Wolfenbarg

They have plenty of hobbies. They make more movies than anyone else in the world. Though I guess making the same movie 900 times in a year might leave you needing a hobby... Maybe they'll come up with a new plot for their movies. Something that isn't a musical love story... Nah, that'd be crazy. A proud day to be Indian indeed.

Pretty much this. Disney could put Mickey Mouse in Darth Nihilus' mask if they felt like it. It's not like the medico industry isn't trying to patent human genes and DNA already. I'm waiting for the day they're going to send me a cease and desist note, stop infringing on their patent by existing. But that's a discussion for another thread You're just mad because your avatar infringes on their copyright.

Congratulations Obsidian, by funding your game through Kickstarter you have effectively freed yourself from the shackles of a publisher. You will never again feel the shame of releasing a buggy or unfinished product because of strict deadlines. And now a word from the fans who made it possible. Fans: I WANT GAME NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!11!!1ONE Oh...

Well it's there. I'm going to get it. Soon my little collection of matter, soon.

What in the what?

No, it's always been there. Skip to the end of the Kickstarter video, it's there too. I love that bit the source code. It feels very... well, Obsidian. Who wrote it? Was it Josh?

I think the reference to Dragon's Eye has to do with how long and varied that dungeon was. Each level was quite different and far more difficult than the last, and overall it felt like a very interesting and satisfying experience.

When I saw that in the teaser, I thought that might have been a cute little jab at the people who stayed up really late for said update. Then I realized that the line was also in the original Kickstarter pitch and saw that site a while after. Now I feel like a fool.

Hello.

Why do people port games over to consoles or start their games on consoles to begin with? To reach the larger audience, of course. The thing with Eternity is that the larger audience is already on PC. I mean thanks to Steam and GOG, older games and games with lower specs made specifically for the PC have returned PC gaming to a rather glorious pool of money to swim in. Eternity can fit right in with that crowd, but it'll barely move units on a console. They couldn't possibly justify the expense.

I guess another thing I'd like to say is that I hope Obsidian won't *need* to kickstart things in the future. Maybe this next one will kind of require it since it looks like Eternity won't be released until the end of next year, but I'd like to think it will do well enough to where they won't need to seek additional funding to complete the next game. I want to see them able to make independent games on their own dime.

It's definitely something to keep pointing out, in my opinion. The stop and move nature of traveling with a group means it could be very easy to be stuck with everyone moving in sync like that. Wasteland 2 was like that during the demo they showed, and it was just as jarring there as it is here. I'm pretty certain it's something that is going to be fixed, but still. The run animation on that... rat creature... or whatever it was in the crystal area was pretty cool, though. That looked like a completed animation to me.

The kickstarter video had more understated music, especially in its opening and as it progressed with them just talking about the game. The epic portions of that video and this trailer I just don't like at all. The former has a lot of flavor and I can see fitting with the world Obsidian has built, the latter really lacks that. The main themes for Planescape and Icewind Dale really had that down. So far I really see Justin as having a style that would really fit the ambiance or down time in Eternity. Some bits remind me of the theme in Kuldahar. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y96Y2JE5F8 That works really well for a lot of sections of the game, but it obviously won't do much in the combat sections. I'm willing to reserve judgement, though I will say that if you aren't sure if you can handle the more "epic" stuff that there's no shame in asking for help scoring the game. Soul Reaver had a number of artists who worked on it, for example, and that soundtrack is incredible.

Are they going to add a tally for how much money has been raised? People are still pledging and adding to pledges, after all.

Neeshka (you can bundle Mission Vao in here too), I absolutely hate this kind of character. It's not enough that she's supremely annoying, but despite her background she has absolutely no depth beyond the trope they assign her. When we got to Neverwinter and it turned out she was actually the best thief in town and was run out as a result I actually laughed out loud. That is completely unbelievable and so very stock. It would be more consistent with her demeanor for her to have been a common dreg, hated because of her extra planar blood who didn't want to be an enforcer in some corrupt guild and left. It would give her room to grow, she could become the best thief in Neverwinter by traveling with you, not just be a fully developed and fully annoying character from the beginning. The only in character and believable thing she did all game was get kidnapped by the bad guys in the final dungeon. Something I would like to see though are characters you love to hate. Fragile alliances are typically done very poorly in games, where a person just sort of tags along without you actually needing them. Bishop and Ammon Jerro worked pretty well in this regard. They were necessary for the plot, so even though they were horrible people who had done terrible things, you had no choice but to take them with. With Ammon Jerro though, they really developed him and used him in a way where you can form some mutual respect for one another. The battle at Shandra's farmstead is pretty much the sole reason I don't totally hate NWN2. Having an arc with a character you previously hated is one of the strongest things you can do in fiction, and most games usually avoid this or do it really poorly. This is something I would like to see again.

