Breaking a Kickstarter record and bringing together isometric cRPG fans for a small-budget project may sound like a bit of a one-time-only deal, but for Obsidian Project Eternity is just the start of something much more epic. If creative director Chris Avellone has his way, Project Eternity will be the studio’s core franchise for, well, eternity.
Talking to Eurogamer, Avellone stated that “We would like to keep it going for as long as…” Eurogamer took the opportunity to pipe up with “What, eternity?” “Exactly!” was the inevitable reply.
The $4million funding for Project Eternity guarantees a classic isometric RPG and an expansion pack, but whilst backers will get given the game (provided they backed with a certain amount of money), the game will really gauge interest in classic RPGs when it goes on sale. “If the first game does well enough and generates enough profit beyond the backer amounts we got…” starts Avellone, leaving any on-the-record promise that further games would be made, but very much intimidated.
So let’s imagine a future (a beautiful future) where Project Eternity is a hit, becomes the number one selling game on Steam for eight weeks running, and Obsidian rake in the dollar. What then? With a team now experienced in the Unity engine toolset, Obsidian would be in a prime position to make more cRPGs easily. They could turn to Kickstarter again for funding, which Avellone claims he has no problem with provided they had a “compelling concept for it”. Or potentially at this point in our glorious hypothetical future publishers are fighting to the death over isometric RPGs because they’re hotter than Call of Duty these days.
And in this hypothetical future, Obsidian has many RPGs in the works. “”If we had multiple isometric hardcore role-playing games going on at the same time, with the scale of Eternity, that is something I think we’d be very very happy about as a studio,” he said, “because that was Black Isle.”
In this hypothetical, glorious future, Obsidian is located on a peaceful island off the coast of California, where the very rocky ground is jet back in appearance.