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Chris Avellone On Interplay, Obsidian, KOTOR2

Posted by simoniker on from the republic-positively-ancient dept.

Thanks to Winterwind Productions for its two-part interview with Chris Avellone, former RPG designer for Interplay's Black Isle division, discussing the continued turmoil at that company ("Projects getting cancelled just happens, but the reasons that projects were getting cancelled at Interplay never felt like good reasons"), his new home at Obsidian Entertainment ("I think our starting line of titles are going to be a good foundation to build Obsidian on... and should help when pitching new ideas to publishers"), and his work on Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic 2, including more specific endings compared to KOTOR ("The current game mechanic we're playing around for the endings with is something similar to Fallout, but it will be presented a little differently.")

18 comments

  1. Re:Game Developement by KDR_11k · · Score: 1

    Wrong story. The one you meant to comment is the one below this one.

    --
    Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
  2. Sounds Like.... by tprime · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It sounds like they at Obsidean are trying to do a little name dropping. If they can somehow connect KOTOR2 to Fallout they will not only get everyone who enjoyed the original KOTOR to buy the game, but every obsessed Fallout nut to buy they game. I fall into both groups, however this might be a way to just draw some attention to Obsidean's past for those that do not already know that they are Black Isle's soul.

    I am not denouncing their promotional methods, but rather praising it. In today's gaming world, developers seem to go bankrupt more often than they succeed (an when they succeed most of the time a bigger company buys them anyway). If Fallout name dropping helps them to sell enough to stay solvent and keep those great minds developing games, all the more power to them. I wish you the same luck that I am wishing Bryan Fargo's in-Xile Entertainment.

    --
    http://www.tomandemily.com
    1. Re:Sounds Like.... by Ayaress · · Score: 0

      The Fallout/KOTOR connection is pretty logical when you think about it. The vast majority of RPGs are fall into some variation on fantasy. Fallout and KOTOR are two of the few big names in that segment of the genre.

    2. Re:Sounds Like.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not really. Given the shitty sales of the original fallout, and even taking piracy into account, about 20% of the people who claim to have played fallout and hype it as "da rpg" all over the internet did actually play it ( http://www.rpgcodex.com )

      The Fallout license is one of worst licenses you could have, lot's of rabid hardcore fanboys that would burn you for every single change you would make to bring gameplay into the 21st Century, lots of bad material released in the meantime (FOBOS, FO Tactics) and lots of bad press (Interplay's fun with FO3).

      I played fallout, it was a good game at it's time, but from todays PoV, it is incredibly overhyped by those said rabid fanboys.

      So what does "ending like fallout" mean: When they made fallout, IP wasn't very strong in the movies department, so they did slideshows. Ending like FallOut means we are saving money from the render movie / ingame cutscene department and put a couple of precreated slides to the end. That makes you happy, indeed.

    3. Re:Sounds Like.... by jonaac · · Score: 3, Interesting

      No wonder you`re anonymous, because most things you are saying aren`t. The weak license had 5 diferent companies trying to get it since january. With the oem figures it reached over 630000 copies. The fans are demanding people, but they kept interest in games that are 6 and 7 years old, like the Jagged Alliance or the Starcraft communities,and thats not a bad start for a sequel to be released. It may be time to rest Fo3 and move on, but not because you say so, that`s another story. By the way i have enough material on FO3 to say it was building up to be a good Fallout game and a great RPG, not beeing released was a shame, and many devs loosing their work and the fans seeing their hopes beeing sent to the pits of Interplay mismanegement was the real tragedy. If you want to finger someone finger Herve Caen and crew and leave Fallout fans alone.

    4. Re:Sounds Like.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sorry, but 630.000 copies over 4 games sucks badly. And trying to pick up a license is different from actually picking it up and paying for it.

      I have no love for Herve, but Fallout is overhyped by a group of vocal guys on the internet, nothing more, nothing less.

    5. Re:Sounds Like.... by tprime · · Score: 4, Informative

      Honestly, this was the "rabid fans" the original Coward referred to. Trust me, in reading the Interplay forums AND nma-fallout.com, the original fans ARE nuts. But, then again, it is a rare game that can make so many people this crazy about ANY game. That 630,000 copies sold is mainly a total from the following:

      1. The original Fallout shelf game
      2. The Fallout2 shelf game
      3. The Fallout/Fallout2 discount combo pack
      In the grand scheme of things, Fallout Tactics sold very few games and FOBOS sold just as few (but not the minisucle amount that many of the Fallout fans claimed, it was picked up by many of the rental places where PC games cannot be)

      Back on the 630,000 copies sold number.... For a console game, that is only decent, but for PC games, that is considered a great seller. Many PC games do not even break the 50k copies mark. That is the difference that Interplay was banking on and reflects back on my original point.

      Yes it was a shame that the franchise possibly died with Herve's knife in the development teams' back, but it is certainly not worth starting a /. flame war over. BlackIsle will not be publishing the game, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it published under the Obsidean sticker. For as crazy, bitter and obsessive the fans of the original game are, the developers are even more nuts over their beloved franchise.

      Here's to hoping that their craze gets this game published.

