In this latest post funding Kickstarter update for Project Eternity designer Bobby Null talks about the design of the creatures in the game.

One of my responsibilities has been creating the bestiary for Project Eternity. I'll admit, it's been a lot of work, but it's also been a lot fun. Like most of the things we do here at Obsidian, the process has been very collaborative. We have a few high-level goals regarding this process on Project Eternity.

• Creature Variety - The goal is to have a large library of creatures to use for the final game. Thus far, we're on track to meet this goal. The concept artists, modelers and animators have been tearing through the bestiary and delivering quality assets at a rapid pace.

• Recognizable is Good - We don't want to try to reinvent the wheel with every single monster. As we've shown in an earlier update, we feel some classic monsters, like the ogre, are essential to capture the adventuring feel we are aiming for. Moving forward, we are committed to including monsters that we feel fans will appreciate, while giving the beasties flavor appropriate to the world of Project Eternity.

• Different if Cool - We've already shown one of the unique creatures for Project Eternity in an earlier update, the skuldr. We will continue to create other unique, and often times bizarre, creatures to populate our world, but unique doesn't always need to feel bizarre. Different because it's cool is the goal.

So now that I've briefly discussed our high level goals, let's talk about a new creature: The Cean Gúla (KEN GOO-lah, "Blood Woman", Glanfathan), and the pipeline we use to get it through the concept phase.

Project Eternity has a new post-funding update that shows concept art, and gives information on the monk class.

                 

Monks in Eternity are different than you might expect. There are no restrictions on armor and weapons – you could wear plate and use a sword, if you wanted to, and the talent system is flexible enough so you could build a great monk that specialized in that gear. But at the core of this class is a little rule about how monks take damage. You see, when a monk gets hit, only part of the damage is inflicted on him or her immediately. The rest is redirected to a Wound, which is an effect that causes damage over time (called a DoT effect) to the monk. That slowly-ticking Wound would only seem to be delaying the inevitable result except for one thing: the monk can get rid of that Wound by using special attacks.

The monk gets all kinds of cool special attacks that do extra effects beyond simply damage and, as a side effect, also eliminate his Wounds. Some of their special attacks include:

• Torment’s Reach - this ability increases the range of melee attacks by 200% for a short duration. Enemies between the monk and his or her target are also attacked. Costs 1 Wound to activate.

• Turning Wheel - if the monk suffers from a DoT effect (including Wounds ticking down), he or she adds a proportional fire bonus to his or her melee damage. This is a passive ability which works automatically whenever the monk has any DoT effect.

• Clarity of Agony - when used, this ability cuts the duration of hostile status effects in half. It lasts for a brief amount of time, halving both incoming effects and ones that are currently on the monk. Costs 2 Wounds.

Each of these attacks makes monks stronger in battle, and many also consume their Wounds, hopefully before those Wounds have done the damage the monks were originally supposed to take.

Culture Concept

Concept artist Kaz Aruga has been developing the look of some of Project Eternity's various cultures. So far, he's created concepts for people from the Dyrwood, the Vailian Republics, the Aedyr Empire, and the Valley of Ixamitl. We hope you like the range we've come up with. Let us know what you think!

GameBanshee has posted a newsbit on Project Eternity that's been made available by devs through social networks and their official forums. Visit the link for more information as there is allot of it.

Josh Sawyer:

Wood elves make up almost half of the population of Aedyr and orlans are also found near savannah folk, north of Readceras (which is north of the Dyrwood).

Even the elves and orlans in Eír Glanfath migrated to the area within the past two thousand years; they don't have any apparent connection to the original residents and builders of the ancient structures.

...

Ethnicity and culture are separate characteristics in the game. Individual meadow folk can be from the Vailian Republics just as coastal aumaua can be from Aedyr. The common-name descriptions of ethnicities don't restrict where they can be from. Literally every ethnicity in our race document has a bit-by-bit description of what physical characteristics they have, including facial features, skin tones, hair colors (and textures), eye colors (and shapes), etc. E.g., only savannah folk, pale elves, and boreal dwarves have epicanthic folds. Of those, only boreal dwarves have them consistently.

...

Just as a point of reference, we've seen the use of Gaelic names for places and people, and now are told that the old English/Norse languages are being referenced, does this indicate a clash of cultures at some point? Or have the two arisen in unison and merged beyond the telling apart?

It's less a clash of cultures and more of the intermingling of them. Places settled by Aedyrans in the Dyrwood tend to have Eld Aedyran or regular Aedyran (i.e. plain English) names. The common names for some creatures are Glanfathan but others are Eld Aedyran or (rarely) Vailian. The cultures borrow terms from each other, too. The title of duc (ducs bels and ducs panits) is used in the Vailian Republics for the sovereign ruler of a city-state, but the Dyrwoodans borrowed it when they rebelled against the Aedyran Empire. Admeth Hadret was originally an erl palatine (palatine/palatinate also being borrowed from the Vailians), but he styled himself as a duc of the "free palatinate" during the rebellion.

...

At first it seemed the different cultures would be more in a high/late Middle period. From your recent answers, it seems that pretty much all the big human factions are actually in what would be a modern, colonial period. 1. So PE is more of a Renaissance/early modern world than a High/Late Medieval one? 2. Is there still some place for knights (vassal system...), Gothic Architecture, Medieval weaponery and other typical Middle Ages characteristics?

The Dyrwood is in the equivalent of a Renaissance/early modern tech level, but even Europe’s own Renaissances didn’t abandon earlier architecture and technology. Swords and armor were used alongside firearms for centuries (as they are in the Dyrwood, where firearms are still uncommon).

Rural communities in the Dyrwood tend to have Romanesque/Norman architecture, with Renaissance features (e.g. domes, symmetrical façades) found in large urban centers. Previous colonial cultures also tried to settle in the Dyrwood and their ruins tend to be more traditionally “Medieval”. In the village concept we released, the buildings are vaguely Romanesque with a few Renaissance features, but they are built adjacent to much older, rougher remnants of a castle and bridges from centuries ago.

...

Hi Josh.You said that Aedyr are white humans and elves with green and blue eyes. But they are from very hot, tropical regions of the world. Wouldnt people living in a climate like that develop a darker skin and darker eyes?

If they had been there for more than a few thousand years, yes. Most people living in Aedyr are Thyrtan humans, "meadow folk". Their ethnic group is not native to Aedyr, but comes from the far north (like the Sceltrfolc elves). They migrated south over thousands of years. Their nickname, "meadow folk", is seemingly a misnomer but is still used because of their origin.

Similarly, the Grand Empire of Vailia (from which the Vailian Republics sprang) was farther south in the southern hemisphere, but the Calbandra people originally lived near the equator for many millennia (hence their name -- Calbandra = warm ring).

Additionally, no one really got why their name meant "warm ring" for a long time because the Vailians pioneered cartography and theories of the world's shape. To most others, Calbandra are "ocean folk".

...

Can you tell us where the spelling of Direwood (Deerwood) comes from?

"Dyrwood" (DEER-wood) is the Eld Aedyran name for the forest north and west of the Bael River. The letter y in Eld Aedyran is pronounced /i/.

...

Can you tell me anything about the clothing and architectural styles of the cultures in Project Eternity? How do you deal with situations where the climate/environment is quite different from that of the real cultures that were the inspiration?

Kaz is working on the clothing right now. It's interesting, because we have combinations of people and styles that aren't usually seen together (e.g. Vailians are essentially black Renaissance Italians) and I think Kaz is doing a good job of making each culture feel distinctive. We've already developed the Dyrwoodan and Vailian styles, and now Kaz is revisiting the Aedyrans to reflect their home climate more.

In Earth's history, Spanish and Portuguese explorers/conquistadors were often overdressed for the hot climates they found themselves in. Aedyrans have the opposite problem when they visit the Dyrwood. Their home climate is very hot and humid, so they are relatively underdressed for the Mediterranean/temperate climates of the Dyrwood.

For Dyrwoodan architecture, Rob and Polina are looking at Renaissance European architecture and also some of the colonial-era South American architecture. Because the Dyrwood is heavily colonized (and very recently), many of the urban buildings look much newer than they might in a traditional Medieval fantasy setting.

The Glanfathan architecture is much more fantastic. We can create shapes and structures that would not be possible/appropriate when using strictly Renaissance-era technology alone.

...

The PE world map was one of the first things shown for the game. How much has it evolved since then? Will we see an updated version in the near future?

It has changed somewhat, mostly how the rivers flow, but a few other details here and there. We haven't revised it in a while, but we will eventually release an updated version.

Adam Brennecke, Executive Producer and Lead Programmer, updates us on the status of prototype 2 in this update for Project Eternity.

Last month we finished our prototype 1 build. In Update #47, Josh outlined our goals for the first prototype, which focused on establishing "that IE feel". Not only did we hit that mark with the look of our characters and environments, but we also hit our target with movement, combat, and gameplay systems. Core basics that you all expect from Project Eternity such as party movement, melee and ranged combat attacks, containers (with loot!), doors, using special class abilities and spell casting, area transitions, inventory and equipment are all in the game and functioning. We also established working character and environment pipelines - the art team is now able to create beautiful rendered areas, and we can model armor sets for all of our uniquely proportioned races. Additionally, we've established that we can efficiently concept, model and animate creatures for our soon to be growing bestiary.

More details on their first creature, art, design and programming can be found in the update.

Obsidian's George Ziets has shared his views on the Project Eternity setting with Examiner.com.

1) Soul mechanics. I like the fact that this defining feature of the world affects almost every element of the setting. For example, we had a creature meeting this week, and we kept coming back to questions like, “Okay, given our soul mechanics, what does it mean to be (for example) undead in this world? What does it mean to be this other creature type? What kind of soul would this creature have? Why would it exist in our setting?” Our soul mechanics give us a strong foundation upon which to build the rest of the world, and in most cases, they result in logical reasons for subtle (or significant) differences between PE and other fantasy settings.

Josh Sawyer provides an overview of what Project Eternity is for everyone who doesn't know, forgot or just likes overviews.

Project Eternity is a party-based fantasy roleplaying game inspired by the Infinity Engine games (Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Icewind Dale 1 & 2, and Planescape: Torment) set in an original world created by Obsidian Entertainment.  The camera has a fixed axonometric (high angle) perspective (with zoom!).  The environments are 2D backgrounds combined with 3D characters and visual effects.
 
Project Eternity's team is focusing on three core ideas that will capture the Infinity Engine experiences players loved so much:

• Unique, beautiful, dynamic environments that encourage and reward exploration.
• A story that is both personal and far-reaching, with believable characters and factions that create compelling dilemmas for players.
• Fun and challenging tactical combat that can escalate in difficulty through the use of optional game modes.

In addition there is an update of MCA's playthrough of Arcanum.

We’re doing something different with the Arcanum playthroughs with this update – instead of filming a large portion at once and then releasing that one session over several weeks in small 10 min chunks, we’re going to release smaller updates that allow us to respond more quickly to your feedback on the playthrough and then iterate on the next playthrough. In this episode, Avellone explores the small town of Shrouded Hills, deals with cowardly constables, explores trash bins, and finds out more about the cryptic ring from the Zephyr’s zeppelin crash. Virgil guest stars.

Odsidian promised they would release a video showing some gameplay elements and they have delivered. I think it looks beautiful. What's your opinion?

Welcome. Today's update is a big one, though not by volume of text. Today we’re showing you our game in action. Specifically, we're showing what we've been doing for our exterior environments. The Infinity Engine games were known for their art, and we wanted to hit the high standard of visual quality established by games like the Icewind Dale series. We also wanted to introduce dynamic elements into the environment that were mostly absent from the classic games, like dynamic water, movement in foliage, and dynamic lighting of the scene.

In a 2D game, this required our programmers and artists to come up with some creative solutions. What they came up with surprised us initially and it continues to amaze us. While we are still working on refining some of the dynamic elements, we're very happy with the progress we've been able to make and hope you feel the same way. Special thanks to Hector Espinoza, our lead environment artist, and Michael Edwards, our rendering programmer, who did a lot of amazing work to bring this environment to life.

Thanks go to WorstUsernameEver and Dr. A

This update for Project Eternity gives some insight on the documentary that is being made of the development of the game.

In Update #23 Feargus announced that Obsidian would fund a documentary of the making of Project Eternity without using a dime from the Kickstarter funding. Here's a behind-the-scenes of the behind-the-scenes and some other tidbits about the documentary.

We've been working with the documentary team, Tony Jacobsen and Michael Mitchell from Creative Lane Media, for some time. Tony and Mike are very professional guys with years of experience making films, and have experience working with the games industry. They will be with following us with their fancy cameras for the entire production of Project Eternity.

Our documentary will be a full movie and released in its entirety when the game is complete. We are targeting a 45 minute film that covers the entire process of the making of Project Eternity from the early days of the Kickstarter, into preproduction, all the way through production to finishing it up and going gold. There will be footage from our team meetings, informal discussions, scrums, and major milestone events.

When can I get the Documentary? The documentary will be released when Project Eternity is finished. We will have more details when we get closer to the Project Eternity beta.

How do I get it? If you already backed at the $20/$25 tier level (and Slacker Backers via PayPal thus far) and above you will be able to stream it. At the $35 tier level and above you will be able to download it, and at the $140 tier level (and physical tiers above) we will include a DVD / Blu-ray. You can still get access to the documentary stream if you donate to the project today via the Slacker Backer pledge at the Eternity website.

And there are some videos of the Let's Play Arcanum activity by MCA.

PC Gamer talked to Chris Avellone at GDC on varius subjects from Fallout: New Vegas, Wasteland 2, to Torment: Tides of Numenera.  In the interview, he also talks about Obsidian's own title, Project Eternity. As always, a quote:

You mentioned the different cultures. We saw some of that in the early concept art, where we had the Inuit-inspired dwarf. Do you have a particular favorite culture that puts a spin on an existing fantasy trope?

Well, my favorite race is the Orlans. They're feline-based, and I don't think there's actually an equivalent of them in standard fantasy fare. Partially because I'm a cat person, and I really like the idea that they're sort of the stealthy, guerrilla class. That kind of appeals to me. And you know, the trap-making. They're very anti-slaver, because the slavers love to pick on them. So that's caused some interesting paranoia and hostility in their culture.

