Chris Avellone Interviews

While you’d expect Chris Avellone to be too busy to give interviews, considering he’s working on a few games, writing a novel, and helping on a live-action series, all on top of his usual high-level work at Obsidian, a couple of Q&As with Planescape: Torment’s lead designer still popped up in the last few days.

First of all, the folks at RPG Codex spotted a video interview with fan questions, apparently organized by Saint-Petersburg’s IT-bar KLЮTCH. It’s undoubtedly an interesting video, but also lasts roughly 1 hour and a half, so you should be sure to have some free time before pressing “play”.

Moving to a format that is far more suited to a quick read, Polish website Grimuar Serofwca also has an interview with Obsidian’s co-founder, which includes a snippet on Obsidian’s future, but mostly focuses on the original Planescape: Torment and the upcoming Torment: Tides of Numenera:

Grimuar: Hi, Chris. We’re glad that you found a moment to answer our questions. Last year you once again became a human stretch goal; you also got involved in another demanding cRPG project. What has been taking up most of your time recently?

Chris Avellone: I got drafted for creative design on the next slate of Obsidian projects, and there’s a lot. We’re pitching several new games at Obsidian now that titles are wrapping up, and I was enlisted into that process. We have about at least nine proposals in the works, some with multiple stories and story arcs, which is challenging, but in a good way, it’s just a lot to juggle. It’s largely Feargus (our CEO) and I doing the initial proposals, and then senior folks get moved on to them as their time frees up. It gives me new respect for what Feargus has to juggle with projects and contracts. Things should settle down once we have the next slate of projects good to go.

In my off-duty time, I’m playing the Wasteland 2 beta and writing the Wasteland novel, doing nation design for the Accursed RPG, both of which are nice changes of pace from my game writing. Working on the FTL Enhanced Edition (which I did for free because I love FTL) was also a fun experience Tom Jubert and Justin Ma and the devs were really fun and open to work with. I also liked a lot of the new plans they had for the game and the expansion of the lore.

I’m also slated to add narrative muscle to the Legend of Grimrock series by Wayside Creations (they did Fallout: Nuka Break and Red Star), and I’m looking forward to that since I’m a Legend of Grimrock fan.