Feargus Urquhart's Q&A on Kickstarter comment thread

[ImmortalZ]

Getting through messages and getting announcements ready, so I'm online. Anyone have any questions? -Feargus

 

Anaeme

Will you have Deities in the game?

Will there be the potential for the player character to become a deity?

 

Obsidian Entertainment @Anaeme We will have deities around - they won't just be hanging out in bars, but they are definitely a part of the world.

 

 

fredgiblet

I'd like to know about 64-bit support myself

 

Obsidian Entertainment @fredgiblet I am pretty sure there will be 64-bit support, since we generally compile all of our games that way nowadays.

 

Chad O'Brien

@Feargus

Deities!!! We were just talking about that actually - how it would be great to see deities implemented in this game.

 

Chad O'Brien

Once of the things that made Baldur's Gate so great was the use of deities - it just gave everything an epic and world-changing feel, like the world was depending on you.

 

Obsidian Entertainment @Chad Josh was the guy who got the whole deity system put into NWN2, so it's important to him.

 

 

fredgiblet

Are you going to be using Vancian magic?

 

Obsidian Entertainment @fredgiblet Wow, I've been playing D&D since the books were colored blue and beige and I've never heard that term before. But the internet conveys knowledge. I don't want to speak for Josh, but I'm not sure if a memorization system will be a focus. Don't quote me completely on that just yet though.

 

 

 

Steven Cameron

Hi Feargus. With the new announcement pending, are you able to hint if some of the digital tiers will be coming in the announcment and if some of those tiers are Mac based since all the tiers are for the PC atm.

 

Obsidian Entertainment about 3 hours ago

@Steven No hinting just yet. Other than we will get Mac added to all the tiers. We can't edit the tiers ourselves once someone pledges, so we need to have someone from Kickstarter do that.

 

 

 

Chad O'Brien

That's good news, thanks.

Also, have a $250 tier for 8-10 digital game keys I can gift to friends who wouldn't buy the game anyway. PLEASE!

 

Chad O'Brien

I hear that new digital tiers are coming, so hopefully multiple game keys are included in there.

 

Chad O'Brien

I wish we could just take the $25 pledge several times for several future game keys!

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Chad How about what Project Annihilation did with letting you add multiple keys to your pledge?

 

 

Rodrigo Roman

@Feargus

Where are the graphic stretch goals? (give some eye candy to the people ;-) )

Also. updates on EFIGS & DRM Free? (...yeah, I know they are coming someday, but... :-P)

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Rodrigo DRM update will be very soon.

 

 

 

Obsidian Entertainment

If I could ask a question for everyone. We are working on a Digital Only Tier that is between the $65 and $100 mark. Anyone have any suggestions for things to add in there? [This wouldn't be the only one]

 

fredgiblet

@OE

There's been a few people asking for PA-style multi-key pledges

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@fredgiblet We were looking at their page earlier and Tim Cain has some friends at Uber, who he was chatting back and forth with today.

 

Chad O'Brien

@Feargus

I'm a Kickstarter noob - I came here specifcally when I heard about this project. So multiple game keys would eventually be a possibility?

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Chad Yes, and very soon.

 

 

Ronnie Keller

@Feargus

Will it be possible to play a really evil character and to finish the game with him? Most of the times because of storytelling it is not possible to play the real bad guys. Will there be many different endings for the game?

And please finish the game in an epic BG2 like way. I love to read about the rest of the lives about my characters.

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Ronnie Keller - Absolutely on the endings, we love doing them that way. As for really evil - that's hard to answer. I don't know if we will go to cutting up children and storing them in your freezer level - but we will let you be pretty not nice person.

 

Angus Sharpe

@Obisdian

Hey man... i am a faller for any tiers with beta or alpha access or some special in game reward that keeps the balance of a game while making you feel special. Also maybe a special part within the forums for backers and a token to show our support within the forums...

Just a few ideas

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Angus Thanks!

 

Rodrigo Roman

@Feargus, yummy, DRM-free food! :-D Thx!

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Rodrigo Allegedly....

 

fredgiblet

@OE

Concept art (though that may be covered in the book that's already in the rewards)

A prequel short story (added on to higher tiers as well of course)

Set of avatar pictures based off of characters in the game

Wallpapers made of concept art and/or finished game content

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@fredgiblet Thanks!

 

 

Adam Ridgway

@Feargus,

I loved how BG was really an epic story stretched over two games and two expansions. I also loved being able to take my character from the goblin clubbing longbeard to the daemon destroying dwarven annihilator he was by the end of Throne of Bhaal.

