Interview of Chris Avellone at Gamebanshee

[Sannom]

The first page is about New Vegas, here is the part about AP :

 

http://www.gamebanshee.com/interviews/9856...ne.html?start=1

 

Wow. Development hell doesn't seem to be too strong of a word I wonder if Chris is trying to defend Chris Parker (if it's him) when he talks about the Project Director who saved the project from cancellation. It always makes you wonder what happened exactly...

 

He is right when he says that he would have done things that people would have hated all the same Less realism, an even more over-the-top story and even craziest characters??? I can already hear the screams of some people

[Grand_Commander13]

I'm curious about what exactly is meant by a "honeycomb" structure. Is this a story structure that looks like Pascal's triangle (i.e. some limited mobility between missions, but it's hard to move from one end of the branch to another), or something else entirely?

 

Also, I really liked the dialogue as it was. A shame he wishes he could have done it differently. I certainly don't think anyone's going to disagree with him about MOAR interactivity between missions and cities being good though.

[WorstUsernameEver]

We had little to no time to redo anims, redo character models, redo locations from previous iterations, so we did what we could with what he had, and it made sense to us for the time frame (even when the time frame kept changing, we had no clue the release date would be what it became, and we didn't work toward that release date).

 

This, I think, speaks a lot about why Alpha Protocol came out as it is.

 

EDIT : I wonder WHY they had to scrap that first iteration in the first place though.

Edited July 1, 2010 by WorstUsernameEver

[Luckmann]

[...]

 

He is right when he says that he would have done things that people would have hated all the same Less realism, an even more over-the-top story and even craziest characters??? I can already hear the screams of some people

But that's not nearly as much of a problem, really. If you do something over-the-top, filled with crazy characters, no-one takes it seriously. And that's fine. If you do something very serious, everyone takes it seriously, and judges it from that viewpoint.

 

The problem arises when you start mixing the two. When something isn't obviously over-the-top, aspects in either direction start to feel out of place. Luckily, I think Alpha Protocol pulls this off nicely in most areas, but I do understand people that think certain things feel very awkward in the overall seriousness of the atmosphere.

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

We had little to no time to redo anims, redo character models, redo locations from previous iterations, so we did what we could with what he had, and it made sense to us for the time frame (even when the time frame kept changing, we had no clue the release date would be what it became, and we didn't work toward that release date).

 

This, I think, speaks a lot about why Alpha Protocol came out as it is.

 

EDIT : I wonder WHY they had to scrap that first iteration in the first place though.

Maybe it was just bad?

 

A bit like how the E3 demo of Halo 2 turned out to be a complete deadend for Bungie. All they had was a demo, and nothing close to a full game. The demo mission didn't even make it in the final game.

[Zoraptor]

In terms of the changes of the first iteration I'd suggest the timeline of events suggests a likely reason, especially given that the previous attempt to use their UE3 licence had failed due to lack of a publisher. Whether that would be a matter of 'blame' or 'credit' really depends on what the first iteration was and how it would have been received, which we'll never know.

 

I'm curious about what exactly is meant by a "honeycomb" structure. Is this a story structure that looks like Pascal's triangle (i.e. some limited mobility between missions, but it's hard to move from one end of the branch to another), or something else entirely?

That's pretty much what is meant, I think- since honeycomb is basically a bunch of minimum space hexagons it fits a branching 'cell' structure pretty well as an analogue.

[funcroc]

Alpha Protocol Narrative Process Backslash Ramble by MCA (Nov 29 2009)

 

At Obsidian, we take narrative design and the game mechanics associated with the plot seriously, and we don

Edited July 2, 2010 by funcroc

[blackwolfe]

It all makes sense now... or well some of it.

[Jackalmonkey]

One of the best interviews I've seen with a game developer in some time. I'm wondering, though:

...change the mission structure to the honeycomb mission structure our Systems Designer proposed 2 years in (and what our Exec Producer originally wanted)...

What's a honeycomb mission structure?

[Oner]

One of the best interviews I've seen with a game developer in some time. I'm wondering, though:

...change the mission structure to the honeycomb mission structure our Systems Designer proposed 2 years in (and what our Exec Producer originally wanted)...

What's a honeycomb mission structure?

http://forums.obsidian.net/index.php?showt...t&p=1051657

[Libertarian]

I love Chris. He's a genius. But seriously, I'm glad it turned out the way it did and not the other way.

[poetic obsidian]

Question to anyone out there who is familiar with game development: Is this kind of developmental flux really such an unusual thing?

 

I've got a feeling that games are even worse than food when it comes to the difference between what goes on in the kitchen and what you see at the table. In the kitchen, it's chaos, with bits of blood and guts everywhere, but by the the time the food reaches the table, everything is pristine over a white tablecloth.

 

Perhaps making games is the same way, but I could be wrong.