Obsidian Entertainment was "floored" by the response to the Project Eternity Kickstarter funding drive, Tim Cain told me. The goal of $1.1 million was surpassed in one weekend, and the total now stands at over $1.55 million.

Tim Cain is the creator of Fallout, of Arcanum and of disappointing (but I still loved it) The Temple of Elemental Evil. He helped program Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. And he joined Obsidian Entertainment in October 2011.

"Work has already begun on [Project Eternity]," Cain explained, "but the advantage of doing the Kickstarter this early in its development is that we can be guided by the feedback from our fans. We are reading the forums and noting what features people think are most important in the game, and then we are revising our work schedule accordingly."

Project Eternity is pencilled for a spring 2014 release. Emphasis on the pencilled - there's still so much to decide and to do.

My main concern about Project Eternity is that fans expect too much. While $1.55 million - or $2 million, or $3 million - may seem like a big wad of cash, it's nowhere near the budget a team like Obsidian usually works with. Granted, Obsidian's going for a retro isometric, text-driven RPG with Project Eternity, but will that be enough to satisfy the hype? Should fans temper their expectations?

Concept art of a dwarf ranger from a southern boreal region, making her quite different to her northern-based kin.

"Those budget numbers are just right for what we are trying to make," Cain answered. "We have an engine already, and we aren't using an established IP with pre-defined game mechanics and an art style that we have to mimic. Both of these things save us a lot of time, because we are now free to make those elements ourselves.

"Here's an analogy: if you ask me to make you a cake, I can bake one and have it ready for you in a couple of hours, and it'll be very tasty."

Great; can you make me a cake?

"Is killing always evil? Is the act of sacrificing someone for the greater good a good act in itself? Does doing good things make a person good?" Tim Cain

"But if you come to me with a photo of a cake and ask me to replicate it, that'll take me a lot longer to do, even though the final result might not taste any different than the first cake. Does that make sense?"

How about that cake?

"Damn, now I want some cake."

My theory is Obsidian may opt for an episodic approach. Not literally, but to launch a realistically-sized adventure first, then to build the world out with subsequent instalments after that. The feast would be staggered over courses, rather than Obsidian faced with the daunting prospect of cooking and presenting it all at once.

The Project Eternity Kickstarter blurb mentioned taking your hero character through "future adventures", which seemed to back this theory up. "Yes," Cain answered, "we are hoping to make additional content for the game which you can explore with the same characters."

Josh Sawyer will be project leader on Project Eternity, Cain informed me. Sawyer was project director and lead designer of Fallout: New Vegas for Obsidian, and also worked at legendary RPG studio Black Isle.

Tim Cain will handle system mechanics and programming for Project Eternity. Chris Avellone is involved with all Obsidian projects as the studio's creative director. But Avellone, once lead designer of Planescape: Torment, will also "specifically be doing writing on this project", Cain shared.

Team size on Project Eternity depends on final budget and feature set. "I'm the most comfortable with teams between 20 and 30 people, so that everyone knows what everyone else is working on," Cain responded, "but if we need to pull in more people to make this game as big and as high-quality as we want, I am sure we will do that."

Gameplay length of Project Eternity, again, "completely depends" on funding. "Adding new content is one of the most time consuming aspects of the RPG development," Cain stressed. There are stretch goals on Kickstarter that will add new races, characters and even entirely new areas.

The nature of the game Idea for possible enemy. Josh Sawyer set the Project Eternity premise in a Kickstarter update posted overnight. "The player witnesses an extraordinary and horrific supernatural event that thrusts them into a unique and difficult circumstance. Burdened with the consequences of this event, the player has to investigate what has happened in order to free themselves from the restless forces that follow and haunt them wherever they go," he wrote. "Your character is not required to be of any particular race, cultural background, sex, class, moral outlook, personality, organisation, etc. The premise is that you are a victim of circumstance. How you choose to deal with your situation is up to you. You can bear it with stoicism and restraint, or fly off in a rage at anyone who gets in your way. The world will react to your choices, but the game is designed to give you the freedom to play your character the way you want to." Freedom's the operative word. BioWare's announcement of Dragon Age 3 met a mixed reaction because there are those disillusioned with the perceived corporate attitude of 'must make a profit, must entertain everyone'. Kickstarter bets are smaller, and devoted fans play the role of publisher. The general effect is one of creative liberation. Take Cain's game The Temple of Elemental Evil: "Many of the quests and characters in the town of Nulb were removed at the publisher's request," Cain recalled, "and others were significantly changed, despite being based on the original D&D module. That kind of censorship won't happen here." Cain is excited about developing mature themes for Project Eternity. "To me, a mature game deals with some issues of a serious nature," he elaborated. "Moral choices are a perfect topic. For example, is killing always evil? Is the act of sacrificing someone for the greater good a good act in itself? Does doing good things make a person good? Torment explored these ideas in exquisite detail, and we'd like to do the same." "Simply put, people who have whole, unbroken souls are more powerful than those people who just have fragments of souls. The nature of these souls, and how they might break, is something we will explore in the game." Tim Cain Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale were all cited as touch-stones for the kind of game Project Eternity will be. The influence of those games will be felt in "a more general way", Cain told me. "We like the isometric view, the real-time-with-pause combat, and the general vibe of those games, but we are not planning to replicate any particular feature from them." Also, Project Eternity will be a more traditional fantasy game, whereas Torment was almost surreal. Nevertheless, Eternity "will have its own special twists"; "It is definitely not going to be a standard, cookie-cutter fantasy realm," Cain stressed. The map of Project Eternity's world.