Theobeau

Thank you for posting the link, it is always good to hear updates about the project.

David Carradine, perhaps? And those are sandals, not slippers. Actually here in Oz we call these thongs though I think in Nth America thongs have another meaning. Forton in thongs.... there's an image we'd all like to see!

As a long time gamer I've only recently become interested in the meta of gaming: what constitutes a "good" game, what makes computer gaming unique, is it art ?, whither gaming commentary and criticism (Doritos and Mountain Dew anyone?) and the mechanics of how games are made. While a lot of this may already be known to the hard core gaming community it was quite an enlightening post for this reader and kudos to OBS for giving the wider KS community an idea of how much planning and effort goes into making a quality game. The nitty gritty is obviously much much more than having talented programmers, writers and an great idea. The logistics of marshalling every one into coherent teams and having skilled producers who can get these teams working together sounds quite challenging though it appears OBS have got a very good handle on Project Eternity. Thanks for a very interesting post!

Blimey cobber...... So that's why MCA threw in all that outdated Aussie slang in his recent interviews!

Mix. I also seemed to play it a little OCD in that there was a difficult resist compulsion to press quick save every 10 minutes or so. Perhaps it was all the crash to desktops that plagued Windows 95 machines (it was Win 95 right?)

Agree with many who have posted here, common enemies should have realistic items that for leaders or in a small % include Masterwork style higher quality weapons/armour etc... Named higher level enemies such as the adventuring parties that were a great feature of later BG1 could have higher tiered Masterwork + magical items (low level artifacts? that have some history or lore to them). Highest level / elite boss type enemies should have the most chance of a rare, genuinely powerful artefact weapon/armour/ jewellery/ or high value crafting item such as high end gems. I'm just not sure how to balance the need to keep magical items novel and interesting from the fact that at the higher levels, enemies should be correspondingly tougher, which in turn means that they tend to have +X weapons. This results in the plague of having far too many +X Swords of Fairy destruction, a problem that took a little shine off ToB.

A couple of thoughts on this topic. As I get on in the years, I find myself more interested in role playing characters who are more than the stero-typical callow youth wanting to go out in search of adventure blah blah blah. However, given OBS' and the lead devs track records, this is not something that I worry about with PE. However when it comes age itself OBS could make it an purely aesthetic choice; give us a range of starting ages, have a few older default portraits for the character/inventory screen and give the option of adding a grey tinge to our avatar's locks. That latter is a little less important as it won't project that well in the 2d isometric display anyway! Or make it have a small but interesting impact on character creation by borrowing from FO's idea of character traits that have +ve and -ve. As someone mentioned earlier, perhaps younger characters have more physical strength but a little less skill points or vice versa. One problem with this approach is that age doesn't necessarily wisdom; quite a few older people lack wisdom and maturity while young people, though difficult life circumstances can have wisdom well beyond their years; and youth doesn't equal strength. As an aside, the OP's post has led great series of thread on this interesting side topic!

Could have thrown in the action-RPG such as the ME series or even MCA's own FNV into the mix; interesting to see if that option would have scored a few more %. For what its worth, count me as one of those dyed in the wool CoD I mean PST fans.....(phew, almost revealed my true colours here!)

Great interview ! BTW: Chris got it right bloody oath can mean hell yes. If he wishes to continue with archaic Australian slang in his next interview, he should throw in bonza, sheila, she'll be right mate and crack open another tinny.

For myself, I appreciated that OBS is trying to regularly update the community, even if the news is "Hey, we really are working!" Some 74,000 people have backed this project, investing OBS with both their hard earned money but also their hopes and aspirations for a complex, character and narrative driver cRPG of the likes that hasn't been seen since the golden age of cRPGs. While it must be almost impossible to manage all the conflicting expectations keeping everyone in the loop is a great first step. The suggestion of an official community liaison is a great one for as the devs get stuck into the project, the temptation will be to cut back on the less "essential" things such as frequency of updates. Hell, look at WL2. Acknowledging Fargo's heroic KS efforts, once the project got stuck with the nitty gritty, the time between updates has really drifted upwards. Finally, as someone living down under, can't say I'm too upset that they opened with "Good Morning America". Who knows, maybe OBS should consider using this to acknowledge all the nationalities of their backers. It'd be great for everyone to see how far and wide their fan base has spread!

How cow, 18 pages on this topic! Putting aside boob plates, chainmail bikinis and realism in fantasy cRPGs is 18 pages some sort of record for this PE meme?

Only came across this thread today so while late to the party well spotted and well deduced Leferd! The pieces certainly look like they make Interplay (did I get the italicised writing right?)

+1 for BG style. There were some gorgeous vanilla and customised portrait sets for BG1, surely enough to satisfy most player's preferences re: gender, race, aesthetics etc... And as the poster "Tiax rules all" proves, there remains quite a few talented fans out there more than willing to make custom sets for the new game. Providing a way for players to tweak the portrait in-game would be a great touch.

