ImRhoven

*sigh* No, it really wasn't. My PC's are always as clean as they can be, I make sure of that. Besides I went through 3 PCs in the time period spanning my attempts at playing NWN2 (the one I had 6 years ago, an upgrade from that one, and my current 2 year old one). The first time I played it, just after release, I never even got out of the tutorial area because the codger that gave you the final quest wouldn't recognize the quest item you had to get from the dungeon (silver shard or something?) while it was plainly sitting in my inventory. I remember starting completely over 3 times, before giving up until a couple of patches had released. The final time I tried it (2010 somewhere) I had reached the Crossroads keep part, despite the game corrupting all my save games on me twice, (I managed to salvage them after some trolling on the internet for solutions), but I finally gave up after my save games getting corrupted a third time and my found solution failing to work. In between those attempts there were 2-3 more that stalled at various places in the game, either due to corrupted save games or me getting fed up with the CTD's and breaking quests and losing interest. The most hilarious bug was, when I loaded my save game after a CTD and noticed that the annoying gnomish bard(?) fellow, who was in my party at the time of the crash, had somehow merged with his familiar (weasel?) into a single entity. His portrait was the weasel's, the stats were the bard's, the skills were a mix of both, and his AI had gone completely unresponsive. I had to reload an older save and restart from there to fix it. KotoR2 actually had most of it's crashing stuff fixed for me by the latest patch, though I will always remember that one planet being unplayable for a good while because of the flying manta ray slowing my frame rate to a crawl every time he got in frame (which was always), and the horribly annoying sound of a lightsaber being drawn getting stuck on infinite loop at random times. And the game's still a horrible mess in the endgame, that was such a let down. (and, again, I'm aware that might not've been entirely OE's fault, but it's still their name on the box.) Anyway, whether you had any problems or not is irrelevant, I know people who had plenty of problems, both with NWN2 and KotoR2, (my brothers, a friend, I can get none of them to pledge to PE, I wonder why?) though admittedly not as much as me, and the internet, if you care to look, is filled with people having problems with various OE games. So, I'm honestly glad for you that you could enjoy your games without problems, but you can keep your condescension to yourself, thank you. I'm here now though, I pledged way more than I should have, and all I'm asking is for OE to take their time and properly polish their game before releasing it.

Personally, I'm pretty confident that OE can pull of the awesome story, dialogue and an original and varied setting. Those are their strong points, after all. My "must-be" would be this: It must be a whole lot less buggy than some other Obsidian titles. And I don't mean the minor things, but CTD's every 15-30 minutes, enormously annoying looping sound files, slow-your-top-of-the-line-gaming-pc-to-a-crawl graphic glitches, crucial quest items not spawning (and reloads not helping), critical NPC's getting stuck in an AI loop or just disappearing, save game corruption (over and over again) and other such niceties. Yes, I've had all of those, and I've only played 2 of Obsidian's games (KotoR2&NWN2)*, never felt to urge to try another for some reason ... Untill now. (I did try out F: NV at a friends', but it crashed at the first loading screen, so I was all "hell no, I'm not doing this again.") Worst part is that I loved those games and they could've been among my favorites if not for their half finished states. So please, please, please Obsidian, don't release PE before it's finished! *Yes, I'm aware that those games' horrible state at release is commonly blamed on their publishers pushing for a premature release, and the fact they're going without a publisher for PE is what brought me over the line to pledge a non-trivial amount of money on this project, but it's still Obsidian's name on those boxes. And my last attempt at NWN2 was over 4 years after release (so with a bunch of patches), and it STILL corrupted all my save games.

Woot! Thanks for expansion add-on! That's an extra $20 for you! Now I can get the Collector's Edition AND the expansion! $250 really was too much for me to upgrade to. Edit: forgot to ask: Is that T-shirt design final? Or will "Project Eternity" be replaced with whatever ends up being the actual name of the game?

