Frisk

No matter which language translations Obsidian will provide/support, there will always be players who will want the game translated to their "obscure" language. So, I wonder if Obsidian will either accept/allow volunteer community translations to those languages, or make it possible for modders to add additional languages somehow. If that's the case, I might volunteer to do the translation for my country - there is no chance if will make any business sense, but it would be a nice project.

If someone wants to play the game with an "optimized" character, doing maximum damage - fine....let him. If someone wants to do a speed run, finising the game in as short time as possible - fine ... let him. If someone wants to play the game with just a single char, no companions - fine ... let him. If someone wants to play the game naked - fine ... let him. Who cares? Why should anyone be concerned with how anyone else wants to play, as long as the player has fun doing things his (or her) way? Just provide some settings that allow players to adjust the difficulty level (and provide the modding community with the info it needs to offer more options). Then just let people have fun their way....it's as simple as that.

Well, in my own case I am fine - I have a fiber-optic connection to my house, and anyhow, I'm getting the boxed (collector's) version as well - no, my concern is with people around the world who may not be able to download, say, a 100GB game. Maybe this is a non-issue - maybe the number of those people will be insignificant 18 months from now, but I am pretty sure that today it would be a real issue for some. (Having said that, I really, really doubt the game will be 100GB - maybe 30-40GB would be my guess.) Anyhow, I guess Obsidian will be able to give a size estimate at some point next year, but for now this discussion is kind-of pointless.

Well, what about the poor guys who only download the game...perhaps over a slow link? By the way, does anyone know what the largest PC game to day is...and how big it is (in GBs, excluding expansions and optional "extras", just the core game) ?

Well, I guess we will see a number of sketches and concept art posted in updates over the next few months, but beyond that....maybe one extra CD like that included in the boxed collector's edition? I'm not sure if it is feasible to make it available in-game...I think it would just lead to arguing on the boards .."NPC X looked much better in the original sketch!".."No!".."Yes!".

Regarding the "Good morning, America" comments, it is interesting to note that in one of the polls here in the forums, the majority of those who answered were located in Europe.....so maybe it should have been "Good morning, Europe (and the rest of the world)"

I would like to get a bug-free game in April 2014, but after 25 years in the software industry I do not trust any schedule estimates this early in the process - not even my own. My guess is that it will get delayed a few months - say, September 2014.

Well, I am probably underestimating things a bit - I revised my calculations somewhat, and here is what I came up with. Let's start with a typical area - something like this (which was posted in a different thread by D3xter: This is a 3840x2880 full area from IWD. Now, PE will have higher resolution areas .... so lets say that a comparable area in PE would be 10860x8140, which means around 8 times more pixels. Fair enough? Now, this would mean 88,400,400 pixels. with 24-bit colours+alpha channel , the uncompressed size would be 336MB. It should be possible to compress that fairly easily down to 100MB or so ... and with lossy compression down to 45MB or so. Let's stick with 100MB for the (static) background per area for now. (Actually, to handle occlusions and such, it might actually be implemented in layers, but I'm ignoring that for now.) The background is not entirely static - they have at least promised moving water and such, so, let's add 50% for that. So, the background for an average area might be 150MB. Now, if you want to do fancy things with dynamic lighting and shadows, my numbers will be way off, but again - let's ignore that for now. So, how many areas will the game have? Here I can only make wild guesses, but let's assume the "big cities" will each consist of 9 areas like my example, the megadungeon will have 15 areas, and there will be 40 other areas, for a total of 73 maps - and at 150 MB per map, that turns out as 11GB. Unreasonable? I don't think so.

I did some quick calculations, based on wild guesses about the size and number of areas, overhead required for animated objects and so on. What I came up with was an estimate of 6-10GB for the backgrounds. For animated objects (characters, monsters and such) you need the usual textures and such, but they would be smaller. Still, overall we might be looking at a total game size of 15GB or so. That's still a reasonable size to fit on a set of DVDs.

I would not expect an immense variety of monsters in the game....but I really hope to see some "different" ones - different from those seen in virtually every other game, that is. However, given the large variety of D&D creatures, it may be a but hard to come up with something truly original.

Multi-screen...uhm, maybe. Multi-touch - just what does that add to the gaming experience? I cannot think of anything.

I just thought of something that would be really, really cool. We don't yet know what the limits of modding will be - but if I had an NPC "of my own" in the game, I would be tempted to expand its role, so to speak - create a plor, or a quest around that NPC to make it more memorable. Now if you had a group of people willing to cooperate on a project like that, the community might be able to create an entire story arch, with multiple quests involving their own NPCs.

