Interview Chris Avellone interviewed

[Monolith]

Tags: Chris Avellone

<a href="http://www.kotaku.com.au">Kotaku Australia</a> has put up an <a href="http://www.kotaku.com.au/2009/06/question-time-your-interview-with-chris-avellone/">interview with Chris Avellone</a> based on user-submitted questions. A lot of questions, most of them quite random, but a lot of interesting information there as well.
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<blockquote><i>Chris, you’ve worked on a bunch of games that have been cancelled (Van Buren, Torn) or had lots of content cut out (KOTOR2). How do you handle it when something you’ve worked on for months or years ends up being released in an imcomplete state or not released at all?</i>
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You drink, sigh, and move on. I actually got numb to it early on in my career (Monte Cook, an editor at Hero Games, would routinely reject my submissions I’d spent months or years on, and he was right to do so because they sucked – I also had ten module proposals to Dungeon all rejected one after the other), so it wasn’t too bad when it started happening at work. The only time it really hurt was Fallout 3, <b>because that game felt like it had the potential to be better than Torment</b>, and when I was working on it, I could feel the inner creativity “sing” because it felt like everything was clicking into place.
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Also, as a consolation prize, you find you can usually transfer design elements from one game to the other in terms of systems or new uses for characters that you did for the “flushed” design that you can use later on.</blockquote>
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MCA rubbing salt into the wound, but since it probably was worse for him than for us, it's ok.
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Stolen from: <a href="http://www.gamebanshee.com">Gamebanshee</a>

 

[Mister Arkham]

Them's some lofty claims MCA. Nice interview. As usual, the man himself manages to remain almost supernaturally interesting.

 

[Jaesun]

My question for Chris is: What did you think when you heard Bethesda were making Fallout 3? And what did you think of the game when you played it?

I was pretty pleased - Oblivion + Fallout seemed like a great combination to me.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

Though granted, he really can't say what he TRULY feels about Fallout 3, Since they are currently working with the enemy with New Vegas.

 

[MetalCraze]

Yeah poor Obsidian, forced by the enemy Bethesda to work on a Fallout shooter.

 

[Hory]

I wonder if he'll adapt content from Van Buren to New Vegas.

 

[Wyrmlord]

I wonder if he'll adapt content from Van Buren to New Vegas.

Much of that would have to be adapted and revised to a new engine, since the previous design ideas would only have been in accord to the Van Buren engine.

 

[Hory]

I wonder if he'll adapt content from Van Buren to New Vegas.

Much of that would have to be adapted and revised to a new engine, since the previous design ideas would only have been in accord to the Van Buren engine.

I'm talking about narrative content, for which I don't think that the engine would be a major plan-changer. In any case, reading further I noticed that he isn't involved with the project actually.

 

[Monolith]

I wonder if he'll adapt content from Van Buren to New Vegas.

He probably won't, as he is not working on it.

Will we ever see Obsidian return to its Planescape roots, as we are seeing with Bioware and Dragon Age?

Probably not, I don’t even know who has the Planescape license now, and I’m afraid if I went back to it, I’d fuck up a good thing. Then again, we’re going full circle on Fallout now and that’s going well, but I’m not working on that project (it’s in the very capable hands of Mr. J.E. Sawyer), so that probably explains why it’s going well.

 

[Vibalist]

Cool interview. The guy always has a lot of interesting stuff to say. The thing about the rival adventuring party is really, really a cool idea.
I hope he keeps up the good work in AP.

 

[Kingston]

I wonder if he'll adapt content from Van Buren to New Vegas.

He probably won't, as he is not working on it.

Will we ever see Obsidian return to its Planescape roots, as we are seeing with Bioware and Dragon Age?

Probably not, I don’t even know who has the Planescape license now, and I’m afraid if I went back to it, I’d fuck up a good thing. Then again, we’re going full circle on Fallout now and that’s going well, but I’m not working on that project (it’s in the very capable hands of Mr. J.E. Sawyer), so that probably explains why it’s going well.

Won't he jump on board once AP is finished? What's the release date for New Vegas?

 

[Monolith]

Won't he jump on board once AP is finished? What's the release date for New Vegas?

"Fallout: New Vegas is slated to hit PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2010."

