People News SHOCKER: Chris Avellone leaves Obsidian Entertainment

[agentorange]

He's a good writer but nowhere near as good as some of the people here would have you believe.

Who is a better writer as a RPG Developer? Could you provide us some examples?

Just because there is no one better doesn't make him "good." That's really more of an indictment of how terrible most RPG writing is.

 

[Telengard]

In a world where Janet Evanovich and Tom Clancy can be found in the Literature section of the library and have won multiple literary awards, and a world where the Star Trek reboots are considered great Science Fiction, one cannot stress enough that Avellone would be better than much of what you would find in the other forms of entertainment too.

And if you think the past was any different, then you honestly should check out the dime store novels of yesteryear.

 

[Irenaeus II]

He's a good writer but nowhere near as good as some of the people here would have you believe.

Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy Tactics is a pretty dark game.

Spoiler

Most key characters die, some in pretty tragic and psychologically perverse circumstances. Even guy who commits the story to writing gets burned at a stake as a heretic in the epilogue. Party saves the world, but costs them their happiness and/or lives and the truth gets suppressed

lol

pretty dark indeed

 

[Redlands]

He's a good writer but nowhere near as good as some of the people here would have you believe.

Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy Tactics is a pretty dark game.

Spoiler

Most key characters die, some in pretty tragic and psychologically perverse circumstances. Even guy who commits the story to writing gets burned at a stake as a heretic in the epilogue. Party saves the world, but costs them their happiness and/or lives and the truth gets suppressed

lol

pretty dark indeed

As much as I enjoy shitting on weeaboo trash, for fuck's sake learn to read to know which weeaboo trash you're supposed to be shitting on.

 

[Jasede]

Bra fucking vo.

 

[ROARRR]

what is a weeaboo ?

 

[Havoc]

what is a weeaboo ?

 

[Trip]

Just because there is no one better doesn't make him "good." That's really more of an indictment of how terrible most RPG writing is.

What is "good" game writing? Nicely stitched-together sentences? Overall plots? Environmental storytelling? Rich NPC interaction? Simply providing story blocks for players to put together in cool ways? Quite a murky category to be labeling someone's writing "good" or "bad" right out of the bat, I'd say. And having said it, yeah, I do agree with your second sentence, intuitively.

 

[ROARRR]

what is a weeaboo ?

WHAT?!
NO..no..noooooooo!
This can´t be

Spoiler

Still don´t know what a weeaboo is

 

[Telengard]

Still don´t know what a weeaboo is

It's in the Urban Dictionary. Google that bitch.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

 

[ROARRR]

It's in the Urban Dictionary, master .

For everyone else here:

Someone who is obsessed with Japan/Japanese Culture/Anime, etc. and attempts to act as if they were Japanese, even though they're far from it. They use Japanese words but usually end up pronouncing them wrong and sounding like total assholes. You can find alot of these faggots clogging up the forums of Gaia Online, hanging out in the international aisle of the supermarket, or crowding the manga section of your local bookstore. Synonym of wapanese.

 

[Irenaeus II]

He's a good writer but nowhere near as good as some of the people here would have you believe.

Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy Tactics is a pretty dark game.

Spoiler

Most key characters die, some in pretty tragic and psychologically perverse circumstances. Even guy who commits the story to writing gets burned at a stake as a heretic in the epilogue. Party saves the world, but costs them their happiness and/or lives and the truth gets suppressed

lol

pretty dark indeed

As much as I enjoy shitting on weeaboo trash, for fuck's sake learn to read to know which weeaboo trash you're supposed to be shitting on.

Maybe this?

 

[DeepOcean]

Let me put this way, Avellone understands the function of descriptive text is to capture the attention of the reader to some intriguing detail and not make you bored to death about characters doing boring trivial BS, Avellone knows how to fucking hook players with intriguing opennings, Avellone knows the protagonist should have something to do with what th fucking is happening on the story, Avellone games have pacing where something fucking interesting happens through the game on strategic points to hold interest, Avellone knows that characterization is more than characters spitting exposition on your face (Avellone characters have goals, hidden agendas, opinions and all the stuff good characters have.), Avellone plots explore theme, setting and meaning. (His characters carry theme and setting on an interesting way making their setting more alive.).