Is that something you would consider replicating for Eternity? i.e multiple games

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Adam We would love to make multiple games and we are pretty sure that the first PE game will be a success. So, what we will probably do is launch another Kickstarter after PE is finished to fund the sequel. Getting to move away from publishers is, well, it's hard to explain...

 

 

Angus Sharpe

@Feargus as i have never played any of the games you guys have said you guys have made (i know they are great games though) is this game along the lines of a kinda skyrim feel??? or is there another direction you guys are trying to take

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Angus The games are pretty different. Skyrim is really a first person RPG that feels a little like GTA. The IE games are more about tactical combat and story. Now when it comes to lots of characters and deep RPG systems - they have more in common.

 

@Feargus

I didn`t mean being bad in a psychopatic kind of way. Being able to be taking-over-the-world-evil would be fine with me. Playing good characters is rewarding, but sometimes it`s nice to be the opposite. Then it`s real roleplaying.

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Ronnie Keller - Totally get you and the "role" part of Role Playing is about getting to be someone you are not. So I think we will have your getting to play evil handled.

 

 

Sam Garamy

@Obsidian - A lot of RPGs generally have problems with evil - you're often forced to be really blunt, thuggish and stupid. Will Eternity allow for a more intelligent and cunning evil, and let you plan ahead to do things that aren't obvious, but definitely on the darker side of morality?

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Sam Our goal would be more sublime with evil. I don't know if I've every actually used sublime and meant it before. Josh and Avellone are great writers and believe in portraying evil in an interesting way rather than the knocking grandma down and taking her money rather than helping across the street way. However, there can be a place for that here and there as well.

 

Obsidian Entertainment

We have spent a lot of time talking about being careful with adding in-game elements to the higher tiers and leaving them out of the lower tiers. For instance, we had thought about recording twice the voice sets we planned and then offering those in the CE. Regular versions would get the original amount. A lot of people at OE felt that would be frowned on.

 

Obsidian Entertainment

If I miss your question (I'm bouncing between things) don't hesitate to send a message.

 

 

fredgiblet

@OE

It's probably to early to tell at this point, but are you planning on making the collector's book a straightforward info dump, or more story-like like the manual to Arcanum? The manual for Arcanum was awesome.

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@fredgiblet Too early to tel, but we are story guys, so I'm sure there will be at least some flair in there.

 

Anaeme

The Obsidian Website and Twitter have not updated the new milestone achievements

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Anaeme We spent a good amount of time talking about how we want to do a stretch goals. We really hope to have something up in the next day or two. However, we have a ton of updates planned on top of that throughout the week - we just zeroed in on the schedule.

 

Chad O'Brien

@Feargus

You keep missing my romance question!!!

Copy/pastes:

@Feargus

What are your thoughts on romance? I know there are a lot of people against it - but I'm one of those people who finds that it humanizes the characters and adds more meaning to the adventure. I don't think romance should be front and centre, but it was great in BG2...

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Chad Sorry!!! Totally meant to respond and got sidetracked. Rob (Art Director) just sent me over some new header art for updates. So romances. We are talking about them and seeing how we want to handle them. That's not a great answer I know. I do think that if we get another writer on board that we are talking right now (maybe an announcement soon on that) we will be able to talk about them more.

 

Chad O'Brien

@Feargus

No problem! I appreciate the candid feedback. Steven Lim's comment is right on the mark.

 

Obsidian Entertainmen

@Chad I can tell you personally what I think of romances. I like them when they are subtle and, this may sound strange, but when I can ignore them. That's personal preference.

 

@OE

Has a decision been made about character avatars? Static portraits or customizable slider system? I really enjoy making a unique looking character and spend tons of time playing with sliders.

What about camera? Static or rotating? Zoom?

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Wodwo I don't want to speak out of turn on what we are doing with portraits just yet. As for the camera, it is going to be static. We are looking at zoom and a zoom that isn't just a blurring of the pixels

 

Obsidian Entertainment

Fun article on TIME - http://techland.time...ise-10-million/

 

Dablue

@Obsidian/Feargus: 1.6 million, a Mac Version of Project Eternity and The Story Grows!

We've listened and we’ll make a Mac version of the game at this tier. We're also going to add a new major storyline along with new quests, locations, NPCs, and unique loot (special histories everyone?).

What do you guys mean by the "special histories everyone" ?

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Dablue Special histories are what we did in the IWD games, in particular, where we wrote unique histories for the cool, more unique items that you can find in the game.

