So appearently Demon's/Dark Souls is the only game that perfected it.

Etrian Odyssey, at least the first one. The mooks are a punishing challenge when you enter each Stratum (Grouping of 5 floors), and they become easier as you progress, but you never feel like you can just ignore every fight. There are mini-bosses that patrol the floors, and a main boss at each floor that's quite challenging.

I do run out of resources for healing spells regularly, that forces me into sorta a recharge phase (but I'm so far down that even that needs to be found the right mobs). So you never really have that full feel of safety.

Seems like things are slowing down a little. (correct me if I'm wrong) I'm sure they'll make it to the 2.4 mil stretch goal, though. :)

Another quick Q&A session:


Question: Romance options. Yea or Nay?
Feargus: I'll poke Josh and Chris about that.

Question: It’s maybe too early, but I want ask about environment. Like how character can interact with things that surrounds he or she?
1) For example, can I destroy some things? Can I smash door or chest to get to some good stuff or I always must lockpick?
2) Weather or environment can affect on you? Like maybe swamp slow down your combat speed or you get illness under rain? Maybe some surroundings have bad affect on some companions?
Feargus: There wil be parts of the environment that you can interact with and there will be some destructables, but it will not be like in a game such as Skyrim where you can touch and throw almost anything. I have to admit that I am not sure what Josh and Tim are planning for chests right now.

Question: did you even remotely expect to get this many backers or this much money at the start of this? much less have it look like you're going to edge towards three million if trends for these things hold?
Feargus: I would say that we were hoping, but not thinking it was just going to happen. It is certainly nice to see!

Question: Btw, love the wallpaper you released with the update. Great stuff! Will you be using a similar art style in the ingame portraits and what not?
Feargus: Thanks again! And yes, that's the style we are going for in general. Want to harken back to that fun fantasy style.

Question: are you guys thinking about doing a live stream at the end of this? just outta curiosity. also... someone started a rumor on the forums the other day about a 1000+ backers only forum being put up. any truth to that that you're aware of?
Feargus: Yes, we are going to do the Live Stream. And, we are giong to get a $1000+ backer forum up, so that we can talk with everyone about their designing - it's not for info just for them.

Question: Any chance of adding a BG-style Co-op option to the game? I'd really love to play this with my GF!
Feargus: Sorry, we are focusing on Single Player for this one, so that we can put all the $'s to the right into that.

Question: what do you think about possibility of using The Witcher 2 engine for cutscenes in Project Eternity? I think that you'll ultimately need to make at least small number of cutscenes in some way. And making them with a game engine such as The Witcher 2 engine would be much cheaper than as conventional CG.
Feargus: As for cutscenes, with the budget we are working with - we really want to spend the time on as much gameplay content and assets as possible. Cutscenes even within that engine would mean we would have an animator and a character artist making things for that instead of more creatures, characters and animation for the game.

Question: do you and/or any on your team have a love for old 2nd Ed Oriental Adventures? I rarely played using any of that specific source material but I LOVED the OA handbook and I always thought it was an excellent hook into a more eastern style D&D experience. Maybe something like that might make an appearance in PE down the road?
Feargus: I think I read the 1st Edition one and the 2nd Edition one. There is this wierd gap in my D&D playing that happened between AD&D and 3rd Edition. I played some 2nd Edition, and Zeb worked for me for about four years, but I mostly played the other editions. Josh really likes to explore other cultures, so I bet in the future we might get to other areas of the world with new cultures.

Question: Could you please ask Justin Bell to take a look at how music was implemented in the first Witcher game? I think that it was a brilliant example of combining "mystical", "ancient" and "emotive".
Feargus: I'll send you comment to him right now.

Question: where was my update 16? i am guessing a big update tomorrow?
Feargus: Yep. We decided to not do one on Thursday, since we did one the first three days of the week. There is a fine line between the right amount and too much information.

Question: Will we have a page such as this in the near future so we can see the paypal backers and backing?
http://revolution.co.uk/kickstarter/paypal
Feargus: Darren is looking at that very page to see what we can do. We are also working on international pages that mimic the main KS site so we can translate into other languages.

