Today, Thursday the 26th of March, 2015 at 9:00am, Obsidian Games releases what is sure to be one of the finest pieces of nostalgia fodder in recent history – Pillars of Eternity.
Pillars of Eternity is a crowd-funded party-based, story-driven pause-and-play RPG intended to harken back to the glory days of … party-based, story-driven, pause-and-play RPGs. I’m sure that the vast majority of you are familiar with Obsidian’s more recent – and problematic offerings – like Fallout: New Vegas and the almost-totally-unfortunate Alpha Protocol, but any gamer who studies their temples astutely in the mirror every morning looking for a touch of grey remembers the real glory days of the developer – brilliant narrative, engaging characters, amazing advances and all-in-all, the closest thing to a fully-realized tabletop gaming experience.
Hopefully the glory days will see a resurgence with today’s release of Pillars of Eternity.
Obsidian is the reverse of the coin created when Black Isle studios closed for the first time – the obverse of that coin being the now-wildly-popular BioWare – and a great deal of brilliant RPG talent spilled into both of the successor studios. Obsidian’s early years as a separate entity were marked with the triumphs of Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2 and their multitude of expansions but those brilliant titles were overshadowed by the rather poorly-received Knights of the Old Republic II, and the later and far more disastrous aforementioned titles Fallout: New Vegas and Alpha Protocol. 2014’s SouthPark: The Stick of Truth, and Wasteland 2 were excellent efforts in their own right with brilliant attention to detail paid to the source material in question, and their warm critical and fan reception alike put Obsidian back on the map.
Now, Obsidian is returning to its roots with Pillars of Eternity – in genre, art design, and narrative, Pillars of Eternity is a love letter to the turn-of-the-century blockbuster Infinity-engine titles like Baldur’s Gate, and Icewind Dale, and we’re very excited to share the first few hours of Obsidian Entertainment’s Pillars of Eternity with you!
Below, you’ll find the link to our Twitch.TV page, where we’ll be streaming Pillars of Eternity at 12:00pm EST/9:00AM PST on March 26th, as well as a link to the Pixelated Geek YouTube channel, where you can catch the recording after the fact.
UPDATE: The Stream has begun!
Pixelated Geek’s Twitch.TV LiveStream of Pillars of Eternity