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People News Chris Avellone Interview @ PC Authority

VentilatorOfDoom

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Tags: Chris Avellone; Obsidian Entertainment

There's an article-style interview with Chris Avellone available over at PC Authority.
We caught up with Obsidian’s Chris Avellone during a visit to Melbourne last year, and quizzed him on Kickstarter, the Australian development scene, and what makes a game, a game.
The enthusiasm and energy that I see in the developers here, the excitement – it’s infectious, energising. It seems to be a really interesting time to be making games in Australia.”

Chris Avellone looks to be in a constant state of relaxation, even when mingling in a room of several hundred game developers. Integral to the development of games such as Planescape: Torment and Star Wars: KOTOR 2, he’s probably best known for his work on Fallout: New Vegas, and it’s his 15 years of game design expertise that he’ll be drawing on today.

He’s here in Melbourne, alongside other well-known developers such as Robin Hunicke, to deliver a “game design masterclass” at Game Connect Asia Pacific (or GCAP, as it’s more colloquially known) – and I’ve managed to tug him away from his catered lunch to answer a few questions on game design, New Vegas, and that crowdfunding phenomenon that has us all throwing our billfolds at projects aiming to revive old-school game design ideals, just like Avellone’s new Project Eternity.
 

Roguey

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“I far prefer how Journey handled the storytelling,” Avellone confesses. “I think that games don’t need a lot of words, or face-to-face interaction, to communicate a story at all, which is kind of strange for a dialogue writer to say,” he adds with a laugh.
...
Avellone knows and accepts that his own opinions can be questioned by other designers. During his masterclass, he declares that a great story with shitty mechanics still makes for a shitty game. It’s a statement he probably didn’t realise was so loaded until he got home and checked the resulting furore on Twitter that night.
:bounce:
 

hiver

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If there’s some sort of much more visual or iconic representation of how characters can interact, that can tell an equally great story without a crapload of words.”

:patriot:= new chris abelone.
 

FeelTheRads

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If there’s some sort of much more visual or iconic representation of how characters can interact,

Oh, yeah, in 2D isometric games there's a fucking "crapload" of ways characters can interact "visually". In 3D there's of course sex, so yeah, I totally get him.

:retarded:
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
See, maybe his lack of involvement with the Torment successor isn't such a bad thing after all.

We'll see very soon if MCA still has the magic touch, when the Wasteland 2 gameplay video comes out.
 

FeelTheRads

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Well, I don't think he ever had it save for his "stroke of genius" in Torment. What the fuck did he do besides that that's worthy of any attention?

inb4 Gannfags.
 

VentilatorOfDoom

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We'll see very soon if MCA still has the magic touch, when the Wasteland 2 gameplay video comes out.
It's an opening area so I'm expecting it to be bad regardless. Avellone's never been good with beginnings whether it's the mortuary, Targos, or Peragus.

What the hell was wrong with the mortuary ?
Not enough action in the beginning of PST (according to MCA) , kobold encounters entirely missing.
 

Broseph

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The enthusiasm and energy that I see in the developers here, the excitement – it’s infectious, energising. It seems to be a really interesting time to be making games in Australia.”

Of course. Grimoire is in development.

3kUEq.png
 

hiver

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See, maybe his lack of involvement with the Torment successor isn't such a bad thing after all.
Yeah, even better that he doesnt have any control over it because we would end up with another attempt to copy bioware dialogue - like AP but with extra icons so that no one can miss what some line might mean - and that then everyone keeps missing.

He did say something about NV companions dialogue to balance this out though... only i couldnt understand it because i couldnt see any animation or icons.


/
Those things aside, i have a reasonably serious question for you infinitron, do you have any plans about going to the sea any time soon or soonish?
This is completely unrelated to this article or subject.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Those things aside, i have a reasonably serious question for you infinitron, do you have any plans about going to the sea any time soon or soonish?
This is completely unrelated to this article or subject.

:hmmm:

Why? Do you want to send me a message in a bottle?
 

hiver

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Thats good. -scuse the interruption of the regular program- Pray continue with Chris protocol.
 

IronicNeurotic

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I'm just going to assume nobody here played journey or understands the word storytelling.

Because a lot of games do a better job there than Obsidian's or Black Isle's.

Because that word has like nothing to do with depth, charachterization or anything else what you guys here probably mean when you say *Avellone lost his touch* The simpler the story, the better is usually the storytelling. (Except if your a hack)
 

Carrion

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If there’s some sort of much more visual or iconic representation of how characters can interact, that can tell an equally great story without a crapload of words.”

:patriot:= new chris abelone.
He's kind of right, though. Something about a picture and a thousand words. Games are a visual media, but very few games actually make a good use of it. Visuality allows a more subtle way to convey information compared to plain text where everything that matters has to be spelled out for you. Then again, many of the subtle things you can see in, say, Kubrick's movies probably wouldn't work out at all in a game since you expect a certain amount of "imperfection" in games, so small details are usually lost in the process. For example, a character says something to you and blinks twice very fast. If you noticed that in a movie, you could take that as a hint of the character lying, or as just a quirk that adds to the personality of the character, but in games you'd probably just ignore it as a glitch or something. So when games convey character quirks and interaction visually, it's usually exaggerated to the point where it loses all of the subtlety and therefore also the advantage it might have over plain text (facial movements look awkward as hell, a character who is slightly limping has a completely different walking animation which stands out like a sore thumb from every other character in the game, and so on). There are games that make great use of visual environments when telling a story (Torment being one of them), but character interaction is a much harder thing to do properly.

Also, there's a certain charm in Torment's text descriptions that you couldn't really replace with visuals and probably shouldn't even try. New Vegas, on the other hand... Well, it would probably benefit from Bloodlines' facial animations, at least.
 

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