[Updated] Summary of the Q&A in the Kickstarter Comments page

[Ieo]

What, did no one ask about multiclassing in these Q&As?

 

I really don't see it happening at this point (class update descriptions, supreme flexibility), but a solid word either way would be nice. Someone go ask! I never seem to catch those Q&As, and the thing goes too fast for my old eyes to keep up.

I asked about it in Cain's first Q&A.

 

They'll consider it, but it's not a priority. They'll see if it works with what they're going for with the classes.

 

Gotcha. I believe the first Q&A was before the class update, so I was just wondering if their stance has solidified at all.

[Ink Blot]

Latest Q&A:

 

 

Question: anyone know is the beta will be Steam exclusive like wasteland 2 ?

Feargus: Most likely, but we are going to work on alternatives.

 

Question: I really want a second big city!!!

Feargus: Bobby Null (designer at OE) really wants that to. He has run D&D campaigns for 20 years and wants to really tackle something like that.

 

Question: Just wondering, are there any plans to sell physical copies of the almanac and/or novella in the future?

Feargus: We talked about that a lot, I mean a lot, yesterday and today. We really want there to be a whole line of PE products, so we are going to work towards selling them.

 

Question: how much will the expansion go up in price by if we wait a couple months to hop in on it?

(assuming paypal stays open til after Christmas) or will we have to wait til 2014 for another window of opportunity?

Feargus: I would assume at least $5.

 

Question: May well hit the second big city goal, but if not, would that be a consideration to include in a expansion?

Feargus: With an expansion, we might do a city in it - we usually try to do a little bit of everything, so it feels like the game as a whole. However, just focusing on a big city for an expansion could be a lot of fun.

 

Question: What about a physical soundtrack?

Feargus: You been looking at our whiteboard?

 

Question: About movement around the game world: will it be like IWD (a location is unlocked and then you can fast travel but the area itself is rather small) or like BG (large interconnected maps and you can fast travel to various zones once you've been to them)? Hope that's clear.

Feargus: It will be more like BG. We want there to be both overland and undergound exploration.

 

Question: You mentioned "light strategic gameplay" as a component of a funded Keep. I wonder if you have given thought to introducing "light strategic gameplay" to other parts of the game within which such a treatment may make sense?

Feargus: Those kind of things are usually up to the Area Designers. They are giving a general theme and story needs for an area and then they come up with the story and design of the area. They then will come up with ideas that involve other gameplay - like strategic things. In other words, while there will be that kind of gameplay with the Stronghold - there might be some of that in the rest of game dependent on what the Area Designers choose to do.

 

Question: With the PE KS campaign at this stage, have you had any immediate reaction from pulishers? Positively encouraging or even negativly towards possible future cooperations? (no names asked)

Feargus: To be honest, I haven't talked with many publishers in the last couple of week with so much focus on the KS campaign. There was some fallout from my comment early in the campaign, but I think everything is cool now.

 

Question: From the Shadeheart interview I sense that Mr. Sawyer is having a blast researching for this project. Does he ever inundate you all with obscure facts and events?

Feargus: I love reading Josh's stuff when he is in the groove. George also does a great job. Having them both on the project will create absolutely cool lore - making the Almanac something that I think is going to be awesome.

 

Question: Have there been any discussions about adding one more class? It's a good selection so far , but I feel there is a hole in the row, shaped like a Mechanic/Engineer/Alchemist-type - someone that puts his soul into his work, so to speak I'm thinking firearms, golems, primitive machinery, maybe an urban equivalent to the druids. It could go many ways but overall a bit more reliant on the things he/she creates and uses than the warrior/rogue/priest. It would be something new and a bit different from the usual suspects and could be very fun to roleplay and level up!

What do you think?

Feargus: That is a really good point and that is a type of character I often play. I'll bring it up.

 

Question: Adam revealed in his video session his preference for fighters and barbarians in PnP D&D, what's your favourite race/class?

Feargus: I like playing Paladins ( I know funny, huh), Fighters, Engineers and pet class characters (although that is more MMO than PnP). Oh, and I gravitate towards Dwarves. Probably because of the Scottish thing and they usually sound Scottish.

 

Question: How much time left until the "Adam plays Icewind Dale II all day stream" starts?

Feargus: I'm guessing he won't start until 10AM PST - but that's a guess.

 

Question: Can we get someone sitting next to Adam the entire time razzing him while he plays IWD2?

Feargus: That would be just like a normal day for Adam.

 

Question: Did we already get the new Paypal numbers?

Feargus: $59K in PayPal, [so] about $75K to Stronghold.

 

Question: Out of curosity, will there be hidden doors and objects like the Infinity Engine games had?

Feargus: I'm pretty sure - but it's not a feature that is set in stone yet.

 

Question: WIll the game have a lot of forest areas to walk around in?

Feargus: We want there to be a good number of outside areas and one of the types of outdoor areas will be forests.

 

 

Feargus: I will let you in one of the silly jokes we have had for a tier. And no we weren't actually going to do this. But it was to put up a $10K tier with a limit of 1 and the description was just going to be "Avellone" nothing else just that.

[Ieo]

Feargus: I will let you in one of the silly jokes we have had for a tier. And no we weren't actually going to do this. But it was to put up a $10K tier with a limit of 1 and the description was just going to be "Avellone" nothing else just that.

 

About died right there.

[Ink Blot]

Today's Q&A:

 

Question: will we have a narrator in the game?

Feargus: I don't know yet. That will depend on how the guys want to tell the story. If I had to guess though - I bet we will have one at least for Act/Chapter breaks.

 

Question: Can you confirm that we now have a stronghold?

Feargus: We have a stronghold!!! Once we get to 3.0M on Kickstarter we will update all the graphics. We got a fair amount of criticism that we said we hit $2.6M, but it did not say that on Kickstarter.

 

Question: The Mega-dungeon picture needs to be updated as well. We're at 8 levels now including the 20K FB likes.

Feargus: Rob is going to be working on that right now. Should have it updated before the end of the day.

 

Question: how about another screenshot before the ending of the kickstart to boost the morale of the backers?

Feargus: We have something fun planned for Tuesday morning - not a new screenshot so much as something about the current screenshot.

 

Question: About the 750 tier I am assuming that that Portrait only applies to that tier and not to the tiers above it? I heard that the writing for those 1000 and above was not true. Could you clarify that?

Feargus: The troll picture is at the $750. We are talking about also throwing in at $5k + and having and add-on for between $750 and $5K. We probably made everything too complicated.

 

Question: Would releasing a small one hour prologue to introduce the world in 2013 be a stretch goal you would consider? Something to get people familiar with the world and character building early. You seemed to be open to the idea a while back...

Feargus: I don't think so. My reasoning is that I want to put all of our effort into the final game and finalling the game twice ( or a portion of it ) takes resources and time.

 

Question: So guys, really quick, what exactly is the Campaign Almanac?

Feargus: Compared to the Collector's Book, the Campaign Almanac is an in depth description of the game world of KE with a lot of lore, history, timelines and detail. It is intended as a great read or even as a sourcebook for someone who might want to run a PnP game in the world of PE. It does not have a rule system in it, but we are thinking about creating some PnP PE books that would accompany it (after the KS).

 

Question: Will there be any more rewards tiers or add ons added before the end?

Feargus: We have plans for a few more things, but not a ton - we don't want things to get too confusing.

 

Question: Is there an official answer on whether we will be able to download multiple operating system versions of the game with one purchase, or do we have to buy twice in order to download a copy for Windows and a copy for Linux? I use two operating systems.

Feargus: I am not totally sure, just yet - sorry.

 

Question: That's not the answer I was hoping for, but at least it's an answer. Thanks. At least not knowing means there is hope for a yes. Using Unity, I have no idea how much work is involved with porting to Linux and Mac. Several other projects have allowed multi-OS downloads, but those are probably smaller in scope than PE.

Feargus: Our goal is to not make you have to pay for extra versions to play yourself - maybe that is a better answer. What I'm not sure about right now, is how we can do that across all versions. Just yet.

 

Question: Big feature for me: Windowed mode. I often work on my computer, doing consulting and other tasks. Games that don't offer me windowed mode just don't get played as often as I'd like. And from what I'm seeing so far, I really want to play this one. Feedback, Obsidian?

Feargus: If we make games without a window mode our programmers cry. I don't like crying programmers.

 

Question: besides working on your first own IP, do you plan something special to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of Obsidian next year ?

