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  1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LtpG02bZDw The campaign is winding down folks, so it's time to bring out the proverbial big guns. In today's update, I'm going to be talking about a bunch of lore tidbits, a Campaign Almanac we'll be offering as an add-on, new BIG OL' stretch goals, and finally, a work-in-progress screenshot of an environment we're developing. As a quick reminder, we are getting close to 20,000 likes on Obsidian's Facebook page, which unlocks another level of the Mega Dungeon the Endless Paths – if you get the chance, please head on over there. That's a lot of stuff, so let's start with the... Lore After thinking about a variety of topics for today's lore update, I decided to describe some of the major (and a few minor) people, places, and things in the world of Project Eternity. I hope these elements help frame the landscape of the Dyrwood and Eír Glanfath. Though this corner of the world is not particularly large, the struggles of its residents will surround the heart of Project Eternity. Aedyr - People from the expansive Aedyr Empire and its former colonies, Dyrwood and Readceras. Aedyr literally translates as "Many Deer", but means "People of the Deer", referring to a 2,500 year-old tribe that became a kingdom 600 years ago. It merged with the elven kingdom of Kulklin in 2399 AI. Among the Aedyr, there is no significant cultural divide between humans and elves. Because of their close contact and integration in spite of physiological differences (such as longer elven lifespans), their culture and legal system have developed a variety of unique concepts such as the haemneg, or ceremonial marriage. Ethnic Aedyr (mostly humans and elves) have fair skin and a variety of hair and eye colors, with blue and green being common. Among other cultures, Aedyr clothing is known for being relatively simple in construction and often using large, colorful striped or checkered patterns for accents. Anni Iroccio - Year of Iroccio. This is the commonly-used calendar in and around the Dyrwood. It is only 150 years old and Vailian in origin, but has been adopted by the residents of Dyrwood and much of the surrounding area due to the hopeless inaccuracy of the Aedyre calendar. Though the Iroccian calendar replaced earlier Vailian calendars, the inventor, Iroccio, started from the same time as his predecessors. It is currently 2823 AI. biamhac - The most feared phenomenon of Eír Glanfath, biamhacs are "spirit winds" that rise up in cursed ruins, shearing souls away from the bodies of their owners. They appear suddenly and without warning, leaving victims little hope of escape. Strong-souled people are not harmed by biamhacs, but affected individuals are instantly reduced to a catatonic state. The discovery of numerous biamhacs in Eír Glanfath during its early exploration resulted in thousands of Aedyr deaths. Dyrwood - Strictly speaking, the forest northwest of the Bael River. Dyrwood, Free Palatinate of - The independent nation that was formerly a colony and later a large, remote duchy of the Aedyr Empire. Led by their duke, Admeth Hadret, the people successfully fought for their independence over an excessively burdensome campaign to colonize the dangerous ruins of Eír Glanfath. Despite the fact that they are no longer, properly speaking, a palatinate (nor a duchy), the people of Dyrwood continue to refer to their home as a "Free Palatinate" out of pride. Most residents of the Dyrwood are Aedyr humans, elves, and dwarves, but many are also culturally integrated orlans or children of Glanfathan elves. Despite having fought a war with the Aedyr Empire in the past, they are now trading partners and have maintained few grudges. Their one continued point of contention is exploration and colonization of Eír Glanfath, which Aedyr continues to push through official and unofficial means. Eír Glanfath - The name natives give to an indeterminately old elven kingdom that covered the entire forest southeast of the Bael River. Though they were not technologically advanced compared to contemporary civilizations, they had accomplished a number of architectural and astronomical feats that explorers and scholars are still trying to understand. Whatever the extent of Eír Glanfath's kingdom was, its ruins had been abandoned for centuries, possibly even millennia, before Vailians or Aedyr arrived in the area. The so-called "Glanfathan" elves in the forest seemed to have no cultural connection to the kingdom and were living in nomadic communities instead of the old structures. Eír Glanfath's ruins are not understood by anyone, and early misinterpretations over their significance resulted in two small-scale conflicts: The Broken Stone War and The War of Black Trees, the latter of which ended with a fire that consumed a vast section of the Dyrwood. Eothas - The Aedyran name for a god of light and redemption. While worship of Eothas is still popular in the Aedyr Empire and Readceras, the faith is outlawed in most cities of the Dyrwood due to events of the Saint's War that culminated at Godhammer Citadel. Though Eothas once communicated regularly with his faithful, he has not done so since the destruction of St. Waidwen at the Battle of Godhammer over 200 years ago. Hylspeak - An old dialect of Aedyran only spoken by rural communities and older elves in the Aedyre heartlands. It is grammatically almost identical to Aedyran, but contains a large number of archaic words that have either disappeared from contemporary use or taken new forms over time. Speakers of contemporary Aedyran can understand Hylspeak, but it can sometimes be confusing. Hylspeak is only commonly heard in folk songs and poems that have survived over the centuries. Some people associate the spontaneous speaking of Hylspeak with an awakened soul. As a result, superstitious folk are easily angered when they hear it spoken, believing it may cause their soul to remember a past life. Magran - The Aedyran name for a goddess of war and fire. Her priests commonly employ firearms and some helped construct the "Godhammer" bomb used to destroy St. Waidwen. Following the Saint's War, she became the most popular faith in Dyrwood. In Aedyr, her symbol