I think, actually, any morality system that rewards only the extremes is a flawed system. Players don't approach life that way, they don't approach games that way, and they shouldn't be trained to approach games that way. They shouldn't be in the 'Star Wars' mode where, 'I've got to choose every good option.'
We've pitched and even begun development on a number of fantasy worlds that have never seen the light of day. All of those worlds... It's soul-crushing to see them sputter out, one by one. Lost. Like tears. In rain.
What I like about Kickstarter is it helps games that people want to play still get made, even if you don't pump $20 million dollars into it to try and meet all the stupid bells and whistles that publishers feel must be in games nowadays.
I absolutely knew that I wanted to play role-playing games when I saw a friend of mine playing 'Bard's Tale 2' on his Commodore 64.
While I'm confident in Obsidian being able to deliver a quality title, it only takes one other Kickstarter developer to ruin things for everyone else and cast doubt on the donation process going forward.
On my long list of hates about RPGs, one of them was, I always felt it was an unnecessary chore to make you care about a world when, in fact, what most players care about is their own personal experience.
If there's anything I can't stand, it's the cliche of the female handler who's always talking through the radio with your player, telling you where to go and what to do with a sexy voice. It's such a horrible, horrible cliche. You just get so tired of it. It's like, is this all she's ever going to be?
The most important thing in games isn't the designer's narrative, but the story the player creates through his experiences.
Working with franchises can be challenging, but at the same time I really did enjoy working on 'Star Wars,' for example, and I have done a lot of 'Dungeons & Dragons' games, but I still enjoy it very much.
In 'Alpha Protocol,' right from the outset, the parameters of the game explain to you that the mission needs to get done. How you approach that is your decision. The rewards and penalties for either path, those are going to balance out into different consequences.
A lot of the strength of an RPG world lies in its foundation: its systems, lore, and when appropriate, its magic systems. While there are elements tied to 'Project: Eternity' that at first glance seem to be classic fantasy, that's intentional - we do want to recreate some elements of a High Fantasy experience.
