Game News Pillars of Eternity II Fig Update #11: Orchestra, Level Cap & Subclasses Stretch Goal, Graphics

[Infinitron]

Tags: Justin Bell; Kazunori Aruga; Obsidian Entertainment; Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire

With the funding level already closing in on the next one in line, Obsidian have announced the $2.8M stretch goal for Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. This time it's a big one. When the campaign reaches that amount, they'll be able to hire an orchestra to compose the game's entire soundtrack (apparently the first game only had one for some of its tracks), and they'll also increase the level cap to 20 and add additional subclasses (for a total of 3 per class, presumably?). The new Fig update doesn't really have any details on the latter two elements of the stretch goal, but as promised in the last update, it does include a primer on Deadfire's graphical features by lead artist Kaz Aruga. That makes for an update that's all about sound and visuals, with a video for each. I'll post them here, along with the beginning of Kaz's primer:

Hey backers! This is Kaz Aruga, lead artist on the Deadfire team and I'd like to share with you some of the new visual features we've been developing for PoE II: Deadfire! Our artists and programmers have been hard artwork upgrading our legacy pipeline to make content creation more efficient, and researching tech to unlock new possibilities for our artists. To us this means eliminating tedious and error prone work through automation, and empowering artists with shiny new toys. We've made great strides across all art departments over the past year, and I'm very excited to share with you some new features that will make your next visit to Eora a much richer and dynamic experience.

I'll kick things off with a quick list of graphical features we have working in the current build:

• Dynamic weather system - Things like trees, ocean, VFX particles and capes all dynamically react to wind. Clouds will cast shadows on the level as they roll by. A feature well worth its own update!
• Parallaxing backgrounds - This is one of the few ways we can convey depth in our areas. Not only can we display backgrounds that scroll at different rates, we can now place VFX and blur them together with the backgrounds. This allows us to add movement and bring these distant backgrounds to life.
• Shader parity* between 3D assets and backgrounds - The rendered backgrounds look amazing now when characters walk by with torches and other in-game light sources. Tight highlights bloom on metals and dance over patches of wet med. *It's not 100%, but it's pretty darn close!
• Antialiasing & Ambient Occlusion - These are more subtle but really help the characters blend into their environments.
• Various Fancy Shaders - Our character artists now have access to shaders that offer better translucent, refractive, and transparent materials. Expect better looking water, ice, and adra materials on our in-game 3D assets.

Read the rest of the update to learn about the process for lighting Deadfire's characters and environments. Also, bloom effects. Perhaps there'll be more details about the new subclasses in a future update.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

 

[Excidium II]

0:40 in the grafics vid

 

[yes plz]

You forgot the announced system requirements:
i7 7700k
x2 1090 GTXs in SLI
25GB of memory

 

[Infinitron]

They've claimed that system requirements will be identical to PoE1.

 

[J_C]

Music.

 

[ArchAngel]

Does not help when combat and encounters will still be by far below BG quality.

 

[LESS T_T]

0:40 in the grafics vid

So, that was all the flat-earthers were talking about!

 

[Sentinel]

They've claimed that system requirements will be identical to PoE1.

"We're adding improved lighting, real-time cloth physics simulation, dynamic shadows, improved AA, introducing Ambient Occlusion, parallax, dynamic weather, among other things. The best thing is, this will have no impact whatsoever on system requirements and performance!" - said no one ever.

 

[Ruzen]

Give the man his orchestra, he much-deserved increased funds. Maybe the only best thing without conflict in the first game.

 

[Invictus]

They've claimed that system requirements will be identical to PoE1.

Hell yeah! I love the idea of playing this on my laptop. Having less demanding games such as Pillars and Dark Souls on my laptop has been such a godsend; I travel a lot and taking these on thr road has extended my playing time a lot... plus since the last save is somehow hidden I wont need to mess around to find it
Isnt this shaping up nicely? I bet the reach 4 mil for the end of the campaign

 

[Bonerbill]

"We're adding improved lighting, real-time cloth physics simulation, dynamic shadows, improved AA, introducing Ambient Occlusion, parallax, dynamic weather, among other things. The best thing is, this will have no impact whatsoever on system requirements and performance!" - said no one ever.

If they're using unity 5 instead of 4( which has really bad optimization), then it probably won't.

EDIT: I'm retarded? More like you don't understand something as simple as engine optimization. Freaking faggot.

 

[One-and-a-half-Ivan]

"We're adding improved lighting, real-time cloth physics simulation, dynamic shadows, improved AA, introducing Ambient Occlusion, parallax, dynamic weather, among other things. The best thing is, this will have no impact whatsoever on system requirements and performance!" - said no one ever.

