Obsidian has been teasing a new game and now its live. Project Eternity is a retun to isometric RPg from the folks who bought you Arcanium and IceWind Dale. im pretty excited that they are getting to make a game that htey want and not screwed by publishers again.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity

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.

Real time party combat is not exactly my favorite genre, but still, it's Obsidian so I pledged. Anyway, things are looking good so far - less than an hour and nearly $80,000 raised.

Sounds great! Now we get to find out if it's bullying publishers or Obsidian themselves that cause so many bugs!

No, really, I'm glad this is getting made and hope to see it released, possibly sitting in my library one day. But I've got to admit that the question above interests me more than the game itself. Are Obsidian just bad coders and good writers, or has it been the publisher's fault for a long time now?

seems cool.

GAH I hate real time party combat. Either make a turn based menu game, or make an action game. I hate this middle shit.

And fantasy? Come on you guys. I know you can do way better than fantasy. What if you did this exact game but Alpha Protocol? Huh? Fuck.


... And with all that said, I will end up giving them 200 dollars.

CLOTH MAP. Sold.

I kinda wanted turn-based.

They'll reach the amount of money the ask for pretty fast I bet.

That cloth map is...HHHNNNNG. But $140 is too much. I'll stick with $35.

I backed it. I don't know why, but I did.

Yah, Obsidian surely needs a kickstarter. This is the perfect example of why Kickstarter is bad.

Okay... and there go my good intentions not to spend that much money on Kickstarter anymore...

@HellBrendy said:

Yah, Obsidian surely needs a kickstarter. This is the perfect example of why Kickstarter is bad.

Could you please elaborate on why you think Kickstarter is bad because of this?

Obsidian wants to make the game they want to make and not be beholden to publisher whims. Based on how much the pledge amount jumps every time I refresh the Kickstarter page, it seem like fans want to play Project Eternity as much as Obsidian wants to make it. Seems like a win/win to me.

@HellBrendy said:

Yah, Obsidian surely needs a kickstarter. This is the perfect example of why Kickstarter is bad.

I think you're missing the point. Developers actually need funding to make games and the only way to get that is through a publisher. Do you think EA or THQ would be willing to make an old school RPG like this? They'd take control of the project and then you end up with games like Dragon Age 2 and Dungeon Siege 3.

Instead, they're making a type of game that a lot of people want to play and asking the fans to pay upfront. I really don't see the problem. If you're worried you won't get the product in the end, you can still just wait and buy it when it's released on Steam.

I'll do it just cause it's Obsidian. Thanks for the notice, I've got a month to get some cash together.

@HellBrendy said:

Yah, Obsidian surely needs a kickstarter. This is the perfect example of why Kickstarter is bad.

Stop hating on Obsidian man.

I backed it. Didn't even read the description. As soon as I saw Obsidian I was on board.

@HellBrendy said:

Yah, Obsidian surely needs a kickstarter. This is the perfect example of why Kickstarter is bad.

From their video it seems like publishers won't provide enough backing to make a new game of this type. I imagine the publishers consider this a niche genre with a dated interface and consider it too risky to fund. Getting crowd funded seems like a pretty obvious way around that.

I'm so fucking excited for this.

I said I'd give them all my money when the day came.

The fact that I only have $53 in change on my desk is irrelevant.

Backed. Loved NWN2. Loved New Vegas. Loved KOTOR 2.

Pity it's just going to be a generic fantasy game =[

@BeachThunder said:

Pity it's just going to be a generic fantasy game =[

It's Obsidian.

Nothing they do is generic.

The last time they did a "generic fantasy game", they made Planescape.

My first born for Obsidian!

I'm so excited for this!

I am a bit skeptical about whether they can make a quality RPG for $1.1M, if that is all it takes, How are publisher's passing on it, seems insane.

How much to put in now...

@HellBrendy said:

Yah, Obsidian surely needs a kickstarter. This is the perfect example of why Kickstarter is bad.

People can do whatever they want. If Kickstarter is truly bad, this will show itself by the site dying down, if and when this ever happens.

Finally, we get to see if Obsidian is actually a competent developer without a publisher tying them down.

@Kidavenger said:

I'm so excited for this!

I am a bit skeptical about whether they can make a quality RPG for $1.1M, if that is all it takes, How are publisher's passing on it, seems insane.

How much to put in now...

Because it's not going to have cutting edge graphics or A-list celebrities doing voice acting (or any voice acting at all, I'd imagine). Publishers aren't interested in something like that, because they can't market it for mass appeal.

Good luck to them. They need it, after all the terrible games they've made in the past.

Finally, we get to see if Obsidian is actually a competent developer without a publisher tying them down.

@Hailinel: The facts are right there. They've always produced high quality games with amazing writing.. that have suffered from being unfinished and buggy due to the release dates being rushed by the publisher, usually by a publisher with a reputation for doing that.

You don't have to like their games, but it's insanely ignorant to blame them for bugs, especially when it comes to publishers like LucasArts and Bethesda.

Already past half a million.

So wait....Chris Avelone, Tim Chain, Josh Sawyer, Obsidian, ISO-CRPG, no Publisher BS and a clothed map?

I'm dreaming right? Please tell me I'm not dreaming. Sadly the clothed map is too expensice for me, but 50$ will do as well.

@FunkyFox said:

Already past half a million.

Daumn, nice to see so much Obsidian love.

Wasteland 2 now this. ^.^

@Kidavenger said:

I am a bit skeptical about whether they can make a quality RPG for $1.1M, if that is all it takes, How are publisher's passing on it, seems insane.