is a flame, but in Dyrwood, it is a flaming bomb. Worship of Magran is extensively persecuted in Readceras. orlan - A race of people found mostly in northern, temperate climates but also as far south as the Dyrwood. Physically, they are notable for their small stature, two-toned skin, and exceptionally large, hair-covered ears. Due to their size, orlans have been victimized and marginalized by most of the cultures with whom they have come into contact. As a result, it is rare to find large communities of them and they have progressively retreated into heavily wooded environments over the last few centuries. Many orlan communities have also adopted brutal guerilla tactics including heavy use of traps and poison in the surrounding environment. As a result, even orlans raised in urban cultures often share their rural kin's nasty reputation. Readceras, The Penitential Regency of - The ecclesiastic nation that was formerly an Aedyre colony and later an independent theocratic dictatorship (the Divine Kingdom of Readceras). Two centuries ago, a popular religious movement took hold in the countryside, in part sparked by the collapse of the nation's vorlas (purple dye-producing plant) market, its resultant poverty, and general civil unrest. The leader of the movement was a farmer named Waidwen who claimed that the Aedyre god of light, Eothas, had appeared to him in the night and told him to punish the colonial governor for leading the people to ruin. Waidwen's success led to his apparent transformation into a living vessel for Eothas, after which he became the first and only "divine king" of the country. His rule produced a subsequent purge of heretics and followers of other faiths across the nation. Events related to this purge led to the Saint's War with Dyrwood, which informally ended in 2618 AI when Waidwen was apparently destroyed by a massive bomb north of Halgot Citadel (popularly renamed Godhammer Citadel). svef - Svef is the Aedyran name for a potent narcotic produced from the berries of small shrub that grows in the dry, distant mountains of Tal Kness. Svef produces hallucinations and, according to some, allows users to actually see their own soul. The narcotic was introduced to the Aedyr long ago, but it is used more frequently in the Dyrwood due to its heavy trafficking by Vailian merchants. Vailians - Most Vailians come from the Vailian Republics, a federation of independent city-states made up of former colonies from the Grand Empire of Vailia. They are a powerful mercantile force in the southern hemisphere, trading with more partners than any other nation or empire. Five cities are considered "grand" republics and have greater voting power in their electoral council: Spirento, Ancenze, Selona, Ozia, and Revua. The federation is widely known for its access to most major commodities in the world, including slaves, and for its habit of impressing (abducting) foreigners into service on their naval vessels. Ethnic Vailians (humans and a small number of dwarves) have dark brown skin and tightly spiraled, dark brown hair. They most commonly have brown or black eyes, but occasionally have green, hazel, or grey eyes. Vailians pride themselves on their well-made and intricately-decorated clothing, often made with rare materials and dyes to which they have easy access. That's a lotta lore! There's more lore where that came from, but to encapsulate all of the things going on in the world at this time, you'd probably need more space, like a book. Maybe a... Campaign Almanac Was that an awkward transition? A little. Is this actually an almanac? If you look at a "dictionary" to get "definitions", probably not, but that's what we're calling it. It's a PDF (and other formats) compendium of facts, figures, maps, lore and more about the world of Project Eternity. Looking to run a PnP campaign in the world of Project Eternity or just want even more detail on the world? This will be your first, of what we hope is many, "go-to" sources. And it will be a real (digital) thing that you can add to any pledge for $15. Also, if you've already pledged at the $50 tier or more, you get it for free! Big Ol' Stretch Goals You've asked for big stretch goals, and we're finally ready to give you some. These are mighty stretch goals, ones we're confident that a lot of people will enjoy but we know require serious funding to do well. $3.0 Million - Stronghold At $2.0 Million, your support funded a player house. Inspired by features like The Sink found in Fallout: New Vegas Old World Blues, the house is a convenient place to store gear, interact with companions, craft items (thanks to the $2.4 Million stretch goal), rest, and buy and sell from special merchants. Some of you wanted something that went beyond the standard player house, allowing you to take control of a full stronghold and its surrounding lands. Well-done strongholds provide players with the ability to make large scale changes, undertake special quests, customize the contents of the stronghold and the surrounding environment, and engage in light strategic gameplay between adventures. If we hit $3.0 Million, we will build a stronghold worthy of the title! $3.5 Million - Big City #2 Baldur's Gate and Athkatla are big cities. Spanning multiple large maps with a ton of interiors, characters and quests, big cities are a lot of fun. Like strongholds, they also take a lot of work to do well. We're going to have one big city in Project Eternity. Would you like two? If you take us on an exciting adventure to $3.5 Million, we will take you on an exciting adventure to another big city. Environment Screenshot Project Eternity's team of crazed environment artists have been working hard on developing our first environment for the game. Early on in the Kickstarter campaign, we told you that we wanted to make maps the Infinity Engine way. That is, we wanted to build 3D levels, render them out as 2D images, and then have our artists paint in beautiful details, highlights, and color-tweaks before they went into the game. Looking back at the levels some of us worked on for Icewind Dale, we were still thrilled with the quality that we could achieve with this approach. For Project Eternity, we're using 10 years of improvements in rendering technology and hardware to get the job done, but we still love what we can do the "old-fashioned" way. We hope you share our enthusiasm. 1920x1080 | 2560x1440 That's all for today's update! Thanks for reading. Update from Josh Sawyer
