First Project Eternity screenshot released, massive lore details revealed

With five days left to go in the Kickstarter for Obsidian's isometric RPG Project Eternity, the first-ever in-engine screenshot has been revealed. It depicts a temple entrance beside a very attractive waterfall. Alongside it, the biggest chunk of pure lore we've seen so far has been rolled out, which made me squirm in my chair with fictional history/geography nerd glee. Seriously. It was slightly embarrassing.

In regards to the screenshot, Obsidian has announced that it's building all of the environments in classic Infinity Engine fashion: rendering them from a 3D model in a fixed perspective, then having artists go in and add detail by hand.

"We are using the same method that was used in the Infinity Engine games, but we now have the power of more advanced rendering packages (we are currently using XSI from Autodesk/Softimage) and much more powerful computer to render out realistic trees and grass as the starting point," the devs said. "It also lets us render things out at 1440p (Super HD – that's probably not the right term), which is 3.7M pixels per screen compared to the resolution of the later Infinity Engine games of .5M pixels per screen. That means we are adding in almost 7.5 times the detail compared to those older games. The artists then pull the image in and add detail into the image that would cost days of rendering time, like moss on the rocks, more detail on the roads and making sure that every screen in the game has all the detail we can get into it."

The lore update describes everything from the major cultures and nations of the world, to the literally soul-sucking biamhac winds. You can read it all for yourself in the latest update . Last but not least, there are two new stretch goals. At $3 million, the already-unlocked player housing becomes a fortress with its own lands to manage, similar to Dragon Age Origins: Awakening's Amaranthine. At $3.5 million, a second big city will be added to the game. Can Obsidian raise almost a million more in the last five days? We'll just have to wait and see.