In this update Josh Sawyer talks about the current development status of Project Eternity now that they have the first prototype done and are working towards their second prototype. Furthermore the Torment and Dwarven Forge's Game Tiles are promoted.

We've got a lot of things in progress on Project Eternity right now. As Darren wrote in the last update, we're winding down our first prototype. We just did an audit of the work that remains from the first prototype and where we will be going with the next prototype. Our first prototype allowed us to prove a lot of the basics of movement, character design, stealth, combat controls, inventory, resting, quests, scripted skill interactions, dialogue, status effects, and the ability and spell systems. There's still a lot of work to do on all of those elements, but by the end of the prototype, it really did have "that IE feel". How I organized and moved my characters, how I used them differently in combat, how I explored areas very much captured the feeling of the Infinity Engine games in gorgeous high-res environments.

DigiPen interviewed Obsidian's Adam Brennecke (former DigiPen editor) on Project Eternity and its Kickstarter.

While the pitch for Project Eternity was an indisputable success, the project likely wouldn’t have gotten off the ground without a period of uncertainty for the studio. Obsidian had been several months into development for an unannounced title when the game’s publisher pulled the plug, leaving the California-based studio little choice but to lay off staff and start shopping for more work.

As one of the programmers who worked on the canceled game, Brennecke joined in the effort of pitching new game ideas to publishers. That meant spending weeks writing design documents, prototyping game ideas, and typically getting nowhere fast.

“It takes a lot of time to go through the pitch process. And right now is not the best time in the world to pitch new games,” Brennecke says.

Fortunately, Brennecke realized that working with a publisher wasn’t the only way to fund their next project. A shift was occurring in the industry, as many game companies began skirting big-name publishers altogether by going directly to the fans to fund games, primarily through Kickstarter. One of the biggest success stories happened in March 2012, when indie studio Double Fine Productions brought in more than $3.3 million to fund an old-school adventure game. Months later, Obsidian’s friends at developer InXile found similar success with their game Wasteland 2.

Darren Monahan on nearing the end of Obsidian's prototype stage.

In this week’s update, we’re back with me for one more! We’ll cover what the team’s up to currently.

To start, every one of Obsidian’s games goes through a series of phases. Those phases, chronologically, are: Prototype, Vertical Slice, Production, and Finalization. At the end of each phase, the team and owners do an analysis of the progress; we verify that we’ve hit key goals, and (hopefully) officially move the project into the next phase.

This update on Project Eternity shares information on the backer portal, 3 videos of MCA's play-through of Arcanum and a promotion for two Kickstarter games (of which one is Torment).

Q: So, what’s happening with the backer portal?
A: I’m personally busy putting together a whole new Project Eternity website, which includes our backer portal, RSS feeds (popular request!), as well as including information and artwork about the universe of Eternity. What we know about classes, races, the gods, and more, and this site will continue to evolve as more and more is designed and released.

It is a big job though for just little ol’ me, so it’s still going to be a few weeks as I work everything out, but we’ll keep you in the know. Oh, and backer badges come with this system as well.

The backer portal will also be a great resource for those of you in the upper tiers who are submitting item, character, or location designs. Speaking of which...!

Q: When will I be able to start submitting my item, character, or location designs?
A: The guys have been talking quite a bit about this recently and have already started designing out the forms. Our current plan is to have those of you with those tiers be able to input them directly in our backer portal, and you can revise them at any time up to a certain point down the road (which we’ll let you all know – this point is when we would send out your text for translation, and it becomes expensive from this point to make edits.) But until then, start thinking about the concept for the thing you’d like to add! Adam will have an update on that in the coming weeks with more detail. We’d like to make sure there’s enough backstory and content available for you to draw connections from, and our new website will be the place for that.

As part of their series of Kickstarter interviews NowGamer talked to Project Eternity's Executive producer and lead programmer, Adam Brennecke.

Have you made or anticipated any changes to the original pitch? If so, how did the community react?

So far we haven’t really changed much of anything. Since it’s a pretty clear project, the idea is very clear and I think that’s why it’s so successful. People understand what we were trying to pitch. And we’ve got a really good idea of how to make this game.

There are little details here and there, since it’s an RPG there are tons of little rules and other things here and there that, through development, somethings work and somethings don’t and we have to make those changes.    

Since we’re pretty clear and honest with our backers they’re pretty cool about us having to make changes to stuff. As long as we explain it properly and explain why we’re making that change most people have been pretty cool.

How has Kickstarter funding changed the development process?

We try and do an update every week and it is a lot of work for us to do that, but we like sharing what we’re doing and discussing it with the community. The community has a lot of great ideas and they’re a good sounding board. Josh Sawyer might have an idea for combat and we can just get it out there and see what people think about it.

Then we can make adjustments as necessary. It’s very different to traditional game development where you have to do a lot of work behind closed doors. It’s great that we can be really open and get things out there as we make them. It’s been a lot of fun.

Thanks Omega.

In update #44 Josh Sawyer informs us of melee engagements in Project Eternity.

Last week, our art director, Rob, showed you our godlike concepts and dazzled you with an in-depth technical breakdown of how we're doing animation rigging on the project. This week, we'll be talking about a different technical subject, but one that's more connected to gameplay: engagement -- specifically, melee engagement.

Melee engagement is a solution to two common problems in the Infinity Engine games: melee characters' inability to control an area and ranged characters' ability to "kite" melee characters. In the Infinity Engine games, melee characters could be quite powerful in toe-to-toe combat, but many opponents found ways to foil those characters with little difficulty. Fast characters could easily rush around a slower melee character with impunity and ranged characters could backpedal perpetually out of reach.

If you're familiar with D&D 3E/3.5/4E/Pathfinder's attack of opportunity mechanics, Project Eternity's melee engagement fills a similar role by making melee combatants "sticky". Coming near a melee combatant means being drawn into Engagement with him or her, a state that can be risky to get out of.

Here's how it works: when two opposed combatants come near each other and one of them a) has a melee weapon equipped b) is not moving and c) is not currently at his or her maximum limit of engagement targets (the standard is 1), the other character will be Engaged.

When an opponent is Engaged by an attacker, moving any significant distance away from the attacker will provoke a Disengagement Attack. A Disengagement Attack has an inherent Accuracy bonus, does significantly more damage than a standard attack, and will call a hit reaction animation while momentarily stopping the character's movement.

When it's initiated, a Disengagement Attack automatically breaks Engagement on the target, but if the target is also the attacker's current melee target, the attacker will typically be able to re-establish Engagement before the target can move farther away. In this manner, melee combatants, especially ones that have high Accuracy and damage per hit, have a solid mechanic for keeping enemies close to them -- or making the cost of escape extremely expensive.

Of course, there are other ways to end Engagement. If the attacker switches to a non-melee weapon or performs a non-melee-based action, Engagement immediately ends. If the attacker moves away from their Engagement targets, is paralyzed, knocked down, or otherwise prevented from maintaining a threat, Engagement will also immediately end. If the attacker has a limited number of Engagement targets (as most do) and switches his or her attack focus to a different character, Engagement immediately ends.

We believe that Engagement can give AI a clear "decision point" where they can evaluate the threat of their new status and choose the appropriate course of action. For player-controlled characters, it makes melee enemies more potent threats and presents players with tactical challenges to solve.

We want Engagement to be a mechanic that players and enemies can mess with using a variety of class Abilities and general Talents, so we will be experimenting with a variety of elements to that end:

• Fighters' Defender mode allows them to engage two additional targets and increases the range at which they engage targets. This gives fighters much greater capability to control the area around them.
• The limited-use Escape ability lets rogues break Engagement without provoking a Disengagement Attack. It is generally best used when the rogue's enemy is preoccupied with another target.
• Barbarians can use Wild Rush to temporarily ignore the movement stop and hit reactions from Engagement and Disengagement Attacks, respectively -- though they can still suffer massive damage while powering through.
• The wizards' Grimoire Slam allows them to attack an enemy in melee with their magically-charged grimoires, unleashing a concussive wave of energy on contact. If it hits, the attack knocks the target back, usually far enough to break Engagement in the process.

Additionally, creatures may have their own special abilities related to Engagement and Disengagement Attacks. We hope that the system itself is easy to understand but allows for increasingly complex tactical considerations over the course of the game.

RPGFrance has made an interview with Adam Brennecke and Chris Avellone from Obsidian Entertainment.  The interview is in French; if you scroll down the interview will be
translated into English. A quote on how Obsidian decided to start a Kickstarter campaign:

When did Project Eternity really become something concrete you knew you would work on ? Why did you specifically choose Kickstarter to launch your game ?

Kickstarter was something we'd been examining for a while, several months before we launched, in fact - I'd put a poll up on the Obsidian site (http://forums.obsidian.net/blog/1/entry-158-if-obsidian-kickstarter/) which got us a lot of interest, and then once Wasteland 2 proved that there was a market for the seemingly-dead old school RPG model, we started to chew over methods for tackling Kickstarter and seeing if we had any ideas that would be a good fit. Even after Eternity, we're still examining Kickstarter in case we want to do another in the future. 

Art Director Rob Nesler brings us the latest Project Enternity update about the work their technical animator Antonio is doing and an image of a godlike made by Polina.

The godlike are the children of humanoids (most often humans) who have been "blessed" (or cursed, depending on personal or social view) with the physical manifestation of a divine spark granted by the gods. Godlike manifest their divine heritage in a variety of ways: wings, horns, strange birthmarks, talons, odd eyes - but they always manifest it somehow. BTW, in case you missed it, this is a playable "race".

And on the work of Antonio:

If you recall, in the last update, I wrote this little nugget:

"Antonio Is our Technical Animator. He makes rigs, writes scripts that make rigs, and rigs the rigs. It’s all very technical. You wouldn’t understand. He’s a professional."

So, specifically ROB, what does Antonio do that will make Project Trenton/Eternity awesome?
Generally, technical animators program scripts using languages like MEL or Python to extend or enhance the functionality of existing off-the-shelf apps like Maya, Max, or Softimage. These scripts are often programs running within the larger app, but sometimes they are utilities that exist outside the application to assist in conversion or batching operations. These often can be purchased, but sometimes they themselves don’t have all the features our animators want so...

NO! Specifically ROB! What the hell does he do???
Okay, okay, for Project Trenton/Eternity Antonio has written, a few, and re-written a couple times the following, and it's all called DNA (Design New Actor).

Firstly, there is the Export Rig, and this is not so unique to 3D character animation. This is a highly optimized skeleton that represents only the bones that the actual actor mesh is weighted to. For a humanoid character these bones would be named: Pelvis, Femur_Rt and Femur_Lt., etc. Vertices of the visible textured geometry, that the player sees, are all attached to these bones with various amounts of strength, so the character will appear to bend and flex more naturally. Sometimes these bones will have physics applied to them, like pony tails. This is less a rig and more of: simply the skeleton that the other rigs interact with, but these are the only bones that go into the game, and we call it the "export rig". Antonio builds this skeletal hierarchy to fit the expected proportions of the character, and character modelers build character meshes to match visible body parts to the locations of bones, so that -- for example -- the bendy part between the upper_arm_rt and lower_arm_rt ends up being where a humanoid creature, as designed, would expect an elbow to be.

Adam Brennecke has posted an Project Eternity update on Kickstarter, discussing equippabe items, dwarves and door placements:

One of the goals in preproduction was to figure out how we could make character modeling pipeline be as efficient as possible. The problem is fairly complex: All of the six playable races, human, elf, dwarf, aumaua, orlan, and the god-like can wear armor, boots, gloves, helmets (...well, some have trouble wearing helmets, but we will talk about that some other day...) and have other options that the player can customize like facial hair, hair style and skin color. We also have tons of armor variations and types of armor, like plate, brigandine, leather, and mail. (Josh loves his armor). Ideally, our artist would only need to model one armor piece - let's say plate body armor - and have it fit all six of our playable races even if the races are all of different proportions and body structure. At the end of the day the same model for plate armor could fit a slender four-foot-tall orlan and a burly seven-foot-tall aumaua. The goal for January was to build a system to allow us to do this very thing.

Thanks for the reminder, Thrasher!

Project Eternity Update #40 offers concept art of the orlan race but the meat of the post is George Ziets on designing the deities:

Building a Pantheon
One of our first steps was to think about gods. Deities can be a good starting point when developing a world. They reflect the views and beliefs of the world’s inhabitants, and they can inspire ideas for characters, organizations, and conflicts.

You’ve already heard a few of our gods mentioned in passing: Magran, goddess of fire and war; Berath, god of cycles, doors, and death; Eothas, god of light and redemption. Josh invented these gods when he was first developing the world, and they play important roles in the region where the game will be set. But we’ll need a lot more gods to fill out the pantheon.

Here are a few of the elements we consider for each new deity:

• What is the god's name, and what are his/her "aliases" (e.g., "The Twinned God" for Berath).
• What is the god's portfolio? That is, what aspects of life or the world do they represent (e.g., mortality, greed, summer, commerce)?
• What allies and foes do they have amongst the other gods?
• What are their symbols?
• How do they manifest in the mortal world?

We list this information for each deity, as well as providing a detailed description. Players won’t necessarily get to see all this stuff, but it’s useful background for the art and design teams, so that the world feels like a consistent, coherent whole.

One other thing to bear in mind: for the most part, our deities aren’t good or evil. They’re somewhere in between – closer to the multi-dimensional gods of the ancient world. Every deity has his or her own agenda, which isn’t bound by notions of alignment. Sometimes they can be helpful and benevolent. Other times – not so much.

In the latest update of Project Eternity, Josh Sawyer talks about the basics of the "non-core" classes, cooldown system (or lack thereof), how attacks are resolved, and on the evolution of the armor system. In addition it shows the dungeon tileset test render is shown and a shakycam of some of the combat basics running in engine. With the exception of the last, everything is both in text and in a video.

The Kickstarter Page for this page has been updated witn an interview featuring Lead Animator Mark Bremerkamp.  We learn about his eagerness to animate the RPG's many creatures, his inspirations, and also about his day-to-day responsibilities, and much more.
Here's a snip from the interview:

Q: What is your typical work day like on Project Eternity?

A:
First drink coffee then check my e-mail and look to see if there are any meetings that I need to prepare for. Then I usually look over the work from the day before. I like to always go back with a fresh set of eyes to see what worked and then I'll make some notes/changes. After all that I get to animating the fixes or I'll move onto a new animation.