Feargus: That is a good question. At the very least a big party. Other than that, we want to come up with some special Obsidian-wear and other stuff for our employees and maybe make some of that available in our store (which will hopefully be up by then - if it's not then Darren is a slacker).

 

Question: I emailed Obsidian through Kickstarter to suggest the Humble Store as one distribution method. I don't know if you are the one that reads those or not. Humble Store is perfectly suited to providing Windows, Mac and Linux versions to a customer DRM free. They can also provide all the extra downloads like the strategy guide, almanac, etc. I have a few purchases that are supplied by them, and it works.

Feargus: Got the message, sorry about not responding. It's on the list of things we are going to look into after KS. A lot of people have suggested that, so we will follow up on it seriously.

 

Question: Would you consider "cutting out the middleman" and just self-distributing from your own store in the future. Or would you stick to KS for the visibility?

Feargus: We are going to be setting up our own store and looking at what are all the things we can distribute that way. I'm not sure how crazy we are going to get there though, since we still want to be a developer first and a publisher second.

 

Question: can we get a small write up about Rangers Druids and Monks as we have for every other class.

Feargus: I'll put that on the list. Also, Josh will be on the AMA on reddit Monday morning at 10AM PST - you could ask for some more detail there as well.

 

Question: About the inventory will it be displayed paper dolls with item slots? and how many item slots will there be? only the standard ones like helmet , hands etc.. or also trinkets necklaces.. rings?

Feargus: Sorry about not answering earlier - I really needed to get going. Inventory will most likely be 3D paper dolls showing the changes to your character with the equipped items. I am pretty sure that we are going to be doing rings, necklaces and some other trinkets as well. While those will go in the slots, I don't believe they will show up on the 3D model / paper doll.

 

Question: Do you see how many people have the project starred? How about starred but not pledged? Do you see the pledges each person has made?

Feargus: We do not get (at least I don't think so) a list of who has starred the project.

 

Question: how vast will be the interaction with the objects in the world/ houses?

Feargus: Interaction will most likely be limited to what we call interactables. Things like chests, doors, puzzle elements, corpses, book cases (and all types of containers). Our system does allow anything that you see in the environment to be interacted with if it needs to be a part of a puzzle or quest though. We will also have examinables - objects that you can click on to get information and lore. [probably a lot of them]

 

Question: I just realised that the famous awesome screenshot is actually in the PE Kickstarter video that has been up since the beginning (at 4:05)... Um... sneaky?

Feargus: Yep we are sneaky.

 

Question: Will Alt or tab be used to help light up items and things to pick up?

Feargus: Absolutely on the Alt key - I loved that option in the IE games, particularly after we did that cool blue/purple shading in Torment.

 

Question: How will Random Encaunters work? Will they nonly be battle-based or will we also se other adventures and travelers on the way that we can talk to and maybe get hints of new quests or something like that? I´playing ToEE right now and I really liked the RE where you find a group of traveling friendly Adventures that you can talk to.

Feargus: We have not talked about that specifically, however I can give you my opinion. We will most likely have random encounter areas when you are travelling using the map from place to place. We will also have a number of random encounters (interactions more than combat) that will show up in particular parts of the areas. So, when you return to a village you might run into a travelling merchant that you met somewhere else in the world. Or, there might be a one off encounter with a crazy monk.

 

Question: I've always wanted an alternative to selling all the loot I get. The best idea I can think of would be a player owned store, I'd have the choice between selling everything now for imediate profit or putting it up for sale in my shop for a slow return over time.

 

There's also a nice mechanic for leveling up as the total value of goods in the store increases, maybe starting as a simple street peddler and increasing until it resembled Sorcerous Sundries in BG. Back when I played pen and paper RPGs we had such a store, it got a bit out of hand when we started hiring a scavenger team who would return to cleared dungeons and start removing the statues and light fixtures

Feargus: Cool idea - I'll put that on the list.

 

Question: In addition to Steve's idea I also think that once you get a stronghold you should be able to assign loot to your guards to improve their abilities in the inevitable siege

Feargus: That's a definite thing - it might go through some translation process - loot to "gold" to more stuff for guards. But a system will definitely be there.

 

Question: About the Stronghold. Will it include governing over NPCs? Lite in the Dragon Age Expantion "The Awakening" where you could make choices and maybe settle problems. Maybe deside if someone is guilty of a crime or not. That would be great!

Feargus: That's exactly what we want the Stronghold to be.

 

Question: So it's also similar to the stronghold you get from nalia in bg2, only I assume more detailed

Feargus: Yes.

 

Question: i think on the main page of KS you can remove the 2.8 stretch goal description as that is already mentioned in the progress image.It is unnecessary now.I know, i have some slight OCD issues.

Feargus: We are a little concerned about editing things right now, since we are having problems with the updates. Our last change caused the pictures to be removed from the last update.

 

Question: . I wouldn't mind having the ALT key not highlight everything in an area and only most things. A Thief should be able to find the rest of the hidden things with their thieving abilities? Something like pnp.

Feargus: Yessish... I think some of those things only show up if a Thief finds them - trying to remember how that worked in the IE games.

 

Question: Will this game have dynamic shadows and lightings on the environment???

Feargus: To a point, we are getting some 3D information out of XSI when we render the scene. That information is then used for shadowing/lighting by dynamic (3D objects) that we place in the scene.

 

Question: are you going to play D&D on monday?

Feargus: I am pretty sure I'm going to play. Josh is going to run a 2E or 3E game.

 

Question: Hey, just how big is your list right now anyways? I get the feeling it's like 20+ pages of suggestions and stuff

Feargus: It is super long and also being put into SharePoint so we can manage it like a bug/issues list.

 

Question: For me I pictured the stronghold acting in some vein like Crossroads Keep in NWN2

Feargus: Another model that we using for the Stronghold (Crossroad's Keep)

 

Question: Hey any further word on the feasibility of a physical almanac? Especially as an add-on?

Feargus: Adam and I will talk more about the hardcover Almanac. We are little leery, since we want to be careful about heavy, expensive things that we have to ship.

 

Question: Does it have to be hardcover? Just curious if the softcover option is more costly...

Feargus: We were just looking at Hardcover. It seemed like if we were going to do it, then we should do it that way. We are still talking about it though - but nothing definite.

 

 

 

Feargus: German almost done: http://eternity.obsidian.net/de/

 

 

Rob is working on the new dungeon level art - we should have it up tonight.

[Ink Blot]

Feargus was on again for just a few minutes then had to leave. Update:

 

Question: How confident do you feel that we can get to 3.5M?

Feargus: It is hard to say, many Kickstarters get another 20% at the end, which means we would hit $3.5M and then a little bit more. I'm hopeful, but this is all so crazy that saying confident feels strange.

 

Question: Feargus, one project I backed did a .png table of their rewards linked from their front page: http://www.digitalmanga.com/emails/images/rewardstable.png

Feargus: I think that is what we are going to need to do. We just didn't want people to have to leave Kickstarter - but that now seems to be our only option.

 

Shortly after...Hey Everyone - does this get you all straight to a list of reward tiers (not updated yet for today's changes) http://project-eternity.tumblr.com/post/33540911246

 

Feargus: We have heard from Kickstarter and hey have changed their policy in regards to editing updates. So, we don't know if we can go back and fix things or use updates to keep the lists of things up to date. We are going to look for an alternative.

[Ink Blot]

Just a bit more:

 

Question:I try to convince other people to pledge, but some are not sure because their computer are not really strong. Do you have any idea on what will be the requirements? As an exemple, if they can run old games like Baldur Gates, will they be able to play Project Eternity?

Feargus: The system requirements will be very modest. They will be more than those older games, since we will be doing some 3D. However, you won't need a computer that runs Battlefield 3 well at all.

 

Question: I'm curious about what sort of price point you're looking to sell Project Eternity at on release.

Feargus: We are not sure yet. There has been talk about $35 or $40. But don't quote me on that.

 

Latest PayPal is $75K. -Feargus

[SqueakyCat]

Thanks again, Ink Blot. All your work is greatly appreciated.

[Ink Blot]

SqueakyCat: my pleasure!

 

Apologies for the delay on this, but I wasn't able to get this up last night. Anyway, here's last night's Q&A:

 

 

Ok, so PayPal says that our transaction log is so long that it has to be compiled offline and then we will get a notice when it is ready for us to download. "Some users may experience a delay of 24 hours." I love PayPal.

 

Question: what do you think about songs in your games?

Feargus: Songs can have a place, but a lot of the time music is generally a better way to go. And, I'm guessing here that you were meaning that songs have vocals, right?

