Durante:
1. What happened to the Ouroboros that was prominently featured in the pre-kickstarter and early kickstarter material? It just seems to have vanished one day during the campaign.
The Ouroboros spiraled out to infinity. The logo and name placeholder until we finalize the name of the game.
2. How are you planning to deal with the size of the game in terms of distribution, and what resolution are you targeting?
I imagine this is a problem with a large modern game featuring prerendered graphics. I did a quick stupid calculation, and developing a BG2-size world targeting 1920x1080 instead of 640x480 will get you to more than 20 GB of background image data before any animation.
Yup! We are targeting higher resolution screens, and dealing with a large data set is one of the problems that we are currently tackling. Compression is going to be our friend.
Labadal:
1. I know you've listened to fan requests during the kickstarter campaign, like adding the Chanter and Cipher, contracting G.Ziets and other things. But how important will the feedback be during the ongoing development of the game? Listening to fans can be good, but a lot of people want the team to do mostly what they want. How do you balance this.
Feedback is definitely listened too, and fan involvement is good for both the developers and fans. Ultimately the developers make the final decision on what goes into the game, but we do really want to hear what you want, because we are making the game for our fans, not us.
2. The higher kickstarter tiers will allow backers to create and name different items, NPCs and more. Obsidian Entertainment are known for good writing and characters. The thought is great and lets backers be a part of the game, but it feels like this is also something that could backfire?
I don't think it will backfire at all. I think it's going to be a fun experience for both the developers and backers - we really want to work with people to make sure that their ideas get into the game, but we also want to make sure that backer content fits within the context of the world.
marrec:
1. Kickstarter has helped generate interest in many forgotten genre's of gaming. From PNC Adventure Games to Isometric CRPGs. What other forgotten genre's of gaming do you think could benefit from the type of direct fan support that Kickstarter offers?
I think any genre, new or old, can use Kickstarter for funding. If your idea is good, crowd funding is a great way to get your project green lit and funded. Kickstarter is nice because you can test out the water to see what the general interest is in your idea without any risk.
2. Working directly for and with your biggest fans has to be different from working for a large publisher. Is there an increased pressure to get it right' with this game as compared to games in the past?
We need to deliver a good game at the end of the day, which is always the case in any funding model. That's always our top priority, and I haven't felt any additional pressure compared to past projects.
3. Telltale's The Walking Dead has been universally praised for the way it told it's story. Obsidian and many of those working on Project Eternity are known for consistently delivering a high quality story. Playing through the Walking Dead myself, I felt as if it would have a heavy influence on how people tell stories in games going into the future. Are there any games that you're currently playing that are impacting the design direction of Project Eternity?
I'm currently playing The Walking Dead right now and I am really enjoying it. Just finished chapter 2. The dialogue system reminds me a lot of Alpha Protocol's conversation system. Letting the player know that people will react to the decisions they are making is a brilliant idea. In the last few days we've been discussing how our dialogue system works - I know that we are looking into not having dedicated speech skills like speech, diplomacy, or intimidate. We do want immediate reactions to your decisions, and also long-term reactions to your reputation in the world.
subversus:
1. I have a question - which inspirations are shaping up the universe now? by universe I mean lore. Any particular political/world events/historical events/books/movies/personal experiences?
I can't adequately answer this question because I'm not directly responsible for the lore. I also can't answer it because I don't want to spoil anything. We throw around tons of references (books/movies/games/comics/stories) all of the time, so I think it would be hard to pinpoint any specific inspiration. We try not to draw from one specific source.
2. What level of violence can we expect?
Violent, but nothing over the top. Typical sword stabbing, spell slinglin', realistic fantasy violence. Dismemberments/gibs, but no blood baths.
3. Will I be able to complete the game without any party on normal level of difficulty?
You should be able to play the game all the way through with a party of 1. We won't require you to take companions at any point. Doing this will be more difficult than having a party of 6 of course.
4. Without need to adhere to any sort of rating what kind of content can we expect to be in the game? I mean what kind of content you always wanted to get into the game but weren't able to due to ratings?
I don't think we are approaching this as, "Let's put in a bunch of M rated naughty stuff because we can." But more along the lines of we can just do whatever we want, and we don't have to worry about hitting a Teen rating. Fantasy games typically target a much more friendly audience, and sometimes we feel it restricts the stories that we can tell.
