Loranc

gyshall Do you guys have any plans for a more "robust" Economy than what was in the old IE games? I've always found it somewhat immersion breaking/jarring to run to a town to dump all my loot off at some merchant, and his total gold never changes, or his stock/item availability never changes or reacts to world events. Obsidian_Ent[S] JESawyer: Personally, I think economy considerations are interesting, as are alternate currencies, waiting for restocks/being forced to seek out other vendors. We'll have to see how it ties into PE, but I definitely like exploring that stuff.

Aravilar What are your plans concerning the loot system of the game? Personally, I loved the Baldur's Gate approach of items beeing set in one specific location of the game/ with certain characters. It motivates to explore every corner of the game and once you figured everything out gave you the experience of really knowing the world. Random loot should be very limited imho. Obsidian_Ent[S] Chris Avellone nods: I loved making item lore for specific items in IWD1, 2, and Torment. They were like making little item short stories because you could hand-craft each one (and handcraft their powers to make the story stronger and vice versa).

I probably missed a few things thanks for that.

[–]delias_ I've seen a lot of designers say that they've enjoyed working within the confines of another world. However, in the case of giants like LucasArts and Hasbro/WoTC, there's an almost censorship-level restriction of where you can take a story. While we already know from KOTOR 2 that this restriction can be fun from a writing perspective, from a world-building perspective, I imagine it will be an interesting task to create locations/lore/history that you can turn on its head based on characters' preconceptions (and to which the audience does not have any reference). Since everything in P:E is essentially a new design, I imagine you guys would have to work in a way that you're having to continually outsmart yourselves (and your creations). Obsidian_Ent[S] Chris Avellone adds: One thing I'd say is while it may seem that some franchise holders are restrictive, if you go into the developer relationship aware of the "bookends" at the outset, it's not hard to craft an interesting powerful story - in fact, it makes it an interesting challenge, and one thing I've liked from working on multiple franchises is each one has challenged me to think about stories and characters in different ways, which only helps the craft.

]Tnbred Part of what really makes BG2 the best RPG so far is the kind of power you end up getting toward the end of the game. I used to play spell casters and really enjoyed time stop spells and other kind of level 9 Spells. Will we be able to reach such power for project Eternity ? Are we to expect seeing a Time Stop spell again ? Thank you for a great project and a great idea. You have my money ! Obsidian_Ent[S] JESawyer: We'll have to see where Project Eternity winds up. We want to leave room to grow, after all. I think making the player feel relative power growth is important, though, whether we're talking about getting Fireball in Pool of Radiance or Time Stop in BG2. I think that people enjoy hitting those late-game points where some really powerful options open up. As long as those options don't make late-game challenges irrelevant, it's nice to go back to earlier encounter styles and just wipe the floor with everyone that previously gave you grief.

Nosferax Right, sometimes in New Vegas the speech (or speak?) skill did feel like an instant win button. Obsidian_Ent[S] Chris Avellone glances furitively around: Yeah, there were two points where it broke convention because I felt it needed to - one was with Lanius, and the second was with Ulysses. If you kept spamming the Speech button and choosing the first option without really listening to what they were saying, you'd end up screwing yourself. The reason I don't feel good about that is because that wasn't the precedent set with other conversations, so I don't know if I'd do it again if I had the chance. But in Project: Eternity, I definitely want to do this. People who don't care about dialogue shouldn't take Speech skills anyway - those that do should have fun exploring the conversation and seeing what they can take away from it.