 

Raufgar

@Calvin, your comment, funny as it was, brings to mind The Golden Pantaloons and other weird misc items that we can pick up in the BG series.

@Feargus, can we reasonably expect to see some outlandish, over the top items to grace our Inventory Screens in PE? I vote for socks. You can never go wrong with a good pair of socks :D

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Raufgar Socks?

 

Łukasz Cyfert

@OE: Digital only tier:

First, placing it between $65 and $100 is a little steep - Wasteland had at $55 and i think it was ideal.

As for the addition to this tier in order of importance: Access to Beta, in game pictures/avatars, additional high res. art, additional copy of a game for friend (especially if the tier will be70+).

Additionally, but not sure if this should restrict to any tier: as someone mentioned, DF documentary is great, I'm not saying it has to be movie, maybe some other cheaper digital form, but documenting the creative process, letting us know how step by step the idea becames final product. And letting us know the teazm behind the project better.

And about the game content :I'd love as much as possible great art, I believe one or couple of great pictures are better than any cut-scene (I think game-engine generated cut-scenes nowe is the worst that could happen to games).

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Lukasz Absolutely on the price, we have gotten a lot of requests in messages about having a medium priced digital tier ($55-ish) and a higher one (~$80-ish). Actually we've gotten requests for ones over $100 as well. Trying to listen and figure out how to make them all make sense and be worth it.

 

Steven Cameron

@ Feargus

With the popularity of Project Eternity, Wasteland 2, Double-Fine, etc. Do you think Publishers might look at making games like these or are they too far gone?

It seems the publishers aim at multi-platform games which includes the console market. These Kickstarter projects show there's a huge interest with PC gaming. Or is this market just too niche for the Publishers to look at, so they're not concerned at losing money with these games?

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Steven We were actually contacted by some publishers over the last few months that wanted to use us to do a Kickstarter. I said to them "So, you want us to do a Kickstarter for, using our name, we then get the Kickstarter money to make the game, you then publish the game, but we then don't get to keep the brand we make and we only get a portion of the profits" They said, "Yes".

 

Steven Cameron

I meant to clarify, publishers don't mind losing money if devs go direct to Kickstarter, since they wouldn't have funded these games anyway. Which doesn't seem to make business sense if they could make money from thse games.

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Steven As for games like this, I think they will consider it, however so many of them support traditional distribution and sales forces that it's hard for them to consider games that would only ship digitally. It then gets pushed to their digital divisions, who have very small budgets (less than $500K).

 

Steven Lim

@OE

I hope you read my earlier post on romance / emotions / exploration of the human spirit and how it would tie in with the strengthening, weakening or breaking of one's soul.

Make Romance optional but make it so that it matters for those who pursue it and not just tack on as a means to take my LI's pants off.

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Steven Understood on romances. Please don't take us not talking about it as we are not listening.

 

Angus Sharpe

@obsidian stupid question probably but have you thought about what the graphics will be like compared to say baldurs gate?

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Angus Better? What we have been putting together has been looking really sharp.

 

Anaeme

@Feargus

What is the most difficult issue developers have to deal with when Publishers are in the picture?

Imposed deadlines?

Creative independence?

Refusal to pay developers?

What is the most problematic issue

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Anaeme That's a whole host of questions. The best way I can answer it is that in actuality, almost everyone I know at publisher is a great person. Heck, I was at a publisher for almost 12 years. The challenge for the publishers is that they have a bunch of different departments that all have different goals and as a whole they have a huge overhead (hundreds / thousands of people and office space) that they have to pay for every day. So, that creates infighting and the success of one group comes at the expense of another.

 

@Anaeme For a developer, it means you are not only working to make a game - which is hard. But, you have to be able to work through all of the politics of your publisher. I know somethings have been said publicly by us about Bethesda, however they are not political. They are still human, but they work very hard to make games the focus and not the rest of the BS.

 

fredgiblet

@OE

Do you think they honestly thought is was a good deal for you or do you think they were hoping you were dumb?

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@fredgiblet I think they were trying, honestly, to be able to do something with us and they felt that was the easiest way to do it. They would then not need to go get budget approved and deal with the challenge of that. What I don't think they did was to think about our side of it and what they were really asking.

 

Kevin Tan

@Obsidian Guys will there be more affordable tiers that feature people wanting to get in as bit NPCs or lower tier/early level artefacts and gear? Will there be an equivalent to the Blade of Cera Sumat or the Entropic Blade in the game?

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Kevin Thanks for the suggestion.

