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We're finally at the last installment of Will Ooi's long and interesting interview with Obsidian's chief creative director Chris Avellone, available on Will's Blog and Gamasutra. This time Chris goes on length about Fallout titles, especially Fallout: New Vegas and its DLC, Fallout 2 and Van Buren, those being the titles he worked on. The subjects include the original plans for Ulysses, what he and the people on the team learned from the mistakes made with Fallout 2, humor in games and more. Avellonian snippet ahead:<blockquote>WO: When cutting Ulysses from the original, vanilla version of New Vegas, was there always an intention to have him - as well as characters only hinted at, such as Elijah - feature in the DLCs?
MCA: No, I didn't know until the end of DLC1 that Ulysses would be part of the narrative arc, it evolved out of writing those characters in the DLC. Elijah and the Burned Man were always intended for the DLCs, and planning to incorporate them and the other hooks occurred before FNV was finished.
As far as Ulysses, there's been some talk that the DLCs feature material that was axed in the game, and that's largely incorrect.* Even Ulysses' incarnation in FNV isn't what he came to be in the DLC narrative arc. All the characters and locations in the DLC are brand new, and the most we did was to make sure there were visual and narrative hooks to these DLCs prior to release (signage, hints, discussions about the other courier). Doing these hooks aren't easy to mask because everyone can have access to the GECK and files on release, so as one example - with Felicia Day's recordings where Veronica discusses Elijah post-Dead Money, we had to make up fake topic lines in order to mask who she'd really be talking about when the DLC was released.
* One notable exception was the LAER rifle, which was a model from New Vegas we didn't use in the main game. We decided to make it work in the DLCs.
WO: Prior to the release of Honest Hearts, the The Burned Man, Joshua Graham, was of near-mythical status thanks in part to the fact that he was only ever spoken of and hinted at with awe. What are the considerations in ensuring that such mystique is maintained when finally bringing these characters to life?
MCA: First, the character model. There's challenges in models in Fallout, where you have a choice between doing a model that can lip-sync and have facial expressions (like Graham) but not have as much freedom with the body type and construction, or you can go down the path that we did with Ulysses, where we decided to forsake that in order to build a completely custom model for the player to interact with.
Also, you have to be clear - when talking about a myth, it's just that, a myth. The reality in meeting someone is certain to either defy people's expectations (and it's difficult when this happens, because when a player imagines a certain character to be a certain way and they're not, they're invariably disappointed because let's face it - anything they can imagine as cool is usually going to be better than what we try to guess would be cool for them).
At the same time, it's the perfect opportunity to surprise them and use that expectation as a twist, which I think Graham (and Josh) did extremely well.</blockquote>
MCA: No, I didn't know until the end of DLC1 that Ulysses would be part of the narrative arc, it evolved out of writing those characters in the DLC. Elijah and the Burned Man were always intended for the DLCs, and planning to incorporate them and the other hooks occurred before FNV was finished.
As far as Ulysses, there's been some talk that the DLCs feature material that was axed in the game, and that's largely incorrect.* Even Ulysses' incarnation in FNV isn't what he came to be in the DLC narrative arc. All the characters and locations in the DLC are brand new, and the most we did was to make sure there were visual and narrative hooks to these DLCs prior to release (signage, hints, discussions about the other courier). Doing these hooks aren't easy to mask because everyone can have access to the GECK and files on release, so as one example - with Felicia Day's recordings where Veronica discusses Elijah post-Dead Money, we had to make up fake topic lines in order to mask who she'd really be talking about when the DLC was released.
* One notable exception was the LAER rifle, which was a model from New Vegas we didn't use in the main game. We decided to make it work in the DLCs.
WO: Prior to the release of Honest Hearts, the The Burned Man, Joshua Graham, was of near-mythical status thanks in part to the fact that he was only ever spoken of and hinted at with awe. What are the considerations in ensuring that such mystique is maintained when finally bringing these characters to life?
MCA: First, the character model. There's challenges in models in Fallout, where you have a choice between doing a model that can lip-sync and have facial expressions (like Graham) but not have as much freedom with the body type and construction, or you can go down the path that we did with Ulysses, where we decided to forsake that in order to build a completely custom model for the player to interact with.
Also, you have to be clear - when talking about a myth, it's just that, a myth. The reality in meeting someone is certain to either defy people's expectations (and it's difficult when this happens, because when a player imagines a certain character to be a certain way and they're not, they're invariably disappointed because let's face it - anything they can imagine as cool is usually going to be better than what we try to guess would be cool for them).
At the same time, it's the perfect opportunity to surprise them and use that expectation as a twist, which I think Graham (and Josh) did extremely well.</blockquote>
