chris-avellone
Latest
Deus Ex writer teams with BioWare designer for Sienna Storm
Sheldon Pacotti, lead writer of Deus Ex, has joined forces with Tony Evans, designer on games like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2, to create an ambitious sci-fi adventure dubbed Sienna Storm. Described as a "non-linear thriller," Sienna Storm uses sketchy, hand-drawn art to complement a lengthy story and a unique card game mechanic that takes the place of in-game combat. "Fluid situations are executed via an innovative card game mechanic that actuates the intel, gear, and skills you've gathered throughout the game," reads the game's description. "Persuasion is just as important as deduction in this sociopolitical thriller, in which the crucial moves in a dangerous multipolar world truly lie in your hands." Though full details on the card game component remain under wraps, the brief description offered by the developers makes it sound a bit like a less complicated take on Netrunner. Unlike most crowdfunding projects, which add minor rewards for each funding goal reached, Sienna Storm will reward its backers with an improved development team. Assuming the two stretch goals are reached, the aforementioned developers will be joined by Unreal Tournament composer Alex Brandon and Fallout designer Chris Avellone. Sienna Storm is seeking $179,000, and has currently raised $2,168. 28 days remain in the game's fundraising drive. [Image: Digital Knights]
FTL spools up 'Advanced Edition' on PC, iPad next year
Indie spacefaring sim FTL: Faster Than Light is getting an upgrade in the new year. Developer Subset Games has announced FTL: Advanced Edition, a beefed-up version that includes new weapons, drone classes and equipment for your ship, plus a new sector to explore with events written by Tom Jubert - the original FTL scribe - and guest writer Chris Avellone from Obsidian Entertainment. This content will be distributed as a free update to all existing owners of FTL. In addition to the PC version, FTL: Advanced Edition will also be available on the iPad next year. Both the Advanced Edition update and iPad port will launch at the same time in 2014, Subset Games says. FTL: Faster Than Light is a roguelike. After selecting a ship and crew, players navigate through randomly-generated sections of uncharted space, deal with space bandits and routinely engage in ship-to-ship combat as they attempt to reach the safety of the Galactic Federation.
Knights of the Old Republic 3 was in pre-production at Obsidian
Another installment in the ever-popular Knights of the Old Republic series was in pre-production at Obsidian, creative director Chris Avellone told Eurogamer. Avellone said KOTOR 3 would have featured the character Revan more than KOTOR 2, from which the character was largely absent. "I always liked the idea that Revan, as smart and powerful as your player-character was, was actually even more of a brilliant strategist than became apparent in the first game," Avellone said of Revan's role in the first game. "The entire second game is littered with clues as to 'why didn't Revan destroy the infrastructure here? What was he trying to make sure was still intact? What did he/she see that no one else saw?'" The third game would have players tracking down Revan as a character deemed "The Exile." Allevone said, "it felt like we were pitching and pitching [to LucasArts] and it just wasn't going anywhere, and at some point people just drew a line and said 'it's just not going to happen,' which made us kind of sad, but, OK, if that's the business, that's the business." Obsidian's pitch to Disney in February 2013 for a new Star Wars game was different than KOTOR 3, according to Eurogamer. Obviously, this was before EA obtained the exclusive rights to develop and publish Star Wars games in May 2013.
Torment passes $3.5 million, adds Chris Avellone to team
Torment: Tides of Numenera will officially feature design work and writing by Obsidian Entertainment's Chris Avellone, lead designer of Planescape: Torment. His position on the Torment team was a stretch goal for the game's Kickstarter, and his arrival on the team marks the passing of an impossible-sounding $3.5 million milestone – including about $67,000 in direct PayPal contributions.Kingkiller Chronicle series author Patrick Rothfuss has also joined up, his presence promised as a $3.25 million stretch goal. Both he and Avellone will contribute companion characters in addition to their other writing and design work.Torment has yet to complete its massive Kickstarter drive, but the as-yet notional game has already been delayed into 2015.
Torment: Tides of Numenera gets its first screenshot
This is your first screenshot of Torment: Tides of Numenera, the Planescape: Torment-inspired RPG which is already up to $3.2 million in Kickstarter funding with four days left to go. What you're looking at, project lead Kevin Saunders tells us, is an environment called The Bloom, which also happens to very much be a living creature. Yes, it's both a bustling commercial hub and a "semi-sentient predator" - sounds like Manhattan to us.The Torment Kickstarter washed past its $900,000 goal, amassing $1 million in just 8 hours. The campaign for the PC, Mac, and Linux game has broken more than a few stretch goals since then, unlocking everything from new areas, character companions, and novellas to developer inXile bringing in a live orchestra for the music. The traditional late Kickstarter surge should see the fundraiser past the $3.5 million stretch goal, at which point Obsidian's Chris Avellone, who was the lead designer of Planescape: Torment, will join Torment's design team.Click here for a larger look at Torment's first screenshot.