If it doesn't cost a lot of resources to implement it then why not make it an optional extra. As the OP mentioned, this was an option of the IE games so implementing it could add to PE's legacy feel.

@Starwars: Thank you for posting this thread. The interview was very interesting and revealing. I hope they are able to stick to a regular update cycle. Given how some other successful KS' quiet down once they get stuck into the grind of making the game/final product I'd settle for monthly updates.

OBS just answered this question; check out Starwar's thread in this same forum titled New interview with Adam Brennecke (small spoiler for a new character). Details are his OP and link where OBS discuss future publishing models for potential sequels. (Edited: silly me, worked out how to directly link to his thread below....) http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61823-new-interview-with-adam-brennecke-small-spoiler-for-a-new-character/

AoE looting sounds like a great idea; could be optional in that you have to click and drag the AoE for it to take effect; otherwise manually click on each corpse/chest for the old school feel. I would expect the final loot/inventory system to be modified as compared to original IE games. Any modification could still stick to the inventory grid a la BG/IWD or grid tetris like diablo ( ). My preference would be inventories to incorporate some sort of list system which groups like items together (perhaps like some of the better modded versions of FNV's inventories).

If something like this gets put into the game then an interesting aside would be to see how the PE's version of souls fitted into the traditional Faustian bargain. After all if souls routinely fracture and if people in the world of PE routinely get reborn into another vessel after death, what value does the soul have to an infernal power? Can they still place the soul into some sort of evil afterlife ? Would they still want souls? Interesting to see how OBS tackles this.

Depends on the level of realism you want in PE. If it was an optional mini-game whose development wouldn't detract from core game/narrative/character development elements then why not ?

Interesting original question and answers. Like most of the earlier posters, if PE is very successful then while OBS would have more clout to negotiate a more equitable publishing contract, a just as valid argument could be to point to the crowdsourced funding as a major factor for their success. After all, with KS they got great early publicity for the title, have locked a large number of motivated fans into de facto pre-orders of the game + paraphernalia and most importantly have a free hand for development time lines esp. internal QA vs release dates (a problem which plagued their AAA titles NWN2, KoTR2 and FNV and become part of their reputation ). The latter issue has been mentioned by several of the OBS team during the just gone round of PE gaming site interviews. It would have to be a big pot of money to OBS to give up all that up + a sizeable % of the subsequent profits. Nikolokus summed up my position on how modern publishers have cast a pall on the industry much better than I could.

There was another thread on this topic a while back but no official news since then. I'm sure there are many of us out there who are interested to see what version of party spokesman they take; the PC only; inter-changeable (which would mean more dialogue options and game build time) or some mixture where NPCs play a role such as interjection, adding or remove conversation options or have their non-combat skills add (or subtract) from conversation skill checks. The latter two options would make a change from the tendency of newer cRPGs to have the PC the party spokesman. The PC also seems always to have a gender non-specific surname or a title/rank that is the only name he/she is referred to the entire game!

@Starwars So not so much dislike but that he never got around to playing it? Strange then it was put in as one of the final stretch goals though by then the OBS team had probably been hitting the sauce rather hard! Thanks for the additional comment; it probably isn't worth the forum's time spending any more energy on this question as we can probably put it to MCA during his live stream via twitter account and all.

I liked many of the early BW games, especially the BG series. ToB was a great ending to the Child of Bhaal story and still stands out in my mind all these years later. However, regarding sentiment towards BW, you have to look at their wider catalogue. Of the ME series, the first two games had great strengths of the last one the less said of that terrible ending the better. A similar sentiment applies to DA0 and DA2. Perhaps it is the experience of these latter games that (arguably very rightfully) leads to an opinion of Bioware that its performance has been less than stellar. They made great games in the past but their latter stuff hasn't reached the same standards of excellence that they originally set for themselves.

Thanks CheeseGraterSuicide for the update about MCA's mysterious dislike of Arcanum! Chris did an interview with Gamestar.ru where he said this: "Lack of balance is the great destroyer, and while it's been in a number of recent titles, it's not a recent development. Lack of combat balance and any need for tactics - so much so that the combats are so easy that you don't have to do much to win or vary your combat style - is pretty crippling. One RPG in the past I've never played because I'm aware there's one low-level spell that makes the critical choice with your character progression in the game meaningless because that spell is overpowered." After I read that, I wondered if he meant Arcanum (magic in the game is generally considered overpowered). But who knows? Anyway, I hope he does stream it, and I also hope he at least tries out playing a low intelligence character. I tried playing as a simple-minded half-orc once, and the dialogue is hilarious. People actually treat you like an idiot and take advantage of you, and your character doesn't know any better. Best dumb dialogue ever.

Thank you Obsidian for keeping us all update about the progress of Project Eternity. I was a little surprised and more than delighted that official news came through so quickly after the end of a spectacular Kickstarter campaign. Surely most of you still hanging from trees, called partners for bail money from police lock ups and sheepishly explaining to love ones how all ones clothes got trashed and replaced by a pink fairy outfit!