Obsidian announced that the cRPG Pillars of Eternity will receive the fan-requested turn-based mode tomorrow. It will be a public beta going live on Steam and the Xbox PC app.
As you already know if you played the game, Pillars of Eternity is currently available only as a real-time with pause (RTwP) game, whereas its sequel, Deadfire, eventually introduced an optional turn-based mode. Fans had long requested this option in the first installment, and now Obsidian is delivering.
The announcement came directly from Josh Sawyer, the project director (also known for Fallout: New Vegas and, more recently, Pentiment), who said:
There were a number of very reasonable criticisms of how the turn-based mode was implemented in Deadfire. Nick Carver and Jesse Bureno are trying to address those as well as they can. One of the major changes is that the action economy is a lot more accurate to the real time with pause game. It's not a 1:1 translation of time because we did try that. But it does match the spirit of what dexterity should do, what recovery time should do, everything like that. The number of turns you get to take per round is no longer tied to the round, but to your speed and recovery. That feels like it has much greater parity with the real time of pause mode. A lot of people commented that free actions felt abusable, which is true. That is now restricted and limited. That will feel like a significant change.
Another criticism levied against the turn-based mode in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire was that it simply felt too slow. A fix for that was increased lethality, which Deadfire got through a mod and the first installment is now receiving by default straight from Obsidian. Lastly, it will be possible to switch from combat to combat between real-time with pause and turn-based modes. Of course, being a beta, issues are expected. Obsidian encouraged players to check out the beta and deliver their feedback ahead of the final release of the mode.
Even though Pillars of Eternity is now a pretty old game (it was released ten years ago), the addition of the turn-based mode, now preferred by most users to RTwP, could be enough to make some people go back and check it out, especially after the positive launch of Avowed, which is set in the same world.
A couple of years ago, Josh Sawyer also admitted he'd love to make Pillars of Eternity 3 with a Baldur's Gate 3-type budget. If that opportunity came along, he'd make it turn-based, so more experimentation feels like an interesting step toward that idea.
In other Obsidian news, the seemingly tireless studio has just released another great RPG: The Outer Worlds 2.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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