Incline Chris Avellone Appreciation Station

[Yosharian]

I'm thinking of Durance mainly and his insanely high Resolve which is not exactly a high priority for Priests in that game, Sawyer Balance be damned. Just wondering if that was a decision on your part to make his stat spread the way it was, or whether it was given to you or decided for you.

In a way it was his decision since he decided to write Durance as a character with great resolve.

Then it's an interesting one considering that he seems to want Nok-Nok to be capable in combat, in order that players use him more.

Since he seems to have taken the opposite route with Durance - he created a Priest with quite possibly the worst stats that it is possible to have. I don't deny that 19 Resolve fits Durance's personality. My point is, it makes him a shit Priest, combat-wise. Same with his awful Perception & Dexterity.

 

[Roguey]

Anyway, for the Chris Avellone completionist https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...ant-is-a-disaster.124859/page-43#post-5910285

Other titles I’ve worked on that you may not know about include Omensight, Alaloth, The Walking Dead: Overkill, and Degrees of Separation (which will ship next year), all for different reasons.

Omensight: furry crap
Alaloth: "The very first isometric souls-like game ever made"
The Walking Dead: Overkill: Co-op shooter
Degrees of Separation: Arty puzzle-platformer

"Anything but Obsidian" going strong.

 

[Roguey]

I sympathize with Chris Avellone on the design of Durance because the stat names in PoE are actually meaningless.

We could have had Cadegund, instead we got the character concept of "a priest who survived a god bomb explosion because the fire inside him burned brighter than the fire around him, but this left his body and soul permanently debilitated nonetheless"

 

[Yosharian]

You could argue for the following stat spread on Durance:

MIG - high, he's an arrogant cunt that's used to getting what he wants
CON - low, his body is worn out and broken down from what happened to him at that event
DEX - high, there's nothing that suggests that Durance isn't graceful, he may be an arse but he's basically wearing robes all the time, he's gotta have learnt some dodging skills by now
PER - high, he's always watching the Watcher, suggests that he spends quite a lot of time observing people
INT - moderate, he's not too smart in my opinion, thinks he is though, classic Dunning-Kruger case if you ask me
RES - low, he can't even have a proper conversation with the Watcher without whining that he's being asked too many questions and going off in a huff, he relies desperately on a God that despises him and treats him like shit, that's not resolve that's dependence.

 

[Roguey]

RES - low, he can't even have a proper conversation with the Watcher without whining that he's being asked too many questions and going off in a huff, he relies desperately on a God that despises him and treats him like shit, that's not resolve that's dependence.

Resolve reflects a character's internal drive, determination, fearlessness, and the emotional intensity they can project to others.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Chris Avellone

If BethesDuh went bankrupt and Larian Studios somehow bought the Fallout IP, would you work with them on a new Fallout game?

 

[Sacred82]

Chris Avellone

If BethesDuh went bankrupt and Larian Studios somehow bought the Fallout IP, would you work with them on a new Fallout game?

"No one has as many friends as the man with many ch..."

 

[Alpan]

While I appreciate MCA's general humility, the fact that he doesn't much discriminate between the projects he chooses to work on means that future reactions to any MCA involvement in any game will soon average out to "so what?" Ah, to witness the fall of an icon...

 

[Efe]

better that he works at every opportunity rather than have his "writing muscles" atrophy.

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

Chris Avellone

The following two quotes, two of my favorites from New Vegas, sound awfully similar.

I've just googled it and indeed, you wrote both characters (two great characters in my opinion). When writing the lines, were you aware of their similarity? Was it intended?

No, just:

1. I am a hack and forget I use the same cadences sometimes. Also, in both instances, I thought it would be a cruel and thematic fate for the player.

2. I was working very long hours on Dead Money to get it to ship in time (even skipped the New Vegas release party), and I was often writing late, which means I may not have been as on-point as I should be.

Thanks on both characters, though, glad you liked them. David Mitchell, who voiced both God and Dog, was great in the studio (he also does a good job with Shocker in the new Spider-Man game).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUqXdbbB_CA&index=60&list=PLMj7raxM5vDNqGfmXT6AE97yfEUPJvrBd Mr MCA you may get a kick out of this. It's a little ditty made in your honour.

 

[Skdursh]

I'm super late to this thread and not about to read through 241 pages of spew, but I just gotta say... I don't really think Chris Avallone's writing is all that good anymore. For like the past 7 or 8 years now all of his characters almost always come across as sterile try-hards with the personality of an old brick. Extremely verbose, but without ever actually saying anything. Granted he *used* to do some really good stuff, but everything that he's put out since after Fallout: New Vegas has been straight-up dull. He's lost his touch and his modern relevance rests almost entirely on games that he worked on a decade ago.

 

[Infinitron]

I'm super late to this thread and not about to read through 241 pages of spew, but I just gotta say... I don't really think Chris Avallone's writing is all that good anymore. For like the past 7 or 8 years now all of his characters almost always come across as sterile try-hards with the personality of an old brick. Extremely verbose, but without ever actually saying anything. Granted he *used* to do some really good stuff, but everything that he's put out since after Fallout: New Vegas has been straight-up dull. He's lost his touch and his modern relevance rests almost entirely on games that he worked on a decade ago.

How many post-Fallout: New Vegas Avellone characters can you name other than the two from Pillars of Eternity?

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Pretty sure most of his jobs these days involve more consulting than writing. Helping to set up some guidelines, fixing the process, and so on. Not much of a point in hiring celebrity designer just so he can write couple of lines.

