Interview Lore-focused Project Eternity interview with Chris Avellone at Anon of Holland

[Infinitron]

Tags: Chris Avellone; Obsidian Entertainment; Project Eternity

Dutch blogger Anon of Holland has a nice interview with Chris Avellone, focused mainly (but not exclusively) on Project Eternity. It's probably the most lore-focused Project Eternity piece we've seen until now, considering most of the game's official updates have been very systems-centric. Chris even provided a high resolution version of the game's world map - the first that we've seen, if I'm not mistaken. Here's an excerpt from the interview:

AoH: One of the things at the top of fan’s lists of things they’d like to hear about would no doubt be Project: Eternity. So far we’ve been seeing a lot of tech and lore updates on the Kickstarter page and the forums, and although I’m sure I wasn’t the only one blown away by that amazing tech demo, it feels like the world design has been put on the back burner a bit, at least as far as the updates go. I understand Obsidian might not want to go into this as of yet in order to save information for future updates, but I was wondering if you could tell us a little about how well the world has been fleshed out so far, which direction it’s going in to make it different from all those cliché fantasy settings out there and what the plans are for the world as shown in the map? Will we be visiting locations all over the map or will you be focusing on a certain area, maybe leaving the other areas for another game?​

MCA: It will be locations all over the map (to clarify, it’s the one below).​

​

[Project: Eternity's Map - Graciously provided by Mr. Avellone in beautiful high resolution]​

The world map [above] is the game space: the game takes place largely in the Dyrwood and the Ruins of Eír Glanfath – while the exact locations are still to be revealed, you will be going to a variety of communities and cities in those areas all over the map, as well as a number of adventure locations. As far as variety goes, it’s much like Icewind Dale in terms of location ambiance and scope (it may seem like an odd example, but while set in the North, there was a lot of freedom in Icewind Dale in terms of looks and feel of each location). As locations and dungeons unlock, you’ll be able to jump to them and begin exploring.​

You will not be going beyond the world map indicated in this first installment of the series. Right now, we’re focused on bringing this section to life. That doesn’t mean we’re ignoring the rest of the world (and in fact, the cultures and empires surrounding the Dyrwood are extremely important to current events) – we’re developing the world and the surrounding nations in tandem with religion, culture, and language.​

There’s directives we try and operate from in terms of design of the game which hopefully should shed some light on the process. In terms of development of the narrative, we have a first draft of a story that we’re iterating on after feedback from the team – the draft we chose as the spine was a collaboration of two stories, one from George Ziets and the other from Eric Fenstermaker. There were elements from every story pitch that we liked a lot, and other elements that we felt could be developed more, or made more impactful for the player.​

AoH: Another Project: Eternity related topic that seems to be on everyone’s mind is the Mega Dungeon. During the Kickstarter campaign we collectively brought the number of levels to a massive 15, which has me slightly worried it could end up turning into a Shin Megami Tensei-level chore to get through. So far this has also been the subject of very few updates, which I suppose is because Obsidian is still working out the details. Are you personally working on the dungeon as well, and if so, in what capacity? Should we expect the dungeon to be mainly a ‘hack and slash’ experience or will there be more to it like in the case of the Castoff’s Labyrinth in Torment: Tides of Numenera?​

MCA: I am not personally working on the dungeon (we haven’t entered the design stage for it yet), and I couldn’t give you an exact breakdown of talking vs. fighting. That said, combat and combat resolution is a big part of Eternity, and while conversations and stealth can help set you up in a favorable position when hostilities erupt, talk-intensive encounters are likely to be left for communities, towns, and other areas where it makes more sense; it may be that Od Nua becomes one such location. In the current iteration of the story, the mega dungeon serves a key role and has a lot of interesting mechanics being kicked around for it that I think will be compelling.​

But to make this question personal, I love level design. The last time I did area design for Wasteland 2, I enjoyed it, although we have level designers here that are more capable than I could aspire to be (Bobby Null and Jorge Salgado are currently tackling the Vertical Slice levels). Personally, I look at a level design such as Od Nua and see possibilities, not as a chore, and so do our level designers. If I asked someone to design 15 levels of archaic soul-lore-focused insanity and have fun with it… the results I imagine would be great, and it’s worked with our other projects where we’ve given the LDs such freedom ([Fallout: New Vegas DLC] Old World Blues).​