 

Question: Something I thought about. since the project eternity is a work in progress name the t-shirts will be related to it and not the real name of the game. right?

Feargus: Good question. We might want to offer both, so people can have Project Eternity shirts if they want. I nice memorial of this time.

 

Question: 2 days ago I spoke to you" give me the stronghold".Second day I you give us the stretch goal of stronghold. So now I shout fullmouthed:"give me legendry battles with giant monsters!" I will check the update tomorrow;)

Feargus: That is on the whiteboard, but I don't know if that one will come true.

 

Question: does PE have mini games? I loved the cardgames in the witcher games for instance

Feargus: We have not really talked about mini-games, however Josh has talked about something that Darklands did - unfortunately that is the one seminal RPG I have not played.

 

Question: So, I'm going through Baldur's Gate 2 (again) and I am concerned about the engine and AI. You are evolving beyond that benchmark? I am thinking of my Wizardry battles (where I'd micromanage every desicion) versus BG2 battles where I micromanaged the AI placement of my fights. I love the spacebar stop and react, I just want my other NPC's to participate intelligently. Even be able to arrive at a destination as a group without a great deal of waiting on one lone wanderer.

Feargus: We are going to have your characters have a varying amount of AI depending on how much you want them to have. I can tell you the pathfinding will be greatly improved - something we always wanted to do in the IE games in the past. Pathfinding being he part of the system that would cause parts of your party to sometimes go completely the wrong way.

 

Question: Are you aware the Kickstarter account isnt connected to the facebook account?

Feargus: Yes, how Kickstarter connects to Facebook is through personal accounts - not company Facebook sites. The reason that doesn't work well is that you then have to request to be friends with the company and not just like them. We have also heard that Facebook frowns on accounts that are not for people, but are company names instead.

 

Question: What language is unity written in ?

Feargus: I'm pretty sure the core is C++, however you write everything on top of it in C#.

 

Question: Paul D and I suggest color coding the physical and digital tiers in the add-on page to avoid confusion

Feargus: Gotcha, I'll see if I can do something more with how they look. I'm not an HTML genius and the skin for tumblr has a lot of customization, but that's not one of them.

 

Question: Did anyone asked Feargus yet how customizable would our stronghold be? Meaning, do we get to "landscape" the surrounding lands , set policy and such (much like Crossroad Keep) but this time, we'd actually see progress made, roads appear as we put them down, Battlements sport new Balistae towers, mage murder holes, can have distinctive cultural architecture styles such as Angular Solid looking dwarvven walls, majestic elvish aesthetics , practical human engineering works that would be apparent as we build them?

Feargus: Our goal is to have it like Crossroad's Keep. We want it to grow visually as much as possible as well.

 

Question: How customizable are you planning to allow the player to fiddle with the aesthetics of the stronghold? Meaning, that I will assume there will be some involvement with owning a stronghold, since its place of power and protection / suppression. Would there be stuff like in NWN2 Crossroads Keep where we can go out and gather people / materials to help build up the stronghold, can we affect its architecture, giving it say Dwarven walls, or elvish towers and parapets, can we actively seek to improve its defense by paying and thus placing / building balistae / ornagers / trebuchets / boiling oil cauldrons and place them for defense as well as install arcane defenses? More importantly, I hope this time round, we'd actually see our Stronghold grow visually, with roads appearing as we commission them and such.

Feargus: Things like that are all on the list. I will be honest and say that we have to figure out how far we can get down the list. Since we are not real-time 3D, there is a little bit more difficulty in swapping out models. However, we have been talking about a layered overlay system so that we can change stuff in the art as you make decisions and change/upgrade the Stronghold.

 

Question: s Cadegund's race and/or class still a secret? I'm thinking she's a priest. In the group picture her hand is to her chest, glowing, like a priest clutching a holy symbol, perhaps even about to turn the many undead that surround them. She seems human, but perhaps she's one of the Godlike?

Feargus: She is a priest and I am pretty sure she is human. Josh likes he idea / twist of guns being something used by the priests of the world.

 

Question: I found the modifiable AI system in DA:O to be very interesting, IE the part where you set up and arrange skills with qualifiers etc. Might be something to look at for inspiration/ideas/whatevs, for a robust AI system that players (like me) like to tinker with. =)

Feargus: That was a pretty cool system. What I want for PE, is to have a layered system where you can interact with it on a high level or get down into the guts of it. The IE games allowed that as well - it was just a bit more hidden. But not as graphical compared to DA.

 

Question: you probably already asked this but will we keep PayPal going after the kickstarter campaign ends so that we can get the second city probably?

Feargus: We will keep it up for a while, but we don't know how long yet.

 

Question: Apparently voice acting for games is pretty cheap anyways. David Lucas who is a pretty famous and talented voice actor apparently commented that it pays the crappiest out of everything he's done. Something like $60 an hour, but he only ends up doing an actual 10 hours of work or something like that. If you think about it, they'll probably wait until the story is written out and the major lines are ready to be voiced, call in the VOs, and have them just go through the scripts.

Feargus: For our bigger games we have to use SAG or AFTA and those are no cheap. A 4 hour session including he actor fees, union fees, studio time and director time is about $3K to $4K. A four hour session gets you between 200 and 300 lines. Actor cost in that (including the union stuff for them) is about $2K of that - I think.

 

Question: Would it be possible to offer the soundtrack in FLAC?

Feargus: We are going to offer FLAC.

[Ieo]

Thanks, Ink Blot.

 

Also, kill full VO with fire! KILL!

[Ink Blot]

Update for this afternoon. Both Feargus and Darren on-line for this one:

 

Darren:Just wanted to give a quick shout out/thanks to Walkir for helping with some German site cleanup! http://eternity.obsidian.net/de/

 

Darren: Wow, I really really appreciate all of the help guys. It's truly appreciated.

 

The above is a shout-out to pledgers such as Farudan, Thomas, Walkir, LC, and Raedwulf for help with the German site. If there's anyone else that deserves kudos and is not mentioned, the oversight is mine - Ink Blot.[/i]

 

Question: I'm a little confused. On the front page in the reward tier section some of the reward tiers have this green circular Halloween themed mark on it. What does that mean? Are there some specific rewards now or?

Darren: That's how Rob drew in the pet.

 

Question: Is there a site where the people of OE are introduced? =) Sometimes I'am a bit confused about so many names.

Darren: Heh yeah, we're a confusing lot. Here's a super quick primer: Feargus - Our CEO, and generally the guy up here on KS. Adam - Project Manager and Lead Programmer. Guy on video streams. Often wears a hat. Josh - Product Director, Tattooed guy, lead on Fallout New Vegas, and really into gameplay systems. Tim - Senior Programmer and Designer, big pencil guy, and also really into gameplay systems. Darren - CIO, back office type. I do a lot of the non-game programming, websites, IT, admin, etc. I'm the guy on Twitter most of the time too.

 

Question: Do you have any feedback on whether people are willing to "buy" the expansion to PE? To me, the numbers do not add up, I thought we would have at least 10k out of the 60k backers that would want the expansion, but we are not even close to that. I think it might be because of the complicated add-on system, some people do not even read the whole homepage, they read about PE somewhere else and come to kickerstarter to pledge somewhere in $20-$80 range. Expansion for $20 is a great deal but people dont see it there when pledging, they see it at $165 lowest and that is too much for most. Maybe you should advertise it more, or create special lower tier with it, it could give us some extra kick (10k backers upgrading with expansion addon -> extra 200k right there)

Darren: Well we have seen a lot of addons additions but I think you're right about addons - if it was more clear (that is, worked more like other shopping sites) it could do even better. It's definitely something that's Kickstarter is currently not well equipped for, but it seems like a popular feature now. Hopefully Kickstarter will be adding that as an addon (pun intended!) so future projects can make use of it. Just in case folks aren't sure how that works, just click the big Manage My Pledge button and add whatever amount to your current pledge while keeping your currently selected tier the same. We'll send a survey out a couple weeks after the Kickstarter is done asking how you want to allocate the money. -Darren

 

Question: DocDoomll already posted this Obsidian Forum link up, but there I think there would be a lot of interest is getting this particular question answered/pointed out to the Devs.

 

http://forums.obsidi...han-resolution/

Darren: Thanks for pointing that out - I'll foward that along. I'm definitely one of the folks in that camp (as is Josh) and someone internally who reminds people about the screen resolutions out and coming. I'll keep reminding people about high resolution screens (Retina, etc.) and to see how we can best support this so you get the clearest look. The only drawback here (as is noted) is space and video memory, but we're on PC's, so we can figure those kinds of things out hopefully.