ReverendBizarre Can you share any (minor) details on the magic system for the game? Obsidian_Ent[S] JESawyer: We haven't developed the systems in detail, but wizard and priest magic may feel similar to their A/D&D counterparts, with the change that low-level powers will return after (sometimes during) battles without requiring the need to rest. Ciphers and chanters abilities will likely feel much different, both in flavor and in their mechanics.

goldenhearted This one piece of art from Project Eternity had me intrigued since it gives of a Lovecraftian vibe. So I might as well ask, will there be quests, story elements and the like that have Lovecraftian influences? Because the idea of exploring PE's world and running into some cosmic horror (or something similar) **** makes me excited. Obsidian_Ent[S] JESawyer: I don't think we're necessarily going FULL LOVECRAFT, but I do want the dark and scary places of Project Eternity to feel appropriately terror-inducing, even from an isometric perspective. Eír Glanfath's ruins are supposed to contain some scary stuff, so we don't want the player to yawn when they kick open the door and face Skeleton #242.

]anexanhume Hi guys! May seem like a silly question, but do you have any stretch goals in mind beyond 3.5M if it really takes off, or is that the final one? Also, are you guys totally against the idea of a console port if PC is still the lead platform? BTW, I started at $20 and worked my way up to $62, so good job on adding stuff people want. Obsidian_Ent[S] Chris Avellone smiles: Thanks for upping the amounts, glad to see the work for the tiers is paying off. Most of the kudos are to Adam and Feargus, they're constantly examining the forums for new potential things people may want and finding a way to incorporate them.

]anexanhume Hi guys! May seem like a silly question, but do you have any stretch goals in mind beyond 3.5M if it really takes off, or is that the final one? Also, are you guys totally against the idea of a console port if PC is still the lead platform? BTW, I started at $20 and worked my way up to $62, so good job on adding stuff people want. Obsidian_EntS Chris Avellone glances at Adam for a second, then continues: We're almost constantly evaluating and designing new stretch goals. The pacing and amount of funding has demanded it. We have no plans for a console port, we want to focus on the PC (and Mac and Linux). Not doing a console title has been freeing in a lot of respects for designing this game, and we don't want to limit that freedom.

]Aravilar What are your plans concerning the loot system of the game? Personally, I loved the Baldur's Gate approach of items beeing set in one specific location of the game/ with certain characters. It motivates to explore every corner of the game and once you figured everything out gave you the experience of really knowing the world. Random loot should be very limited imho. Obsidian_Ent[S] JESawyer: We will rely more on placed loot than randomized loot. The IWD games had a huge amount of unique items and most of those were hand-placed (e.g. Pale Justice). I like writing the unique histories of those items, anyway. There might be a tiny amount of randomization, but that will likely happen at that the individual gear level. E.g. 5 bandits are placed on a map. When the map loads, each will randomly be given a pair of shortswords, a longsword and shield, or a bigass mace.

delias_ I've seen a lot of designers say that they've enjoyed working within the confines of another world. However, in the case of giants like LucasArts and Hasbro/WoTC, there's an almost censorship-level restriction of where you can take a story. While we already know from KOTOR 2 that this restriction can be fun from a writing perspective, from a world-building perspective, I imagine it will be an interesting task to create locations/lore/history that you can turn on its head based on characters' preconceptions (and to which the audience does not have any reference). Since everything in P:E is essentially a new design, I imagine you guys would have to work in a way that you're having to continually outsmart yourselves (and your creations). Obsidian_Ent[S] Chris Avellone pontificates: I feel creating a world (and slang and culture) often is just as time-consuming as researching someone else's franchise (for example, Star Wars required a lot of research into the expanded universe, not just to become familiar with it, but to understand what stories and elements had already been told). As such, we only had 5-6 comments on our story from LucasArts over the whole course of the project because we'd done our due diligence. And we don't work on franchises because we don't have our own ideas, it's just the way things have shaken out. I feel we've had opportunities to examine those franchises in new ways that players appreciate (K2 and Mask of the Betrayer).

[–]hideo__kuze Nice. I like the idea of the worshiped deity affecting the spell list. Is there a deity of death? Necro magic for the win. Obsidian_Ent[S] JESawyer: There's a little bit about DEATH in today's update.

