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Update by Brandon Adler, Lead Producer The long wait is over! We have officially released our documentary, The Road to Eternity. The documentary covers everything - from before the Kickstarter to after the game's release. It was an incredible journey, so take a look if you have the time. Our next update will come when we release our next patch in a couple of weeks. Addresses We are shipping out game DVDs to tiers that get physical disc rewards very shorty. To ensure that your DVD will go to the correct location, please make sure your address is updated on our site. Next Tuesday, May 26th is the final cutoff to make sure that you have your address entered correctly. Documentary To access your documentary reward head over to your Products page on the Backer Portal. From the "Making Of Documentary" entry you can click the "Watch Video" button. If you prefer to download the documentary directly you can do so on Steam, GOG or Origin. In the future we will allow direct downloads from the Backer Portal. Steam and Origin currently have the documentary live and GOG should have the documentary live in the next day or so. If you would like more information about redeeming rewards on the Backer Portal please check out our previous updates. Great Stories Two of our fellow Obsidianites have released novels recently. They are really good and we wanted to share them with you. Forging Divinity Andrew Rowe's (Game Designer) novel, Forging Divinity is the first novel in the War of Broken Mirrors series. It features a well-developed magic system, powerful characters, and epic combat scenes. Check out this plot synopsis from Andrew: Some say that in the city of Orlyn, godhood is on sale to the highest bidder. Thousands flock to the city each year, hoping for a chance at immortality. Lydia Hastings is a knowledge sorcerer, capable of extracting information from anything she touches. When she travels to Orlyn to validate the claims of the local faith, she discovers a conspiracy that could lead to a war between the world's three greatest powers. At the focal point is a prisoner who bears a striking resemblance to the long-missing leader of the pantheon she worships. Rescuing the prisoner would require risking her carefully cultivated cover - but his execution could mean the end of everything Lydia holds dear. Head over to Amazon and pick it up. The Buried Life Carrie Patel's (Narrative Designer) novel, The Buried Life, follows an inspector and a laundress as they investigate a series of murders in the underground city of Recoletta. It's a fantastical mystery about secret histories and dirty politics, perfect for fans of China Miéville and Cherie Priest. The sequel, Cities and Thrones, comes out July 7. Make sure to be on the lookout for it. Head to Amazon and grab yourself a copy of The Buried Life.

Update by Rose Gomez, Associate Producer Hello backers! In today's update, we'd like to show off a few of our creatures that you might have heard us talk about in previous updates. With the end of production getting closer every day, we have some news about our backer updates, and we’re also pleased to announce a date for the upcoming Backer Beta! In our next update, we’ll get into more detail about that. First, let’s get to the creatures. Blight Blights are lost souls or soul fragments that have bonded with elemental substances. They are often victims of natural disasters (floods, rock slides, forest fires, etc.). They are incoherent, confused, and full of rage, an amorphous cloud that swirls endlessly and with great violence. Within the vortex, dozens of humanoid shapes materialize and vanish from moment to moment. Faces scream in silent agony while hands desperately clutch and claw at their surroundings, as though still trying to escape their tragic fates. Bîaŵacs, storms that can rip the soul out of a person’s body, often create blights. If souls are ripped free from their bodies and caught in the center of the storm, they may become stuck together and bonded with any other elemental substances in the maelstrom. They are pure chaos and confusion, and destroying them is considered by many to be a mercy to the souls trapped within them. Blights have been the subject of controversial research carried out by the animancers of Eora. On the one hand, attempts at vivisection have led to promising strides in treating patients who, for one reason or another, contain within their bodies two or more complete souls fused together, which has been identified as the root cause of a variety of mental and physiological disorders. On the other, however, some groups lament that there is a lack of transparency on the methods being employed in these experiments, the general concerns being that these might be somehow inhumane or present some broader risk to the surrounding populace. There are also some who accuse animancers of deliberately trying to create blights for study, but the veracity of these claims is difficult to substantiate. Xaurip This hairless humanoid is about the size of an orlan. It has an elongated snout and snake-like eyes, giving it a very reptilian appearance. Its legs end in three-toed feet, while its elongated arms end in three-fingered claws. Xaurips adorn themselves with the bones of fallen enemies - mostly xaurips from rival tribes. They also have an affinity for large feathers, which they hang and pin to their attire. Skin tones can vary from light green, to a rustic brown. Their elongated snouts (which makes speech impossible) and overly-aggressive behavior have hindered them from communicating with the more civilized races of the world. They live in secluded, tribal territories and are known for ruthlessly attacking any foolish enough to cross their path. Xaurips revere dragons as deities and build their communities around the lairs of these powerful creatures. It is not uncommon for a small tribe to wander until it has found a wurm to worship. Once a tribe dedicates itself to a dragon, they will defend it at all costs. Elaborate rituals, in which the dragon consumes xaurip sacrifices, are normal. As a dragon grows in age and size, these sacrifices become