RPG Codex Interview: Chris Avellone on Pillars Cut Content, Game Development Hierarchies and More

[Ainamacar]

Chris Avellone , I'd like to know if there were conversations at the owner level about very broad alternate dialog (e.g. low Int, Malkavian, etc.) which is expensive to implement and carries a risk of being missed (and thus of uncertain value to the player), but is thrilling when observed.

Also, since we are conditioned in traditional entertainment to expect a story on rails, it seems to me a reactive story may actually be harmed if told "seamlessly": it is easy to assume there was never any choice at all, and thus the player can miss the thrill. Other than completely replaying a game, signaling such choices can be done somewhat inorganically (PoE and the new Shadowruns can show that dialog choices exist the character can't actually take) but there are other, not necessarily portable, options. The time rewind mechanic in Life is Strange lets players explore the phase space of every conversation (even if the actual reactivity of the game is fairly modest). In an RPG, one could imagine (a potentially dumb) mechanic where spell preparation "borrows" some of a character's intellect, introducing a dialog/strength tradeoff the player will notice throughout the game. Heck, a game influenced by the Eclipse Phase PnP RPG could involve forks (copies of the character, some of significantly lesser capability) to an extent that choosing what fork does what action has an impact on how events are resolved or experienced.

So, assuming one is willing to commit the resources to substantial reactivity and/or branching, what are your thoughts on how to effectively convey this to players?

(And thanks for for answering my first question. Will Brofist in...[checks forum rules]...1 year!? Alright, added to calendar.)

 

[Ninjerk]

I suppose I'll never know if Chris Avellone played the Outcast game or not now. Oh well.

I have not, but I played an early version of AoD and tried to give what feedback I could, although I mostly had a lot of compliments.

I want to set aside time to play the release version, which I've spoken to Vince about (I bought the full version along with the others from Iron Tower Studios - not just because of Vince, but the AoD reviews are some seriously amazing shit, he and the team should be proud).

Which reviews? Half the fun of AoD is reading reviews by butthurt "gamers" who die constantly in the first possible fight or two.

 

[Kz3r0]

Even accepting all of that, I think Obsidian's inability to sign another open world RPG (besides Stormlands) after Fallout: New Vegas is first and foremost evidence of blithering publisher idiocy. After Josh Sawyer cranked that game out in 18 months, there should have been publishers knocking down their doors, period.

And now we know why they didn't:

 

[Darth Roxor]

Which reviews?

rpgcodex of course

 

[Blaine]

Actual footage of Darth Roxor after accidentally reading two paragraphs of a mainstream review last year:

 

[Elwro]

I've said it many times, but maybe once more: even though I obviously have no idea about the internal stuff that was going on with NV, I want to point out that while people often say stuff like the above 'Josh cranked up NV in 18 months', John Gonzalez was the Creative Lead on this, right?

 

[Infinitron]

I've said it many times, but maybe once more: even though I obviously have no idea about the internal stuff that was going on with NV, I want to point out that while people often say stuff like the above 'Josh cranked up NV in 18 months', John Gonzalez was the Creative Lead on this, right?

Yes, you're right. I regret phrasing it like that.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Even accepting all of that, I think Obsidian's inability to sign another open world RPG (besides Stormlands) after Fallout: New Vegas is first and foremost evidence of blithering publisher idiocy. After Josh Sawyer cranked that game out in 18 months, there should have been publishers knocking down their doors, period.

And now we know why they didn't:

But Microsoft did give them an open world RPG project—a launch date title for XBox, FFS. Even after the Stormlands implosion, Take-Two financed the Cainarsky project, which will probably be open world. Don’t see how publishers can be blamed for not giving them this business when, despite all of Obsidian’s flaws, they’ve gotten two huge publishers to do precisely that since New Vegas.

 

[Infinitron]

Don’t see how publishers can be blamed for not giving them this business when, despite all of Obsidian’s flaws, they’ve gotten two huge publishers to do precisely that since New Vegas.

Well, the second one comes after the purported realization I posted about here: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...archies-and-more.121588/page-172#post-5602999

 

[Chris Avellone]

Which reviews? Half the fun of AoD is reading reviews by butthurt "gamers" who die constantly in the first possible fight or two.

Glancing at the Metacritic scores, they seemed pretty amazing to me (unfortunately, that's the first site I check) - as a developer I would be proud.

 

[Chris Avellone]

I've said it many times, but maybe once more: even though I obviously have no idea about the internal stuff that was going on with NV, I want to point out that while people often say stuff like the above 'Josh cranked up NV in 18 months', John Gonzalez was the Creative Lead on this, right?

