So I take it the campaign is starting soon? I understand InXile's reasons for that, but from what I've read on other forums (like SomethingAwful) most people expect them to only launch the Torment campaign when Wasteland 2 is released or at least close to release. I'm afraid starting it early will turn A LOT of potential backers off pledging. I hope Brian knows what he's doing.
Also, despite MCA "endorsing" the new Torment, I've seen a lot of people say "no MCA, no pledge". Truth be told I fear a bit for this campaign.
Oh believe me when I say we're very aware of all of this. From the very first time I had Brian on the phone about Torment - several months ago - to now we've been constantly considering this Kickstarter drive's rather steep challenges; no Planescape, no MCA, no Wasteland 2 being released yet. It's not an easy pitch for those reasons, but they're all reasons beyond our control. Brian can't wave a magic wand and make Planescape or Chris available (though we've kind of moved on from Planescape already), and the truth is we need the money for preproduction because inXile doesn't have the means to keep footing the bill, including my wages, haha.
Part of my job is to keep a close eye on different communities, looking shallow and deep to get an impression how people are taking things, and I am very well aware (and thus, transitively, Kevin and Brian are very well aware) of the criticisms leveled at this idea in many communities. All we can do is explain, though, list our reasonings, what we need and what we offer, and hope it works for the best. You can see me pop up all over the place, from NeoGAF to RPS to the GOG forums.
The thing is, once it's explained a lot of people seem to get it, all of it. Why Numenera makes more sense here than Planescape. How this team can be good enough to be worthy of the name without Chris. And - perhaps most important - why we're looking to establish a cycle of development time where pre-production of the next project starts now, because writers and concept artists have no significant work left to do on Wasteland 2, but how we're not going to fund that pre-production from Wasteland 2's money (that would be wrong) and do not have the means ourselves to fully fund it. You don't have to like it. Hell, you think we like it? You think we wouldn't rather have Wasteland 2 out there before going back for more funding? Heck yeah we would. But it's not just feasible from a production cycle perspective, and while inXile will certainly survive having to fire Kevin, Colin, Adam, cutting contracts with a bunch of concept artists and letting me go, it would create a negative workflow environment that would needlessly delay Torment *and* probably present a lesser team for it since a lot of us will have moved on before they get their funding together.
Now, we're full bore on this, working hard on documentation, art, presentations, doing everything to show what we want to do and why it's worth backing (and - I know this doesn't necessarily mean all that much since I work for them - but I am personally VERY impressed by some of the design and narrative ideas I'm reading in the internal documentation). But for communities...I'm going to be lame and say "we can always use your help". coz we could! Explain our concepts and why this needs to be done like this to people as you see misunderstandings crop up. I've been explaining it time and again here and there, but the more people get it, the better. Not that there's any obligation to get it. I mean, you can understand why it's being done but still feel uncomfortable with it and not look at Torment at all until you've played Wasteland 2. That's fine, but I would like people to understand our reasoning and make an informed decision on these questions.
Can't read that thread, I'm not registered on SA (never have been). I know I probably should now, but I'll freely admit to being a bit less than kindly inclined towards Something Awful, since they once tries to DDoS and hack NMA and my own personal computer, and banned everyone associated with NMA. Would they still ban me from being from NMA, I wonder?
Not sure how I feel about that. It's like if Obsidian Kickstarted Baldur's Gate 3, and "Set in the Faerun D&D setting" was a stretch goal instead of a core feature. For me 2D is as integral to Torment as the writing, but I realize I may be in the minority here.
Well, Real Talk® time, 2D is expensive. It takes up a large part of your budget and time compared to Wasteland 2's graphic style. Now even if we can't do hand-painted 2D, we'll look at ways to emulate the painterly feel, it's never an either-or question, but doing hand-painted 2D is expensive. Eternity was a huge success so they can pull it off, but honestly, if you work on a one million budget and are going to do 2D backgrounds, you're going to end up allocating too much of your budget to graphics which will end up severely limiting the amount you have to spend on, y'know, writing, level design, C&C. We're not comfortable starting with 2D promised because for this particular project that balance does not make sense. We'd love to do it tho, but it depends on the funding.
What the fuck are you talking about?