large religious events that cost the lives of hundreds of xaurips. The power and prestige of a xaurip tribe directly correlates with the age of its dragon. The most powerful tribes have existed for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Warriors and shamans of these large tribes typically paint their bodies to resemble their draconic overlord. Vithrack Extremely rare, very dangerous creatures with natural cipher powers. They are mostly humanoid in shape, slightly taller and thinner than humans, but with horrific, fanged spider-like heads. Like spiders, they are capable of spinning silk, though they use it to make their own very intricate and fine robes. Males and females are indistinguishable from each other. They are primarily spellcasters and mental manipulators, like ciphers, though they will also attack with their fangs when forced into melee combat. Despite their extreme intelligence and power, vithrack are not a major force in the world due to their extremely low birth rates. Given their arachnid appearance, it's no surprise that vithrack have traditionally used spiders as companions and minions. Though highly intelligent and socially organized, little is known about their culture as they are both hostile to outsiders and rare. Their psionic powers allow them to communicate mentally with one another. Like many social insectoids, their society includes a variety of specific roles, including scouts and defenders. While their low birth rates are likely responsible for their hostility toward other races, they have also made the vithrack highly altruistic when it comes to their own kind. They will defend their nests to the death. Update Schedule Hey, everyone. Brandon here. With production moving into the finalization phase for Eternity, the team and I are hunkering down to finish up the game over the next few months. Going forward, we will be spacing out our backer updates a bit more from now until the project ships. They’ll come a bit less predictably, but you can still expect updates as we have big announcements or special news for you. This will really help us focus as much of our efforts into putting out the best game we possibly can for everyone. In our next big update, we will discuss the upcoming Backer Beta in more detail as well as what it will entail and how to redeem your copy. Speaking of the Backer Beta... Backer Beta We will be releasing our Backer Beta on August 18th. As we mentioned above, we will get into all of the specifics about the Backer Beta in our next update. Be on the lookout for it over the next month. Documentary Reward We also wanted to let all of our backers know about a decision we'd recently come to about our Documentary DVD/Bluray item. We were faced with a bit of a dilemma when it came to the full documentary footage. In order to provide a physical copy of the documentary when the game shipped, we would be unable to show the final leg of production in order to have time to print all of the discs and packaging. We want our backers to be able to share the entire experience of making this game with us - from the earliest beginnings to the very end. To do this, we've decided to forgo making a physical copy of the documentary, and will instead release a digital downloadable extended version. We recognize that some of you may be upset by this decision, but we hope that you'll understand our reasoning. We will be replacing the DVD/Blu-ray with another reward though. Stay tuned for a future update to find out all of the particulars. That's it for this update, head over to our forums and let us know what you think.

Project Eternity the Documentary Update Article by Adam Brennecke, Executive Producer and Lead Programmer In Update #23 Feargus announced that Obsidian would fund a documentary of the making of Project Eternity without using a dime from the Kickstarter funding. Here's a behind-the-scenes of the behind-the-scenes and some other tidbits about the documentary. We've been working with the documentary team, Tony Jacobsen and Michael Mitchell from Creative Lane Media, for some time. Tony and Mike are very professional guys with years of experience making films, and have experience working with the games industry. They will be with following us with their fancy cameras for the entire production of Project Eternity. Our documentary will be a full movie and released in its entirety when the game is complete. We are targeting a 45 minute film that covers the entire process of the making of Project Eternity from the early days of the Kickstarter, into preproduction, all the way through production to finishing it up and going gold. There will be footage from our team meetings, informal discussions, scrums, and major milestone events. The room pictured above is an office at that we transformed into a small film studio. It will be used to shoot one-on-one sit down style interviews. Documentary FAQ When can I get the Documentary? The documentary will be released when Project Eternity is finished. We will have more details when we get closer to the Project Eternity beta. How do I get it? If you already backed at the $20/$25 tier level (and Slacker Backers via PayPal thus far) and above you will be able to stream it. At the $35 tier level and above you will be able to download it, and at the $140 tier level (and physical tiers above) we will include a DVD / Blu-ray. You can still get access to the documentary stream if you donate to the project today via the Slacker Backer pledge at the Eternity website. Tony and Mike from Creative Lanes Media Season 0: Season of the Wolf (Ghosts), Parts 4, 5, 6 Article by Darren Monahan, HTML monkey The truth behind Season 0's naming reveals itself in... ghosts. Note that this recording was done at the same time as last season, so any fixes or interface errors will not be fixed again until, uh, the real Season 1. (Ed: Yes, that means Chris is probably not using the world map enough quite yet. ) We'll be recording a new batch soon and I'm passing along feedback from YouTube comments and our forums. PART 4 PART 5 PART 6 Next week's update we will have a movie showcasing some of the progress we've made on prototype 1! Stay tuned!

