With publisher Paradox Entertainment having recently taken on marketing and distribution duties for Pillars of Eternity, AusGamers was fortunate enough to score some quality Q&A time with Obsidian Entertainment's Josh Sawyer to discuss the studio's much anticipated crowdfunded return to the classic party-based isometric style RPG.

A veteran of the celebrated Black Isle studios and acclaimed Icewind Dale games, Sawyer offers plenty of insight into Project Eternity's development process and confirms the studio's intention to run some manner of public beta testing ahead of the game's now planned late 2014 launch.

AusGamers: I believe the latest hints at a release target for Pillars of Eternity were pointing to late this year. Is the current plan to launch then as a feature-complete game or will there be public alphas for the backers or any other type of early access things preceding that?

Josh: Yeah I think we’ll have beta access at some point before release, and that’s good, because it will get a lot of eyes on the game and people can give feedback. People do have a tendency to be extremely negative during betas, but that’s ok [laughs]. I’d much rather get their feedback at that point, so we can just fix it, or see how they respond, rather than come out with the game and suddenly have them all going “Oh, I hate this UI; I can’t do any of this stuff”; Oh whoops, I wish we’d have seen that earlier. So we are planning on having a beta beforehand.

Read the full Pillars of Eternity interview for the full Q&A session.