Pillars of Eternity II Creator Josh Sawyer Explained Why Early Access in the Style of Baldur's Gate 3 Wouldn't Have Helped the Game
Some things only become obvious as you progress through the game.
Fallout: New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity creator Josh Sawyer recently released a blog in which he discussed the project's problems.
In his opinion, the launch of Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire would not have been more successful even if Obsidian had used the "early access" format, as Larian did with Baldur's Gate 3.
In the case of the two Pillars of Eternity games, backers who supported the project on crowdfunding platforms were offered to try beta versions of the games.
Josh Sawyer explained that balance was not the main focus of these beta versions, and the developers concentrated on the "overall gaming experience." By studying the reaction to the beta, Obsidian wanted to understand how players perceived quests and other content:
My approach to beta tests for backers was to use side content. Things that the player would still see somewhere in the middle of the game, but which are not a core part of the project. If the quality of this content slightly decreased due to numerous iterations, it would not greatly affect the overall experience.
Despite the benefits of this "beta test," Sawyer took responsibility for a number of missteps — Obsidian did not have enough time to refine a number of points, as priorities were set incorrectly:
There were many things that needed to be refined, but never received due attention. That's my fault. We released a patch about two weeks after release, and had to catch up on a lot. I don't think it was a disaster, but looking back: I would have preferred to prioritize differently. That's on my conscience. And it wasn't so much what the beta gave to the backers, but how I managed the team's time in the final stages of development.
Sawyer spoke about the example of Baldur's Gate 3's "early access." In his opinion, even if they had used such a format for Pillars of Eternity II, they would have faced the same problems — some things only become obvious as you progress:
The further the player progresses through the game, the greater the imbalance, simply because more numerical parameters start entering the system. Of course, you can say that this is noticeable even in the early stages, but I still think that we would have faced the same problems even if I had prioritized exactly the same way. I don't think that shifting the focus or a different order of work would have drastically changed the result. And also — and this is not a reproach to Baldur's Gate 3, but simply a statement of fact: at release, many players negatively commented on the balance of the third act of BG3. Probably because a huge number of tests were done at the beginning and middle of the game. And, as often happens in game development, something was simply missed, and then it was already fixed.