AoH: Speaking of the mega dungeon; the idea behind it and a statement you made in an interview with gamesindustry.biz “Numenera is much more free flowing, much more story focused, and Eternity is stuff like dungeon exploration, party team, how do you approach a problem, how do you approach an encounter.”might lead some to believe that Project: Eternity might end up becoming the Icewind Dale to Torment: Tides of Numenera’s Planescape: Torment; more focused on combat and exploration than actual deep role playing. Is this what you are specifically aiming for, or are you trying to strike a balance between the two?​

MCA: Numenera is planned to have much more story than Eternity at this stage because it has many more writers on it, and that’s one of the major pillars for any Torment game. That doesn’t imply that the Eternity story will be weak or that the Numenera levels and locations will suffer, it just means they are two different experiences. Eternity will still have a compelling, reactive plot, and while it features dungeon exploration and party tactics, the story is still an important part of the whole… just as dungeons and the party tactics will be important in Numenera as well.​

In short, based on what I’ve seen and read, neither one will sacrifice what it means to be a role-playing game, which means having player agency and clear choices that matter. Player agency is important to all aspects of design in our studio, from the character development systems, to the level design, to the narrative branching.​

For a specific writing example, our goal with companions, for example, is Planescape Torment-style companions (for both Numenera and Eternity) because we feel that the people that travel with you create the best opportunities for RPG sounding board and reactivity feedback.​

Read the full interview to learn more about MCA, including the fact that Fallout 3 is one of his favorite modern RPGs. Ahem.

 

[AstroZombie]

"including the fact that Fallout 3 is one of his favorite modern RPGs"



Seeing how well he's doing at Arcanum I'm not surprised that he likes simplified popamole RPGs.

 

[crawlkill]

“Numenera is much more free flowing, much more story focused, and Eternity is stuff like dungeon exploration, party team, how do you approach a problem, how do you approach an encounter.” might lead some to believe that Project: Eternity might end up becoming the Icewind Dale to Torment: Tides of Numenera’s Planescape: Torment; more focused on combat and exploration than actual deep role playing. Is this what you are specifically aiming for, or are you trying to strike a balance between the two?

having just replayed, like, every major RPG of the late 90s/early 2000s, I bin wondran about this. PE is shaping up to be a Baldur's Gate game, and BG games (unless I missed something big replaying BG1 three or four times and BG2 twice in the last few months) mostly have decisionmaking/problem solving coming down to which of two sides you want to murder (or possibly talk down, maybe, sometimes). Torment's obviously got a lot more going on there, but even in Torment it's mostly about which stat checks you pass. which can still be pretty satisfying, ofc, but there's always the question of not knowing which roads you didn't travel.

sometimes I wonder if we haven't even seen the true "choices and consequences" RPG we imagine yet. if you could smear Alpha Protocol and New Vegas together, get that breadth of choice combined with that granularity of consequence, where the game notices things you've done that you didn't even notice doing--well, Iunno. obviously it's super hard to do. part of why I'm so excited about these KS projects is because they promise minimal voiceacting, which means C+C can be updated freely by the writers/level designers without needing to go back into the studio.

ultimately, I trust both projects. at worst, they'll be imperfect, and who can blame them for that? Fallout 3 being anyone's favorite modern RPG is inexcusable but let's just pretend that was some corporate shilling ey

 

[Xodetaetl]

Humans, when will you realize what is important?

 

[M0RBUS]

"including the fact that Fallout 3 is one of his favorite modern RPGs"



Seeing how well he's doing at Arcanum I'm not surprised that he likes simplified popamole RPGs.

This stuff is basically THE main reason I didn't buy into this crapfest.

 

[hiver]

Also, I’m not happy with scope evaluations of previous projects I’ve worked on, the last of which was Knights of the Old Republic II. We could have downscaled earlier and not pursued some story elements in that title (cut down the companions, removed the minigames, and recognized that cutscenes are difficult to do in the engine) and made a more complete version… I’ve worked hard to fix that in titles since, but KOTOR2 still stands out as a game that could have been much better than it was, and I am responsible for that.

Well, now you know who to blame.

 

[evdk]

Well, now you know who to blame.

LucasArts, but I knew that all along.

 

[hiver]

He says he is responsible so we can push him into the spiked barrel.

down with the MCA!!!

 

[Infinitron]

In Avellone's defense, he's a fan of Fallout 3 due to its exploration design. In general, he seems to have a great appreciation for games that do things he's not so good at himself. Emergent gameplay, wide open worlds, etc.