Question: How unique are the classes you mentioned in the update? can we say that every class has different mechanics and game play ? Fighter vs barbarian - is it more then just less armor and resistance, or druid vs wizard ?
Feargus: I would say yes to that. As example, in D&D - I feel that playing a Fighter vs. a Barbarian is different due to how you focus their use.

Question: A class idea I've been thinking of, Alchemist. Uses its soul to isolate and refine element properties such as toxicity and explosiveness. Then uses these to create useful items such as bombs and traps which have a variety of effects and usages, for example using his soul to ignite a specially designed remote detonated bomb. Primarily used for theatre control and support but also capable of inflicting damage.
Perhaps there's a few ideas there you can use. Ohad and I were debating about it before you arrived if you want to know more.
Feargus: I'll send over to Josh.
It's still trending towards 3.5 million and while I'm well aware that's not a definite predictor of what the final total is going to be, I highly doubt that it's going to stall out before hitting 2.6 million with 11 days still to go.

*edit* Oh, and so far no word on a toolset, and no word on modability.

Remember negative nancies, the end of a kickstarter is a big bump. Saying it won't hit 2.6 with 11 days to go is ridiculous. Learn to love.

BG2 did have bosses. Irenicus, Bodhi, Firkraag, that black dragon in the shadow grove. Almost every location had a boss fight of some kind, only that those weren't just damage sponges.

Even comparing these two games makes no sense as the overall approach to boss encounters and gameplay are completely different.

I have been playing Dark Souls (the PC version) lately and I really find the encounter design for the non-humanoid bosses very lacking and uninspired. The game is really quite good in other areas but the way the game designs boss encounters is gimmicky, like straight out of an action movie. I would prefer more humanoid enemies.

I just want to say that 1C is shit. Shit shit shit shit shit. They do not fucking publish prices for their accounting software (sold through authorized resellers only), nor do they publish a license agreement. So, for example, you write to them to ask what part numbers you need for a particular network setup and they reply with "lol we dunno ask your partner". Prices? Same. Partners are encouraged to lie to end users to meet quarterly sales requirements (failure to meet requirements leads to de-authorization), and they can set whatever prices they want.

Resellers do not provide ANY licensing information either (1C policy prohibits disclosing licensing terms on pain of being de-authorized), they can just make an offer, "you give us X and we set up some accounting software on your machines". It's very difficult to switch resellers; one basically needs to sue them in the internal 1C court before a switch is approved by 1C, otherwise the user loses their purchased licenses. The whole reseller program is advertised to facilitate licensing for the end user, but of course if the end user unknowingly breaks the license agreement (again, because the terms are not published anywhere), they face piracy charges, criminal prosecution and jailtime.

When I had to deal with this shit, I pirated a not-for-retail (reseller) software update DVD, which included the full archive of news bulletins, both published and secret, which in total formed the 1C licensing policy for every item of software ever released by 1C. Yes, they do not even have a coherent policy/pricing digest for resellers, I suspect this is done so that resellers can back up just about any ripoff licensing scheme they might have with references to that humongous data silo (which makes for a cute lovey-dovey relationship between 1C, the reseller, and the embezzling insider within the end user company). And I was able to knock the update subscription price from $31k down to $2k, with the scheme's validity subsequently confirmed by a reseller.

TL;DR: 1C are thieves and embezzlers.

I agree, somewhat. I think Demon's Souls had overall better boss design. I hear the DLC's bosses are a big improvement, though.

This seems cool but they didn´t show anything... Compare this with Planettary Annihilation, 2.3, 2.5 ,2.6 , 2.8 or whatever may look like a lot of money, but it is not for a RPG if you start from "ground zero". I fear many people expect an AAA title from this, same to other KS projects.

Continuing last night's Q&A (I was too tired to stay up for the finish):


Question: have you some plan to keep in touch with the backers which are not accessing the forums after the 17th ? (the forums are classified as gaming category and thus blocked in corporate environment) Also there was a question about what could be added in the pledge levels to get people investing more. Have you thougt about a messenger bag? I would like to have that. For now, I am aiming digital only due to
shipping, but I would surely tempt me.
Feargus: (1) I think we can still be up here and responding to comments - I think, so we will be doing that.
(2) Still working on ideas for the pledge levels and will have some news on that both tomorrow and on Monday.

