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

[Infinitron]

FWIW, those West Coast-based Kickstarted RPGs seem to be increasingly outsourcing art, and then there's inXile opening a studio in Louisiana for Bard's Tale IV.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

I can count the number of genuinely useful questions asked in the entire thread on two hands, and with room to spare.

Shut up shitposter. We want to read Avellone's posts.

But aren't asymmetries, arbitrary as they may seem, more interesting and believable than perfect symmetry? Symmetry always feels formulaic to me, while asymmetry feels more natural.

Here we go again with you trying to push this irrationalist agenda. There are asymmetries and symmetries in everything, and both are important.

 

[Blaine]

Then you aren't paying enough attention.

Or you're just too sensitive, and think that addressing racial issues is "racist" by definition.

Some people can and do find "bigotry" anywhere they look for it. There's no reasoning with them.

The giveaway is usually where they choose not to find bigotry. Pay enough attention and it's easy to see the bias.

I can count the number of genuinely useful questions asked in the entire thread on two hands, and with room to spare.

Shut up shitposter. We want to read Avellone's posts.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?search/68663714/

You're welcome.

 

[The Great ThunThun*]

Blaine

I disagree. Is there racism on the codex? Most certainly. The real issue is not that, however. The problem is the consequence of stifling opinions. If you choose to repress "real" racists, then you will simply not be able to make them the part of the debate and change their opinions. In fact, you will make it even more clear to them that a discrimination exists and they are the ones being persecuted.

 

[JarlFrank]

I'm a real national socialist and don't feel oppressed on the Codex.

 

[Blaine]

Blaine

I disagree. Is there racism on the codex? Most certainly.

Yeah, and they by and large aren't hiding (see directly above this post), so there's no need for social justice inquisitors to hound-dog it out.

Not that that stops them, mind you.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

What do you guys even mean by symmetry here? Symmetry of power? You definitely don't need factions to be on similar power level. Symmetry in amount of content? You don't need that either.

You absolutely do need a roughly symmetrical amount of content in order for the two main factions to be equally attractive in a playthrough, particularly a first playthrough.

You do not even know if there's a symmetry in amount of content, until you played the game twice, once with each faction. So lack of symmetry has no impact whatsoever on your first playthrough.

It does have an impact if one path feels unfinished or like it lacks content, and that's the one you chose on your first playthrough.

I would argue that's almost always a quality issue first, not a quantity issue.

Take PoE. The Doemenels have pitiful amount of content if you would just compare the work that went to it. But it's really well done and it's the coolest faction questline to do.

​

Meanwhile, Crucible Knights have a huge fucking castle that had to take a lot of effort to design, they have their own unique look, they have unique monster class that attacks them during the course of a quest, overall I'm pretty sure they have more quests. And all of those quests suck gigantic dick.

If we assume a consistent quality level throughout the game, with each faction being roughly on the same level quality-wise, the one faction with the least content will still be considered the least worthwhile playthrough due to quantity.

It's not about quality or quantity, it's about both.

But we can't assume a consistent quality level, can we? The only time when an RPG has consistent quality, it's when it is consistently shit. These are 40-50-100 hour games, even the goldest of the golden classics are inconsistent.

I'll give you that - in principle - having a rough content parity is a good thing. But whether that should be your goal as a designer, and a high priority goal at that? Eh, I don't know. I'll take a tight, fun, smartly designed 3-part faction quest, over a 10-part gargantuan borefest faction quest that was buffed up with shit content to achieve content parity.

Far as I'm concerned, the #1 priority is for all the critical areas of an RPG - which to me would be companions, factions, and the core path main quest - to have a highest possible quality and polish.

And once you have that, you can worry about content parity and maybe rewrite some of the minor side quests to bring back the between the factions.

 

[Cael]

I'm a real national socialist and don't feel oppressed on the Codex.

*gets Roseanne to sit on the Jarl*

Oh sorry. "Oppressed." I missed the "O".

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

Jason Liang
Care to explain your reasoning, or are you just going to drop off a rating and leave?

Sure. The majority of the computer gaming industry is based in Southern California for a reason: to attract more leftists from University of Commiefornia.

Fixed. I knew it!

