Fallout 2's Chris Avellone describes his game design philosophy
arstechnica.com53 points by LaSombra 9 hours ago
53 points by LaSombra 9 hours ago
I didn't know the same person was behind both Planescape: Tormentand Fallout 2, some of my favorite games of all time. Torment I actually played only recently (had only played Baldur's Gate 1&2 before) and absolutely loved it. So it's not even just nostalgia.
He's worked on an impressive number of great games. Prey, SW Kotor 2, Fallout New Vegas, Neverwinter Nights 2, Icewind Dale 1+2 and Alpha Protocol (ok, arguably great) jump out at me https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Avellone#Works
Also (to my mind) two of the most successful Kickstarted video game projects so far: Pillars of Eternity (a personal favorite) and Torment: Tides of Numenéra.
(He just needs to jump on a title like Numenéra: Into the Planescape to complete the cycle.)
Anyone who overlooked Prey (as I did for years) but loves the Looking Glass Studios games and successors (Thief series, Deus Ex series, System Shock series, Dishonored Series): just get it an play it. Read nothing. Just play it. You won’t regret it.
Worth qualifying as Prey (2017). Somewhat related[1] to Prey(2006) which is also a great game. Chris did not work on the 2006 one.
[1]: it's complicated.
Yes, the 2017 one is what I mean.
I think the overlapping names might even be why I overlooked it. Didn’t realize it was a new game.
IIRC it was supposed to be a sequel for 2006 one at some point, but some development and name rights shenanigans happened.
When it was developed as a sequel, the story was completely different.
yep, i remember playing Fallout 2 and Planenscape as well, one of the best summers ever (1998 and 1999). I discovered some glitch in Fallout to get more skill points ;) and Planescape, had one of the best plots ever in video games (IMO BG3 doesnt even compare ;))
In all honesty, the plot in BG3 isn't anything special imo. It's not bad, but neither is it something which stands out from the crowd of fantasy RPGs. Where BG3 shines is the freedom the game gives you to approach things how you like, not so much the writing.
Yeah I re-played Torment recently on the iPad. It holds up really well. It’s just a very well done game all around.
> “Players are selfish,” Avellone said, reflecting on his time designing the seminal computer roleplaying game Planescape: Torment. “The more you can make the experience all about them, the better.
Put more charitably: the user is paying for this experience with their money AND their time. Let’s pack a wallop into the experience.
More software should be this way!
If you like this sort of content, I recently found Sandy Petersen (Call of Cthulu, Doom, Age of Empire, Halo) is extremely active on X. Lots of interesting tidbits about game design https://x.com/SandyofCthulhu
Mark Darrah worked on a bunch of classic RPGs and has an interesting retrospectives series as well: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLN8wmKeck6fe0jtibONfIWzpY...
The Anthem one is very long, but is a really fascinating portrait of cultural misfunction. The biggest factor to me was the entire design was dictated by the 'ghost' of Casey Hudson. His initial high-level vision was sacrosanct, but he also was not around to actually clarify anything or take feedback from development since he had already left the studio.
Some people are a different level of productive, and game development sure was different back in the day:
> During his (Sandy Petersen) interview, John Romero (of id Software) introduced him to DoomEd and simply asked him to build a level. Romero was ultimately happy with the results, so Petersen was brought on to production for Doom. The level from Petersen's interview eventually became "E2M6". He was a fast level designer and produced all maps for the third episode of Doom, Inferno. Petersen designed 17 levels for Doom II, a little over half of the 32 total.
Sweet cheese and crackers, you weren't kidding about "extremely active". He's posting like once a minute.
Obligatory link to Tim Cain's[1] YouTube channel[2] where he talks almost daily about every aspect of game dev.
[1]: Tim is the original Fallout creator/designer, who also made Arcanum, and worked on Outer Worlds.
Great find and also worth a watch is the Classic Game Postmortem: Fallout video from Fallout creator Tim Cain