Obsidian Entertainment - $1.8M, Unity Engine and More

Obsidian's Project Eternity Kickstarter has pased the $1.8M stretch, unlocking:

1.8 million, New Playable Race, Class, and Companion!
The options grow for your main character and the roster of your motley crew expands with the addition of a new companion from the selected class.

The player house is next at $2M.
Moving on, Chief Technology Officer and co-founder Chris Jones has posted Update #6, revealing the Unity Engine is the chosen technology base:

Unity enables small teams to be very productive. Unity has an amazing development environment that makes it very easy for programmers, artists and designers to work together to build great games. In a very short time we have already made great progress prototyping some of the core functionality for Project Eternity.
We do intend to use some of our in-house tools in conjunction with Unity where it makes sense, such as in the case of creating conversations and editing some of the RPG-specific game data. Unity makes it very easy to extend not only the game engine but the development tools as well, and we feel integrating some of the tools that have already proven effective on previous Obsidian games will get us off to a great start on the development of Project Eternity.

Chris also reveals "something new" will be added to the $2.2M stretch goal along with additional goals to be posted on Monday.
Let's throw a couple of interviews in here. First off, a sample from the Pure Sophistry podcast:

Why make the choice of developing this particular project on Kickstarter?
Feargus: That’s a really good question, I think a lot of it is we want to make the game. It’s a game we really want to make and it’s a game we feel that we can really make well. It’s funny, I was just talking to a publisher about an hour ago and he said, “Why didn’t you come and talk to us about publishing Project Eternity?” I said, I’m a pretty good salesmen- but not good enough to come into your office and ask you for money for a PC Roleplaying game. It’s just not something alot of the publishers are built around. It just made sense to “Kick-start it”

…Chris Avellone over at Time, which is worth reading:

I’m assuming $1.1 million is a fraction of what you’d typically require to make games like Neverwinter Nights 2 or Fallout: New Vegas. How’d you settle on this figure?
Yep, it’s a much reduced amount because you’re not doing all the extraneous features (total voice acting across all languages, the latest super graphic video card enhancements with tint control and crotch rumble™ technology, multiple skews across consoles, etc.).
We looked carefully at the budgets for previous Infinity Engine titles we’d done in the past at Black Isle [Studios], made adjustments for personnel (personnel costs have risen a great deal since then), kept the technology costs in mind and made a reasonable estimation of what we can accomplish. Our CEO (Feargus Urquhart) is pretty ruthless about stuff like that.
We’re in a good position because a number of us have made this type of game before (Josh, Tim, Feargus, me, etc.) – and even better, we’ve done this type of game several times. Now this is our opportunity to take that production knowledge and make it even better. Knowing the process from start to finish helps reduce a lot of the X factors in terms of implementation and avoid many of the pitfalls in development.

More information.

he latest super graphic video card enhancements with tint control and crotch rumble™ technology, multiple skews across consoles

Were all these in Dungeon Siege 3?

This is probably the biggest news in RPG in the coming year and RPGWatch and Wactchers better keep a keep eye on this one!

Knowing the process from start to finish helps reduce a lot of the X factors in terms of implementation and avoid many of the pitfalls in development.

Agreed.

Originally Posted by azarhal
Were all these in Dungeon Siege 3?

What, you didn't think DS3 was an AAA+++ game—across consoles? Because it was. You may not agree with the gameplay, but that is another matter entirely.

No crotch rumble support!? That's it, withdrawing pledge.

No surprises on the engine. Unity is cheap, versatile, has a ton of support, and can output into several platforms. I know some people complain about it, but I think Unity is a decent enough engine for this.

Originally Posted by Avantre
No crotch rumble support!? That's it, withdrawing pledge.

I agree, its such a wasted oppertunity..

Glad they using the unity engine, since wasteland 2 is looking fine by me.

Originally Posted by Avantre
No crotch rumble support!? That's it, withdrawing pledge.

Insta-withdraw.

Biowares next game will include romantic sex scenes with rumble support.

Originally Posted by Thaurin
What, you didn't think DS3 was an AAA+++ game—across consoles? Because it was. You may not agree with the gameplay, but that is another matter entirely.

I'm currently playing DS3 and I'm pretty sure I haven't seen any crotch rumble™ technology yet…

Feargus talks about having Eternity not stray too far from the "Forgotten Realms" formula… a design philosophy I'm not sure I welcome

Kudos to Avellone on the Roy Batty reference though:

[…]pitching something like Eternity is largely useless and even pitching other more “publisher friendly” RPGs in today’s market makes me want to slit my wrists. We’ve pitched and even begun development on a number of fantasy worlds that have never seen the light of day. All of those worlds… It’s soul-crushing to see them sputter out, one by one. Lost. Like tears. In rain.

Chris Avellon wrote a blog on PE and Characterization.

Originally Posted by azarhal
I'm currently playing DS3 and I'm pretty sure I haven't seen any crotch rumble™ technology yet…

Only the Cool Kids get that feature. Sorry!

I hope they take the idea of this and run with it making multiple games. Most companies get so caught up in the latest tech that they don't reuse all the good stuff they already have and make a new story with new characters.

Originally Posted by SveNitoR
Biowares next game will include romantic sex scenes with rumble support.

They would be copying the witcher then wouldn't they?

Originally Posted by rune_74
They would be copying the witcher then wouldn't they?

That would be an awesome lawsuit.

Originally Posted by SveNitoR
Biowares next game will include romantic sex scenes with rumble support.

Would that be a "stretch" goal?

I think the mystery publisher that's getting people to front them to do kickstarters is Unity. Prove me wrong.

Originally Posted by Charles-cgr
I think the mystery publisher that's getting people to front them to do kickstarters is Unity. Prove me wrong.

Hmm you may be right since the rpg's that I was hoping to be funded are using unity. Get the tin foil hats.