Incline Chris Avellone Appreciation Station

[Drax]

TFW Fairfax is secretly MCA's italian wife

 

[conan_edw]

They same to be in touch lately, it could be that he's working with levine on his upcoming game

 

[Infinitron]

They same to be in touch lately, it could be that he's working with levine on his upcoming game

Well they've always been in touch tbh.

 

[Fairfax]

 

[Sizzle]

They did end up making personalized gear (in v2.0, I think?) for companions, but what MCA is talking about here sounds a lot more involved and interesting. Too bad, yet another aspect of PoE that could have been improved if they let MCA do his thing.

 

[Azarkon]

The longer he's been away from Obsidian, the more details we get of why he left. I think we'll get the whole story, one day.

 

[Cross]

Out of curiosity I decided to check out that person's Twitter page:

Alex P
@SaddestRobots
Twitter is a trash box where I post about my politics and a lot of boring-ass hobbies. I love you all. (he/him)

Why am I not surprised there is a correlation between people who want their pronouns to be respected and people who dislike characters like Durance and the Grieving Mother for not being friendly enough?

They did end up making personalized gear (in v2.0, I think?) for companions, but what MCA is talking about here sounds a lot more involved and interesting. Too bad, yet another aspect of PoE that could have been improved if they let MCA do his thing.

It doesn't even have to be particularly involved. In Kotor 2 for example every companion has some unique feat or mechanical quirk that highlights their identity, like how Mira is able to walk over mines without setting them off because she grew up hauling explosives as a Mandalorian slave.

With the way companions were handled in PoE, it feels like Obsidian took far more inspiration from Bioware games than they did from their own work, bizarrely enough.

 

[Fairfax]

The longer he's been away from Obsidian, the more details we get of why he left. I think we'll get the whole story, one day.

NDAs prevent him from sharing most of what happened at Obsidian, but the Codex interview will have a few more details.

IIRC he can talk about things that are public knowledge or have been revealed by Obsidian folks, so Feargus having a big mouth helps.

 

[Infinitron]

NDAs prevent him from sharing most of what happened at Obsidian, but the Codex interview will have a few more details.

What year is that coming out?

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Dear Chris Avellone,

I love you. Sometimes when I have sex with Ms. Generic-Giant-Black-Widow I think to myself in the throes of arachnid ecstasy, "How would Chris Avellone write this?"

Thanks to you, I have the courage to be the tarantula I always wanted to be. Now I spend my days chilling in Cloakwood and killing gibberlings and hobgoblins. Whenever doubt seeps into my mind, I simply think to myself in a breathy whisper, "Avellone. Big cock. Avellone."

Keep being the best Chris you can be, Chris.

Regards,

Your pal,
Generic-Giant-Spider

 

[Sannom]

They did end up making personalized gear (in v2.0, I think?) for companions, but what MCA is talking about here sounds a lot more involved and interesting. Too bad, yet another aspect of PoE that could have been improved if they let MCA do his thing.

They sound like Soulbound weapons before they were a thing. They were probably cut because those concepts were probably deemed low-priority.

 

[Fairfax]

NDAs prevent him from sharing most of what happened at Obsidian, but the Codex interview will have a few more details.

What year is that coming out?

He's been quite busy for a while, but I'll see if he has more time after he's done working on Into the Breach. If not, I'll split it in parts and send you the first one.

 

[Sizzle]

They did end up making personalized gear (in v2.0, I think?) for companions, but what MCA is talking about here sounds a lot more involved and interesting. Too bad, yet another aspect of PoE that could have been improved if they let MCA do his thing.

They sound like Soulbound weapons before they were a thing. They were probably cut because those concepts were probably deemed low-priority.

Sure, but this is just another case of Obsidian limiting the (arguably) best writer in the gaming business.

The game would have been a better one if we got two completely MCA-designed NPCs, instead of having companions like Kana Rua and Maneha, who were only there so every class could be represented by one NPC.

 

[Sannom]

I don't know, I tend to think that MCA-designed NPCs in the vein of Durance and GM only work in Avellone-directed games. His companion in New Vegas was much more restrained and she fit a lot better.

 

[Infinitron]

Unpopular take: MCA could have been a team player and designed companions according to spec that wouldn't have needed to be cut, instead of dumping giant unworkable walls of text on his fellow writers

 

[Sannom]

Hence why I believe that his style works better when he's in charge.

 

[Cross]

Unpopular take: MCA could have been a team player and designed companions according to spec that wouldn't have needed to be cut, instead of dumping giant unworkable walls of text on his fellow writers

How so? In his interview with the Codex, Eric Fenstermaker said that the primary bottleneck for Durance and the Grieving Mother wasn't the amount of text, but Obsidian's own absurd guidelines that a significant amount of all text must be voice acted.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=10231

The cuts came for length. The three limiting factors were time to implement, art resources for the dream sequences, and VO budget. There was a target length we had set upfront for all companions, and we had to stick to it. Otherwise we'd be, for example, voicing maybe one out of every six lines for Durance and the Grieving Mother, and it'd be conspicuously incongruent with the other companions, who had maybe 2/3 of their lines voiced. Unfortunately in this case it meant cutting down characters that had had a lot of research and creative energy invested in them, and there were some good ideas there that it would've been interesting to explore. It was a shitty thing to have to do, but we'd never have been able to implement the original versions in time to ship.

