Incline Chris Avellone Appreciation Station

[Don Peste]

Is this tweet New Vegas 2?

 

[koyota]

Man.. Retired... The world missed out on Tim Cain...

Tim Cain`s story feels like if Stanley Kubrick had made a few cult films and then vanished for 14 years making some studio-appointed blockbuster film that was never finished

Only to come back and have his last movie, be a movie that he didn`t even really direct (The Outer Worlds)

 

[Roguey]

Chris is getting fed up with the Randian accusations.
https://twitter.com/ChrisAvellone/status/1500156718369566726

Predestination doesn't usually mix well with a true role-playing game.

Also, the whole Ayn Rand thing is stupid, I've never read any of her stuff (which, being an English major, is embarrassing on my part), so it's just randos trying to make a case to support their own views. It usually says more about the bleaters than the actual work.

But yeah, I just focused on the construction of the setting + make an antagonist. It's a lot simpler than whatever shallow-as-shit college wannabe reading interpretation of the game.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Additionally he's confirmed that the "side with the Think Tank" ending of Old World Blues was cut because Bethesda decided that they no longer wanted to support endings where you could side with an evil group.

https://twitter.com/ChrisAvellone/status/1499954794340913154

Yep, it was the cut ending if the Think Tank "won" and we had ending slides and everything

Bethesda was like, "you better not do this ending shit again after Dead Money"

Bad guys don't win

Only Bethesda won

(P.S. Showing the bad guys winning is actually very true to Fallout 1)

https://twitter.com/ChrisAvellone/status/1500160336795619328

With most things with new vegas, it was likely down to time constraints.

Nope, they just didn't want it

But glad to see it was preserved, I'm sure the VO and slides exist somewhere, too.

Thanks for the clarification Chris. Having watched previous devs talk about the development of the dlc, I just assumed this was another case of time and budget constraints. Glad to know it was a creative decision.

I wouldn't call it a creative decision, more like the publisher didn't want it. :/ So "de-creative" might be a better word for it, and it was another example of de-Fallouting the original spirit of Fallout.

As much as I disagree with Bethesda kiddifying the setting (which they continued to do with Fallout 4), there is some grim amusement that the guy who once said that you never should have been able to side with the Legion because they're a bunch of sexists is also seething that Bethesda wouldn't allow you to side with a bunch of mad scientists who go on to commit weird science atrocities and murder on a mass scale if they break out of their containment. But at least they're not intolerant!

 

[antimeridian]

Weird that Beth went on to allow you to side with a bunch of mad scientists who commit atrocities and murder in FO4...

 

[Kev Inkline]

de-creative, de-Fallouting...what's next? de-ownering?

 

[Sordid MCA/Prosper Hybryd]

de-creative, de-Fallouting...what's next? de-ownering?

de-cancelling?

 

[deuxhero]

being an English major

MCA has a degree in English?! Huh. Surprised to see a successful author with one. Actual successful authors who know hundreds of published authors can think of "maybe... 10" with one and know more with a background in accounting.

 

[Nano]

Chris is a lot more direct on Twitter now. I like it.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

So is he starting to find his balls or what?

 

[The_Mask]

I can't be arsed to actually type all this out, but if any of this goes away, MCA basically confirmed that you could join the Think Tank in New Vegas, but it was cut out.

 

[Maxwell's Demon]

MCA has a degree in English?! Huh. Surprised to see a successful author with one. Actual successful authors who know hundreds of published authors can think of "maybe... 10" with one and know more with a background in accounting.

You have to understand, before 2000-2005, universities hadn't sunk to ideological conditioning of their students. While it wasn't as prestigious as a STEM degree, getting an English major during this period could still be considered as having a good education.

 

[pomenitul]

I've never read any of her stuff (which, being an English major, is embarrassing on my part)

Quite the opposite, really. His knee-jerk self-deprecation can be irritating sometimes.