I have no problems with Steam, either morally or technically, I have a good deal of games on there. They have some nice offers from time to time and as far as mandatory platforms go they're rather unintrusive and reliable, once you've registered/downloaded your game you can play offline if you want. They have nice game management features, patches are automatically applied and they have good support for multiplayer games (by which I mean L4D, cause I don't really play other multiplayer games >.>). They have a large and vibrant community (with all the good and bad that comes with large gaming communities) so I've you're a very social gamer you can get that too (I'm not). Their mod support is very userfriendly and hassle free too (for more complex mods that need extra hacks and stuff you still have to go around steam with 3rd party programs though). I also like Valve as a company, so I don't mind supporting them. That being said, I'm getting PE on GOG. I like the service they offer, and while I like Valve, I love CD Projekt and their anti-DRM, consumer-friendly mentality.

Actually, $100.000 (5 zeros not 6) isn't that much for 1.5 years worth of pay and expenses.

1. "The Governator" does over the top, brainless action flicks, PE is an immersive, story driven RPG. 2. The IE games weren't about "power fantasies", and since PE is a game built on their foundation neither should it be. There're plenty of games on the market that deliver that already if that's what you want. 3. You're comparing some modern soldiers firing from a safe high ground position with long range weaponry, to chainmail bikinis ... really? You also saw why what those guys did is a bad idea (the hot casing dropping in his shoe, the burns on his uncovered legs from the casings, in case you missed it.)

I would, but never got past the basic NWN2 game cause it kept corrupting my save games. I gave up after the fifth attempt (which was after the last patch). Spent good money on that collectors edition too.

now, what's the point of tiers below $165? We help to finance the project, yet we have to pay for the expansion. Without backers there would be no game, thus no expansion...I might as well cancel my pledge and wait for the "GOTY" edition, I don't want to own/pay for half a game. Would you call Baldur's Gate 2 half a game because it didn't ship with the throne of Bhaal expansion?

The old IE games, and by extension PE are NOT exactly like Dragon Age: Origins. Trust me, I've played both. And the reason they are not alike is because Dragon Age was developed for multiple platforms. DA:O is a diluted version of the IE games. From the combat system to the controls to the inventory system, everything was simplified in order to be playable with a console controller. (I'm blaming the lack of depth and the numerous filler quests on it being an AAA title in general, and not just a console release, and thus needing full voice work and high-end 3D graphics for everything being prohibitively expensive and cutting into the amount of content created.) This is exactly what Obsidian wants to avoid for PE.

honestly I'm kind of stuck, I'd love the physical goodies as well....I don't know what to do. And yes I'd instantly jump on a $175 - $180 tier that removed this dilemma. Me too. Hell, I'd jump on a 175-180$ tier that was just 140$ + Expansion. While Wasteland 2 is a nice bonus and all, I'm okay with not getting it right now. I'm in the same position. $250 +shipping is just too much for me, but I might be able to squeeze out a total of $200.

Re: Expansion pack. It was clear from near the beginning that OE sought to turn PE into a franchise with expansions and sequels. Planning an expansion pack you're going to do anyway from the beginning so it can be integrated into the greater world and story, instead of making it feel wedged in is just the proper way to go about things. I'm really failing to see why people are so up in arms about this. Re: New tiers and rewards. I'm slightly annoyed. My current pledge is at 160 (140+20 for shipping). I blew the rest of this years gaming budget, and then some, on this PE thing. It's easily the highest amount of money I ever spent on a single piece of entertainment. It's also the very first time I ever did anything resembling a pre-order for a game, because I don't buy games without consulting a number of reviews from places I trust. And OE is a company that has seriously let me down before, despite those reviews. Actually I once swore to never give them my money again. And I haven't, until now. I want this project to succeed that much. This means that I'm $5 away from the Wasteland 2 and expansion rewards. I could squeeze out another $5. But I want the box and the map, I like physical things to touch and rummage through and look pretty on my shelves. But I really can't justify to upgrade to the $250 (+20) tier. So I'm at a dilemma, but I think the box is going to win out, so I'll stay at my current pledge. Now I know I'm not entitled to anything here (well except a proper game that does it best to fulfill the promises OE made of course, I did pledge for that after all), so I'm not asking for the expansion and Wasteland2 to be dropped to the $140 tier, but I would appreciate an option were I can get access to both the collectors edition and the expansion for something between $165 and $200. That way I get at least a feasible option that I might talk myself into. It appears that there are more people feeling this way, so I thought I'd add my voice and reasoning to the chorus.

