Incline Chris Avellone Appreciation Station

[Infinitron]

What's with the Arcade hate man

The nostalgic send-off for the Enclave was one of FO:NV's top moments.

 

[Latro]

What's with the Arcade hate man

The nostalgic send-off for the Enclave was one of FO:NV's top moments.

dull character, I believe I decapitated him with the steam punk powerfist as soon as his quest ended.

 

[MRY]

The whole "story guy at the very bottom, if at all" coupled with the "reduce verbal storytelling" is a little odd. It seems like maybe it dovetails with his complaints that he was pigeonholed as nothing but a writer, when he wanted to branch out. "Those skills of mine that you think are so great! Not important at all! Now can I do something else?" It's not so much that I disagree with him (although I do a bit); it's more that it just is odd hearing someone derogate the expression of the talents for which he's loved.

I agree with some of his points (for example, that generally speaking the most important thing is that players enjoy the moment-to-moment of your game), but at the same time, some parts seem off. For example, while it is true that level design should trump writing, it is not at all clear that level desig should trump narrative. Sometimes yes, sometimes no; generally in RPGs, it seems to me that narrative comes first. More fundamentally, it strikes me that he misses a key point, which is that even assuming that great gameplay trumps great writing, people may still sometimes care for great writing (or even just okay writing) despite mediocre gameplay. The most dramatic examples, it seems to me, are the TellTale games, where gameplay is clearly subordinated to writing. But I think PS:T is arguably an example, too. It has some great gameplay (in terms of encounters, C&C, etc.), but it is memorable overwhelmingly because of the writing and the art. In a sense it's true of The Witcher as well, where the bedrock principle is some adherence to the source material. Which is to say, if you have an Avellone on your team, or a popular IP, I don't think it's the least bit crazy to put a premium on writing/narrative and derogate systems design to service his narrative (rather than vice versa).

In my mind, AOD is an example of an RPG with superb design, but even there it is not obvious to me that design trumped narrative; the two operated in a cooperative equilibrium. Obviously that's harder to do with a big team and fixed deadlines -- AOD benefited from having the design lead and narrative lead a single person with a broad skillset.

 

[Grauken]

God no, level design should trump narrative, especially in RPGs

also TellTale games are a fucking disease

 

[MRY]

How, in an RPG, do you come up with levels absent some sense of what the narrative is? Other than, of course, including generic sewers, absolutely required.

 

[Grauken]

You ever played a roguelike or wizardry-type, sure there is some super-generic quest thing in the background, but most of the time nobody fucking cares, its all about gameplay

Also, I'm not actually arguing for an absence of narrative, just that gameplay should trump it and come first

 

[MRY]

That's a fair point. (There could be some quibbling over whether designing the system that creates levels is the same as level design in rogue-likes, but I think it is similar enough.) But those constitute a small subset of RPGs, one that is largely extinct, so I can't imagine that those are the RPGs he's talking about. I assumed he was talking about the kind of RPG that has held near-exclusive status since the mid-90s, namely one in which the "levels" are part of a cohesive world, populated with NPCs, etc., etc.

 

[Grauken]

I don't see much of difference, you can still start with a list of all the stuff you want include, then design a setting around this (I argue lots of the early P&P RPG settings started out with laundry list of things they wanted to include) and then a narrative to give your characters a reason to visit all the various dungeons and cities in your game, even if a game looks like it's top-down designed starting with a narrative, it could and I bet some games actually have been designed where the overall narrative was just an afterthought

 

[Infinitron]

MRY Right now, Chris is reminding me a bit of Warren Spector.

A few years back, we interviewed him, and one of my questions was something like this: "You're famous for your philosophy of systemic player choice, etc, but if we look at your older games that you made at Origin, they were actually more narrative-centric and more scripted than games made by other people at Origin."

He was completely baffled by that. His response was that he'd always been trying to do the player choice/systemic stuff. He was never just a "story guy".

Maybe sometimes a game designer might think a particular design principle is really important, and put a lot of conscious emphasis into it. But at the same time, he might also be really "naturally" good at something else. So good at it, that he makes it great without even really trying - as a minimum standard, which he's barely aware that other people can't reach.

 

[Fairfax]

Telltale "games" are a fucking disgrace indeed. No reactivity and shitty barebones gameplay. Overpriced webcomic trash.

 

[Popiel]

Telltale "games" are a fucking disgrace indeed. No reactivity and shitty barebones gameplay. Overpriced webcomic trash.

I only played The Wolf Among Us and, while I would likely never call it a game, I liked it pretty much. Am I retarded or is it an exception?

 

[Jedi Exile]

I only played The Wolf Among Us and, while I would likely never call it a game, I liked it pretty much. Am I retarded or is it an exception?

