Pillars of Eternity Backer’s Beta Demoed at gamescom

Obsidian Entertainment and Paradox Interactive have published a new video of Pillars of Eternity that’s about a half-hour long, showcasing some content within the game’s so-called “Backer’s Beta,” which was on display at the Paradox gamescom show last week. 

The Infinity Engine-styled role-playing game was fully funded through Kickstarter, but Paradox will be handling the game’s distribution. 

One of the game’s lead developers Josh Sawyer narrates the video, which runs at 26 minutes in length. In it, viewers can learn about the various character options, from regular humans to the exotic Godlike race, and get an overview of the skills available to the game’s Paladin class. Sawyer says that the content within the Backer’s Beta is based around 3 to 5 hours of optional quests in the central portion of the game. There’s few spoilers to be had, unless you consider optional quests spoilery in any way.

You get to watch one of the game’s developers, Adam Brennecke, fight his way through a swarm of giant stone beetles until he makes his way to a sheep-stealing Ogre, with whom he chooses to fight. In typical Obsidian fashion, it will be possible to take a diplomatic course of action when dealing with the Ogre instead of slaying him.

The game comes with a multitude of modes, including Easy mode, which isn’t really that ‘easy’; Expert mode, which removes user interface prompts and serves players who are going through the game more than once; and Iron Man mode, which has a single rolling save that deletes itself when your party dies. 

The Pillars of Eternity Backer’s Beta begins today, on August 18.