Project Eternity aiming for M-rated fantasy story, but 'no fart jokes'
Obsidian Entertainment's recently announced Project Eternity has gotten RPG fans buzzing about the new game, so much so that the company blew through the $1.1 million barrier it was seeking a mere 30 hours after its Kickstarter campaign launched. We talk briefly with Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart about the game.
Obsidian Entertainment's recently announced Project Eternity has gotten RPG fans buzzing about the new game, so much so that the company blew through the $1.1 million barrier it was seeking a mere 30 hours after its Kickstarter campaign launched.
The old-school RPGs get a lot of love on Shacknews, so I cornered Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart and threatened to put him in a bag of holding if he didn't answer a few quick questions for us. He said they had been thinking about the game for while, but didn't want to do a Dungeons & Dragons rule-set game this time.
"D&D is awesome and we absolutely want to make more D&D games here at Obsidian," he said. "For Project Eternity, though, we wanted to stretch again and put together a new game system that is really tied into the world. The new system is something that Josh Sawyer has been working on for a while now and he has some really great new ideas not with just combat, but, in particular, support abilities and skills."
Project Eternity is only a working title, however, and it is something the team has been mulling over, looking for a way to create a sense of a future for the series. "The Infinity Engine games created stories that felt epic and brought everyone who played them (and still plays them today) along for an incredible ride," Urquhart said. "We wanted to come up with a name that gave that same feeling and one that also let everyone know that we don't want to stop with the first game. Baldur’s Gate 2 was great in part because there was a Baldur’s Gate 1. We want to do the same with a Project Eternity 2, 3 and then some."
The world of Eternity is enmeshed in fantasy, where magic is a part of soul of the people. "That means creating deep stories that have numerous factions weaving in and out that the player can join, destroy or just ignore," he said. "We are also not going to shy away from mature themes. As Chris Avellone says, this doesn't mean dick and fart jokes –- it means themes that challenge our players and, for that matter, challenge our designers."
With the game already getting strong support on Kickstarter, Urquhart said that stretch goal are already in the works. "We have a lot of great ideas for stretch goals that we will be putting up soon. Cooking with Tim? More seriously, what's great about making and RPG is there are so many options for things that we can add in to the game. We also have one really fun stretch goal that involves bringing another friend along for the ride."
The game's focus will be PC. "It's where our roots in gaming started and we want the game to live up to everyone's expectations and fond memories," he said. They have announced that Mac and Linux are stretch goals, Mac at $1.6 million and Linux at $2.2 million.
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John Keefer posted a new article, Project Eternity aiming for M-rated fantasy story, but 'no fart jokes'.
Obsidian Entertainment's recently announced Project Eternity has gotten RPG fans buzzing about the new game, so much so that the company blew through the $1.1 million barrier it was seeking a mere 30 hours after its Kickstarter campaign launched. We talk briefly with Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart about the game.-
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I don't think you will find an RPG that doesn't use fantasy in some way. Games like KOTOR and Mass Effect are science fantasy or space operas. You could be thinking of fantasy in terms of tolkien-esque or high fantasy with orcs/elves/etc. There are other RPGs that were kickstarted that are going to be set in more modern times like Wasteland2 or Shadowrun returns.
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