Ieo

I admit--I'm impressed that someone would back PE without being part of the target audience (at all, turns out). I hope you will like it, if you indeed did back it. You can also try the older isometric games available on GOG.com, the ones mentioned on the KS page. Or wait a little while for Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition to come out.

Optimism isn't a bad thing. That said, I sincerely hope Obsidian doesn't thin companion content due to the timescale (storyboarding interactions wouldn't take as much time as the actual writing output with tree testing and editing--thank the gods there is no full VO). It was extremely rare to get both quantity and quality in a game's combined interactive narrative/dialogic text content; nothing has come close to PS:T since, that I'm aware of. I hope PE breaks that trend without much, if any, sacrifice. The two ideal scenarios for me are, ignoring resource limitations, either full parallel character content development (doubling up)* or applying a smaller percentage of explicit "romance" content for a given character and allow free "conversion" to a bromance/womance track. I think the latter would be most flexible and more resource-friendly, theoretically. Oh, I fully expect reams of juicy epilogue content for various questlines and all companion interactions, romance or not, in the style of BG2:ToB (or outstripping). I can't imagine Obsidian not doing that, really. *I forgot that there will also be "low intelligence" type interactions as well, so that increases dialogic workload as well. Oof.

Obsidian wouldn't do the latter, I'm sure we can agree on that. It's the first statement that's my concern. Thank you, Ieo, for responding. I enjoy a dialogue about opinions between respectful individuals. ^^ Now, I understand your point in the post you linked me to, regarding the idea that: "Sawyer described how a character is always written by one writer to maintain consistency, which totally makes sense. This also means that development is completely linear." Some of the best story-telling I've seen has come from that area; one writer being in charge of a particular character. However, what made the entire story so amazing was that all of these writers came together to discuss how it all fit together like a giant puzzle. Just because one writer is in charge of one character doesn't mean that no other writers are involved in a solid production of any size. This means that after an over-all storyline has been decided upon, the writers of each section can come together and brain-storm what relationship options will work and how best to weave them into the overall narrative the game is delivering. I will also point out that, unlike other titles leading up to now, these writers are not under a tyrannical over-company's imposed time-limit on when they need to get things done. That was part of the reason for this kickstarter and I fully expect them to live up to that. This means that if they need to spend half a year working on the writing while the programmers create the world, art assets and the musicians get the scores written and recorded, then so be it. This is already an incredibly ambitious project and they were responded to by players in an overwhelming fashion, as the record-breaking numbers show. It makes zero sense to me that they would skimp on this aspect of the game when they are not being constricted with a publishing company's deadlines. I don't argue your 3-month numbers... at all. What I say is: So what? They HAVE the time to put into it. Thanks for the response, though that didn't quite get to my point, based on a key assumption... Consider that PS:T had one writer--I think PE's scene has changed a bit with Ziets added, who knows what writing he will do--but Avellone wrote PS:T all by his lonesome. If it takes Avellone up to 3 months according to Feargus/Cain (forget who) for a character of considerable depth, that's up to 24 months of writing right there for 8 characters. If we want a deep and meaningful romance track for character A, that could take up the majority of the character writing cycle, or 3 months. If we also want a deep and meaningful non-romance track for character A, that would take the usual cycle, 3 months. So in total, for a romance-optional character covering both types of content equally, 6 months--before the writer can move onto character B. Unless Obsidian hires a bunch more writers, I don't see how that kind of content creation can be done in their short development timetable. But I don't want them to hire more writers; I really don't trust them as I would Avellone (I know nothing about Ziets since I hated NWN1 and didn't bother with NWN2 due to its famous bugs). I dunno... So the other option is purely linear-- If we want a deeper romance for A, maybe we'll do 1 month non-romance "friend" content and then 2 months for romance content. If we want a more light "romance" with B, maybe we'll start out with the flirting for a month and then a sex scene and then 2 months of normal banter. If we want a late-blooming romance for C, maybe we'll do 2 months of "friend" content and then 1 month romance content. I hope you see where I'm going with this. Basically, in this kind of linear content dev, there would be uneven representation that would be more obvious since we only have 8 companions. The only other equation I can think of for the current situation is-- Avellone and Ziets split writing duties, 4 characters each. Even cutting to 2 months development per character, if aiming for equal non/romance content each, that comes out to 16 months.... Hmm. Also, weaving romances into the main narrative makes me very leery; I wouldn't like any party relationship to be requisite or hold over significant content in the main storyline, romance or not--that is to say, I wouldn't want a romance to be required for a potentially preferred "happy" ending, for example. Of course, companion relationships should color the rest of world interaction and the epilogues.

I described the technical process for a signel game writer to linearly (e.g. 3 months) create character content and the choices required in adding romances. How would you respond to that exactly? By pointing out that I, personally, don't plan on taking any of the evil paths, ever, and I could use the exact same "resource" argument to say that they should be left out in favor of content that I would enjoy. As the other poster said though, that would make me pretty selfish. That's a fair point. The only issue I have with that general stance is that it's easy to ignore potential companions in the likes of BG2 because there are so many to choose from; there's far less potential to "sacrifice" based on breadth alone. Eight, not so much, especially if we're expecting tremendous depth to each.

Well, Sawyer did say there would be scaling for the "critical path" storyline quests, but the rest of the world wouldn't be scaled. I don't remember how BG did it, but it did have scaling and was pretty low-key about it. I voted based on his reasoning, which makes sense to me.

I described the technical process for a signel game writer to linearly (e.g. 3 months) create character content and the choices required in adding romances. How would you respond to that exactly?