Question: Could you clarify what is your general stance for regional locks on content ? Will Obsidian do what it can to make sure that we (backers from other parts of the world - Poland/Russia) have unrestricted access to English-only versions of (possible) further content (DLC/expansions etc.) at least ?
Feargus: On the subject of regional locks - I don't think we plan on doing that unless there is some law that would require us to do so.

Question: will you continue to accept donations towards the game after the kickstarter has ended? I've been following Double Fine's kickstarter project lately and they are still taking Paypal donations and giving some of the rewards still for donating and calling them Slacker Backers.
Feargus: We will continue to take donations for a while after the Kickstarter campaign. We are working on our own storefront that will take donations and also let everyone buy the latest in Obsidian wear.

Question: any news on vo work yet? I understood that you guys planned on doing it like it was done in BG1 and BG2.. but do you have any names for us to sneak peek? (even if you only have them on your short list)
Feargus: I was hoping we would have some names that we could talk about, but our VO Producer went and got married and has been on his honeymoon. I think they are back early next week, so we might be able to get some info out then.

Question: My one question is how visible the soul abilities are going to be on martial characters? If they use their soul to make their blade keener or whatever, will it be enveloped in a magical light or will it just be an invisible change? From a design point of view I guess it’s nice to have visual cues to tell what the characters are doing but I kind of prefer it when the martial classes don’t look outright magical even if they are. Casting healing spells is one thing but flashy lights kind of take the fun out of down and dirty swordplay.
Feargus: Our general stance on the use of effects is they should be cool, but reinforce what is really going on with the character based upon what type of class they are. So, having lots of crazy lights for a martial character wouldn't be something we would do in PE, except of abilities that it applied to - more magical ones.

Question: Are there classes/ combinations where you can weild two 2handers? one in left hand one in right.. i could see classes like barbarians fit that role.
Feargus: I'm going to go with a maybe on that one, with an answer that might be forthcoming soon based upon us talking about another one of the races

Question: Feargus what about transportation in PE. Some teleports? Ships? Horses?
Feargus: No horses. Once you have been told where a place is then you will be able to go there. Also, you can use the map to get from place to place. However, you will need to explore on the areas that you do get to.

Question: Are dwarves and humans going to wear the same sized armour or are there going to be different sizes Arcanum style?
Feargus: I'm pretty sure that we are going with armor of the same styles for Humans and Dwarves, but we will be modifying the models so that they fit well. We tend to move away from making unique armors for races, since then it means we can make fewer armor types per race.

Question: Do you have any information which OS gog.com will anounce for future support on Oct 18th? But even if you know it you are probably not allowed to tell us yet.... ;)
Feargus: I know what it is, but must keep quiet or suffer the wrath of the Poles.

Question: Have you already decided about who's handling the translations? Based on my personal opinion I think Roland Austinat did a good job for the german translations of Skyrim and New Vegas.
Feargus: We have not, but we learned our lesson on BG when the company did the VO with the accent that I can't remember the name of right now. Wow, I'm tired. Bavarian, that's it - I think.

I think what help demon's souls with that was it's linearity imo the World 1-1 to World 5-3 and with each end is a boss fight and I like that design.

RPS interview with Chris Avellone. Pic of new mage-type companion, Aloth.

Bodhi, Irenicus or the dragons are not bosses in the traditional sense, imo.

Or else, you have to consider that the whole of BG 2 is a series of boss fights, since the guys in the Closed Compound, the Twisted Rune, the Shadow Lord (you know, that guy you fight after the purely optional black dragon), the various liches or Kangaxx, just to give a few of the more challenging fights as an example, are all just as difficult if not more.

I didn't compare Dark Souls or BG 2 either. That would be nonsensical. I just pointed out that few games have balanced combat difficulty with both mooks and bosses being challenging, and I cited Dark Souls as and example of a game that mostly got it right.

BG 2 is an example of a game where the devs, OTOH, just designed a series of interesting fights, with nothing to separate one from the other from a mechanics point of view.