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Game News Torment Kickstarter Update #9: Chris Avellone!

Brother None

inXile Entertainment
Developer
Joined
Jul 11, 2004
Messages
5,673
Actually, New Vegas was a pretty good game with exceptional NPCs, quests and dialogues (Yes Man was brilliant).
Exceptional NPCs and dialogues should have a lot of credit go to the writers (John Gonzalez as creative lead and lead writer, Chris Avellone, Eric Fenstermaker, Travis Stout as writers, Tess Treadwell, George Ziets, Jason Bergman, Nick Breckon, Matthew Grandstaff, Will Noble, Andrew Scharf as additional writers) (Fenstermaker and Stout are both total underappreciated bros). That ain't a diss on Sawyer and a lot of New Vegas' design stems from both his and MCA's work on Van Buren, plus no doubt he did plenty of writing himself, but I think his focus was more on project coordination and system design?
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
36,888
Sawyer was responsible for the high level concept design for all the areas, though yes the others deserve credit when they properly executed his ideas. :cool:

Editin' in more details
http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer/q/2025171501
For the most part, I only wrote high-level documents. I didn't write any of the plot-critical characters and I didn't do detailed area development or implementation.

I wrote our RDC (Region Design Constraints) documents, which had a basic overview of the concepts/conflicts for all of the primary locations (e.g. Goodsprings, Mojave Outpost, the vaults, The Strip, Nellis AFB, etc.) and I did the initial write-ups for the companions (just a page each covering their basic concept, background, personality, voice, and intended plot arc).

Let me just do a mini-writing credits dump to answer a lot of common questions here. Most of the major plot characters (Benny, Victor, Caesar, Mr. House) and the main story itself were written by the game's creative lead, John Gonzalez. Eric Fenstermaker wrote Veronica and Boone. Chris Avellone wrote Cass, Lanius, and Oliver. Travis Stout wrote Lily and Raul. Most of the other characters, major and minor, were split between the writers above and other area designers. Of course the actual full design treatments, quests, and implementation of areas were done by the area designers.

The only "big" characters I wrote were Chief Hanlon, Arcade Gannon, and President Kimball's speech. Also I just wrote/structured the dialogue in GECK. The design, implementation, and scripting for the associated quests of those dialogues (Return to Sender, For Auld Lang Syne, You'll Know It When You See It/Arizona Killer) were handled by Matt McLean, Travis Stout, Jeff Husges, and Charlie "Master of Hoover" Staples.

Most of the content design and generation I did was for game systems (SPECIAL + gambling/Caravan + equipment).
 

Gozma

Arcane
Joined
Aug 1, 2012
Messages
2,951
I'd give credit to Sawyer for the DT stuff in New Vegas, which was an actual good high-level design decision because it added a dimension to useful weapon variety and meant you'd shuffle through more guns messing around with their quirks instead of picking the obvious best weapon in each tier. The game doesn't hold together as a game at all, the overall story design is basically FO2 level, and I have no idea how many straightforwardly stupid design decisions like skill books were forced on them by F03 legacy and how many they reiterated themselves, but it at least managed not to ruin its own gun porn.
 

Duraframe300

Arcane
Joined
Dec 21, 2010
Messages
6,395
I'd give credit to Sawyer for the DT stuff in New Vegas, which was an actual good high-level design decision because it added a dimension to useful weapon variety and meant you'd shuffle through more guns messing around with their quirks instead of picking the obvious best weapon in each tier. The game doesn't hold together as a game at all, the overall story design is basically FO2 level, and I have no idea how many straightforwardly stupid design decisions like skill books were forced on them by F03 legacy and how many they reiterated themselves, but it at least managed not to ruin its own gun porn.

I don't really think thats right. Or I may be remembering FO2 a lot worse.
 

Duraframe300

Arcane
Joined
Dec 21, 2010
Messages
6,395
Actually, New Vegas was a pretty good game with exceptional NPCs, quests and dialogues (Yes Man was brilliant).
Exceptional NPCs and dialogues should have a lot of credit go to the writers (John Gonzalez as creative lead and lead writer, Chris Avellone, Eric Fenstermaker, Travis Stout as writers, Tess Treadwell, George Ziets, Jason Bergman, Nick Breckon, Matthew Grandstaff, Will Noble, Andrew Scharf as additional writers) (Fenstermaker and Stout are both total underappreciated bros). That ain't a diss on Sawyer and a lot of New Vegas' design stems from both his and MCA's work on Van Buren, plus no doubt he did plenty of writing himself, but I think his focus was more on project coordination and system design?