 

Question: One option for that could be an optional high-res download pack.

[/b]Darren:[/b] That's a great idea actually.

Cannot find the question associated with this response - Ink Blot.

Darren: RE: Windows 8. If we want to support selling it in the Windows Store, yeah. I've been using Windows 8 RTM for the last month, and boy. It's got some awesome new tweaky stuff in the desktop mode, but I'm really struggling to like the Metro side of things, and after reading some of the Windows Store stuff recently about mature titles potentially being blocked in Europe, etc., it doesn't look good currently...

 

Once again I cannot find the question associated with this response - Ink Blot.

Darren: We'll see where things land. Making a big city is a reallllly large amount of work (but just to say it, it's nothing compared to adding multiplayer and testing it, especially cross platforms), so with KS + PayPal - KS Pledges That Don't Go Through (don't forget those!), we'll have to see where we land!

 

Question: Windows 8 is not very different from the previous versions of Windows. The complaints from game developers have less to do with any real difficulty in programming and more to do with financial (e.g. Valve worried that the Windows Store will rain on their parade) and philosophical (Notch not wanting to be part of closed system like the Windows Store).

Darren: That's right. As far as gaming goes, it works just as well as Windows 7 on the desktop side. XCOM and ToEE play great for me, as will PE. It's just whether or not to be sold in the Windows Store, which is a more closed system like Apple's App Store (and they take the same cut, so that's why Steam and other online stores are concerned.)

 

Just to say it, there are some really nice little improvements to the desktop mode in Windows 8 though. I really like the new copy dialog box, it shows a performance graph on copy speed, and I like the new Task Manager. For folks with multiple monitors you don't need Ultramon anymore. The taskbar can be extended across all monitors. Lots of other little niceties too. I dislike the Start Menu personally because I'm a neat freak and like things to be cleanly divided, etc., and don't like that it takes up the entire screen, and since I don't have a touch interface, that side of things is lost on me, but I wouldn't say it's the "Windows ME" version though. It's nice and fast (especially booting - it's crazy fast). But like Fred says, it's just the philosophy of closed systems that rub game devs the wrong way, especially when it starts getting into censorship type things.

 

Question: Are you going to use some ideas from The Black Hound for PE? Some stuff of the little information known about it seemed really interesting. I know Josh was working on transforming it to a NWN2 module a few years ago, but AFAIK, nothing came of it.

Darren: Hmmm I'm not sure, but I bet Josh has some of those ideas percolating for PE.

 

Question: this question was brought up here earlier. where will you host the extra digital tiers for us to download from? I don't think Gog.com has different tiers for it's games

Darren: I believe you're right. We are going to look into what we can do distribution-wise ourselves too. Not promising anything (because it's all work I'd need to do, hah!) but we'll come up with something to deal with that.

 

Question: I am very happy they are not adding multiplayer to the game. MP for too long has been added to games just to have it and like walkir just said it takes funds away from the game... and we want the best game possible... at least IMO

Darren: RE: Multiplayer - I know this is definitely something lots of folks want, and it's certainly hard for us to describe in enough detail the difficulties and complexities it adds (certainly when you start thinking about cross-platform support and the amount of testing that involves.) There are also limitations it puts on story development too. Some people really didn't like the 'protagonist' idea from BG (but others, like me, were fine with it.) But of course, with time and money, can't all things be solved? That's not to say though that a future Eternity project couldn't (or won't) have multiplayer. If we had enough funding, it would allow us to add the resources to properly do MP, but at this funding level, we just couldn't tell you guys, "we can do it" and be honest with you or ourselves. Please know though that we don't take that lightly though!

 

Comment by Darren: I did announce on Twitter that at $4M I would push like heck to get a dog companion in the game (request from Fallout fans). Not sure the team officially recognizes such a stretch goal however, but at least we have *something* for 4M!

 

Question: If it's going to be a mediaeval Dogmeat, then at least make it a Vorpal Wolf / Direwolf etc.

Personally, I'd hope for a bird of prey of some sort ('maltese' falcon, anyone?

Darren: I was trying to get the guys to make a Mini Pet Giant for the game. They looked at me with dull eyes. Maybe that would fly! We could name him Boo-Hoo?

 

OK how about this. If we get to $4M I will try to push some kind of familiar/pet that is more substantial than just a little critter that follows you. Doesn't have to be a dog...! Let's design it right now for the designers! I love doing that to them, and they love it too!

 

Question: Are we on 7 or 8 levels total for the mega dungeon? The "Support Project Eternity" banner shows 8, working towards 9. But the "Mega Dungeon Progress" graphic farther down the Kickstarter page only shows 7 levels.

Darren: Rob swears he's working on the dungeon art right now. Hope to have an update to that graphic soon. We're adding levels faster than he can draw them! (I guess that's a good problem to have???)

 

Question: .I've said it before and i'll say it again.i would LOVE to see a spiritual successor of Vampire Bloodlines from you guys,especially with Tim Cain being on your team.Is there any chance of that?

Darren: I would love to do that project. Troika's Vampire was *easily* one of my most favorite games. In fact, I think I need to get that out when I theoretically have time to play games and play it again.

 

Question: can we have some info about the fauna of the world so we can pick an appropriate pet?

Feargus: We'll get more about the world and parts of the world released in the coming weeks and months. We have already started talking about how we are going to keep everyone updated.

 

Question: what about digital cards in pdf that we can print if we feel like?

Feargus: Good idea, I'll put that on the big list of everything.

 

Question: can you tell us a little more about the documentary? Are you planning on monthly-ish episodes like DFA or a compiled feature release at the end?

Feargus: Somewhere in the middle. We want to give you guys some stuff between now and the end, but did want to keep the budget a little controlled and not have the company have to final 18 or 20 episodes.

 

Question:

Feargus: They will not be gone from the game. Let me check with Josh how he is thinking about it. I think I know, but there is a feeling that I might have it wrong.

 

Question: Any idea how death will work in PE? If a companion dies will you have to go back to a town to revive him, or will he be revived when the battle is over, or will he simple be gone from the game? Or maybe you are planing something else?

Feargus: They will not be gone from the game. Let me check with Josh how he is thinking about it. I think I know, but there is a feeling that I might have it wrong.

 

Question: Will project eternity be sold at retailers when released? I have some friends who are interested in the game, but can't back it here, but want physical copies of it.

Feargus: Sorry, I'm not sure about that yet.

 

Question: Will there be an option to import/export characters from and into the game (so they turn up in the Hall of Champions, or you can start the game with them)? Swapping characters and savegames on floppies with gamingbuddies used to be one of the fun things to do when we didn't have all this momrpg stuff … It would be awesome if you could now actually make a party out of your friends' characters … and some geeks could like … start project eternity geocaches filled with memorycards or something ^.~

Feargus: That's a very cool idea. Putting it on the list.

 

Question: Could you make the back design of the cards a KS exclusive, differentiate them from the Store sold ones further down the line?

Feargus: That is a great idea! I'll e-mail Adam and ScottE about that right now.

 

Question: So to get this straight, I need to have a physical pledge of at least 65$ to add the deck of card?

Feargus: Yes, since we are already shipping to someone at $65, we don't have to figure out the difference in shipping or the change for international. Apologies for that.

 

Question: Since you guys are already going mad with physical items, how about a 2013 wall calendar with a piece of PE concept art for each month?

Feargus: We talked about that as well ( the calendar ). As we get close to the end, we are a little worried about having things get too confusing with all the add-ons and additions and new tiers. But, we like the idea, so that might be something we can offer later.

 

 

 

Feargus: Pay Pal is at $85K.

Feargus: So, I was looking around for video interviews and stuff last night. And found this, (safe for work and Torment related). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnVME-7FCtk

Fixed an incorrect reference in the update - the characters are not necessarily companions in the game, just key characters. Sorry for the confusion!

Edited October 15, 2012 by Ink Blot

[Ieo]

(Feargus)

Fixed an incorrect reference in the update - the characters are not necessarily companions in the game, just key characters. Sorry for the confusion!

 

WAIT, WHAT? But Update 15..... But but.....

Edited October 15, 2012 by Ieo

[Ink Blot]

 

WAIT, WHAT? But Update 15..... But but.....

 

Yeah, I caught that too. I'm intrigued to see who all the companions will be, if these guys aren't all in the mix as well.

[Ieo]

WAIT, WHAT? But Update 15..... But but.....

