Pillars of Eternity delayed from spring release

Obsidian Entertainment's crowd-funded role-playing game, Pillars of Eternity, will not launch in the first half of 2014 due to its substantial size, project lead Josh Sawyer recently told Eurogamer.

Previously known as Project Eternity, the game more than tripled its asking amount of $1.1 million by raising $3.9 million in October 2012; at the campaign's start, the developer labeled it with a Spring 2014 release date. According to Sawyer, however, the developer suspected it would need more time after the campaign ended.

"It's understandable that people don't know this, but when you start a Kickstarter, once it goes live, you can't change that [estimated release] date," Sawyer said. "You're not allowed to change to that date."

Because of the crowd-funding campaign's success, the game was significantly expanded. That didn't mean that the team was, too, Sawyer said.

"We got almost four-times as much money and that's a much bigger game, and that doesn't mean that immediately we just dump four-times as many people on it and it also gets done in April," Sawyer said. "There's a lot more stuff to do.

"... Until we get really close to releasing the game we don't want a specific release window, because we're not a publisher, we don't have to! Virtually nothing good comes from us releasing a date before we're very confident in it. It's not going to be in spring; we're going to be working into spring to get alpha done because it's a big game."

Sawyer added that Pillars of Eternity is more than halfway done, "at least to an alpha state." Obsidian plans to release it via Steam Early Access first.