 

[BlackAdderBG]

That's an unavoidable function of what the Codex is. We're talking about a gaming world that salivates games prior to release (thanks to kick backs, secret agreements, and general cock-sucking) and only once the sequel is in production is it suddenly accepted that the prior game had any issues at all. The Codex was the game that shat on things prior to their release, that naturally puts us off-side with everyone else whose main aim is to suck cock so they can get that next "exclusive" of highly selected and polished game information for their readers so they can sell subscriptions.

We've never been a paid site - reliant on funding from reader numbers and ad revenue - so we've never cared.

There's no way to change that without fundamentally meaning threads like this wouldn't occur. Which part of this topic would you like excised, for example, to tidy it up? The first bit about communism, the second bit, the bit in-between about whatever that was? Ultimately cutting bits out doesn't matter and changes nothing. People who care will find the important bits, others will make the summaries, and the world will keep turning.

If we take the approach that certain viewpoints are toxic (basically anything to the right of the political spectrum) then we're just the same as all those other idiots who missed Trump becoming President.

I dread the day DU leaves the codex.

 

[Blaine]

Jason Liang
Care to explain your reasoning, or are you just going to drop off a rating and leave?

Sure. The majority of the computer gaming industry is based in Southern California for a reason: to attract more leftists from University of Commiefornia.

Fixed. I knew it!

That is also true, but beside the point.

It amuses me that the forum faglords are putting on a great big show of ignorance in this thread, as though everyone has forgotten the social justice squealfest and world-class virtue-signaling competition that occurred when Kingdom Come: Deliverance debuted featuring 0 black people. The horror!

Those of you 1.) defending these sacks of garbage or 2.) pretending they don't exist will get the rope when The Day arrives, too.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

I'm a real national socialist and don't feel oppressed on the Codex.

The irrationalist bulshit in other threads was strike two. With this one you are out. You just a lost a costumer for your future game, asshole.

That is also true, but beside the point.

Dude, you just wrote a tome in a few pages back about the influence of SJWs, danger hair whales and whatnot. Now you have a geographical argument to make it even more reasonable and you to debate it because you don't feel like it. I'm getting a Feargus vibe here.

 

[agentorange]

I don't think you can have factions that truly feel different and simultaneously have them be symmetrical. One of those qualities tends to preclude the other. Especially in New Vegas where the factions represented opposing ideologies, it would make absolutely no sense for these groups that are basically antithetical to each other to play the same or reward the player in the same ways. I personally liked how some factions were introduced much later than others (Yes Man and Legion) because it aided the factions in feeling distinct, like their own entities rather than a bullet point list that the player scrolls through and picks from at their leisure. Go for total symmetry and you end up with a Red Team, Blue Team, Yellow Team scenario where the factions are not actually different they just have different skins (the factions in ELEX for example). The Legion may have had less gameplay content, but so what, they felt unique and it was worth siding with them in order to see how that particular story plays out. Asymmetry is far more interesting in subsequent playthroughs as well, why the hell would I want to see the same basic structure every time I replay the game.

 

[JarlFrank]

But we can't assume a consistent quality level, can we? The only time when an RPG has consistent quality, it's when it is consistently shit. These are 40-50-100 hour games, even the goldest of the golden classics are inconsistent.

I'll give you that - in principle - having a rough content parity is a good thing. But whether that should be your goal as a designer, and a high priority goal at that? Eh, I don't know. I'll take a tight, fun, smartly designed 3-part faction quest, over a 10-part gargantuan borefest faction quest that was buffed up with shit content to achieve content parity.

That's why, overall, I prefer faction quests that aren't gargantuan 20-quest-colossi but instead have a smaller questline with more choices within each quest (or different quests that aren't a direct "line" rather than the typical line-structure).

If you keep questlines smaller, you can increase the quality of each quest. I also love one-off quests that offer plenty of choices and maybe even affect other quests and factions. That kind of content is quicker and easier to implement and less painful to cut, too, compared to longer questlines.

 

[Jason Liang]

That is also true, but beside the point.

It amuses me that the forum faglords are putting on a great big show of ignorance in this thread, as though everyone has forgotten the social justice squealfest and world-class virtue-signaling competition that occurred when Kingdom Come: Deliverance debuted featuring 0 black people. The horror!

Those of you 1.) defending these sacks of garbage or 2.) pretending they don't exist will get the rope when The Day arrives, too.

