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"Pillars of Eternity&amp;#039;s beta will be exclusive to backers of the game, developer Obsidian Entertainment has explained. Users who funded the game during its Kickstarter, or pledge through its website and purchase the beta as an add-on through the official website until mid-August, will have access.  Launching on August 18, the beta will focus on a side area of the game outside of the critical path, allowing fans to experiment with the game&amp;#039;s systems, combat and mid-level characters without fear of story spoilers. &amp;quot;We decided very early on we won&amp;#039;t use the critical path for this,&amp;quot; project lead Josh Sawyer told Digital Spy. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s not going to have any of the story companions, because that&amp;#039;s a big part of the story for people, is meeting those companions and experimenting with them.  &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s mostly for people to get a feel of just how the game plays overall, goofing around with the classes, the mechanics, combat, journals - it&amp;#039;s up to them to try and play and mess around with it and see what doesn&amp;#039;t really work, or if we aren&amp;#039;t communicating things clearly.&amp;quot; Sawyer also explained that the beta will act as a separate product, so they won&amp;#039;t have to commit to a certain digital download service at this stage. &amp;quot;I know with some of the other backer betas that have been released, a lot of people are concerned if it&amp;#039;s released on a certain platform then it means they can&amp;#039;t then get the full game through other platforms,&amp;quot; he explained. &amp;quot;But that&amp;#039;s not going to be the case for us. When we released the backer beta, that is being released as its own [product], so it&amp;#039;s not the same as the actual final key. There will be a separate product for that.&amp;quot;  The beta will be available for backers from release next month until close to release, and will also be shown at gamescom. Pillars of Eternity - previously known as Project Eternity - was crowdfunded through Kickstarter in 2012, raising almost $4 million from 77,000 backers. Billed as a spiritual successor to Infinity Engine role-playing games such as Baldur&amp;#039;s Gate, Icewind Dale and Planescape: Torment, it will feature exploration in 2D environments, tactical real-time pause combat and an adaptive story based on choices and interactions.      The game recently announced a distribution deal with Paradox Interactive. It will be released on PC, Mac and Linux by the end of the year, with no plans for a console release. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/gaming/gamescom/news/a584735/pillars-of-eternity-beta-to-focus-on-side-content-exclusive-to-backers/>