Swedish politicians have to be fucking sorcerers then.

By the way "proper expansions" for Icewind dale extended the gameplay double time.

Oh yes, please!
I know fixed camera causes many problems, but hell it's amtmospherical as hell. The best and the only ones that were scary survival horrors were made during "Fixed camera" era.

I've gotten very sober of this particular kickstarter here. They still get my money, but more as a "thank you" for all the great stuff they made. The more I look at this game here, the more generic it gets.

Obsidian is not taking any chances (which is what made them who they are today) but is going for the greatest known denominator.

On the other hand, the "we're so oldschool, we're so cool" kickstarter which I ignored has gotten really interesting ...

The update #18 isn't available yet, but they put two more stretch goals: 2.7M with 2 new classes (paladins and chanters) and 2.8M (George Ziets, who doesn't work in Obsidian actually but worked in Mask of the Betrayer)

I'm disappointed they're going so traditional, but I get that they don't want to be too risky with their first attempt at this sort of thing. I also don't think it's really their fault that most people want traditional Tolkien blowjobs.

In the end I trust them to make it interesting through dialogue and proper quest design.

Update #18: George Ziets, Paladins, Add-Ons, Rewards, and More!

Hey everyone, there's exactly one more week left in the Kickstarter, and we are going to be kicking it up with bigger and better updates every day!
New Add-ons and Rewards

We were looking at the $140 tier and thought it needed something more, so we decided to throw a Project Eternity Mouse Pad into the Collector's Edition. The mouse pad features the painting from Kiernan Yanner. You can also add-on additional mouse pads at any physical tier for $15.

• $140 Reward Tier and Above (excludes the digital only $165 tier) - Now includes a Project Eternity Mouse Pad.
• Project Eternity Mouse Pad Add-On - $15 each*

Also we've been asked if we are going to have more physical rewards and add-ons, and we are listening. Today, we are announcing new t-shirt add-ons for you:

• Obsidian T-Shirt Add-On - $25 each*
• Project Eternity T-Shirt Add-On - $25 each*

For more information on how to add-on rewards, please see Update #4. Sizes will be asked during the survey that will be sent to you after the end of the Kickstarter.

*You must be at a physical goods reward tier to add on any additional physical add-ons.
New Stretch Goals for $2.7m and $2.8m

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.

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.

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.

George is gifted in designing lore, levels, and companions for role-playing games, and Baldur’s Gate 2 is one of his favorite titles. His impact can be felt in Mask of the Betrayer, and the character concepts, story, and his narrative decisions to take a disused section of the Forgotten Realms and use it as a backdrop to weave a fascinating story is testament to his design skills. We’ve given him the rundown of Project Eternity, and he’s eager to help shape the lore, design areas, and bring the characters in the world to life.

More DUNGEON!

Yesterday Project Eternity hit 55,000 backers! Everyone loves bigger dungeons, and The Endless Paths Mega Dungeon is now 5 levels deep. We will add another level at 57,500 backers and another level if we get to 20,000 Likes on Facebook.

Don't miss the update on Thursday - Josh will be talking lore, and our first screenshot will be revealed. Everyone at the studio is really excited to show you what we've been working on.


Lastly, if you haven't checked out the Wasteland 2 Store that opened yesterday - head on over here. You are still able to donate money towards Wasteland 2 to make it bigger and better!

Would be extremely cool to have Ziets along for the ride. Mask of the Betrayer was superb, so I'd be curious to see what he could bring to the table here.

I find the George Ziets thing absolutely baffling. It seems to me that either he wants to work on their project, or he doesn't. And either they want him on their project, or they don't. "Sorry George, we wanted you, and we know you were hoping to work with us, but we only raised $2.79 million. Maybe next game!"

Honestly (and this is coming from someone who was defending the standard fantasyness of it earlier), I'm feeling the same way about PE. My interest is slipping and I'm only holding on at all due to the guys behind it being some of my favorite in the business. I really think we need an update on what Project Eternity does that's new. So you're resurrecting RTWP-style combat, great. But I don't want Baldur's Gate 3. Tell me how PE updates the formula, tell me what makes the world unique, tell me something that's not just "We're making a Baldur's Gate game with hopefully the maturity of Planescape!".

Actually, a writing update would be great. Or a world-building one. Something of that sort. (Oh hey, I missed that there's a lore update soon. Hopefully that'll make me feel better.)

What they need is a stretch goal where they'll switch to turn-based Temple of Elemental Evil-style combat.

Haven't played it because my Impulse copy doesn't work on my computer. ;_;

Yeh, pretty much this.

Latest Q&A:


Question: did anyone notice that in that video it looks like OE has even sold all the furniture to pay for PE? All except the shirt off the guys back!
Feargus: Adam just moved into that office, so he hasn't personalized it yet. :) He had to move into his own office, because his officemates were about to kill him with all the Kickstarter talk that was going on all day long.

Question: Any update on PayPal numbers?
Feargus: It's at $35K. Having trouble downloading the history (it started the download and then stopped twice for some reason), so that I can get the number of backers. Will update on that later.

Question: 1) have you guys thought about adding an expansion to the physical set of tiers at around 200? a TON of people have been suggesting that, but it seems like it would be a smart thing to do as it would be about the same kind of jump as with the digital tier. and it would give those people that just can't do 250 that inbetween option that they've been wanting.

2) about the game, are we just getting a single version of it (i.e. windows, mac or linux, not all three)?

