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Project Eternity, Obsidian's Isometric Fantasy RPG

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Obsidian's Kickstarting their next game. It's a party based isometric fantasy RPG. Tim Cain, Chris Avellone, and Josh Sawyer are all in on the fun, it's set in a brand new fantasy universe, and they've made $100k in like, 30 minutes or something. Pretty nuts. I'm super pumped - Obsidian makes my favorite RPGs and I'm looking forward to seeing what they can do without the constraints of a publisher telling them that it won't sell if they don't put in enough blood to let the marketers make a trailer set to Marilyn Manson's declarations that "this is the new shit." There's a bit more info in this interview with Feargus Urquhart and this one with Chris Avellone which includes this gem:

"Project: Eternity is our opportunity to FINALLY develop our own fantasy RPG world and franchise," Obsidian's Avellone told me in an e-mail this week. "FINALLY. Did I say FINALLY enough? One more time: FINALLY.

"It's not like we've had any lack of ideas, only a lack of opportunity or anyone who wanted to finance it. Then Kickstarter came along and a door opened—this was FINALLY our chance to sidestep the publisher model and get financing directly from the people who want to play an Obsidian RPG. I'd much rather have the players be my boss and hear their thoughts for what would be fun than people who might be more distant from the process and the genre and frankly, any long-term attachment to the title."

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I'm excited about this, but wary that it may be all-too common high-fantasy fare. Part of my soul dies every time I see an elf in furs with a longbow. An elf in an evening suit with a crowbar, however, might be more palatable. :)

Though I love infinity-engine games, I feel like RPG-makers have been a bit too slavish in trying to recreate them. With BG: Enhanced edition coming out and what-not, I just hope they can do something more than cash in on nostalgia.

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Sweet, did you update the Kickstarter compendium thread thing?

I backed this right away. I spent so much time on the Vault Network Arcanum forum, so a Tim Cain kickstarter immediately triggers my automatic kickstarter backing mechanick.

edit: Oh, and more than one million dollars?

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I'm excited about this, but wary that it may be all-too common high-fantasy fare. Part of my soul dies every time I see an elf in furs with a longbow. An elf in an evening suit with a crowbar, however, might be more palatable. :)

Though I love infinity-engine games, I feel like RPG-makers have been a bit too slavish in trying to recreate them. With BG: Enhanced edition coming out and what-not, I just hope they can do something more than cash in on nostalgia.

Here's what Feargus Urquhart says about your high fantasy worries:

Feargus: We talked a lot about the genre and to be honest we kept on coming back to fantasy. With all the experience we have had with a lot of varied fantasy settings, we are really looking for to taking our unique approach with factions, characters and mature themes to the setting. Ultimately, we really feel that what an RPG is about is the characters and the story – not the setting. Hit points are hit points whether you are killing past, present or future zombies. What engages and what keeps you going in an RPG are characters that you love and hate and story lines that tug at your emotions.

And here's what Josh Sawyer says:

One of the reasons I made the blog updates I did earlier in the week was because I wanted folks to get the *~ vibe ~* of how we approach a) world-building in general and B) fantasy. If you haven't seen them, they're here:

http://forums.obsidian.net/blog/3/entry-167-building-better-worlds/

http://twofoldsilence.diogenes-lamp.info/2012/09/the-black-hound-what-its-deal-was.html

Considering that this is the studio behind KOTOR II, which was a philosophical deconstruction of the entire Star Wars mythos while simultaneously being a Star Wars game, I think they can handle fantasy without making it stupid. Also, on twitter, Josh Sawyer makes another very interesting point about fantasy as a setting.

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Okay, backed. It's rising damn fast. Exiting. Now I have to prevent myself from giving them more money for the next 32 days. (I'm happy that this is probably the last Kickstarter I basically have to support [the Anachronox 2 Kickstarter will never happen].)

I hope they'll go crazy with the setting. Yeah, too early to tell, but the map they show and the rest of the makeup all look rather like Lord of the Rings than Planescape. Wishful thinking whispers that the mundaneness (and seriousness – too much even) of the pitch is to preserve attention from the widest possible audience.

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Jim--to my knowledge it's already going to be on steam. Quoth the $20 pledge promise: "DIGITAL DOWNLOADABLE COPY OF PROJECT ETERNITY (via Steam PC)..." [www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity]

yeah, I know it says steam on everything there. but since it's very early for the project, and a lot of people want drm free hopefully they can still add that.

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Already backed.

For someone who complains about many games today, and has a hard time finding games I like through the mess of them, I'm sure buying a lot lately.

But heck, I'll take all the old school rpg games I can get! I just wonder how, since they're going for sword and sorcery, the setting will handle "The Tolkien Paradox". A term I just made up in which: If you copy Tolkien, you'll end up unoriginal to some greater extent (D&D, Elderscrolls, Dragon Age, Harry Potter, et al.); but if you don't, you'll end up uncompelling most of the time (Ugh, just... ugh).

Well, Planescape: Torment wasn't terribly Tolkien. And Harry Potter had originality, partially thanks to its modern setting of course. I'm sure there's something to be done.

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Not the thread for this discussion, but I seriously wonder why people still support this studio... boggling.

