PureSophistry

Funny you should mention this- I have a follow up Interview with Fergy- coming up this week. Don't want to miss! -Andy

Any new info here?

Stay tuned for our next 30 minutes of awesome! Cheers

Had to cut it down for on air- Fascinating chat with Feargus, insights into the gaming industry and his step by step guidelines on how to make it in gaming. Illuminating!

Worth a listen!

Here's some updated info. From us!

Hey everyone- I had the great pleasure to talk to Feargus Urquhart about Project Eternity, Obsidian in general and the gaming industry. An amazing experience, not one you'd want to miss! Here's a tease You’ve had great success in the past, now you’re jumping into Kickstarter with your new game, “Project Eternity” What exactly is Project Eternity? Feargus: A lot of us before we worked for Obsidian, we worked for another company called Internet Interplay, which had an RPG division “Black Isle Studios” which I was the founder back then we worked with a developer called Bioware on games like Baldur’s gate and the sequel and internally, Icewind Dale 2. A lot of people called these games the resurgence of sort of PC role playing games. They were fun games that people loved to play, but they sort of stopped being made and we were having a real challenge getting publishers funding and people interested so when Kickstarter came out we realized this was the perfect way to recreate the games people remember fondly again. You mentioned Bioware, with the recent news that the Docs in charge are retiring- What’s your opinion on that? Feargus: Well Ray and Greg are great guys and still very much my friends, I talk to them frequently and I wish them all the best. They put an immense amount of time trying to build the RPG brand at EA up and I think that sometimes you need to take a break…If you work so many years so intensely you tend to burn out and sometimes you just need to take a brake. But you’re not at the “Taking a Break Stage” just yet? Feargus: No maybe I’m just more of masochistic then they are (Laughs) I still love making role playing games. It’s kind of hard for an independent developer- for those who don’t know what that means. We kind of work for people who are going to pay us, which is a challenge but also means we have more options. If we don’t want to make a certain style game- we don’t have to pitch that. Which puts us in a very different position. Of course the challenge is then getting that funding- which is why Project Eternity was a hard sell.

I'll do companion NPC characters because I understand them the best: They need understandable motivations (or hidden, but understandable motivations), unpredictability, some element of mystery, effective in the game, and a good voice actor. (Note that I have generated this list in five minutes, so it's possibly I have forgotten something. Anyway.) Motivations: People like characters they can understand or sympathize with. Part of my love of Hellboy and Robot Man in Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol is that when they are confronted with a weird situation, they go "hunh?" and then they punch it repeatedly. This is an understandable, sympathetic motivation. Unpredictable: Cliches being what they are, familiarity breeds contempt. If you come across a character archetype you immediately recognize and know exactly what his personality and character arc is going to be, he immediately becomes less compelling. Mystery: Characters become more interesting when there is an element of mystery about their personality or motivations - then they become a mini-game that you want to unlock and find out why they are doing the things they do. The more these mysterious agendas revolve or focus around your player character, the better. Effective in the Game: Any character that does not perform an effective support role in the game is pretty much doomed by any non-roleplayer, which you should assume is everyone. Myron from Fallout 2 - ineffective. Cassidy and Bonenose from Fallout 2 - effective. I sometimes call this the "Final Fantasy III Test" - every character in Final Fantasy III had a different, yet very effective combat ability, which made them all worthwhile to use in the game. Voice Actor: Poor voice acting can breed hatred faster than anything, especially if their combat lines or selection lines are annoying or shrill. One last thing - any NPC who disparages your character or doesn't acknowledge that the main player is super cool on some level, even if it's grudgingly, is generally not as well liked as other companion characters. Sorry for the delay on this, we were in Dallas showing Neverwinter Nights 2 at A-Kon. Expect pix soon. If you want to see informal pix, go to: Informal A-Kon pix. This needs to be inscribed on gold plates and burried. 30 years later- The Church of Obsidan!