Obsidian's Adam Brennecke posted a Kickstarter update for Project Eternity summing up the pledges and recent activities.

The team has returned from our cozy elfhomes, and we are re-energized and excited to get back to work on Project Eternity. Without further adieu, we had promised backer details in this update, so let's start off with those. Thanks to all of your extremely generous donations, our final backer numbers for our crowdfunding phase are: $3,986,929 from 73,986 Kickstarter backers and $324,650 from roughly 5,698 unique PayPal backers (not including the almost 500 slacker backers who have contributed since the crowdfunding phase ended!) For the phase, we earned about $4,311,600 before any fees from Kickstarter and the payment services. (This does include some losses from failed charges, returns, etc.)

We are continuing to work on fulfillment and are slowly getting in contact with our backers about specifics. The last of the $350 tier loot bags are being sent out this week, and Chris Avellone is starting to draw Troll Avatars for the $750 tier backers. As we continue forward in pre-production, we will have more information for the higher tier design and art related rewards and how backers will be able to participate in designing your items, NPCs, adventuring parties, etc. The backer site is coming together and the plan is to have it up and running by the end of the month. Thank you for your patience and for those of you who will be designing goodies for the game, we’ll be in touch once we’re ready with your templates to fill out.

Josh Sawyer brings us a lengthy update on Project Infinity about resolution and scaling, movement and combat feel, UI design and the four core classes and advancement.

As players advance their characters, they have the ability to choose class-specific abilities and more class-neutral talents (more like perks or feats) to customize their character capabilities. If you want to keep your fighters very low maintenance, there are a large number of passive fighter abilities and combat-oriented talents that you can buy. If you'd like to make a fighter that's much more "active-use" (more like a 4E fighter), you can choose to buy more modal and active abilities. Similarly, while all wizards gain additional spells, you can use talents to boost a wizard's damage with implement weapons and Blasts, making them more useful when you're not having them chain-cast a series of limited-use spells.

The same also applies to skills, which are used for a variety of non-combat purposes. All classes start out with bonuses in the skills that their classes most commonly use, but players can choose to reinforce or play against that top. If you want to make a paladin who delights in picking locks, you can do that and get a lot of utility out of the skill -- though the character will never be quite as good as a rogue who specializes in it.

Thomas sends word of a Project Eternity interview with Josh Sawyer at Gamers.de:

G: The setting reminds me of some kind of a „new world”-scenario. It is planed that your group will be able to use a ship to venture to another continent at the course of the adventure? Personally, the thought about an Infinity Engine-quest line on a ship excites me. It would be a perfect scenario for romantic adventures as well!

JS: We have not yet decided all of the places you can travel in this game, but the Dyrwood is the "new world" for the settlers and there is a lot of ship travel in the area.

G: Regarding romances, relationships were always important elements in the IE-Games, especially in "Baldur's Gate 2".  Will it be possible for our PC to engage in a relationship? 

JS: We aren't currently focusing much attention on romances on Project Eternity.  I would only want to include them if they feel like a natural fit.  As we develop the companion characters, we'll see where their plot arcs take them.

Josh Sawyer has made a new video as an answer to a question posed to him on his Formspring account.

When you write about how all classes in Project Eternity should be "useful", what does that mean? Does it mean they need to be equally powerful and "balanced"? If so, what does that even mean in a single player, party-based RPG?

In the latest Project Enternity update we are introduced to Lead Character Artist Dimitri Berman.

Q: Hi Dimitri! What do you do on the Project Eternity team?
A: Hi everyone! I make sure all characters and creatures meet our set quality bar as they enter the game, this includes creation of high poly and low poly models, textures and materials, and occasional skinning and rigging. I work closely with animators, programmers, and designers to make sure our stuff looks and behaves as best it can, and also prototype new systems if we find something particularly cool we can do that the players will enjoy seeing. Occasionally I will jump over and help out the environment guys if they need help with complex set pieces.

Josh Sawyer has answered some questions about Project Eternity over at Iron Tower Studio's forums:

3. So, a brand new world, with elves, dwarves, the godlike and the odd, as well as souls and firearms. How do the firearms fit in there from the design perspective?

I think early firearms are interesting and I've enjoyed reading about their use in late Medieval and early modern Europe.  From a gameplay perspective, they pack more of a punch than bows and crossbows, but they have worse accuracy and take much longer to reload.  They're also particularly good at penetrating wizards' arcane veils, which are commonly used for defense.  In our setting, I believe the presence of firearms helps shift the feeling of the world away from the equivalent of Earth's High Middle Ages and into the Late Middle Ages and early modern period.  Europe's early modern period was a time of domestic social unrest and extensive exploration by imperial powers.  I think those topics aren't explored a lot in fantasy RPGs (Maztica [RIP] being a notable exception) and the presence of firearms helps give the feeling of that age.

4. Speaking of arcane veils and such, one of the most praised features in BG2 was the mage duels. In BG a wizard was an annoying pest lurking behind fighters and waiting to be shot full of arrows. In BG a wizard was an impregnable juggernaut, capable of wiping out your entire party, if it was caught unprepared. What should we expect in Project Eternity?

Personally, I believe AD&D elevated the "glass cannon" conception of wizards to an un-fun place.  It's cool that, especially in 2nd Edition, wizards had so many spells to use, but in Baldur's Gate II, I believe it resulted in more-or-less strict combat puzzles rather than loose combat puzzles or tactical challenges.  If the only viable way through a fight is to use a specific sequence of spells, that's not something that you tactically opt to do -- it's the thing you must do to move forward.  And in many of those fights, the only way to figure out what spells to use is to trigger the fight, get wiped, reload, and try again.

I think we can still have powerful, high-threat wizards in Project Eternity without using rock-paper-scissors defense and counter mechanics.  I'd like to present players with challenges that make them think of a variety of solutions.  I want them to feel like they can be flexible and adaptive when an unforeseen challenge appears.  If the game comes out and I see walkthroughs that all suggest the exact same tactics for going through a tough fight, I believe that's a failure on my part.

Obsidian's Art Director for Project Eternity Rob Nesler has posted a large update on their work developing the art. A number of "grey" work-in-progress art samples are provided and here's a snip from the text on the +3 Medicine Ball Flail you'll see in the samples:

Mark is our Lead Animator, and he knows his sh-tuff, but he made the Medicine ball. Needless to say, he will not be asked to make any more weapons. No no, it just so happens, that he was making it so he could test physics on weapons. So, it’s all good--we don’t care what things look like right now, we care about making things that matter, and making them right. Lately Mark has been testing cloth physics on our characters, as well as physics on weapons, and attachments. Prior to that he was building a basic set of traversal animations and getting them into the game. Crucial.

TotalBiscuit caught up with Obsidian's Adam Brennecke to talk about Project Eternity (thanks, Melvil!):

TotalBiscuit invites Adam Brennecke from Obsidian Entertainment to talk a bit about the upcoming and highly anticipated RPG, Project Eternity. Unfortunately there is no video footage available at this time, except for a showcase of early concept art.

There's a new update for Project Eternity, announcing Paypal donations are closing in a week and also providing a current development update:

The Project Eternity team is tackling a number of different things in pre-production including story and world building, creating the look of the Aumaua and Orlans, character customization, combat, and fancy rendering R&D.

Here are a few bits on current developments:

• The narrative team is creating the world almanac which contains all the information about the people and history of Project Eternity. Right now they are fleshing out the pantheon of gods. Do you have any crazy or wacky ideas for gods? Share your ideas in the forums!

• The artists and programmers have been working on character customization. The system allows for individual pieces of armor to show up on your characters such as boots, gloves, and chest armor. When you swap armor, the character's torso model and texture are also swapped out. There are thousands of different armor, weapon, head, and hair customization models for each race (male and female too!), and we need to make sure that the system can organize and manage all of these character assets.

• Lastly, the picture is from an early test environment area using temporary art assets. The red shapes represent collision geometry that will block pathfinding and line-of-sight. The light blue/greenish color represents the walkmesh geometry which determines where characters can walk. We use this area to test tech features that we are building. For example, we are using the cemetery in the lower left to test out complex party pathfinding. If you look carefully, you can see two test characters in the picture. 

Project Eternity's latest update introduces programmer Steve Weatherly:

Q: Steve, can you tell us what you do on Project Eternity?

A:
I'm a gameplay programmer primarily responsible for making combat happen. What that means is that I look at what Josh and Tim design for the game, and tell them it can never be done. After that, they tell me it has to get done, so then I figure out a way to make it happen. I spend most of my day writing code, either for AI (to make the enemies act like they know what they're doing), or the underlying code that makes characters fight and take damage, etc. I'm also our chief Reddit ambassador, which I sort of fell into but it has been a lot of fun.

Josh Sawyer brings us the next update for Project Eternity, which provides some more information about the process of the plot development.

Today's update isn't about lore as much as it is about the focus and process of developing our central plot. I'm not going to spoil any details of the story, but I do want to share what we're working on.

When we develop stories at Obsidian, we often ask ourselves (and each other), "What's the conflict and why do I care about it?" and, "What is my range of roles in resolving the conflict?" "RPG" means a lot of different things to different people. For us, it's important to let the player decide who he or she is in the story. That means when you set aside class, race, magic missiles, and all of the other goodies, the player needs to be able to define his or her own motivations, attitudes toward others, and ways of resolving problems in the story.

Finding the right level of player freedom and clarity of purpose can be difficult. It's tricky to develop scenarios that can convincingly motivate characters of many races and classes, many backgrounds, and many moral and ethical stances. A conflict that is too "hands-off" or impersonal (e.g. a political conflict that doesn't directly involve the player) can make it difficult for players to connect to it. A conflict that is extremely personal may rub players the wrong way if it assumes too much about their character or if it feels like their choices don't have a large enough impact on the world around them.

Because this is the first story your characters will shape in this world, we want to start with something small that grows into something larger. As we have hinted before, the story opens with the player's character witnessing a supernatural event that puts him or her in a difficult situation. The full ramifications of what you become a part of are not immediately apparent, but you quickly become aware that you have... new problems. Dealing with these problems makes you realize that resolving your situation is inexorably linked to the fates of many others. In some cases, these "others" are individuals. In others, they are much larger groups of people. You will get to interact with them all in various ways over the course of the story. If we do a good job in developing these groups and characters, the decisions you make in the course of resolving your problems will be interesting and difficult to make.

That's what we're aiming for, but that doesn't necessarily tell you what we've been doing. On this project, the process started with a rough idea for a story and a theme that went along with it. The story itself wasn't that important; it was just an idea to get us moving. What followed were critiques of the story's premise, the unfolding of the plot, the player's motivation and involvement, and the scope of the conflicts the player faces from the beginning through the end. For the past few weeks, we've been exchanging various small ideas, big ideas, minor tweaks, radical overhauls, and brand new storylines. Through it all, we regularly return to the questions I posed up above: "What's the conflict and why do I care about it?" and, "What is my range of roles in resolving the conflict?" We can (and do) write about all sorts of character and location ideas, subplots and interesting takes on themes, but until we answer those questions in a way we believe will be compelling to your characters and all that they may be, we still have work to do.

We like to develop fun ideas we come up with and every once in a while we delight at some clever character or situation we think of, but for us, it's more important for you to feel clever, for you to feel like you can take control of a situation -- by whatever means you see fit. Until we believe we have a few gems on our hands, we'll keep the Story Gnomes digging in the mines on your behalf.

Feargus Urquhart is interviewed by Pure Sophistry on Project Eternity. It is a video interview where they list these as the highlights:

Is the development side of the game going to be that different from previous titles you’ve made?

Now that we’ve gone through the funding, what’s different is that we are publishing it. So that is going to be something a little new. On the development side a lot of us have been doing this for 20 years, but the one big change is ensuring fan involvement. Really invite people into the process, we are working on how we are going to do that right now, websites, webblogs and constant updates for the fans. On the publishing side, we have had a lot of contact in the publishing world but it is a little bit different , but we’re up for it.

Have there been any ideas from the nearly 75 thousand contributors that you’ve heard, or read that maybe you never considered for the vision of Project Eternity?

That’s a good question, whats interesting about RPG’s, the games are huge and broad and come from a rich pen and paper foundation, so I don’t want to say there’s no new ideas. But a lot of what we do is adapted on already proven methods. An example would be someone was saying in the comments section the other day, and I know this may sound dorky- but he said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if after I come back from a quest, instead of just selling off my stuff to a vendor I could invest my money into a store? Earning money that way?” It’s nothing something we ever considered and we are actually talking about and looking at if we can add that to the game.

Obsidian has these really robust features like perma-death and low intelligence characters are you considering bringing back that way to play?

Games have changed a little bit since then, it’s one of those thing where we have to think about what’s right for Project Eternity. Is it about the player playing someone who goes, “Ugh Urgh Ooh” while it was entertaining in Fallout, it still a conversation tier that made sense. In the end when it comes to the companions and perma death; RPG’s are all about options and choices, and even in choice in how you want to play this version of the game and that’s something Josh REALLY feels strongly about. Having features like that, that can be turned on.

Sometimes people think adding options to a change is just designer and game developers not making a choice (laughs) “we’ll just give a players a choice, makes it easy” that sorta thing! In the case, for an RPG I think that’s appropriate. When you go back to the DnD games, we made a choice in Icewind Dale to have Max Hitpoints on by default- a lot of times…because wizards would get killed in the first 7 minutes of the game. But for those who want a true DnD feeling they could turn it on.

So that’s how we look at it, with perma death you can have that experience. We also know the side effects of that though, usually when players turn on perma death all it does is force them to reload when someone dies. For the people who want to have that Ironman experience, we have you covered.

The latest Kickstarter update for Project Eternity looks at "what's going on in the studio", including delving into the different departments of Art, Audio, Design, Production, Programming and QA:

Right now we are knee deep in pre-production. Pre-production is the period of time at the beginning of development where everything is planned and prototyped, production schedules are made, and pipelines are constructed. I'm not talking about oil pipelines here - I'm talking about asset pipelines. An asset pipeline can be described like an oil pipeline - First the asset is made by a content creator (like an artist), next the asset is processed by a tool so that the game understands what the heck it is, and finally the asset is placed into the game world in its final location. All of the different types of assets (stuff) require a custom pipeline. Pipeline creation is one of the many problems we are tackling right now in pre-production.

