Chris Avellone Rezzed 2013 Interviews :: rpg codex

Chris Avellone was interviewed by representatives of various gaming sites during his visit to the Rezzed PC and indie gaming convention last month. Here are a few of those interviews.

In a very short interview for Strategy Informer, Chris claimed that Project Eternity's system would "translate very well to a pen and paper game":

“The two people heading that up in the studio are Josh Sawyer, the Project Director and Tim Cain, one of our gameplay programmers. Tim was Arcanum, Fallout, Temple of Elemental Evil , and Josh was New Vegas and Icewind Dale, among others. They both really like designing systems and that's been proven throughout both their careers, so the idea of creating an RPG system like that from scratch is an idea they're really excited about, it's been pretty amazing to watch.”

“I think it'd translate very well to a pen and paper game, which was part of the intent. As for whether there'd be a core rulebook for the game, I don't know if that was always the destination as far as we're concerned, but the fact we wanted to create a system that felt very turn-based and pen and paper rules, that was important.”

In his interview for Eurogamer, Chris spoke about the possibilities for Project Eternity sequels and further Kickstarter titles from Obsidian:

"If the first game does well enough and generates enough profit beyond the backer amounts we got..." 'Well, then it will happen,' were the words Avellone intimated but left unsaid.

"We would need the same amount again."

[...] "The advantage we would have this time around," he added, "is we'd be more familiar with the toolset, more familiar with the pipelines. And the energy and resources that are usually spent on programming the systems and getting the framework all set up: they can devote that to creating much more player-seen content - more spells, more ways of casting and reacting to the environment and things like that."

But what if Project Eternity doesn't do very well, doesn't raise enough money through sales - what happens to the series then?

"The way we structured the plan is I don't think there's ever an instance where it would be put on hold, because as soon as the first game is completed then we're still working on the expansion," he said.

"And during that time when we're working on the expansion, we have a good sense for how well Eternity is doing in the marketplace, and if it's doing well then we will have a sequel going on, and if it's not, no worries, at least we delivered what the backers were happy with."

[...] But let's flip the situation around; let's say Project Eternity does the business and sells 1 million copies or more - what then? Could it grow to become Obsidian's major project and occupy the entire 100-plus team there? Could Project Eternity become a blockbuster PC and console game?

"I don't know if it would grow into the console arena," said Avellone, "and I wouldn't want to change the format for how Eternity is presented and the more Windows-focused aspects of it, because I think that's what makes Eternity what it is. So I don't believe it would go to the console arena for that reason.

"Our goal was just to make a PC-focused, much more keyboard-driven - something that's a bit more, for want of a better word, old-school. We enjoyed making those old Infinity Engine games. I don't know that they'd work as well on consoles, which was one of the reasons we focused on Windows in the first place."

[...] "If we had multiple isometric hardcore role-playing games going on at the same time, with the scale of Eternity, that is something I think we'd be very very happy about as a studio," he said, "because that was Black Isle."

Finally, there's an interview which was posted at Gameranx today, which was more focused on technical aspects such as dialogue editing and procedural content generation, as well as various non-Eternity topics. It's way too eclectic for me to post any one representative paragraph, but I'd recommend that you read it as it's pretty interesting stuff.

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