Developer Obsidian has a bit of a reputation for releasing good but sometimes buggy games. It’s hoping to avoid that scenario for its next big release by delaying it into 2015.
Publisher Paradox Interactive, which is handling distribution for Obsidian’s Pillars of Eternity role-playing game, confirmed today that the crowdfunded project will miss its “late 2014” launch date. Instead, Pillars of Eternity is now expected to come out early next year. The developer has worked continously on Pillars of Eternity since the game’s Kickstarter raised nearly $4 million in October 2012. More than 73,000 people contributed to that campaign, and ensuring they get a satisfactory product is likely important to Obsidian, who may turn to crowdfunding again in the future and may want to point to a successful Pillars of Eternity as evidence that it can come through again.
“Since the very beginning of this project, we promised our fans and ourselves that we would release this game only when we knew it would be absolutely ready for the best experience possible,” Obsidian chief executive Feargus Urguhart said in a statement. “We’re very close to that point, but not quite there yet. The feedback we have received through our playtest process has been invaluable to us. We are coming into the home stretch but are pushing the release out just a bit to make sure we honor that promise we made originally. Thanks for your patience and support, it will be worth the wait.”
Pillars of Eternity is playable right now as a beta test for certain Kickstarter backers. Paradox acknowledged that feedback from those players helped it come to the decision to delay the release. As is common for a beta, players are finding bugs and other problems, and Obsidian will use this extra time to get the game optimized for public consumption.
We’re in touch with the development team to nail down some details about exactly what it is planning on improving. We’ll update this story once we get comment back from Obsidian.
Pillars of Eternity is just one of a handful of PC RPGs that are taking players back to a classic-style of isometric turn-based action thanks to crowdfunding. Earlier this year, developer Larian Studios released fantasy RPG Divinity: Original Sin after raising nearly $1 million through crowdfunding in April 2013. Earlier this month, developer InXile released its post-apocalyptic PC RPG Wasteland 2 after raising $2.9 million on Kickstarter in April 2012.
Divinity and Wasteland 2 (read our review) were both well-received by critics, with Original Sin managing an 87 average on review-aggregation site Metacritic and Wasteland 2 landing an 81. Obsidian is hoping to complete the trifecta.