Chris Avellone has been interviewed at LFG.hu about Project Eternity:

Do moral decisions affect the plotline and how?

Decisions, moral or otherwise, have an impact on the plotline, factions, and companions. Without giving anything too specific away, we want the breadth of reactivity (personal and world-wise) to be along the lines of Fallout 2, Torment, and Fallout: New Vegas, all of which we felt were great examples of being able to make an impact on the environment.

Lastly, I wanted to clarify – “moral” decisions aren’t necessarily our focus. Sometimes the right way to determine the course of a nation’s growth or a person’s growth is to simply make decisions with what you know of the world and in accordance with your outlook as a player, and the choices you have to make can all seem equally valid in achieving the goal you desire – do you sternly punish someone who’s drifted from their responsibilities, or do you reach out a helping hand to lift them up? Which one might help the individual more in the end if you really want to help them? At that point, the decision becomes a personal one, and says more about you as a player rather than any attempt to game the system or force a good/evil result with a group, person, or faction.

 Do you plan many possible companions you can add to your party or do you prefer less companions with rich background and personality?

We prefer to let the player choose. We have two different breakdowns in companions – one are the limited cast of extremely detailed companions (like Planescape: Torment and NX2: Mask of the Betrayer), but the player can also choose to either take no companions at all, or go to the Adventurer’s Hall (a stretch goal that was made possible by the players – thank you!) and recruit a selection of mercenaries there of their own choosing, not ours.

GameRanx has an interview with Chris Avellone on this game.  In it, he talks about emergent behaviors, pacing, the system used for dialogues in rpgs, and much much more. Chris Avellone has this to say about romances:

You've stated in the past that you don't like romances in games—at least to the extent that they've been done in games thus far. Were you to implement a romance subplot in Project Eternity, what would it involve?

........So if I were to implement a romance subplot in Eternity - I wouldn’t.  I’d examine interpersonal relationships from another angle and I wouldn’t confine it to love and romance. Maybe I’d explore it after a “loving” relationship crashed and burned, and one or both was killed in the aftermath enough for them to see if it had really been worth it spending the last few years of their physical existence chained to each other in a dance of human misery and/or a plateau of soul-killing compromise. Or maybe I’d explore a veteran’s love affair with his craft of murder and allowing souls to be freed to travel beyond their bleeding shell, or a Cipher’s obsession with plucking the emotions of deep-rooted souls to try and see what makes people attracted to each other beyond their baser instincts and discovers love... specifically, his love of manipulating others. 

Josh Sawyer has painted himself in the face for this Update # 29 for this game.
This being Halloween, it isn't surprising, but perhaps rather scary. What's not scary - or perhaps is it? - is that Josh Sawyer talks about armour design for this update. He talks about different kinds of armor and what it means for Project Eternity.

A quote then, on some pertinent questions:

Should something like hide armor be supplanted/made obsolete by leather as an "improved version" or does that effectively kill the visual concept of the rough-hewn rawhide-wearing ranger or barbarian?

If armor types like hide (or scale, or mail) should remain viable on their own, how should that "upgrade" be expressed to the player? Functional descriptors like "fine scale", "superior hide", etc.? Cultural or material descriptors like "Vailian doublet", "iron feather scale"? Olde tyme numerical descriptors like "scale armor +1", "half-plate +2"?

Is it okay for an upgrade from a visual type of armor to maintain its relative position to other armor types even if "realistically" that upgraded armor is now probably superior in protection to other armor types? E.g. an armored jack or brigandine armor is probably more protective than even nice suit of leather armor... but mechanically, we're presenting it as an upgrade of a padded (doublet) armor type.

Darren Mohahan talks about the fullfilment system as well. A quote, too:

First off, I wanted to announce that we’re developing a fulfillment site, which we’re hoping to have online in the next month or two (I was hoping to have it up sooner, but my first baby is coming into the world in the next few days, eeep!). Everyone who backed the project on Kickstarter and/or PayPal will be e-mailed details that will give you credit on that site. After logging in, you will be able to:

Confirm the tier of choice that you wanted. A few of you donated on Kickstarter, and then topped up via PayPal, so you’ll be able to select the exact tier you wanted. Confirm any add-ons you wanted that weren’t easy to specify on Kickstarter or via PayPal.

CyberGamer talked to J.E. Sawyer about Obsidian Entertainment's Project Eternity, their game funded by Kickstarter. Here's an excerpt on the inspiration behind the use of souls in the game:

One of the first things mentioned about Project Eternity was the concept of Souls being important and a source of power, that you were interested what world building ideas are generated from that design mechanic. Where did the inspiration behind this concept come from ? I've heard many people mention NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer, although I personally thought of Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader.

It actually came out of some thoughts I had about the physical and metaphysical underpinnings of our own world. When worldbuilding, I think a lot of designers want to explain everything up front. There's obvious value in defining how the world works because it helps everyone wrap their heads around what the setting is about. Over the years, I've felt that breaking down the supernatural into easy-to-comprehend chunks drains the magic from it. Compare this to our own observation and understanding of the physical world. Public reaction to the discovery of the Higgs boson particle was very telling. Despite the scientific community's general requests to stop calling it the "God particle", the public and media couldn't help themselves. A discovery that potentially explains, if not the "why", at least the "how" of existence is appealing.

A quote on the art style

Regarding the art style of the game, what games in particular have inspired the look and feel of the 2D Backdrops, Portraits, Avatars and Paperdolls? (for example IWD1 for backdrops, ToEE for avatars etc)

We look at Icewind Dale levels for a lot of our inspiration. They were beautiful settings full of atmosphere, interesting architecture, and a ton of cool, hand-painted details. Also the relatively subdued color palettes of that art falls in line with what we want to explore, similar in saturation what you might see in the art of the Hudson River School. We also look at Icewind Dale portraits because the brushwork of all of the artists tended to have an enjoyable mix of loose and tight strokes.

Here's Sawyer's answer to a young man wanting to break into the the industry:

This question is from Aaron Patel. "How did you get your position as Lead Designer / Project Director? As someone who isnt too interested in game development, always cool to hear a bit of a career success story in a skill based industry". From My understanding you started as a Web Designer for Interplay?

Yeah. In the mid-90s, I started teaching myself HTML, JavaScript, and other tidbits of web development. Toward the end of college, I taught myself Flash 3.0 so I could do something fancy for a tattoo website (Steve's Tattoo in Madison, though thankfully they've replaced my crappy website since then). It turned out to be a key piece of tech knowledge when I applied for a web developer position at Interplay. It also helped that I knew a lot about AD&D and played it every week (sometimes multiple times a week). I got the job and wound up being the webmaster for Planescape: Torment and eventually Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights. I worked closely with the development team on Torment and when a position opened on the Icewind Dale design team, Feargus gave me a shot as a part-time junior designer. So in my case, I found a side-door into development via marketing/web.

Josh Sawyer brings us update 28 of Project Eternity.

Thanks to you, we're funded. Now the work begins. At this stage of the project, we are still in pre-production, so at Wednesday morning's team meeting we started talking about the passion-stirring topic of logistics. Before we start scripting quests and writing dialogues, we need to understand the full scope of what we're setting out to do. In some ways, the basics stay the same for us as they did a decade ago. But we have new problems to solve and we need to have them all worked out before we enter production.

The key elements we have been focusing on are:

• The size and str ucture of the world - This game will be... large. And it will have two big cities, exploration areas, and a 15-level mega-dungeon. Ensuring that the world is planned properly requires examination of what has worked for us in the past and what hasn't. The original Baldur's Gate had a number of wilderness areas, but low density of content in many of those areas. Baldur's Gate II had much greater content density, but fewer wilderness/pure exploration areas. We'd like to make sure we have pure exploration areas while still maintaining good content density.

• Dynamic environment integration - Animated objects, interactive objects, ambient visual effects, water, dynamic lights and shadows -- all of these elements can be featured even within a "2D" world. Our goal is to strike a good balance between visual fidelity, performance (including memory on disk), and the amount of time environment artists have to spend setting up their areas. We prefer dynamic sol utions that are relatively easy to author, as we want our environment artists to maximize their efficiency.

• Lore and story - What we've developed so far has been the result of a small number of impromptu discussions and high-level efforts. Last week, we (including George -- thanks!) had our first meeting to increase development of the setting and story. We discussed major themes we'd like to explore, the order in which we'd each like to develop aspects of the lore and characters, and what elements we each were having trouble wrapping our heads around. Our immediate focus is on the central conflict of the story and the various factions that have a stake in it.

As the song goes, we've only just begun, but the team is excited and determined to make a game that lives up to your, and our, expectations. You've put a huge amount of trust in us, and we want to repay you with the best RPG we can.

Next week, we'll be talking about system desi gn and how we're approaching mechanics like class design, advancement, and the role of equipment. We're also working on fulfillment of some of the Kickstarter pledges and we'll have more info on that in the next few weeks. Finally, if you missed our D&D session from last week, we have it up on the YouTubes for your enjoyment!

Here's a pair of Project Eternity interviews, starting with out friends at Sorcerer's Place who visited Obsidian at their offices to catch up with Adam Brennecke:

[Marceror] With all the content that you’ve committed to including in the game, is April 2014 still looking like a feasible release date?

[Adam] Yeah. In the beginning it may have seemed like we were a bit caught off guard by how quickly things were happening, but we did have a plan for the stretch goals ahead of time. The development team will be ramping up in size to tackle the increased scope of the game.       

[Marceror] With all the content that you’ve committed to including in the game, is April 2014 still looking like a feasible release date?

[Adam] Yeah. In the beginning it may have seemed like we were a bit caught off guard by how quickly things were happening, but we did have a plan for the stretch goals ahead of time. The development team will be ramping up in size to tackle the increased scope of the game.

...and over at GamesIndustry.biz, who focus on Kickstarter with Chris Avellone:

Q: Once Project Eternity comes out, do you have plans for more content?

Chris Avellone: Our hope with Eternity is that it's just the first in a series of installments, and then obviously we want to do the full expansion packs, and then extra content, just because we know we really enjoyed doing that for Fallout: New Vegas. We'd want to continue adding new content to the world. The first game is only one moderately sized nation in a much, much, much bigger world where a lot of other things are going on. There's plenty more room for games in that universe and that's what we'd like to do.

It's kind of nice because not all of that has to be done in the games; we can go out and look for graphic novel tie-ins and novel tie-ins and stuff. It is kind of cool to be able to pursue that on our own without having to go through a publisher, or accept the fact that whatever franchise we're with already has the avenues all covered. It's such a nice feeling. 

Obsidian provides us with update #27 in which they summarize the Kickstarter and Paypal results and has information on changing your pledge, video streams, the next steps and current amount of pledges:

Kickstarter
Backers: 73,986
Pledged: $3,986,929

PayPal
Backers: 3,681
Pledged: $176,279

Totals
Backers: 77,667
Pledged: $4,163,208

By the way, the Mega dungeon is now at 14 levels and as the Paypal pledges and Facebook likes are still going on, a 15th and even a 16th level is within reach.

Well, Project Eternity closed earlier in the day with in excess of $4.1M by my calculations. The official Kickstarter total is $3,986,929 plus the latest Paypal total of...

Quick #ProjectEternity PayPal update: $140,099  

...with an official final tally coming tomorrow:

We'll send out a recap tomorrow (our time) with figures from PayPal and when PayPal is closing down (which is VERY VERY soon.) Good night!

Two new updates on Project Eternity since I last posted. Update #25 offers a new $350 "Loot Bag" tier that includes an AMD A10 processor (US only because of shipping), confirms Big City #2 and offer a recap of achieved goals and a little on the development of the temple entrance screenshot.

With 5 hours to go, currently at $3.68M (plus >$100k Paypal), Update #26 has the last stretch - it's a simple one:

$4m Stretch Goal - Enhance the Whole Game

OK! After much team deliberation we have one final ultimate stretch goal. At $4.0m we will be enhancing the whole game. We will use live instrumentation for the soundtrack, add developer in-game commentary, and use every dollar between $3.5m and $4m to enhance the game. Also at $4.0m Chris Avellone will be forced to play Arcanum. 

Oh, there's an AMA with Chris, Tim and Josh over here.

Obsidian's Kickstarter is on $3.41M as I write, plus $106k in Paypal:

Quick #ProjectEternity PayPal Update: $106,663 - 2,230 backers

...which means they have passed $3.5M and the big city #2 is in.

Well I don't like announcing achieves until I see it on KS (we'll apply PP $ to final totals) but uhhh, it's hard not to say... BBC2 IS IN!

Project Eternity Update #24 was published minutes after I finished the previous newsbit but this is worth its own coverage. J.E. Sawyer talks about the health mechanic and death:

Life and Death in the Dyrwood

For today's update, I was supposed to do a lore update, but I decided that I wanted to talk about a specific subject and how lore and mechanics tie into that subject. Today's subjects are LIFE AND DEATH. Project Eternity is a fantasy RPG inspired by several A/D&D-based settings in which death is, for those with means, a temporary setback (for the Nameless One, it's even less problematic). The priests of the Forgotten Realms run around with boatloads of cure x wounds spells, the ability to banish disease, and even the power to bring the dead back to life.

In Project Eternity, prospects are not so bright. And when death comes, some try to stay, some choose to go, but most people believe that once they make the trip to the other side, there is only one way back: to begin a new life.

Common Mortality
Project Eternity's world is one with limited medicine and medical understanding. Unlike many fantasy settings, there is very little access to curative magic. Remedies for health problems often have only a palliative or placebo effect at best, owing their continued use more to folk beliefs and tradition than any basis in scientific methodology. Though soul-based magic has helped the great exploring cultures from suffering massive pandemics and has helped some individuals overcome illness over the long-term, there is no quick magical "cure" for disease or illness. Most people go through life and death in the ordinary way -- unless they put themselves in harm's way, that is.

Stamina and Health
In Project Eternity's combat, players need to be concerned with two elements of a character's vitality: Stamina and Health. The majority of damage a character takes is subtracted from his or her Stamina. Stamina represents how much general abuse a character can take before falling unconscious. Characters lose it quickly and regain it relatively rapidly, even without assistance. Soul-based abilities are able to help replenish or regenerate Stamina and are often used on the battlefield to turn the tide of combat. If a character hits 0 Stamina, he or she is knocked out. Intervention from another character can bring an unconscious character back into a fight.

