Strategy Informer: How involved were you with Wasteland 2? ​

Chris Avellone: I was one of the early designers involved with the first third of the project, in terms of getting the areas and the characters set up. A lot of my role was doing area design. I covered about four areas in total, although some of those areas could change in extreme ways and it felt more like designing six areas! But that was really fun since I hadn’t had chance to do area design since Knights of the Old Republic II. I felt Wasteland 2 was a good project to do that again, it felt like I was back doing Fallout 2 area design, which was absolutely wonderful.​

Strategy Informer: Have you thought up a title yet for Project Eternity?​

Chris Avellone: No! I believe that is in Adam [Brennecke] and Josh [Sawyer]’s court, but currently it is just Project Eternity.​

Strategy Informer: Will we ever get to an “original Xbox” type scenario where everyone knows it so well by the codename you just say “screw it, let’s just call it that”.​

Chris Avellone: I don’t know about that! I don’t know if we want to decide on a title until or after pre-production and we have a good sense of the game, have written a whole bunch of dialogues, and we’ve got even more fleshed out with the themes. Sometimes as you’re doing game development the perfect title will just come to you as you’re scripting out an area or a quest, or you just start noticing a certain phrase or question that keeps popping up and you realise “hey, that’s the hook that’s being evolved here, why don’t we try to turn that into the title?”. I think that it’s important to have that larger context before we choose the title. Having the title first, it’s kind of like putting the cart before the horse!​

Strategy Informer: You’re done with Wasteland 2 now, how are you dividing your time between Eternity and Torment?​

Chris Avellone: Eternity is full-time during core work hours, and then when I get home and at the weekends I deal with review and design documents for Torment, as well as talking with Kevin [Saunders] and Colin [McComb] and going back and forth with them.​

Strategy Informer: Was it flattering to be a Kickstarter stretch goal for Torment?​

Chris Avellone: Yes it was! I was flattered and then I was really happy, because I just wanted to work on it. Colin sent out this video once he heard that I was coming aboard and I got excited and into a cycle of enthusiasm.​

Strategy Informer: Must be double flattering for George Ziets [creative lead on the respected Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer expansion, who was a stretch goal for both Eternity and Torment]!​

Chris Avellone: Yeah, I don’t think he minds! Also I think that George deserves much more attention than he normally gets, he’s just a quiet, reserved guy and his writing is excellent. He’s one of the best writers in this industry, when I read his stuff I don’t have any comments on it and I walk away from the dialogue that I just read thinking about it, going “oh that’s interesting”, and George’s dialogue is just awesome. When he was working on Mask of the Betrayer it was the same sort of thing, the dialogue was just cool and he had his themes down, he had a compelling hook for the player, and I was like “George gets it”.​

Strategy Informer: How free-roaming is the world in Project Eternity? Is it like Baldur’s Gate with large box-areas where you go off the side?​

Chris Avellone: Yeah, it’s going to be set up like that, and then you can hop to locations like you could in Icewind Dale, where dungeons and communities would open up.​