 

[Humbaba]

I always thought Ayn Rand was well known in America in particular, despite her ideology being mostly disregarded trash.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

I always thought Ayn Rand was well known in America in particular, despite her ideology being mostly disregarded trash.

She’s quite well known, but mostly for the ideas she brought into the mainstream; most literati consider her to be a poor writer that’s not particularly worth reading (I agree, her prose is trash).

 

[Roguey]

John Galt's speech is 60 pages (three hours to actually speak) long. She was on the spectrum.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Anthem by Ayn Rand (1938) is an excellent dystopian novel novella, written at a time when she evidently understood the virtue of brevity.

 

[GhostCow]

Anthem by Ayn Rand (1938) is an excellent dystopian novel novella, written at a time when she evidently understand the virtue of brevity.

I was actually going to post this but forgot. +1 for this being pretty good. I can't speak about the rest of her work because it never seemed worth the effort.

 

[dacencora]

Anthem has pretty interesting prose and a fairly well-developed plot. I greatly enjoyed it when I read it. Never could get into other books by Rand.

 

[Humbaba]

John Galt's speech is 60 pages (three hours to actually speak) long. She was on the spectrum.

GRRM writes 1500+ pages long books. If it weren't for Hemingway I would've said being long winded was the American style.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

John Galt's speech is 60 pages (three hours to actually speak) long. She was on the spectrum.

GRRM writes 1500+ pages long books. If it weren't for Hemingway I would've said being long winded was the American style.

Grrm sucks though

 

[koyota]

Chris seems to be enjoying his extra free time.
Go through his twitter replies lately and he is answering almost all the autistic NV questions thrown at him.

 

[Roguey]

Chris reveals that Todd was a bro: https://twitter.com/ChrisAvellone/status/1511161022333083652

No, if they had an issue with something, they would have asked us to remove it. We did have to change ED-E's backstory character from "Dr. Howard," however, as people at Bethesda (not Todd), thought it was a reference to Todd. So we did.

Later on, Todd came back with (paraphrased) "check with me first, since a lot of folks around here say I said something/approve/disapprove of something, when I didn't." He was chill about it. It was a harmless change, though, so no big deal (no Dr. Howard).

Also reveals that the Polacy at Techland couldn't wrap their heads around nonlinear narratives even when shown specific examples: https://twitter.com/ChrisAvellone/status/1511194986603159554

Nothing from me is in the game, and I'm sorry the reactivity was a letdown.

Choices and consequences were one of the main reasons I was brought on board, but it was hard to communicate non-linear plots to the devs, even when you showed them examples.

And also gets a bit too dangerously based when he expresses his approval of a fictional relationship between a 19 year old man and a 14 year old girl (this is why they were split up, the editor-in-chief got nervous and squeamish about it). https://twitter.com/ChrisAvellone/status/1511199081212747778

I will never forgive Secret Wars for breaking up Colossus and Kitty Pryde

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

Any news on the lawsuit?

 

[Roguey]

Any news on the lawsuit?

Search for my posts within https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/chris-avellone-gets-metood-now-fighting-back.133607

 

[conan_edw]

https://chrisavellone.medium.com/fallout-apocrypha-77c75954641a

Fallout Apocrypha
Many years before the Great War of 2077, specifically, the late 90s and a few years into the new millennium (2002, in fact), a time when all things regarding Fallout seemed to be going nowhere at Interplay, I worked on a “keep awareness of Fallout high (and also test out the community reaction to ideas)” series of releases called the “Fallout Bible.”

The Fallout Bible contained a lot of questions from the community, specifics about Fallout 1 and 2 development and design information, and other things that it seemed the Fallout community (you) would be interested in seeing.

And so is this — a living “Fallout Apocrypha” page. I’ve only recently been introduced to Medium, but this “page” is something where I’ll try to make a repository of all the questions I get asked, factoids, and other fun Fallout-y stuff that may have occurred during Fallout 1, 2, Tactics (which I got to see being developed and had some minor insights on), and New Vegas. It’s a much easier place to search for info than on most social media sights, so there’s that as well.

