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Interview Chris Avellone Fallout-Centric Podcast Roundup

Infinitron

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Tags: Black Isle Studios; Chris Avellone; Fallout 2; Fallout 3 (Van Buren); Fallout: New Vegas; Obsidian Entertainment

Chris Avellone loves being interviewed, and when Chris talks, I listen and take notes. He recently participated in two podcasts, which I've helpfully summarized for you.

The first is a 70 minute interview for a series called The Grey Area Podcast. It's an eclectic interview that touches on various aspects of MCA's career, with a particular emphasis on the Fallout series. It's mostly familiar stuff, but in the last twenty minutes, the interviewer tries to get him to talk about Pillars of Eternity, and since he's not allowed to do that, he goes off on some interesting tangents instead - about Obsidian's relationships with various publishers, about companion design, and even about how he would have finished Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series.

Some of our readers will be glad to hear that Chris admits that he went overboard with the in-jokes in Fallout 2. As it happens, the second podcast is dedicated entirely to that game. It's a 45 minute interview for the podcasting site Duckfeed.tv, which is actually the second in a two-part series of podcasts about that game. Here too, Chris spares no criticism from Fallout 2. He admits that the game's areas were often tonally inconsistent, and also that some of its companions (in particular, Myron) weren't useful enough. He still thinks the game was loads of fun simply because of all the things it allowed you to do.

Chris also provides some in-depth information about the development of Vault City, and talks a bit about Obsidian's development of the Fallout lore in New Vegas, particularly in the Old World Blues DLC. Near the end, he also drops some tidbits about the nature the companion he's designing for Torment: Tides of Numenera. All in all, it's good stuff...although I'm not sure I'd recommend 115 consecutive minutes of it, phew.
 

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The first podcast also talks about MCA recently wasting time on reading comics. The two series mentioned are Rat Queens and Black Science.
 

Diggfinger

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True: Fallout 2 was buggy and inconsistent at times. But honestly, I thought this "randomness" fitted perfectly with the setting. It made it more "realistic" that each town/area kindda had their own problems and stuff to deal with (its very much "video-gamey" that hero is responsible for bringing huuuge change to a world, slaying the ultimate evil for the ever-lasting improvement of mankind etc. - in a real-world post-apocalyptic scenario I doubt that would take place).
And there were cool ripple effects, for instance the brothers from Redding following you around if you had solved that sheriff quest in a certain way.

Moreover, I just love how F2 was just "more of everything". Companions were cooler/worked better, more perks, more guns, bigger world (no time limit!)...it was just perfect.

My biggest criticism would be that they could have put in additional anti-power-gaming safeguards. E.g. its too easy to con Chris (?) to allow you access into the Navarro base and get high level gear right from the get-go.

In Fallout 1 i sometimes missed deeper dialogue. The options were quite limited and people would just give you the same lines over and over. For instance, I remember how easy it was to completely piss-off the mayor of that one town by one wrong line of dialogue, dispite having saved his freakkin town, taken care of Gozmo and basically solved all the problems of his freakkin life!! What an ass...
 
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Jvegi

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Chris is cool, as usual. I like how wet this chick is for him. It makes my man-crush less embarrassing knowing that wanting to suck this man's dick is an universal quality of all human beings.

Anyway, this "Watch Out for Fireballs" podcast seems pretty goddamn cool. They have episodes on HoMMIII, Max Payne, Deus Ex Torment, Bloodlines and a bunch of other high-brow stuff (and Mario...). I'm going to give'em a listen. It's a rare pleasure to find a piece of media devoted to games WE like.
 

ERYFKRAD

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Strap Yourselves In Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Does he ever mention what happened to bicycles in Fallout?
 

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