This was news to me, but it’s not too surprising. I had the sense that engine development on Dungeon Siege 3 was a significant investment, and if that game had been made with something like Unity, we may have had more resources to devote to the game itself. (And the stretched resources on DS3 were a big part of the reason for its shortcomings.)

No one at Obsidian ever discussed MMOs with me, even as a “what if” exercise. However, I think they considered online multiplayer projects in the past, so this is not an entirely unprecedented move.

Obsidian has a surprising number of developers who are hard-core MMO and multiplayer gamers, and as far as I know, those guys are the ones who are working on the MMO game. The Obsidian founders try to assign people to games that they are excited about, and I suspect that most members of the MMO team love that genre and are excited to be working on the project. Also, Feargus wouldn’t have signed the project if he didn’t feel confident that Obsidian could execute it well.

PE will probably have some factions and groups that are just bad guys, like the raiders in Fallout. On the level of specific NPCs, it will be up to whoever is designing or writing the character. The team doesn’t have any rules against irredeemable NPCs, and they could certainly exist within the fiction (e.g., pirates, cutthroats, cultists, slavers, etc.)

Surprisingly, no. They haven't said much to me about the new game - I don't really know any more than the fans do. It is a mystery. :)

Slavery is present in the game world, but it doesn’t play a prominent role in our current storyline. IIRC, slavery isn’t especially prevalent in the Dyrwood. It is more widespread in some of the surrounding nations and cultures, though, and it might be found in outlying areas of Dyrwood, or among foreigners who pass through the big cities like Defiance Bay.

So far, freelancing on PE and TToN has been keeping me busy. Longer-term, I’ll probably return to a full-time role at a studio, though there’s always a chance I’ll stay solo for a while (by choice or necessity) or even go indie.

Thanks. :)

A full-time job in PR probably wouldn’t be as fun as design, but a job where I could do both (design and interaction with the public) could be interesting.

Yes, definitely. I think I even cited Gene Wolfe’s New Sun books in my answer, and that series is a very clear influence on the Numenera setting.

I don't think any of them have been revealed to the public, so I can't talk about them yet.

In my case, I didn’t have any control over the funding level of my stretch goals. I think Obsidian and InXile set what they believed were achievable goals, but if the funding had been too weak, they wouldn’t have brought me onto the team.

I think it’s more interesting to leave some things mysterious, especially if they’re not crucial to the player’s understanding of the main narrative. To me, it makes the world feel more intriguing, and it also sets up potential conflicts between factions in the world who believe different things.

Also, leaving some questions unanswered for now gives us, as writers and designers, more freedom in planning additional stories. If fans are especially interested in part of the mythology, we can explore that in a future product, and we’re not hemmed in by earlier decisions.

I did read it, and Neal is right – his backstory was far better than what appeared in the game. In fact, I used some of his 10,000 year history to inspire elements of the Ehb sourcebook, and also parts of the TotS storyline.

The DS setting is actually more interesting than people realize, largely thanks to Neal’s original documents. Same for the DS1 story, though the game doesn’t do it justice. For example, I saw documents hinting at deeper (and darker) backstories for the companions, but these were reduced to a few sentences of dialogue intro in the actual game.

It’s a work in progress right now, so I can’t provide specific numbers, but we do cover a good range of creatures. Some will be unique to PE (like the skuldr), while others are PE-versions of well-known fantasy creatures (like the ogre) to evoke the feeling of the IE games.

Such things are... possible. :)

Native Glanfathans won't be at such a low level of culture to be seeking fire, but I could imagine any of those events happening somewhere in the world of PE.

Most of those elements will vary a lot by culture and region. For example, the Aedyran Empire (which colonized the Dyrwood) still maintains a feudal social structure, while the Vailian Republics are rooted in what we would call a Renaissance culture, closely resembling the Italian city-states.

It’s important to note that only the most advanced civilizations in PE have reached a level of technology that resembles our early modern period. Most civilizations are still in the equivalent of our Late or High Middle Ages. That means that you will see medieval arms and armor, though probably at a relatively high level of sophistication. On the other hand, some remote cultures have not progressed beyond the Stone Age or Bronze Age, so you may encounter technology appropriate to those periods, as well.

At least some of them will probably be recruitable companions, but we haven't finalized the list yet.

That’s a good question, and it's something we've been talking about lately. We haven’t defined all the creatures in the game yet, but based on our discussions so far, we’ll probably have some other intelligent or semi-intelligent species. Not as many as D&D, though.

As to the origins of the playable races... it's a mystery. :)

It’s a little too early to say for sure, but I’d lean toward BG2. PE isn’t going to be as text-heavy as PS:T, but it probably won’t be quite as hack-and-slashy as the IWDs either. BG2 offered a balance of city questing and dialogue with combat and exploration in dungeons, and that feels like the direction we’re going. But again – we’re still in preproduction, so don’t take that as the final word.

Hmm. Things I like best about PE setting so far:

1) Soul mechanics. I like the fact that this defining feature of the world affects almost every element of the setting. For example, we had a creature meeting this week, and we kept coming back to questions like, “Okay, given our soul mechanics, what does it mean to be (for example) undead in this world? What does it mean to be this other creature type? What kind of soul would this creature have? Why would it exist in our setting?” Our soul mechanics give us a strong foundation upon which to build the rest of the world, and in most cases, they result in logical reasons for subtle (or significant) differences between PE and other fantasy settings.

2) Strong national/regional cultures. Josh has done a great job defining these, and they are far more grounded in believable history than I typically see in fantasy games. The languages, though not yet fully developed, are based roughly upon grammar of real-world languages and follow well-considered rules of orthography and pronunciation. We’re paying a lot of attention to whether words and names feel appropriate to each language and culture, and if they don’t, we change them. Josh has even drilled down to the level of cultural virtues and vices that differ from one culture to the next (potentially setting up some interesting culture clashes).

3) Sense of a larger world that is “out there.” The world that you see on our regional map – and the areas you’ll see in the game – is only a small part of the setting as a whole. We’ve started to establish some cultures and groups that won’t even appear in the first game, but you may see references to them, creating a sense of a larger world to explore in future titles.

4) Lots of unanswered questions. The setting will present various questions about the nature of souls, the gods, cosmology, the larger world, etc., and not all of them will be answered in the first game. Some may never be answered at all – at least not definitively. People and factions in the world will have their own beliefs and opinions about these questions, but none of them will necessarily be identified as the absolute truth. (Another setting that handles this sort of thing well – in my opinion – is the Elder Scrolls, where aspects of the setting are often viewed differently by different people, and players are never told for certain who is right and who is wrong.)

We haven’t spent much time on creation myths yet, but I suspect that we won’t have just one. Each of the major cultures will probably have their own creation myth, and players may never know for certain which one is “true” (if any).