 

[evdk]

In Avellone's defense, he's a fan of Fallout 3 due to its exploration design. In general, he seems to have a great appreciation for games that do things he's not so good at himself. Emergent gameplay, wide open worlds, etc.

But Fallout 3 expiration is terrible. Metro station, Metro station, Metro station, hey, a bobblehead! There was nothing interesting to find in that game, no interesting sights our areas to explore. And the color palette was atrocious.

 

[hiver]

Theres no need to defend. Mans working the press.

/

If its his choice to get ripped off bonuses because of rigged metacritic scores - hey, i hope he enjoys it!

 

[Surf Solar]

The only thing which was nice to "explore" only for the art direction was the actual city, which looked pretty cool (Washington I mean). Ofcourse forgetting the fact that you need to traverse through those shitty metro tunnels to get anywhere.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Not to mention:

(a) Developers consistently praise the games that do things in a different way to their studio because they encounter things that make them go 'wow, how did they manage to implement that?', whereas games of their own genre (which their fans expect them to like) are more likely to be boring because they can't help but keep on seeing the strings holding the props and puppets up.

(b) This actually makes things more difficult for them because they can't get into the game's headset and so they one thing they can't see are the minor variations from their own game design. Consequently, they keep butting their heads against the wall trying to play it the way you play their own games. I recall making almost the exact same mistakes as Avellone the first time I played Arcanum: it clearly seemed a game in the style of the fallout/IE games rather than the Wizardry and early-Ultima games, and so I approached it in a similar fashion. I'd never run into problems in early combat when using a heavily diplomat-scientist (or cha/wis/int characters in slow-developing classes in the IE games) - from FO2 onwards any game with companions had meant companions could handle the combat whereas non-combat on the main character was often necessary to unlock information or options, and both FO2 and PS:T have a feel and setting that synch's well with the main character starting out as an intelligent diplomat who's a liability on the party in combat, but slowly overtakes the party as the game goes on. In particular FO1-2 and PS:T give you a lot of breathing space at the start, so you can go max out your non-combat to ensure you get all the options+dialogue and still do the early combat until you've had time to raise some fighting skills.

So I went into Arcanum with the same approach and pretty much savescummed the entire first area. Not to mention, the signposting in Arcanum is very poor compared to those earlier games, and the first location is one of the worst. It's clear that it's a large area and that there's gonig to be a lot of handy stuff that you won't find if you just go where Virgil tells you, but in the absence of any visual variation that suggests where you might want/not-want to go, my instinct was to explore the full map. This, as MCA keeps finding out, can be dangerous for heavily non-combat characters, but in earlier games going non-combat early means you really need to explore everything (and are more likely to find optional things that a pure combat character couldn't do anything with). Sure, I learnt and completed the game, but it was a rough transition (notably, the Troika team went back to designs with strong visual signposting in ToEE and had that plus the old 'early breathing space for non-combat builds' in VtM:B).

(c) Obsidian would really want to maintain good relations with Bethesda. It's pretty much the only one of the Interplay-styled self-publishing developers that survived the 90s, and for all their games' flaws, they're still much more likely to understand Obsidian's games and the budgeting needs / long-selling aspects of crpgs than most publishers. I doubt that Todd's looking at the kickstarter games and thinking 'gee what are they? I don't get it - there's no quest compass and why are they trying to make it like chess instead of a game?'. The people who play his games might be thinking that, but given he gamed through the 80s-90s and holds Ultima VII to be the best game evre made, I suspect that he's just looking at them and thinking 'that will be fun when it comes out, look forward to playing it...but I'd rather work on something that's going to make me absurdly rich'.

 

[Space Satan]

I hated the Metro but cannot supress my marauding instincts and abstain from looting every mall, house and vault. Same goes for Skyrim - I can heal to full life in a second, but I NEED this cabbage and iron ingot, I will stash them at my chest to lie there forever but I have to do it.
I can forgive Fallout 3, NV and Skyrim a LOT for that feel.

 

[J_C]

And MCA met Brother None in The Netherlands? Why didn't BN mentioned us that he finally met God.

 

[Lancehead]

In Avellone's defense, he's a fan of Fallout 3 due to its exploration design. In general, he seems to have a great appreciation for games that do things he's not so good at himself. Emergent gameplay, wide open worlds, etc.

