Players of Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire will have a whole new way to play the game this week when a new turn-based mode gets added to the game.
The news was broke by Shacknews earlier today, who also posted a video with game director Josh Sawyer who explained how the new turn-based mode will change the game dramatically. Speaking in the video, Josh said:
“The turn-based mode slows everything down. It’s a very, very tactical mode of play. It highlights some abilities and debuffs and things like that, that aren’t necessarily as highlighted in the real-time with pause combat system. And it’s really a lot of fun.
When you enable it, it means that all of the combat is in turn-based mode. Each character in a combat takes a turn in order of initiative—that means that one of your characters will go, maybe another one of your characters will go, and enemy will go, and so on. The important thing is that each character is acting independently of all the other characters, so you can take your time, you can plan out how you move, and how you use abilities with as much time as you want. It really makes the tactical combat much more deliberate.”
This new turn-based mode will obviously provide a much slower, more tactical approach to combat as an alternative to the games natural real-time combat. There has been some debate between players for quite a while about whether the game should feature real-time combat or turn-based combat, so it’s great that players will finally get the chance to play in whichever style they please.
The new turn-based mode will be introduced as part of the 4.1 patch which will release on January 24th. It’s important to note that this turn-based mode will be releasing in beta phase so that Obsidian can check out how it fares and then tweak it accordingly.
Players who want to try out the new turn-based mode will have to start a new game and select the option right from the start; you will not be able to switch back and forth between combat styles as you play. It’s very much a “one or the other” affair.
Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire is still slated to get a console release at some point this year, so it’s likely that this turn-based option will be included in those versions right from the off.
The new turn-based mode will be introduced with update 4.1 on Thursday 24th January.
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