So, Obsidian is going to film and document the whole development process, which I think is a great idea. They don't do it as a stretch goal so they don't owe us anything, really, and maybe they haven't decided yet but I'd still like to know, if possible, how they're going to do it. Is this going to be a documentary as in "we're filming all our work, then, towards the end, we'll cut all the material to make a roughly 90 min feature and release it to our backers" or are you going to do it like Double Fine and release parts of the documentary as episodes whenever there's a new stage in the development process and/or to show different aspects of the production (or soemthing different alltogether?). To those who haven backed Double Fine Adventure and therefore can't see it, Double Fine are constantly releasing episodes of their documentary (there are 5 so far), each showcasing different aspects of development and what has happened so far. So far they have done episodes on the writing process, introduced the programmers and how they work, showcased the artists and so on. In between they are releasing a ton of other updates from just-for-fun stuff like watching Tim Schafer play his old games to in-depth articles about art, production, programming and so on. They are very careful not to spoil anything but it gives a great sense of being part of the production and a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at how such a game is being made. It's also very entertaining. So, basically, what I'm saying is: I want this. Of course Obsidian hasn't planned to do this from the start like DF, so I'm not expecting quite the same wealth of information but it would be great if you modeled your approach to this documentary business after Double Fine. Of course this is mainly directed at the Developers but I hope others here will chime in. So, what's your opinion on this? Agree/disagree/don't want them distracted from making the game/don't care/whatever?

We’ve hit the $3M mark now on Project Eternity and it’s on to add another Big, Big City to the game! We have less than 50 hours to go before the Kickstarter ends! Before we announce some new stuff, some quick housekeeping is in order. If you are looking to add anything on to your pledge, check out our Project Eternity Add-On List page. This includes instructions on how to add on other options, as well as what our current offerings are. Also to reduce some confusion in finding what each tier contains (we’re no longer able to update some of our posts on the Kickstarter site), we have a comprehensive list of the Project Eternity Reward Tiers up as well over on our Tumblr site. Two last items, we’re hosting an AMA (Ask Me Anything) tomorrow on reddit. A number of Project Eternity staffers will be on hand at 10 AM PDT / 1 PM ET to answer your questions about the game! Then at 5 PM PDT / 8 ET, watch us on Ustream play some D&D in the studio! Project Eternity the Documentary The big news for the day is that we are adding a documentary covering the development of Project Eternity. After getting a lot of requests to do a documentary, like the Double Fine Adventure, we started looking into it a couple of weeks ago. We talked about it more last week and decided that we don’t have a visual history of one of our games, even after almost ten years as a company. We felt it was something we should just do and do it without it being a new stretch goal. So, we are happy to announce that we are going to include a stream, download, or physical copy of the documentary in all of our Kickstarter reward tiers. At the $20/$25 level you will be able to stream it, at the $35 level you will be able to download it, and at the $140 level (and physical tiers above) we will include a DVD / Blu-ray. We are not going to use the Kickstarter funding to do this however, since this is something we decided to do anyway. To us, it is a thank you to all of you for supporting us over the last month in making Project Eternity a reality and a historical record for everyone at Obsidian as well. Project Eternity Playing Cards Add-On As a fun new add-on for Sunday, we are now offering Project Eternity playing cards for $10. Designed by Scott Everts, one of our longtime technical artists who worked on Black Isle’s Infinity Engine games, and does a lot of work on board games, he designed this beautiful set which will feature characters and maybe critters (Kerfluffleupogus, Devourer of the Faithful anyone?) from Project Eternity. Check out the Project Eternity Add-On List on how to add-on items to your pledge. (Please note: Playing Cards only available to tiers including physical items. For digital tier folks, we’ll hopefully sell these as a future store offering.) New Wallpaper Last, but not least, we’ve received a lot of great feedback on the concept art for some of our first key characters. So here is a new wallpaper with each of the characters that we have released so far. Might we be releasing more art soon? Stay tuned… 1920x1080 | 1920x1200 Tomorrow, we will be updating everyone with a schedule for Tuesday and another fun add-on. Oh and we have some plans for a crazy new reward tier for Tuesday morning. Thanks everyone! Update by Feargus Urquhart Like us on Facebook! Next goal is 40,000 likes for another Mega Dungeon level. We're also on Twitter: @Obsidian. We announce ongoing PayPal figures there too.