Derp, was this posted in news?
http://www.puresophistry.com/2012/0...argus-urquhart-ceo-of-obsidian-entertainment/
Everything You Need to Know About “Project Eternity”
You were good all year, minded your P and Q’s- didn’t even complain about Mass Effect 3 (in public) and now the gods have deigned to reward you. The angels of your deliverance are none other than the RPG Kings Obsidian Entertainment makers of great games like, “Knights of the Old Republic 2″, “Fallout New Vegas” and of course- “Neverwinter Nights 2″ They’re teaming up with Kickstarter to bring you Project Eternity something so delicious I need only quote them to make you salivate:
“Project Eternity is an isometric, party-based RPG…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.”
Reassemble the scrambled pieces of your cranium as you try and process that. Even more amazingly, the folks at Obsidian want you to be their boss! An interesting sentiment for a game development company but a welcome one. Why settle with second hand info when you can go to the source- we were very fortunate to talk to the Messiah, Feargus Urquhart CEO of Obsidian Entertainment all about Project Eternity, Obsidian and the Gaming Industry! Not one to miss!
Here are some excerpts giving you a little taste!
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You’ve had great success in the past, now you’re jumping into Kickstarter with your new game, “Project Eternity” What exactly is Project Eternity?
Feargus: A lot of us before we worked for Obsidian, we worked for another company called Internet Interplay, which had an RPG division “Black Isle Studios” which I was the founder back then we worked with a developer called Bioware on games like Baldur’s gate and the sequel and internally, Icewind Dale 2. A lot of people called these games the resurgence of sort of PC role playing games. They were fun games that people loved to play, but they sort of stopped being made and we were having a real challenge getting publishers funding and people interested so when Kickstarter came out we realized this was the perfect way to recreate the games people remember fondly again.
You mentioned Bioware, with the recent news that the Docs in charge are retiring- What’s your opinion on that?
Feargus: Well Ray and Greg are great guys and still very much my friends, I talk to them frequently and I wish them all the best. They put an immense amount of time trying to build the RPG brand at EA up and I think that sometimes you need to take a break…If you work so many years so intensely you tend to burn out and sometimes you just need to take a brake.
But you’re not at the “Taking a Break Stage” just yet?
Feargus: No maybe I’m just more of masochistic then they are (Laughs) I still love making role playing games. It’s kind of hard for an independent developer- for those who don’t know what that means. We kind of work for people who are going to pay us, which is a challenge but also means we have more options. If we don’t want to make a certain style game- we don’t have to pitch that. Which puts us in a very different position. Of course the challenge is then getting that funding- which is why Project Eternity was a hard sell.
Why make the choice of developing this particular project on Kickstarter?
Feargus: That’s a really good question, I think a lot of it is we want to make the game. It’s a game we really want to make and it’s a game we feel that we can really make well. It’s funny, I was just talking to a publisher about an hour ago and he said, “Why didn’t you come and talk to us about publishing Project Eternity?” I said, I’m a pretty good salesmen- but not good enough to come into your office and ask you for money for a PC Roleplaying game. It’s just not something alot of the publishers are built around. It just made sense to “Kick-start it”
Make sure you Watch the rest of the video, Contribute to “Project Eternity” and Stay Tuned!
Next Week we go deeper with Feargus Urquhart on the Gaming Industry!