
There is also the issue of another Kickstarter campaign. In April 2014, a no longer existing website CVG reported that Obsidian was planning to lunch such a fundraiser by the end of 2014. As we know, it didn’t happen. We asked for a comment on the matter:
”We are still talking about it and figuring out what would be best. We didn't feel like we should run another campaign before Pillars was done, so that was one of the main reasons for the delay. I can say that we might have some fun news about a Kickstarter in the next few weeks. Something that I think I have hinted at before, but haven’t talked about for a while.”
Most likely this is about a continuation of Pillars of Eternity, which was suggested almost two years ago and almost confirmed a few weeks ago. However, taking into account how willingly Obsidian Entertainment changes its mind about new projects, it might as well refer to a completely different thing. We'll find out soon enough.