 

Yeah, I caught that too. I'm intrigued to see who all the companions will be, if these guys aren't all in the mix as well.

 

BUT I'M ALREADY IMAGINING PARTY BANTER. You're killing me, Obsidian!

[Ink Blot]

Q&A with Adam Brennecke:

 

Question: This might be a silly question, but are the playing cards going to be almost paper thin like the red dead redemption playing cards, really disappointing, or something like bicycle playing card level of quality?

Adam: The playing cards should be good quality.

 

Question: I've gotten some very good answers from my fellow backers here, but since you are here, Could you briefly explain the differences between the various books you offering. Specifically the Collectors Book / Campaign Almanac / Strategy Guide?

Adam: The collector's book will not be offered as an add-on. Sorry. For a simple answer: Strategy Guide = Tips and Tricks on how to play the game. Collector's Book = Art, Concepts, Making Of/Behind the Scenes, Monster Info, additional lore, and info on companions/characters Almanac = All about the World, History and Lore of Project Eternity

 

Question: what are the plans for the game keys will we be locked in to a version of the game or can they wait till they redeem it to choose Linux/Win? Another one was about combining orders with friends so they could all get collectors editions but not have to pay $30 each for shipping.

Adam: We are not sure if the physical game disc will contain all platforms yet - we are still looking into it. No combining orders with friends, sorry. We don't have any way of tracking that.

 

Question: Are subraces a possibility? I know that for me, they were one of the highlights of IWD character creation.

Adam: Yep, subraces are in.

 

Question: Question regarding the Audio Novella, For those of us who are in tier(s) which have the PDF, is there a smaller add-on that we can do that gets both the audio and the PDF. After having the pdf, $20 for the same content in audio format seems a little steep. Just for clarification, I meant the opposite, the audio being an add-on (hopefully at a reduced cost) to the tier(s) with the Novella PDF. The thinking being, the tier(s) already has the content, and paying $20 for the same content in a different format seems a bit steep. So to sum up having something similar to the "physical tiers". The "Novella" tiers would have the option of adding the Audio Novella for a nominal charge (say $10?) Well thats what I would suggest anyways

Adam: Sorry, we don't plan on having the Novella PDF be an add-on with the audio. I'll discuss this with Feargus, but I can't make any promises right now.

 

Question: Is there any way to watch a recorded version of your IWD2 game? Same question for the D&D session tomorrow and a potential recording.

Adam: I have the recordings from Friday and Saturday. I'll look at posting them for download once things calm down a bit

 

Question: If Obsidian could find a way to confirm that the physical disk WILL have all three platform versions on the disk, then I will upgrade to the physical tier pledge.

Adam: Sorry, I can't confirm it. We will try, since it's a much less of a headache for you and us, but I can't guarantee it at this point since it's so far down the road.

 

Question: If anyone is interested, I've created a fairly comprehensive information guide for Project Eternity here: http://www.sorcerers.net/forums/showthread.php… Cheers!

Adam: Hah. I think that's a great idea.

 

Question: Is it possible for the almanac and/or the strategy guide to get physical printed versions?

Adam: Right now there are no plans for physical versions. That might change depend on demand.

 

Question: Not all platforms on the physical disc?! *brainmelts*

Adam: I think you are confusing my statement. You will choose your version, and we will ship that version to you, or you don't get to choose and you get all three versions. I'm not sure if we can have all three versions in the same box/disc set yet. Does that make sense?

 

Question: Can we confirm (at least) that there will be a physical edition for each platform? In contrast with Claudia, physical copies of Windows & Mac versions are meaningless to me. Worse, in fact, since I'm pledged at a healthy level in support of Linux gaming. If I have to buy a Win/Mac only box, I'd probably need to reduce my pledge to a digital-only level. And possibly cry a little. :-P

Adam: Physical edition for each platform, yep.

 

Question: Please please please tell me there's been discussion about a physical almanac?

Adam: We will look into doing a physical almanac if there is a demand for it. Books are very expensive to make and ship, so we wanted to cut down on overhead of doing more books.

 

Question: Is there an office betting pool on how much P:E will raise?

Adam: All of our expectations of the project were blown away, so we would be all wrong by a large margin

 

Question: After the KS, how often do you guys plan to release development updates and videos? Weekly? Biweekly? Monthly?

Adam: As much as we can. I would like to do something weekly, but I don't want it to be a distraction to the team during production. We gotta make a game after all We also have to be careful with spoilers moving forward.

 

Question: Ray finally backed the game and is going to create a custom NPC.

 

Pretty cool! :D

Adam: Wow.

 

Question: any idea who is DMing tomorrow?

Adam: Josh is DM

 

Question: is the cooking with tim PDF in the $80 tier, I can't seem to see it on the tumblr rewards list

Adam: All backers get the Cooking with Tim PDF.

 

Question: What will the tone of the game be? Playing ToEE right now I find it somewhat alittle to funny and less serius. And it was the same with Fallout 2.

Adam: More serious, but still humorous when appropriate. Like most Obsidian games (sans Southpark

 

Question: will there be guilds or factions in the game? And if so, will joining one guild/faction have consequences (additional quests, other faction treats you as a persona non grata etc.). Would definitely increase the replay value.

Adam: Yes there will be factions (one was added in a stretch goal). Can you join them? Mayhaps.

 

 

 

Feargus is on now, so I'll be back later with his Q&A - Ink Blot.

[Ink Blot]

More from tonight with Feargus. Feargus is out for a while, but Darren's back on. I'll have that a bit later:

 

Question: the documentary will have subtitles?

Feargus: Hadn't thought about that. Putting on the list. It's something we should try to do.

 

Question: so are you sitting in your boardroom chuckling over your hoard yet?

Feargus: Actually, the work begins Wednesday a 9AM. Adam said we should take Wednesday off - I gave him a look.

 

Question: You should just have an in-game reference to the total # of comments when the kickstarter ends. Something like someone had 50,438 gold or whatever. Then, its an inside joke.

Feargus: That's a great idea!

 

Question: May I know the difference between the COLLECTOR'S BOOK and the STRATEGY GUIDE?

Feargus: The Collector's Book is an overview of the world, concept art, the manual and info on the development of the game. The Strategy Guide goes through how to play the game - strategies and solutions to all the quests.

 

Question: Strategy Guide = Tips and Tricks on how to play the game.

Collector's Book = Art, Concepts, Making Of/Behind the Scenes, Monster Info, additional lore, and info on companions/characters

Almanac = All about the World, History and Lore of Project Eternity

Feargus: Thanks - great way to say it succinctly.

 

Question: Adam was just leaving so I couldn't get an answer, or maybe you guys haven't worked it out yet, but, the question that is burning in my mind right now is on character creation. I for one really loved how I could roll dice for my character stats in Baldur's Gate and Temple of Elemental Evil. I was just wondering if that may be something you guys are considering adding as an option to do in this game too?

Feargus: Josh is a fan of point buy systems, so I would expect that is the direction. I'll put it on the list of things for him to cover in an update in the weeks to come.

 

Question:

Feargus: The reason for the $500K step in stretch goals is because of the big city. As for a release date, we need to look at everything and figure it out - if we get to $3.5M. It is possible, however we do have a few other artists and designers who have made these games, which we could bring onto the project. But, I don't want the team to get too large.

 

Question:

Feargus: The reason for the $500K step in stretch goals is because of the big city. As for a release date, we need to look at everything and figure it out - if we get to $3.5M. It is possible, however we do have a few other artists and designers who have made these games, which we could bring onto the project. But, I don't want the team to get too large.

 

Question: How do you feel about how we're over $100k per day?

Feargus: It is pretty amazing. It's going to be really interesting to see what will happen in the next couple of days. PA did amazingly well the last 48 hours - 20% of their overall funding. So, we shall see.

 

Question: How important will currency be in the game, and what steps are you taking to ensure that there are enough money sinks to keep it important from start to finish?

 

Josh: I think currency is really interesting and it says a lot about the state of the world and the cultures in it. My interest is not necessarily shared by everyone, so I don't know how important individual currencies will be. What we use as money sinks will depend in part on how our stretch goals turn out. We already have a player house and that can be a good money sink. If the stronghold is funded at $3 million, that can be a huge money sink. Additionally, some crafting options and the Adventurer's Hall can serve as money sinks. "

 

@Feargus-

 

This section made me think about how cool the idea of different currencies was in New Vegas, but unfortunately it was never really fully fleshed out and you basically always wanted caps. Are you guys going to try to make different currencies matter in some way in the game?

