Nivenus

I'm guessing there will be a race that somehow ties into the concept of "souls" in the game. The so-called Godlike (of which we know nearly nothing it is fair to remember), may be an example. Possibly we might also see some race that ties into the folklore of Europe that isn't usually represented as playable, such as lycanthropes or goblin-like creatures (I'm thinking brownies and kobolds, for example). Another possibility is something from outside of European folklore, perhaps representing a foreign and uncommon race in the accessible game world.

An interesting question to pose, since there are many kinds of slavery. In Medieval Europe, slavery as we usually understand it, was more or less prohibited, since the keeping of slaves (especially Christian slaves) was considered contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church. However, slavery did exist peripherally in most of Europe and more significantly in rich parts of the continent like the Italian city-states or the Byzantine Empire, where the mix of foreign cultures ironically made slavery more appropriate (since the Church was more willing to allow the enslavement of non-Christians). And Muslim nations had virtually no objections to slavery at all, though it was considered good behavior to free your slaves before your or their death. More significantly, perhaps, serfdom was pretty much ubiquitous throughout all of Europe and is quite similar to what we would consider slavery. However, serfs were not chattel property who could be sold at the market and were instead tied to the land they worked. They were obliged to perform work without pay, but they weren't exactly considered property either. There's also, of course, the long-practiced tradition of indentured servitude. So I'm going to go with a "yes," even though the question is rather non-specific in its meaning, because slavery of various forms did exist throughout most pre-modern societies and I don't think we should shy away from it. Also, the second question adds a bit more variety to the equation, so I'll vote yes for that as well.

Why specifically? Does that matter? I mean, I said I think it works fine. I also like purely skill-based systems like Fallout, even though they're not my favorite ruleset (I prefer classes of some sort). It seems like you're contending my answer for no particular reason, since I said dividing the attributes up could work well given what we already know about the game (namely that combat and non-combat skills will be divvied up similarly). If you really want an answer I'll give one, but it seems irrelevant.

So... basically something like Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines' division between social, mental, and physical stats. I'd be okay with that. It's not necessarily my favorite system and I don't think it would work for every game but since Tim Cain recently said you'd level up combat and non-combat skills separately it seems semi-plausible.

The full budget for The Witcher 2 was less than 10mln USD... That's not that much more, when you consider the amount of work done... Full 3D, full voiceover, development of a completely new engine for the purpose of the game, etc... To be fair, it was made in Poland. In my experience North American costs of production are much higher (for whatever reason) than production costs in most other countries. Red Cliff, for example, is the most expensive film ever to be filmed in China and cost $80 million. Compare that with $220 million for The Avengers, which while on the high end, is hardly extraordinary for an American blockbuster.

Actually, most pre-modern armies required soldiers to arm themselves. So blacksmiths definitely existed as a private industry, though free markets as we would understand them didn't exist and trade in the later portion of the Middle Ages was largely managed by monopolistic guilds.

A different engine seems highly unlikely. I'm pretty sure Obsidian's satisfied with Unity based on their post earlier and besides which, that would be a pretty big switch, even at such an early stage in development. More likely, the stretch goals will include some of the possibilities Urquhart was talking about earlier.

It's not actually that weird. Some of the biggest games in modding are the Elder Scrolls games, Fallout 3, and Fallout: New Vegas. Dragon Age: Origins also had a pretty big modding community as I recall. All four of those are exclusively singleplayer. So while NWN is a good example of modding being used for multiplayer purposes, its hardly the only purpose modding has. In fact, I think that SP modding usually gets higher priority since it doesn't require everyone to be running the same mods.

I'm okay with co-operative multiplayer and would probably like it if it was implemented well (unlike DS3 from what I understand) but it's not a big priority for me. I'd much rather see multiple language support and modding as stretch goals.

Whether or not the game is truly isometric (fixed perspective, equal angles/sides, etc.) doesn't matter to me that much. I think an overhead 3D camera similar to Wasteland 2 would be entirely okay. But then again I'd be okay if the game was just third-person, which I know many here most emphatically would not be okay with. So I really could go either way.

I'll admit the mental impression I have of Jim Cummings is a lot different than most people's (Robotink from SatAM) but he is a wonderful voice actor with a lot of versatility and range, so assuming Obsidian can grab him (and given how many roles he's taken I imagine he can't be that expensive) he'd be a good one to pick for Obsidian's limited VA approach.

Technically it only means that the self-selected demographic of people answering a poll on Obsidian's forum (which may or may not be representative of the donor base) are largely from Europe. However, given what I've heard about the gaming market in Central and Eastern Europe, it would not surprise me in the least to learn that the poll reflects the actual demographics of Obsidian's fan base. Which makes the importance of greenlighting a German, Polish, or Russian translation of the game more obvious.

I continue to be stunned by the number of people who don't realize this game is in the lower-mid budget range. What do people think $1.1 million buys in game development? Dragon Age? Alpha Protocol? Those games easily cost several times more to produce.

I don't mind having rolled dice as an option in character creation, but I think a point buy system should be present as well.

I would say "fully voiced," because I do think it adds something to the game, but I also understand that the budget of Project Eternity would make such a goal untenable without severely hampering other parts of development (regardless of what the poll says). So I'm going to have to go with BG2/PS:T levels of voice acting.