Zoraptor

To be fair, EA actually does offer distribution (as opposed to publishing) and hybrid deals through EA Partners- think Crysis, Kingdoms of Amalur etc- where the developers still own the IP, and they do have the "ninety free days on Origin" deal as well. They probably offer more flexibility than most. Bethesda/ Zenimax is certainly not big three though, by any stretch. They've hardly had any decently successful titles outside their core franchises- even iD's game published through them was disappointing sales wise. If it weren't for TES/ Fallout every two years they'd barely be bigger than Paradox.

I'm a bit surprised by the implication that it was for Eternity that an offer was made, but that's all. Someone like WOTC looking to get a BG3 or similar done would make perfect sense, for them, as it would be effectively risk free venture capital- and at least a bit of sense from Obsidian's point of view as they'd get, for example, the publicity due from and fans of Baldur's Gate. There will also be some who will not contribute to kickstarter on principle (yes, such people do exist) who will contribute if there's a more known property behind the project. I also rather doubt that publishers spend time worrying about kickstarter as a competitor, their biggest threat is increasing costs vs decreasing returns in their traditional fields. The three biggest funded games in kickstarter history don't come close to adding up to the funding for a single AAA game. All the evidence is that publishers simply do not care about kickstarter size projects, as there's no way for them to make money- or enough money- off projects that size that they fund themselves. Of course if kickstarters provide that scope of funding to the publishers then that would be a different story, as it's "free", and more or less risk free, funding.

Gamersgate was for a long time the only place to have NWN2 as a DD, being smaller than Steam they're generally more flexible. Some of the D&D stuff definitely disappeared from there when the roll over of the rights happened. All they've done now is change the listed publisher from Atari to WOTC, even the copyright and disclaimer text is the same as previous. The only place that kept all games (that they had) available throughout was GOG, albeit they simply do not have NWN2 at all.

You can try Ultima IV for free if you want- it (and a couple of other fringe Ultimas) is one of the free games you get for signing up at GOG. Its graphics are just a tad dated to be sure, but there's no way to know whether you'd like a game more than trying the game.

Achievements per se are (usually) rubbish as they're (usually) trite make work for obsessive compulsives and epeen wavers. On the other hand gaining traits/ reputations/ whatever from your actions in game are good, if handled well.

Pretty surprised at this- I'd have thought licencing might be a reason for not having a tool kit/ SDK but not for not using Onyx at all. Presumably DS3 has some of the middleware it uses listed in its EULA/ splash screens, so that would give an idea of some of the 3rd party stuff that is being used.

It seems likely that it will be sold at a lot of places, no real reason not to. Don't know if Origin would allow key registration or similar though so it's probably not usable as a kickstarter specific distribution option- the presumption would be that if steam/ gog/ whoever were used for the kickstarter copy you'd just get a key you could enter to register the game then download from there, saving Obsidian download and admin costs. Personally I think the ideal situation would be a universal key that could be registered at the DD store of your choice so all options and preferences are catered for, but that has obvious practical problems.

That's not true at all. Oh, it's true. One of the earlier threads in this forum even had a picture of the Kuldahar area from IWD as a 3d wireframe mesh (dunno where they got it from, since Google Images can't seem to find it).

I'd quite like to see what Obsidian would come up with in collaboration with Warren Spector or Ken Levine*, but that's a pipe dream and likely a case of too many cooks/ chiefs as well. *

Carmageddon Reincarnation kickstarter, you got a voucher for the original game from GOG is you contributed $25 or more- though it hasn't been released yet.

If it's 2d as the gamebanshee interview suggests then a likely camera style is similar to other isometric 2d games; Baldurs Gate/ IE, Fallout/ Jagged Alliance etc as you really need 3d to have an adjustable camera (except for zooming, though that would still have a fixed angle/ aspect).

Why do you hate me, multiquote? It's technically true for Paradox though I'm not sure how anyone could sensibly describe it as not being drm when CK2 has had 10 (?) patches and 12 (?) dlcs, all of which only work through steam- unless you're an enlightened and informed individual and purchased the gamersgate version, of course. Given how frequently they talked about hating drm and not having a preferred estore Paradox basically have to insist that steam isn't drm though. While I'd tend to agree that purchasing direct from the developer is best as an option, all distribution systems do have costs, Obsidian cannot simply provide the game themselves without overheads- you either need a system to manage purchases or accounts yourself (potentially expensive to establish and maintain) or use a premade system like BMT Micro, which will take their own cut. Using steam for "pre purchases" like kickstarter is understandable since part of the Embrace Extend Extinguish philosophy Gabe learned at MS is the benefit of loss leading, hence free steamworks in the first place, something smaller players with lower resources like GOG find difficult to match. Which is, of course, the whole point of steam offering it in the first place.