Feargus: Josh on currencies: "I think currency is really interesting and it says a lot about the state of the world and the cultures in it. My interest is not necessarily shared by everyone, so I don't know how important individual currencies will be. "

 

Question: I may be missing something, but why doesn't Josh Sawyer respond to questions from fans like the rest of you are happy to do?

Feargus: Josh goes around the forums a lot and posts in a variety of places. We decided a few weeks ago that we would each try to cover different things. Also, Josh has been spending a ton of time designing the world so that he has great things to update you all on with lore. And, he has the formspring account....

 

Question: And make sure you set your teams bonus to n+1 of whatever Metacritic score you end up getting for PE. You know, for old time's sake. But really, Just make the best game you can with the money you have, and release it when it's ready.

Feargus: Thanks! And that is the goal - make an awesome game that wouldn't have been made otherwise.

 

Question: Do you plan to ensure the game includes high resolution settings for those who have high end PC's? CD Projeckt did the same thing for 'The Witcher 2' by including an ubersampling mode

Feargus: We are rendering at 2560x1440 and there will be some options for higher end machines that are pure eye candy. However, like the IE games, we want as many people to play the game and play it in a form that is how it is meant to be played. So, our focus is to make it look incredible on low end machines. Now, like I said there will be some candy for the higher end machines - and only them will probably be able to run it at 2560x1440.

 

Question: "We are rendering at 2560x1440" I hope the 16:10 master race will be taken into consideration, here.

Feargus: I think that will work fine - we just draw another 160 pixels.

 

Question: I would caution you, however, from taking the late-night crowd on your comments section as a true represenation of the backers at large. 18 months out and already talking about delaying the project? That's a scary sign.

Feargus: I think you will find that how we talk about things at Obsidian is being honest and pragmatic. In running the project we want to have the right number of people on it and the right number. To fit within the funding that we are getting (more than we expected), we could just keep on increasing the team. We like to be careful about that though and potentially keep the team smaller and go a bit longer. Not saying we are doing that, but it's how we would look at the problem in order to make the best game possible.

 

Question: have you got anything planned for reaching triple your [starting goal]?

Feargus: At $3.3M we go DRM only. At $3.4M we go DRM Free. At $3.5M DRM only......and so on. Oh and Paladins are out at $3.45M, but back in at $3.55M and then out at $3.65M....

 

 

More seriously we will talk more about other things tomorrow when we are all in the office again. Avellone is back from his week in Austin.

 

Question: Are we not getting a secret stretch goal tomorrow?

Feargus: Not sure at this point - but we will spend a ton of time tomorrow talking about the options we have up on the whiteboard. I would hate for one of our last announcements to be the dumb one.

 

Question: will the roles break down into the traditional "Tank / DPS / Healer / Troller" type of roles - and various combinations thereof? Or is it more complicated / totally different than that.

Feargus: Some of those roles work well from the standpoint of designing classes surrounding combat tactics that make sense. What I know that Josh wants to do is to make sure that our multi-role classes do not feel like they are 50% as good at the normal roles, but still play a core part in the tactics of combat.

 

Question: So, what's the first quest in PE? Killing rats?

Feargus: Killing barrels.

 

Question: will they at least be ill-tempered barrels?

Feargus:Aren't all barrels ill-tempered?

 

Question: I'm really hoping the game starts out, where depending on what race/class you choose, you might start in a different town.. or at least different part of the city and have a different start game experience that influences you in certain ways that might not happen if you'd started with a different race/class. People are shaped by their environments and they react to the environment more than they shape the environment proactively.. so having a different environment for each starting race/class would be awesome.

Feargus: We have some ideas to let the main characters earlier life play a role (and be defined by the player), but we are not sure if we will create actual different levels at this point.

 

Question: I think you should remove the 2.8million and 3.0million descriptions and add the 3.00 stretch goal to the main stretch goal picture.It will make the description size smaller and much more easy for new pledgers to read...

Feargus: We will get that done very soon. Probably first thing in the morning.

 

Question: I really like how in Morrowind you can answer that imperial agent's questions at the beginning, and have your character defined by the answers. Such as what would you do if someone stole your sweetroll? Or, say you took an arrow to the knee, would you give up and become a guard? Anyways, I think it would be interesting if one could help define their character through a series of questions somehow. Just a little idea.

Feargus: Similar to what we have prototyped - but a bit more visual. It looks pretty cool.

 

Question: Is the facebook mega dungeon likes going to end when Kickstarter does, or will that get to continue?

Feargus: We might keep that open for a bit, but we will need to shut it down at some point.

 

 

 

 

Feargus: New Interview

Feargus: Paypal Numbers - $87,7K and 1,813 backers.

[Sensuki]

That's a really good interview.

Edited October 15, 2012 by Sensuki

[Ink Blot]

Latest from Darren:

 

Questions: I worry that all these levels of the Mega-dungeon may become a hack and slash fest that grows tedious over time. The first torchlight had endless dungeons which became boring and repetitive quickly. My hope is that you tie enough story telling and lore into the journey to make people motivated to finish

Darren: well, it may take us some time to explain that big huge guy that Rob's been developing in the Mega Dungeon picture... It could take several levels to uncover various bits of lore...

 

Questions: Can't say I'm thrilled to uncover the "bits of lore" regarding the statue's waist area...=P

Darren: Never know - there might be a big story we could tell there... ok, that was just horrible.

 

Questions: but, will he be wearing a codpiece?

Darren: I suppose we'll just have to get the dungeon deep enough to find out! To quote Robocop, "I'd buy that for a dollar!"

 

Questions: Had this game been funded by a publisher... how much of the budget would be gobbled up with non-development nonsense (and not so useless nonsense).. I mean.. how much is 3.5mil budget in a home-grown game compared with a publisher-run game budget of 3.5mil? Can we expect a whole lot more because of the 3.5mil budget as a result of there not being publisher's interests to worry about?

Darren: Tough to answer that one directly, but I'll give it a shot. It's not really going to be much different (in fact, it'll probably be more expensive to make w/o a publisher.) When we do games for publishers, there are extra things that occur (some of which can happen on PE too): Requests to change things by say an art or creative director or producer, or maybe say from a licensor or an executive (we owner types can sometimes be "enemies of fun" but we try to do that only after careful consideration). There are often demos for conventions, executive management reviews, vertical slice demos, a variety of press tours, etc. For PE, we have to take on all of the traditional things the publishers did that weren't managed by us. We have to market the game, design the box, write and layout the manuals, hire QA folks and manage them, hire localization folks and manage them, put together a store and streaming system, etc., so there's quite a bit of extra work actually that comes with that. Fortunately, many of us worked for publishers so we have experience with that side of the business too, and it's something we just plainly *really* want to do.

 

Questions: any idea about how often can we expect a documentary episode and how revealing it will be? Tim Schaefer's episodes were usually teasing about what might be spoilers of even the most tiny aspects at first,

Darren: you know, I'm not sure yet. I think it will be a combination of bits we leak out through the development, and then a comprehensive one at the end. Once the KS is done we'll start talking more about that (and we're definitely welcoming feedback on our forums - seems like something quite a few folks have interest in)

 

Questions: I would -greatly- like the ability to annotate my maps and quests as I could in Baldur's Gate II.

-Please- include keyboard shortcuts for everything!

-A minor feature I've not seen elsewhere is the ability to individually name my items.

-A minor addition that could have made a big difference in Baldur's Gate II was macros.

-What's my party size limit? I like the ability to have a small army, meaning 10-20 units. Not all these need to be fully fleshed-out characters, though it would be nice.

-I want the game to be soloable by at least some builds, a la Baldur's Gate II with Monks, Thieves, Rangers, and Sorcerers.

-Unlike Dungeon Siege III, -please- make it unmistakably clear what each stat (and item) does! Don't name a stat "Doom!" Say, "Critical Hit Damage" or "Critical Hit Frequency." On a similar note, make sure people understand the relative importance of each stat. Perhaps put gear tier labels on all items, like in Dragon Age 1.

-A lower priority is making custom classes, a la The Elder Scrolls games. It's still fun to determine my character's mechanical abilities based on -my- picks, not on what the game developers thought was best.

Darren: Let me try to tackle a few of those:

- Map annotation: I agree. I'd like to see that too.

- Keyboard shortcuts: This is a must-have feature!

- Naming items: No spoilers yet.

- Macros: That was definitely something we learned in NWN2 too. I'll make sure they're on the feature req list.