John Gonzalez is criminally underapriciated. There's still lots of people that think MCA was Lead Writer and only a few actually know who he is three years after. I heard more people speaking about Travis (Mainly because of Alpha Protocol's Steven Heck) and Fenstermaker (Vault 11)

John gets only really sparsly mentioned.
 

Volourn

Pretty Princess
Pretty Princess Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Mar 10, 2003
Messages
24,992
"I have no idea how many straightforwardly stupid design decisions like skill books were forced on them by F03 legac"

Because FO1 (or FO20 don't have skill book legacy. R00fles!
 

uaciaut

Augur
Joined
Feb 18, 2013
Messages
505
Actually, New Vegas was a pretty good game with exceptional NPCs, quests and dialogues (Yes Man was brilliant).
Exceptional NPCs and dialogues should have a lot of credit go to the writers (John Gonzalez as creative lead and lead writer, Chris Avellone, Eric Fenstermaker, Travis Stout as writers, Tess Treadwell, George Ziets, Jason Bergman, Nick Breckon, Matthew Grandstaff, Will Noble, Andrew Scharf as additional writers) (Fenstermaker and Stout are both total underappreciated bros). That ain't a diss on Sawyer and a lot of New Vegas' design stems from both his and MCA's work on Van Buren, plus no doubt he did plenty of writing himself, but I think his focus was more on project coordination and system design?

A lot (if not most) of what made New Vegas awesome was taken from Van Buren, at least from what i've seen revealed about the Van Buren project itself (it seems like they didn't have time/the necessary means to put in all of it) so props to all the people who worked on that, MCA included of course. I actually wonder what NV would've been like without all that "pre-production" type of what was Van Buren being there.

I don't get when this thread became a Sawyer appreciation/criticism/analysis station but i don't really get all the controversy around him.


edit: what the fuck is wrong about skill books? Jesus some people pick on anything no matter how dumb it is.
 
Joined
Mar 14, 2012
Messages
32
what the fuck is wrong about skill books? Jesus some people pick on anything no matter how dumb it is.

Because despite that even though in real life reading a book about surviving the wilderness actually makes one better at surviving the wilderness (a shocker, i know), in a game it's somehow retarded :roll:
 

janjetina

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 28, 2008
Messages
14,231
Location
Zagreb, Croatia
Torment: Tides of Numenera
There is nothing wrong with skill books, as long as they are rare (and / or somehow difficult to obtain, i.e. the character has to accomplish something to get to the place where the book is, as it is the best when the character has to do the work to advance in something, in contrast to just finding the book in a random place) and not overpowered. Skill books should have their requirements and the number of skill points that a skill book can give should diminish with the skill level the character has while reading it. As an example (with Medicine skill), a freshman medical student would gain the most from reading a physiology textbook, while an accomplished doctor who specialised in internal medicine wouldn't gain much, as he already has the knowledge the book should give. A person completely unfamiliar with biology wouldn't gain much either, as the book would probably be above his head.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
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Messages
36,888
A lot (if not most) of what made New Vegas awesome was taken from Van Buren, at least from what i've seen revealed about the Van Buren project itself (it seems like they didn't have time/the necessary means to put in all of it) so props to all the people who worked on that, MCA included of course. I actually wonder what NV would've been like without all that "pre-production" type of what was Van Buren being there.
http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer/q/276198240741757082
NV was given one year of development time, right? Was meeting the deadline hard? Also, how much was taken/slightly modded from Van Buren to use in NV? Do you think you could've met the deadline w/o the help of VB ideas to base off of?
No, it was about 18 months. All we really took from Van Buren were some faction ideas (Caesar's Legion), characters, and a variety of plot hooks/setting changes. We used no material resources from VB, no VB documentation, nothing that would actually give us any significant time savings, honestly.
 

uaciaut

Augur
Joined
Feb 18, 2013
Messages
505
A lot (if not most) of what made New Vegas awesome was taken from Van Buren, at least from what i've seen revealed about the Van Buren project itself (it seems like they didn't have time/the necessary means to put in all of it) so props to all the people who worked on that, MCA included of course. I actually wonder what NV would've been like without all that "pre-production" type of what was Van Buren being there.
http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer/q/276198240741757082
NV was given one year of development time, right? Was meeting the deadline hard? Also, how much was taken/slightly modded from Van Buren to use in NV? Do you think you could've met the deadline w/o the help of VB ideas to base off of?
No, it was about 18 months. All we really took from Van Buren were some faction ideas (Caesar's Legion), characters, and a variety of plot hooks/setting changes. We used no material resources from VB, no VB documentation, nothing that would actually give us any significant time savings, honestly.