For players, the Health of their party members is a tether that makes them consider how far they are willing to venture from a safe resting spot. Though Health is typically lost at a lower rate, when the PC or a companion hits 0 Health, he or she is maimed (in standard play) or killed (in Expert mode or as an option in standard play). Magic may help mitigate damage to Health and slow the tide, but once characters have died (in Expert mode), there is no known magic that can bring them back.

Head over for more.

Sorcerer's Place sends word they have collected all the information on Project Eternity from every source they can find into this thread. For example:

Classes in Project Eternity are meant to provide a general framework for character types. Different classes excel in different areas, but the framework can be extended and elaborated on in a multitude of ways to create characters with unique capabilities. If you see a fighter, chances are good that he or she is going to be able to take a lot of damage, but that's about all you can be sure of. If you see a wizard, he or she probably has some hard-hitting spells that can cover a large area, but his potential list of capabilities is vast.

If you want to create a wizard who wears plate armor and hacks away with a broadsword from behind a heavily-enhanced arcane veil, we want to let you do that. If your idea of the perfect fighter is one who wears light armor and uses a variety of dazzling rapier attacks in rapid succession, we want to help you make that character. So it's good to think of Project Eternity's classes as being purpose-ready but not purpose-limited.       

The campaign is about to hit the last day, with $3.24M on Kickstarter and >$85 on Paypal, which makes the 3.5M goal achievable with a final push.

Josh Sawyer is interviewed by GameBanshee on Project Eternity and they even managed to pop in a question on Icewind Dale 3.

Buck: Will there be some sort of damage type system in play (bludgeoning, piercing, slashing), and what steps are you taking to ensure that all weapon types (two-handed, sword/shield, dual-wielding, and ranged) are balanced and, ultimately, viable pursuits?

Josh: I'm not sure if there will be or not. I don't want to introduce so many moving parts to the damage, weapons, and armor systems that we become unable to present player choices that are meaningful and coherent. That is, depending on how many factors the player is expected to analyze when selecting a weapon for any given task, we need to make sure that the range of choices the player can make feel like they have clear, solid benefits and drawbacks instead of coming across as a bunch of "mush".

The first step in ensuring that weapon types/combat styles are viable pursuits is saying, "All weapon types and combat styles must be viable pursuits." If that's your high-level goal, design decisions should always be framed in that context. If someone says, "Daggers are the bad weapons for characters who suck!" that clearly flies in the face of the stated goal.

I think some editions of AD&D have really struggled with this. The rules seem to want to structure weapons in a certain way that promotes trade-offs, but mechanics are in conflict and produce a bunch of choices that feel dead in the water outside of niche circumstances. If you ever look at a choice and say, "Obviously everyone should take this," or "I would never take this," there's probably something wrong with how they've been balanced.

And the IWD3 question answered by Feargus:

Buck: I know that Obsidian Entertainment owns the Icewind Dale franchise assets and that you've approached publishers in the past about the prospect of pursuing Icewind Dale III. Given the success of your Project Eternity Kickstarter, what are the odds that we may yet see an ID3 in the near future, crowd-funded or not? Hypothetically, what direction would you take a third entry in the series?

Feargus: You are correct, we approached Atari a number of times about doing Icewind Dale 3. We hope that with the success of Project Eternity that it might be possible to talk to Hasbro / Wizards of the Coast about those games again. However, our focus right now is Project Eternity. We would not want to start working on something like IWD3 soon, since we don’t want anything to compromise Project Eternity at all. If we were to do IWD3, I think we would continue the focus of what the IWD series was all about – a great dungeon crawling counterpoint to Baldur’s Gate and Torment.

Project Eternity has kicked up a new update as they push towards the end. As I write, Project Eternity is at $3.15M on Kickstarter plus another $75k+ on Paypal (40 hours left). Other than a wrap-up of events, the big announcement is a Double Fine-style documentary:

The big news for the day is that we are adding a documentary covering the development of Project Eternity.

After getting a lot of requests to do a documentary, like the Double Fine Adventure, we started looking into it a couple of weeks ago. We talked about it more last week and decided that we don’t have a visual history of one of our games, even after almost ten years as a company. We felt it was something we should just do and do it without it being a new stretch goal.

So, we are happy to announce that we are going to include a stream, download, or physical copy of the documentary in all of our Kickstarter reward tiers. At the $20/$25 level you will be able to stream it, at the $35 level you will be able to download it, and at the $140 level (and physical tiers above) we will include a DVD / Blu-ray.

If you add Paypal, Project Eternity is probably just about to nudge $3.0M ($2.94 on Kickstarter alone). Yesterday, PC Gamer held a live chat and you can find some of the key answers here:

On the aumaua race:

“the other race we haven’t talked about yet are called the aumaua. they are larger than humans and are found in a lot of coastal and island areas. like orlans, they look somewhat… different, but they are still a bipedal race. we’re still working on their concepts (as we are with orlans), but we will show them when we feel they’re in a good place.” – Josh Sawyer

The latest Kickstarter update offers five answers from Tim chosen from questions on various boards around the 'net:

Will there be low intelligence/charisma dialog?

Yes, we will have these dialogs. They are a great deal of work, since it means writing two versions of every dialog in the game, but I am sure that our wonderful writers are up to it. I really want these dialogs too! I find it fun to replay the game with a low intelligence character, just to see how the NPC's react to my slow-witted attempts to help them.

And there we have it! Five questions answered from five sites. Again, thanks for your support of Obsidian and Project Eternity. There are just a few days left before the Kickstarter campaign is over and we enter full production of this game, and we are all very excited about the prospect of working on a classic CRPG again!

Project Eternity is now at $2.83M (plus Paypal) meaning the Paladin and Cipher classes are unlocked, George Ziets is on board and we aren't far too away from the full $3.0M stronghold.

With only four days to go, Obsidian has a slew of activities planned:

Here's the rest of the scheduled events for the next 5 days:

Friday, October 12

• 11:00am PDT - Inside look at a not so typical day with Adam Brennecke - UStream.
• 3:00pm PDT - PC Gamer Live Chat with the Project Eternity Team - PC Gamer.

Saturday, October 13

• 10:00am PDT - Adam plays Icewind Dale II all day - UStream.

Monday, October 15

• 10:00am PDT - Reddit AMA with the Project Eternity Team - Reddit.
• 5:00pm PDT - Game night at Obsidian. Watch us play D&D at the studio! - UStream.

Tuesday, October 16

• 12:00pm PDT - The final countdown starts at the Obsidian Office - UStream.
• 6:00pm PDT - The Project Eternity Kickstarter ends!

Updates to the schedule will be sent via Twitter, Facebook, and posted to our forums.

Oh, the Endless Paths dungeon has an extra level, as well!

In a huge update for Project Eternity as we head for home with 5 days to go, J.E. Sawyer has posted a large chunk of lore, a Digital Campaign Almanac addon, two big stretch goals and the first screenshot. Thanks to the various readers who wrote in about this!

A sample of the lore:

Aedyr - People from the expansive Aedyr Empire and its former colonies, Dyrwood and Readceras. Aedyr literally translates as "Many Deer", but means "People of the Deer", referring to a 2,500 year-old tribe that became a kingdom 600 years ago. It merged with the elven kingdom of Kulklin in 2399 AI. Among the Aedyr, there is no significant cultural divide between humans and elves. Because of their close contact and integration in spite of physiological differences (such as longer elven lifespans), their culture and legal system have developed a variety of unique concepts such as the haemneg, or ceremonial marriage. Ethnic Aedyr (mostly humans and elves) have fair skin and a variety of hair and eye colors, with blue and green being common. Among other cultures, Aedyr clothing is known for being relatively simple in construction and often using large, colorful striped or checkered patterns for accents. 

The stretch goals are a full Stronghold at $3.0M and a "big city" at $3.5M:

Baldur's Gate and Athkatla are big cities. Spanning multiple large maps with a ton of interiors, characters and quests, big cities are a lot of fun. Like strongholds, they also take a lot of work to do well. We're going to have one big city in Project Eternity. Would you like two? If you take us on an exciting adventure to $3.5 Million, we will take you on an exciting adventure to another big city.

...and an "environment screenshot" - head over to read their approach to the art (link to 1920x1080 version).

Project Eternity has passed $2.6M on Kickstarter (and when you add Paypal, is well on the way to $2.7M) unlocking the Adventurer's Hall. There are also new addons and a summary of every reward tier if you've lost track of what you get. Paladins and Chanters are the next stretch goal, then George Ziets after that:

Paladins are extremely devoted, often fanatical, soldiers who have pledged themselves to a chosen cause, combining the zeal of a priest with the ascetic discipline of a monk. They have founded many elite fighting forces, from the original Darcozzi Paladini, a two thousand year-old order of palace guards, to the fledgling Fellows of St. Waidwen Martyr, zealous defenders of the Godhammer pilgrim trail. Often found at the vanguard of many conflicts, paladins are natural leaders and have the ability to quickly assist their allies with targeted commands. A paladin's commands can stave off impending death, overcome fatigue, or hasten the charge to close breached defenses. And though they are not always pledged to the service of a god or gods, paladins are so singularly focused on their chosen cause that their souls are continually creating a wellspring of spiritual energy from which they can blast groups of foes in their immediate vicinity. Despite their often stoic presence and explosive combat style, paladins work best alongside allies. When isolated, they can be vulnerable, especially against singular powerful foes.

Chanters can be found in almost any culture, but are most often seen in communities with a strong oral tradition. They are repositories of folk knowledge and common wisdom, tellers of tall tales and hallowed legends. Though chanters have a bit of minor talent in traditional arts of combat and soul-based magic, their true power lies in their chants. Chanters construct chants from individual iconic phrases and rhyming couplets they have memorized from hundreds of stories and poems, creating a chain of magical effects that plays out over time. While chanters do use the power of their souls to work their magic, chants are exhortations to the unconscious memory of wayward souls and the diffused spiritual energy of the world. That is, ambient spirits respond to the evocation of ancient, common story elements and play their part in reconstructing the chanter's tales. While a chanter's magic may seem modest compared to that of a wizard or a priest, chanters are able to recite their chants while occupied with other activities, making them extremely versatile.

If, like me, you're a fan of George Ziets' work on Mask of the Betrayer (and other games) this latest Project Eternity stretch goal for $2.8M is the most exciting so far. There are also new class goals, new addons and new rewards:

We are happy to announce two more classes for the 2.7m stretch goal. With your pledges we now have Barbarians and Ciphers as playable classes, and now we would like to add Paladins and Chanters to round out our class selection for Project Eternity, bringing the class total to 11. [...]

It’s our pleasure to introduce our next stretch goal of George Ziets at $2.8m – with your help, we’ll be able to enlist the skills of George Ziets in shaping Project Eternity. For those not familiar with George’s work, he was the creative lead and core writer behind the acclaimed Mask of the Betrayer - the first expansion pack for Neverwinter Nights 2. George leant his talents to many of Obsidian’s other games including Fallout: New Vegas.

Obsidian's Project Eternity Kickstarter has ticked past $2.5M, unlocking the Barbarian and Cipher classes - next stop is the Adventurer's Hall at $2.6M. Only seven days to go!

At $2.6M, we will add an Adventurer's Hall to the world. In the Free Palatinate of Dyrwood, adventurers and mercenaries from across the world are often employed as personal bodyguards, elite security, or salvage (plunder) teams that venture into the forgotten corners of Eír Glanfath. A lot of the folks who hang out as such places are robbers and miscreants, but reliable agents can be found and employed with a bit of patience.

What does this mean for you? It means that if you don't like a companion, or if you don't like any of our companions, you won't be cut off from having characters of their classes. Over time, you can build your own custom parties to play through the game. If you want a party of monks or all casters, this gives you the ability to do it within the game while still maintaining the pacing of the standard PC + companions play style.

Matt Barton chats with Josh Sawyer:

PCGamer has made an overview of what is known so far by them of Project Eternity. Here is a random pick:

Non-combat skills will be significant

The core four uses for non-combat skills presented by Obsidian are learning new things, traveling around the world, getting new items, and interacting with companions. Some examples given include the classic lockpicking and crafting, as well as some more novel concepts like being able to travel around the overworld with less chance of hostile encounters. The devs have also asserted that non-combat skills will not draw from the same pool of character points as combat ones, so you should never have to choose between being a better fighter or being better at something else. We’ve also been assured that players who use non-combat skills to bypass encounters will get the same amount of experience as those who choose to duke it out.

In Project Eternity's Update #17, Feargus Urquhart announces a new $165 tier that includes a copy of Wasteland 2, as well as revealing expansion plans. The mega dungeon continues to grow and more:

Personally, we are incredibly thankful to him and for the second wave of Kickstarter attention he brought with Wasteland 2. But, Brian hasn’t stopped being the great guy that he is, and so, he’s helping us out by letting us add Wasteland 2 as a reward at our higher tiers. So, what tiers will that be? A lot of you have asked for a digital tier after $110, so we are adding a $165 Digital Only Tier. That means Wasteland 2 will get added to this new $165 tier and all the tiers above.

What we are also doing is adding the first expansion pack for the game to the $165 Tier (and above). The expansion will come out approximately six months after Project Eternity is released. That’s right, it’s not DLC, but a real honest to God RPG expansion pack. We don’t have the details on the Expansion yet, but you can bet it will be what you’d expect from an Infinity Engine game expansion.

Project Eternity has passed $2.4M, unlocking crafting and enchanting. Next step at $2.5M addes Barbarians and Ciphers:

Barbarians come from many of the more remote cultures found across the world. In the Dyrwood, they are commonly found among Glanfathan elf communities. They are distinguished from fighters by their recklessness, ferocity, and their predilection to substitute raw aggression for discipline. Barbarians are a challenge to deal with on a battlefield, though they are vulnerable to exhaustion if they don't pace themselves.

Ciphers are uncommon and often misunderstood individuals with extraordinary mental abilities. Like wizards and priests, they have many talents that draw directly from their souls, but ciphers have the unique ability to peer through the spiritual energy of the world to manipulate other souls. While wizards use complex formulae in large tomes and priests tap into the passion of their faith, ciphers are able to operate directly through the power of their minds... and yours.

