Incline Chris Avellone Appreciation Station

[Inland Empire]

Is he really doing that though? Seems more he is pointing out a misconception.

Misconception he gave legs to and watched as the internet went crazy with it. If he had any balls left, he would actually tell that it was his fuck up that began the whole goddamn thing. But that does not fit his agenda.

Must have missed that he started it? Was he the one that mentioned it?

"[Fallout: New Vegas] was a straight payment, no royalties, only a bonus if we got an 85+ on Metacritic, which we didn't," Avellone wrote on Twitter.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/o...as-metacritic-score-studio-head/1100-6366337/

 

[Fenix]

That was kinda the point of fallout to begin with, with its "retrofuturistic" gimmick. It's not so much "ree, nuclear war is bad" as it is "lol, look at those 50s boomers and their silly nuclear scare".

I disagree, it all narrative is driven and fueled by those fears, that almost yesterday was very much alive.
It was alive in 80s avd even part of 90s.

 

[Fenix]

I get what you're saying, but medieval games somehow aren't dead even though we're not fighting with swords anymore.

Fallout crate atmosphere by using out recent past, and widespread fear (propaganda fueled) of nuclear war. It's not the same.
Medieval fantasy use same thing, only it's about myths, and mythological conscience - heroics, epics etc.

Ismaul you are quite rigth.

 

[Fenix]

And fucking up isn't dead.

Fear of nuclear war has nothing with it at all.

Bomb scare was a major part of American culture in the 50-s - see "Foster, You're Dead" by PKD as a great example - and Fallout got it as a part of the deal with all retrofuturistic aesthetics; but it is not a main theme of the game.

Don't know about US, but in USSR those fears were well alive in 80s too.
Also, yeah - Terminator used it too, and was supersuccessful.

 

[Latelistener]

The thing is Fallout 3 got a free pass from reviewers for its bugs, while NV didn't.

Soyboy reviewers + Bethesda asslickers. Only later they realized that NV is actually a better game.

Skyrim has 94 on Metacritic, except that thing didn't even support more than 2GB of RAM on release causing various issues on PC for people who had more RAM (that's practically any decent gaming rig back then). It's also a much simpler game. Only two factions you can join and no reputation system.

 

[Tihskael]

Hail Todd.

Psst.

Spoiler

Hey, I know who you are. Hail Todd.

 

[KyivAfter12am]

I wouldn't say Fallout is dead, the great thing about post-apo is how it's all grounded in the real world locations and history, so that gives you near infinite amount of twists you can apply to the formula and keep it fresh. Wasteland 3 moving to a winter-y setting was a seemingly small change but it made a big difference.

Fallout is dead in a sence its foundation - fear of nuclear war is dead.
There are no global powers that oppose each other due ideology.
US won't bomb China cause then it will go bunkrupt immediately.
China won't bomb US cause same reason.
War of tomorrow will be done with bacteriological weapon and sabotage.

By this logic Fallout was never alive. Noone was afraid of nuclear war in 1997, I would argue people are more afraid of various global cataclysms now than in the 90's.

 

[Fenix]

Fear of nuclear war was real. Yes, novbody fear that then, but people remmeber it, as it was very real just 10 years ago, or 15 - it's not that much time.
People who made it were rather familiar with subject.
Fallout exploted not only nuclear war theme, but nuclear, radioactive pollutions - which is more fresh theme, as just 10 years before that happened nuclear plant disaster.
Also, Fallout exploited also biological weapon theme - FEV is surpisingly accurately describing today's "vaccine".

 

[taomcio]

Behold, the ultimate cRPG designer is here. I present to You... Mr Josh Avellone!

 

[agris]

Have they ever said what was the extra features that they added that weren`t necessary?

back in the early 2010s when we thought that FNV may not be just reheated Gamebryo gruel, I read a lot about it prior to release and after. I have a vague recollection of reading an interview, likely with our Chief Balancing Officer (CBO), that addressed what items caused poor-man’s Interplay to really stretch themselves too thin.

It was:

• The 3 4? paths to resolving the game
• The scope of the Legion, evident by example of how non-sensical quests and dialogue are once you’re in Caesar’s camp
• The end sequence Hoover dam battle

And the root cause for much of this was (a) poor-man’s Interplay unfamilairty with the Quake 1 eng.. err Gamebryo, and (b) poor production such that they didn’t realize their ambitions couldn’t match the timeline they had and an inability to address the reality and make cuts.

edit: for context, and after reading @roguey’s post above, I expect I read this no later than the dead money DLC announcement, as Ulysses wasn’t part of the analysis.

 

[Humbaba]

Full damage control. OK.

Anyway, anyone knows what did he write in WOTR?

Probably nothing. He is not credited as a writer but as "narrative designer" which I have no idea what that means and let's be honest neither do you.

Apparently he wrote Nok-Nok in Kingmaker but Nok-Nok was a meh character at best. I was surprised to learn that he didn't write Tristian because Tristian is a highly avellonian sort of character.

 

[Humbaba]

I think the first person to point this out as a misconception was Feargus himself.

Also, the the first source of this misconception was Avellone himself with his very vague and insinuating tweet.