Because Caesar's Legion - one of the biggest elements of the world, vital to plotline, story development and so on (not to mention the whole ideology which probably was a source to further develop/create lots of characters upon) was "not much". Not to mention characters, plot setting, etc. Van Buren's existence probably shortened the pre-production period of the game by a lot. For reference: http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Portal:Van_Buren

Btw i wasn't even calling out/criticizing Sawyer or anything, do you get some sort of mail alert every time his name is mentioned in a thread or something though? You replying with that speed in a defensive way seems really creepy D:
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
36,888
Because Caesar's Legion - one of the biggest elements of the world, vital to plotline, story development and so on (not to mention the whole ideology which probably was a source to further develop/create lots of characters upon) was "not much". Not to mention characters, plot setting, etc. Van Buren's existence probably shortened the pre-production period of the game by a lot. For reference: http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Portal:Van_Buren
He says it was superficial and it's your word (an outsider) versus his (someone involved in both games).
 
Self-Ejected

HobGoblin42

Self-Ejected
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Codex 2013 Codex USB, 2014
JS: No, it was about 18 months.

A production time of 18 months sounds pretty much for a content-only add-on. I am wondering if the complete Obsidian team actually worked on NV over the whole period of time.
 

Duraframe300

Arcane
Joined
Dec 21, 2010
Messages
6,395
JS: No, it was about 18 months.

A production time of 18 months sounds pretty much for a content-only add-on. I am wondering if the complete Obsidian team actually worked on NV over the whole period of time.

No, they have multiple teams.

The time is because its LOTS of content and they reworked a lot of previous mechanics related stuff. Though, it's not that noticable on first glance. You're right by the way, programming work done on the game wasn't big and there were very few people on the programming team.
 

uaciaut

Augur
Joined
Feb 18, 2013
Messages
505
Because Caesar's Legion - one of the biggest elements of the world, vital to plotline, story development and so on (not to mention the whole ideology which probably was a source to further develop/create lots of characters upon) was "not much". Not to mention characters, plot setting, etc. Van Buren's existence probably shortened the pre-production period of the game by a lot. For reference: http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Portal:Van_Buren
He says it was superficial and it's your word (an outsider) versus his (someone involved in both games).

What's superficial? They didn't come up with the whole concept of the legion on their own, they took it from Van Buren. I don't estimate that fact as being superficial simply because i think the Legion and how they interacted with the rest of the game was awesome and i think coming up with something similar to that would have either taken more time or would've been worse. That's my opinion on the subject, there's nothing superficial about it. And i don't think it's as much about "they copy pasted shit from VB" as much as it is "they had people that worked for so long on VB on the team and they could more easily work upon what they had created there".
But i digress, i simply think that without the elements that were taken from VB New Vegas would have been a completely different game, likely worse. That's just my opinion on this, it doesn't have to be the same as Sawyers or yours.
 

Duraframe300

Arcane
Joined
Dec 21, 2010
Messages
6,395
Because Caesar's Legion - one of the biggest elements of the world, vital to plotline, story development and so on (not to mention the whole ideology which probably was a source to further develop/create lots of characters upon) was "not much". Not to mention characters, plot setting, etc. Van Buren's existence probably shortened the pre-production period of the game by a lot. For reference: http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Portal:Van_Buren
He says it was superficial and it's your word (an outsider) versus his (someone involved in both games).

What's superficial? They didn't come up with the whole concept of the legion on their own, they took it from Van Buren. I don't estimate that fact as being superficial simply because i think the Legion and how they interacted with the rest of the game was awesome and i think coming up with something similar to that would have either taken more time or would've been worse. That's my opinion on the subject, there's nothing superficial about it. And i don't think it's as much about "they copy pasted shit from VB" as much as it is "they had people that worked for so long on VB on the team and they could more easily work upon what they had created there".
But i digress, i simply think that without the elements that were taken from VB New Vegas would have been a completely different game, likely worse. That's just my opinion on this, it doesn't have to be the same as Sawyers or yours.

Because the Van Buren Legion and New Vegas Legion are quite different and the story and interaction you talk about are unique to New Vegas. Van Buren and New Vegas don't really have the same narrative apart from there being a conflict.

There was already a huge difference between Avellone's and Sawyer's versions back in VB. I think that was what he meant. I agree though, that the concepts used from New Vegas were helpful. But, actual execution is the main work.
 

OSK

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 24, 2007
Messages
8,141
Codex 2012 Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Sawyer's a bro for releasing his New Vegas mod in his free time long after he stopped getting paid to work on the game.
 

grdja

Augur
Joined
Mar 20, 2011
Messages
250
Technicality question. If I do "T:TN+WL2" tier, when do I gate Wasteland 2, when Torment ships or when W2 gets released (assuming of course that W2 ships long before TTN).
 

Brother None

inXile Entertainment
Developer
Joined
Jul 11, 2004
Messages
5,673

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