[–]Justhammer So I just watched a video on Mecanim. Wow! The characters have the potential to look great! Now your animation and art teams have their work cut out for them! Obsidian_Ent[S] JESawyer: It's nice that Mecanim apparently makes certain things (like retargeting animations) much easier. Having to port animations across all of the different race/sex combinations is typically a pain. Mecanim handles retargeting pretty easily.

Feldoth This is really good to hear, that aspect of skills has always bugged me. What about people simply acting differently if you have a high skill in (for example) intimidate? Rather than giving you specific "intimidate" dialog choices the NPCs just react to you as though you are intimidating. Obsidian_Ent[S] Chris Avellone thinks: We sometimes would assume auto-reactions based on perks and traits, although we feel it's more fair to a player to choose when and where they want to flex their mental muscles. Even someone with Terrifying Presence may not be having a terrifying day or want to role-play that at the moment. Race reactions and more obivous elements (like in Fallout, people would react to what you were wearing), I feel clicks more with a player and is fine.

Borskey How would you guys feel about fans volunteering their time to help with the development of the game? 3.5M isn't much of a budget these days, and you've got to do a lot with that. One of the things that has always amazed me is that fans are willing to put weeks of work into making something for a game that they love: fan translations, mods, etc. So I'm sure that some people would be more than happy to help translate Project Eternity into a language for free- so long as they get credit and get a sneak peek at the game. And as for modders: I'm sure you've noticed some of the great improvements players have made for your games. For example, when Adam was streaming Icewind Dale 2, he used some Gibberlings 3 mods. Another example- the popular Fallout 3 mod "Weapon Mod Kits" was re-made by you guys and included into New Vegas. It seems to me that modders often come up with great tweaks that improve gameplay, or design whole new areas. One of your stretch goals was a Player House- why bother spending money developing that when there are hundreds of people out there who will do that for free? I think it would be great if you have mod toolkits available during beta, and then you keep an eye out on which mods the beta testers seem to like the most- and consider incorporating those (perhaps after tweaking them yourself) into the final game. Even if you decide against incorporating anything, the fact that established mods will be available at release will make it a better game. Games like New Vegas get better with age (at least on the PC). Simply making resources available to modders during beta will give Project Eternity a big head start without you having to do any work vetting and debugging their creations. Obsidian_Ent[S] Tim Cain: we have been contacted by several fans already about the possibility of translating the game into their native language, and we will talk to them about the seriousness and breadth of their offer (it's a big deal to make the translations correct and complete). As for mods, we like modding and want to support it as much as we can. We are looking into how to make data formats available, along with tools, if we can.

Greenei How are you going to handle reactions from the world on actions of the Player (like thievery, violence and murder) or events in the world itself? Will there be some kind of legal system? Will NPC remember how you treated them and will there be ways to get on a good branch with them again? Will NPCs be reflective of what's going on in the world and have dialogue about it? jesawyer We haven't discussed reactions to criminal acts, but we'd like there to be good reactivity to those events. For reputation, we will be using a modified version of the system found in F:NV, which allowed for a broad spectrum of reactions that could shift over time. Not having to worry about full voice acting means we can have even more reactions to player actions from NPCs throughout the world. Overall, this is pretty important to us so we will support it as much as we can. Obsidian_Ent[S] Chris Avellone adds: Josh is right (I almost wrote "write" there). It's often the VO budget, not the will of the designers that limits the amount of reactivity text between NPCs in an area. As an example, the reactivity text in Fallout 2 I felt was far more true to an RPG than other games I've worked on because it was much easier pipeline-wise to implement it and while it wasn't free, it was definitely FAR less expensive than if someone had had to voice it. Also, it was easier to edit.