If you’d like, you can ask questions on Twitter: @chrisavellone or you can ask them in the Comments section. I’ll also likely be re-ordering this page and re-structuring its categories and potential sub-pages depending on if the questions and answers can be easily categorized (ex: “Everything about Stimpaks”).

Ask away!

Spoiler

IS THIS “APOCRYPHA” CANON? IS THE FALLOUT BIBLE?

Neither this or the Fallout Bible are canon, these just compile insights and factoids from development.

If you’re looking for what’s canon and what’s not, then the actual game content from the Bethesda/Bethesda-backed titles (F3, NV, F4, 76) are the sources you should refer to (F1, F2, Tactics are not necessarily canon).

OMFG DID BETHESDA LIKE, TOTALLY, SCREW OBSIDIAN OUT OF A BONUS ON METACRITIC???!!!

Nope.

The “Metacritic bonus” if the game got above an 84 review score was something Bethesda offered above and beyond the New Vegas contract.

We didn’t ask for this, they offered it, and it was our responsibility to hit that review score. We did have to have layoffs at Obsidian around this time period, but the bonus from Metacritic wouldn’t have prevented that from happening.

HOW MANY PEOPLE FROM NEW VEGAS ARE STILL AT OBSIDIAN

As of 4/9/22, about 20-ish, I believe, out of an original team of ~70. The remainder either quit, were laid off, or were fired.

Before that’s a cause for alarm, however, many of these remaining 20 were key people in New Vegas’ development, and Obsidian also has Leonard Boyarsky and Tim Cain on board, even though both are on Outer Worlds (2), and Leonard and Tim are the original creators of Fallout.

I BET YOU HATE BETHESDA FOR WHAT THEY DID TO FALLOUT

Nope.

If anything, they kept it alive, and then added a much deeper layer of open-world exploration than anything we’d been able to do at Interplay.

Also, the marketing department at Bethesda had a much stronger push than anything Interplay could have made happen, and arguably helped Fallout enter the mainstream more than Interplay ever could have done. There’s a reason you’ll see Fallout shirts at Target, and that alone is a pretty big accomplishment (whether you agree that’s an accomplishment or not).

DID YOU PLAY FALLOUT 3

Yes.

UH, WHAT DID YOU THINK ABOUT FALLOUT 3

My critique was:

:: Floodgates open ::

It’s a testament to the game that for every thing that initially bothered me, there was a solution or a tool to counterbalance it. For example, I was exploring Hubris Comics, dropped my Power Fist so I could haul some extra loot, then came back and couldn’t find it on the floor. Pissed. And then I remembered Dogmeat has the dialogue option to go “fetch” existing weapons in the environment and bring them back — so I asked him to go hunt down the Power Fist for me, and he found it in 5 seconds. Awesome. The game had enough options and tools at my disposal to insure I was having fun no matter what the challenges, so I can’t ask for much more.

So here’s the list:

The negatives: Dogmeat’s breathing if you don’t adjust the sound sliders. The tiny model house in Minefield not containing anything special. Anyone armed with a flamer can kick my melee-specialized ass, and thus, can kiss my ass. It was confusing to find one’s way around Megaton, although it had beautiful set pieces and I got used to it. I played with a 4 ST character and regretted it, but it made me appreciate the ST boost from alcohol more (1st time I’ve ever considered alcohol a viable drug in any game system, ever) and also made me appreciate Buffouts. I suck at the Science minigame, which is a horrible confession for an English major. Thought Hubris Comics should have had more Grognak issues, although I really liked the fan mail and the text adventure game in there. Didn’t like not being able to kill Amata or Andy the Robot at the outset because I hated them both. I didn’t like that the first potential companion was a bad Karma companion and expensive, but then the twin goals of being an asshole and scrounging up a thousand caps became bait and a challenge in trying to get him — when I got Jericho, I felt like I’d earned him as a companion. I think Repair became too valuable as a skill, but it’s better than the special case it was in Fallout 1 and 2, so I’d rather that than it remain a broken skill (like Doctor in F2). Maybe because I’m approaching it from the development end, I didn’t care, but I think the level cap turned a number of people off, as did not being able to play after and continue the game until Broken Steel came out. Some of the locations I think broke the 4th wall (Dunwich, which I actually enjoyed playing, just not the premise).

