Game News Project Eternity Kickstarter Update #2: Stretch Goals Revealed

[kaizoku]

For me House where you can hang out and chillax is like the Inn from NWN 2 Sunken Flagon also the backround music was just right chillaxing with Khelgar and shit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9yXJ6aj7AE

not bad, but I would prefer something like this instead:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

 

[almondblight]

Roguey, I don't consider the romances of PST shitty. They were barely there, even less than in BG2. So much that it was easy to miss them. And if the game will have romances, I will be OK if they are on the level of PST.

Miss them? You have to take Annah with you, and if you do she'll start making hints that she likes you. If you take Fall from Grace with you (and you should, because despite her stupid name she's the only healer), Annah refuses to continue with you past a certain point unless you tell her that she means much more to you than that other girl (which is why I dumped her beneath Curst). When you talk to Fall from Grace, the option to tell her you love her and the option to tell her you love Annah are there from the beginning, for no reason other than the fact that those are the only two females in your party. Oh, and all of this love stuff happens on top of the fact that you're this morbid walking corpse.

PST romances were horrible. At least in BG2, you could play a dwarf and avoid them completely. For all the hate that gay characters get here, it would have definitely been an improvement for Torment and BG2 to let your main character be gay to avoid the fanfic level romances.

 

[Semper]

They could have been honest and knowing that their player base is mostly hardcore (though they mostly want Bio fans), people would have still donated.

you got any sources here or are you just throwing around assumptions of your own? there are roughly 34k backers right now and imo more than 90% of them are just players who enjoyed the infinity engine games and/or crpg as a genre, giving a shit about what's hardcore.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Pretty much.
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...rum-codex-vigilance.76078/page-6#post-2269069

 

[l3loodAngel]

If you say so.

No, really. Go find a monocle and put it on. You sound exactly like the type of idiot we targeted in the WL2 vigilance thread. Chillax.

Ok I am calm now. I would have still pledged, but it would have been nice to know.

But it really does give an insight at Obisidian planning. They showed the people, but they didn't actually mention their involvement. Helping on a project might mean 1 h. weekly consultation or active participation. They didn't properly explain (at least to me) that it's not the MCA kickstarter and etc.

snip. nobody knows how many workhours can he/she contribute to the game 5-6 months from here. MCA, Sawyer and Tim are all working on the project, that is certain, and that is what's important. To what degree, that is rarely common knowledge during game development.

They are not fellowship of like minded adults, they are company. Therefore they pay salaries, bills inc. electricity, rent and etc. 5-6 months is a really small time frame for companies, so saying that they don't know is wishful thinking.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

WILL YOU ASSBAGS STOP TAGGING ME WITH THESE QUOTE PYRAMIDS.

 

[l3loodAngel]

They could have been honest and knowing that their player base is mostly hardcore (though they mostly want Bio fans), people would have still donated.

you got any sources here or are you just throwing around assumptions of your own? there are roughly 34k backers right now and imo more than 90% of them are just players who enjoyed the infinity engine games, giving a shit about what's hardcore.

By codex's standards I am talking out of my ass, but I kinda believe if you would remove MCA and TC from the kickstarter campaign, they would struggle to get past 500k...

 

[kaizoku]

Pretty much.
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...rum-codex-vigilance.76078/page-6#post-2269069

Well there are a few sober comments as well.

What exactly the demographic is, I'm not sure if anyone can say it.

 

[J_C]

If you say so.

No, really. Go find a monocle and put it on. You sound exactly like the type of idiot we targeted in the WL2 vigilance thread. Chillax.

Ok I am calm now. I would have still pledged, but it would have been nice to know.

But it really does give an insight at Obisidian planning. They showed the people, but they didn't actually mention their involvement. Helping on a project might mean 1 h. weekly consultation or active participation. They didn't properly explain (at least to me) that it's not the MCA kickstarter and etc.

snip. nobody knows how many workhours can he/she contribute to the game 5-6 months from here. MCA, Sawyer and Tim are all working on the project, that is certain, and that is what's important. To what degree, that is rarely common knowledge during game development.

They are not fellowship of like minded adults, they are company. Therefore they pay salaries, bills inc. electricity, rent and etc. 5-6 months is a really small time frame for companies, so saying that they don't know is wishful thinking.

Ok, lets say that they know that. It is possible afterall. But nobody tells that in their pitch video. That is not the purpose of it. And this whole thing has just started, lets just wait and see after the project gains momentum.

