YourVoiceisAmbrosia

The fact that this is considered "gaming journalism" is terrifying. Regarding the OP, it doesn't seem like PE is going to aim to be frustrating. There are a ton of options that allow you to modify difficulty to suit your needs. The stamina bar is basically like a second health bar that goes down at a faster rate than your first, and can be recovered, while your first goes down at a slower rate, but can't really be recovered except for resting. Permanent death and few to no options for resurrection doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me. Lore wise, it makes sense that resurrection is difficult, and it also makes death have meaning. Besides, if you've played IE games before resurrecting dead party members was annoying and I'd rather just reload a save.

He said "Good morning America and the rest of the world" because he lives in America, and it's morning for him. If someone from Germany said "Good morning Germany" that would make sense as well. Of all the things to over analyze, it has to be the way he opens with an update video?

Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

As long as it's not something like "Bring me 10 rat tails, then I'll give you gold" or "Kill 20 orcs" or something like that, then I'm fine.

Females having sexually revealing or attractive outfits isn't necessarily sexist. There are women who think other women wearing sexually revealing clothing is empowering in a sense, because it means that women are given full control and freedom to wear whatever they want and do whatever they want with their own bodies. Now, such outfits being practical in, say, a combat situation is a completely different story.

How exactly does reincarnation work? If someone needs to die in order to have their soul pass into new life, wouldn't that render population growth stagnant? Or do plants and animals also have souls? Can souls be created or destroyed?

Actually, if that's how souls work that brings up some questions. Wouldn't that basically mean that global population growth is stagnant? For new life to successfully be born, someone needs to die so the soul can pass to it. Unless souls can somehow be created and/or destroyed? Or unless souls can also include plants or animals? Maybe there's a massive pool of souls stored in the underworld or something, and every time someone dies, the soul is added to that pool, whereas every time someone is born, a soul is picked at random from the pool, or with divine intervention, and is sent to the new life. Then the complication, I suppose, would be being able to find and retrieve the soul from the underworld and bring it back to the original body.

Well what makes resurrection complicated in PE is that there is a natural cycle when it comes to souls, sort of like reincarnation. I'm guessing what happens is once someone dies, their soul leaves their body and occupies new life. However, to resurrect someone perfectly, as in not undead, you'd basically have to drag the soul back and place it back into the person you are resurrecting, either killing the new potential life that was supposed to have the soul or turning it into undead. So yeah, I'm guessing there probably is a "sacrifice life to bring it back" sort of deal, although I don't know if that's exactly how souls work.

As a "what-if" scenario, that depends. There are ups and downs to a standard publisher model. For one, the funding might help a lot in improving many aspects on the game. On the flip-side, however, publishers also want profit, so they're going to be looking at what seems to appeal to the mass market. This means publishers may want to shoehorn things more fit for, say, the Call of Duty audience into the game. This also means publishers may demand for strict deadlines, giving developers less time to work, do QA, and lead to more cut content. Additionally, increased funding doesn't necessarily mean it will improve the quality of the game. The money may go more into other things, like marketing, voice work, etc. instead of actual content. This is basically what happened to Dragon Age 2. In the end, it really depends on how much creative control Obsidian would have in this case.

Obsidian has been pretty good about handling mature content in their previous games. I think what they mean is that they're tackling more serious, realistic issues that can be applied to real life, like difficult and complex moral conundrums, conflicting cultures, etc.

4 million isn't a particularly large budget, but I think it's sufficient to pull off what Obsidian wants to do. AAA games nowadays are getting expensive, but I think it's because budgeting is leaning more towards marketing and cinematics, both of which can take an considerable amount of funding. Marketing for PE has either generally been word-of-mouth or unpaid, and cinematics, from what I understand, will be limited, considering that Obsidian is aiming for a genre of games that is generally known for limited voice acting, little to no cut scenes, and with a much smaller emphasis on 3D modeling and graphics compared to games today. As such, while PE does not have the budget of a AAA game, in the end I don't think it really needs it either.

Project Eternity definitely needs to be influenced by Mass Effect 3, because of its well-written, consistent plot and intricate, complex rpg mechanics.

We haven't seen any specifics in terms of gameplay, but from what the devs say, yeah, that's pretty much what they're shooting for. Except it's not really a matter of being a "good guy who saves kittens" or a "diabolical evil mastermind that kills children." It's more of an evaluation of individual values and beliefs that conflict with one another, values and beliefs that may be perceived as "good" or "evil" relative to both the societies in the game and our own. That's not to say, of course, there wouldn't be choices that would, for the majority, be widely perceived as good or evil, it just means that the majority of choices won't necessarily be clear cut.

