Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Interview
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Buck: Good to hear. One of the things I was wondering about, too, is since the release of Pillars of Eternity and the White March expansions, we haven't seen a compilation or bundle released. Do you plan on having a bundle of the core game plus expansions, possibly even with something a little extra? Maybe even an enhanced edition of some sort?
Feargus: Yes, so we've been talking to Paradox about that a lot and we're going to have something up soon. I don't know if it's in 30 days or 60 days or something like that. But we're going to have something pretty soon.
A lot of it is interesting because we've been talking a lot like how to come up with what is the price point? And I don't know if anybody really cares about this, but Steam is a really interesting ecology – don't know if that's the right word – of where you put your prices and how do you do this and how do you take your pricing to a point based upon discounts you're going to do. So where do you put your price based upon - are you going to put out a sale at the start or not put out a sale at the start? And when it wasn't a bundle, what was your max sales on each part of the bundle? Because you don't want to make your first sale on the bundle if it's very close to when you did the last sale on the parts is much less because people will be pissed off that they just bought something and now it's cheaper.
So it's interesting. It seemed to us like it's a simple proposition to figure this all out, and then as we started to think about it more and more, it was complicated.
Buck: I think you could remove some of that complication, though, if you add an additional incentive, right? It doesn't have to be much, maybe add a few extra quests, an area or two, or have some sort of unique item set or other bonus for purchasing the bundle and make that a $5 DLC for everybody else.
Feargus: Yeah. And the other thing is, luckily we have three versions; we have the Hero and the Champion and the Royal Edition and I forgot if we're taking the Champion or the Royal edition. But we take the Champion or the Royal edition, that becomes the core version and then the White March is a part of that. So people feel there's a lot more stuff in there for them when they get it.
Buck: So to confirm, this is coming and you're actively working on it?
Feargus: Yes, absolutely.
Buck: That's great news. Another thing I was hoping we could talk about - and this is going to deviate from Pillars of Eternity - but let's change course for a bit to reflect upon the super-secret project that Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky are working on.
Feargus: They're working on a super-secret project, absolutely.
Buck: Leo has tossed out a few hints here and there, suggesting that it'll be a single-player RPG and that it's his "dream game". I'm pretty sure we know that it's not Bloodlines 2 and it's not Arcanum 2 at this point, but are there any other nuggets of information you can give us?
Feargus: Not really. I think the thing is, obviously, for us, we want to make the games that we love to make and those are the games that people want to have from us. So I think that's a good hint as to kind of what you would expect. I can say that it's not Fallout, that is not what it is. So Leonard and Tim are not working on the next Fallout game or anything like that. But again, this is our opportunity to go off and do our digging, which I think is awesome. And we can’t announce who our partner is and all that. I think people are going to be really excited about it.
Buck: Given the fact that there's a partner involved, can you tell us whether it's a new IP or an existing IP?
Feargus: [LAUGHTER] It's not Fallout.
Buck: How about setting or theme?
Feargus: I'm going to be really shocking. It's an RPG.
Buck: [LAUGHTER] I guess that's something. As far as I know, that's about the only thing that has been confirmed up to this point.
Feargus: We've said nothing about it yet. Just because it's the early days and we need to closely manage these things through completion and managing – you know when it's bigger, we start to think of managing staff and how does the whole PR marketing stuff work and things like that. And so yes, so I know it's just going to irritate people like probably for like a year that we're just going to be being coy. And it's not to be coy, it's just because it's not time to – even a lot of the ideas that we're coming about right now is we also don't want to do this thing where we release a whole lot of stuff that gets people excited. But for us it's still stuff that's not – it's not the stuff we know is going to be final. Because I've seen a lot games do that; they'll release stuff that's really early and get people excited and then when the real game is promoted it's like, "Wait a minute, what happened to the big robot with the thingies and the samurai sword and the dwarf?"
See what I did there?
Buck: [LAUGHTER] Yes, I see that... you alluded to the fact that it will be a year before we'll know anything. Do you have an announcement timeframe in mind?
Feargus: We don't. I would be surprised if we did announce anything in 2017. My guess is – it's literally just a guess right now – there won't be a public announcement as to what it is until 2018.
