Please give us some info about the basic premise of Eternity

[Naked Ninja]

Firstly, congrats on achieving funding and I'm glad that Obsidian is trying to bring us a new game in a genre we love. Exciting!

 

That being said, I was a bit disappointed and baffled by the kickstarter video. After I'd watched it, I felt I knew as little about Project Eternity as I did when I started.

 

Please, could you give us some information about the basic premise of the game itself?

 

What I got from your video was :

 

- Obsidian has awesome developers (true)

- These devs have made some great RPGs (true)

- The want to make a game that is like the great RPGs we all remember (great!)

- It's a fantasy game and there is soul magic.

 

The last point is the only one about the actual game itself. I feel like I don't have enough information to get emotionally attached to this game, though I do support what you're trying to do here, intellectually.

 

Could you give us a basic elevator pitch? Something that tells us the basic premise of the game, who the player character is, and what the broad goal we'll be pursuing during the game is?

 

In the KS were about Planescape, this is what I would have learned :

 

"We're making an Infinity Engine RPG in the Planescape setting."

 

That doesn't really tell me what the game is about or get me particularly excited, though the Planescape detail is interesting.

 

What I want is a short summary like this :

 

"You play a scarred, amnesiac immortal, whose quest to discover who he really is takes him on a journey from Sigil to the Outer Hells."

 

That's the "hook" that gets me excited about this specific game, as opposed to the broad concept of old-school RPGs in general.

 

Don't have to give a lot of spoilers, and I get that you want to dole out info slowly for PR purposes, but something, please?

[LadyCrimson]

What I got from your video was :

 

- Obsidian has awesome developers (true)

- These devs have made some great RPGs (true)

- The want to make a game that is like the great RPGs we all remember (great!)

- It's a fantasy game and there is soul magic.

 

The last point is the only one about the actual game itself. I feel like I don't have enough information to get emotionally attached to this game, though I do support what you're trying to do here, intellectually.

That's similar to how I felt when I first watched the video. I wouldn't mind a tiny bit more "baseline" information as well. I understand there may be a lot of reasons why they're being very vague, and I don't expect oodles and pages of plot/graphic etc. details that may not even be fully formulated yet - but it's still a bit frustrating.

 

On the other hand, having the mystery to speculate on is kind of interesting in of itself, at times.

[Troller]

Man I`m curious to on what the setting will be...will there be gunpowder? will there be wars?

[Milten]

I agree, I'd like to see some basic lore.

Base game includes three races, five classes, and five companions. We have ideas for these, but we want to hear your opinions on what you'd like to see.

That's cool, but that's kinda difficult to say something without any knowledge about Eternity world.

Edited September 16, 2012 by Milten

[Pop]

They hadn't really anticipated making their goal in 28 hours (a good number of them didn't expect to make the goal in 32 days). What they probably anticipated was a pretty strong early showing that left them somewhere only partway to the goal. So they had essentially planned to parse out info over the weeks of the Kickstarter drive to keep momentum going until they hit the finish line (which is what I believe Brian Fargo had to do for Wasteland 2, and it's what I would have done in their shoes, fwiw). That the goal was hit so quickly came as a surprise and they had no PR stuff planned or implemented for this early juncture.

 

I know (oh, I know) the reticence to just come out and say something is frustrating, especially given that cutting out publishers was supposed to reduce needless secrecy, but the fact is that there is still money at stake and were I in their position, I'd want to consider what to say about my project before I reveal it.

 

Sawyer has said that he is putting together some stuff for us tomorrow, so sit tight. The thing was just formally announced as a thing that exists less than 48 hours ago. There are 30 days left in the drive. We'll learn lots more about this thing very soon.

[fan]

I imagine it was more like:

 

Feartgus Urquhart: Wow, look at the money some developers raised from kickstarter! We could make a great old school game without a publisher breathing down our necks if we independently raised money there. Chris, are you interested?

 

Chris Avallone: Sure, me and the team will throw something together. If it plays out, we'll start working on it seriously.

 

 

 

So... I guess they are at the drawing board right now thinking about these questions. Which is ok, I don't understand why some people demand facts right now. It's exciting to see the project developing, and empirically faith in Obsidian is not misplaced.

 

What I'm much more interested in is how much 1.1mil actually is, in terms of development time. More specifically, how does it compare to the development costs of PST.

Edited September 16, 2012 by fan

[Pop]

Feargus has said in interviews that Josh and Tim Cain have been spitballing system designs for a few months, and the concept art / map, while quaint for some, certainly wasn't made on the fly. Sawyer and Avellone have also intimated that at least a few companion concepts have been established (though probably not finalized) I really highly doubt that they would make the map and include locations on it without actually knowing what those locations are and what are in them. They might not have gameplay stuff locked down but there are things to know about this game, otherwise they wouldn't have made the Kickstarter in the first place.

 

They were just blindsided by the celerity of success, that's all. Anyone would be. It's not really safe to bet on $1,009,000 being raised in 24 hours.

[Pop]

I think that Sawyer had said $1.1 mil was the bare minimum needed to get the game they had planned funded and developed. Hopefully once this is all over we can grill the devs about how the KS was planned out - is it modular? Do they have the "core game" at the minimum and then sequester off chunks of content for stretch goals to add? Hard to say. This is one of an early wave of indie game developments - WL2, Dead State, and Double Fine Adventure being other examples - to reach a "mid-level" between the 5-figures-or-less development of typical indie games / mobile games and the $30 mil AAA blockbusters. They're obviously closer to the former than the latter, but we have yet to really see how robust they'll be in comparison to the 90's classics they cite as inspiration.

[Milten]

They were just blindsided by the celerity of success, that's all. Anyone would be.

Honestly, raising at least two millions is inevitable. While Fargo called to old fanbase, Obsidian has large and living one. Hundreds of pages in Kickstart theme few months ago were quite demonstrative as well.

[Pop]

Even so, it wasn't unwise to plan for a long slog to the finish line.

[Frusciante]

I dont get why people think it is ok to go into Kickstarter so unprepared as Obsidian. Your asking people to give you money, and for the higher tiers a lot of money. The least you can do is be honest and upfront to them so you dont get a lot of dissapointment later on when you start to provide real information. I get that there's a strategy involved here to get as much money as possible, but some people also think that you should treat your fans/customers with respect. Personally I hate this teasing game that is played to get more money. Just tell me what the game is going to be like, show some early artwork etc and I am old enough to see if I'm going to back it or not.

 

I do have high hopes for this game because of the talent involved. But I'm not going to give money to a game thats coming out in 18 months with no information about it at all. Bottom line, based on these first few days I cant say I trust these developpers enough to give them my money.

 

Edit: Look at these two kickstarter projects :

 

 

Even though they are much less succesfull, they provide much more information, some artwork and even a gameplay snippet. Especially the Pangenic KS is very well done I think. It provides basic information on the world, gameplay and ideology. Also the basic artwork is enough to set the down for that they

Edited September 16, 2012 by Frusciante

[Gurkog]

I just hope they switch to GoG or some service, anything, other than DRM. I stopped buying games with DRM a while ago, except for some good deals on games that are hard to find outside of STEAM.

 

I think Obsidian made it pretty clear what their methodology will be for Eternity. I think they are also using the project as a way to train/test newer staff and that is why the presentation is clunky. Their starting video is not much different than a lot of the successful adventure game pitches. They are using brand recognition to generate an initial buzz.