If they're using unity 5 instead of 4( which has really bad optimization), then it probably won't.

They are.

 

[Sannom]

and add additional subclasses (for a total of 3 per class, presumably?)

They've already explained in other places that Paladin Orders and Priest Deities count as their subclasses, so it will more likely be 4 for Paladins and Priests, 3 for the rest. Unless they decide to not have every class be equal in that regard, does the language in any of the updates suggest it?

 

[ArchAngel]

I notice these boards are visited by too many PoEtards. Why don't you retards go visit some places where your master NoFun will notice you?

 

[Sentinel]

"We're adding improved lighting, real-time cloth physics simulation, dynamic shadows, improved AA, introducing Ambient Occlusion, parallax, dynamic weather, among other things. The best thing is, this will have no impact whatsoever on system requirements and performance!" - said no one ever.

If they're using unity 5 instead of 4( which has really bad optimization), then it probably won't.

EDIT: I'm retarded? More like you don't understand something as simple as engine optimization. Freaking faggot.

Just because they upgrade the engine from Unity 4 to 5 doesn't mean it magically solves all optimization problems you retarded piece of shit.
Engine optimization is a lot of things, but simple isn't one of the adjectives you can attribute to it.

 

[One-and-a-half-Ivan]

I notice these boards are visited by too many PoEtards. Why don't you retards go visit some places where your master NoFun will notice you?

Son, I am disappoint.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

I'm less interested in the orchestra and more in the sub classes. Further delving into these is interesting. My understanding would be that these are further efforts at specialization. For example a barbarian can become a berserker as an option, further increasing stuff like rage times and damage done during rage etc. But losing access to other abilities.

I'd like a listing of these.

 

[Abu Antar]

I wish that instead of orchestra, we didn't geat an expanded soundtrack. I want as many tunes as possible.

 

[Joni Odin von Hassenstein]

I'm less interested in the orchestra and more in the sub classes. Further delving into these is interesting. My understanding would be that these are further efforts at specialization. For example a barbarian can become a berserker as an option, further increasing stuff like rage times and damage done during rage etc. But losing access to other abilities.

I'd like a listing of these.

That'd be great, but maybe it just means different bonusses etc.!?

 

[ArchAngel]

I notice these boards are visited by too many PoEtards. Why don't you retards go visit some places where your master NoFun will notice you?

Son, I am disappoint.

If you think you can troll PoEtards better go ahead.

 

[Wizfall]

PoE 1 graphics were truly fantastic especially for a kickstarter game and the only thing that exceeded my expectation.
Make me believe Unity is an awesome engine for isometric game if not for the painful loading time.
Still overall an excellent deal considering the cheap price of the engine and even more so when you think that Obsidian dropped his own engine because too expensive (which is quite face palming).

 

[Tigranes]

PoE 1 graphics were truly fantastic especially for a kickstarter game and the only thing that exceeded my expectation.
Make me believe Unity is an awesome engine for isometric game if not for the painful loading time.
Still overall an excellent deal considering the cheap price of the engine and even more so when you think that Obsidian dropped his own engine because too expensive (which is quite face palming).

You realise Onyx, a game made while Obs games all had multi-million budgets, 'cost too much' for a game like POE, esp. because of the cost of middleware for a 4m budget project? Did you think it cost more than CryEngine or something?

 

[Wizfall]

PoE 1 graphics were truly fantastic especially for a kickstarter game and the only thing that exceeded my expectation.
Make me believe Unity is an awesome engine for isometric game if not for the painful loading time.
Still overall an excellent deal considering the cheap price of the engine and even more so when you think that Obsidian dropped his own engine because too expensive (which is quite face palming).

You realise Onyx, a game made while Obs games all had multi-million budgets, 'cost too much' for a game like POE, esp. because of the cost of middleware for a 4m budget project? Did you think it cost more than CryEngine or something?

I do realize that for isometric game like i said, Onyx engine (and probably CryEngine too) is worthless compared to Unity to the point it's ridiculous.
I do believe PoE has AAA quality graphics and the engine show it could implement every cRPG feature wanted so why paying much much more for a supposed "better" engine.
I think even South Park, an AAA game could have been developed with Unity.

 

[Tigranes]

South Park could have been developed with an arcade machine. The point was Onyx was developed for a plan where Obsidian could create AAA 3D RPGs with an in-house engine. POE is an entirely different beast with a different budget, different, you know, dimensions.

If you're trying to say they should have just turned to isometric a long time ago, sure, I agree (even if the market may not), you might as well say so.