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You might think of Obsidian Entertainment as a mistreated genius, a talented group of game-makers responsible for unappreciated gems like Alpha Protocol and Neverwinter Nights 2. Or maybe you don't have much faith in their development skills after the buggy Fallout: New Vegas and the unfinished Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II. Either way, their story is undeniably fascinating.

The story of Obsidian—a story of heartbreaking failures and record-shattering successes—begins with a company called Interplay, a game developer and publisher best known for games like Wasteland and Descent. Interplay's execs were looking to expand their role-playing game division, and in 1996, they found a young game developer named Feargus Urquhart (pronounced "FUR-gus URK-heart") to take the steering wheel.

"I was put in charge of it when I was 26," Urquhart told me as we sat in his office in sunny Irvine, California earlier this month. Urquhart, Obsidian's CEO and one of five co-founders, spent an afternoon chatting with me about his company's culture and history—which began with that small division at Interplay.

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Fargo elaborated on his point, using the recent example of Obsidian and Bethesda:

“[Developers] are afraid to talk, because they’ll never get another contract if they do. That’s why. You cannot believe… it’s awful. It’s really bad. You should try to dig in and get some stories out there. Look at the most recent one with those poor guys at Obsidian. They did Fallout: New Vegas, the ship date got moved up and, who does the QA [quality assurance] on a project? The publisher is always in charge of QA. When a project goes out buggy, it’s not the developer. The developer never says, ‘I refuse to fix the bug,’ or, ‘I don’t know how.’ They never do that. It’s the publisher that does the QA, so if a product goes out buggy, it’s not the developer’s fault. So, [Fallout: New Vegas] goes out buggy and they didn’t do the QA, their ship date got moved up and they missed their Metacritic rating by one point. Did they get a bonus? No. Do you think that’s fair?”

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Pillars of Eternity looks gorgeous, and what little writing I could read as Brennecke flew through dialogue options seemed on par with typical Obsidian quality. I have no doubt this game will be great, provided Obsidian can avoid its typical pitfalls—bugs, terminated questlines, et cetera .

That's a big "if," but Pillars of Eternity is definitely looking like the CRPG I've waited to play for the last decade.

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RPS:

It’s a triumph. A wonderful, enormous and spellbinding RPG, gloriously created in the image of BioWare’s Infinity classics, but distinctly its own. A classic in every sense.

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PC Gamer:
This is a big, fat, deep adventure that lets you carve your own unique path through a fantasy world that’s been brilliantly brought to life with rich, evocative writing. It’s a game steeped in a bygone era of computer RPG design, but somehow it doesn’t feel archaic. Obsidian have always been bound to other peoples’ worlds—Fallout, Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars, South Park—but in creating their own from scratch, they’ve made not only their best game to date, but one of the best RPGs on PC.

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Escapist:

Bottom Line: It's the best new, isometric RPG to come out in years.

Recommendation: While Pillars of Eternity is certainly banking on a nostalgic fan base, it's still an excellent RPG in its own right. It's a game rich with player agency, giving you tons of control to craft your story or explore different solutions to the presented problems. You know, actual roleplaying not simply a game with a leveling and stat system stapled on.

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PCGamesN

Obsidian had a daunting task before them: to make a spiritual successor to a series of games that are inextricably tangled up in nostalgia, over a decade after the height of those games’ popularity. This is not the Baldur’s Gate of 2015, it’s Baldur’s Gate, Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale, the best parts of the lot of them wrapped up in something new and brilliant. And before you venture forth, don’t forget to gather your party.

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