  2. Update #18: George Ziets, Paladins, Add-Ons, Rewards, and More! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oPKIzyGos8 Hey everyone, there's exactly one more week left in the Kickstarter, and we are going to be kicking it up with bigger and better updates every day! New Add-ons and Rewards We were looking at the $140 tier and thought it needed something more, so we decided to throw a Project Eternity Mouse Pad into the Collector's Edition. The mouse pad features the painting from Kiernan Yanner. You can also add-on additional mouse pads at any physical tier for $15. $140 Reward Tier and Above (excludes the digital only $165 tier) - Now includes a Project Eternity Mouse Pad. Project Eternity Mouse Pad Add-On - $15 each* Also we've been asked if we are going to have more physical rewards and add-ons, and we are listening. Today, we are announcing new t-shirt add-ons for you: Obsidian T-Shirt Add-On - $25 each* Project Eternity T-Shirt Add-On - $25 each* For more information on how to add-on rewards, please see Update #4. Sizes will be asked during the survey that will be sent to you after the end of the Kickstarter. *You must be at a physical goods reward tier to add on any additional physical add-ons. New Stretch Goals for $2.7m and $2.8m We are happy to announce two more classes for the 2.7m stretch goal. With your pledges we now have Barbarians and Ciphers as playable classes, and now we would like to add Paladins and Chanters to round out our class selection for Project Eternity, bringing the class total to 11. Paladins are extremely devoted, often fanatical, soldiers who have pledged themselves to a chosen cause, combining the zeal of a priest with the ascetic discipline of a monk. They have founded many elite fighting forces, from the original Darcozzi Paladini, a two thousand year-old order of palace guards, to the fledgling Fellows of St. Waidwen Martyr, zealous defenders of the Godhammer pilgrim trail. Often found at the vanguard of many conflicts, paladins are natural leaders and have the ability to quickly assist their allies with targeted commands. A paladin's commands can stave off impending death, overcome fatigue, or hasten the charge to close breached defenses. And though they are not always pledged to the service of a god or gods, paladins are so singularly focused on their chosen cause that their souls are continually creating a wellspring of spiritual energy from which they can blast groups of foes in their immediate vicinity. Despite their often stoic presence and explosive combat style, paladins work best alongside allies. When isolated, they can be vulnerable, especially against singular powerful foes. Chanters can be found in almost any culture, but are most often seen in communities with a strong oral tradition. They are repositories of folk knowledge and common wisdom, tellers of tall tales and hallowed legends. Though chanters have a bit of minor talent in traditional arts of combat and soul-based magic, their true power lies in their chants. Chanters construct chants from individual iconic phrases and rhyming couplets they have memorized from hundreds of stories and poems, creating a chain of magical effects that plays out over time. While chanters do use the power of their souls to work their magic, chants are exhortations to the unconscious memory of wayward souls and the diffused spiritual energy of the world. That is, ambient spirits respond to the evocation of ancient, common story elements and play their part in reconstructing the chanter's tales. While a chanter's magic may seem modest compared to that of a wizard or a priest, chanters are able to recite their chants while occupied with other activities, making them extremely versatile. It’s our pleasure to introduce our next stretch goal of George Ziets at $2.8m – with your help, we’ll be able to enlist the skills of George Ziets in shaping Project Eternity. For those not familiar with George’s work, he was the creative lead and core writer behind the acclaimed Mask of the Betrayer - the first expansion pack for Neverwinter Nights 2. George leant his talents to many of Obsidian’s other games including Fallout: New Vegas. George is gifted in designing lore, levels, and companions for role-playing games, and Baldur’s Gate 2 is one of his favorite titles. His impact can be felt in Mask of the Betrayer, and the character concepts, story, and his narrative decisions to take a disused section of the Forgotten Realms and use it as a backdrop to weave a fascinating story is testament to his design skills. We’ve given him the rundown of Project Eternity, and he’s eager to help shape the lore, design areas, and bring the characters in the world to life. More DUNGEON! Yesterday Project Eternity hit 55,000 backers! Everyone loves bigger dungeons, and The Endless Paths Mega Dungeon is now 5 levels deep. We will add another level at 57,500 backers and another level if we get to 20,000 Likes on Facebook. Don't miss the update on Thursday - Josh will be talking lore, and our first screenshot will be revealed. Everyone at the studio is really excited to show you what we've been working on. Lastly, if you haven't checked out the Wasteland 2 Store that opened yesterday - head on over here. You are still able to donate money towards Wasteland 2 to make it bigger and better! FACEBOOK: Like Obsidian on Facebook - We are about 6,000 more Likes away for another dungeon level! Update by Chris Avellone, Josh Sawyer, and Adam Brennecke
  3. One of the coolest things I've ever gotten in a boxed copy of a game was by far ... The Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings Civilization Attributes fold-out (4-piece cardboard foldout) It would be cool to get something like this included in the Collector's Edition Box of Project Eternity it could include Race and Class information, Stats information, and Skill trees or something like that (just general race and class foldout of some sort) But yeah just a hint, paper doesn't last like cardboard does.
