Can you believe it’s been 10 years since the release of Obsidian Entertainment’s first Pillars of Eternity? And still, a decade later we’re receiving a brand new update for the classic CRPG, a beta to test out a newly implemented turn based mode.

If there’s any one man to obsess over the mechanical nuance of the games they make it would be Josh Sawyer; a legend in the CRPG spaces, Josh is known for being quite the stickler when it comes to perfecting his systems and no doubt he’s directed his full attention to this turn based mode for Pillars of Eternity. Taking some cues from Pillars of Eternity: Deadfire, Josh and the team at Obsidian have worked to implement turn based mode into Pillars 1 as seamlessly as possible, taking a lot of the criticism Pillars of Eternity: Deadfire received for its turn based mode to heart: speeding up the slow combat with increased damage, applying dexterity and strength and other ability scores practically and flavorfully to combat, and implementing a way to toggle the turn based mode on and off.

Pillars of Eternity is arguably responsible for the resurgence of CRPGs we’ve been seeing in the past few years. Owlcat’s Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous can trace some amount of DNA to Pillars, and even Larian’s Baldur’s Gate 3 can owe a bit of its existence to the success of Obsidian’s Pillars of Eternity kickstarter all those years ago.

It’s great that such a pillar (no pun intended) of the modern CRPG era is getting a bit of love in the form of this update. If you’re interested in testing the game’s new turn based beta out, Pillars of Eternity is available on Steam and GOG (and is currently 75% off on GOG), and the beta should be available today on November 5^th.