First Screenshot of Project Eternity Released

Obsidian Entertainment (Alpha Protocol, Dungeon Siege III) have released the first screenshot of Project Eternity, an upcoming role-playing game in development at the company which is based on a new IP.

The image showcases the level of detail Obsidian are able to achieve with their new technology, while sticking to the same sort of rendering techniques used by games like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescpe: Torment - titles Project Eternity was created to pay homage to.

If you're interested in the technical detail, the screenshot came with an explanation from the team at Obsidian:

“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.

It also lets us render things out at 1440p, 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.”

Project Eternity is currently accepting crowd-sourced funding by way of a Kickstarter campaign, which still has five days to run and has already attracted more than $3 million dollars in gamer investment. The game is currently expected to release in the first quarter of 2014, for Windows and Linux-based PCs and Mac OS.