  4. With only seven days left on the Project Eternity Kickstarter, we want to start the last week off with some pretty incredible things to announce. You might not know that Brian Fargo is the guy who gave many of us our start in the games industry – myself (Feargus), Josh Sawyer, Chris Avellone, Scott Everts, Brian Menze, Chris Jones, Chris Parker, Darren Monahan – and the list keeps on going from there. He also gave the guys who started a little company called Silicon & Synapse their first few projects – pretty crazy to think that little company is now Blizzard Entertainment. Personally, we are incredibly thankful to him and for the second wave of Kickstarter attention he brought with Wasteland 2. But, Brian hasn’t stopped being the great guy that he is, and so, he’s helping us out by letting us add Wasteland 2 as a reward at our higher tiers. So, what tiers will that be? A lot of you have asked for a digital tier after $110, so we are adding a $165 Digital Only Tier. That means Wasteland 2 will get added to this new $165 tier and all the tiers above. What we are also doing is adding the first expansion pack for the game to the $165 Tier (and above). The expansion will come out approximately six months after Project Eternity is released. That’s right, it’s not DLC, but a real honest to God RPG expansion pack. We don’t have the details on the Expansion yet, but you can bet it will be what you’d expect from an Infinity Engine game expansion. With all that Brian has done for us in the past and his incredibly generous offer, we also want to kick something in. To do that we are now supporting Brian's Kicking It Forward initiative. The Kickstarter community is pretty amazing and we want to help whomever we can be as successful as we have been. For those of you that missed the announcement over the weekend, we will be adding another level to the Mega Dungeon if we hit 20,000 Likes on Obsidian's Facebook page. We are getting close to halfway there! That’s a lot for today, and we have so much more coming up tomorrow. Maybe some new stretch goals, maybe some new add-ons, or heck maybe all of that! Stay tuned all of this week as we ramp up to the Project Eternity Kickstarter finish next Tuesday, October 16th with an all-day live video stream from Obsidian. We are trying to get Tim to do the cooking! Oh, and we also owe everyone an update that goes through everything you get at each of the tiers listed out with a bit more detail than we can squeeze in on the front page of our Kickstarter site. We will get that update out in the next few days, but to tide everyone over – we’ve attached the full concept for Aloth below. Have a great week everyone! Update by Feargus Urquhart
  5. I'm doing an email interview with Josh (I think, although others may answer my questions if they're more appropriate) for the Australian website Cybergamer (which has a European sister site). My interview will try to avoid any of the questions that interviews/articles have asked already and things that the devs have answered on the Kickstarter Q&A, the forums or their personal sites (Sawyer's Formspring etc). The planned interview will be split into three sections (Personal, Design, Mechanics). I will ask very specific design and mechanics questions to try and generate better / more informative answers. I think I have a bit of room for an extra design or mechanical question or two, so if there's anything you want to know that fits the bill of the interview then feel free to post your question here and if I like it I'll try and fit it in. I expect that I should get a reply tomorrow, if so the article should go up in 36 hours or so. General topics I've already got covered
  6. I have a good feeling about this... a very good feeling :D http://soundcloud.co...n-entertainment Yep, pretty much it. Just wanted to share this here, in case anyone has missed it like I did. Liked and following. EDIT: Yep what Canteousent says below, here it is (Update #14): http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60901-update-14-the-music-of-project-eternity/
  7. For our weekend update this week (update 16!), we have another Q&A from our reddit readers in the Project Eternity Q&A Subgroup, with all of the questions having to do with the combat system of Project Eternity. Tim answers the top five questions below (as voted up by the community) as well as picking an additional question at random from all of those asked. Also check out the main Project Eternity group if you stop over to reddit. And now, on to the questions! Kaaaboom asks... Hi Tim! I'm curious how the close combat in P:E will turn out. Will the melee of P:E encompass stuff like reach weapons, opportunity attacks, flanking, grappling, charging, prone/standing-modes and so forth? Yes, we are looking to include many of these features into our close combat system. Specifically, opportunity attacks and flanking are definitely in, as well as charging. We're not sure about reach weapons yet (we need to figure out if that attribute on a weapon will be worthwhile enough in combat and will supportable with the appropriate UI), and while we will support prone positions, you won't be able to attack while prone because the animations involved are too different from attacks while standing that we would have to make every animation twice, once for standing and once for prone. This limitation also means that grappling abilities will not be included. There are too many new animations needed and special case limitations that apply, e.g. how does a human grapple a centaur or a dragon or an ooze?). DTKT asks... Are you guys designing some of the abilities/spells to be used in synergy with other spells? AKA, a grease spell and a fireball? Yes! We love abilities (including spells) that leave side effects on the target that subsequent abilities can take advantage of. So we may give you an attack that has a chance to stun a target, and another attack that does extra damage on stunned targets. Or you have a spell that catches targets on fire, and another that causes explosions on burning targets. These abilities work fine on their own, but when you learn the combinations, you will be much more effective. Karel_evzen asks... On KickStarter you mention positioning will be an important aspect of combat. How important will this (and tactics in general) be? Will we see similar combat mechanics as in NWN2 (backstabbing, friendly fire) or something completely different? We plan to make positioning very important, since we will support flanking attacks and backstabbing. We want you to be thinking about where your characters are standing and facing, not only relative to the monsters but also to each other, because we will have friendly fire in the game. Some abilities will affect their target and other targets around the main one, so you will need to use these abilities carefully. You can always avoid using these abilities at all, as they are never required, or you can choose to use them around your other characters that have a good chance to evade such damage. And if you don't like it, friendly fire will be an option you can turn off in most modes, but not in expert mode. In expert mode, you will always have to be careful when using area of effect abilities or abilities that cause splash damage, because you won't be able to turn off friendly fire. DoubtfulGuest asks... A question about combat magic: I really enjoyed the complexity of the system in the Baldurs Gate series where a wizard's repertoire included contingency spells, spell triggers, spell shields of different magnitudes, "prep spells" like Malison, and so forth. It added an interesting amount of strategy to a wizard duel. Will the system in Project Eternity have similar elements? Yes, we will have spells that are useful to counter other spells, and we will certainly have buffs and shields that you can cast on yourself and other party members. However, we are not going