You are not an exception. I also liked that game, though gameplay really sucked. Those damn QTEs...

 

[Spectacle]

Is it possible that MCA is a disaster outside of his area of expertise? Did Obsidian only want him to write because his opinions on other game design matters are uninformed and borderline retarded?

 

[Space Insect]

I only played The Wolf Among Us and, while I would likely never call it a game, I liked it pretty much. Am I retarded or is it an exception?

It's mostly okay if you realize that there is practically no real C&C or reactivity and it is all railroaded.

 

[Joni Odin von Hassenstein]

jesus I would hate to work on a project run on MCA's principles... hierarchy all over the place

What's funny to me about this talk is that it must have been given in front of an audience full of seat-of-their-pants Eastern European indie devs. And he's talking to them about these corporate-like hierarchies. You can see how when it was over a couple of them immediately pushed back basically saying "But how is this relevant to us, dude?"

I think it's also reflective of work culture. Where I'm from organizations tend to be flat and decisions tend to be taken by consensus within a small team responsible for a particular area. You have distinct roles of course, but you generally speaking don't have anyone below the CEO who is the one who "makes the calls." You want to lead? Make a proposal and sell it to the team. Want to become a leader? Make more of them, and eventually the team will come to you for advice.

This model has its problems too of course; notably it's based on a culture of trust and self-direction, and if you don't have that, it will quickly collapse into chaos, infighting, and lack of direction. But when it works, it works really well.

tl;dr I really, really dislike clearly-defined multi-level hierarchies like the one in MCA's presentation.

 

[Beastro]

Yes. So what?

Virgil had the most to say out of all the companions in Arcanum. The NPCs in BG2 also vary in content and quality. Durance is also miles better than any othe PoE companion, with more things to say, greater integration into the game's themes.

What I'm saying is - if you have arguably the best writer in the gaming industry writing one of your NPCs, you should make the most of him, no matter if he makes the other companions worse in comparison.

I'd hope companion Ulysses would have had more time to ease the player into the shit he's obsessed with. He was best cut if all he did all the time walking around with you was natter on like he did in Lonesome Road.

What's with the Arcade hate man

The nostalgic send-off for the Enclave was one of FO:NV's top moments.

dull character, I believe I decapitated him with the steam punk powerfist as soon as his quest ended.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Arcade_Gannon#Behind_the_scenes

As a character, he is also inspired by Sawyer's idealism.

 

[Roguey]

Instead a shitty companion like Arcade made the cut because Sawyer was Director/Lead Designer/Systems Designer and the character was based on himself (lol).

Cutting Arcade late in the cycle wouldn't have made them able to implement Ulysses. It's all on Chris for writing more than he was supposed to and even he agrees http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...reciation-station.101693/page-54#post-4408932

Voice acted text, both writing and budgeting, is a much different matter b/c the expenses alone and the design implications add up quickly. Again, "writing for VO" is probably an entire Style Guide right there.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

As a character, he is also inspired by Sawyer's idealism.

He must be a riot, one can hardly find better real life inspiration for an NPC. Is he a post apocalyptic vegan perhaps?

 

[Excidium II]

He's a post apocalyptic gay mormon.

 

[Fairfax]

I'd hope companion Ulysses would have had more time to ease the player into the shit he's obsessed with. He was best cut if all he did all the time walking around with you was natter on like he did in Lonesome Road.



http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Arcade_Gannon#Behind_the_scenes

Sawyer is so humble:

Arcade is the most intelligent companion with an Intelligence of 10 and is the most charismatic companion with a statistic of 6.

Cutting Arcade late in the cycle wouldn't have made them able to implement Ulysses. It's all on Chris for writing more than he was supposed to and even he agrees http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...reciation-station.101693/page-54#post-4408932

Could've worked it out instead of cutting the character entirely.

 

[Roguey]

Could've worked it out instead of cutting the character entirely.

They did try working it out, which is why they cut him late instead of early. It wasn't happening.

 

[Infinitron]

DLC Ulysses worked out pretty well. His one weakness was that if you knew he was a cut character, it became obvious that "The Divide" was a stand-in for Hoover Dam from the main game (he even lampshades it at one point)

 

[Excidium II]

The worst thing about Arcade is that his companion quest has some really specific trigger. I think only Raul is worse in this regard.

 

[Roguey]

I recall either Avellone or Sawyer even said that cutting Ulysses was an ordeal in and of itself because he touched so much content that removing him broke so many things. It was a last resort "we absolutely have to do this" band-aid pull.

 

[Fairfax]

DLC Ulysses isn't close to what he could've been to the base game. Although it wouldn't have helped much with the Legion being as poorly designed as it was.