 

Nikolokolus

So this game will have railguns right?

 

Obsidian Entertainment

No railguns sorry, but plenty of pudding guns!

 

Michael Balzan

The best thing about BG2 was that if you have certain people in your party that you don't romance they romance each other. I would love to see that again, something I miss so terribly.

At this size budget I can only assume that you're not expecting to be fully VO, but to me at least the companions should be.

@OE If my understanding of the way game writers works each companion tends to have a unique writer. Not knowing who wrote Kreia for KotOR2, will they be writing for Profect Eternity. Kreia is my all time favourite RPG character, such a well designed and thought provoking character!

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Michael Chris Avellone wrote Kreia and he is definitely writing for Project Eternity.

 

Dablue

@obsidian: How about whorehouses? (serious question here. CD project did it very good with the witcher games)

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Dablue I think we are getting into the unknown territory with that one.

 

Wes Kerfoot

@ Feargus, oh suggestion! I really liked having the dimension door spell from Icewind Dale, even though it had limited potential for use. Any idea on whether a similar spell could be in PE?

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Wes I have to admit that I have totally forgotten what Dimension Door did in IWD. And I'm the guy who converted almost all the spells in IWD to the 3E versions for IWD2.

 

Angus Sharpe

@ Feargus

any suggestions on what game to try if i want to get a feel for what PE will be like?

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Angus I think your best bet is BG2. Torment is an awesome choice as well, however we were never totally happy with how combat ended up being in Torment. However, it was never the largest focus.

 

Raedwulf

@Obsidian Entertainment

Could you give us some information on localization? Which languages will get support? There are would-be-backers who do not speak english at all.

Also there is some information lacking about designing an NPC or high level item. A list of detailed questions gets gathered in your forum:

http://forums.obsidi...h-level-widget/

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Raedwulf We aren't sure on which languages yet.

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Raedwulf We will start having more coverage on our forums in the coming days. The reception has been pretty staggering and, to be honest, we were unprepared. Darren (co-founder) has been working practically night and day to move all of our hosting over to Amazon so we don't go down anymore. It seems like we are doing better today than we were doing a day or two in that area.

 

Dablue

@Obsidian: How will the playing map be.. like in BG1 where you could walk from one map to the next.. or like in BG2 where you had a map with intrest points?

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Dablue We are thinking more like BG2, with the caveat that exploration is important so we are making sure the areas have plenty of open-ness about them.

 

Ross Stuart

@Obsidian Entertainment (profile manager): Quick shout out to you! You don't have to answer this question now (and I would prefer a more official means because with this volume of regular comments I would never find your answer tomorrow morning ), but would Avellone, Cain, and co. comment as to how much modding your engine might allow? I beta tested with the Sith Lords Restored Content Mod and I remembered how much of a joy it was to the community to insert custom content and tweak the game to their liking.

On another note, cheers! Mac OS X version and storyline expansion achieved!

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Ross You got me tonight - Feargus. We are really not sure about the modding side of things yet. We will try to have more information out about that before the end of the campaign.

 

Wes Kerfoot

@Feargus, what do you think about the possibility of Jeremy Soule coming on to write the musical score?

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Wes Not really sure at this point. Personally, I was really happy with what our internal audio guy, Justin Bell, did in the video. Not saying that is the choice, but he is itching to give it a shot.

 

Charles R

@obsidian

Is the reputation system fleshed out already? I really liked the FO: NV system that encouraged shades of grey instead of a black & white approach of DND alignment.

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Charles Factions and shades of gray - that's what it is all about.

 

Peter Klevvall

@Obsidian: Can we get 50 factions in the game then?

 

Obsidian Entertainment

And a nice new Latest News header on the main page.

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Peter That would be $123.6M please.

 

Floyd Ryan

@ Obsidian/Feargus

A quick question. So we have the two models, publishers and kickstarter. What about the intermediate case to fund slighly bigger projects, say $10M+. Aren't there possibilities to get additional funding via something like venture capital where i can invest money and participate in the economic success/failure of the game? This could make much sense for projects which target audience consists mainly of employed persons

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Floyd I think there is a possibility there, however the atmosphere for VC has been pretty bad over the last few years. Also, games still feel like voodoo to a lot of people. I do think it will get better.

 

Floyd Ryan

@Feargus

It would help if we'd have a similar system as Kickstarter, or even an upgrade to Kickstarter. But i see the legal issues of course. The point would be that gamers would be the investors. I feel much more comfortable making risk investments with some smaller part of my savings in a particular game that in some stocks. It's simply a question of competence.Sure, this is not suitable to raise AAA funds, but it could double the kickstarter money if say 1000 backers invest $1000+.