5. Will I be able to craft firearms? And will elevated terrain play any role in battle? (see XCOM)
Craft firearms - sure. Most of our areas will be relatively flat because of the nature of how we are rendering the world with an orthographic projection. It will be difficult to tell if you have any tactical advantage due to elevation.
6. What seems to become the most challenging part in development of Project Eternity?
So far one of our challenges has been working with a new Engine. I think the team has gotten over the hump now, and we are starting to pick up momentum. We can do things really fast in Unity compared to other engines, and sometimes it feels weird, in an awesome way, on how fast we can get things up and running.
Lancehead:
1. Will the game feature the "hive" quest structure (from Alpha Protocol) in any capacity?
I'm not entirely sure what the hive quest structure is. I don't remember if we ever called it that internally. The quest structure is going to be fairly similar to Baldur's Gate I/II.
3. Will there be post-end game play that features reactivity to all the major choices made by the player during the course of the campaign? I know Obsidian didn't have enough time to implement it but the lack of post-Hoover play in New Vegas was disappointing.
Probably not. Sorry. I would love to do it if we could (more reactivity is always awesome), but it's a huge investment to develop post end-game content. To do it well, the entire world would need to react (otherwise why do it?), and that would require thousands of new lines of dialogue.
Geoff9920:
When the Kickstarter was first announced we were given a very rough estimate of April 2014 as a release date. After that date was given a significant number of additional features were announced for the game due to stretch goals. Is the April 2014 release date still relevant or is a fall 2014 release more likely? (No rush. I'd rather wait for a solid final product if I had the choice.)
We are still shooting for Spring 2014. Making a quality game is our top priority however.
Dragonzord:
What's the craziest looking playable race? I don't want to be no stinking human or pointy eared human.
We have the Aumaua and Orlans. Currently we are creating concepts to see how crazy they look, and want to find a good balance between unusual and familiar. The god-like will probably be strange looking as well.
Perkel:
1. Do you plan to include low or high magical items overall. Meaning weapons with just +1/+2 will be already rare or +5 (ultra power-full) will be rare.
Somewhat low magic. We are looking at D&D as inspiration in this regard. Weapons similar to +5 in power won't be in this first campaign.
2. Will characters lie ? (not some stupid lies, meaningful with agenda lies)
Sure! This is up to the narrative guys when they write dialogue, but I don't see why we wouldn't have people that lie.
EndcatOmega:
1. Will classes have a large impact on social tests and dialogue? Such as the Barbarian finding it harder in the cities to charm people his way (though more intimidating means works better), etc? Or will social options be divorced from the classes with everyone being able to choose what stuff they want (except maybe the rogue gets more 'skill points' or whatever)
We do want to explore dialogue options based on your race, gender, class, and stats. We are looking at alternatives than pure dialogue skills such as intimidate.
2. Can you talk about the underlying system? Like, is it going to be pnp-style, with a d20, d100 or dice pool, and the player can actually see the rolls? Or more 'video gamey' and the mechanics less transparent?
Project Eternity's combat system is not going to be based on d20, and we aren't tied down to dice rolls in any way. We do have a combat log, and all of the attacks (and the mechanics behind the attacks) are displayed in the log.
CrunchyFrog:
1. Have you discussed much about what the team is looking for in a soundtrack? Has an official audio lead been settled upon yet?
Justin Bell, our audio designer, is the audio lead on the project. He did the music and audio production on the pitch video.
2. How do you plan to keep the crafting/enchanting system relevant in tandem with assorted drops of high quality loot?
Tim Cain has proposed some good ideas on how to balance the crafting system. Crafting is still early in design, so I can't share any deets at the moment.
3. Could you expand a bit on your plans with the stronghold and adventure hall? If they are both still in existence in parallel, how do they differ in gameplay significance?
The Stronghold and Adventurer's Hall serve two completely different purposes. Stronghold is your own fortress that you are able to upgrade through quests or money. Your friends hang out in your stronghold. The Adventurer's Hall is a location to hire additional help. As an option you can create an entire party of mercenaries to replace your companions and fully customize the party to your exact specifications. People enjoyed full party creation in Icewind Dale, and if you want a party of 6 dual wielding Orlan rangers - here you go. We will still have companions of course - this is just a supplemental feature.
ShockingAlberto:
Do you feel Kickstarter proves that there's a market for the games you want to make or does it prove the opposite? Does it sort of imply that games like Project Eternity would need that funding upfront because it would be too risky otherwise? Do you think a successful kickstarter like PE would change minds about it?
