There's no reason for concern, MCA has always hated elves (and halflings).
So right now, my work has been: Revising the story, revising each chapter of the Adventure Path, general feedback, writing the aesthetic/reactive style guides for the game (on-going as new elements appear), and also specc’ing out the technical requirements for dialogue on the design side (for alignment choices, reactivity, etc).
I have also revised a number of written scripts for the game’s vertical slice, and am coordinating with editors in the States to naturalize the English as well. I haven’t altered the structure of the sequences, merely rewritten nodes. While I haven’t done much with the companions yet, that’s actually because I’ve been spending more time on the antagonists in the game and how they interact from chapter to chapter.
He's confirmed to be working on Amiri and Jubilost, but also wanted to work on three other characters.
Sounds like he is doing some writer lead type of job, high level design and coordination. Better than what he did for TToN and other such games.
It is great that Kingmaker team brought in someone of Chris's experience to help them become better at what they do.
(In relation to this,
Fairfax dropped me a line and asked, so figured I'd answer here about what I've done on Pathfinder, info, etc. )
So Alexander Mushlin is the Creative Director, Alexander Komzolov is the lead writer. I’m one of the writers reporting to the Alexander(s), but I’m not the lead writer on the game, no, and there are other writers on the project for sure.
This was mentioned before, but I did passes of the story with the Alexander(s) to expand it from the pen-and-paper roots so people who would play the game would still have some new content and we worked out the underlying theme for the story as well (in quoted section). In addition, some elements of the PNP path were taken in new directions to make them more suited for evil playstyles, which was fun.
I also worked with them on setting up the PNP quest arcs with the new companion quest arcs in chapters of the game (the companions add a lot) and gave feedback on the companions as well.
As for writing companions, it was a reverse of Fane from
Divinity: Original Sin 2: I got elements of the "goblin rogue" (the companions weren't named at the outset, and I did help with naming companions). From that, was able to flesh out additional elements of his backstory, look, etc. then I wrote Nok-Nok from start to finish. (In Divinity, I only wrote Fane’s backstory, Stephen Rooney wrote the dialogue - it was always the case when talking with Swen that I wouldn't have time to write a companion.) I say a “reverse” from D:OS2 because Nok-Nok’s 1-paragraph character arc had already been approved by Paizo before I came on board (and same with some of the other story elements), but Alexander Komzolov and I agreed to change aspects about Nok-Nok afterwards even though his general arc remained the same (and some specific conclusion to his companion quest).
I also did the background for another companion that the Alexanders were interested in including in the game (he’s the halfling in the portraits with writing on his face), but he didn’t make it in. He wasn’t cut for scoping reasons involving his character (he had a portrait, backstory, and quest arc), but more the Alexanders wanted to make sure we could do the companions we had justice. If he had been included, I would have been writing him as well.
I also did the style guide, the module (on 2nd draft now), helped coordinate some aspects of the editing team (we had two editors who worked on the English versions), helped with UI text, and writing and edits on about 150+ other characters.
I didn’t write Amiri or Jubilost, although I would have been happy to (I was pretty busy on the other aspects, though, so I doubt I would have had time - writing companions can take months).
I like working with Owlcat (and Pathfinder) a lot, it’s been a good experience. I hope more Pathfinder games follow after Kingmaker.
