Over 20 Years of RPG Making with Chris Avellone
-
Category: News ArchiveHits: 2008
We've been following Chris Avellone's every move since GameBanshee's inception, so in the event that you've been with us from the beginning, then most of what you read in this new interview on GamesTM with the veteran design should be a refresher of knowledge gained before. Topics include his earliest design experience, his projects and eventual departures from Black Isle Studios and Obsidian Entertainment, the RPGs he's currently working on, and more. A snip:
While you did work on Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale, your biggest role was with the intriguing Planescape Torment.
That’s not a pretty story. Interplay had the Planescape license but didn’t know what to do with it. They tried to make a PlayStation game with it but that didn’t go anywhere, so all they had left was ‘take the license, take the Infinity engine, make a game with half the people that normally work with this engine – GO!’. That said, I loved it. I got to write a story well in advance of the production period and iron out all the kinks. We had a small, passionate team and it seems to be a game that has stood the test of time and people enjoyed – I’m gratified that people seemed to respond to the themes and direction of the game, because I was certainly terrified they wouldn’t and I would lose my job over it.
...
Things got even messier with Baldur’s Gate 3 and Van Buren (Fallout 3) and after the cancellation of the former you soon left Interplay. What happened?
While I was there, Van Buren hadn’t gone much beyond the paper prototype, which was considerable on the area, system and story side. The reason for this was there was no staff, and even as a developer of one, I kept getting pulled off for Lionheart where my role wasn’t very well-defined from Black Isle’s end. When I left that, I thought I’d be free to work on Van Buren, but got drafted into Baldur’s Gate 3 pre-production work, which I didn’t enjoy very much. After it was cancelled, I left and didn’t have much exposure to what happened to Van Buren from then on, but I did keep my design thoughts close in case I could explore them again. But at that point, it became clear to me that no matter how hard the developers worked, we could lose it all in a second.
So, while I loved Van Buren, I left Fallout at Interplay and moved on, taking a brief stop to work with Snowblind again as a script doctor on Champions Of Norrath. And sure enough, within a year, Van Buren was cancelled, which I regret, but knew [that it] wasn’t my or the other devs fault. My only other regret was that I should have realised from that brief stint freelancing with Snowblind that that could have proved a much better branch to pursue from that point on.
...
You then co-founded Obsidian with a number of ex-Black Isle employees – what were the first games you were involved with there?
I was lead designer on Knights Of The Old Republic 2 and wrote almost all the companions for Neverwinter Nights 2. That was a pretty brutal death march. I wasn’t actually a Star Wars fan, but I did become a fan of KOTOR and its universe, and grew to enjoy the possibilities of exploring Star Wars outside the realm of the ‘modern’ universe. I also got the opportunity to do a few Star Wars short scripts and, even better, write short comic bursts for Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures. It was my first foray into comics but my editor at Dark Horse, Dave Marshall, was very generous with his time and showed a lot of patience. I’m forever grateful to him.
Probably Obsidian’s most notable game of this period was Fallout New Vegas. It was great to get back into the Fallout world and incorporate some of the Van Buren elements I’d spent years designing back at Interplay such as locations, factions, tech and even the Night Kin’s psychosis. I really enjoyed working on it, especially the DLCs.