While stuff like "finishing moves" may be expected in a combat-oriented game, I really don't consider it important in a story-focused RPG. Sure, if they have the time and resources to add it, fine....but personally I would prefer their resources to be allocated elsewhere.

Of course, a seemingly simple fetch quest may turn out to be anything but simple - it may start a chain of quests, and only a long time later will you actually be able to return to the original quest giver with the item you went after in the first place...and at that time you might even discover that the whole chain was planned from the beginning by a manipulative NPC. .

I really, really don't see how repeatable quests would improve my game experience. Having said that, there are some sorts of "semi-repeatable" quests that are fine...."In order to prove your worth, you must defeat the three bandit groups of the area"....so I have three similar tasks, but with slight strategic and tactical differences. That's fine.

I was wondering about the supposed ability of souls to coexist with other souls in the same body. "Real world" religions that include a belief in reincarnation do not have that - it is always "one soul, one body", as far as I know. It is an interesting idea - and maybe some religion has come up with it as an explanation for multiple personality disorders, but as I said, I have not heard of that. The closest thing I can think of is the Body Thetan concept in Scientology - which basically involves unwanted extra "souls" attaching themselves to a human "meat body" - and those body thetans are in a sense damaged because of past events - perhaps similar to the "fractured" souls of PE. I don't know, perhaps there will be soul-related quests, artifacts to heal fractured souls, necromancers seeking to capture "excess" souls from bodies and so on. However...I just hope that nobody reaches the conclusion that the "multiple souls" idea in PE is secret Scientology propaganda, because that could create a significant negative reaction, at least in many European countries.

Then there is another side...when the first spectacular big Kickstarter failure appears (that is, some project that gets funded, but fails to deliver), it may scare people away from Kickstarter.

It is impossible to tell, but I suspect that the success of Project Eternity on Kickstarter might indeed be drawing more attention to other games currently being funded there - Star Citizen for example.

Fair enough. I would not be surprised or disappointed either if the game got delayed a few months (and after 25+ years in the software industry, I have seen my share of delayed projects), but of course I would like to see it as soon as possible.

Let me make it absolutely clear that I have no inside information whatsoever, so the list below is just speculation, nothing more. The subject of the speculation is the timeline - what he community might expect Obsidian to deliver and when. Is it realistic? Well, some of it is probably close - other items are way off ... don't take this too seriously. And no, I don't expect Obsidian to comment on this - it would only cause hassle for them later on when people would complain that "...but you promised..." - November 2012 - Forum badges for the $100+ tiers November 2012 - More concept art. December 2012 - Paypal donations closed - online store will still allow ordering of some physical goodies. December 2012 - Special (closed) forum for the $1000+ tiers set up. January 2013 - Game mechanisms/rules will be sufficiently clear for Obsidian to start contacting the $1000 tier to create the NPCs, items and taverns/inns. February 2013 - Main story line, companions and major side quests fully designed. March 2013 - First "real" screenshots. June 2013 - This might be a bit optimistic, but perhaps the game will be demoed at E3 - at least some bits and pieces that are actually working. December 2013 - Most game content (areas/NPCs/quests/dialogue) implemented. Still a lot of fine-tuning and additions left. January 2014 - Selected small group of community members given early access to file format information and parts of the game under NDA. February 2014 - Feature complete - In-house alpha testing to find the worst bugs. March 2014 - Beta available - beta keys sent to the $110+ tiers (and those who paid $25 extra for that) March 2014 - Obsidian contacts all physical tiers backers to confirm mailing addresses. April 2014 - Game ships - all the physical goodies sent out.

Like a surprisingly (or not) large percentage of those responding, I am from Europe - Iceland, to be exact.

Die, thread, die!

It depends on a number of factors. For example, will we always have the same starting location, or will that depend on class and/or race? If the character starts with a substantial backstory, it makes sense if that determines the equipment - at least to a degree. Also, what about weapon skills and such? If the character creation allows you to select which weapons you are skilled with, it makes sense that you should have some of those weapons in your inventory at the start.

I don't care if this option is offered, but I would personally never use it myself....it is practically equivalent to using a save game editor at the start to give you skills and equipment that you were not supposed to have until much later on. It takes all the challenge away. Where's the fun in that?

At the time, I really looked forward to Dragon Age....with all the hype about it being the spiritual successor to the Baldur's Gate series of games, it sounded like the game I had been waiting for for years. I also intended to work on modding for the game - got into the toolset beta, but evebtually I became disappointed and left - it just wasn't what I was looking for. Wjhen DA2 arrived, I didn't even bother to buy the game - from what I heard, it seemed even further away from what I wanted. So, will PE be the true spiritual successor to BG? I hope so. I really, really hope so.