Obsidian's Avellone on South Park and the continued appeal of external franchises
Obsidian Entertainment has proven through its Project Eternity Kickstarter that it can afford to make original IPs. However, just because the company doesn't necessarily have to work in existing franchises doesn't mean the team will stop doing so."Working with franchises can be challenging, but at the same time I really did enjoy working on Star Wars, for example, and I have done a lot of Dungeons & Dragons games, but I still enjoy it very much," Obsidian creative director Chris Avellone told me. "And there's plenty of franchises out there that we would love to work with still."Developing games in pre-existing universes can be rewarding for Obsidian, Avellone suggested. South Park: The Stick of Truth, which is as far from Obsidian's comfort zone as anything would be, illustrates the benefits. "The fact that you're implementing game system mechanics that cater to the South Park franchise, in the sense of rude and obnoxious different weapon types," Avellone explained, "we rarely get a chance to flex our design skills in those directions, and it's a lot of fun to do. We're actually learning a lot while we're doing it. That's another advantage of working on someone else's franchise. You sort of get inside their head for a sense of how they think, and how that stuff can be converted into game mechanics." Obsidian was dropped into South Park with a surprisingly clear vision of what to do, as a concept had already been proposed. "We didn't actually know what they were thinking about in terms of RPGs, so we went up there for one day, they ran us this animatic sequence of how they imagined the opening of the game playing," and Obsidian "got it" immediately. "It was hilarious, and we got it, we see what you're trying to make here. It's going to feel like the show, it's going to look like the show. Here's how you interpret the controller mechanisms." What wasn't as clear from the outset was whether the Stick of Truth offer was true. "I would never have thought we'd get a chance to do an RPG like that, and like holy crap," Avellone said. "When we first heard about it, I seriously thought some other game company was punking us. 'Ha ha ha, we're from South Park and we want to do an RPG!... ha ha, fake.'"
Obsidian's Avellone on new Black Isle: 'I have no idea'
Interplay mysteriously resurrected Black Isle Studios, touting the previous iteration's goal "to make the world's best RPGs." Obsidian creative director Chris Avellone worked at Black Isle as a senior designer, but tweeted shortly after that neither he nor anyone else at Obsidian is involved.I asked Avellone today if he'd learned any more about the new Black Isle. "I have no idea," he said. "I do not know. I'm very curious." He then leaned in and added "I would like to know more." Avellone is pragmatic about the announcement, putting the proliferation of his favorite games above his own concerns about the use of the name. "If it means more RPGs, great. I love RPGs."I'll have more from my interview with Avellone soon.
How to write Fallout: New Vegas DLC
In a narrative-focused presentation at GDC Online, Obsidian Entertainment creative director Chris Avellone outlined the considerations that went into the development of the four Fallout: New Vegas DLC packs. For one thing, "We had the rare opportunity to know we were actually going to do four of these," unlike most game projects where sequels are not guaranteed, he said.However, they couldn't carry storylines over. "Each one was a very self-contained short experience" by design; each storyline and setting had to exist in isolation from one another, because the team could not assume that any player would own all four packs. That "short experience" adds up to just 10,000 lines of dialogue across all four, Avellone said – a hard maximum. As a result, Avellone and Obsidian had to pad out the dialogue with "trickery" including mute characters who spoke in hand gestures. "We were only able to get away with that for so long," he added.