He was, and I think he understood the narrative importance of the Fallout series more than anyone else on FNV working on the story arc (ex: it was common in F1 and F2 to have over-the-top mouthpieces (and visual mouthpieces) "antagonists" for a certain faction). That's why I think he made House and Caesar work well - but NCR felt lacking and tacked on (which wasn't John's call, but the problem overall was throughout the game there was no one was like "Tandi" who exemplified the NCR faction on a personal level - the leadership of the faction felt disconnected and distant).

John is a great writer, and he's very easy and up-front to work with. Would continue to work with him on future projects without a doubt.

 

[Cross]

Don’t see how publishers can be blamed for not giving them this business when, despite all of Obsidian’s flaws, they’ve gotten two huge publishers to do precisely that since New Vegas.

Well, the second one comes after the purported realization I posted about here: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...archies-and-more.121588/page-172#post-5602999

It might be another example of unlucky timing. Feels like it wasn't until relatively recently with Witcher 3, Horizon Zero Dawn, etc, that folks realized "Hey, wait a minute, Bethesda doesn't have to be the only publisher that makes open world RPGs". Back in 2010-2011 even Tim Cain was going "Mass Effect is the top RPG today, we must make RPGs like Mass Effect". No foresight - any Codexer could tell them they were wrong.

What you're saying makes very little. Triple-A games can easily take 5+ years to develop. We're seeing games like The Witcher 3 and Horizon: Zero Dawn now precisely because other developers very quickly took notice of Skyrim's success and immediately started copying it. If they hadn't, these games would still be in development.

By contrast, nobody decided to copy Mass Effect because Mass Effect itself was an imitator of an already popular trend: cinematic cover-based shooting.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

But Microsoft did give them an open world RPG project—a launch date title for XBox, FFS. Even after the Stormlands implosion, Take-Two financed the Cainarsky project, which will probably be open world.

I'm not so sure about that. Open world would be expensive. It is not actually Take Two publishing this, but rather their subsidiary Private Division, which appears to be a label created to publish sort of mid-level games, not exactly indie, but not exactly 100 million blockbusters, either.

 

[Gakkone]

Chris Avellone Make a let's play of AoD.

 

[Starwars]

I've said it many times, but maybe once more: even though I obviously have no idea about the internal stuff that was going on with NV, I want to point out that while people often say stuff like the above 'Josh cranked up NV in 18 months', John Gonzalez was the Creative Lead on this, right?

He was, and I think he understood the narrative importance of the Fallout series more than anyone else on FNV working on the story arc (ex: it was common in F1 and F2 to have over-the-top mouthpieces (and visual mouthpieces) "antagonists" for a certain faction). That's why I think he made House and Caesar work well - but NCR felt lacking and tacked on (which wasn't John's call, but the problem overall was throughout the game there was no one was like "Tandi" who exemplified the NCR faction on a personal level - the leadership of the faction felt disconnected and distant).

John is a great writer, and he's very easy and up-front to work with. Would continue to work with him on future projects without a doubt.

Totally get what you're saying but I have to say that I think it works in favor for the game in a weird way given that there is such a surplus of NCR content in the game. NCR feels more like a big blob, lots of different characters who you can interact with on the factory floor level, but the leaders are far above in the clouds somewhere. Well, there are people like Hanlon and Moore who are more in charge but not the ones really in charge so to speak. It kinda reinforces the feel that the NCR is lacking in direction and is out of touch with what's happening.

Would definitely be cool to have a "NCR personality" though like you say but yeah, I think it actually worked out pretty well in that regard anyways.

 

[deepfire]

Kit Walker was doing it on purpose, screw that guy.

Oh yeah, and the posts about communism here are totally legit and lead to some amazing debate, is not just attention whores trolling on the Codex's most popular thread in years...

felipepepe my droog, we’ve only been educating the public when the main man is napping. (Not counting one or two butthurt Randroids getting out of hand like they always do.)

One problem with such education is that Chris tries to read this thread, just as we do -- he answers posts that don't tag him.

And unlike us, who can visually filter by Nihilus (or even use the post index), he needs to consider everything, by at least a cursory reading.

So the problem isn't that we drown out his voice -- we drown out the useful questions that lead to answers.

 

[Kz3r0]

Gotta ask yourself what happened since.

:kwanzania:

 

[Chris Avellone]

Totally get what you're saying but I have to say that I think it works in favor for the game in a weird way given that there is such a surplus of NCR content in the game.

I completely agree, except I feel that aspect should have been fixed - and you set a start point in between two factions (so you feel like you have a genuine choice), but you give the game board on both sides equal representation.

For example, I would have loved to recruit Vulpes as a companion in Nipton - and then consider helping him burn it down, if we saw eye-to-eye.

 

[Abu Antar]

Chris Avellone If you could turn back time, what would you have done differently, knowing what you do?

 

[Chris Avellone]

So in this situation you are the underdog now.

Not at all, and I wouldn't want to take control of Obsidian - I'd love if the developers found better owners, however, and ones that shared the royalty gains (vs. select folks on the team like Adam and Josh) and when they finally agreed to share, the would share at a much, much higher level than PoE1 allowed (regardless of owner decisions). This would also be shared across projects (Armored Warfare) that helped keep PoE afloat, even if they weren't recognized for it.

 

[Daedalos]

Chris Avellone You mentioned that part of the proces for you, after a failed project or negative experience within the workplace (management or otherwise) was to do a post-mortem break-down, and evaluation of the failures and bad decisions of the project - Can you elaborate abit on that proces?

I am working as a Project Lead myself in mostly IT-systems implementation between us and the supplier, and I have been writing down and doing sort of what you describe as a post-mortem breakdown of the implementation projects. I seek advice on how to structure this proces better to deal with future problems in projects and have it become a better learning experience. You got any tips?

/Cheers

 

[Cross]

Hey Chris Avellone thanks for taking the time to answer questions here.

Can you talk at all about the Orlan detective companion that (I think) morphed into the NPC of Kurran? When initially reading about him I thought he was a pretty interesting and unique character concept, and upon learning he had been cut as a companion I hoped that he might show up as MCA companion for PoE2.

What was your original vision for the character and his arc in PoE, and what ultimately caused him to be discarded in favor of (again, I think) The Grieving Mother? Was it entirely your decision, and, if so, how did that come about?

Thanks!

George (even though he didn't write a companion) and I would often push for being able to design companions without Josh providing summaries of them, since that could rob some of the fun out of creating them (and it also made them less yours, which isn't a great idea if you're going to be spending a lot of weeks writing that character). When we did Van Buren, my directive to each companion designer was "your companion needs to be a prisoner on the run, but beyond that, send me what you'd like to do with that in mind," since I felt it would make them own the characters more (and they should, if they're doing the work).

Originally, the Cipher character was proposed to be an orlan, but once I realized it was important someone speak to the severity and perspective on the Hollowborn crisis, I felt it would be distracting if the person in question was an orlan (it's hard to explain, but the fact they're an orlan AND a Cipher is pushing too many themes, since it's a new race and a new class, and one of the big things in the character should be the Hollowborn angle - just like Durance had the god importance angle). I also wasn't really interested in the detective concept for the first game, and I was more interested in the psychic midwife, even if it didn't go over as well as hoped - still, gave it my best shot.

I read somewhere that Josh came up with the concepts for all the companions in PoE, and then handed them to individual designers to write. Durance and the Grieving Mother appear to be the only exception to this, and they're also the two companions with by far the strongest ties to the overarching story.

Do you think the two are related?

 

[Prime Junta]

Not at all, and I wouldn't want to take control of Obsidian - I'd love if the developers found better owners, however, and ones that shared the royalty gains (vs. select folks on the team like Adam and Josh) and when they finally agreed to share, the would share at a much, much higher level than PoE1 allowed (regardless of owner decisions). This would also be shared across projects (Armored Warfare) that helped keep PoE afloat, even if they weren't recognized for it.

Do you feel a pirate ship would provide a good model for power- and profit-sharing in a game studio? I.e., everyone gets an equal share of the booty, except the cook, carpenter, quartermaster, and first mate who get two shares, and the captain, who gets three, and if the crew doesn't like the captain they maroon him on a desert island and pick a new one?

 

[Infinitron]

There seems to be a pattern of Chris Avellone disliking "asymmetries" in world design. In Fallout: New Vegas, you start in NCR territory and there's no Legion companion, why? In PoE, Calisca and Heodan are temporary companions who have to die, why?

 

[Prime Junta]

There seems to be a pattern of Chris Avellone disliking "asymmetries" in world design. In Fallout: New Vegas, you start in NCR territory and there's no Legion companion, why? In PoE, Calisca and Heodan are temporary companions who have to die, why?

Are you going out of your way to irritate him, or does it come naturally?