Pillars of Eternity Interviews, Big Head Mode Footage

Since we last checked, a couple of new interviews popped up for Pillars of Eternity, the first being an RPG Codex Q&A that offers a mix of aesthethic and mechanically focused questions and answers. Here’s a snippet on area and encounter design:

There are many Area Designers for Pillars of Eternity (more than many of the IE games going by the credits), many of which came across from the South Park team in January. How did you go about divvying up the responsibilities and area assignments? Did this new onset of designers get to design any locations themselves or were they put to work fleshing out already existing areas? Has having more designers for less time been more productive than having less designers for a longer period?

I would almost always prefer a smaller number of designers working for longer, but I think things worked out pretty well for us. Many of the new designers who came over worked on side content, often in dungeons or wilderness areas. More complex content generally stayed with the long-term area designers. Bobby has done a good job wrangling everyone’s content and reviewing it to make sure it’s fun.’‹

Regarding encounter design, is there anything in Pillars of Eternity that rivals or surpasses the complexity of some of the encounters in Icewind Dale 2 (Orc Shamans beating War Drums to summon reinforcements, Goblins falling off Worgs)? Will there be pre-stealthed enemies? Are there any new scripting features that were built for PE that made things possible you couldn’t do in the IE games?

Honestly, I think it will take us a while to exceed the complexity of IWD2 fights. IWD2 and BG2 were built with a lot of tried-and-true scripting functions that programmers and designers developed over previous titles and expansions. Like any other feature, AI in PoE is being built from the ground up, so we have to add layers of complexity over time.’‹

Dealspwn has an audio interview in YouTube form instead. It mostly focuses on issues people that have been following the project after its Kickstarter campaign finished are already familiar with, but also ends with some offscreen footage of the game’s Big Head mode. Project director J.E. Sawyer seems pretty proud: