Reassuring but sad at the same time seeing a partnership end after 17 years. MCA, Sawyer, Feargus and Tim Cain are the A team of cRPG's as far as I'm concerned.
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Chris Avellone has left Obsidian Entertainment
- Thread starter Drazgul
- Start date
Reassuring but sad at the same time seeing a partnership end after 17 years. MCA, Sawyer, Feargus and Tim Cain are the A team of cRPG's as far as I'm concerned.
Baron von Loathsome
Member
I'm not in the mood to debate this particular controversy, but I'm inclined to agree with those calling it transphobic.
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
Some people needed to believe that Obsidian was full of manly men and tried concocting situations in which Chris Avellone was a bigot that hated gays, women, and transgenered and was being held back by his SJW bosses.
That's what I was referring to. Apparently, him quitting is being used as further evidence that MCA is a paragon among MRAs.
exmachina64
Banned
Not usual in the game industry, but I'd love to read some memoirs after all these people retire. They've been through so much shit we'll never know.
pantsonhead
Member
Real as a boulder. The subreddit for Pillars blew the fuck up when the poem got switched, and it wasn't in support of the change. Cries of "SJW" and "Censorship" still ring somewhere deep in those halls.
Stiler
Member
People always forget Leonard Boyarsky. After interplay he went to Troika (along with Tim Cain and Jason Anderson) and helped make Arcanum and was the lead designer of Vampire: TMB.
IIRC he works at Blizzard now on the Diablo team.
PoE was a pretty good game but it never came close to !!Torment!! or BG2 in terms of story or characters. It's pretty telling that my two favorites companions (Durance and Grieving Mother) we're both created by him. The rest of the cast is good but never comes closes to those two.
I'd like him somewhere where he can really work on some core stuff without the fear of getting his content diminished. I doesn't seem like Obsidian was a good fit for that.
I'd like him somewhere where he can really work on some core stuff without the fear of getting his content diminished. I doesn't seem like Obsidian was a good fit for that.
Oh, I know about poemgate. But MRAs holding Avellone as their patron saint? I don't know if they've been paying attention or what...
Moon_frogger
Member
Off to start his new mobile game studio probably. Great things await.
I wonder why that entire interview has zero mentions of his recent work with Obsidian. He talks about both Wasteland 2 and Numenera, nothing about Pillars of Eternity. He even mentions finishing up the Wasteland 2 novel(la) which he owes the backers, but he doesn't even suggest that he's working on the PoE one?
This entire situation is starting to feel kinda shitty...
This entire situation is starting to feel kinda shitty...
The more we heard about this, the more it's very unlikely to be an amicable split.
"Pillars"? I guess you mean Planescape: Torment?
Anyway, I think the setting in PoE is more interesting overall than in BG2, and the characters are easily on par -- some better than others but the same was true for BG2.
Not as good as PST, I agree with that one -- but then, nothing is.
More interesting than the most overplayed fantasy setting in RPGs. Truly a difficult task (MotB was more interesting than Pillars.)
I replied to what the other poster wrote. Sorry about that!
(I thought the political/historical background and how it influences societies in PoE was equally interesting and really quite comparable to how the pantheons, religions and gods influence the plot in MotB)
Fair enough.
What the... really? Well it doesn't surprise me I guess.
Where did this happen?
Turin Turambar
Member
Yeah that was suspect. They ask him for the new wave of isometric RPGs and he refers to the two inXile games, instead of PoE...
it's the usual gamergate drivel. The PoE reddit thread blew up and we had pages of useless discussion about it in the GAF thread as well
I'd rather not jump to any conclusions, there is enough of that going around already, but it could possibly be worrying.
I don't want to jump to conclusions either. I do want to know if he's going to ever start working on the PoE novella though!
I would suspect not.
The lack of a mention of Pillars in that interview makes me think he's not a huge fan of the property or Obsidian.
I really hope nothing bad happened between the fine people in Obsidian and Avellone... But not mentioning Pillars wconsidering it is much better than Wasteland 2 and out unlike Torment, is pretty weird. Obsidian's cold response is also quite telling.
We know Pillars under Josh went in a direction quite different than Avellone's usual (and that a lot of Avellone's ideas were cut from the game.) While I think Josh's choices made for a better game than what I read of Avellone's cut ideas, it's possible that could have caused some bad air...
Not to mention years of project after project being canceled...
We know Pillars under Josh went in a direction quite different than Avellone's usual (and that a lot of Avellone's ideas were cut from the game.) While I think Josh's choices made for a better game than what I read of Avellone's cut ideas, it's possible that could have caused some bad air...