I'm trying to avoid the 'really' stupid ones.

cornerbash What would your dream development project be? As in, if you weren't constrained by budget, time or technology, what would be the thing you'd produce? Obsidian_Ent[S] JESawyer: Personally, there are two settings/ideas I'd like to explore. One is a setting called Antebellum that is an alternate Earth stuck in the late 19th century at the outbreak of the Civil War after spirit armies swarm over the American South, Ireland, India, and a variety of other places. I'd mostly like to explore the idea of different power groups (e.g. slave owners and slaves) being paralyzed by inaction due to the thread of reactive spirit groups coming to the defense of any party being victimized. The other game I've wanted to make for a long time is one in which you play a player-defined St. George in the 3rd century Near East who enters a land terrorized by the Dragon. All conversation is abstracted into incomprehensible foreign language and the entire game looks like it is a moving Greek Orthodox icon painted on wood and plaster. As George suffers in the world, the icon fades, cracks, and chips away over time. I'd want it to be more about mood, atmosphere, and subtle body language/character interaction than a scripted narrative and fierce gameplay.

]IceStorm007 - How are you going to sign 1750+ fysical boxes and are you indeed signing the boxes themself or some inlay? And I have to thank you for making a CE worthy of the name! Obsidian_Ent[S] Chris Avellone responds with a terrified expression: I have no idea except that IT WILL GET DONE. I believe we'd be signing them ourselves. Expecting hand cramps for a month.

Puistokemisti I play these games mostly to dress up my characters like beautiful princesses. How fabulous dresses, armors and hats will I be able to find and equip? Obsidian_Ent[S] Tim Cain: I like lots of variety in armor and clothes as well, so I'll ask Rob to make you lots of them! In the meantime, here is some Princess Chocolate to avoid: http://chocolateihav...chocolate-ever/

Enforcer84 Are you the same Chris Avellone who used to do Stick Figure Theater in Champions books? If so, hi! If not, sorry bout that, but Hi! Obsidian_Ent[S]e has a nostalgia attack: Yes, and if you want to see more, they're on Twitter (@chrisavellone), too. I doodle on everything when I get restless. Or I'm on the phone. Or having beers and I've brought my sketchbook. I believe I did all the RPG Codex stick figure style trolls while intoxicated. Um, I mean SOBER. Yes, SOBER. And professional.

sacklunch What was the first or most impact-full RPG experience you ever had? Obsidian_Ent[S] Chris Avellone thinks: For me it was Fallout 1, when I first started talking to someone and realized that even the dialogues would shift depending on my character build. It changed how I approached the dialogue in Torment, for certain. I would add Ultima Underworld, Wasteland 1, and Chronotrigger to this list as well. For Ultima Underworld, there were so many quests and twists that I feel have never been replicated (at the end game, the main guy I'd come to for help had NO IDEA how to defeat the badguy and asked ME what I thought we could do - awesome), Wasteland 1 (proof that game mechanics in the right context can make amazing moments, like going through Finster's Android Brain and fighting adversaries with your IQ skill), and Chronotrigger for the brave story choices they took and reactivity to that (no spoilers). I have a whole bunch of games I consider to be "design document" games because they do a lot of design elements so well - Dead Space and System Shock 2 are among them.

MatSuta How do you feel about Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition? Obsidian_Ent[S] Tim Cain: I am looking forward to it, but I think I will have to buy a new tablet, since I have an original iPad.

tentomasz Hey, first of all: thanks for opening paypal option. Otherwise I wouldnt be able to support you. Could you please elaborate as much as you can about P:E's story? I guess it's not only me who's hoping it will be the most important part of the game. Please bring back this thrill I could experience during the good old days where it wasn't all about "expand your group, kill the finall boss, boom, end of the story". I'm reaaaaaally hoping for something I will be telling about long after I'll be done with P:E. Obsidian_Ent[S] JESawyer: We don't want to spoil the story, especially since we're still in pre-production! The story will be a big focus for us, especially allowing players to choose their own way through the story that makes sense for the characters they want to play. When you've finished the story, we want you to feel like you had to make a lot of difficult choices and that the world changed because of it -- both in major and minor ways.