Honestly, I'd rather put money towards Eternity, especially if they give compelling reason through well thought out stretch goals. Making sure that ends up as the best game possible and not self competing for funds seems like it would be the smartest move.

The gameplay video was nice, it's good to see progress being made. It's not a point where I can be impressed by the product presented as a whole, though. The environments are beautiful, but I'm eager to see how it will look a year from now when it's really got some polish on it. I think the best part of the update are actually the articles and interviews, especially the one with PC World. They really say a lot about the world and systems in place without spoiling too much. Just getting more info on the colonial atmosphere and animancy has really ramped up my interest significantly. I've seen a lot that left me unimpressed previously, feeling it was all too familiar, but that bit of flavor really put me at ease. Sometimes the familiar is exactly the setting you need to do something fresh. I am a bit worried about one writer being a bit flighty when giving an overall impression of combat and saying the game didn't wow him like Wasteland 2's demo (I've still not been wowed by that game). Hopefully things are coming together in a really solid way, I have a lot of faith in Josh and Obsidian as a whole. Anyway, this was a great update. Very much worth the wait.

I voted no. I'm not opposed to seeing more stretch goals, but stretch goals like the ones described don't sound appealing to me. Planescape: Torment and Mask of the Betrayer had a pretty sparse cast, but I felt like I knew all of them when all was said and done. Shadows of Amn on the other hand has tons of companions and most of them never go for the ride because they aren't fleshed out past their one unique quest. Focus on making the ones you have as responsive and fleshed out as possible. If not all classes are represented... well, it kind of makes those classes sort of unique, right? There were no sorcerers, monks, swashbucklers, or kensais in Shadows of Amn, and it made playing those classes feel pretty cool. The kinds of things I would like to fund are mostly related to polish. Adding more tracks to the score, additional arts passes or revisions if you can afford to do something to match any changes in vision, more ambient sounds, better spell effects and animations, additional voice over work, something like Baldur's Gate 2's intro and ending cinematics for exposition, etc. Now I know this sort of thing is kind of tricky because things like that might be kind of hard to get people excited about, while telling people they'll be getting more stuff is like guaranteed money. But if you do add more stuff through stretch goals and have extra funds, putting it toward making existing content feel as satisfying as possible would be ideal, in my opinion. And it might be hypocritical to say this after I've gone on about not wanting the "more stuff!" type of stretch goals, but when people mention class quests I kind of melt a little bit. That kind of in game responsiveness is really cool.

That's not even all of them. All of the older games I bought work without it, as does Endless Space. Quite a few can be configured for offline mode as well.

I bet the game is already done. They're just too busy playing it to say anything.

Well your message would make sense if EA and Obsidian had the same financial situation or the same role in the industry. I've nothing against financing the developper but I'd feel kinda confused if the distributor asked for money, i already consider him useless so... Publishers do ask for money. They were the ones who were nuts about pre-orders and season passes for future DLC packs. Those models used to be like the old crowd funding model for developers, now they're treated like investment capital and publishers have a real **** if they aren't making money sight unseen based on their marketing campaigns. That makes no sense, even your example rings of passing the blame. A good publisher is also responsible for shipping a good product regardless of their time table. If New Vegas wasn't ready to ship, then Bethesda shouldn't have shipped it. Considering how fast it was patched up to playability shows that they cared more about the release schedule than any sort of QA for the game. Knights of the Old Republic 2 was exactly the same. While the PC version was patched quickly and they acted like no harm was done, the Xbox version had game breaking bugs frequent enough for the game itself to tell you to save in multiple slots because your game was likely to kill itself and you'd have to start over. It isn't the developer's fault that a game is released with bugs because the release date is not their decision. And bringing up cases like Amalur doesn't really help their case. That's how the publisher/developer relationship is supposed to work. Instead seeing money whoring and product domination in their place is crazy. Am I supposed to be grateful for that crap? Why did we crowd fund this game again?

Trash mobs aren't always bad. They can make you feel powerless or godlike depending on the stage of the game and their relative difficulty. Trash mobs were punishing in Baldur's Gate, and kind of a fun reward in Baldur's Gate 2 to carve through. The times where they're bad are when the game isn't fine tuned to support their existence. Planescape: Torment would have been a superior game without trash mobs, while Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale would suffer greatly without them. They offer a change of pace, which is why lots of games of varying genres use them.

I think it's an either-or scenario. If you don't have well voice acted conversations that really draw you in like KotOR 2 or New Vegas, then it's preferable to just have text exposition to advance the story in most cases. You also have a larger range of responses and reactivity, so there are some trade offs. Of course, that didn't always matter. Baldur's Gate only had a bit of stretching in conversation branches, but for the most part that game was involved in the combat more than anything.

Holy crap, you're still here.

Yeah, if they're announcing the title finally, I'd imagine something more akin to a trailer as well. Something to stir up some buzz and secure a bit more funding would be smart.