- Party size: I think Josh said 5 or 6. Apologies if that was confirmed as one or the other! Note: It's been pointed out by one of the devs (Feargus?) that the party size will be 6: your character and up to 5 companions - Ink Blot

- Soloable: That's very challenging to do balance-wise (and would unfortunately be a "B" feature) but it is a cool one. We'll see what happens!

- DS3 stats: Yeah agreed. With a PC focus too we can do more with the interface to help teach players about any stats we create and what they do.

- Custom classes: Not sure how deep this will get. We've announced specific classes you'll choose (as opposed to older Dungeon Siege that you would evolve) but Josh and Tim will update that over the coming months.

 

Questions: can we count PayPall backers towards the Mega Dungeon levels? I wanna see the codp... er the sandlas. Yes. Them sandals are on my mind!

Darren: Yep, PayPal will count, but to keep the math easy I've been telling folks it applies once the Kickstarter period ends. That allows us to focus on the KS number, and then PayPal can cover any lost pledges (those unfortunately do happen at the last minute! Some projects have lost [multiple] 10k backers when it comes time to settle up!)

 

Questions: one thing BG2 did a lot better than BG1 was monsters never came out of nowhere or bunched in a nieche. it felt like there was an explanation of them being there istead of being put there by a level designer. I hope we'll have this feeling in PE as well

Darren: Agreed - I have this weird thing against that too. Something that used to bug me about Doom way back in the day. Even though it's a computer game, I like things to make some semblance of sense.

 

Questions: an you tell us anything about the Fauna in the game? will it be the same as Faerun when it comes to animals that aren't monsters?

Darren: Hmmm not sure about the fauna. I'd expect several DVD's. The maps are going to be large. VERY large.

 

Questions: I've never been so completely stoked for any game that had yet to be released, let alone one over a year away. Way to go, Obsidian!

Darren: Thanks Ross. I think I can safely say the same about working on the game too.

 

Questions: Quite a few gaming sites have started to add a description for PE to their list of games. A lot of those entries are rather sketchy, incomplete or even partially wrong. Have you thought about compiling and sending out a press package to help them fix that? (this might also help with boosting the coverage a bit)

Darren: That's a great idea. I'll pass that along to Feargus and crew. Also if you see sites that have bad info, we can reach out to them specifically too.

[IndiraLightfoot]

A big thanks to you, InkBlot, for your regular Q&A-post here! :

 

I love reading them every day and will miss them sorely when the KS is over. I hope OEI will keep up something like this as the game development progresses.

[Dray Truoc]

Agreed! Great to be able to read this compilation in one place. Much appreciated Inkblot!

[kenup]

So these guys are not necessarily companions? Good to know. This gives us a slim chance we won't have that monk with us.

[Ink Blot]

Thanks all. Glad to do it.

 

So these guys are not necessarily companions? Good to know. This gives us a slim chance we won't have that monk with us.

 

The Obs devs have said that none of the companions in the game will be required in your party, so even if he is a companion, you don't have to take him.

[Ink Blot]

Some more from last night with Darren and Feargus:

 

Question: will the production documentary be released episodically (possibly with little side quests, a la Double Fine Adventure), or monolithically nearing release? If this has not been fully determined, please consider my vote on the side of an in-progress, episodic affair. It rocks, over at DFA, and I can't stress how involved it makes us feel, regardless of how one-sided it actually is.

Feargus: We want to deliver some episodes during development, I don't know if we will do one every month at this point. However, we are going to be updating you all frequently outside of the documentary with web blogs, chats and posts of info

 

Question: guys are you going to do any live steams though this project at all ? sorry if question has been asked before ?

Feargus: We do plan on doing live streams from time to time. After KS is done, we are going to work on the whole plan.

 

Question: Is Adam not invited to the $10k games?

Feargus: He is.

 

Question: If some one has alreaqdy pledged via Paypal but want's some additions, can he just upgrade by paying the difference?

Darren: yep, you can either select the addons at the bottom of the Eternity site (I don't have xlations for those in German though, so not available on DE page!) or the person can use the custom donation option at the end of the tiers.

 

Question: What's with the little green 'troll' on the $50-$750 pledges on the front page? Why doesn't it apply to $1000+

Darren: We just need to whip Rob more to update that art. 1000+ get the pet too. He's busy drawing the dungeon faster than we can keep up!

 

Question: Any chance Obsidian would consider selling some high quality prints of the artwork of the 5 adventurers battling undead? That would be awesome to have framed, and hanging on the wall in my office!

Darren: I like that idea! I'll pass that along!

 

Question: Have you thoughts about selling Original Concept Art over E-Bay one page at a time? Web Cartoonists do that sometimes for paying bills or for charity. If the proceeds went Half to the Expansion and Half to something like Child's Play, I think there would be no one who would disagree to bidding on it.

Feargus: I like that idea. Might even be something to consider for a store of our own too. I know I love concept art. Although now come to think of it, almost all of our concept art is created digitally now. Signed Prints!?

 

Question: I have a question about the playing card quality is it like Fallout New Vegas Collector's Edition?

Darren: Dunno who Bethesda ended up using for those - we're likely going to use one of the companies one of our designers has used in his board / card gaming business. Depends on the quality though.

 

Question: what is your main task in Obsidian actually? is that the website?

Darren: Well I'm one of the five owners, and am sort of the back office guy. My official title is "CIO/VP of Operations" but that's a very stuffy title basically for just business cards. Right now my job is lots of web stuff, and likely will be helping design and set up the fulfillment and store stuff. I used to do game production though - produced NWN2 and DS3 (and before that programming.)

 

Question: what was the reaction in the office to the obsidian order? as a curiosity.

Darren: Complete and utter astonishment, and I mean that in the best way possible. Sometimes when reading the internet, it can uh, well, you know... But when I saw Dlux and the guys getting this going, it was **really** invigorating and inspiring to us. I immediately thought, "We gotta do something for these folks. This is incredible" - I've been such a stickler about not having titles on our forums (for many years) but thought, this is a great way to give a little something back for all of the support. It's really unbelievable. It feels amazing when I'm browsing other Kickstarters and I see OO folks in the comments. Really special and always perks up a big smile.

 

Question: What means the green face in the rewards?

Darren: That indicates you get a special pet with that tier. It's included in the 1,000+ tiers too, even though the art doesn't show it.

 

Question: Once the game is finished, will we have information about which Inn, item, Npc, have been created by backers? Including some of the process in the documentary would be great.

Darren: Yep, we'll point those out (assuming the backer is OK with it - some might want to remain anonymous!)

 

 

 

Darren: Quick PayPal update: $89,641. It takes quite a while to get unique backer count from PP, so using a previous average of $48.37/pledge, that's roughly ~1853 backers or so.

[Ink Blot]

Aaaand, some Q&A with Feargus this morning:

 

Question: I have three related questions for you.

1) In the box version, will the disk be in a CD jewel case, a DVD case, or a paper envelope?

2) Has any decision been made about the soundtrack being on CD for physical tiers?

3) Will the expansion be available on disk when it's released?

I would love if everything came in CD jewel cases, so they would fit right next to all my other related games. No big deal though

Feargus: (1) Our hope is a CD case, however we need to do costing out once everything is settled to see the break down (2) No. But one is being made very, very shortly. (3) It is possible, but we think it is unlikely. (4) Gotcha, and totally understand.

 

Question: Also any confirmation on a physical almanac?

Feargus: I don't think we will be adding the physical almanac at this point as an add-on. We want to do some work in figuring out the cost in both production and shipping first.

 

Question: do you have further strechgoals planned? I would hate to see the campaign just stop at 3.5 if more is possible..

Feargus: Our big conversation for this morning will be further stretch goal(s), we have a short list on the whiteboard and need to talk through it.

 

Question: With the success of this KS project, do you think you will consider publishing through the fans again in the future? I know we can't muster 40 mil for game development, but I like dealing directly with you way more than some corporate middleman. I mean, I still buy plenty of games that way. Its just this feels more like you are custom making a present just for me.

Feargus: We absolutely would like to fund through our fans. The one thing we have talked about internally is when we can fund another game. It feels like we really should get PE done before asking for more (for another game).

 

Question: Any word on that physical soundtrack?

Feargus: Talking about it this morning - still before 9AM PST here, so it's still very, very early in the normal game developer day.

 

Question: Regarding the documentary, will everyone above the $20/25 mark be able to stream, everyone above $35 be able to download? I'm assuming so, but thought I'd ask.

Feargus: Yes, everyone inherits the lower tier features of the Documentary

 

Question: Random Question: I have seen on the forums the discussions about the cost of voice acting and I have even seen people volunteer to voice act for you. Have you guys ever thought of doing online auditions or casting of fans? I am sure everyone here would love to gift some dialogue.

