Interview Fallout Developer Profile: Chris Avellone

[Sol Invictus]

Tags: Chris Avellone; Fallout 3 (Van Buren)

No Mutants Allowed has scored none other than <a href=http://www.obsidianent.com>Obsidian Entertainment</a>'s Chris Avellone in their <a href=http://www.nma-fallout.com/article.php?id=12668>latest Fallout Developer Profile</a> feature. It's extremely long, and should therefore make for an extremely interesting read. Here's a funny snippet from the interview.
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<b><blockquote>Tell us a little about yourself, what have you accomplished in life?</b>
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This is an unusual question, Odin, and I feel that perhaps you are being disingenuous, but I forgive you. I hope this isn’t the question you ask ALL Fallout developers on the first interview, but I suspect you do.
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The short answer is this: I am Chris Avellone, I am 33, I love girls from Norway, I design computer games, I am one of the founders and co-owners of Obsidian Entertainment, who recently turned out Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords in thirteen months, and I have the scars to prove it. The happiest moments of my game design life were on Planescape: Torment, though Fallout 2 was a close second.
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Now the long answer follows. If you really don’t give a shit and would rather hear what was planned for Fallout 3, skip ahead to question 5. To be honest, I don’t have much respect for questions one through four, since they’re designed as filler before you get to the stuff that No Mutants Allowed would seriously care about. I will cue the significant events that lead up to my peripheral involvement with Fallout.
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I was born. Cue trumpets. Suffice to say, birth is a messy process, just ask Feargus, who’s got two kids to his name now. Christ - keep your pants on, man.</blockquote>
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As Odin said to me, "He sure does write alot." It's pretty funny stuff, so be sure to read the rest of it <a href=http://www.nma-fallout.com/article.php?id=12668>here</a>. Thanks for the heads up, <b>Odin</b>.

 

[Sol Invictus]

It's a pretty damn good interview, but only because of the answers. As MCA says, a lot of the questions were generic and therefore sucked.

This one's funny:

What are your favourite bands/artists (music) ?

Oh, please, I know you don’t care, Odin. The only music I love is the sound of Fallout fans roasting over an open flame, or their shrill howling chorus as you apply hot irons to their face as they desperately attempt to convince you there was no steam-powered truck ever intended for Fallout 1. Sorry, guys, you can suck it – and do it slowly, for the cameras.

Humour aside, it's pretty interesting to read up on MCA's history at Dragonplay/Black Isle Studios and it almost brought a tear to my eye reading about how all the hard work they put into Jefferson and Van Buren (including that very interesting bit about how they wanted to make VB closer to a pen-and-paper experience by PNPing the game themselves and learning from their experiences) all went to waste because Herve fucked up the company. Herve aside, most of them didn't even know FOT was in development until it was announced.

Tell us a little about your role in the making of Fallout 1/2/3 (Van Buren)/Tactics ?

I didn’t do anything for Fallout 1, although Tim Cain did invite me to work on it, and upon retrospect, wish I’d chosen to work on that instead.

In Fallout 2, I cleaned up Vault City (and added a lot of quests and interaction that wasn’t there previously and believe it or not, downplayed some pretty nasty sexuality that was too offensive even for me),

That's neat. Vault City was easily my favorite area in the game and the nasty sexuality would have probably ruined the area.

did the Raider Camp (which sucked), New Reno (which I will still defend as a fun location to play), and a number of secret encounters, including the Guardian of Forever. Fallout 2 was the first hardcore RPG I got to work on (Torment was going concurrently, but we weren’t able to lay out levels or enter much dialogue yet). I will say that I wish I’d reduced the number of crime families in New Reno down to two or three rather than the original specifications for four, and then spent some extra time on the Raider Camp or ditched the Raider Camp entirely, especially that Walks-With-Shadows/Shadow-Who-Walks guy who was supposed to be Sulik’s arch-enemy, but that didn’t pan out either. It was another one of those “not enough time” projects, and Interplay was starving for cash again (it seemed like many people were going to get laid off if F2 didn’t ship, so it was ship or die).

Interesting Sulik details, but beyond that: Ouch! Those time constraints pretty much fucked over Fallout 2.

Edit: There's a lot more stuff in the interview about Chris Avellone's version of Van Buren, which to me seems far better than the latter version with the space station thing (which CA's version doesn't have). Read on.

 

[keeks]

Awesome interview. I would totally buy that 80s high school RPG.

 

[Reklar]

Looks like I'll have to check out the full interview when I get home. Good newsbit, Exitium.

-Reklar
(a Fallout/RPG fan)

 

[Volourn]

Funny; but he most certainly needs to take a chill pill and Odin should stop being a stalker. LOL

And, Vault City along with New Reno are not only with no doubt Mr. Avellone's best work; theya re two of the best town/cities in ANY game. EVER.

Only idiots like the Codex Big Wigs tm. think otherwise.

I also find it hilarious that yet again another toekn of the so called FO Fanatics's stalking love praises BIO yet again - this time Avellone really likes the story in KOTOR which supposedly according to the morons here is total crap (only due to retarded biasness and just plain moroncism).

R00fles!


Overall, good interview. Can't wait for part 2!

 

[Reklar]

So you mean you actually consider this news, Volourn?

There's going to be a part 2? Rats, I've got to wait all day to read this darn thing. :evil:

-Reklar
(a Fallout/RPG fan)

 

[Volourn]

"So you mean you actually consider this news, Volourn? "

Not really; but I decided not to bring it up this time.

I have you guys trained to do that for me, anyways now. LOL

 

[Sol Invictus]

It's a new interview. Therefore, it's news.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Volly, your words are biting like that one asian girl I had once (which was kinda hot actually), but these are not good biting sensations. They are the painful, acidic kind.