Original Fallout and Planescape: Torment dev Black Isle Studios re-opens [updated]
The studio that created classics like Fallout and Planescape: Torment may be rising from the ashes – at least in name. A website for Black Isle Studios popped up with the image you see above and a mailing list signup, as NeoGAF discovered. There's also a Twitter account and a Facebook page tied to the website, and if you sign up for the mailing list, Black Isle is said to be a "a division of Interplay."InXile's Brian Fargo doesn't seem to be involved, as he tweeted, "I just read that Interplay is bringing back Black Isle. Hmmm... Not enough info for me to comment." We've already reached out to Obsidian – where many ex-Black Islers went when the studio shut down in 2003 – and have yet to hear back.Update: Interplay CEO and entrepreneur Herve Caen is behind the resurrection of Black Isle, we're told. The studio's website is also registered to Interplay, per WHOIS search. It's unclear who – if anyone – from the original Black Isle staff is involved with the studio.Update 2: Obsidian tells Joystiq that the new Black Isle, "Doesn't involve Obsidian at all." We've yet to hear back from Interplay or Herve Caen.Update 3: Obsidian creative lead Chris Avellone says on Twitter, "I know nothing about the Black Isle Studio news announcement, doesn't involve me or Obsidian... or well, anyone that I know. ;)"
Voice acting in RPGs may be more trouble than it's worth
This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. Jennifer Hale, Nolan North and Troy Baker, among others, have become video game celebrities for their voice acting – deservedly so, given how entertaining they can be as characters like Commander Shepard or Nathan Drake. Recorded speech has become a significant component of most all games, notably RPGs, having grown steadily since the shift to CD-ROM games in the mid-1990s. Yet their importance isn't always apparent.I, for one, didn't realize their impact on games until just a year or two ago, when I commented on game designer Brenda Brathwaite's blog about how an RPG could be done cheaper and faster without many modern components, which included recorded speech. Brathwaite responded specifically to the voice acting component, saying that once her company started making RPGs with voice acting, they discovered that their writing and editing process had to be completed well in advance of what they were used to, with the actor's recording of his or her lines "baking" the narrative section in place much earlier than normal."Great ideas were left sitting on the bench because the time to record them (or render graphics) wasn't available," she said in her reply.
Storybricks starts Kickstarter campaign, welcomes aboard animators Don Bluth and Gary Goldman
Build-your-own-MMO toolset Storybricks is getting a major second wind today as the company's announced that it's brought on board legendary animators Don Bluth and Gary Goldman to assist in animation and character design. The two are well-known in both the film and video game industry for their work on The Secret of NIMH and Dragon's Lair (among many other projects). "We intend to bring our experience in animation and character design to help provide appealing, believable, thinking characters to Storybricks' founding partners' vision for gaming," Goldman said. The two join a dream team of advisors for the project that includes Richard Bartle, Liz Danforth, and Chris Avellone. Storybricks is also tapping the Kickstarter well to help fund the project. The team hopes to raise $250,000 in pledges by June 1st. "Though we have found the right people who share our mad (or perhaps inspired) vision of role-playing and storytelling in computer RPGs, we haven't been able to find enough people willing to write us a check," the team explains on the page. Sponsors can get copies of the game, beta keys, and even digital versions of themselves inserted into the final version. [Source: Storybricks press release]
Irrational's Levine, BioWare's Gaider, and Obsidian's Avellone on why story matters in games
I grew up reading and loving fiction. As I've aged and taken up a profession in journalism, I've erred on the side of nonfiction. And these days, most of my storytelling experiences come from film, television, and video games. But I'd be lying if I said that many of those story experiences – especially in the gaming medium – left the same impression on me as the works of Marquez or Vonnegut.In late summer 2007, I played BioShock, and my tune began to change. Six months later, I played Mass Effect, and my stance on games as storytelling devices was altered even further. Somewhere along the line, between Jill sandwiches and lost princesses, game devs started implementing stories that I actually cared about.Fast-forward to 2011, and the concept of games as storytelling devices is more accepted than ever. But games haven't changed – they're still mechanically driven constructs, and they still allow player agency to run all over what the game dev set out for you to experience. I found myself having conversations with Kotaku's Jason Schreier over the course of the past year about this seeming duality within games. We felt it was time for a proper discussion.Enter: "Plot vs. Play: The Duality of Modern Game Design," the panel Schreier and I hosted at PAX East. Our idea was to gather several game developers who've tackled this duality head on, and have them discuss their individual approaches to navigating that issue. Irrational Games creative director Ken Levine, Obsidian Entertainment creative director Chris Avellone, and BioWare lead writer David Gaider were our first team of game devs to take up the challenge – something we hope to continue at future PAXes – and they did a great job.In our rush to prepare for both the panel and that weekend's coverage plans at our respective outlets, neither Jason nor myself thought to set up a video camera to catch the event on tape. Thankfully, Mash Those Buttons captured the whole hour and put it up on YouTube, which I've dropped above.Let us know what you think, and please suggest any devs you'd like to see play a part in future versions of "Plot vs Play." We're open to ideas!