to make encounters that require the use of a particular spell or that involve a creature with extreme immunities (such as a creature only harmed by silver weapons). We don't want to make encounters that only have one solution, and if you cannot use that solution, you are out of luck. Instead, our encounters will have creatures with various strengths and weaknesses, and you can pick several different ways to take them down, and some of those ways will be more efficacious than others. Few choices will be outright unusable, though. Wormix asks... In certain CRPGs you will regenerate all your health and mana after every fight, ensuring that you have your full power for every fight. In the IE games you didn't regenerate spells or health after each battle, making spell management a strategic concern.While this allows individual fights to be balanced for difficulty easier and is less punishing in general, it removes an aspect of strategy from the game that a lot of players enjoy. What is Project Eternity's aim in terms of strategic resource management? In the old IE games, wizards and priests had resources that got drained and did not regenerate before the next battle, unlike fighters and rogues that few or no such resources. We are looking for a middle ground solution, either one where the wizards aren't the only ones to make a hard choice of whether to "use up" a resource, or one where no class has to make such a choice. For example, we are looking into the idea that wizards are only limited in the number of times they can cast their higher-level combat spells in a fight, and other spell are castable as many times as you want. As the wizard levels up, spells that previously had a limit can now be cast an unlimited number of times, and the newly acquired spells are the ones with a limit. And we could make similar abilities for fighters, priests and rogues too. In general, we always want to the player to have a choice of what to do with a particular character, and we want those choices to change as the character becomes more powerful. Now for a bonus question! Diablo169 asks... Could you please provide a bit more detail on how skill/spell cooldowns are going to factor into the games combat system? Sure, let me give some specifics on how we are planning to incorporate cooldowns into the wizard class. First off, cooldowns are NOT on individual spells. For any particular spell, you cast it, and when you are done, you can cast it again right away. But one limitation is on spells of a particular level. When you cast a certain number of those spells, in any combination, then the whole spell level group goes into a cooldown, and you can't use any of them until that cooldown has passed. That cooldown is long enough that for short battles, you are limited to casting a certain number of spells for each spell level. For long battles, that cooldown might expire and you can start casting those spells again. The other cooldown has to do with your grimoire. A wizard may know a lot of spells, but he can only cast a few basic spells plus the ones that are in the grimoire that he is holding. Grimoires vary in size, holding various numbers of spells of different spell levels, and the player is free to load up his different grimoires with spell combinations of his choice. But once combat begins, switching grimoires causes a cooldown for all of those spells, leaving the caster only able to cast his basic spells until the grimoire cooldown passes. This means the player will have to think carefully about which spells he adds to a grimoire and under what situations he would want to switch one for another. And that's everything for this week, folks. Thank you very much for your support of Obsidian and Project Eternity. Tim.
  8. Happy Monday! We've reached 50,000 backers, and have a special reward for everyone. Details below. Also coming this week, we have more updates about the development and creation of the game. Tomorrow, Justin Bell will discuss the process for composing the music for our trailer video. On Wednesday, Josh will update with more details about the game's design, and we are going to unveil a awesome art piece that we’ve been working on. Oh, PayPal is also coming on Wednesday! The 50,000 Backer Reward We are very excited to announce a reward to all backers that have helped us come this far. Today we are introducing The Endless Paths of Od Nua - a new dungeon experience for Project Eternity: In the western reaches of the Dyrwood lies the Endless Paths, an ancient network of cobbled trails that wind through arches of dense overgrowth, twisting within the confines of a high castle wall as they make their way to the gates of iron-shuttered towers that jut forth from the interior. In ages past, the towers rising from the gardens to pierce the canopy of the forest once marked the dominion of the castle's relentless, crazed builder: Od Nua. But the courses of Od Nua's madness run far below the surface, stretching forever deeper into wandering catacombs and bone-cramped oubliettes unseen by living eyes for centuries. The Endless Paths, as the old Glanfathans call them, cannot be walked by the living, but the storytellers say with certainty that many strong souls have found a permanent home beneath the grieving creator's estate. Most else that is said and written of the place is fiction or conjecture, more likely to have sprouted from the svef-enhanced imaginations of bored and boasting mercenaries than from any seed of truth. Hosts of lost souls that relentlessly stalk the living, cathedral-sized tombs overflowing with the restless victims of a horrific plague, lightless chambers sealing in the remnants of Od Nua's failed experiments. Most legends converge on a common theme: that under the castle rest myriad forgotten vaults of death and darkness glittering with Od Nua's enchanted creations and the abandoned treasure of ill-fated interlopers. So great is the fear of the castle's denizens that even drunken and drug-cheered adventurers do not joke of setting foot on the paths, lest their souls join the eternal ranks of those that have gone before them. The current plan is to make The Endless Paths with three subterranean levels, but it can grow larger with your help. For every 2,500 additional backers, the depths of Od Nua’s castle become deeper, which means one additional level will be added to the vaults. Continue to spread the word about Project Eternity, and let's see how big we can make The Endless Paths! Crafting and Enchanting at $2.4 Million We also have a new stretch goal at $2.4 million dollars to announce: Crafting and Enchanting! Crafting and enchanting in Project Eternity will allow players to use objects and materials they find during exploration to both create consumable items like potions and scrolls as well as give their gear custom upgrades that can't be accomplished by other means. This system is intended to be easy to use and very flexible, allowing players to customize many aspects of what they can create or alter. Whether it's brewing basic potions from herbs and minerals commonly found throughout the world or upgrading a humble broadsword into a custom-named, magically-imbued weapon of distinctive and legendary power, we want to give players the ability to make it. On the development side of things, we also want to make the system as data-driven as possible, allowing us to easily extend our list of recipes in the future. Each stretch goal we hit not only adds new features to the game like crafting, but also makes the game larger by adding more content, quests, dialogue, and characters. Together, we've already added two new races, companions and classes, along with a player house. $2.2 million is very close which adds a new faction and region, and there are more exciting stretch goals planned if we make it past $2.4 million and beyond. New Add-Ons Additionally, we have two new add-ons for you: Add an Early Access Beta Key for $25. The beta key is the same reward at the $110 and up levels, but now you can add it as an extra at the lower tiers. Add a Digital Strategy Guide for $7. The digital strategy guide is also included in the $80 and up levels, but now you can add it as an extra at the lower tiers. This will cost more when we ship the game, so get in on the opportunity to save! As a quick tutorial on how to add add-ons, go to the Project Eternity Kickstarter site and hit the Manage Your Pledge button. The reward tier you had already picked will still be selected and the amount will be in the big box at the top. All you need to do is add the dollar amount that covers the add-ons you would like to your pledge and enter the new total number. For instance, if you are at the $35 Pledge level and want to add the Beta Key, you would enter $60 as your total pledge. We’ll send you a fulfillment survey after the Kickstarter period is over and you can specify what you wanted to do with any excess monies added. Thank you! Update by Adam Brennecke and Josh Sawyer