I'm pretty sure Throne of Bhaal was planned during the concept stages of Baldur's Gate 2. That's all that needs to be said on this topic imo.

I'm not 's worlds biggest Facebook fan. But ignoring it's enormous potential for spreading the word about this project, just so a certain demographic can try to pretend it's not there, is just dumb. Social networking is here, it's part of the world and it doesn't look like it's going away. You don't have to participate, or even like it, but the elitist pride for this whole "get off ma lawn!" attitude some people keep insisting on makes me roll my eyes every time I come across it. Just deal with it. (I have an account, and that's about the extent to which I use it. I had to generate a new password so I could log in to 'Like' the Obsidian page, cause I haven't got a clue what my old one was ...) And I fail to see how making plans for the future of the PE IP and getting incentives so people will pledge more money are anything but "focusing on things that will expand PE."

That will just result in me getting a sandwich or walking the dog while I wait for the 16 hours to go by so I can actually get some use out of my mages at a dungeon boss fight. That's not really great game design.

Actually the donations per day have been in the same ballpark since the first week or so. PayPal doesn't seem to have affected it at all. The total PayPal donations hadn't reached 20k yesterday.

I'm in the hate it camp, but at the same time something like a non-combat pet falls under the "digital goodies", rather than "content" category for me. So that doesn't bother me as much. Actual usable ingame items being made exclusive bother me more, but in this special case of backers actually putting money up front in good fate and it being available for every backer (that pledges enough for a copy) I'm not that fussed either. An exclusive item at, say, $100 would annoy me greatly, even though I'm past that level myself.

That's a great interview, from both of them. A very sincere and natural feel to it. I'm all for the way that magic system works too. Resting every 5 minutes in the middle of a dungeon or fortress or whatever, always seemed ridiculous to me, so I never did. Which means that either my casters were without spells halfway through the dungeon, or I never actually used any of the more powerful ones, hanging on until I really needed.

I have to go with BG2. Free-roam is nice and all, but the sheer quality of the zones, both in content and in details, from BG2 outshines those of BG1 by a margin. I'd rather PE focus on less awesome content than lots of okay content.

That really would be the dumbest thing they could do. There really is no reason to make the disc necessary, so I see no reason why they would. Needing a disc to play is a lot more annoying than needing Steam. And I like physical copies.

You wouldn't need a GoG account either way. The only thing GoG requires an account for is making a purchase. After you download the game it's on your pc and you can do with it whatever you want. That's the good thing about GoG, it's completely DRM free.

The first thing that came to mind when I saw that concept art was this: http://hyperboleanda...everything.html Not sure that's a good or a bad thing.

Quite like the new logo. It's better than a generic Ouroboros, which struck me as a place holder anyway, and for some reason it invokes the feeling of the old IE games logos, the one from Baldur's Gate 2 specifically.

This says it all really. The item and loot system was pretty weak too. I disliked the tiered item system and I really disliked the way simple guards and thugs were dropping supposedly superrare, superexpensive dragonbone items near the end game, which is a definitive point against random loot drops. The expansion (which I never ended up finishing now that I think about it) made this worse by adding extra tiers on top making your items of legend and ultimate power from the original game completely obsolete. Stuff like that works in a hack&slash grindfest like Diablo, but not in the sort of game DA:O was supposed to be and PE, hopefully, will be.

Nice update. I like your ideas for the combat system. You're right about the imbalance between mages and fighters in the IE games. I like your idea of giving mages some smalltime spells to cast that never run out. It's at the least more interesting than just having them stand there throwing slingbullets that never hit anyway. To bad about hearing that animations are a limiting factor in combat, but I know that this is the case for most games, especially those on a small budget like PE. So it's a good call to spend funds on other things than fringe situations in combat. As for the pet: It would be nice if this would be a creature that would only exist in the world of PE, rather than simply, say, a dog or an imp.

Despite being Dutch I couldn't care less about a Dutch translation. The very few (mature) games that actually get a Dutch version had always completely dreadful translations done by people who knew absolutely nothing about the game in question which resulted in the wrong words being picked for words with more than one meaning and loads of context getting lost, humor completely missing the mark and other abominations. Not to mention the horrid voice acting (I'm looking at you specifically Black&White *shudder*). I'll take the original English version, thanks.