 

[Infinitron]

That doesn't contradict my point. There was a spec and all the other companion writers met it, why couldn't he? This entire situation is bizarre, it's as if Avellone was sitting alone in a room isolated from everybody else. Maybe someday we'll learn how that happened in the first place.

Also I don't believe that's the only reason Fenstermaker meant to give, notice he said "for example".

 

[Fairfax]

I don't know, I tend to think that MCA-designed NPCs in the vein of Durance and GM only work in Avellone-directed games. His companion in New Vegas was much more restrained and she fit a lot better.

Cass is not entirely designed by MCA, he inherited the concept.

Unpopular take: MCA could have been a team player and designed companions according to spec that wouldn't have needed to be cut, instead of dumping giant unworkable walls of text on his fellow writers

You're assuming he wrote everything in secret and suddenly showed up with the finished content. Do you really believe they never got progress updates, couldn't read what he was writing and never gave him the go ahead? Even if that was case, and there's nothing to suggest it was, it was on Sawyer, Brennecke and Fenstermaker to keep track of his progress.

Also, I talked to him about a similar topic a while ago, and he said he always tries to get approval before moving forward with his content.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I skipped most of Durance's dialogue.

 

[Sizzle]

I don't know, I tend to think that MCA-designed NPCs in the vein of Durance and GM only work in Avellone-directed games. His companion in New Vegas was much more restrained and she fit a lot better.

He also wanted to do Ulysses as a companion (a pro-Legion one, something the game was sorely lacking), but this was shut down because he over-designed him. I still contend it would have been better to make one or two NPCs less, if that would have meant we would get one more MCA companion.

Look at Durance - he's shoulders above every other PoE companion. And that's in spite of having significant cuts.

 

[Infinitron]

You're assuming he wrote everything in secret and suddenly showed up with the finished content. Do you really believe they never got progress updates, couldn't read what he was writing and never gave him the go ahead? Even if that was case, and there's nothing to suggest it was, it was on Sawyer, Brennecke and Fenstermaker to keep track of his progress.

It's certainly possible that the leads were reluctant to manage MCA the way they ought to have. Maybe there was already bad blood in the air and they didn't want to interact with him too much. Or maybe they trusted him to do his thing with less supervision, and thought it would all work out.

Still, at what point does one demand some common sense? He must have known what the other companion writers were doing, did he not think that maybe writing ten times as much content as they were might not turn out well?

 

[Cross]

That doesn't contradict my point.

It does. The only reason given for the target length is VO budget and the desire to have a consistent amount of voice acting across all companions. Why would you think PoE would have an aversion to walls of text? There's a reason why it has the nickname 'Pillars of Exposition'.

Also I don't believe that's the only reason Fenstermaker gave, notice he said "for example".

He says 'for example' because he's giving a hypothetical example of what companions with less voice acting would be like.

The fact that the game was developed with such a guideline says volumes about how misplaced Obsidian's priorities are. Voice acting in an isometric RGP should be used for flavor and to establish distinct voices for prominent characters (the Infinity Engine games did this to great effect, much better than PoE), it should never be used to justify gutting characters and dumbing down the narrative.

 

[Infinitron]

The three limiting factors were time to implement, art resources for the dream sequences, and VO budget.

Eric probably used the VO factor in his example because it was the easiest to explain (and he didn't quite realize how poorly it would sound to Codexian ears)

Why would you think PoE would have an aversion to walls of text? There's a reason why it has the nickname 'Pillars of Exposition'.

By "walls of text" I didn't mean just sheer text, but also all the extra scripting and content that his companions' sidequests involved. After all, the final versions of Durance and Grieving Mother that we got in the game WERE still giant walls of text compared to the other companions. In fact I'd be surprised if they satisfied Eric Fenstermaker's voice acting criteria, which makes his citation of that all the more unconvincing.

 

[Cross]

The three limiting factors were time to implement, art resources for the dream sequences, and VO budget.

The first two factors refer to the dream sequences. I'm talking about the decision to cut large swathes of backstory and dialogue dealing with the relationship between Durance and the Grieving Mother, and interactions with the player character, which is what Avellone's tweet alludes to. If VO budget wasn't a concern, Fenstermaker certainly wouldn't have spent the bulk of a paragraph talking about it.[/QUOTE]

In fact I'd be surprised if they satisfied Eric Fenstermaker's voice acting criteria

They did satisfy that criteria. According to this video, Durance's VO length is almost double that of Aloth's, despite the fact that Durance talks much faster than Aloth.