But ever since Trump's election there's been a call to produce films and games for the radicalized right as well. Californians are as avaricious as anyone else. We want dem Neo-Nazi dollars too We know who likes playing

 

[JarlFrank]

I'm a real national socialist and don't feel oppressed on the Codex.

The irrationalist bulshit in other threads was strike two. With this one you are out. You just a lost a costumer for your future game, asshole.

What was strike one?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I'm a real national socialist and don't feel oppressed on the Codex.

Oh yeah? See what happens if Realms Beyond doesn't deliver.

 

[Blaine]

What was strike one?

The crime of being a white male, naturally.

 

[JarlFrank]

I'm a real national socialist and don't feel oppressed on the Codex.

Oh yeah? See what happens if Realms Beyond doesn't deliver.

Proof again that the only group on the Codex that is oppressed are developers of disappointing games!

Where's the Shit Games Liberation Front when you need it?

 

[Israfael]

To be honest, I don't get why there should be 'even' or arcane 'symmetric' design to the world/ companions/whatevs. Legion by design serves as a foreign, (initially) unknowable force that behaves like some sort of force of nature that ignores human plight, peculiarities of the situation or something else. Like a hurricane of order, it sweeps away the chaotic diversity and replaces it with cruel, but "Ordnung muss sei" rules of Caesar. Only after you meet him you understand his logic, why whole Nipton was crucified and what drives the leadership of the legion (even if the ordinary rabble is there just for the shits and giggles and has no big picture in mind). You can accept it (like the Disvafoured in Tyranny) or rebel against it (like the Eb faction), or just serve your own selfish ends (Chorus)

In that respect, NV is actually more fleshed out Tyranny (evil has won) than the Tyranny itself (since you interact with both sides at the same time, instead of picking one and following it's questline). Even more so, from a political science point of view, it's the eternal dispute between 'naturalists' and 'progressors' and the fruits of labor of the latter (like Congo massacres, Rwanda genocide and other conflicts that arose when the 'white man' (tm) (C) tried to impose his supposedly better and progressive way of living on a feral population.

PS Since i don't know the proper rendition of the russian word 'прогрессоры' into English, here's the description - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressor

 

[JarlFrank]

Yeah but the thing is, joining Legion feels less rewarding than the other factions due to it having less content than the other factions.

That's the kind of "symmetry" people care about.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

In the IGN interview I linked earlier, at some point Feargus was talking about contracts and dealing with publishers and said "do as I say, not as I do". These quotes from the book seem to be examples of that.

When I was interviewing Feargus it was after he had given a speech about good management practices like not being late. He came 15 minutes late for the interview and said something like "I should listen to my own advices more"

But he seemed like a genuinely nice person.

 

[JarlFrank]

In the IGN interview I linked earlier, at some point Feargus was talking about contracts and dealing with publishers and said "do as I say, not as I do". These quotes from the book seem to be examples of that.

When I was interviewing Feargus it was after he had given a speech about good management practices like not being late. He came 15 minutes late for the interview and said something like "I should listen to my own advices more"

But he seemed like a genuinely nice person.

 

[Israfael]

That's the kind of "symmetry" people care about.

As Lion el Johnson has said, loyalty is its own reward . Serve the Emperor, citizen, and venerate the Primarchs. As I said, if there would be same amount of content, then the Legion would not be so unknowable, isnt it?

 

[Latro]

Feargus’ reading list is something else altogether. It’s as though FU is deliberately trying to read every shitty, self-published, $2.99 piece of trash that Amazon tries to foist off on me in its “Sponsored Products” list.

You guys are too naive. Do you really think that a simpleton like him really read books? He just bought them and made a list to look like he has some knowledge in the subject. It's all fake, guys. When you criticise his taste you are giving him too much credit. I wouldn't be surprised if he suggested book passages and ideas out of the blue just to give the appareance that he has some cretive input. He never read these books. He probaby never read books. This is the type that only watch television. That is where you should be looking for to determine his taste.

I'm sure he gets tons of novel narrative ideas to help shape the design of such critically acclaimed masterpieces as Pillars of Eternity.

That would explain a lot.

Oh I found Obsidian's articles of incorporation and put them on scribd-> https://www.scribd.com/document/378532707/Obsidian-Entertainment-Inc-Articles-of-in-Corp.

This document has been removed from Scribd.

I cannot imagine Feargus's children reading a fantasy story about being a former software company CEO, that is way too specific.