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I'm in for $20. As for why support them? Sure they've released some buggy messes in their time, but they're also some of the people behind some of my absolute favourite gaming experiences. Fallout 2 and Planescape Torment are both in my top 3 favourite crpgs.

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Yeah I know, I love those games too, but it was 14 years ago. FOURTEEN! You can have a mildly intelligent conversation with someone born when Fallout 2 came out at this point and they haven't done anything "good" since.

Anyway, not going to crap this up, the game might actually be interesting but I'll see how it shapes up when it's done before I hand any money over.

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I've only ever played Fallout: New Vegas but I really enjoyed it. That was enough for me!

Yay, I have Kickstarted at least seven games and have little evidence that any of them will ultimately exist!

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Yeah I know, I love those games too, but it was 14 years ago. FOURTEEN! You can have a mildly intelligent conversation with someone born when Fallout 2 came out at this point and they haven't done anything "good" since.

Anyway, not going to crap this up, the game might actually be interesting but I'll see how it shapes up when it's done before I hand any money over.

Fallout New Vegas was actually quite good, and regarded by many as better than Bethesdas take on the material. NWN2, also made by Obsidian, had a very dragging early campaign in the early game that eventually picked up and got quite good, and Mask of the Betrayer, a NWN2 expansion was sort of like a Planescape Lite expansion. They're pretty good at story (better than Bethesda by miles) and characters, but their coding leaves a lot to be desired.

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Yeah I know, I love those games too, but it was 14 years ago. FOURTEEN! You can have a mildly intelligent conversation with someone born when Fallout 2 came out at this point and they haven't done anything "good" since.

Anyway, not going to crap this up, the game might actually be interesting but I'll see how it shapes up when it's done before I hand any money over.

Alpha Protocol and New Vegas are my two favorite RPGs in recent memory. Dungeon Siege III was apparently pretty good and someday I will get around to play NWN 2:MotB, which was apparently also great. KOTOR II is one of my all time favorite games. So between that, PS:T, Fallout + FO2, and so on... yeah, I backed this before I even watched the video or read the Kickstarter page.

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Same here, really need to get around to playing Mask of the Betrayer. I've got all the NWN2 expansions, but only played through most of the vanilla game (not a huge fan, but definitely gets better) and the beginning of Mysteries of Westgate (which seemed pretty great, but not made by Obsidian of course).

Also yeah, Alpha Protocol is one of my absolute favourite recent rpgs as well. Thinking about the rest of the Obsidian games, I think I own pretty much all of them, except Dungeon Siege III. Haven't gotten around to Knights of the Old Republic 2 yet, since I got stuck or bored somewhere in KOTOR1. I have this problem with a lot of their games, since they are sequels to other studios' games. I always feel like I should exhaust the initial game before moving on to the Obsidian sequel, so I never seem to get around to playing a lot of them. Hehe. This is definitely why I haven't played a lot of New Vegas, not played at all KOTOR2, and not a lot of NWN2 all in all.

Anyway, just started playing Baldur's Gate 1 again. :)

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Hm fair enough, I guess I'm just not catching whatever they've been throwing. Still boggle me because I don't understand what it is, because the bullet points you guys list of whats good about their games today was what I liked about their games of yesteryear.

There must be a divide somewhere, but I won't bother figuring it out.

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Here is something I'll back hard.

I like all the Obsidian games, flaws and all. The quirks are just marks of ambition! I think MotB is maybe the next best D&D to Planescape. As Thumbs fans, we know all about "morality" systems in games, and I think Mask does a really nice job of present choices, and letting differentiate between similar ones with differing reasons. Yes (truthfully) or Yes (Lying). DS3 is the one I like least, though I hope they use the engine, modified for this, because it's a beautiful update of their usual fare.

Fun fact! I found Idle Thumbs because I saw a post on the Obsidian forums that this podcast was saying interesting things about AP.

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Haven't gotten around to Knights of the Old Republic 2 yet, since I got stuck or bored somewhere in KOTOR1.

When you do, and you should, pick up the recently released cut content community patch. There's a lot of stuff that was missing from KOTOR 2.

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I'm not particularly interested in yet another western-fantasy RPG series right now, but Obsidian has such a bad history with publisher meddling, it'll be interesting to see what they can do when they have nobody to answer to but themselves and their fans.

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When you do, and you should, pick up the recently released cut content community patch. There's a lot of stuff that was missing from KOTOR 2.

oh yeah definitely. that patch/mod is on my radar.

already to 600k :blink::o love it

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No lie, I'm REALLY interested in this. I straight-up love the amount of choices you tend to get in Obsidian games, and the only thing they've made that I played and ended up disliking when all was said and done was KotOR 2.

That said, Jsawyer was totally bullshitting: there is no way to make elves cool. Every elf created within the past fifty years or so in fiction has been doomed to shitedom, and I fail to see how they will change this.

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That said, Jsawyer was totally bullshitting: there is no way to make elves cool.

To be fair, his version of cool includes tribal tattoos.

Backing this, though I always liked Troika more then Obsidian (I still like Obsidian games) and this is out of love for Tim Cain.

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