Chris Avellone hates his day job
Chris Avellone hates his day job
Game News - posted by DarkUnderlord on Thu 7 May 2009, 04:20:46
Tags: Alpha Protocol; Chris Avellone"At the recent Framework conference in Melbourne, veteran RPG designer Chris Avellone - of Planescape: Torment, Fallout 2 and KOTOR 2 fame - told us all how much he hated RPGs":
In Knights of the Old Republic 2, Avellone hated Star Wars and the Force. In particular, he hated the concept of predestination implicit within the Force. So he built the game’s story and characters around this idea. He focused on what a Jedi might gain from turning away from the Force or what they may lose when they embrace it.
In Planescape: Torment, Avellone felt it was the perfect setting for a guy burnt out on RPGs because it allowed him to turn everything on its head. He hated death, so he made the main character an immortal so that death became something useful rather than an impediment. He felt inspired to build a game where the death screen is just the beginning - and so Torment opens with you lying on a slab in a mortuary.
[...]
Avellone realised that in all RPGs, the most powerful bad-ass in the world wasn’t the “big bad”, but the player-character’s adventuring party. So Fallout 3 was designed around there being another party of adventurers out there in the world at the same time as you. Over the course of the game you will encounter this other party and experience how their actions have influenced the world. Along the way you’d have to decide whether to cooperate or work against them.It goes on to talk about Chris' hatred of character interaction and how that's resulted in Alpha Protocols simple response mechanism.
Spotted @ GameBanshee
In Knights of the Old Republic 2, Avellone hated Star Wars and the Force. In particular, he hated the concept of predestination implicit within the Force. So he built the game’s story and characters around this idea. He focused on what a Jedi might gain from turning away from the Force or what they may lose when they embrace it.
In Planescape: Torment, Avellone felt it was the perfect setting for a guy burnt out on RPGs because it allowed him to turn everything on its head. He hated death, so he made the main character an immortal so that death became something useful rather than an impediment. He felt inspired to build a game where the death screen is just the beginning - and so Torment opens with you lying on a slab in a mortuary.
[...]
Avellone realised that in all RPGs, the most powerful bad-ass in the world wasn’t the “big bad”, but the player-character’s adventuring party. So Fallout 3 was designed around there being another party of adventurers out there in the world at the same time as you. Over the course of the game you will encounter this other party and experience how their actions have influenced the world. Along the way you’d have to decide whether to cooperate or work against them.
Spotted @ GameBanshee
