Obsidian Fridays
Of course, the biggest news from Obsidian Entertainment this week broke today: their Kickstarter-funded Project Eternity was announced and began collecting donations. When I first looked at the project’s Kickstarter page, shortly after it went live, they had collected a mere $6,500 in donations; they’ve now collected more than $715,000.
I think it’s safe to say that this project is going to be funded, and I suspect that it might even exceed the impressive funding total that Wasteland 2 achieved.
Anyhow, here’s how the game is described:
Project Eternity is an isometric, party-based RPG set in a new fantasy world developed by Obsidian Entertainment.
…
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.
Excited yet? Have a look at the game’s map:
I’ve already thrown my backing behind the project, and I’m seeing if I can possibly scrounge up enough to increase my support to a level that’ll net me a Collector’s Edition of the game (which comes with a cloth map, among other things). If you haven’t yet contributed…click on over and do so!
Oh, and don’t miss J.E. Sawyer’s blog post about what Baldur’s Gate 3 was supposed to be like. He also posted in the Obsidian forums on the topic of “building better worlds”, something he and the rest of the team at the studio are likely to be investing a good deal of effort in doing between now and…April 2014.
Which, by the way, is the projected fulfilment date on prizes for Kickstarter backers, and thus can be assumed to be the release window for Eternity.
Well I was more than happy to support this one. They’ve surpassed their goal now, which I suppose should come as no surprise. Now we just wait. . .
It’s funded. $1,162,551 as of time of writing. Not a surprise!
Considerably displeased with Obsidian’s attitude towards Linux. So Mac users don’t have to contribute as much as Linux users? We have to reach 200% of the Kickstarter target? There may not be many of us out there, Obsidian, but we do exist. And you may very well have lost a customer.
As one of those Mac users, it’s much easier/cheaper for a company to market a Mac version of a game these days than it is to market a Linux version. If Project Eternity goes up on Apple’s Mac App Store and on Steam, it will instantly get a lot of coverage from the Mac sites, as well as end up on Apple and Steam’s featured games lists within their stores.
Things might be different when Linux has a large presence within Steam, but for now it’s a lot harder for Linux versions of games to get widespread coverage, outside of the various Humble Bundle (and similar) deals.
Plus, if in fact they are using the Onyx engine, they’ll likely need a fair chunk of money to pay for the engineering necessary to get it working under Linux. To be fair, they’ll need to spend some coin to port it to Mac…but evidently, in their estimation, they can do the Mac port much more easily than the Linux port.
Male bovine excrement. Mac OS X and Linux both use OpenGL. Both have access to the same sound APIs (OpenAL). And Linux distros now all come with standard libraries, so distro fragmentation isn’t an excuse.
You’re more well-versed in it than I, so on the technical side I’ll take your word for it. It’s possible they’re just being jackschitts about it…or it’s possible that other economic considerations apply (e.g. how many Mac copies can they expect to sell vs. how many Linux copies).
They’re evidently NOT using Onyx after all, which of course also leaves the question of what technology they WILL be using wide open. If they opt to use Unity (like Wasteland 2), then that will make it a lot easier for them to deploy to Linux, which further eliminates development cost as an argument…but also leaves unanswered the question of why the difference in price is so wild.
But as I say, I’m sure there’s more of a reason there than that Obsidian feel like trolling Linux users.
Well they’ve now announced that Linux support is no longer a stretch goal – they’re just going to do it anyway and come up with something else as a replacement goal.
Does anyone else find it strange this and Wasteland 2 only needed 1 million to get started? I know, I wish I had a million bucks, but it makes me wonder how 38 studios went down with all the money they had invested.
I suspect the money being raised via Kickstarter etc. is more to cover related expenses rather than purely to pay for assets, coders etc.
I won’t be happy until accounting records have been released. I love games as much as the next guy, but I love the economic health of my country way more.
Why doesn’t someone give me government subsidies to start an airliner? I like to fly, hence I can run an airliner. I can’t do worse than Curt Schilling.
Five guys from Black Isle working on a new RPG, damn this looks promising!
Lets start building a time machine so we can jump to 2014 cause i can’t wait.