Balancing would be my primary worry too. Both xp gain and loot. On the other hand, it would be easier to balance in terms of the proposed back-loaded objectives xp mechanism. Like so--only a few quests, so not too much xp, which means the only other point is loot, which should be very cool but the game at whatever set difficulty level shouldn't require the loot to finish the main storyline. It'll be fun to see how this development puzzle turns out. Usually a giant dungeon crawl is the game. In PE.... Huh.

Hm, would require intelligent video recording addition to the game core? That seems like too much work and probably not something Unity can provide; I'm not sure what other technical solution there might be, though.

I'm planning on Expert first. But about the random bit... I totally forgot about that in the other games. Random low/mid-level loot is okay, randomness with modifiers in combat is always great, but stats on leveling? That always rubbed me the wrong way.

I'd have to agree; real relationships are fluid around those points--it's true that sometimes someone who has very strong feelings for another person who doesn't share those feelings will shut down.... which isn't very healthy either, but infatuations are rather awful as a rule. That may be the most flexible scenario for the problem I have with mutually exclusive non-romance/romance path content.

Yeah, that is open to interpretation. If a "romance path" could be converted fairly to a bromance/womance path, I'd like that. A marriage relationship could be interesting.... and yet I'd probably never want to see that because I observe and discuss marriage problems all the ****ing time, and I'd most likely want to throttle the NPCs to death.

Neither. I'm saying I hope "live music" doesn't necessarily mean using a classical orchestra, because that should be a stylistic choice rather than one based purely on budget. I'm hoping for period instruments myself. And live tavern music is a must--preferably with partially inebriated musicians.

Caring for our characters in the worlds wasn't a problem with the old games without zoom. I doubt you're going to be able to customize things like body type/size and facial features, though, so a lot of zoom would be wasted. That said, a certain amount of zoom wouldn't be bad--mainly for future-proofing when resolutions get high and the sprites get small...

My card just took a stamina hit! In combat! Regen regen!

I just really, really want it to have the narrative strength of Durlag's Tower. Maybe not the bazillion traps, though... If it ends up more like Watcher's Keep, I may still go in. It was just so terribly boring to me and not compelling at all, even despite the decent combat.

I seem to remember a decent number of well-known NPC mods with romance for BG2, but it's really been a while since I played anyway (or looked at the modding scene). People who keep saying it's optional don't realize that romance can easily unbalance available companion content for someone who doesn't go down that path; this is much worse when there are only 8 companions to choose from, not the 18 in BG2, for example. If it makes it into the game, I just want it subtle and not overpowering anything, ever--character content or main storyline. If it turns out that a party NPC's content is half-locked behind a romance path, and I end up not choosing that path, and the party NPC ends up being very quiet with little else to say halfway through the game, that's just an awful waste and boring as all hell. I might as well just get a mercenary spot from the Adventurer's Hall. Companions must be equally compelling to both romancers and non-romancers. (I'll still never forgive a friend who exclaimed that all the companions in PE should be pansexual and romances everyone, any sex or race. Really?) LOL, maybe I should mod a romance. Coming from someone who studied the sociology of unhealthy relationship and role expectations arising from Western popular media.

Nah, that would be in 2014.

Naw, there's no way... I'm expecting a giant disco ball to drop... Edit: Congratulations on the very successful KS campaign! DO US PROUD.

Wow. Seeing the number pop up as someone dropped $10k. Wow. BEARD.

Obsidian sings Journey is amazing, you are just jealous. I was mostly referring to the chat. Embarrassing. All they want is porn. I guess they'd all vote for romances, lol.

Oh, that part was pretty good. When the mic blew out.

Watching the live stream chat sure supports the general view gamers.... embarrassing.

$100k for JUST the orchestra... maybe. I've said this before, but the last budget I saw for a AAA video game during my internship was $100k-150k JUST for the orchestra. Then you have to add the costs for score prep, orchestrators, engineers, conductor, mixing and mastering, assistants, costs of physical CD printing, and then any other on-site musicians they'd need to hire for live vocals/choir or ethnic winds or percussion, for example, that they don't want directly mixed with the orchestra. And like I said before also, this doesn't even cover the payment for the composer him/her/themselves. There is a lot more that goes into it than just 'hiring an orchestra'. More than likely they're all union musicians too, so those costs pay for medical, dental, etc. Well, Justin had this to say about costs: No no, not that much at all. A budget for a hollywood caliber orchestra can cost as much as 80-100k+ for a full orchestra (80+ musicians), conductor, engineer, orchestrator, copyists etc for about 60-ish minutes of music. Which is lots of money, especially for a game like Project Eternity. But there are ways to bring that price down significantly. The size of the ensemble, their international location, and other factors play into that. In otherwords, there are options, and the example I gave of the "prohibitively expensive" orchestra is definitely on the higher side of those options.

It really does seem more appropriate for modding, and an iso game with no stupid full VO 3D talking heads is going to be far easier to mod for NPC content. Depending on the toolsets the fanbase can create (since there's no word on an official kit) and since Obs is going to leave the content data transparent, I'm sure someone will figure out the necessary triggers. The plus side of leaving any romance content "simple" is that it shouldn't cut into that character's non-romance content too much nor hook into the central plot; but if the companions are going to be around PS:T depth, I doubt romances must exist for someone to figure out dialogue variable use for a particular path, anyway--it's just a road map to particular ends, possibly with math. 0s and 1s.

Well, dip me in chalk and call me a limestone conglomerate.