Pillars of Eternity Team Ready for Work on Sequel

Key developers behind Pillars of Eternity, the isometric-view RPG that generated about $4 million on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter, will begin to discuss ideas for a sequel within a matter of weeks.

Though the Pillars of Eternity release date is just over a month away (March 26), the development team at Obsidian Entertainment has completed the main bulk of work and is already eager to discuss future plans.

"We're going to do some expansions because we said we would as a part of the Kickstarter," said studio chief executive Feargus Urquhart, as quoted by Polygon.

"We've already started working on artwork [for the expansions]. So we've already kind of figured out where we want to go in the world and the artists are doing some tests.”

He continued: "But with Pillars of Eternity 2, that's the next thing. Probably at the end of this month, Josh [Sawyer] and Adam [Brennecke], the key guys on the team are all going to sit down. They've already come up with a list of what they want to do, kind of new game systems and that kind of stuff. We're going to try and get going on that as soon as we can."

Pillars of Eternity thrived on Kickstarter and immediately attained cult status specifically because of its spiritual link to old Infinity Engine games such as Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale.

Now Urquhart is pondering whether Kickstarter is the right path to take for the sequel.

“I think so, I think that's what we'll do," he said.

"It's not 100 percent. The reason is because first we didn't want to do it until [Pillars of Eternity] came out. The second thing is that the Kickstarter stuff is kind of up and down here and there. But the Shadowrun guys look like they're pretty successful, they're like one and a half or two million. I know if we put exploding kittens in it we could make billions."

Obsidian is now applying finishing touches to the Pillars of Eternity PC build, including gameplay tweaks and balancing; issues which are being discovered via developer playthroughs.

"We told the entire team that no one works for a week and instead they just play the game," Urquhart said.

"It gave everyone a chance to be proud of what they had done and to figure out what they wanted to fix and change. This whole process has been great.”