  9. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Uyzap5FcgI This update is going to be a little different. Instead of doing an update on a topic that we chose, we asked readers on reddit to submit questions and vote them up or down, and on Friday we took the five highest scoring questions to answer here. You can visit the Project Eternity reddit group here: http://www.reddit.co...rojecteternity/ and the Q&A subgroup is here: http://www.reddit.co...ns_answered_by/ Let us know if you like these Q&A updates, and we can look into doing more of them. Tim. AtheistBots asks... Class vs. Classless systems You're most famous for classless systems involved in Fallout and Arcanum. It sounds as if Obsidian will be using a class based system. What do you see as being the advantages of a class based system that you're hoping to leverage in Project Eternity? Answer: We are designing a class-based system because we want the different characters in your party to fill different roles, and classes are the best way to achieve this goal. In a skill-based game, it's harder to tell if a companion gives you the skills you are looking for, especially before you recruit them. In a class-based game, you know what each class can do, so you can decide that you want a particular class even before a potential companion offers to join you. And when you have a lot of companions and can choose which ones you want to take on a particular adventure, classes make it easier to form the group and be assured that you have your skillsets covered. Bonus question: Are you considering multiclassing? Answer: Bonus questions are cheating…but yes, we are considering adding multi-classing to the game. A better way to put this answer is that we are not ruling them out at this time. If they work well with our final system, we will offer them. Kaaaboom asks… I was a bit discouraged when I heard that the combat was going to be RTwP (real time with pause), myself being a big fan of TB (turn-based) and the possibility of tactical combat that it lends to a game. My question is then: how are you going to make the combat in P:E tactically interesting despite it being RTwP? Answer: Hmm, this is a bit of a loaded question, as it implies that real-time games aren't tactically interesting while all turn-based games are. Believe me, I have played plenty of dull turn-based games with very few options on what to do on each turn, and there are lots of real-time games that are incredibly tactically rich. Look at all of the real-time strategy games out there! So to answer your question, we are going to make sure that the distinct abilities that our classes will have will each provide different roles to those characters in combat, and that you will always have choices to make in combat about how to best position yourself and use your attacks. In addition, we are going to design the enemy encounters to be ever-increasing challenges, so that one way of fighting won't carry you through every encounter. You will be forced to mix it up a bit, tactically speaking, and use all of your combat skills to make it through to the end of the game. Let me add that as an Infinity Engine inspired game, our pillars of design include isometric exploration of a fantasy world, a reactive storyline with interesting and believable characters, and real-time with pause combat. Those elements are expected in our game, and we feel strongly about providing them. Elthosian asks… How much reactivity can we expect from the world based in our character's race and sub-race? Answer: We will provide a lot of reactivity in our game to your choice of race. We are planning on giving each race a set of traits that the player can pick from, and those traits affect everything from dialogs choices to skill bonuses to what kind of options you will have to finish some quests. There probably won't be quests that are just for one race, but one thing we are not going to do for certain is make race-restricted items. While many items have a cultural connection to some races, they will still be useable by members of other races. It might be unusual to see humans in elven chain, but they can wear it. NeuroArcanist asks… What aspect of cRPGs missing from modern games do you most want to recapture with Project Eternity? Answer: I can answer that in one word: parties. I like playing cRPG's that allow the player to control big parties of characters, and by control, I mean you can pick the actions of each party member if you want. We will have lots of pause conditions in our combat, and if you want to have the game pause whenever a party member can perform a new action, you can do that. Most modern games only let you control one character, or if they give you a party, you only control one member of that group. In this game, I want to control all of them. Zinicel asks… Will there be modding capabilities for this game? I know it's a tall order for this style of game, but I've wanted a definitive answer to this question. Knowing Unity, I know it's somewhat unlikely to offer this. But it'd still be nice to know for sure. Answer: That is a very good question, but unfortunately, I don't have an answer for you. We are still looking at Unity and how it bundles up content in the shipped game, and we will have to see how much of that we can make available to the player. I can say that we want you to be able to mod the game, and if it's possible, we will allow you to do it. It's not our primary focus, which is to give you an amazing single player experience with our game, but we know a lot of people will want to tinker with the game and make their own content, so we will let you know how this objective is faring when we are further along in development.
  10. Something I haven't seen much discussion on is the aspects of Death in Project Eternity. What is your opinion on death mechanisms? Would you prefer a Baldur's Gate style? or a more forgiving style? This is something I'd be interested in hearing about in an update (if Josh and the team have made any decisions on which angle they're going to go for the death system). I'd like to know whether it will be a brutal death system like Baldur's Gate or a more forgiving KotOR-like style. Perhaps they're going to use different systems on different difficulties? For example, on Expert or Heart of Fury mode, the BG style death? I think I'd enjoy the game if it used a KotOR style death system with party-joinable NPC deaths related to the story or as consequences of my choices in the game (but with some degree of avoidability, for instance, not a if you pick this option, Ashley Williams dies a la Mass Effect). if they're going that route that would be fine. However I wouldn't mind a harsh system like Baldur's Gate as well, that would also be fine. Do you think death should be permanent in Project Eternity? Should a Raise Dead or Ressurection spell exist?