So that said…

Likes: Opening immersion and re-introducing you into the Fallout world. Fallout 1 and 2 had consistently broken or special case skills that were rectified in F3 (for example, Repair — and Doctor vs. First Aid in Fallout 2 became broken without a time limit, so Medicine was clearly an improvement). Fast Travel. Felt my skills mattered in general. The kitchen bell XP sound. I love radiation more in F3, it makes me pay close attention to the environment, I loved the Grognak text adventure game, I loved the Gutsy and Robobrain combat barkstrings, I liked the usage of the radio and the reactivity to the player’s actions — that seemed an elegant way of reinforcing your actions in the world as well as introducing a bad guy you couldn’t immediately shoot in the face, I liked a lot of the moments in the game, including suddenly being surrounded by the creepy Andale residents after entering the basement in town, I never thought a neighborhood filled with land mines would be a good adventure locale and I ate my words, loved the juxtaposition of real world mundane locations and their change into dungeons (Campgrounds, Springvale School, Super Duper Mart). Liked tracking down radio transmission signals for rewards. This is the first game I’ve ever played where I was excited to see barricades.* Nerd Rage surprised me as a Perk — chose it by default at one level only so I could drop grenades on myself to increase my carrying capacity and found it surprisingly useful at saving my ass when I walked into an ambush. The Pitt DLC, especially the opening vista crossing the bridge, is incredible. Liked the lockpick minigame. The Arlington Cemetery actually hit me pretty hard, and as a location it really drove home the futility of war to me — just seeing all those graves with Washington DC stretching out behind it made me feel really bad. Loved firing my combat shotgun into a bus with 5 ghouls trapped on the Dupont Circle freeway below and watching the whole screen erupt in fire. Consistently being rewarded for exploring the environment — there was always at least three things to see on the horizon that you wanted to go check out. I didn’t think I would like Liberty Prime, but the Iron Giant aspect worked for me and made me do a 180. I liked the Brotherhood camping out at the Pentagon. The sign inside the portable bomb shelters made me smile. I liked the Time Bandits aspects of Mothership Zeta. Seeing Dogmeat on fire, and being so tough that he didn’t even care that he was on fire. Liked playing as a Psycho-using alcoholic and murdering caravan folks for things I didn’t even need. Thought beer was valuable as a ST enhancer to carry loot. Liked the Well-Rested Perk. Shiskebab rocks — tap and burn.

* Yes, barricades. I have never had anything but hate for barricades until this game. They block my progress. Fuck barricades. But in F3, they are filled with the equivalent of RPG candy — containers are usually embedded in the wreckage, which was a great way to turn something hated into a gaming loot opportunity. Good level design call.

UH, WHAT’S A “BARKSTRING”?

Different companies have different names for this, but it’s the “bark” (usually 1 line of text or VO) that floats above a character or they say without entering an actual dialogue window.

DID YOU PLAY FALLOUT 4

About 3 hours, then quit over a level design/encounter issue and haven’t gone back.

DID YOU PLAY FALLOUT 76

No.

WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT NEW VEGAS 2. COME ON. TELL US. NOW.

Nothing. Except it probably wouldn’t be called “New Vegas 2”.

I do think any such game would require Bethesda’s support, even though they are owned by Microsoft. I know people assume that Phil Spencer could simply force Bethesda to do something, that’s not the pattern from the studios that Microsoft has acquired.

That’s it for now. Looking forward to your questions. If I can answer them, I will.