Not to mention years of project after project being canceled...
AuthenticM
Member
Can we have him work on the next Elder Scrolls game, please ?
pantsonhead
Member
I just hope this won't affect Tides too badly.
Tides is by inXile. I don't see why this would impact that too much.
The only fantasy world more boring than Faerun.
Wonder what they'd even do about those that backed for the novella? Refund where relevant? Have someone else write one to fill the gap? It seems to be a strange, awkward situation unless the bad vibe is mainly JUST him quitting suddenly and was more or less stable and civil until then, just without opportunities for him.
Though working with the NWN2 guys has interesting implications. Are we looking at a full on Obsidian split? Or were these people long gone?
Though working with the NWN2 guys has interesting implications. Are we looking at a full on Obsidian split? Or were these people long gone?
It actually seems pretty interesting under the surface... Just that they haven't really capitalized on it in the newer games. Even actively avoiding it it seems.
pantsonhead
Member
It wouldn't, I'm just dumb and got shit mixed up.
I'm far from a fan of TES, but I wouldn't call the world boring (I wouldn't call Fearun boring either, but whateves.)
I wouldn't want Avellone on TES because it's a series that wouldn't put his talent as narrative designer to use, and that would be a shame.
Long gone I think. Obsidian have lost a lot of developers over the years, he probably means Kevin Saunders and George Ziets, they've been at Inxile for some time now.
From all interesting Daerda Princes, they choose the most boring one, Mehrunes Dagon for Oblivion. Then they still ignore the princes and opt for a fucking dragon. But even then, they can't live the potential of Sheogorath to the fullest. Bethesda should hired writer with better plotting, not just lore.
Yeah, that's what I mean about having something interesting set up, and completely failing to make use of it. Don't really know if it's that they don't know how to handle it, or they actively will not in the name of something more easily marketable (Satan figure coming in to conquer the world! Now we have DRAGONS rampaging around!) I'm actually kind of thinking the latter after Morrowind, it seems like that was more interesting on a whole and Oblivion especially presented itself as fairly bog standard.
He probably told them beforehand that he didn't want to talk about his recent stuff and departure from Obsidian, which is understandable.
Besides, it's not like he had much input in PoE in the first place.
anexanhume
Member
Heck, it could have been a condition of the dissolution of his share/interest in the company. Who knows.
Shake Appeal
Member
How do you play a game with Annah, or Fall-from-Grace, or Kreia, or Grieving Mother in it and come out thinking Avellone is on the side of men's rights activism?
CraigerGamer
Member
It's been this way since Kirkbride left. Say what you want about the choices Howard made, the Lore itself is outstanding. Michael Kirkbride is a crazy ass savant to come up with that he did. Dude's unreal.
Back OT. Heard the news and thought the best way to pay tribute to MCA was to find more New Vegas towns IRL. I can now scratch Nipton, Searchlight, and Nelson off the list. Rumors are not true of Leagion Solders crucifying townies and holding an unlucky lottery. I repeat, rumors are not true
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
He's a goddamn founder and was the friggin' CCO, and there isn't anything up on the Obsidian homepage about this.
At all.
The forums are even dark about this, including the thread about him leaving. It's sounding more and more like something really bad happened. Like, really fucking bad.
Reddit, Obsidian Forums, Twitter.
This was actually brought up. I believe the response was "people can write things they don't believe".
They are in Poland. Avellone likes living in the USA. He's not going to move to another country just because they do good work.
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
dp
More Fun To Compute
Member
I have still only played Shadowrun from this wave of kickstarter RPG's as the one I really want is Numenara. Pillars seems too Icewind Dale like for me for some reason and I never really played those in the day.
A lot of fantasy RPGs are just made for the people who like things as vanilla as they can get them. They don't like stuff that is too weird or philosophical.
A lot of fantasy RPGs are just made for the people who like things as vanilla as they can get them. They don't like stuff that is too weird or philosophical.
I was wondering about this myself the other day. But I actually listened to parts of the interview podcast itself, and Avellone did mention the PoE novella. It was a short casual line, but he says that he completed the novella "a few weeks ago" and that he hasn't heard any feedback for it yet, but he would be happy to make any revisions required. I... hope that doesn't mean he's not even on speaking terms with the team anymore.
Guess that's what happens when you cut his content in PoE and possibly vetoed his Kickstarter project as well. Here's hoping for a KS with Inxile maybe even have him as the lead for Van Buren project that Inxile eventually plans to do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Buren_(video_game)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Buren_(video_game)
Octavianus
Banned
Can we have him work on a setting that isn't riddled with fantasy cliches instead?