Stated at the bottom of that interview, although not personally by Hines.
http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=1113

 

[Darth Roxor]

It says on your Wiki page that you went to college with Todd Howard from Bethesda. Were you guys friends? Did you play D&D together back then?

I unfortunately never met Todd at William and Mary, and I am sad.

Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure

 

[Lockkaliber]

For anyone still hoping for a KotOR 3 by Obsidian, his answer on the "true Sith" question seems to verify that they won't be working on it. He's been pretty tight lipped on the story and anything even related to a KotOR 3 up until now, so I take that comment as a confirmation that he's given up any hope of making it.

 

[Raapys]

and even more gratifying to me was a lot of developers I knew who weren’t RPG fans were playing it and loving it as well, so kudos to Bethesda.

That's our Bethesda. Making "RPGs" for people who don't like RPGs.

 

[Thrasher]

WTF? Better than Torment?

 

[X40c]

Codexites are always say that Mr. Avellone and his peers are saying that F3 is good because of they're trying to avoid criticizing it for various reasons, but it never feels like they're saying it through their teeth. Its starting to seem to me like maybe Avellone really likes F3. I ask ye, what if he really does? What if? Remember, he's the guy who made the Codex troll and the elitist baby crib.

Man, Obsidian never supposed to team up with the mindless corporate zombies at Bethesda, they supposed to team up with Troika and make a fucking PS:Torment².

 

[Gerrard]

Really? Because I'm pretty sure there was more than one jab at Bethtodd in there.

 

[Vibalist]

Codexites are always say that Mr. Avellone and his peers are saying that F3 is good because of they're trying to avoid criticizing it for various reasons, but it never feels like they're saying it through their teeth. Its starting to seem to me like maybe Avellone really likes F3. I ask ye, what if he really does? What if? Remember, he's the guy who made the Codex troll and the elitist baby crib.

Man, Obsidian never supposed to team up with the mindless corporate zombies at Bethesda, they supposed to team up with Troika and make a fucking PS:Torment².

Which they can still do regardless of what games they like playing in their spare time.

I understand that some people feel 'betrayed' that Avellone likes what many consider a game that commercialises and dumbs down their favorite franchise, but even if he does, so what? Look at the rest of the interview and you'll see that he's pretty much still himself.

 

[Helton]

MCA's kind of disowned Torment in the past so "better than Planescape" might not mean the same thing to him it does to, say, me.

 

[Moray]

It says on your Wiki page that you went to college with Todd Howard from Bethesda. Were you guys friends? Did you play D&D together back then?

I unfortunately never met Todd at William and Mary, and I am sad.

Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure

Maybe he means that he's sad he never got a chance to rid the world of Howard before he helped to pollute the video game industry with his plague.

One can only imagine and hope, I suppose...

 

[Hory]

Codexites are always say that Mr. Avellone and his peers are saying that F3 is good because of they're trying to avoid criticizing it for various reasons, but it never feels like they're saying it through their teeth. Its starting to seem to me like maybe Avellone really likes F3. I ask ye, what if he really does? What if? Remember, he's the guy who made the Codex troll and the elitist baby crib.

He said that Oblivion + Fallout was a good idea. This implies that it's not even truly a Fallout-like CRPG, and that the execution itself might not have been so good. In any case, what really matters is his work as a developer, not as a critic.

 

[JarlFrank]

I heard Todd Howard thinks Fallout 1 is a good game. We should all worship him now for his taste of games.

 

[Lockkaliber]

MCA's kind of disowned Torment in the past so "better than Planescape" might not mean the same thing to him it does to, say, me.

When did he disown Torment?

 

[CrimsonAngel]

Lets face it Obsidian needs MONEY and becaus Chris is a pretty important person at Obsidian he cant say any thing that would HURT there relations with a major Money hat.

Its like prison sometimes you have to suck a bit of cock to not get shived.

New Vegas could be a chance for Obsidian to make some major bank.

 

[Helton]

When did he disown Torment?

Shit I don't know when, nig. He was asked something along the lines of "would you change anything" and responded like "Yeah less focus on story/dialogue/narrative, less build up. Better action, more action, and action sooner."

If that was his idea of doing Torment "better" then, likely, that'd describe a game he thought was better than Torment. Capishay, ay?