The 16th update for Project Eternity brings news of an optional pet for >$50 backers, some new high-end rewards and some possible light at the end of the mod tunnel:

Mod Support

From Neverwinter Nights 2 to Fallout: New Vegas, we've enjoyed supporting the mod community, and we are continuing that with Project Eternity. It is awesome to see how you extend the worlds we make.

To make getting mods easy, we are excited to announce that our friends at the Nexus will be the official spot to download Project Eternity mods once the game is released. They have been a great host for mods for our past games, and we want to continue the trend with the Project Eternity Nexus. Check out the Nexus Network at www.nexusmods.com.

Our plan is to release our file-format information and expose as much of the data in the game as possible for you to extend and edit. We traditionally do not "hard-code" numbers so that our designers, and you, have the power to easily change and iterate on RPG data. We also plan on releasing localization tools to let communities around the world create localized versions for languages we are not translating Project Eternity into.

As we get more familiar with Unity during production, we will be extending Project Eternity even more for mod makers. Look forward to announcements in the months ahead as we make further progress and can provide you with more information about tools and mod support.

There's also a great Reddit Q&A (edited version on the Obsidian boards) with Tim Cain on combat:

Kaaaboom asks...
Hi Tim! I'm curious how the close combat in P:E will turn out. Will the melee of P:E encompass stuff like reach weapons, opportunity attacks, flanking, grappling, charging, prone/standing-modes and so forth?

Yes, we are looking to include many of these features into our close combat system. Specifically, opportunity attacks and flanking are definitely in, as well as charging. We're not sure about reach weapons yet (we need to figure out if that attribute on a weapon will be worthwhile enough in combat and will supportable with the appropriate UI), and while we will support prone positions, you won't be able to attack while prone because the animations involved are too different from attacks while standing that we would have to make every animation twice, once for standing and once for prone. This limitation also means that grappling abilities will not be included. There are too many new animations needed and special case limitations that apply, e.g. how does a human grapple a centaur or a dragon or an ooze?).

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has interviewed Chris Avellone about Project Eternity, asking why they went with fantasy, innovation and more:

RPS: Why opt for a fantasy setting? I mean, gaming has quite a few of them. How will you set your mythology apart – as opposed to simply being another world of orcs and elves and dwarves and totally-not-hobbits?

Avellone: The type of races and concept art that’s been revealed for Eternity we hope display our commitment to showcasing seemingly-traditional races with unusual gear and traits – including the fact our women characters wear… appropriate armor. In addition to the more easily recognizable races, we have a number of specialized races as well, including the god-touched races and even more unusual races we intend to unveil later. In addition, the technology level and the concept of souls puts a further twist on the races and classes of the world in an interesting way.

RPS: Black Isle’s RPGs included all sorts of amazing, totally optional details. For instance, I always got a kick out of Fallout 2′s idiot dialogue options and how much thought went into that system. Will Project Eternity have any surprises along those lines?

Avellone: Yes, we want to examine the dialogue mechanics, and one thing we’re going to do is low-intelligence options – either based on Intelligence or a trait – and have the sequences play out differently according to the player’s intellect. As a narrative designer, I enjoy writing interactions like that, and I had a blast with the stupid options in F2 in Vault City and New Reno.

IndieRPGs also apoke with Chris, although the interview ranges past just Project Eternity. An excerpt:

You recently mentioned that you were tempted to crowd-fund a spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment. It wasn’t long thereafter that Obsidian launched Project Eternity on Kickstarter. Is this the aforementioned spiritual successor?

No, Project: Eternity is something different. We had considered doing a Planescape: Torment successor, and that seemed like a waste considering the powerhouses we already had in the studio – why not have them come together and collaborate on something? In my opinion, that would actually be more interesting to the public than a Planescape title, and that seems to have proved itself out.

Project Eternity has exceeded $2.3M, unlocking hardcore modes and Godlike races. A reminder:

Remember the Heart of Fury challenge mode from the Icewind Dale series? How about Ironman Mode from Temple of Elemental Evil? Hardcore mode from Fallout: New Vegas ring a bell? At $2.3M, we've got 'em all and they can all be turned on at the same time... Ouch! Also, Godlike races come at this level. Check out Update #9 for more details!

In today's update for Project Eternity Josh Sawyer updates us on the following

 I'll be talking about new stretch goals and the "core four" classes. We also have some fantastic art for you that illustrates five of our adventurers engaged in some classic dungeon exploration. Other great stuff going on includes Tim Cain’s reddit on combat and you can now pledge with PayPal over on the Project Eternity Site.

And, for our Polish- and Russian-speaking fans - we are very happy to announce that distributors in Poland and Russia will be handling localization for these two languages, so we will be able to provide them without requiring a stretch goal!

The new stretch goals are:

$2.5M and $2.6M Stretch Goals - Barbarian and Cipher, Adventurer's Hall with Party Creation

Since the days are counting down, we'd like to introduce two new stretch goals. As you'll read in a few more paragraphs, Project Eternity is currently slated to support seven classes. Our current roster includes fighters, priests, rogues, wizards, rangers, monks, and druids. We believe this represents the common core and several popular secondary classes that many players enjoyed using in the Infinity Engine games. We would like to use our $2.5M stretch goal to include two additional classes: the barbarian and the cipher.

Barbarians come from many of the more remote cultures found across the world. In the Dyrwood, they are commonly found among Glanfathan elf communities. They are distinguished from fighters by their recklessness, ferocity, and their predilection to substitute raw aggression for discipline. Barbarians are a challenge to deal with on a battlefield, though they are vulnerable to exhaustion if they don't pace themselves.

Ciphers are uncommon and often misunderstood individuals with extraordinary mental abilities. Like wizards and priests, they have many talents that draw directly from their souls, but ciphers have the unique ability to peer through the spiritual energy of the world to manipulate other souls. While wizards use complex formulae in large tomes and priests tap into the passion of their faith, ciphers are able to operate directly through the power of their minds... and yours.

But wait, we're not done yet! We've been reading a lot of feedback online about classes, companions, and party composition options. We want to give people the ability to build their parties as they like and we also want to allow people to experience the full spectrum of class mechanics. Companions go a long way toward achieving that goal while also providing a ton of reactivity in the world. Even so, we'd like to do more.

At $2.6M, we will add an Adventurer's Hall to the world. In the Free Palatinate of Dyrwood, adventurers and mercenaries from across the world are often employed as personal bodyguards, elite security, or salvage (plunder) teams that venture into the forgotten corners of Eír Glanfath. A lot of the folks who hang out as such places are robbers and miscreants, but reliable agents can be found and employed with a bit of patience.

What does this mean for you? It means that if you don't like a companion, or if you don't like any of our companions, you won't be cut off from having characters of their classes. Over time, you can build your own custom parties to play through the game. If you want a party of monks or all casters, this gives you the ability to do it within the game while still maintaining the pacing of the standard PC + companions play style.

There's another Project Eternity update, talking about the music and offering three sample tracks, as well as the track from the Kickstarter announcement video to download:

Souls, the supernatural, a fantasy setting, mature themes... These are just a few of the big ideas behind Project Eternity's story and world. As with any great CRPG story, music plays an important role in communicating those ideas. This was true for the Infinity Engine games as well. Looking back they all had one thing in common with regards to music: all are known for having strong and memorable soundtracks that drew you in as a listener and set fire to your imagination. That's exactly what we're aiming for with the music for Project Eternity.

So what will the music sound like? Great question! Describing music with words alone can be a tricky thing to do because so much of that is subjective and wide open for interpretation. Even still it's important to have some sort of plan in place before writing a single note. You need an idea that will guide you towards creating an effective score. To help paint that picture more clearly, here are three words that we believe best describe what the score will ultimately sound like:

Mystical

Ancient

Emotive

Twenty questions was what Link Dead Gaming asked Tim Cain, Senior Programmer with Obsidian Entertainment about Project Eternity. Here is a bit about why they choose Kickstarter.

LDG: There are multiple ways you could have attempted to nail down funding for this project. Is there something in particular that made you choose Kickstarter?

Tim: We saw the success that DoubleFine and inXile had with their Kickstarter campaigns, and Chris Avellone was involved with the inXile campaign, so he had learned a great deal about what is involved in a successful campaign there. We thought the time was right for us to try that route too.

LDG: Crowdsourcing can be a two edged sword. With a few more than 15 days to go, you have already been successfully funded by almost 200%. That first day, did any of you speak about what a letdown it would be if the people did not pledge to help you fund the game?

Tim: Not really. We were really excited about the launch, and almost immediately the funding began to pour in. It seemed that every monitor at Obsidian has a window open to the Kickstarter page, including the big monitors in the conference rooms and lounges. Towards the end of the day, Feargus let everyone go home early, since we had put in a lot of time getting the Kickstarter launch ready. We all wanted to celebrate, and many of us went to a pub across the street. That first day felt very special, and it still does. We are excited about seeing where the campaign will end, and what stretch goals we will reach.

This might be stretching the definition of news but it's all in the name of a good cause. Desslock - of PC Gamer fame - is selling some classic RPGs on Ebay and putting any money raised towards Obsidian's Project Eternity Kickstarter. Full details can be found in this post on the Qt3 forums:

Hey guys, I didn't want to spam your forum with something that might be unwanted, but I'm selling 20 classic old "big box" games on eBay and donating all of the money raised to Obsidian's Project Eternity — there's a bunch of good RPGs in the crop, including a sealed copy of Ultima 9: Dragon Edition, a sealed copy of Icewind Dale 2, and collector's edition copies of World of WarCraft; WoW-Burning Crusade; EverQuest 2, & Guild Wars. There's also some non-RPG classics like Grim Fandango, Blade and Tomb Raider, and some UO expansions, Sea Dogs and Nox.

Obviously most of the listed games will only appeal to collectors, but for them, it's a chance to buy copies of some classic collectible games, and at the same time help raise money for traditional RPG gaming as represented by Project Eternity, so I thought some folks at RPG Watch might be interested.

Project Eternity has passed $2.2M, unlocking a Linux version, French, German and Spanish translations, a new region, new faction and new companion. Whew!

The next goal is $2.3M, which provides different hardcore modes.

After that, the newly announced $2.4M goal unlocks crafting and enchanting. From Update #13:

Crafting and enchanting in Project Eternity will allow players to use objects and materials they find during exploration to both create consumable items like potions and scrolls as well as give their gear custom upgrades that can't be accomplished by other means.  This system is intended to be easy to use and very flexible, allowing players to customize many aspects of what they can create or alter.  Whether it's brewing basic potions from herbs and minerals commonly found throughout the world or upgrading a humble broadsword into a custom-named, magically-imbued weapon of distinctive and legendary power, we want to give players the ability to make it.  On the development side of things, we also want to make the system as data-driven as possible, allowing us to easily extend our list of recipes in the future.

There are also new "addon" pledges, such as $25 to add an Early Access Beta Key.

Lastly, the 50k backers level has also been passed, providing a bonus "mega dungeon" to all backers:

We are very excited to announce a reward to all backers that have helped us come this far. Today we are introducing The Endless Paths of Od Nua - a new dungeon experience for Project Eternity:

In the western reaches of the Dyrwood lies the Endless Paths, an ancient network of cobbled trails that wind through arches of dense overgrowth, twisting within the confines of a high castle wall as they make their way to the gates of iron-shuttered towers that jut forth from the interior.  In ages past, the towers rising from the gardens to pierce the canopy of the forest once marked the dominion of the castle's relentless, crazed builder: Od Nua.  But the courses of Od Nua's madness run far below the surface, stretching forever deeper into wandering catacombs and bone-cramped oubliettes unseen by living eyes for centuries.  The Endless Paths, as the old Glanfathans call them, cannot be walked by the living, but the storytellers say with certainty that many strong souls have found a permanent home beneath the grieving creator's estate.

Tim Cain has answered questions at Reddit as the Project Eternity Kickstarter ticks over to $2.139M. The Reddit format can be a bit hard to read through, so here's an edited exerpt provided by the update they posted on Kickstarter:

AtheistBots asks...
Class vs. Classless systems You're most famous for classless systems involved in Fallout and Arcanum. It sounds as if Obsidian will be using a class based system. What do you see as being the advantages of a class based system that you're hoping to leverage in Project Eternity?

Answer: We are designing a class-based system because we want the different characters in your party to fill different roles, and classes are the best way to achieve this goal. In a skill-based game, it's harder to tell if a companion gives you the skills you are looking for, especially before you recruit them. In a class-based game, you know what each class can do, so you can decide that you want a particular class even before a potential companion offers to join you. And when you have a lot of companions and can choose which ones you want to take on a particular adventure, classes make it easier to form the group and be assured that you have your skillsets covered.

Bonus question: Are you considering multiclassing?

Answer: Bonus questions are cheating…but yes, we are considering adding multi-classing to the game. A better way to put this answer is that we are not ruling them out at this time. If they work well with our final system, we will offer them.

Kaaaboom asks…
I was a bit discouraged when I heard that the combat was going to be RTwP (real time with pause), myself being a big fan of TB (turn based) and the possibility of tactical combat that it lends to a game. My question is then: how are you going to make the combat in P:E tactically interesting despite it being RTwP?

Answer: Hmm, this is a bit of a loaded question, as it implies that real-time games aren't tactically interesting while all turn-based games are. Believe me, I have played plenty of dull turn-based games with very few options on what to do on each turn, and there are lots of real-time games that are incredibly tactically rich. Look at all of the real-time strategy games out there!

So to answer your question, we are going to make sure that the distinct abilities that our classes will have will each provide different roles to those characters in combat, and that you will always have choices to make in combat about how to best position yourself and use your attacks. In addition, we are going to design the enemy encounters to be ever-increasing challenges, so that one way of fighting won't carry you through every encounter. You will be forced to mix it up a bit, tactically speaking, and use all of your combat skills to make it through to the end of the game.

Let me add that as an Infinity Engine inspired game, our pillars of design include isometric exploration of a fantasy world, a reactive storyline with interesting and believable characters, and real-time with pause combat. Those elements are expected in our game, and we feel strongly about providing them.

Elthosian asks…
How much reactivity can we expect from the world based in our character's race and sub-race?