And for the people who say that they should have everything planned. I'm watching Double Fine' documentary about the development process, and believe me, not everything is planned. They for one didn't have anything planned, except for the genre. Of course you might say that DF's project was the first major gaming KS project. But that doesn't mean the Obsidian will have a full design document at the start.

 

[Spectacle]

Hey, someone made an observation on the Update#2 video. There are formations for player groups of 6 on the whiteboard.

Fuck yeah! That's really all I need to know. Sounds like they're aiming for a game with both deep story and deep combat.

My $280 will remain pledged for now

 

[kaizoku]

question asked in dumbfucked way, but he handles it like a boss

please try to make the game racist and sexist, kthnx

I think it's important to distinguish between a game/story being inherently racist or sexist and the characters in it being racist or sexist. Settings with a diverse populace will almost always have some elements of prejudice in them. Characters with grounded prejudices (including religious) can be very compelling and interesting to deal with. I think their presence can make a setting feel more believable.

 

[asper]

I hope the kickstarter money isn't the whole budget for the game. Obsidian, being a company, could allocate some of their funds to this project. Otherwise, hoping for another BG2 is futile.

Could someone post the development costs of the IE games? I remember VD posting them a couple of times. They were well over 3 million if I recall correctly.

 

[l3loodAngel]

1. And for the people who say that they should have everything planned. I'm watching Double Fine' documentary about the development process, and believe me, not everything is planned. They for one didn't have anything planned, except for the genre. 2. Of course you might say that DF's project was the first major gaming KS project. But that doesn't mean the Obsidian will have a full design document at the start.

1. Is the documentary publicly available?
2. DF could not measure their success, Fargo and Obsidian could have and should have. It kinda sounds amateurish when you go and ask for 1.1 million and don't even have your stretch goals ready. It means that you don't have your budget ready, your team ready and their goals show that. They don't talk to their community and there are plenty of posts they could reply to, but I think the problem is that they don't know what to reply as their are cough with their pants down.

At this point it's not about design document it's about having a slightest clue.

 

[Brother None]

http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer/q/371743314262641756

Can you please say if Tim Cain and MCA are very involved with this game? The KS video implies they are, but Brother None has said they aren't that involved and PE is mainly your project?

I have been spending more time on it, proportionally, but yes they are (and will be) very much involved in making the game. There's no way I could do this all on my own.

:shrug: I dunno why this was unclear to people. Sawyer and Brennecke are the project leads, while we *know* Cain and MCA have other projects they're working on. But yes, MCA and Cain are working on it. No one said otherwise. Hopefully they can do more work as the project progresses and their own stuff wraps up.

I do wonder if Cain straight-up moves over full-time for South Park. Not impossible, for sure.

 

[Semper]

Otherwise, hoping for another BG2 is futile.

hoping for another bg2 in terms of content is retarded anyway...

 

[Zeronet]

I hope the kickstarter money isn't the whole budget for the game. Obsidian, being a company, could allocate some of their funds to this project. Otherwise, hoping for another BG2 is futile.

Could someone post the development costs of the IE games? I remember VD posting them a couple of times. They were well over 3 million if I recall correctly.

I believe it's cheaper to make a old school game today, the technology is mature and Obsidian already has a fully functioning game studio with their cRPG tools including specialised programs for integrating dialogue and quests.

 

[asper]

Huh? What I meant was a game with the same scope and polish as BG2. Amount of locations, NPC's, items, etc..

 

[J_C]

http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer/q/371743314262641756

Can you please say if Tim Cain and MCA are very involved with this game? The KS video implies they are, but Brother None has said they aren't that involved and PE is mainly your project?

I have been spending more time on it, proportionally, but yes they are (and will be) very much involved in making the game. There's no way I could do this all on my own.

:shrug: I dunno why this was unclear to people. Sawyer and Brennecke are the project leads, while we *know* Cain and MCA have other projects they're working on. But yes, MCA and Cain are working on it. No one said otherwise. Hopefully they can do more work as the project progresses and their own stuff wraps up.

I do wonder if Cain straight-up moves over full-time for South Park. Not impossible, for sure.

Well to be honest, your comment was kinda misleading:

MCA and Tim Cain are both working on Wasteland 2 and South Park respectively, you know, they're not going to be on this project fulltime for a while, that I know.

I know that you said they are not on the project FULLTIME, but some might have drawn the conclusion that they are not on it at all.

 

[Semper]

Huh? What I meant was a game with the same scope and polish as BG2. Amount of locations, NPC's, items, etc..

yeah, and that's a bit off for the budget they will raise. they have to create everything from scratch with like 2.5-4mio dollars. in terms of content i think we're talking about something like iwd or fallout.