But Fallout 3 expiration is terrible. Metro station, Metro station, Metro station, hey, a bobblehead! There was nothing interesting to find in that game, no interesting sights our areas to explore. And the color palette was atrocious.

As MCA puts it, it's "design principles". The design principles of a sandbox game, and I can see why he would like them. The examples he gives are about world interaction, and Bethesda games have always had that. In a Bethesda game if you move an item two feet, it'll stay there for the rest of the game. It's a pretty minor thing, but that world persistence makes a big difference to creating believable, interactive worlds.

 

[Infinitron]

And MCA met Brother None in The Netherlands? Why didn't BN mentioned us that he finally met God.

Brother None has met all of the Codex Gods. :jealous:

https://twitter.com/thomasbeekers/status/327901086251888640

 

[J_C]

Brother None, may I touch your feet?

 

[Untermensch]

including the fact that Fallout 3 is one of his favorite modern RPGs. Ahem.

Of course he would say something like that.

They are friends with Bethesda, and the only way they will get the chance of working on a new Fallout game again is if they stay friends with Bethesda.

 

[Excidium]

Or maybe he really does likes it? Reminds me of when Tim Cain said he had pre-ordered Fallout 3, and thought VATS and all the shit was p. cool. Everyone went "H-he's just being proffessional. There's no way he would really think it might be even worth playing, r-right? Guys I think he's being ironic..."

 

[Infinitron]

You guys don't have to make any wild guesses. He explains exactly what he likes about the game in the interview.

 

[evdk]

As MCA puts it, it's "design principles". The design principles of a sandbox game, and I can see why he would like them. The examples he gives are about world interaction, and Bethesda games have always had that. In a Bethesda game if you move an item two feet, it'll stay there for the rest of the game. It's a pretty minor thing, but that world persistence makes a big difference to creating believable, interactive worlds.

And what does it matter when it has no actual influence on gameplay or the world? So you have taken a few plates from a nobleman's table and put them on the floor - nobody will comment on it (unless they were marked as somebody's property and you were seen, then it's telepathic guards time), nobody will put them back or clean up. It's absolutely useless and it does the very opposite of what you claim - it clearly shows the artificial nature of the gameworld to the player and then bashes him repeatedly over the head with it.

But hey, you can loot every pair of shoes in Skyrim and put them in your house, all is forgiven.

 

[abnaxus]

MCA: I loved the Netherlands, I loved walking the canals (I loved that I could walk almost anywhere, which was a huge plus after California), I loved the architecture and layout, and everyone was really nice during the visit… the local game devs were more than happy to show me around, introduce me to good food places, and we all sat around and talked about games for hours. I also got to meet Brother None, Thomas Beekers, who I only knew via the internet and now works at inXile. Overall, was a great visit – the two days I spent doing a walking tour of Jordaan and the Old Center and checking out the Rembrandt exhibit at the Rijksmuseum was amazing (along with going to a downtown nightclub that played 8-bit electronic music, which was also tremendous fun). You all took very good care of me, I’d love to come back!

 

[Lancehead]

As MCA puts it, it's "design principles". The design principles of a sandbox game, and I can see why he would like them. The examples he gives are about world interaction, and Bethesda games have always had that. In a Bethesda game if you move an item two feet, it'll stay there for the rest of the game. It's a pretty minor thing, but that world persistence makes a big difference to creating believable, interactive worlds.

And what does it matter when it has no actual influence on gameplay or the world? So you have taken a few plates from a nobleman's table and put them on the floor - nobody will comment on it (unless they were marked as somebody's property and you were seen, then it's telepathic guards time), nobody will put them back or clean up. It's absolutely useless and it does the very opposite of what you claim - it clearly shows the artificial nature of the gameworld to the player and then bashes him repeatedly over the head with it.

It matters to creating a believable world. A world where player's actions are respected by the game, which happens to be the unique quality of the medium. It doesn't make the world artificial, it makes it less so. A world where you can interact in plausible ways is less artificial than one where there's less plausible interaction, despite the inadequacies in the former. An example of artificial would be ending slides featuring different outcomes of your actions. They're artificial because they have no presence in the game, and the influence they have on the gameworld occurs outside the game.

But hey, you can loot every pair of shoes in Skyrim and put them in your house, all is forgiven.

?

 

[General Maxson]

When I saw him play Arcanum, I knew immediately what he really likes...