Answer: We will provide a lot of reactivity in our game to your choice of race. We are planning on giving each race a set of traits that the player can pick from, and those traits affect everything from dialogs choices to skill bonuses to what kind of options you will have to finish some quests. There probably won't be quests that are just for one race, but one thing we are not going to do for certain is make race-restricted items. While many items have a cultural connection to some races, they will still be useable by members of other races. It might be unusual to see humans in elven chain, but they can wear it.

NeuroArcanist asks…
What aspect of cRPGs missing from modern games do you most want to recapture with Project Eternity?

Answer: I can answer that in one word: parties. I like playing cRPG's that allow the player to control big parties of characters, and by control, I mean you can pick the actions of each party member if you want. We will have lots of pause conditions in our combat, and if you want to have the game pause whenever a party member can perform a new action, you can do that. Most modern games only let you control one character, or if they give you a party, you only control one member of that group. In this game, I want to control all of them.

Zinicel asks…
Will there be modding capabilities for this game? I know it's a tall order for this style of game, but I've wanted a definitive answer to this question. Knowing Unity, I know it's somewhat unlikely to offer this. But it'd still be nice to know for sure.

Answer: That is a very good question, but unfortunately, I don't have an answer for you. We are still looking at Unity and how it bundles up content in the shipped game, and we will have to see how much of that we can make available to the player. I can say that we want you to be able to mod the game, and if it's possible, we will allow you to do it. It's not our primary focus, which is to give you an amazing single player experience with our game, but we know a lot of people will want to tinker with the game and make their own content, so we will let you know how this objective is faring when we are further along in development.

Adam Brennecke has posted a quick Project Eternity update, promising "something fun and special" when they pass $50k backers (currently $2.1M, 48,666 backers as of writing):

It's been an amazing week and we are getting close to doubling our initial goal of $1.1 million. The next stretch goal at $2.2 million adds a new region, faction, and companion along with French, German, and Spanish translations.

We are also getting close to 50k backers! We have something fun and special planned for all of our backers when we hit this milestone, so keep a look out for an update on Monday about it.  

There's also a new article / interview at Gamasutra. Here, Josh Sawyer discusses text versus cinematic animation:

Sawyer recalls a particular element of 1992 MicroProse RPG Darklands, whereby interactions were only subtly illustrated via text against loose watercolor illustrations. The images were enough to suggest key elements, but it was the text that carried the imagery.

Older games with technical limitations had to get very creative about how to immerse players and capture their imaginations, says Sawyer, since they didn't have the option to be literal -- and that's something Obsidian wants to keep in mind through the old-school visuals and interface of Project Eternity.

And when it comes to the idea that today's audiences don't like to read text, or that communicating a story through prose rather than through gameplay automatically represents some kind of narrative failure, Sawyer isn't sold. The idea that all players should like the same things, or that players can be segregated into "ones that like story" and "ones that like combat" seem equally fallacious to him.

"This has been bugging me a lot lately," he says. "In the past few years there's been a trend toward designing games with mechanics for people who don't like those mechanics, and it blows my mind... I look at a lot of mechanics, like 'hey, let's write dialog for people who don't like to read!' You were writing with the assumption that they do want to read some of it, right? If people don't want to read, why are we writing? And if people don't like combat, why do you have combat in it?"

Chris Avellone posts Project Eternity Update #10, which is primarily a video showing his messy desk, celebrating his birthday and following up on the characterisation blog from a few days back:

Today's Project Eternity update is shorter and sweeter than usual (at least on the text side), and instead is a fun video from Obsidian's creative director, Chris Avellone. In the video, Chris talks about birthdays, gratitude for fan gratitude, his one really @$!$ messy desk, and some extrapolation of characterization in Project Eternity.

The video is a follow up to his Project Eternity and Characterization blog post over on the Obsidian forums from a few days ago. We encourage you to check it out first if you haven't already, particularly if the process of character design interests you, and then watch the video!

There's also a piece of concept art.

Over at Penny Arcade, there's an interview with producer Adam Brennecke. There's not a lot of new revelations, though here he talks about the first screenshot:

Brennecke talked about Project Eternity exploring mature themes, though the studio’s definition of “mature” doesn’t necessarily mean sex and gore. Brennecke’s example was racism. Reading through the Kickstarter updates, there’s some hints of how that could play out on reincarnated souls. “...souls are subject to “fracturing” over generations, transforming in myriad ways, and not quite… working right. Some cultures and individuals place a high value on “strong” souls, souls with a “pure” lineage, “awakened” souls that remember past lives, “traveled” souls that have drifted through the divine realms, or those that co-exist with other souls in one body. However, the opposite is also true, resulting in negative discrimination and sometimes outright violence.”

Although they’re not ready to share it just yet, Brennecke told me he saw the first screenshot of the game the day we spoke. Even he was impressed. “It looks amazing.”

RPGamer has an interview with Tim Cain about Project Eternity (currently $2.06M, 20 days to run). Here's a sample:

Michael A. Cunningham (RPGamer): Greetings Tim, and thank you for taking the time out to chat with us about Project Eternity. We'd like to talk briefly about the game itself and your tentative future plans for the project.

You state Project Eternity will have "the central hero, memorable companions and the epic exploration of Baldur's Gate, the fun, intense combat and dungeon diving of Icewind Dale, and the emotional writing and mature thematic exploration of Planescape: Torment." I know fans that love Planescape, but have no love for Icewind Dale. Since it's impossible to please everyone, how do you plan on blending those aspects?

Tim Cain (Obsidian Entertainment): The game is going to support multiple paths, meaning the player can choose how he or she wants to play the game. If you don't enjoy combat, you can avoid much of it, and have companions that help speed combat encounters that you can't avoid. You can choose to play solo if you don't want any companions, you can choose how to treat other people in dialogs, and you can involve yourself deeply or shallowly in the storyline, since we will have lots of side quests.

Multiple paths also means the game will have a lot of replayability. You can pick different classes and races and companions and side quests, and you will experience a different game.

Thanks, Asdraguuhl!

Project Eternity has passed $2M, unlocking player housing and the additional related content. Josh Sawyer has since posted a new update with a new $2.3M stretch goal tier that offers three different "hardcore" mode features, as well as some brief details on Godlike races. A partial snip:

Additionally, even among the ranks of RPG superfans, there exists a subset of players who can't get enough challenge. They want all of the difficulty features set to "I am pro." Collectively, we've worked on a bunch of these challenge modes in the past and enjoyed the results. Project Eternity seems like a very appropriate place to highlight suites of these difficulty options as distinct gameplay modes that players can opt-into at the beginning of any game. We've come up with three modes we'd like to support, which also includes the ability to turn many of their sub-features on and off on an individual level in an ordinary game: Expert Mode, Trial of Iron, and Path of the Damned.

Expert Mode will disable all of the common ease-of-use / in-case-you-missed it gameplay elements like the display of skill thresholds, influence/reputation modifiers, and similar "helper" information. In a fashion similar to Fallout: New Vegas' Hardcore Mode, Expert Mode will also enable more punitive and demanding gameplay elements, in and out of combat. We're not saying we're going to have weighty gold (for real, we're not saying that), but if we did, you can bet that would be automatically turned on by Expert Mode.

If you guessed that Trial of Iron is like Temple of Elemental Evil's Ironman Mode, you guessed right. When you start a Trial of Iron game, you have one save game that persists for the entire campaign... or until you die. And if you die, your save game is deleted. Enjoy!

Path of the Damned is a spiritual successor to Icewind Dale's Heart of Fury mode. In our encounters, we like to turn individual combatants on and off based on the level of difficulty. If you come into an area on Easy, maybe casters are replaced with weak melee enemies. If you come in on Hard, maybe the casters are augmented by a tough melee enemy or two. With Path of the Damned, that goes out the window. All enemies from all levels of difficulty are enabled and the combat mechanics are amplified to make battles much more brutal for everyone involved.

The first question you may have is, "Can I enable multiple challenge modes at once?" Yep, you sure can. They have to be selected at the beginning of the game, but if you want to play with two or all three at the same time, you can certainly can do so. If you're not quite sure you want all of the elements that come along with a given mode, this funding level will also cover implementing the ability to enable and disable the individual sub-features.

In the latest Project Eternity update, Obsidian has announced a novella from Chris Avellone, new digital tiers and translations:

We are still going strong over here on Kickstarter and we wanted to thank everyone that has been here since the beginning as well as those of you who have come on recently to back us with your pledge.  With such great support, we want to thank everyone with a new addition to the $50 and later tiers, a new $110 digital only tier, and a big change to our $2.2M stretch goal. 

Oh, and what are we doing this week as to updates you might ask?  Josh Sawyer, Tim Cain and Chris Avellone will be posting updates and videos all this week starting on Sep 26 with Josh, Sep 27 with Mr. Avellone and a great one from Tim over the weekend.

French, German, and Spanish Translations added at $2.2M

We are glad to announce that we will add text translations for French, German, and Spanish when we reach this goal.  As we hit more of our stretch goals, we hope to be able to add even more languages as well!

Feargus Urquhart has been interviewed at GamesIndustry.biz, mostly about the Kickstarter itself rather than game details:

Q: You've essentially got 40,000 preorders for a game targeting a niche audience. Do you worry at all that the addressable audience for the game will have already been addressed once you launch?

Feargus Urquhart: I'm not, actually. And that's entirely Feargus data. It's my own way of looking at the world. Baldur's Gate sold between 2-4 million units, and that was 10 years ago. It still sells today. The GOG guys put up packages of sales for the D&D games because they still sell. I think there's absolutely a market for them. I don't know what that market is. I couldn't tell you if it's 200,000 or 300,000 or 400,000, but there's definitely a market and it's hopefully more than the number of backers we'll have. [...]

Q: Are consoles or tablet versions on Project Eternity's stretch goal list?

Feargus Urquhart: No they're not. It's a game that goes back to the roots of the great RPG games of the past and the focus of those was keyboard and mouse. Not that console games aren't great; they're just different. There's a big difference between Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance [for consoles] and Baldur's Gate II [for PC]. And we don't want to create some camel in the middle to try to straddle a line. It's do one thing or another, and we're going to try to do the PC and do that right.

Wow, Obsidian has really worked hard on the frequency of their Project Eternity updates. Around an hour ago, Tim Cain posted about non-combat abilities - there are no specific skills or details but the philosophy of their design is outlined:

Chris Avellone has kicked up a blog entry for Project Eternity titled "Characterisation":

Character building for games isn’t easy, and it requires a lot of effort, especially when it comes to companions. I’ve had the good fortune to work on a variety of titles with strong support characters over the years, and I enjoy writing them a great deal. I still can’t believe I get paid to do this (don’t cut me off, Feargus).

There are a few guidelines I try to follow when designing companions (some of these are dependent on the engine and franchise).

- Combat/Challenge-viable. Any companion that can’t hold their weight and help support the home team in some fashion isn’t going to last long in the hearts of players (well, maybe a very forgiving few). This is something I learned way back in Fallout 2 when it became clear that Cassidy was far preferred over Myron, for example (and not just because Myron was an ****, which factors into another point below). It’s also a lesson I picked up while playing Final Fantasy III – every character needs to contribute to the mechanics and challenge mechanics in some fashion (whether combat or stealth or whatever the game’s challenge is).

- Companions should be optional. Whenever possible, the player should never be forced to take them or in the case of true psychopaths, even let them live. The golden rule is the companion should be a support character or a walking/breathing slab of target practice if the players don’t like or want anything to do with the companion.

Head over for the full post. Meanwhile, VG247 has an interview with MCA:

Can you give us an insight into what stage of that process you’re at now?

We’re in pre-production, although most of our efforts at the moment are focused on the Kickstarter. Adam Brennecke is heading up our production and tasking efforts – he’s where we’ve gotten most of our Kickstarter metrics and planning.

Josh Sawyer is our project lead and he’s laying out world elements, races, and systems, I’m working on narrative approaches and character concepting – which should be up this week -Rob Nesler is setting up the visual look and feel of the game, and Tim Cain is working on a number of design elements of the game, including basic stats and armor mechanics, as well as ideas for non-combat ability design.

In addition to the folks above, we have a number of other Obsidianites are working on gameplay and graphics, which you’ll see samples of in the days to come.

...and some comments from J.E. Sawyer at Ars Technica:

In the great RPG debate between real-time action and turn-based battles, Obsidian has decided to split the baby for Eternity, going with a real-time system that allows for the option to pause the action to set party positioning and coordinate attacks. Sawyer said that a purely real-time system was out if the team wanted to keep the feeling of classic "Infinity Engine" games like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment. But going with a purely turn-based system would have also felt off, he said.

"Because we also wanted to emphasize more open map exploration, with combat taking place in the same space as that exploration, pacing-wise it felt better to use real-time with pause than turn-based. In talking with Tim Cain (who's doing a lot of the system design), most of the problems we've faced with previous systems came from adapting turn-based tabletop systems in real-time with pause. We believe we can eliminate a lot of those problems by designing the system for real-time with pause from the start."

The people from Pure Sophistry have an audio interview with Feargus Urquhart about Project Eternity and other things.

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”

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.

J.E. Sawyer has posted a new Project Eternity update, discussing souls, the level of technology in the game world and a new $5000 ledge tier. Here's a lengthy snip on technology:

Technology

The cultures of Project Eternity are in a variety of different technological states. Though some remote civilizations are still in the equivalent of Earth's Stone Age or Bronze Age, most large civilizations are in the equivalent of Earth's high or late Middle Ages. The most aggressive and powerful civilizations are in the early stages of what would be our early modern period, technologically, even if they are not culturally undergoing "Renaissance"-style changes.

For most large civilizations, this means that all of the core arms and armor of medieval warfare have reached a high level of development: full suits of articulated plate armor, a variety of military swords, war hammers, polearms, longbows, crossbows, and advanced siege weaponry. Architecturally, these cultures also employ technologies found in Earth's Gothic structures, allowing them to create towering vertical structures.

The most recent technologies seeing use in the world are ocean-going carrack-style ships and black powder firearms (notably absent: the printing press). Cultures with large navies and mercantile traffic are exploring the world, which has led to contact with previously-unknown lands and societies and settlement in new lands. Despite their intense drive, these explorers have been restricted from aggressive long-range exploration by monstrous sea creatures that pose a lethal, seemingly insurmountable threat to even the stoutest, most well-armed ships.