3)also, will we be getting codes for both the GOG and steam versions, like the humble bundle do with giving desura codes and steam codes, and having a direct download link on a page literally right there? or will it just be the one?

4) someone on here mentioned that they thought all of the NPCs at the 1k tier, and the ones above, were going to be getting a quest associated with them, is there any truth to that?

5) someone on the forums just asked about post kickstarter paypal additions to pledges, so i figured i'd relay that as well.

Hi,

I would like to ask, is Obsidian considering a system which will allow its backer to add funds to his/her pledge to upgrade it to a higher tier later on once the Kickstarter campaign is over?
This would be something similar to Wasteland 2's project as an example, where backers will able to upgrade our pledge right till shortly before inexile starts shipping the items out.

The reason why I'm asking this is because current I could only afford a lower tier without the strategy guide and beta access. Once I have enough money in the future, I do plan to upgrade to a higher tier that will get me all of those stuff too.

However, if Obsidian have no plan for such system, then I do hope that we could confirm it before the KS ends and I could just add the extra add-on for a strategy guide so as not to miss out on that.

Thank you very much for your time.

6) someone on the forums wanted to know if the people who get the expansion as part of a tier will be getting early access to it? just wanted clarity on that, they're assuming not.

not a question but...

7)also something you guys definitely need to see: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61182-making-the-game-support-1-handed-cursor-only-play-disabilities/
Feargus: (1) We will update about the expansion as an add-on in the next day or twol.

(2) Not totally sure on that one. I'll say a single version for right now.

(3) It sounded like people wanted either Steam or a DRM free version, so I think we will have distinct versions. I"m pretty sure you can still add any version to Steam if you want.

(4) They will all probably be involved with a quest - but they won'tbe the main quest NPC.

(5) I'll put that on Darren's list ot think about, just so I don't have to. :)

(6) I don't think we will be doing early access to the expansion. For that we might just do a Beta sign up program like we did for the FNV DLC (expanion is not DLC - just saying so that using the word DLC doesn't bring that up).

(7) I will send that along.

Phew!

Question: Are you guys going to have to get through Steam's Greenlight? If so, you know we'll support you.
Feargus: We don't have to go through Steam's greenlight with this project.

Responding to a comment on the boards about budgets and the size of the dev team:
Feargus: he team will hover around 15 people, sometimes it will be larger depending on what we need done at the time. We do plan to cover all the costs with Kickstarer contributions unless we feel something that we something we are working on contributes to every project at the company - this would mostly apply to tools programming. Then that cost would probably be shared.

Question: The $250 tier picture still says Softcover instead of Hardcover for the collector's book. And the tiers beyond $250 don't mention any international shipping fee - so I assumed the $30 is carried on for mine.
Feargus: We need to get the tiers changed, so that there is no shipping on $500 and above is obvious. I'll talk to Rob (again) about the hardcover. He's slacking.... Just kidding, Rob has been working his ass off!

Question: Don't forget to update the reward tier overview to resemble updates: 250$ hardcover or pets for example. Also take a look at "broken swords" way of organizing reward-pics: http://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/assets/000/169/904/6edd3c2573d005977a825417136ba38a_large.png…
They had a simmilar way of displaying the tiers before they switched to this mode near the end of the campaign.
Feargus: That looks cool, what we are thinking of doing in the short term is to include, as one of the things, in the update tomorrow ia text list of what you get for each reward tier. We can then edit that update as things change and link to it.

Question: Just a fun fact, the great and horrible beast the codex, opened a single eye for only the second time in history, and it seems it was mostly pleased with the 2.8M stretch goal. ;)
Feargus: "Mostly Pleased" is like an 11 on a scale of 1 to 10 for the codex. :) ....Ok, sorry, I didn't provide the right range. That's like a 12 on a scale of 1 to 6.

Question: How aware is everyone at Obsidian about the reputation for producing buggy games and how concerned/happy are they about the chance to show that you can produce games that are not only really good but also fully functional?
Feargus: We are as aware as anyone - independent developers can live and die based upon their Metacritic. What we have done internally over the last two years is to work on our bug reporting process and our tools. Our tools now allow bugs to be reported from in-game and immediately filed into a bug database. The status of the database is then sent out to the whole team and the owners/founders of the company multiple times a week. We take it very seriously and have worked to take on as much of the responsibility as we can. I would point to Dungeon Siege 3, which had some criticisms (although I am very proud of the game), but there were no criticisms about it being buggy.

Question: Sorry if this has been asked but for the Expansion pack, will we be getting one key for the expansion for every copy of the game that our associated Tier and any add-ons entitle us to or is it just one key for the expansion per pledge?
Feargus: I don't think that was our original intention, but let me talk with the guys about it.

Question: this has been quite a ride. I've been loving every update, every interview, video, tweet, etc. My concern now is what happens after the KS ends. Will we be getting some updates every now and then? I guess the fans will be a bit spoiled with all this goodness. Intricate design discussions FTW.
Feargus: We are going to be setting up a site for the game and will be updating it regularly with what we are doing. I'm not sure how often, but it will absolutely be regularly.

Question: So, is the screenshot actually already ready, or is the team scrambling furiously to get it done in time?
Feargus: ...

Question: Does George Ziets realize the amount of books and boxes he'll have to sign if he joins the team? Or did you hide that fact from him? : )
Feargus: Shh..... We didn't tell him, so no one let him know!

That second one sure is a big stretch!