Dragon Age 2, because of its artistic integrity and deep choices and consequences.

I think the people at Obsidian are more than fully aware that virtually anything posted on the Internet needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

Honestly, I'd rather not have romances. A lot of them tend to be cheesy, there's a tendency to limit character interaction when romance is a significant focus, and it often attracts particularly vocal and unruly fanbases.

A dungeon can be made special or especially challenging without having to remove an exit. It makes even less sense for the creator of the building to make less exits if it is underground. You mentioned an escape tunnel, in addition to the path from the entrance. That's two ways of leaving. What if both tunnels collapse? The setting of PE has implied, although not confirmed, that there is teleportation magic to some degree. If this is the case, why wouldn't the builder take advantage of this fact when building a 14 level estate? There's a fine line between challenging and frustrating. In the case of the mega dungeon, again, as I've stated it depends if there are spikes in difficulties when it comes to encounters, if resources and supplies are especially lacking, etc. If encounters have a significant spike in difficulty in later levels, and if resources are hard to find in the dungeon, a hidden exit half way is a perfectly reasonable trade off from my perspective. It's not as if someone building a home would conveniently keep containers with arrows, potions, or other dungeon-crawling necessities every two floors.

Certainly. However, allowing you to leave a dungeon when you're halfway through does not fit the definition of "too much freedom.". I think you're kinda getting a bit over zealous with your argument here. To me, it most certainly does fit that definition. I mean really, this is supposed to be a monstrosity of a dungeon, and people want to waltz in and out at leisure to sell loot? Come on... The dungeon was designed to be the abode of an individual, Od Nua, yes? If so, I find it equally hard to believe that someone with the knowledge and expertise to build an intricate, complex and detailed estate scaling 14 floors would not consider having at least one additional exit aside from the entrance, whether it be for convenience or in the case of an emergency.

When people end up using it in excess, yes. And I think Chris Avellone would agree with that. That's not really an issue in design, though, that's more of an issue on how someone plays the game. The same can be argued for any game that allows you to save anywhere, anytime. For example, in Civilization IV I could, technically, save after each and every single turn if I wanted to. The game isn't demanding I do, nor does its mechanics steer me in the direction of doing so in order to succeed, it is merely a possible option I could take if that is how I want to play it. If you really wanted to "fix" or prevent excess saving, you would want to opt for uncommon save points, and that has its design issues as well.

Well, for me it depends on the design of the dungeon. Would resources be scarce to scavenge/obtain in the dungeon itself? For example, if someone was to have an archer who has limited ammunition, would he/she be able to find more and get by within the dungeon somehow, even if it isn't necessarily in abundance or from a vendor? If the answer is yes, I wouldn't mind the dungeon not having an exit or a merchant or what have you. However, if the answer is no, I would like a secret exit or two that would require some effort to attain. 14-15 levels is very long for a dungeon; it could be extremely hard to be able to prepare adequately for it, especially if not much is known about it. Plus, this isn't including the possibility of a particularly hard encounter towards the end, when the party has expended a great deal of resources in order to reach that point. A hidden exit at the halfway point, say level 7, and maybe another near the end wouldn't hurt too much in my eyes, especially if there is a considerable spike in difficulty near the end as opposed to the beginning.

Paypal backers were close to reaching 2500 too, weren't they? That means that if there is a surge of backers within the final hours, there is a chance of actually having 13 levels of the dungeon

This is actually pretty interesting given the lore surrounding necromancy that was recently revealed. It seems that souls work in a natural cycle, sort of akin to reincarnation, with souls moving on with the advent of death and birth. Necromancy seems to be an attempt to defy or alter this natural cycle, and explore its mechanics. Liches are essentially ambitious wizards or sorcerers that seek immortality, and do so by preserving their soul within a magical phylactery and by making their body undead. Thus, they are able to have an unlimited pursuit of knowledge; with their humanity as their price, and can defy this natural cycle, essentially exploiting a loophole in the natural order. It can certainly make for some interesting characters, at the very least.

Obsidian seems to be asking for suggestions https://twitter.com/...116614715748352

3.0 mil also looks pretty far from 2.8. I'm guessing if it is a stretch goal, it would probably be 3.7 mil, although we'll have to wait and see what's in store. Perhaps it will be liches?