  11. Thinking about the unanswered question we've been pitched as important to the early lore, the nature of the soul, I run into a conundrum. There are gods. These gods occasionally intervene\fere with mortal affairs according to the devs. Religions and cultures have their own ideas about the cycle of souls and, presumably, worship their own god(s). Why can't a god just tell them how it is? Obviously they're going to want to spin it their way or maybe even outright lie, but wouldn't the cosmic being that came out with "the truth" be the most popular? I can think of lots of ways to write around that, but in brain storming I came up with one particularly appealing idea. Re-wind from the Age of Sail P:E is geared up to be in, take us to the days where men and mer were in loincloths and bludgeoned to death what they ate. As they transition from this to agricultural river valley societies, gods are developed without concrete "proof" of existence like we find in many fantasy RPGs for the same sociological reasons they appeared on Earth (the exacts of which are up for debate and I don't want to light that fire here, not the point). They worship, build altars\temples/mazes, and perhaps even sacrifice for them. When these followers die, their souls enter this soul cycle and their soul is a reflection of their beliefs. Everyone who worshiped that same god in life's soul conglomerates and melds, some to a great metaphysical degree and some only tangentially, and then that's when the fantasy RPG gods come in-- they remember to a degree where their living selves had been, and the god is connected to those places and more highly aware and powerful in them. But souls don't stay out of bodies forever in P:E; they come back. Eventually, parts of the god will fall away and return to the cycle-- perhaps as their own worshipers if they have some control over the process or perhaps not. New souls will come in, and the old ones may leave residue or splinters of themselves behind that bolster the power of the god a slight bit and leave a reminder of that worshiper who was greatly attached to this meta-god. Here having worshipers whose souls stay out of the living realm is an advantage, but may also be disadvantageous. The god might be able to send out Godlike races with a powerful soul of one of the devote (now de-individuated as part of the god and re-individuated when born into a body) as prophets to spread their religion where ever they are born, creating the stereotype of Godlike as prophets or holy peoples. But over time, souls will filter in and out and the people worshiping will change with the ebb and flow of ideas through generations: one example could be a fertility goddess. The fertility goddess starts out in the early days as someone invoked for crops to grow and children and mothers to survive child birth in a dangerous time. This goddess is a protective, agricultural figure and her representation and worship would reflect this. Perhaps live stock are sacrificed to her. Could be animal or have animal traits. Hundreds of years pass, and leaders become concerned with producing copious competent issue, perhaps of a particular gender. Here the fertility goddess becomes less about the good of an entire society and more about the good of a ruler. They'd still be invoked for childbirth and harvests, certainly, but gradually their focus would broaden or shift greatly towards this other idea. The souls that die and go to join the meta-god hold these concepts in their consciousnesses and it becomes an element of the celestial being more and more over time. Perhaps the goddess is even perceived as or obtains a male persona, a figure whose seed insures strong children. Probably more human than the original incarnation, but whatever the goddess was before is still a part of him\her now-- those shards of souls left behind are still there, melded together, although slowly over thousands of years they may blend with the others not exactly the same but similar to them. Hundreds of more years pass, and the time's a bit more Elizabethan or perhaps Victorian. The fertility goddess has become a sex symbol in an increasingly radical and free thinking society; concepts of having strong young and marriage, while still present and unmoving parts of society, are not as fervently felt as lust and desire. Agriculture is an after thought or perhaps gone from the mortal perception of the goddess while still a part of her repertoire and to some degree under her power. People now implore her for virility and stamina in less-than-living room appropriate ways, and prayers that they might seduce or be seduced become more commonplace (although to say they had not always existed and been a part of some of the souls going to the goddess would be silly). By the period P:E starts, the goddess would have become a sex symbol to some degree but still associated with children having/rearing-- which could create different sects or separate places of worship to celebrate the different "aspects" of this god, who could have two personas or fill her own pantheon depending on which way the society trended. This goddess would likely co-exist in a society with others, so the souls going just to her in the aforementioned period would likely be very interested in the sexual side of things. Rites of the flesh and acts of sodomy could be used to revere her in cults that members of the upper echelon discretely participate in while hymns and donations to hospitals might be the public, more popular and cross-class form of celebrating this deity. Conversing and interacting with this goddess would be something else entirely-- a composite being of all these ideas and desires, who perhaps the PC themselves was once a part of, with many interlaced agendas and worshipers spread throughout their decision making process on what to tell the PC and what to ask of them. One interesting idea could be a quest to gain an audience with a high ranking member of this goddess's following. One route could be just making their way into the temple through sneaking, breaking-and-entering, or teleportation magic-- but each of these would be icky and they're not likely to remember a PC who did this fondly or offer them much in the way of help. Another route would be gaining favor with the goddess. There could be three routes: helping discreetly deliver an "enhancement" to a ruler to help them impregnate (or be impregnated by) their spouse, either of which is a devotee of the goddess. Another would be aiding the priest/esses of the goddess in a way not necessarily related to the goddess but which would help further the goal of spreading the faith or maintaining the faithful's position in society. Lastly, you could gain entrance by some means into the secluded soirees of the rich and influential persons who are devoted to the goddess. I'm not saying get yourself involved in an orgy, but perhaps deliver the "enhancement" to them instead of the ruler to win you the affection of some of her most carnal worshipers rather than an under-performing ruler. Also: that horrible supernatural event? What about the PC witnessing the death of a god? Imagine in ethereal cries of pain as a hundred thousand souls implode and then rip outwards with the very fabric of their celestial being dismembered and scattered across the world and possibly various planes. Seems to me like a Watcher might be someone who a god/council of gods deputized, who'd seen this and was privy to their nature, to safeguard that knowledge and chase after the Godkiller or Godkilling utility-- knowledge, weapon, rite, whatever. In conclusion, I think interweaving the concept of gods and souls should be very important regardless of religion's role in the game ((which I think should be significant but isn't absolutely necessary for this idea to be present, it just seems like something that's worth persuing)). [so please don't merge this thread, it's different]. If this were how they did it, how do you think the particulars with souls/splinting c\should work out? Should the player ever really know, should there be context clues that they can extrapolate arguments from but which in the end leave the argument largely in the air?