The PoE plot is exactly what happens when you get a writer that doesn't understand any of those things to try to write anything more complex than some cheap DnD fanfiction garbage, uther fail. Avellone is only overrated if you consider other videogame writers adequate and ohh boy... you would be making a BIG mistake, how about inverting roles and getting the dudes that written PoE to make Torment, I'm sure everything would be alright and nothing would go wrong.I'm comparing Avellone with other Obsidian writers, if I compared him with Bioware or worse... Bethesda... ugh... it wouldn't be fair as comparing an athlete with some Down's Syndrome kid.

 

[Roguey]

Avellone really botched the opening of Old World Blues though, way too much unskippable dialogue, like you're frozen in place for 20 minutes or longer.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

He's a good writer but nowhere near as good as some of the people here would have you believe.

I guess you haven't played KOTOR 2.

 

[Volourn]

"Just because there is no one better doesn't make him "good." That's really more of an indictment of how terrible most RPG writing is."

He's better than most movie/tv/book writers too. He's certainly better than you or your favroite writers 99% most likely. R00fles!

Go read your Twilight fanfiction.

 

[Excidium II]

MCA is good for what he is

 

[Metro]

He's a good writer but nowhere near as good as some of the people here would have you believe.

I guess you haven't played KOTOR 2.

I probably played it when you were in diapers. It's a good game. The writing is good. MCA is not Ernest fucking Hemingway.

Who is a better writer as a RPG Developer? Could you provide us some examples?

Ken Rolston, obviously~

He's certainly better than you or your favroite writers 99% most likely. R00fles!

You presume most people here read trash... granted they probably do... but...

You can tell from the focused butthurt that Codex has an unhealthy worship of him when they consider someone calling him a 'good writer' is an insult to his talent.

 

[Sabin Rene Figaro]

I'm glad I enjoy all kinds of RPG's and am not a stupid elitist retard over which side of the world they come from.

 

[Irenaeus II]

I'm glad I enjoy all kinds of RPG's and am not a stupid elitist retard over which side of the world they come from.

I enjoy all kinds of RPGs and I'm elitist as fuck. I hate bad RPGs with all force from the side of the world where bananas (and cocaine) come from.

 

[Jasede]

You can't both hate bad RPGs and enjoy PoE you dishonest fuck.

 

[J_C]

You can't both hate bad RPGs and enjoy PoE you dishonest fuck.

You are wise as fuck, you fuck!

 

[Cosmo]

Avellone really botched the opening of Old World Blues though, way too much unskippable dialogue, like you're frozen in place for 20 minutes or longer.

My thoughts exactly. Brilliant and funny dialog, but sitting through it felt like eating a whole box of turkish delights.

 

[Chris Avellone]

So... I concur and still hate myself for it to this day.

While this doesn't excuse the length (nothing can, and a number of people at the studio refused to give the DLC a chance on play days because of it), after numerous... discussions concerning how much more the context of Dead Money needed to be explained at the outset (which I fiercely disagreed with and its the reason Elijah goes on so long), the Old World Blues intro was designed as a response to prevent further such time-wasting discussions and I never should have bent the knee to the thought because, hey, players don't need to have everything explained to them if they see it working in the actual world they're exploring.

But I did write it, so I deserve the blame - it goes on too long, and it kills the momentum, frankly. The only part I probably could have chosen to remove with little consequences is the mockery sequence for anyone attempting to speed run through the DLC and claim it was too short (which was part of the reason that we had ending slides based on how many labs you found when you explored) and maybe the Barter sequence thread (I always feel like Barter gets shafted in Fallout if there's not enough stores), but I added the Barter sequence after one of our senior level designers, Jeff Husges, mentioned it would be a lot more fun to be able to outwit/show up the brains, and like most of what Jeff says, I agreed with it.

True story: the intro was based off the Venture Brothers (shocker! if you weren't already aware) where Dr. Girlfriend is being interrogated by the Guild of Calamitous Intent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVjuwhEWonU

Oh, well. That said, I did think it was the one DLC that was going to be burned in effigy when it was released since it came close to scaling the 4th wall.