      --
      http://www.tomandemily.com
    6. Re:Sounds Like.... by jonaac · · Score: 1

      Two games, with the second beeing one of the buggiest games on release ever. Remember Tactics was the most pre-ordered game in the Interplay store history,beat Baldurs Gate2 easilly, then word of mouth killed it, wich was really for the best, a rather week game. They didn`t picked it up because of Herve asking unbelievable ammounts of money, with FO:BOS costing almost twice of the BGDA2 costs according to Fergus, and selling less than 20000 copies, therefore the market value of the franchise droped significantly since December, only Herve doesn`t see that. Yet it was almost sold last month, but Herve screwed the deal yet again at the last minute. Yet again the "rabid" fans warned Interplay that FO:BOS was a bad idea, but since they were a "minority of rabid hardcore fans" they didn`t listened. Too bad for them. My point that the franchise was comercially viable, and important to a diversification process, with Baldurs Gate3: the Black Hound as the pivotal release to relaunch the PCRPG success of Interplay, and Fallout3 to pick up the critical and long term success (Vivendi loves Fallout, they are rubbing their hands with the prospect of getting it for free or on a sale target price scale, since it remained selling through the years), allowing other licenses to thrive in order to keep them less vulnerable of the end of the D&D milkcow. Herve chose a diferent path, and plummeted Interplay into the surreal situation where it stands now. So again don`t blame the fans, and don`t underestimate the capability of a Fallout3 be profitable, try instead to find the causes of the current situation starting in this article http://burgerbill.livejournal.com/2004/06/03/ it`s quite revealing. And on overhype, remember there wouldn`t be Baldurs Gate, that was set up to be a Warcraft clone on the inicial project of Bioware, if it wasn`t for Interplay wanting to make a new RPG after Fallout turning out to be profitable. So Fallout had more in keeping the PCRPGs afloat than what is usually perceived.

    7. Re:Sounds Like.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      A 50k PC game is a commercial failure today. A 200k PC game is commercial failure for an AA game. A 350k pc game is a commercial failure for an AAA game.

      Developing an AAA game costs *a lot of money* these days, up to a couple of millions a month (just wages + expenses for 100+ people teams)

      It is increasingly hard to get shelfspace for anything that isn't expected to bust the 800k mark (speaking of PC games).

      To give a perspective, the Baldurs Gate (I + II + Exp packs) saga sold more than 5.000.000 copies up to date.

    8. Re:Sounds Like.... by jonaac · · Score: 1

      Are you sure?

    9. Re:Sounds Like.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yes. 50k doesn't pay the production for a B quality game these days.

  3. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  4. Re:Development Blues by Ayaress · · Score: 0

    I agree with all those points, but it's a bit late for that for Fallout 3. Interplay's on the rocks, and likely to be gone before long. As far as I know, they're still gripping to their game rights like grim death. I hope they get smart and liquidate their intellectual property. Sure, it won't save Interplay, but at least then we have a hope in hell of getting Fallout 3 made and Interplay's brass can make a truckload of money and laugh all the way to the bank like they want to so much.

  5. Re:Development Blues by tprime · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I followed along with the whole Fallout3 thing and here is how things seemed to happen.

    1. Fallout3 is a PC game and PC Games do not currently sell as well as most of the new console games do.
    2. BlackIsle is having serious financial problems. Due to the in-depth nature of an epic game like a Fallout3 and the development costs associated with it, staff gets cut and Interplay CEO and SuperGenius Herve Caen believes that the ActionRPG genre (Baldurs Gate: Dark Alliance, Champions of Norrath, etc.) can earn his company (and his stock options) a quick buck.
    3. Lower development costs, support costs and distribution costs spawn the blasphemous Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel (FOBOS) game for the xbox and PS2. All remaining staff are given the option to work on FOBOS or pound the concrete.
    4. FOBOS is rushed out the door and does VERY poorly due to generic gameplay and bad controls.

    Basically, Interplay made some bad decisions based upon flawed logic to try and stay in business. The only logical conclusion they came to throughout the whole thing is regarding the console vs. PC profit structure.
    a. PC games cost more to develop and support because of the meriad of hardware configurations that need to be considered.
    b. A full Fallout3 game takes MUCH more time to write from a story side as well.
    c. Console games are much more difficult to pirate.
    d. This might surprise some people, but console games SELL much better. The original Baldurs Gate: Dark Alliance (although Snowblind wrote it, it is another Interplay title) sold more than Fallout and Fallout2 combined.

    Do any of these reasons make ActionRPGs better than a Fallout3? In my opinion, Hell NO! I played Dark Alliance through once and sold it back to GameStop. After all of these years I still pick my Fallout2 off my shelf and play. Great game.

    This rambles on a lot, but after sitting around in the BlackIsle forums (Before they closed them) for about a year and talking to the developers, this is the impression that they were given by management.

    --
    http://www.tomandemily.com
  6. Re:Development Blues by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    THe shame is how far it appears F3 was along the development process, according to the devs the engine was basically done and over half the content had been created, from what has been leaked, it looked and sounded fantastic. To kill it at that point was plain stupid. Well, interplay is dead now and let's hope obsidian pick up the licence.