How is this vague? Bethesda promised them a bonus if they got a 85+ on metacritic which they didn't hence no bonus was given. People on twitter must have shite reading comprehension.

 

[Razor]

Holy fuck at Avellone's new Twitter avatar

Oh god yes

Let the powers that be guide MCA to the light. I would love to hear Avellone's take on the eternal question that has plagued men for ages.

What can change the nature of SNEED?

Is it the omnipresent tranny menace?

Or is it buck breaking?

Or maybe advanced buck breaking techniques?

Or maybe, just maybe it was the Taliban all along...

Or... "You see: Sneed's Feed & Feed (Formerly Chucks)"

 

[Tihskael]

Holy fuck at Avellone's new Twitter avatar

Oh god yes

Let the powers that be guide MCA to the light. I would love to hear Avellone's take on the eternal question that has plagued men for ages.

What can change the nature of SNEED?

Is it the omnipresent tranny menace?

Or is it buck breaking?

Or maybe advanced buck breaking techniques?

Or maybe, just maybe it was the Taliban all along...

Or... "You see: Sneed's Feed & Feed (Formerly Chucks)"

I have seen my fair share of retards on this god forsaken website and oh boy, you definitely take the cake.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Wait really, Caravan was given priority? That's some dumb bullshit. I get that New Vegas should have gambling, but there were more important things to work on and caravan isn't even that good anyway.

the best thing that sawyer did during the development of NV was keep his hands off anything that mattered

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Probably nothing. He is not credited as a writer but as "narrative designer" which I have no idea what that means and let's be honest neither do you.

narrative designer is to a writer as CYOA books are to regular books

the idea that they're fundamentally the same is how you end up with movie games

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Holy fuck at Avellone's new Twitter avatar

Isn't it 41%?

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Wait really, Caravan was given priority? That's some dumb bullshit. I get that New Vegas should have gambling, but there were more important things to work on and caravan isn't even that good anyway.

the best thing that sawyer did during the development of NV was keep his hands off anything that mattered

Nonsense. Josh directly mandated the gun-porn side of things (and iirc was directly responsible for most of the itemization design and implementation), wrote Hanlon (arguably the best character in the base game), and pushed back strongly when Feargus and Parker suggested the design be more in line with FO3 than FO1&2 for the sake of commercial continuity. His most major failure as PL was overestimating the capabilities of Obsidian's programmers and underestimating what a piece of shit Frankensteined engine Gamebryo is.

He made other mistakes too -as much as I love it, Beyond the Beef probably should have been cut, and I'm definitely not here to defend Caravan- , but most of what's good in NV has his fingerprints on it.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Yeah, Beyond the Beef didn't feel right to me. It always felt pretty jank imo.

 

[Tihskael]

Were it not for the bugs, Beyond the Beef would have been the best quest in the game.

 

[Humbaba]

Probably nothing. He is not credited as a writer but as "narrative designer" which I have no idea what that means and let's be honest neither do you.

narrative designer is to a writer as CYOA books are to regular books

the idea that they're fundamentally the same is how you end up with movie games

A quick google search tells me that narrative designers basically ensure the presence of c&c and do not do any actual writing on their own. Meaning that Chrissy did in fact in all likelihood not write jack and was mostly hired for clout.

 

[Roguey]

A quick google search tells me that narrative designers basically ensure the presence of c&c and do not do any actual writing on their own. Meaning that Chrissy did in fact in all likelihood not write jack and was mostly hired for clout.

Narrative designers are what they call people who do more than just write text. Owlcat has no "writers," it only has narrative designers. That being said, they mentioned that Avellone did no specific writing for Wrath, he just did the same thing he did for Kingmaker minus Nok Nok.

I worked with the Alexanders to do passes of the story to expand it from the pen and paper roots so people who had played the original adventure path would still have some new content. We worked out the underlying theme for the story as well. In addition, some elements of the pen and paper path were taken in new directions to make them more suited for evil playstyles, which was fun. I also worked with the designers on setting up the pen and paper quest arcs with the new companion quests across the game (the companions add a lot), and gave feedback on the companions as well.

As for writing companions, I got the parameters of the “goblin rogue” (the companions weren’t named at the outset, and I did help with naming companions). From that, I was able to flesh out additional elements of his backstory, look, etc. and then I wrote Nok-Nok from start to finish. Nok-Nok’s one-paragraph character arc had already been approved by the license holder before I came on board (and same with some of the other story elements), but Alexander Komzolov and I agreed to change aspects about Nok-Nok afterwards even though his general arc remained the same (and some specific conclusions to his companion quest).

I also did the style guide, the module (on 2nd draft now), helped coordinate some aspects of the editing team (we had two editors who worked on the English versions), helped with UI text, and writing and edits on about 150+ other characters.

Take that, subtract the Nok-Nok paragraph.

 

[Trashos]

Hanlon (arguably the best character in the base game)

Hanlon is the worst written character out of the main ones. Sawyer did some good work on NV, but Hanlon isn't any of it.

 

[Yosharian]

Beyond the Beef is a brilliant quest when it actually works. It mostly does, now, if you play with VNV or some other patched/bugfixed version of the game.

 

[Humbaba]

Owlcat has no "writers," it only has narrative designers.

Isn't Komzolov credited as "Lead Writer"?