Development time too short

[drain]

There were two years between Baldurs Gate and Baldurs Gate 2. One year between Fallout and Fallout 2. I'm sure there is enough time.

[AwesomeOcelot]

I will be more happy with long term support, patches that improve the engine, fix bugs, and rebalance.

[ToveriJuri]

I think it will be released in 2013, but not in April. Probably sometime in last month of quarter 3 or sometime in quarter 4.

 

Less than a year to develop this game?

Not going to happen...

[SesameTree]

Well I think 2014 sounds realistic to me, because i think they already did a lot of prep work.

The way I understand it they already have the engine, lore and a lot of characters already done.

Then again if they think they need the time I'd rather wait for it than play buggy/rushed game.

[Rabain]

I'd not be surprised by an early release, they have done this before several times and they don't need to make an engine. Unity is pretty user friendly, you can download the free version and be making your own 3d areas inside of 20 minutes following a tutorial (I'm not saying that is how fast it will be for PE, just that the engine is user friendly even for a total newbie to it).

 

If anything I'd say it will be writing that will take time, with 2 cities and a bunch of joinable npcs and the main story and everything else....this will be huge.

[Clawdius_Talonious]

It sounds as though they've already done a lot of the early work for fleshing out the world, if Obsidian needs more time I'm sure they'll take it, I personally am alright with trusting their judgement in how long something like this will take. They know better than I do exactly what goes into RPG development. Just because a lot of games are made on a five year cycle doesn't mean that a lot of what they are doing isn't revamping old content or iterating based on feedback from QA. With the community so close to this project I imagine that Obsidian will have a better grasp on what needs to be done than if there was a publisher between them and their market. Publishers often make changes to things in the interest of "streamlining". There is also the fact that I don't believe Project Eternity is going the route of full voice acting etc, which takes a considerable amount of time to introduce and test. While it isn't uncommon for a "modern" RPG to take five years, a "retro" RPG could feasibly be developed in less time, especially by an experienced team. Mind you, at the time Fallout, Baulders Gate etc. were all modern for their era.

Edited October 17, 2012 by Clawdius_Talonious

[Ink Blot]

I'm firmly in the camp of 'they know what they're doing'. I wouldn't have thrown several hundred dollars at the kickstarter if I didn't think that. As others have noted, they don't have to create their own engine, they don't have a publisher breathing down their necks, they already have their own tools ready to use (such as their own convo editor etc.), and I also believe they had a lot of the world, lore, possible story arcs etc. fleshed out even before the kickstarter began. It wouldn't surprise or dismay me if they turned out to need a couple extra months, but I highly doubt it would be much longer a delay than that.

[AwesomeOcelot]

Looks to me like they've been working on this for a while now. I don't think they were pulling lore concepts and screenshots and character or dungeon designs out of thin air last weekend. I believe they've known what they want to do, and Kickstarter was simply intended to make more of those goals a reality. A year and a half to code their ideas and write some stories seems like a pretty long time in light of that.

 

I think they did knock up screenshots, concept art, and the stretch goal meters during the KickStarter. Yeah, informal pre-production lore stuff probably has been happening for a long while, with MCA and Sawyer not having an opportunity to use the ideas they were coming up with, and TIm Cain probably dreams game design and mechanics. Because they can do what they want, it's going to take a lot less pre-production time than the other games they've made.

[ComradeGoby]

KOTOR 2 was a near masterpiece and it was rushed like crazy.

 

I'm not too worried.

[Farbautisonn]

Hmn... Torn here. I want the product asap, but I dont want a crap, untested, buggy and incoherent lore and setting logic gaming experience akin to ME3.

 

Id prefer it if they wait and get it right from the word "go" rather than having to wait for patches etc.

 

Thankfully its a game thats not going to be ported to consoles. That crap takes ages in red tape alone. So... Take your time Obsidian. Make your product epic. Get the lore, the nuts and the bolts down to pat. Release one week later rather than one sooner.

[Labadal]

I think it will be released in 2013, but not in April. Probably sometime in last month of quarter 3 or sometime in quarter 4.

 

Less than a year to develop this game?

Not going to happen...

 

I meant 2014. Couldn't edit my post.

[Karkarov]

OP, you are assuming work didn't start on this game months (possibly a year) or more before the Kickstarter even showed up. I will be very surprised if the games final budget isn't noticeably higher than what was raised on Kickstarter.

[Ieo]

OP, you are assuming work didn't start on this game months (possibly a year) or more before the Kickstarter even showed up. I will be very surprised if the games final budget isn't noticeably higher than what was raised on Kickstarter.

 

Uh, depends on what you mean by "work"--the dev comments scattered about have been clear that nothing is truly set in stone and a number of things are still fluid. Especially when it comes to mechanics, which are the underlying framework of a CRPG. Since the mechanics are still fluid around the edges and not quite set in the middle, Obsidian wasn't going to start work on this months/year ahead of time; think about it--what if the Kickstarter failed? A few months or a year of work unpaid for that? Makes no sense.

 

In the past month, however, yes, they could start work on it shortly after the first 27 hours of KS, but I don't see it before that. Too risky on manpower, considering they have a current project already and are loaning Avellone to Wasteland2.

 

That said, as others have already noted--Obsidian is saving a lot of time and money by cutting out the "unnecessary" bits: console/tablet ports, multiplayer, 3D cinematics, full VO, etc. I don't think we have anything to worry about in actual development time. Additional time for QA, though--I'm all for that.

[Calmar]

Well I think 2014 sounds realistic to me, because i think they already did a lot of prep work.

The way I understand it they already have the engine, lore and a lot of characters already done.

Then again if they think they need the time I'd rather wait for it than play buggy/rushed game.

 

I agree, from what I gather from the updates and interviews, there seems to be a very concrete notion about the world and what might happen in the game. They are definitely beyond the early planning phase.

 

Btw, I really like your avatar, SesameTree.

[Pshaw]

While I do believe the stretch goals were designed to expand the team, so they could in turn put out more content in the same amount of time, I agree that 1.5 years seems a bit small. If they can get it done then by all means I'll be glad to play it sooner rather than later. However if it's not polished and complete just take more time. I'm sure budget will still be a concern though, they can't keep developement running forever on what they've taken in. Still I trust the game will be wonderful and if not I trust that the team will support it with additional patches after release until it meets their standards.

[Adhin]

Well think of it this way, the biggest of the IE games took 2 years to make. And back then it took a HELL of a lot longer to render out stuff. They can do things infinitely more detailed now in a fraction of the time, which allows for much quicker iteration testing and whatnot. As for the actual lore/world creation it looks like they did a bunch of that already before kickstarter, or at least had some good ideas to go off of. And ultimately a lot of that wont really kick into gear till they get to those areas them selves.

 

In the end you have different people doing different things, but 2 years is enough time to come up with a compelling world and story awhile doing all the art and game content. Majority of examples you see it taking longer, it actually has less to do with the story/lore, and more to do with technical hurtles... often re-doing stuff, updating an engine. DAO and NWN are great examples of that. What they ended up with is not what they had started going for, it took a lot of iterations to get there and, least in NWN, the campain suffered heavily from there constant re-do's with the engine and toolset and trying to get the MP/DM stuff all working.

 

Ultimately, they don't have to deal with most of that and the engine there working with is, by its very existence, designed to be simple and easy to get into while allowing for a lot of variation in what it can accomplish. It's made for people starting out but capable of doing some rather amazing things. Obsidian is far from just starting out, these guys have over a decade of experience with this stuff... 2 years is enough, and if by that time it needs some polish, they'll take it.