  12. We are still going strong over here on Kickstarter and we wanted to thank everyone that has been here since the beginning as well as those of you who have come on recently to back us with your pledge. With such great support, we want to thank everyone with a new addition to the $50 and later tiers, a new $110 digital only tier, and a big change to our $2.2M stretch goal. Oh, and what are we doing this week as to updates you might ask? Josh Sawyer, Tim Cain and Chris Avellone will be posting updates and videos all this week starting on Sep 26 with Josh, Sep 27 with Mr. Avellone and a great one from Tim over the weekend. French, German, and Spanish Translations added at $2.2M We are glad to announce that we will add text translations for French, German, and Spanish when we reach this goal. As we hit more of our stretch goals, we hope to be able to add even more languages as well! Novella by Chris Avellone added for $50 and Up! Chris Avellone has been so thankful for everyone's support that he himself has pledged to write a novella in the world of Project Eternity. We are adding that to everyone who pledges $50 and up. New $110 Digital Only Tier Thanks to popular demand, we are adding a new digital tier at $110 that has early beta access to the game, thanks in the credits, a postcard thanking you for your pledge (sent physically) along with all the other digital benefits of the $140 Tier. Since we added the new novella written by Chris Avellone at the $50 reward tier - that is in there as well! Oh and we have a little piece of artwork to share as well. The following is one of our traditional race and class combinations - the Human Fighter - but he's not just any Human Fighter. He has an integral role in the story that we will be hinting at soon. Don't worry, we will also be sharing more and more of the non-traditional options in the days and weeks to come. (See the official Kickstarter post for art)
  13. One thing I miss about the Infinity Engine games is the old AD&D Level Progression tables, you get a much more satisfying feeling earning 1000XP for a quest, instead of 100XP (a la 3rd edition, Star Wars, all other games using that d20 model). i really liked the fighter's progression table Level 2: 2,000 Level 3: 4,000 Level 4: 8,000 Level 5: 16,000 Level 6: 32,000 Level 7: 64,000 Level 8: 125,000 Level 9: 250,000 Level 10+: +250,000 XP But yeah larger numbers feels more rewarding (and more of a monolith to obtain). In conjunction quest/monster XP rewards should be high too, for instance, 2,000 XP for defeating a Flesh Golem encounter, instead of say 200. YMMV.
  14. Should Obsidian take the route of Skryim and add children in their rpg, but make them unkillable? Should children be present and killable? Or should children be absent from the game? Thoughts?
  15. One thing I'd like to see in a game like this is a more personal quest journal for tracking quests as opposed to the rather impersonal ones that are usually received in these games that tend to outline quests in a very sedate and to-the-point kind of way. I know there's often the ability to make notes yourself, but I still feel it would be nice if the quest journal actually felt more like an actual journal or diary that your hero is writing themselves and less like an emotionless listing of what you've done and what you need to do. By incorporating the dialogue choices you made into the journal instead of just the outcome, I imagine it could a good job of reflecting this. However, there is a possible downside to this I realise, and that's the fact that players could feel that their journal is telling their character who they are instead of actually expressing their character. I know I'm not a fan personally of a game taking too much control over my character in an RPG and telling me why I did something or forcing me to do it when I don't feel it would suit the character. So I suppose for it to work the dialogue choices and nature of resolving issues would have to be clear and defined with next to no room for error. I'm curious as to how other people feel about this. Would you guys like a more personal journal too, or would you feel it would overtly step on your toes, or would you simply prefer a less dynamic journal that gets to the point more like a quest log with perhaps the option of additional notes?
  16. I did not like stealing in BG2/PS:T/IWD at all. Nicking 10gp from someone out of dialogue and only being able to steal proper items in stores did not provide as much fun to me as stealing in, for example, Fallout did. What I'd love to see would be the ability to use my Stealing skill via conversation options (with the possibility of failure), and, most importantly, to steal from random NPCs out in the world without initiating dialogue. Of course it wouldn't make sense to steal the armor off someones back, but I'd love it if any item that is not currently worn would provide me with the option to go for it. The chance of success could be influenced by the weight or type of the item, and in special cases by how protective the owner feels towards the item. In the interface that'd show me the contents of his/her backpack and the chance of success, you could fuzz the numbers stronger by how little Dexterity/Perception/Intelligence/Streetsmarts/Awareness the protagonist and the target has. As the last ingredient, add a cooldown to stealing (5 times within 5 minutes or something) much like the gambling/reload cooldown in New Vegas worked, and I would be one happy sonofabitch. ...Okay, this got a little out of hand, I'm not designing the game after all... but do my fellow career rogues think about making Stealing more interesting?
  17. How do you feel about them? What sorts of factions would you like to see? What are your thoughts on reputation over alignment? Personally, the multitude of factions and the reputation mechanic was one of my favourite features of NV and I'm glad this seems to be something akin to that. I would like to see everything from religious orders/sects, to merchant guilds, to mercenary bands and everything in between.
  18. Hey. I'm super excited for Obsidian's upcoming game and I've created a fan-page on facebook. The page currently have 40 likes and i'm looking for a person who can be a moderator for the page (Along with me). I might hire more than one person. But there are some conditions: - You must write good english - You must be over the age of 15 years old It is also a big pluss if you have experience with facebook-pages. If you're interested in being a Moderator for the page, message the page a short message why you wanna be a moderator. (The message button is at the top-right.. Above where the likes are displayed). This is an unofficial page, so if you have any questions about the page please message. https://www.facebook...463757270322911
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