Pillars of Eternity: The White March Part I Gameplay Footage and Info

The White March Part 1, the first expansion for Pillars of Eternity, has been showcased by Josh Sawyer at Twitch’s E3 stage, with some gameplay footage. Josh states that the expansion is directly inspired by Icewind Dale, the first game he worked on, something that I imagine many of us already suspected due to the trailer’s ambiance, and that it won’t be a simple dungeon crawling experience. Indeed, the footage we get to see actually mostly shows adventuring in a village that sounds like the starting point of the expansion and some wilderness areas.

The expansion will include a new party AI system, a number of additional tweaks to the UI like a new hit-chance indicator, new “multi-class” talents that will grant a character a weaker version of another class’ ability, a dozen new enemy types that comprise frost variants of old monsters and totally new creatures. One of these new creatures was showcased by Obsidian, a new aquatic four-armed aquatic critter that can use ranged attacks (with a blowdart), melee and even magic.

The White March Part 1 targets the game’s mid-levels in terms of difficulty, but considering many players have already finished the game and will go in hoping to reach the new level 14 level cap, Obsidian has added opt-in level scaling. Before starting the expansion, the game will check if the party is overleveled for the area and ask the player whether they want the expansion to scale to their level so that it still offers a challenge.

The expansion is slated to come out “soon”. Obsidian has apparently been working on adding new areas to make the expansion feel properly sized so Sawyer didn’t feel comfortable giving a precise release window. He did however note that backers who pledged for the expansion will get The White March Part 1 and the second part, and that the decision to split the expansion came from Obsidian’s desire to release something sooner, as a normal expansion takes about six months of development time.

The latest update for the Pillars of Eternity: Lords of the Eastern Reach card game Kickstarter also includes some details on the expansion. Apparently, two of the three new companions will be the Devil of Caroc, a rogue costruct, and Zahua, a monk, presumably human:

The Devil of Caroc is a rogue construct. While she is strong in combat, with that Armor 1, high Defense and an Attack die, she excels at sneaking around and removing your opponent’s heroes and troops.

…

Zahua is a monk who has taking many wounds, but that doesn’t kill him, makes him stronger. He breaks one otherwise unbreakable rule from our game he can be assigned more than one soul gem. The more soul gems he gets, the more powerful he becomes.

Thanks, RPG Codex.