Chris Avellone Q&A

Chris is going to be working on Fallout:New Vegas, right?

If yes, then he needs to be diplomatic when talking about Fallout 3. Saying something wrong/negative might make him lose his job.

Also, he probably feels like a bag of shit when being involved in such great and artistic games, gave him nothing till this day. When such anti-creative people like Todd or Pete drive exppensive cars and are being called gods of the game industry.

Edit: In short, he doesn't give a damn anymore IMO.
 
TamaNeko said:
I'm guessing he means that it's a good thing that the RPG genre is attracting more people who would otherwise never play RPGs if it wasn't for Fallout 3.
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...But they still haven't played any RPGs.

Public said:
Chris is going to be working on Fallout:New Vegas, right?
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Possibly, sure, I can't see him skipping the opportunity to work on it completely.

That said, he's one of Obsidian's heads, he's not badmouthing one of their payrollers.
 
Mmm yeah, can't forget that. Can't help but wonder what his reponses would be if this interview was done months earlier.
 
Brother None said:
TamaNeko said:
I'm guessing he means that it's a good thing that the RPG genre is attracting more people who would otherwise never play RPGs if it wasn't for Fallout 3.
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...But they still haven't played any RPGs.
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But maybe they'll stumble upon the Fallout Trilogy in a shop someday and check it out. That's good.
Except for when they show up here later to ask about refuelling a certain vehicle.
 
TamaNeko said:
Mmm yeah, can't forget that. Can't help but wonder what his reponses would be if this interview was done months earlier.
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It probably would have been the same. You have to remember that he's a real person with a real job. Most people are at least superficially polite when they are speaking to the general public without hiding behind an anonymous internet account. As the project lead on an action RPG designed for a mainstream audience, he can probably appreciate another mainstream action RPG. And he managed to identify the major strength of the game, which suggests that he enjoyed the game more than many of the posters here.
 
I'm quite sure Chris enjoyed it. Not that that says anything about the quality of the game, other than that he enjoyed it. Personally I don't have a particularly high opinion about him. So what if he worked on FO 2, it doesn't make him godlike and doesn't make his opinion dogma. If anything because he was responsible for New Reno, I'm inclined to take his opinions with more than a pinch of salt.
 
Hamenaglar said:
I'm quite sure Chris enjoyed it. Not that that says anything about the quality of the game, other than that he enjoyed it. Personally I don't have a particularly high opinion about him. So what if he worked on FO 2, it doesn't make him godlike and doesn't make his opinion dogma. If anything because he was responsible for New Reno, I'm inclined to take his opinions with more than a pinch of salt.
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um, its not Fallout 2 that gives him all his respect. Its Torment. And the fact hes given Fallout fans endless amounts of Fallout lore and information.
 
Not bashing Fallout 3 was probably a clause in their deal to get to work on Vegas.

Who knows though. Vegas could turn out to be a pile of shit too, and it probably will if it's modeled after New Reno.
 
Hamenaglar said:
I'm quite sure Chris enjoyed it. Not that that says anything about the quality of the game, other than that he enjoyed it. Personally I don't have a particularly high opinion about him.
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I have a pretty high opinion of MCA even if he hasn't produced anything extraordinary since leaving BIS. His work on the Fallout Bibles gives him a justified high standing amongst Fallout fans.

That said, I'm not sure much of what he said is that shocking. He likes the game? So did I, kind of. It got a bit boring after a while, but it was better than Oblivion and had enjoyable parts. It wasn't great, but it had its fun moments.

He doesn't comment at all on its level of RPGness or Falloutness, other than noting he thinks Oblivion and Fallout combine well, which I don't agree with as they're pretty different genres of games.

The only thing he says that really strikes me as interesting is that they consulted Tim Cain. That's news to me.
 
Brother None said:
13pm said:
I wonder if he's not saying anything really bad about Bethesda's work just to preserve good relationship.
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*shrugs* We've been over this. Devs who don't like other developer's games generally just shut up about it. If they say they like it, they usually do.

Though the fact that Obsidian is currently on Bethesda payroll does make asking them a bit of a pointless exercise.
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He was asked very directly about Beth's FO3. A 'no comment' is just about the same as 'I think it's shit.'

Compared to all the shooters I've played over the last several years (and I've played quite a few), FO3 is by far the worst when it comes to shooting mechanics, which is pretty important in a shooter. Its strong point is open world exploration. This combat system works better in Oblivion than in FO3, magic vs. supposed real-world weapons.
 
Brother None said:
The only thing he says that really strikes me as interesting is that they consulted Tim Cain. That's news to me.
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That would not surprise me, in hindsight the game has a lot in common with VTM: Bloodlines in being a FPS with dialog trees, XP, stylized hacking and lockpicking and all that. Now while I'm a huge fallout 3 defender I feel that bloodlines did a lot of these things better (despite the bugs) but a lot of the way they did things are very similar. If they did not consult Tim for sure they "consulted" his version of a FPS RPG.
 
Well cain, having absoloutely no stake in the project, couldn't have had too much sway or much in the way of demands.

He probably took a glance, saw some plans, said "Yeah thats alright" before going back and working on the game that's actually his job
 
It's interesting that he does kind of trash the idea of a "Non-kill" npc, so maybe we can look forward to none of that nonsense in new vegas
 
TamaNeko said:
Mmm yeah, can't forget that. Can't help but wonder what his reponses would be if this interview was done months earlier.
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Not sure, but I remember these pre-FO3-release comments:

http://www.nma-fallout.com/article.php?id=39341
10. What advice would you have for someone making another Fallout game?

Chris Avellone
Don't do one. Do something better and raise the bar even higher.
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As the project lead on an action RPG designed for a mainstream audience, he can probably appreciate another mainstream action RPG.
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Someone should explain that to the Beth devs who went all snipey on Diablo 3. Heh.
Sour grapes much?
 
13pm said:
The only time it really hurt was Fallout 3, because that game felt like it had the potential to be better than Torment, and when I was working on it, I could feel the inner creativity “sing” because it felt like everything was clicking into place. </blockquote>
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:cry:
 
Probably not any of the actual plot, but I wouldn't be surprised if they mentioned some of the places, factions and characters from Van Buren.
 
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