Obviously the last thing I'd do would be to try and lure people away from inXile, given the great kindness they showed me, but in any event, I don't want to make a game like TTON, or even work on one again. That said, I think that Ziets is amazing -- I think the same of other folk I worked with, too. I had the chance to work with Kevin again at his new gig, but unfortunately I just don't have the time or (to be honest) interest to jump into another thing like that, and frankly I'm sure that Neal Hallford will be more than able to do worldbuilding. :D Likewise, I had the opportunity to work on WL3, but it seemed likely to be the same experience all over again, in a setting less suited to my pompous style.
A game like Torment is so large and sprawling that, unless you can sacrifice everything else in your life as Avellone did for Torment, or Vince did for AOD, you can't really have much control over it. The absurdity is that short of people specifically calling out my tiny contribution, there's sort of no tangible upside for the TTON work*, whereas with a tiny game like Primordia, when people talk about the game they're talking about what I did, and I can (when WEG is not in some way interposed) deal with them directly -- for example, replacing the game with another game key if they're unsatisfied, or talking through their problems with it. [* I did get paid, but the money would not be enough to induce me. I probably could've made more as a waiter.]
It's very weird being in the position where my role on the game is basically invisible because when people are annoyed, it's not really my place to talk with them and work through it. On Primordia, my usual shtick is to say, "All your criticisms are valid, I'm sorry the game failed you, here are some more things I think are wrong with it, let me know how I can make it up to you." But in this case, I can't say something like that since it's one thing to beat up on my own game and something else to do so when I'm a small part of a team of people I highly respect. At the same time, I can't possibly help patch the things that people are complaining about because the amount of resources are astronomical and I couldn't provide them even if I wanted to. When people complained that Primordia lacked a "how to play" screen, I added one; when they said that a couple cinematics sucked, we redid them -- they were right. And for years (when WEG would let us patch) we went through fixing every bug brought to our attention, and bug-hunting ourselves. But if someone says that the UI is off on the TTON Meres, I can't do anything about it -- I can't apologize or fix it, I can't publicly sympathize, I can't offer to replace the game. By the same token, when someone says, "This is the greatest RPG writing since PS:T's" they're not talking about me, they're talking about Colin, Gavin, George, Adam, Chris, etc., though in practice even George, Adam, and Gavin will get little public credit for it (notwithstanding George's great Forbes interview), and even Colin is hit or miss -- it probably will be packaged as Obsidian's Avellone, Rothfuss, and Fargo's work because that's how game reporters work. :/ Ultimately, this posture wreaks havoc on both my vanity and my guilt: I view my writing as pretty personal, but I also view games as commercial entertainment, so if my writing doesn't entertain the player, I've failed, and he deserves an apology and a refund. On a big project, you wind up somewhat alienated from your writing and thus incapable of taking ultimate responsibility for it with the customers, for better and worse.
I'd rather work on something smaller that I can control in my free time, and right now that's Fallen Gods. It's funny because, coincidentally, it too begins with the P.C. falling out of the sky, but I swear that predated TTON. :/ On Fallen Gods, I can take the blame for everything -- any shortcomings of anyone else on the project is a product of my poor direction or poor compensation. And while I can share the credit freely, I can also feel confident that any credit it gets is at least mine to tithe.
now and in a couple years, when the butthurt has decreased, the same will be said of Torment.