Most publishers are so big they need the huge pay-off from successful AAA games to stay in business. A relatively small game like this would make little difference on their balance sheets, they'd need to put out hundreds of them to cover their operating expenses.

@Abendlaender said:

So wait....Chris Avelone, Tim Chain, Josh Sawyer, Obsidian, ISO-CRPG, no Publisher BS and a clothed map?

I'm dreaming right? Please tell me I'm not dreaming. Sadly the clothed map is too expensice for me, but 50$ will do as well.

Yes this actually is a dream.

In fact this has all been a dream.

Tomorrow the butterfly will wake up, and that will be that.

I never truly gave a shit about a few bugs in Obsidian games. I can get superb polish from any dime a dozen unoriginal shallow AAA titles, polish wont make them less iterative or boring. Interesting smart narrative and deeper game play mechanics in RPGs are far harder to come by. So I value them way more. Plus being a PC gamer, bugs are part of the medium, peoples gripes with tiny things like an occasional crash are an alien concept to me.

@Tennmuerti said:

I never truly gave a shit about a few bugs in Obsidian games. I can get superb polish from any dime a dozen unoriginal shallow AAA titles, polish wont make them less iterative or boring. Interesting smart narrative and deeper game play mechanics in RPGs are far harder to come by. So I value them way more. Plus being a PC gamer, bugs are part of the medium, peoples gripes with tiny things like an occasional crash are an alien concept to me.

PC gaming in general makes a lot of things seem trivial.

"Raul wouldn't give me his quest!"

"Yeah, same thing happened to me. Here's the console commands to set the starting parameters."

"What the fuck is a tilde key?"

@WinterSnowblind said:

@Hailinel: The facts are right there. They've always produced high quality games with amazing writing.. that have suffered from being unfinished and buggy due to the release dates being rushed by the publisher, usually by a publisher with a reputation for doing that.

You don't have to like their games, but it's insanely ignorant to blame them for bugs, especially when it comes to publishers like LucasArts and Bethesda.

You forgot Sega.

And it just seems odd that a company with as much output as Obsidian has, and with as many publishing partners as they've had, that they have yet to produce a full-scale RPG that isn't comically rife with technical issues. Who's going to be to blame if the South Park RPG ends up a buggy mess? Yet another publisher?

I dont know about this. I've been let down by Obsidian on several ocassions and the Kickstarter video and description didn't go into great detail. Is it voiced for one thing? The price seems reasonable but we see nothing of the game or the story and taking a leap of faith on a developer who is spotty at best gives me concern. I hope they update the page and we can see what will come.

@Hailinel said:

@WinterSnowblind said:

@Hailinel: The facts are right there. They've always produced high quality games with amazing writing.. that have suffered from being unfinished and buggy due to the release dates being rushed by the publisher, usually by a publisher with a reputation for doing that.

You don't have to like their games, but it's insanely ignorant to blame them for bugs, especially when it comes to publishers like LucasArts and Bethesda.

You forgot Sega.

And it just seems odd that a company with as much output as Obsidian has, and with as many publishing partners as they've had, that they have yet to produce a full-scale RPG that isn't comically rife with technical issues. Who's going to be to blame if the South Park RPG ends up a buggy mess? Yet another publisher?

Dungeon Siege 3, for all its problems, was the most stable game I've seen in years.

@Senno said:

I dont know about this. I've been let down by Obsidian on several ocassions and the Kickstarter video and description didn't go into great detail. Is it voiced for one thing? The price seems reasonable but we see nothing of the game or the story and taking a leap of faith on a developer who is spotty at best gives me concern. I hope they update the page and we can see what will come.

They mention, by name, the Infinity Engine. I imagine it'll be much like Torment and Baldur's Gate - mostly text, but when shit hits the fan suddenly there's voice acting so you know some crazy shit is happening.

@Terramagi:

I actually had to punch in some lines in the console in NWN2 because of a plot stopping bug. But man, I felt like the king of the internet after it worked (just to be clear: I just followed instructions someone else figured out, but I felt like a master-hacker after doing that). I never had much problems with Obsidians bugs, their games are just so freakin good.

@Hailinel: I really don't understand what you find odd or confusing about this. They've generally been used to farm out quick sequels for big name franchises. For KotOR 2 in particularly, they were given a laughable short amount of time to develop the game, forcing it to release before it was even finished. Sega halted further development on Alpha Protocol, even after they delayed it to miss the busy holiday period and Bethesda's track record speaks for itself.

Again, if you don't like Obsidian because you dislike their style of games or the mechanics they use, fine, I can understand that. I don't understand why people repeatedly blame them for problems they're ultimately not responsible for. That's just how game development works. I'm sure this is part of the reason why they're going with Kickstarter for this project.

I'm going to sleep now. Someone wake me up in a year and a half.

I saw that this was a thing and I dropped my $20 immediately. Obsidian without the restraints of a publisher, with theoretically as much funding as they want, is something I want to see.

dropping 65 bucks for now cant wait to see what happens

I put 65$ down this sounds awesome. They will get this in no time they are half way there now on day 1.

@Hailinel: To be fair most of those games have been on licensed engines and it's the publisher who determines when the game gets released. Publishers also have their own QA department. Given these are year-long projects usually I don't see it as Obsidian's sole responsibility to fix engines that are not theirs and do QA as well.

Nah. If it was Alpha Protocol 2, I'd be making my Kickstarter debut!

It's about to pass 800k this will be done in the first 24 hours, I say they get to over 3 mill by the end of this.

Oh man, this might be the first thing I fund on Kickstarter. It is rather tempting at 25 bones....hell, even 35 for the soundtrack and digital collector's book. Maybe when my next paycheck comes in I'll do it.