 

[Skdursh]

I'm super late to this thread and not about to read through 241 pages of spew, but I just gotta say... I don't really think Chris Avallone's writing is all that good anymore. For like the past 7 or 8 years now all of his characters almost always come across as sterile try-hards with the personality of an old brick. Extremely verbose, but without ever actually saying anything. Granted he *used* to do some really good stuff, but everything that he's put out since after Fallout: New Vegas has been straight-up dull. He's lost his touch and his modern relevance rests almost entirely on games that he worked on a decade ago.

How many post-Fallout: New Vegas Avellone characters can you name other than the two from Pillars of Eternity?

He wrote for Pillars of Eternity, Torment: Tides of Numenera, Into the Breach and Prey and did world and story design for Tyranny. The writing in all of them is mediocre at best. He also worked on Pathfinder: Kingmaker, which I admittedly like a lot, but as far as I am aware he only worked on maybe one character in it.

 

[TemplarGR]

I'm super late to this thread and not about to read through 241 pages of spew, but I just gotta say... I don't really think Chris Avallone's writing is all that good anymore. For like the past 7 or 8 years now all of his characters almost always come across as sterile try-hards with the personality of an old brick. Extremely verbose, but without ever actually saying anything. Granted he *used* to do some really good stuff, but everything that he's put out since after Fallout: New Vegas has been straight-up dull. He's lost his touch and his modern relevance rests almost entirely on games that he worked on a decade ago.

This is not true. I am no Avellone fanboy and yet i don't think he has "lost his edge". I think you are confusing your opinion of the games he worked on, with your opinion on the writing he personally contributed to these games. Happens all the time...

 

[DragoFireheart]

Honestly, if it's not written by MCA it's probably trash dialog/story

 

[Alpan]

Can't blame the new(er) guy there. I'm playing Prey right now and had forgotten entirely that MCA had worked on it, and nothing I've played so far has evoked any sort of trace or memory of his work.

 

[TemplarGR]

Can't blame the new(er) guy there. I'm playing Prey right now and had forgotten entirely that MCA had worked on it, and nothing I've played so far has evoked any sort of trace or memory of his work.

What did you expect?

 

[Sailor Woedica]

https://youtu.be/vFkRzC7HWr8?t=4065

"Obs tried non-compete-clause on Chris & he took it too personally" this dude says, saying he's met Chris twice :D

Hey quill, awesome video!!! Did you also listen to all of it just before the chris talk at the end (around 40-50? minutes into the youtube video)? According to his insider info Outer Worlds is maybe going to take place all on a giant space ship, be what fallout did to the 1950s but instead its the 1910s-20s (he said steampunk but more advanced) and be maybe the biggest announcement of the games awards (unless something called border lands? is revealed instead)!

He also said Obsidian was given "a lot of money and a legit awesome deal by Microsoft", told they have as much time and resources to make games and if there are any problems during development to contact Microsoft and legit experts will be available to help them make the best games ever (I'm so close to being an xbox girl next gen I can't even)

He also mentioned they've been stiffed on payments by loads of companies

(not just the publicly known ones) and gives insight on some of the sad stuff they had to do during the struggle

sorry for any left out info listened to some of it before field hockey practice so can't remember everything!

 

[Quillon]

Don't think he has insider info, he was just speculating/educated guessing.

That "MS gave acquired studios unlimited budget" thing is from some other speculation from last week.

 

[Sailor Woedica]

He said he was pretty close to Obsidian and used a lot of 'what I heard/hearing', 'what I can confirm' throughout it tho?

 

[Fairfax]

Can't blame the new(er) guy there. I'm playing Prey right now and had forgotten entirely that MCA had worked on it, and nothing I've played so far has evoked any sort of trace or memory of his work.

He wrote Igwe, Mikhaila, "the Cook", Sarah, Danielle, and Abigail. He also wrote some of the lore and other minor characters, but AFAIK he hasn't named them.

 

[Quillon]

He said he was pretty close to Obsidian and used a lot of 'what I heard/hearing', 'what I can confirm' throughout it tho?

I got it as he's following Obs & Bioware closely and he interpreted the news from his view, prolly with exaggeration, cos he said nothing I didn't know about from the interwebz.

During the conversation, Boogie asked Mike “why would Microsoft buy so many studios at the end of a console generation.” The reason is pretty simple, dominating the next generation. Speaking about the studios they bought, Ybarra basically implied the following, according to Boogie:

He (Mike) said we basically went in there to those companies and said: “what project do you wanna make?” And they are like “what’s our budget?” And he’s “I don’t think you understand, that’s not our question, our question is what games do you want to make? We are Microsoft and we have the budget, we just want to know what game you want to do, what are your wildest dreams”.

https://segmentnext.com/2018/11/26/newly-acquired-studios-for-xbox-exclusives/

 

[Sailor Woedica]

ah ok, still learned a lot of cool stuff so thanks for posting it anyway!

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

Thanks! He was a lot of fun to write. I'm also relieved they made him combat effective enough so players would actually use him.

Oh yeah, he's awesome in combat. Little green killing machine.

I loved the bits about he and other goblins creating shrines of Lamashtu, and then the statue of him and the king. That was really cute. I like how he's kind of scared at times but also accomplishes things, and then gets proud and thinks he's the best all of a sudden. :D Really fun character in a game full of them. I wish you could have written more characters in the game, maybe for the sequel?