Black powder firearms are of the single-shot wheellock variety. Largely considered complex curiosities, these weapons are not employed extensively by military forces. Their long reload times are considered a liability in battles against foes that are too monstrous to drop with a single volley, foes that fly or move at high speed, and foes that have the power of invisibility. Despite this, some individuals do employ firearms for one specific purpose: close range penetration of the arcane veil, a standard magical defense employed by wizards. The arcane veil is powerful, but it does not react well to the high-velocity projectiles generated by arquebuses and handguns. As a result, more wizards who previously relied on the veil and similar abjurations have turned to traditional armor for additional defense. 

Update #4 has been released for Project Eternity, offering a DRM-free option via GOG, digital reward tiers, addons and beta access for the $140 Collector's Edition. They have also announced a series of updates:

Well you all did it, you helped us get to $1.6M and we now have a Mac version and are adding more story into the world.

We have also been listening and reading your feedback on Kickstarter and have some changes that are happening as soon as this update is posted. One thing, we are not updating just yet are the stretch goals, but don’t worry those are going to get updated very soon. Oh, and we are putting a schedule together for updates that will include guest stars almost every day – Josh will be talking more about the design tomorrow (Sep 20), our unflappable CTO Chris Jones (architect of the Fallout and Arcanum engines) on Friday (Sep 21), and I think we will be able to squeeze one in from Mr. Tim Cain over the weekend. 

So, what are those changes?!? 

DRM Free Option

You asked and we are delivering. In conjunction with GOG, we are going to offer a DRM free version of the game for our Kickstarter Backers. When the campaign ends, you will be able to choose whether you would like a key from GOG or Steam. For our Mac friends, we are still working on a DRM free option, since GOG does not currently support the Mac. Oh, and the great guys at GOG are having a special right now on all of the great Infinity Engine games, so check that out as well.

New Digital Tiers

We are adding a $50 and an $80 digital tier. The $50 tier will get you the digital version of the game, the soundtrack, the digital version of the Collector’s Book, a collection of wallpapers made for multiple resolutions and multiple monitors, high resolution concept art, a high resolution version of the map, and ringtones. For the $80 tier, you will get all of that plus a digital copy of the strategy guide, and a second digital download of the game.

Head over for the full text.

In other Eternity news, engineer Steve Weatherly dropped by Reddit for an IAMA. Steve is careful not to reveal anything he shouldn't but it's worth a skim through:

At the moment I am responsible for all of the gameplay systems for Project Eternity. That means combat, AI, camera, movement, etc. We're still VERY early on in the project and I'm just laying out a foundation for this stuff. Two engineers are not enough for this project, we will be ramping up over time. I don't know what the final count will be, but I'm sure the management types do.

Obsidian's Project Eternity Kickstarter has just ticked past $1.6M, unlocking the following stretch goals:

1.6 million, a Mac Version of Project Eternity and The Story Grows!
We've listened and we’ll make a Mac version of the game at this tier. We're also going to add a new major storyline along with new quests, locations, NPCs, and unique loot (special histories everyone?).

Looking forward to $1.8M, we'll get:

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.

Eurogamer has posted a piece on Project Eternity that mixes new comments from Tim Cain with the earlier Project Update from J.E. Sawyer that we've aleady seen. Still, there are some worthwhile bits in the article, with Cain confirming guns and a reputation system:

At the core of the rules will be souls. In the Kickstarter video, Josh Sawyer said a character's soul was tied to the magic system. Cain expanded: "No, you don't have to be evil to access any abilities. They aren't categorised like that. Instead, in this world, your soul is connected to your power. Simply put, people who have whole, unbroken souls are more powerful than those people who just have fragments of souls. The nature of these souls, and how they might break, is something we will explore in the game.

"While there are social concepts of good and evil," he added, "the game does not track an alignment for the player. Instead we will use a reputation system to keep track of what different groups in the world think of you. Consequences of your actions will matter in Project Eternity."

Interestingly, Cain notes they have an engine but MCA says it isn't Onyx.

Obsidian has posted their next Project Eternity update for Kickstarter, covering some basic but welcome information such as party size, the importance of formations, a little on character creation and some story background.

The Kickstarter update has a video from JE Sawyer and also a link to a post on the Obsidian forums. Since they've been crashing from the load, here's the entire post:

Project Eternity is still early in development and we are still working on many of the cultures, factions, and ethnic groups of the world and debating many of the system concepts.  However, there are certain fundamental things we want to let you know about the game and the setting for Project Eternity.

Your Party
The maximum party size is the player's main character (PC) and up to five companions for a total of six characters.  This does not preclude the addition of temporary characters in special circumstances.  Companions are never forced on the player. Players can explore the entire world and its story on their own if they so choose.  We feel companions are excellent sounding boards for the player's (and other companions') actions, but the story is ultimately about the player's personal conflict among the larger social and political complexities of the world.

Formations
A key element of the classic party-based tactical combat that we are developing is the use of party formations. As in the good ol' games, you can arrange your party in a large number of set formations.  You can also construct your own formations if you want to get fancy.  When moving companions, you have the ability to rotate formations for more precise positioning.

Character Creation
At a minimum, players will be able to specify their main character's name, sex, class, race (including subrace), culture, traits, ability scores, portrait, and the fundamental starting options of his or her class (gear, skills, and talents).  We have not worked out customization details of character avatars, but we believe those are important and will be updating on these specifics in the future.

Companions
In Project Eternity, companions exist for both narrative and mechanical purposes.  Companions are designed to have a driving interest in the player's central conflict.  Their personalities and motivations open plot branches and generate conflicts for players to resolve over the course of the story.  They are highly reactive to the player's actions and to the world around them.  Additionally, companions exist to give players strategic management options in party composition that expand the party's capabilities in exploration, combat, and quest resolution.  It is no coincidence that there are at least as many companions as there are classes.  As stated above, companions are not required to play through Project Eternity's story, but we feel that they can add greatly to the experience.

The Set-Up
The player witnesses an extraordinary and horrific supernatural event that thrusts them into a unique and difficult circumstance.  Burdened with the consequences of this event, the player has to investigate what has happened in order to free themselves from the restless forces that follow and haunt them wherever they go.

The Nature of You
Your character is not required to be of any particular race, cultural background, sex, class, moral outlook, personality, organization, etc.  The premise is that you are a victim of circumstance.  How you choose to deal with your situation is up to you.  You can bear it with stoicism and restraint or fly off in a rage at anyone who gets in your way.  The world will react to your choices, but the game is designed to give you the freedom to play your character the way you want to.

Races
We are still developing the races of Project Eternity, but we are creating a range that encompasses the recognizable (e.g. humans, elves, dwarves), the out-of-the-ordinary (e.g. the so-called "godlike"), and the truly odd (?!).  Races and subraces differ from each other culturally, but the races also have different physiological factors that can contribute to friction and confusion between them.

Within even the recognizable races (including humans), we are creating a variety of ethnic subtypes and nationalities.  This world's races did not all spring forth from the same place, and millennia of independent development have resulted in distinctive and unconnected groups.  For example, the dwarf ranger below is originally from a southern boreal region that is quite different from the temperate homes of her distant kin to the north.

Additionally, Project Eternity's world contains some isolated races and ethnicities, but transoceanic exploration and cultural cohabitation have heavily mixed many racial and ethnic groups over time.  This mixing is not always... peaceful.  At times it has degenerated into genocide and long-standing prejudices are ingrained in many cultures.

Project Eternity's Kickstarter has just ticked past $1.4M, meaning the first stretch goal has been unlocked:

1.4 million, New Playable Race, Class, and Companion!
Expands your options for character creation and adds a companion of the new class.

Next stop, at $1.6M, is...

1.6 million, a Mac Version of Project Eternity and The Story Grows!
We've listened and we’ll make a Mac version of the game at this tier. We're also going to add a new major storyline along with new quests, locations, NPCs, and unique loot (special histories everyone?).

While we're here, J.E. Sawyer's Formspring is normally full of questions about the types of ammo in F:NV but now there are a few useful tidbits for Project Eternity. First off, we might be hearing about party size soon:

I am writing up some basics on party size/composition that will hopefully answer some of your other questions.

On the player-house goal:

OP: To answer your question, we believe player houses serve a basic utilitarian purpose in RPGs. We like using them and would like to have them in PE. They require work to implement, but the $ of the goal is not meant to indicate $ spent on that feature.

Okay, but I hope it's obvious that the spacing of stretch goals does not map 1:1 with dollars spent for features. A house is not the equivalent of a region, faction, and companion. They are listed w/ =$ increments for fundraising pacing purposes.

In my mind, a player "house" is something like The Sink. A player stronghold would be something like Crossroad Keep, with much more in-depth strategic gameplay.

...and being early in development:

The problem inherent with this is that we're still very early in development. Designing systems takes time. I would rather be general and risk some frustration than be specific at this stage in the process.

Josh Sawyer did an update on his blog.   The Black Hound, the rpg projetct he laid to rest, is the subject for discussion this time. An excerpt about his feelings toward this:

I regret that the team wasn't able to complete The Black Hound, and not just because of the time and passion we all invested in it. Some of my best tabletop RPG (and CRPG) memories come out of the Forgotten Realms. Huge, crazy, "how many more Volo's Guides can there be?" Forgotten Realms. I think those scenarios were memorable because the DMs/designers made compelling scenarios and the players gave a damn about each other and what was going on. If you take fantasy for granted, yeah, no one's going to get much out of it. I don't think we took anything for granted. We had an opportunity to make something that celebrated high fantasy without being enslaved by its conventions.

Obsidian has updated with a "thank you" video and the first stretch goals:

We are excited to announce the stretch goals for Project Eternity!

1.1 million, Base Goal – Achieved!
Base game includes three races, five classes, and five companions. We have ideas for these, but we want to hear your opinions on what you'd like to see. Stay tuned to Kickstarter, our website, and our forums to join in on the conversation.

1.4 million, New Playable Race, Class, and Companion!
Expands your options for character creation and adds a companion of the new class.

1.6 million, a Mac Version of Project Eternity and The Story Grows!
We've listened and we’ll make a Mac version of the game at this tier. We're also going to add a new major storyline along with new quests, locations, NPCs, and unique loot (special histories everyone?).

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.

2.0 million, Player House!
Get your own house in the game that you can customize, store equipment in, and where your companions hang out, or, as the elves say, "chillax".

2.2 million, a new Region, a new Faction and another new Companion! And, dare we say it... ? LINUX!
Great news, everyone! For the Tarball Knights of Gzippia out there, we'll be adding Linux support!
Also, the world of Project Eternity grows in a major way with the inclusion of a whole new faction and the territory it holds. This adds new NPCs, quests, magic items, and hours of gameplay. And yes, you got it, another companion.

We've been listening to your feedback, and have the following announcements:

• DRM Free: We are looking into it! Please check back for updates.
• Digital Only Tiers are coming!
• PayPal is coming asap. Please be patient!
• New $5k Tier. We are looking into a new $5k tier since it sold out so quickly! We are looking into equivalent alternatives.

Thank you fans!

Obsidian

Obsidian's Kickstarter for Project Eternity has been funded in a little over 24 hours, with $1.128M on the board of a $1.1M goal. No update from Obsidian yet, but they should start rolling out the stretch goals soon. From Twitter:

Thanks to everyone for helping us hit our $1.1M goal so quickly!!! We will have an update very soon about #ProjectEternity

Stretch goals and an update coming soon! Stay tuned.

Obsidian has unveiled a Kickstarter campaign for Project Eternity, an "isometric, party-based RPG set in a new fantasy world". The Kickstarter video highlights the talents of designers like Josh Sawyer (Project Director), Tim Cain (Senior Programmer, who points out this is his first "pure" fantasy game) and Chris Avellone. Dialogue and companions are highlighted as key features. They are looking for $1.1M in funding over the next 32 days, with $173k already on the board:

Obsidian Entertainment and our legendary game designers Chris Avellone, Tim Cain, and Josh Sawyer are excited to bring you a new role-playing game for the PC. Project Eternity (working title) pays homage to the great Infinity Engine games of years past: Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment.

Project Eternity aims to recapture the magic, imagination, depth, and nostalgia of classic RPGs that we enjoyed making - and playing. At Obsidian, we have the people responsible for many of those classic games and we want to bring those games back… and that’s why we’re here - we need your help to make it a reality!

Project Eternity will take the central hero, memorable companions and the epic exploration of Baldur’s Gate, add in the fun, intense combat and dungeon diving of Icewind Dale, and tie it all together with the emotional writing and mature thematic exploration of Planescape: Torment.

Combat uses a tactical real-time with pause system - positioning your party and coordinating attacks and abilities is one of the keys to success. The world map is dotted with unique locations and wilderness ripe for exploration and questing. You’ll create your own character and collect companions along the way – taking him or her not just through this story, but, with your continued support, through future adventures. You will engage in dialogues that are deep, and offer many choices to determine the fate of you and your party. …and you'll experience a story that explores mature themes and presents you with complex, difficult choices to shape how your story plays out.

We are excited at this chance to create something new, yet reminiscent of those great games and we want you to be a part of it as well. 

The first interview is up at Gamebanshee:

Buck: Let's talk mechanics. While the game is certainly far from completion, what are your goals for the character creation and advancement system? Will progression be a standard affair with attributes and skills/perks/feats, or will you be treading into unknown territory? Finally, will there be a major focus on the non-combat abilities that are often overlooked in modern RPGs?

Feargus: Yes, yes and yes – we are still rolling up the system, but our goals are very much along the lines of creating a robust and multi-faceted RPG system. That means having a huge focus on support abilities and not just combat ones. Josh has been whiteboarding up a system for a number of months now for the support ability system and it’s looking very, very cool.

Buck: As you're going with a fantasy world, one would assume that there will be a magic system of some kind. What are your goals for the game's magic system, and will the spells that we gain access to be reminiscient of the D&D-based arsenal we had in the IE games?

Feargus: We will be talking about the magic system more in the coming week and months, but we are tying magic and overall potential of all characters to the power of a character’s soul. Player characters and companions are among the people in the world with great potential, those with "unbroken" or "strong" souls. As for the spell types, we’ll definitely see spells that give that us that D&D feeling. But, we want to use the connection between power and the soul as an added factor into every part of the character development system – including magic.