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Floyd I agree. My worry is where does the FTC start to get involved.

 

John Zammit

@Obsidian:

Sorry if this has been asked already but can you make sure there are some options in terms of healers. I am specifically thinking of Dragon Age where there was only really one obvious option for a healer if you didn't make your main character one and she could be killed off before you got them in your party (as a mate of mine did). Have you considered a more distributed healer model where healing is more a responsibility on a per character basis as opposed to a specific class role?

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@John Exactly the model that Josh is going for - well the latter and not the former.

 

Obsidian Entertainment

Goodnight everyone, need to be up in 6AM (5 hours from now) to do a little coordination with an announcement. Should be a fun day tomorrow! Oh, and we are going to have the first person from the press to visit us in person to talk about Project Eternity. Thanks for all the support!

 

Elvar

Sorry if this has been asked before (been trying to keep up with news and I may have missed something or forgotten some things I have read already) but what level of technology can players expect, and in particular will there be guns and then to what extent?

I have always felt that guns remove a certain aspect of atmosphere as a relatively modern invention and I know others who would argue the same. Not that they can't be in a few places, but if they are in game are they going to be everywhere you go or something you see rarely?

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Elvar Rarely - and my last word for the night!

 

Rami Itkonen

Urquhart, how about making a topic about possible pledge bonuses in Obsidian Forum as well? Or SA or whenever you have made your "contacts" with audience in the first place.

I think it's Sawyer who did those though BUT you'd get feedback from possible pledgers that

1. aren't At Kickstart (heck, this is my first one to pledge and I did it the moment I heard it)

2. Have found out about the Comment-sections

3. If they have, might not discover your posts or profile

4. Due to the latter, feel like they're opinion/voice will drown out in the 7000+ comments anyways)

Though I understand that you need direct feedback from pledgers/fans who would like to up the pledge. The comment section is a little hard to organize. )

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Rami Ok, really my last for the night. We are going to get the forums covered a lot better and also look at organizing the information. My job is going to be the comments for a while every day, while I'm doing other stuff.

 

Obsidian Entertainment

@Rami Oh, and really appreciate your thoughts.

 

 

--

 

Sorry for the wall of text style post, but I'm at a loss for ideas on how to format this. But I hope this will help keep these answers from being buried in Kickstarter's comments system.

Edited September 19, 2012 by Pidesco

[Moonlight Butterfly]

Nice, thanks for taking the time to do this

[Kaldurenik]

Great thanks!

[Mamoulian War]

Thanks.

 

I cant wait to hear the announcement especially after Feargus mentioned some announcement about DRM free

[Sales101]

great post, thanks

[TwinkieGorilla]

I'm at a loss for ideas on how to format this.

 

Maybe put the questions in quote-blocks and the answers as plain text? Just a thought.

[C2B]

Thanks for summing them up.

[Shadenuat]

At least use bold or italic for dev responses.

[Flouride]

Aye, thanks

[ImmortalZ]

I can't edit the post anymore. Sorry guys, I got really busy at work and couldn't get back to it before the edit window expired.

[WorstUsernameEver]

I can't edit the post anymore. Sorry guys, I got really busy at work and couldn't get back to it before the edit window expired.

 

Maybe you can ask a mod to edit the stuff in the OP for you and maybe sticky this? It's a service to all of the community, so I'm sure they would be collaborative.

[Pidesco]

Hopefully this will make Feargus' posts a bit easier to parse.

[Longknife]

We were actually contacted by some publishers over the last few months that wanted to use us to do a Kickstarter. I said to them "So, you want us to do a Kickstarter for, using our name, we then get the Kickstarter money to make the game, you then publish the game, but we then don't get to keep the brand we make and we only get a portion of the profits" They said, "Yes".

 

Best part of the entire thing.

[LTenhet]

We were actually contacted by some publishers over the last few months that wanted to use us to do a Kickstarter. I said to them "So, you want us to do a Kickstarter for, using our name, we then get the Kickstarter money to make the game, you then publish the game, but we then don't get to keep the brand we make and we only get a portion of the profits" They said, "Yes".

 

Best part of the entire thing.

Gotta love Publishers trying to take control of everything again

“Hey do all the work, get all the money needed to make the game, but we’ll keep everything afterwards! It’s a GREAT deal developers! You get to lie to your loyal fans too!”

 

I'm glad Obsidian are good people, and honest. I love you Obsidian.