Obsidian will help with Wasteland 2 if Kickstarter reaches $2.1 million
Brian Fargo's Wasteland 2 Kickstarter, having already surpassed two funding goals, has laid out a third one that will ensnare Obsidian Chief Creative Officer Chris Avellone if passed. With 17 days of funding left to go and $1.7 million already pledged, Fargo's company inXile wants to hit $2.1 million on Kickstarter, after which Avellone will agree to work directly with the design team on the project.Fargo and Avellone's relationship goes back to the better days of publisher Interplay, where the pair worked on titles like Fallout 1 and 2, and Planescape: Torment."Wasteland is one of my favorite RPGs of all time, and when Brian asked if I wanted to work on the sequel, I jumped at the chance," said Avellone. "While I've worked on Fallout 2 and Fallout: New Vegas, getting the chance to work on the spiritual predecessor to the Fallout franchise is a honor."Developer Obsidian will also lend a hand in the game's creation, providing "experience they have in the development of RPG games and tools to inXile."Fargo stated, "Obsidian has an incredible library of story, dialog and design tools that they have used to create hits like Neverwinter Nights 2, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, and of course, Fallout: New Vegas. Regardless of the tech we use to develop the game, experience with these tools will help us efficiently design the game without wasting time and resources on the tools needed for development."If you're looking to support the dream, you know where to go.
Obsidian missed Fallout: New Vegas Metacritic bonus by one point
Business sucks, alright? It's cold and rigid and occasionally unfair. Such is the case with Obsidian's Fallout: New Vegas contract with Bethesda, wherein the developer only received royalties if the game matched or exceeded an 85 rating on Metacritic. Leaving aside the fact that Metacritic is a woefully unbalanced aggregation of review scores from both vetted and unvetted publications, agreements like this can leave indie studios -- like Obsidian -- in the lurch should that Metacritic score just barely miss the mark.Unfortunately for Obsidian, Fallout: New Vegas currently has a Metacritic average of 84, a single point below the average that would've earned the company royalties on its product. "[Fallout: New Vegas] was a straight payment, no royalties, only a bonus if we got an 85+ on Metacritic, which we didn't," Obsidian creative director and co-owner Chris Avellone told one Twitter user.The Metacritic news comes just one day after we reported layoffs at the California-based developer -- layoffs that were said to be the result of a canceled next-gen project (codenamed "North Carolina") for an unnamed console. New Vegas lead producer Jason Fader's Facebook profile reflects the recent layoffs, also outing himself as former lead producer on the North Carolina project. His credentials also list an unnamed project known as "Vermont," but that could be Obsidian's upcoming South Park RPG (we've reached out for clarification).Additionally, Kotaku reports that the North Carolina project was to be published by Microsoft, and was intended for the still unannounced Xbox 360 successor console. Our tipster tells us that the North Carolina project was "desperately needed" for the studio's continued survival, which matches reports that Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart "choked up" while addressing his employees about the canned project.
Obsidian: Sex scenes help involve players in the game world
Obsidian's Chris Avellone, creative director on the upcoming Alpha Protocol, thinks that human interaction is a very important element in RPG -- especially when it comes to the love shared between two consenting adults. Avellone recently commented to Destructoid that including sex scenes in Alpha Protocol was "an important step, and it's not sex for sex's sake, but it's part of human interaction that makes you more involved in the game world and your characters."Sometimes the act can come off more out-of-place than appropriate, which our time with Dragon Age: Origins seemed to highlight, but, on the other hand (keep it where we can see it!) the sex scene in Mass Effect was fairly tasteful. Well, unless you're one of the misinformed minds at Fox News.
A touch of RTS in Neverwinter Nights 2
Like Kingdom Under Fire and Dragonshard before it, Neverwinter Nights 2 will be mixing some strategic elements into the RPG formula. Now, before fans of the D&D roleplay series cry foul, Obsidian's Chris Avellone explained to IGN that NWN2's "stronghold" system will simply be an element within the game's larger storyline. As part of your mission, you are charged with restoring a decrepit castle to a full, battle-ready garrison using various NPCs. The castle's defense involves army training and management, as well as synchronizing the troops controlled by other members of your party.IGN has also posted four updated gameplay vids and some new images. There is an additional gameplay vid at GameTrailers.
Obsidian's Avellone on breaking into the industry
Over at Penny Arcade, Obsidian co-founder Chris Avellone has some advice for aspiring game designers. A creative force behind RPG classics Fallout 2, Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale and the upcoming Neverwinter Nights 2, Avellone is always an entertaining read. He values persistence, practical experience, and attention to detail over academic background. And if you want to be a writer, a sense of humor doesn't hurt, either. Just make sure your email address isn't SuperMageCockLord@yourmomma.com. Chris will explain why.See also: NWN mod creator on Atari, Infinite Dungeons Obsidian's Urquhart: happy thoughts on KoTOR 3