 

[Surlent]

MCA is on funny mood. That man should unload more often, ya know get things off his shoulders. His posts become way too long when he's makes every answer a novel and telling his life story.

 

[EvoG]

I'll tells ya, I have great respect and admiration for Chris, of which Killzig had to enlighten me to his exploits, primarily on Planescape, which at the time I exclaimed as being fucking awesome, yet, I never finished the goddamn game! ( I made it to the revelation that I should indeed, not trust the skull ).

If you guys dont know what makes a great writer a great writer, here you go, what when merely an interview is this damn entertaining.

Cheers

 

[Sol Invictus]

Hey Steve, read your private messages.

 

[Digit]

That was an excellent read, I really like hearing the history behind some of these people. It's nice to know there are gamers out there, making games still.

Digit

 

[coaxmetal]

awsome. Thanks for the interview, Mr. Avellone. Me shameless fanboi.

While there, I envisioned Planescape: Torment, which I would argue was a huge mistake, but I loved doing it, so there was a period where I loved my job more than my own life, which my doctor later told me would not allow me to rise from the dead when the combination of stress and caffeine would cause my heart to stop beating (the last month of Torment was when I got this medical warning, but Annah was the last companion I had to write, so it was probably the best time for it to happen). This was the third thing I learned about game development – planting your ass in front of a computer game monitor is not conducive to your emotional and physical health.

This cracked my arse. :D

Meh, this whole interview is kinda bitter-sweet... Funny, but reminds me how many things actually suck so much.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Well, I always liked the guy. Hope he makes good games like Planescape over at Obsidian.

 

[Aaron Contreras]

I'm really hip on the high school RPG tip. Not so attached to the 80's - those bastards got enough attention in film alone. It'd need drug abuse and teen sex to really capture the theme...so I dunno if it is possible to straight up set the game in a high school.

 

[Andyman Messiah]

Once again Chris proves he's one of few highly intelligent men working in game development and that you can respect him without getting called a fucking asskisser. Great news, great interview. Great, generic, useless questions making great, funny, interesting answers. Love the bit about birth. Think it goes for all of us. So true. :wink:

Take note, RPG developers. This is how we want our RPG game designers to behave.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

80 high school CRPG.. Only if it has ZOMBIES.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

God, he really hates Odin.

 

[RGE]

I got the impression that he left Interplay right after finishing the pre-production of Fallout 3. That can't have increased the chances for the game, but I guess he was right when he considered the risk of it being cancelled to already be high.

And is the lead artist from Planescape: Torment working on NWN2 then? I hope so. I won't be buying any high school RPG though. High school just isn't fun. It's like school, y'know? Maybe a demolished high school (sure, zombies too). In a demolished city. Yep. High school is precisely the kind of thing that makes me appreciate post-apocalyptic stuff.

And speaking of that, since he apparently refuses to divulge what nasty sexual content he removed from the oh so clean Vault City, I'm just going to have to take a few stabs and see what goes *splurt*:

• The doctor with the autodoc who could install dermal armour might have been violating the sanctity of various orifices while the PC was sedated! And who needs tentacles when you've got an autodoc? Eh? Eh? *nudge, nudge*
  
  The nurse who refuses to go out with the PC might previously have been willing, and it may have been possible to let out one's frustration with Vault City by going completely psycho on her!
  
  If the First Citizen doesn't like the PC, who knows what kind of sexual favours the PC might previously have had to perform? And if the guards won't let the PC inside the real city, who knows what kind of sexual favours...yeah...
  
  And that creepy old guy deep down in the vault, didn't he always seem like he was hiding some kind of nasty sexual habit? Yeah, I bet he had more than lint in his pockets! Perhaps there used to be children in VC after all, but then MCA changed that and added the nurse to cover up what was really going on. And the children were moved to the Den, where they lived happily ever after. The little pianos.

 

[Spazmo]

The nurse who refuses to go out with the PC might previously have been willing, and it may have been possible to let out one's frustration with Vault City by going completely psycho on her!

You actually CAN go on a date with her. You just need a high charisma or speech or something. The game tells you that the nurse is actually a quite boring person. Still, there may have been some horrible sexual thing in there before that MCA yanked.

 

[Fez]

Perhaps if we needle him for long enough, he will break and tell us.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Let Odin once again work him over. He seems to like that.

 

[EvilManagedCare]

Though Avellone's answers became tiresome after a while, it reminded me what a great game the Fallouts are. I may have to play through them again. It also makes me concerned about its future being a Morrowind clone. Lordy, how I hope not.

 

[Grifman]

I like Avellone, but he's off base in this comment:

Based on feedback from Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords I am also never going to do an Empire Strikes Back ending again in a game

Chris, get a clue. It wasn't the ESB ending that people hated, it was the totally screwed up, futzzed, truncated ending that they hated:

1) The Ebonhawk falls to its apparent destruction then magically appears at the end to fly away our hero

2) There is an unresolved confrontation between GOTO and T3

3) Mira appears magically, fights Hanharr, then magically disappears

4) Though you hear about the future of your comrades through Kreia, you see nothing of them at the end - they just disappear, presumably in the disappearing/appearing Ebonhawk

It's clear that the game was rushed out with all these loose ends through looking at the files that were left behind when completion of the ending was stopped. Based upon what I've read, had the planned ending been carried out - a confrontation of your comrades vs. Kreia, the opportunity to redeem Kreia, and the possible death of some comrades who sacrifice themselves for you - people would have been raving about the end. Instead we got a badly unedited, truncated ending that made little if any sense.

That's what people are complaining about - we didn't get an ESB ending, we got a WTF ending.