Way, way too much work. Fully animating 2D sprites from all angles is ridiculously time-consuming. They don't have nearly enough money for that.

I like the art direction. Hopefully, I will be able to donate to this campaign after the Kickstarter ends. Yeah, I'm broke.

Hey, if you're going to get excited about a screenshot, you may as well get excited about the full resolution version: http://media.obsidian.net/eternity/media/screenshots/0001/PE-TempleEntrance01-2560x1440.jpg
;)

(I'm slightly worried that their highest supported resolution is 2560x1440 - by the time PE is released high-DPI desktop displays might finally be available / affordable)

I mean angles of the character relative to the camera (front, back, left, right, …). Baldur's Gate had eight of those, I think? Together with all possible equipment, it's crazy amount of work.

Oh yeah, I don't doubt 3D character models are necessary today, but trees or grass? If you can't shift the camera angle it doesn't make much difference, really.

Well, yeah. But this depends on if they want to do them destructible, put in some rudimentary physics for fancy spells to make barrels fly around and things like that. Also, characters walking behind objects, that could be simpler if they were 3D models.

Either way would work fine, though.

Funny fact.

You can knock down doors in Arcanum, a fully 2D game, but you can't in Oblivion, a fully 3D one.

No to mention that character animations in the infinity engine looked like spastics on steroids ...
Check out some of the the games between '00 and '05. IIRC some of them had some really nice combinations (or was it earlier). Especially in adventure games I always loved the 2D with 3D characters approach. Because the background is static, you can put a lot of effort into this.

With stuff that is going to be animated, 3d is always the way to go.

Also a little gift from our friends on RPGCodex:
http://i.imgur.com/uXdxc.gif'
Doesn't really matter, Obsidian have a paypal donation option on their site, which will remain open after the KS finishes.

Wow. That's kind of depressing.

(I really should stop trying to piss on this particular parade.)

But it is oldschool. Everything is better oldschool.

Edit: I haven't gotten around reading the lore update yet. Depending on this, I might just stick with my high pledge. It is Obsidian after all ...

Heh, love the Codex-gif. XD I'd even play the damn game, if it actually looked like that.

I wouldn't. Every 3D model put there looks out of place. Entirely.

Obsidian folks have much better sense of style.

Actually, it looks just fine to me.

However, we already know that the game entities won't actually look like that, so there's not much point in arguing about this.