Chris Avellone Dialogue Monologue

Obsidian Entertainment’s Chris Avellone has penned a visual-laden “dialogue monologue” article for RPG Codex, in which he offers his thoughts on creating dialogue and personalities for video games.

Part of a dialogue writer’s job is being able to write a bunch of personalities at once. You store them up, like a chorus that follows you around.

Sometimes they don’t always come out, and you need to use a little inspiration. For Brian Mitsoda (Vampire, TORN, and now an unannounced project at Obsidian), he slugs his way through with brute force.

For Josh Sawyer, I sometimes see him using his religion and history degrees/passions to fuel his writing. A lot of the excellent attention to FR theology in the Black Isle (and Neverwinter 2) games is indicative of this. You’ll probably see it in the Black Hound mod as well.

When Chris is old and never wants to see a role-playing game ever again, I hope he creates a “The Best of Chris Avellone’s Illustrations” book. I’ll buy it.