Feargus: We have talked about it. After the campaign, our voice over producer, Mikey Dowling, is going to start working on plans and when we would want to do things like auditions.

 

Question: Will we be able to register the Physical copy on Steam?

Feargus: I know you will be able to add it to your game library (like you can with other games).

 

Question: just wanted to say thanks for teaming with NEXUS as the mod site ... I have great respect for them and have used way way too much of their bandwidth

Feargus: Thanks - I use Nexus all the time for Skyrim and Fallout stuff.

 

Question: Around/between wat time(s) will that Tuesday morning tier be announced? If it is something cool I'd like to be able to consider it and not be asleep cause I'm not American.

Feargus: We are hoping to announce that pretty early - trying for 9AM or 10AM PST.

 

Question: So if we beat 3.5 million with time to spare would you add another stretch?

Feargus: We are going to be working on that today

 

Question: Anybody know the typical percentage of delinquent pledges for a Kickstarter campaign? It would be rather disappointing to finish around 3.55M total only to loose the second super city to fraudulent pledges.

Feargus: The percentage is pretty small. We have numbers from both Wasteland 2 and PA.

 

 

 

Feargus: PayPal is at $92.5K.

[Ink Blot]

Today's Q&A:

 

Question: Great update 24 as usual Josh and crew. Just one thing, please add some dwarven (I really love dwarves) and more "exotic" companions as well (ala Torment), some more "out there" characters. I would really appreciate that. The characters so far seem very intriguing, but I would sorely miss not having a dwarf (female even) companion or even a more exotic race or two companions (instead of just humans and elves).

Feargus: She is actually a dwarf - we should probably have sized her that way on the image.

 

Question: Welcome back. I love the fact the women are A. Built like real women who are out adventuring and B. Wearing practical looking armor. THANK YOU.

Feargus: I'll pass that onto Josh. He really pushes for that.

 

Question: Any chance to reveal who will handle distribution of Polish/Russian version? Is there a 1C/Cenega (no!) or maybe someone else (CD Projekt - hell yeah beybe:)). Please please, do tell:)

Feargus: We are talking to multiple companies right now, since we want to make sure the translations are good. We've heard that some of the companies have not done a great job.

 

Feargus: Hey everyone - a few people have asked about us opening up a couple more design a Tavern slots if we hit the $3.5M mark. Does that sound cool?

 

Could not find the question or comment associated with this response - Ink Blot

Feargus: Yes, we are going to include the Obsidian Order in the game. Not sure in the details, but they will not be the Obsidian Order of Street Sweepers.

 

Question: You should include an OO roster somewhere as an easter egg.

Feargus: Absolutely. Might want to use the total number of members as a special number in the game as well.

 

Question: The word "Eternity", will it be in the game in some big way or was it just a name for the project to go with Infinity?

Feargus: Not totally sure, but I think we will want to incorporate it.

 

Question: since you just stated that their will be something special about the obsidian order in the game, does that mean its members get something special? If so you should put that up i am sure you would get many more people doling out the 8 bucks

Feargus: We didn't organize the OO, and we like it that you guys do everything yourselves. So, while we are going to do something for the order in the game - we don't think it make sense to publicize. Maybe sounds like a strange distinction, but it feels better to just let it be something separate from actual Obsidian.

 

Question: Looking back over the kickstarter project. Are there things you would have done differently if you woere to do another kickstarter.

Feargus: That's a good question. I think we know more about how much work it is and how much time it takes to put together good updates. The biggest thing is probably the amount of artwork we need to have daily to keep things interesting. Rob probably wouldn't have drawn the guy in the dungeon image. But, that turned out really cool.

 

Question: People have been asking about the possibility of the Endless Paths image becoming a poster once the final level totals are calculated. Any chance?

Feargus: I think Rob would really like to do that. On the list as an offer in the Obsidian store that we will hopefully have up in the near-ish future.

 

Question: i am still waiting for an add on for the in game companion or for a $50 tier that would be the game + expansion + in-game companion

Feargus: Understood. I don't think we are going to create that level at this point. Our concern is that it could really confuse the tiers at this point.

 

Question: Feargus, is there any chance of the final hours of the kickstarter being recorded? I've been trying to catch a cold all day so I can stay at home on Wednesday...not sure it's gonna work out though

Feargus: We are absolutely going to try to do that. Will talk to Adam in just a bit to make sure that we are going to record the final hours.

 

Question: Can you give me some more info about the memorial stone, how does it look, how many words can be written. Is it like a statue (maybe a husband and wife in arms?) or gravestone ingame?

Feargus: We don't have a specific look for it just yet - but we will be sharing in the weeks and months to come. Our idea for the memorial is that we will have a pop up text that can be fairly long.

 

Question: Any ETA on figuring out how long you will keep rewards up for PayPal?

Feargus: We are really playing that by ear right now. A lot of people have asked to have it kept open until at least Friday for pay day. I think we will do that at least. Not sure how much longer than that.

 

Question: So if I give my significant other the spare key in the 2-copy tiers, will their account also get all of the digital bonuses too?

Feargus: Yes the extra copies at your reward tier all come with the in-game extras.

 

Question: what about the possibility of show that screenshot with at least a basic animation? Guess many people is curious to see the water flowing

Feargus: We are working on something for the screenshot, but I don't think we will show any animation just yet. The animators are doing some cool character stuff in Unity 4 though. They say the character animation tools in it are better than Unreal or CryEngine now.

 

Question: I don't think many of us ever have put this much money down before. @Feargus how much was IWD to make?

Feargus: Sorry, I usually just let that question slide by. I'm still under non-disclosure with Interplay. Don't mean to give a lame answer like that - but it's the case.

 

Question: Would you know about how much Baldur's Gate II took to make? Or is that also non-disclosure?

Feargus: Same non-disclosure and probably tied into non-disclosures that are now handled by EA as well now.

 

Question: Would it be violating the NDA to answer "If we were making an IE game with the budget we currently have in and the technology/personnel costs of the early 2000s, how would the scope of that game likely compare to the IE games of that time?"

Feargus: Flirting with it, so I'm just going to stay silent.

 

Question:Would you feel confident that with the current budget you have now, you'd have the funds necessary to make a game as good or better than BG2 or IWD2?

Feargus: I am confident that we can make an awesome RPG for what we have.

 

Question: In case you missed my comment earlier today. Please make sure your dungeon artist is prepared for any last minute level additions. We need to have that dungeon image on the home page accurate before it's locked.

 

Oh, could we also get a high resolution image of the final dungeon drawing?

Feargus: Absolutely.

 

Question: Who is the lucky person organising Obsidian's project close celebrations?

Feargus: And, we need to get that all figured out tonight! Going to be a long one. Hopefully Josh will kill them all off soon.

 

 

Feargus on becoming the highest funded Kickstarter game title ever: And there we have it. You all rock!

 

Feargus: Paypal is at $99,266.33.

[Ieo]

Thanks, Ink Blot.

 

Today's Q&A:

 

Question: Great update 24 as usual Josh and crew. Just one thing, please add some dwarven (I really love dwarves) and more "exotic" companions as well (ala Torment), some more "out there" characters. I would really appreciate that. The characters so far seem very intriguing, but I would sorely miss not having a dwarf (female even) companion or even a more exotic race or two companions (instead of just humans and elves).

Feargus: She is actually a dwarf - we should probably have sized her that way on the image.

 

Question: Welcome back. I love the fact the women are A. Built like real women who are out adventuring and B. Wearing practical looking armor. THANK YOU.

Feargus: I'll pass that onto Josh. He really pushes for that.

 

Question: Any chance to reveal who will handle distribution of Polish/Russian version? Is there a 1C/Cenega (no!) or maybe someone else (CD Projekt - hell yeah beybe:)). Please please, do tell:)

Feargus: We are talking to multiple companies right now, since we want to make sure the translations are good. We've heard that some of the companies have not done a great job.

 

Great stuff. Sagani is confirmed, supposedly, as a companion. Definitely still appreciate that the women are being drawn out well, and hopefully that makes it in game too. And I'm glad Obsidian is taking heed to the translator company concerns expressed in one of the update threads....

 

]Question:[/b] You should include an OO roster somewhere as an easter egg.

Feargus: Absolutely. Might want to use the total number of members as a special number in the game as well.

 

Stick a white gazebo somewhere with an arrow sticking out of it for me!

Edited October 16, 2012 by Ieo