I'm not sure. I guess we will see how successful the game is when it's released. I know that there are many people out there that didn't back the project that still would like to play a game like this.
Mister_Bubbles:
This is a long one, apologies. I have always wondered why there is never much attention put towards party member audio 'barks' when navigating the world in party-based RPGs - we always hear the same four or five phrases repeated over and over again, no matter the location, context or emotional state of the NPC. It's like they're only actual people when you're in a dialogue tree. Given that selecting and ordering your characters around makes up a large percentage of the user's gameplay experience, it would make the game much more immersive to have more reactivity and variety in audio cues.
Have you had any discussions on expanding this aspect of the party-based RPG, or are you going to stick with the old 'stock phrase' setup?
I don't disagree. It's just one of those features that gets cut early because it's not a necessity, and to do it correctly would require a lot of work. Also, I think that it's one feature that would have gotten better if there were more games made in IE. For example, Icewind Dale II has many more voice set lines than BG.
Recently, I've been looking at the dialogue reactivity in DOTA 2 and TF2. They are doing a lot of neat things with reactive dialogue at Valve. I would like to do something like this in one of our games down the line.
Rubius:
Will neutral characters be awarded for being "Meh"? In RPG, it always seem you either have to be Full Paragon or Full Renegate to get any kind of bonus. Will we be able to see a reward for people who simply act themselves and not always take the "Blue" answer?
Maybe I dont like the politic of this one guy to allow all the killers to live, but I still love to save Genasi orphans. I dont really like the whole "This is evil, and this is good" notion in RPG. very few RPG were able to remove this notion and put it all in gray zones.
Grey zone owns. Obsidian typically does this well, and we will be doing the same thing for Project Eternity.
Riposte:
What are your thoughts on Eberron?
I haven't played in Eberron so I have no comment on it.
injurai:
Will the game have a sense of distant lands? One of my favorite Aspects of a rpg game is getting to travel to some new and far away hub town with a completely new culture, items, art assets that really makes you feel as if you stepped into a whole new world from where you previous where in the game.
This may be one of the most important design aspects to really draw in the "explorers."
You may not visit these distant lands in Project Eternity, but we do have a large world that we are making - It's much much much larger than where the game takes place.
Jibbajabbawockky:
2. What is the thinking with the UI? More like the old Infinity engine games where the whole UI is kept out of the actual game view and acted more like a frame or something more modern without the framed view?
I personally like the frame-based UI. It gives it a more solid feel, and fits with the fantasy genre.
3. With dialogue, should we expect the presentation to be similar to Baldur's Gate where we see the portrait of the NPC come up, with the important lines being voice acted and the rest text? How much voice acting do you expect to have compared to games like Baldur's Gate 2 or Fallout?
Yup! Exactly. We are planning to do something very similar to BG2.
TruePrime:
Will companions be romanceable? If so will they be able to across races and or same sex?
I don't want to spoil anything about companions. We are going to be mum on companion details and we will let the player discover them.
Corto:
What do you think of the online persistence/multiplayer component of the Demons Souls/Dark Souls games, and do you think that that could be implemented in a game like yours?
I love my Dark Souls, but we are designing Project Eternity as a single player only experience from the start.
Sullen:
How deep will the gameplay mechanics be? Are you guys going for fairly streamlined video game RPG mechanics or tabletop RPG levels of depth with the mechanics?
I wouldn't say we are doing anything streamlined. We are trying to stay very true to the feel of playing IE games - so it's not super nerdcore, but it's not baby action rpg gameplay. Somewhere in between. We want the combat to be tactical with how you give orders to your party, and we also want to think about larger strategic decisions. You won't be able to rush into things without thinking about it.
jred250:
I've got a business question in regards to Obsidian. It is becoming harder and harder to get the deep rpg experiences I like to play funded by publishers. Do you think there is there any sustainable future in direct funding by fans (via Kickstarter or whatever)?
Sure. Hopefully Eternity can be successful, and at that point we can self-fund another project, or start another Kickstarter.
Castor Krieg:
Part of the appeal of PS:T for me was slow realization how important and powerful the character was in the past. This was not 'rags to riches' or 'nameless adventurer' story, you slowly discovered just how the character shaped the world through his subsequent incarnations. Will we get to experience something similar in Project Eternity (either from a PC or an NPC)?
I don't want to spoil anything, although we don't want to retread stories that we've already told.
Bonus Question from EatChildren: Can I romance a house?
No??
