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Incline Chris Avellone Appreciation Station
- Thread starter Crooked Bee
- Start date
anus_pounder
Arcane
Fairfax
Arcane
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Book will be released on the 15th, and no sign of an english translation.
Irenaeus II
Unwanted
Avellone speaks Spanish?
Irenaeus II
Unwanted
I like this stuff also. AoD has some very interesting dialogue/plot branching, a case I'd love to see applied more to games, even if it shorten their lengths. Because they increase replayability.
TheScarecrow
Educated
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Well... i will try going to a bookstore when this has come out and take a picture of what Avellone wrote to translate it.
Fairfax
Arcane
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Well... i will try going to a bookstore when this has come out and take a picture of what Avellone wrote to translate it.
anus_pounder
Arcane
Obviously, those games are what inspired him to work on his own JRPG, Planescape.
Name
Cipher
For one thing the high level spells animation is inspired by Final Fantasy.
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You had to have played the game at the time it came out to really note the similarity. A lot of the things that PS:T did became more normal for Western RPGs later on. The unique, stylised companions with dedicated weapon types you can't switch. No armor switching, just accessories. And the spell animations of course.
Azrael the cat
Arcane
Yeah, the 'not quite steampunk' prominence of factories, pollution, guilds that look a bit like ruthless corporations (the Godsmen), urban decay interpretation of a fantasy setting seems partially inspired by FF7 and Chrono Trigger as well. Obviously there are other, possibly greater, influences and MCA probably shared influences with the creators of those games, but it's a setting that was far more common in Japanese pop art/games/comics. There's plenty of Western counter examples, but they were usually aimed at slightly more niche, or older, audiences at the upper end of mid brow, compared to the popularity of such settings in Japan, where especially 1970-1990s they had a lot of cultural pride in taking bits of Western traditions/tech and doing things totally unexpected with them.
At a broader level, you could also include the idea that computer games can aim for an emotional effect upon the player. PS:T wasn't the first decently written computer game (and the JRPGs that inspired it are often a little cringe-worthy in their attempts at emotional impact), but usually 'good writing' would fall into one of three categories - (1) humour, generally of the slapstick variety, (2) interesting at a more cerebral level (e.g. 'A mind forever wandering' - not saying that such games were any more intelligent, just that they're aiming more for a 'that's interesting' effect than an emotional one), or (3) thematic. FO is a good example of the 3rd one - superficially similar writing style to PS:T, but it's always aimed at creating a stylish Mad Max feel, and often relies on not giving the decisions any real emotional weight, so that potentially horrific scenarios can be fun or even humorous.
And yeah, those high-level spell animations. Even at the time I fucking hated those. Cool the first time you cast them, but such a fucking drag on the combat pacing after that. And whilst this certainly isn't the worst aspect of the animations, what makes them particularly unforgivable for me is that they actually run counter to immersion. Normally, when playing a crpg, I can ignore the fact that a spell that summons a meteor to hit the planet doesn't result in mass extinctions/floods/carnage outside of a 2 square metre target zone. When a spell summons an extra-planar cannon to fire at the enemy, I don't usually find myself thinking about who loaded and prepped the cannon, or why someone doesn't use a spell to go fetch that damn thing (or just reverse-engineer it) and use it for more than one shot. But the animations play those spells out in the most literal damn interpretation of the spell description, to the point where you're summoning and firing weapons of mass destruction at single, human-sized, targets, from a range somewhere outside the fucking solar system.
Even if that wasn't the case, they'd still be annoying. But holding up combat every time I want to cast a high level spell, and then having the opposite effect of what the developer's flimsy justification is based upon, makes me far less forgiving than if it was just a matter of having different priorities to the developer.
At a broader level, you could also include the idea that computer games can aim for an emotional effect upon the player. PS:T wasn't the first decently written computer game (and the JRPGs that inspired it are often a little cringe-worthy in their attempts at emotional impact), but usually 'good writing' would fall into one of three categories - (1) humour, generally of the slapstick variety, (2) interesting at a more cerebral level (e.g. 'A mind forever wandering' - not saying that such games were any more intelligent, just that they're aiming more for a 'that's interesting' effect than an emotional one), or (3) thematic. FO is a good example of the 3rd one - superficially similar writing style to PS:T, but it's always aimed at creating a stylish Mad Max feel, and often relies on not giving the decisions any real emotional weight, so that potentially horrific scenarios can be fun or even humorous.
And yeah, those high-level spell animations. Even at the time I fucking hated those. Cool the first time you cast them, but such a fucking drag on the combat pacing after that. And whilst this certainly isn't the worst aspect of the animations, what makes them particularly unforgivable for me is that they actually run counter to immersion. Normally, when playing a crpg, I can ignore the fact that a spell that summons a meteor to hit the planet doesn't result in mass extinctions/floods/carnage outside of a 2 square metre target zone. When a spell summons an extra-planar cannon to fire at the enemy, I don't usually find myself thinking about who loaded and prepped the cannon, or why someone doesn't use a spell to go fetch that damn thing (or just reverse-engineer it) and use it for more than one shot. But the animations play those spells out in the most literal damn interpretation of the spell description, to the point where you're summoning and firing weapons of mass destruction at single, human-sized, targets, from a range somewhere outside the fucking solar system.
Even if that wasn't the case, they'd still be annoying. But holding up combat every time I want to cast a high level spell, and then having the opposite effect of what the developer's flimsy justification is based upon, makes me far less forgiving than if it was just a matter of having different priorities to the developer.
Last edited:
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It's something people like to do, pick a very superficial resemblance and call it the defining feature. "PST is a JRPG because spell animations." "Might and Magic VI is an FPS because real-time combat."
Fairfax
Arcane
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Found a pretty good interview with MCA from 09/14.
A big loss, really. This would've been the first full fledged game led by MCA in 10 years, and his first original setting ever.
Now which project was that? Hmm...if I had to guess, I'd guess it's their 2nd crowdfunded game, which might was cancelled/taken over as Louisiana.
This confirms that Feargus did give him free rein to create a new IP and that he was Creative Lead in one of their secret projects. I think the "core writing work" was either PoE editing or giving feedback/editing Stormlands stuff.
A big loss, really. This would've been the first full fledged game led by MCA in 10 years, and his first original setting ever.
Now which project was that? Hmm...if I had to guess, I'd guess it's their 2nd crowdfunded game, which might was cancelled/taken over as Louisiana.
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You don't need to use Google. Most major MCA interviews find their way to the Codex front page: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...with-chris-avellone-at-scripts-scribes.94397/
http://www.rpgcodex.net/tags.php?id=497
http://www.rpgcodex.net/tags.php?id=497
"Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination. This is the war of the future."
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Should we start calling FO3 a turn-based isometric CRPG then?
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