Incline Chris Avellone Appreciation Station

[Irenaeus II]

He's never said it outright but you can tell from the questions that he chooses to answer that he's not super familiar with the storyline, specific quests, specific characters, etc. And that makes sense, since he had to have been too busy managing the development of the engine and systems to get deep into that stuff, unlike FO:NV where they were ready to use from the beginning.

Then no one pointing out that they were writing garbage kinda makes more sense.

You both make it seem like writing in PoE was a free for all wild west extravaganza. Maybe that explains why the game's story/plot and writing is such a mess so unique and complex. In short, a masterpiece.

 

[Lhynn]

Fairfax I'm not saying he was the one who literally wrote everything, but the amount of things he has to say about the game's story and themes indicates that he was heavily involved in the creative process nonetheless. Just look at his Tumblr over the past month.

Didnt he write almost a whole DLC? would make sense he familiarized with everything about the game at a later stage, especially considering how related to one of the game main faction it is.

You both make it seem like writing in PoE was a free for all wild west extravaganza. Maybe that explains why the game's story/plot and writing is such a mess so unique and complex. In short, a masterpiece.

You almost dropped your mask there bro.

 

[Fairfax]

Oh, thats a very interesting post there. Who from NV team is still around?

From a previous post:

I checked FNV's credits on the wiki, and apparently they've lost even more key personnel than I thought.
I've yet to check/find everyone, but it's confirmed they've lost:

Executive Producer
2 out of 4 producers
Lead Artist
UI Artist
2/3 character artists
Audio Director
Design Lead/Lead Writer
2/3 Main writers
Lead Programmer
At least 4/5 programers
8/10 environment artists
6/9 area designers
Chief Creative Officer (MCA again)
Lead Animator

Duraframe also added a lot of context here.

They lost easily more than half of the entire team (not including management credits, marketing, cast, etc, just people who actually worked on it).

Fairfax I'm not saying he was the one who literally wrote everything, but the amount of things he has to say about the game's story and themes indicates that he was heavily involved in the creative process nonetheless. Just look at his Tumblr over the past month.

I have. There's no accurate method to measure how much was Sawyer's doing or under his direct guidance. He was heavily involved in general because he was director, sure, but the actual writing and design was done mostly by other people. Again, he obviously did a good job for the most part and nobody can take that away from him, but other project directors are usually more heavily involved, so a lot of casual fans think FNV was great solely because of him and MCA (who didn't do much in the base game). You can see that in neogaf, reddit, twitter, etc people don't even know who John Gonzalez is, and he's a huge part of why FNV was good.

 

[Fairfax]

Fairfax I'm not saying he was the one who literally wrote everything, but the amount of things he has to say about the game's story and themes indicates that he was heavily involved in the creative process nonetheless. Just look at his Tumblr over the past month.

Didnt he write almost a whole DLC? would make sense he familiarized with everything about the game at a later stage, especially considering how related to one of the game main faction it is.

You both make it seem like writing in PoE was a free for all wild west extravaganza. Maybe that explains why the game's story/plot and writing is such a mess so unique and complex. In short, a masterpiece.

You almost dropped your mask there bro.

Yes, Honest Hearts. That was mostly Sawyer.

 

[Infinitron]

Obsidian boardroom meeting, June 2015:

"I have just received word that Feargus has silenced Chris Avellone permanently. The last remnant of the Old Obsidian has been swept away."

"That's impossible! How will Feargus maintain quality standards without a creative director?"

"The project directors now have direct control over their games. Fear will keep the local gamers in line. Fear of not getting their next Obsidian RPG."

...

"Don't be too proud of this tank MMO that you've constructed. The ability to sell microtransactions is insignificant next to the power of the Balance."

 

[Sannom]

Also, most of the quests in the base game were designed by the rest of the design team. He still did a great job as director per se, nobody can take that away, but as far as actual design and writing go he wasn't heavily involved. That's not good or bad on its own, but I believe he takes way too much credit for FNV's qualities, specially from casual "Fallout fans".

Well, we know that he set the "do not assume that any of the characters can't be killed by the player" rule. Survival Mode, the re-arranging of weapons and skills and probably more than a few new weapons are probably on him too.

 

[Roguey]

There's no accurate method to measure how much was Sawyer's doing or under his direct guidance.

I got this.

For F:NV, I designed (but did not write the dialogue for) all of the companions and companion arcs. I did all of the system design and balancing. I wrote all of the high level RDCs (Region Design Constraints) that area designers used to write their ADDs (Area Design Docs). I wrote the dialogues for Arcade Gannon, Chief Hanlon, and President Kimball.

For Honest Hearts, I was also the project director. I wrote the story, designed and tuned most of the gear, designed all of the main characters (the Happy Trails caravan, Ricky, Joshua Graham, Daniel, Follows-Chalk, Waking Cloud, and the Survivalist) and wrote Joshua Graham and Daniel (Ricky, Stella, and the Survivalist were written by John Gonzalez; Jed Masterson, Follows-Chalk, and Waking Cloud were written by Travis Stout).