I wouldn't put money (ohoho) on there necessarily being an option to include a toolkit, or at least anything approaching a fully featured one. Non tiled 2d levels are potentially problematic and there may be 3rd party plug ins involved that would require $$$ or permission to redistribute. Be nice is it does happen, of course.

Raithe mentioned he'd got a new job with bad hours in one of the Project Eternity threads.

That is a very silly policy from GOG, would not be at all surprised if it goes very quickly. It's not like indie even has a set definition. You can quite easily define Paradox (developed) games as being indie, or Valve games for that matter as neither has an external publisher. On the other hand most would refer to Bastion as indie. If GOG want it not to be a problem it won't be, even if the 'solution' amounts to deciding the publisher is 'Obsidian'.

Pre order/ forum member bonus: Helm of Visceris and Blade of Honour item set. Seriously though, most people would think it's a misspelt GoT/ ASOIAF reference.

Technically, a whole host of things are only very likely- it's just extraordinarily tiresome to specify that every time much as it's extraordinarily tiresome to presage everything with imo. IMO this game will be released on PC and be an RPG, but I guess it could be a flight simulator for Commodore 64 instead. As it happens there is a (marginally) possible alternative in that Obsidian has (theoretically at least, and if other information is correct) an unused UE licence from a cancelled project. But Onyx is still the vastly most likely possibility though for all the reasons Tigranes listed.

Watchmen RPG, clearly. Who Watchers the Watchermen? Or maybe a Pratchett/ Sapkowski crossover featuring Sam Geralt of Ankh-Rivia.

Why wouldn't they tease a game then put up a kickstarter for it? If it is a kickstarter then they will need to get as much money as possible out of it- maybe as much as DFA and Wasteland 2 combined, given the size of Obsidian. Best way to do that is to get the hype train running full steam ahead of time, not to go from a standing start, and to have something to show as part of the kickstarter pitch as well which would explain the delay. At the moment Kickstarter is the most likely explanation of why it's Obsidian and not a publisher doing the hyping. It isn't definitive, it could be funded by an investment group like BVT (who for example funded NWN2 for Atari) who wouldn't/ couldn't do hyping themselves or by someone who isn't really a computer game publisher like Hasbro/ WOTC, but that seems a lot less likely. Certainly if it were a big publisher there'd be an expectation that they'd be hyping it themselves instead of, or as well as, Obsidian.

Dunno if the 2d stuff is directly SP related though- the cartoon itself for example is done in Maya despite being "2d". It also seems to be a bit late in the picture for such hires relating to SP unless there's either a mobile or flash tie in. For that matter, the infinity engine stuff was 3d models (from Max, iirc) rendered out to 2d rather than being intrinsic 2d as well.

It's not a joke. It's sadism. It can't be TORN anyway, as that's queued up as Interplay's next kickstarter after the success of Battlechess. Now THAT's sadism.

I shall use my powers of deduction to decide that all the X's are important... clearly a roman numeral. OMG IT'S ULTIMA X!!!!

If you buy an empty glass described as an empty glass you don't get the right to complain that it isn't full when you bought it.

A PC will work with a gamepad 100% fine and a lot of PC gamers actually have one and game with them- while a 360 won't handle a KB&M set up at all. For that reason a 'perfect' port may be done one way but not the other unless, of course, the PC game was designed with gamepad support in which case no problems, 'perfect' port possible. If you don't like that approach then the recourse is simply not to buy, it's not like anyone can really say they've been misinformed about what the port was and was not doing- in fact I'd say they've been more honest than pretty much anyone else would be. I'm sure we've all seen Optimised for PC!!!! lists which contain a whole lot of questionable claims, if not outright lying, and I'm all for people being honest about their products. Buying and then complaining about stuff that was already known about is, well, a bit unfair IMO.

Is 1024x720 at 30fps not good enough for mister fifty screens? Joking aside, I agree, worst port ever, thankfully someone has made a resolution patch, maybe they can fix the framerate too. Seriously that 1024x720 is lower res than what I was playing 12 years ago! Luckly that patch lets me set whatever res I want, so I bumped it up to 4k and it looks really good now 1280x720 is the standard console HD resolution. You guys have been depriving yourselves of a whole extra 176 column pixels! It's not like they lied about it not being a direct port and bragged about all the wonderful improvements made for the glorious PC Gaming Master Race- whose magnificent contribution was a petition that got all but the Euro retail version saddled with the DRM scheme they like and the DRM scheme they dislike; ta muchly, everyone involved. It's a bad port only if it doesn't work properly on PC, if it works exactly like the console version then it's actually a perfect, though unimproved, port.