BF3 had $100,000,000 in marketing and quite likely only about $25 million for the actual game development. At elast from what I've read. I'll be shocked if DA:O cost that much.
Other games have cost much more though, like GTA IV.
I'd say probably about ten times more.
But then you have to take into account that DA:O has probably a much bigger team - Obsidian is rather small, while Bioware has grown rather big -, and had MUCH MORE marketting budget (this last part is ridiculously high in AAA games these days, and is probably the root of most of the problems in the industry today.
Voice Acting as well, by all accounts that stuff gets expensive really fast. It's why Project Eternity is going the Baldurs Gate 2 route, important lines are voiced but 95%+ of the dialogue isn't.
And yet their budget is almost 4x as much as their original estimate. If they think they could have made some half-way decent game at 1.1m, the 4m+ kickstart is reassuring, IMO.
If they didn't think they could make a game fans would like at such a low beginning kickstart goal, why would they set the goal so low? The Kickstarter actually did wonders for marketing, IMO. It was all over my RSS feed from gaming news sites for a long time.
The differences between this and other WRPGs is that a game like this takes way less of a budget to produce more content. Skyrim could have a 100 million dollar budget based on making it look pretty and hiring voice actors alone.
I managed to completely overlook this while it was actually running, so I missed donating to it, but with so many great names behind it, the expectations will be immense.
They probably already had most of the work done on some other budget, only running a Kickstarter to gain enough to add extras and make the players feel important.
Their kickstarter has quite a bit of lore, confirms they will be using Unity and has a screenshot. However the game by their own admission is barely started. Hence why they have given themselves over a year and a half to make it.
They claim they can get it made so fast because of the experience they have making this sort of RPG although I fully expect it to be delayed at least once.
Oh, you can still donate via paypal on the games homepage for a very limited time if you missed the kickstarter.
Oh yea, I meant the lore though. Maybe I'm spoiled by TES, or I didn't get what was meant by "the lore is in place." I looked around and sure, I saw lore, but it wasn't impressive at all. They have a few generalities and a very basic/short list of actual information about the world. It is just a really basic sketch at this point.
I hoped so. One German reviewer (who has already recommended it but won't give a score until he finishes the game) has even said that there are very few bugs and he hasn't encountered a single crash in 70 hours.
So, Obsidian can make a polished game as long as they don't work for a publisher and make their own deadlines. Although this may not be the perfect game for me -I don't really like the graphics and I never liked the combat in Baldur's gate much- I'll definitely get it later this year.
Let's hope it sells well. I want them to have the money for another Alpha Protocol.
Edit: Ugh, I'm reading a review and just found out the level cap is 12. This won't do at all. I like gaining levels, and I don't want my characters to statistically stagnate hours before the end (which is very likely, sidequest whore that I am). This is hopefully one of the first things to get modded.
Edit: Ugh, I'm reading a review and just found out the level cap is 12. This won't do at all. I like gaining levels, and I don't want my characters to statistically stagnate hours before the end (which is very likely, sidequest whore that I am). This is hopefully one of the first things to get modded.
The level cap is the one and only reason why i have not played Baldur's Gate 1. I loved BG2 but even the thought of having a level-cap in BG1 killed it for me.
I might never play this.
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