For Gun Runners' Arsenal, I did all of the design except for scripting, which was done by Jorge Salgado and Jeff Husges.

On the other DLCs, all I did was weapon tuning.

 

[Irenaeus II]

Avellone is probably pissed that his thread was hijacked by Sawyer

 

[PeachPlumage]

Avellone is probably pissed that his thread was hijacked by Sawyer

Perfect opportunity to open that Josh Sawyer Appreciation Station thread!

 

[Ninjerk]

Avellone is probably pissed that his thread was hijacked by Sawyer

Like everything in his life.

 

[Fairfax]

More like his role at Obsidian was hijacked and we were talking about his replacement.

There's no accurate method to measure how much was Sawyer's doing or under his direct guidance.

I got this.

For F:NV, I designed (but did not write the dialogue for) all of the companions and companion arcs. I did all of the system design and balancing. I wrote all of the high level RDCs (Region Design Constraints) that area designers used to write their ADDs (Area Design Docs). I wrote the dialogues for Arcade Gannon, Chief Hanlon, and President Kimball.

For Honest Hearts, I was also the project director. I wrote the story, designed and tuned most of the gear, designed all of the main characters (the Happy Trails caravan, Ricky, Joshua Graham, Daniel, Follows-Chalk, Waking Cloud, and the Survivalist) and wrote Joshua Graham and Daniel (Ricky, Stella, and the Survivalist were written by John Gonzalez; Jed Masterson, Follows-Chalk, and Waking Cloud were written by Travis Stout).

For Gun Runners' Arsenal, I did all of the design except for scripting, which was done by Jorge Salgado and Jeff Husges.

On the other DLCs, all I did was weapon tuning.

Well, there you go. It seems to me that he was more heavily involved in PoE, as he created much of the lore and almost all mechanics from the ground up.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Avellone is probably pissed that his thread was hijacked by Sawyer

Like everything in his life.

Brutal.

 

[Fairfax]

Ouch.

 

[Lhynn]

Sawyer or no sawyer, MCA wasnt getting much done at obsidian, im glad he got out.

 

[Sannom]

Well, there you go. It seems to me that he was more heavily involved in PoE, as he created much of the lore and almost all mechanics from the ground up.

Mechanics were already in place in FNV though, and so was a lot of the lore. So he basically did everything in FNV that he (presumably) did in PoE except for the things which were already mostly done by the predecessor to FNV.

 

[pippin]

Development for New Vegas was not normal, even for Obsidian's standards until then. I still kind of wonder at how they managed to make such a good game with all the limitations they had. Considering how PoE turned out to be, New Vegas might be Obsidian's swan song in terms of true quality.

 

[Fairfax]

Well, there you go. It seems to me that he was more heavily involved in PoE, as he created much of the lore and almost all mechanics from the ground up.

Mechanics were already in place in FNV though, and so was a lot of the lore. So he basically did everything in FNV that he (presumably) did in PoE except for the things which were already mostly done by the predecessor to FNV.

Might be the case, don't know if he designed any areas or quests in PoE. I've seen people say here that wilderness areas were left to interns (and it shows), so who knows.
Anyway, all I was trying to saying at first is that Sawyer gets too much credit for FNV and others (specially John Gonzalez) are basically forgotten. I wasn't even talking about the Codex, but FNV players in general.

 

[Name]

I wonder what Chris thinks about Obsidian turning down Star Trek RPG because they have no idea Hollywood will be doing a reboot in one or two years...

 

[Jaesun]

MCA wasnt getting much done at obsidian, im glad he got out.

Completely agree. I still really want to see him at a creative lead on a project again. On something he really is passionate about... I don't know if that will happen any time soon though...

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Development for New Vegas was not normal, even for Obsidian's standards until then. I still kind of wonder at how they managed to make such a good game with all the limitations they had.

Didn't they reuse a lot of Van Buren designs?

 

[Roguey]

Didn't they reuse a lot of Van Buren designs?

All we really took from Van Buren were some faction ideas (Caesar's Legion), characters, and a variety of plot hooks/setting changes. We used no material resources from VB, no VB documentation, nothing that would actually give us any significant time savings, honestly.

 

[Irenaeus II]

Seems like he was already downplaying Avellone's contributions to undermine him.

 

[HotSnack]

I wonder what Chris thinks about Obsidian turning down Star Trek RPG because they have no idea Hollywood will be doing a reboot in one or two years...

"Bullet dodged." A rpg based on nuST will be shit.

 

[ArchAngel]

I wonder what Chris thinks about Obsidian turning down Star Trek RPG because they have no idea Hollywood will be doing a reboot in one or two years...

"Bullet dodged." A rpg based on nuST will be shit.

True story. They would probably force them to make if Fast and Furious

 

[Drax]

A classic/tng star trek rpg by MCA would be one of those "ok, I can die happy now" moments.