 

[Brother None]

I know that you said they are not on the project FULLTIME, but some might have drawn the conclusion that they are not on it at all.

Yeah, gotta be careful in being too vague. Still, the point was mostly that this isn't MCA's project, and that MCA is still gonna do WL2 first (or at the very least WL2 will eat up a lot of his time), and I believe (but don't know) Cain is still working on South Park. It's mostly JE Sawyer's baby. Which is one of the things keeping my in doubt about what tier I want to go for. I'm not a huge fan of Sawyer's.

 

[J_C]

And for the whiners, here are some of Josh's answer about the game. Maybe they calm you a little about he house problem:

Josh Sawyer on D&D style camping
Source: Somethingawful
Quote
I've talked with Tim about this for a while and here's the thing: camping out in the wilderness and setting watches and getting ambushed by jackasses has a great classic A/D&D feel to it, but it got pretty silly in games like IWD2. I'd like to build in reasonable mechanics that make you rest in the wilderness, but I don't want it to result in the sort of degenerate "rest after every fight" stuff we've faced in the past.

Josh Sawyer on experimental and innovative features
Source: Obsidian Forums
Quote
BTW, these sorts of questions (and many have been asked in different threads) are the ones I think we're most interested in hearing your thoughts on. I certainly have my own opinions on things I'd like to change from the standard operating procedure (e.g. resting mechanics), but you folks are the customers.


Josh Sawyer on the map
Source: Somethingawful
Quote
This is good feedback. The actual map is significantly larger; I just bored down on this section for detail. That particular section was what I worked out first. I'll try to address the geological problems (e.g. rivers) and I'll think more about the rest.

Sorry for those of you who didn't like it. I was actually trying to capture the feeling of the Dragon Reach/Dalelands, which is an area of the Realms that I always liked.

This may be true, but I don't like getting things fundamentally wrong/bad. People who are in the know see it and immediately recognize a problem.


Josh Sawyer on the Player House stretch goal
Source: Formspring
Quote
To answer your question, we believe player houses serve a basic utilitarian purpose in RPGs. We like using them and would like to have them in PE. They require work to implement, but the $ of the goal is not meant to indicate $ spent on that feature [...] We have learned that a small interior with containers thrown in it (e.g. Novac hotel room, Pres. Suite [Tigranes: reference to Fallout: New Vegas]) is too minimal when it comes to auto-organization functionality. And again, KS is a fundraising platform, not a means of making a literal budget. [...] The problem inherent with this is that we're still very early in development. Designing systems takes time. I would rather be general and risk some frustration than be specific at this stage in the process.

Source: Obsidian Forums
Quote
In my mind, a player "house" is something like The Sink. A player stronghold would be something like Crossroad Keep, with much more in-depth strategic gameplay.

 

[J_C]

. Which is one of the things keeping my in doubt about what tier I want to go for. I'm not a huge fan of Sawyer's.

I don't have a problem with Sawyer's work, but I'm also holding back my larger donations. So far I pledged the minimal 20 dollars. Might increase it if some good info comes in about the game.

 

[Brother None]

Yeah, I don't dislike Sawyer, but from Van Buren to New Vegas I have too often found myself disagreeing with what he's saying on design philosophies, and while some of the games he's worked on have been good, there hasn't been anything great, unlike what was the case for Fargo, Mitsoda, or would be the case for Cain and MCA. I dunno.

 

[Sitra Achara]

And for the whiners, here are some of Josh's answer about the game. Maybe they calm you a little about he house problem:

Josh Sawyer on D&D style camping
Source: Somethingawful
Quote
I've talked with Tim about this for a while and here's the thing: camping out in the wilderness and setting watches and getting ambushed by jackasses has a great classic A/D&D feel to it, but it got pretty silly in games like IWD2. I'd like to build in reasonable mechanics that make you rest in the wilderness, but I don't want it to result in the sort of degenerate "rest after every fight" stuff we've faced in the past.

Josh Sawyer on experimental and innovative features
Source: Obsidian Forums
Quote
BTW, these sorts of questions (and many have been asked in different threads) are the ones I think we're most interested in hearing your thoughts on. I certainly have my own opinions on things I'd like to change from the standard operating procedure (e.g. resting mechanics), but you folks are the customers.

No sleep for the watcher?!

 

[kris]

I am going to donate to get a box. I want the boxed game. That is my level of old-school.

Good to see Sawyer was listening about the map and the hilarious river.