Tell me about the Developers

[Wirdjos]

First and foremost, this project sounds incredible! However, after the Bioware debacle with every new failure being blamed on another division or team, the thing that's keeping me from pledging is how little I know about the people making the game. I know some of the same people worked on Planescape: Torment and Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas, but what has each person actually done? I would really love to be able to say "This guy wrote this character, so I know he can write good characters" or "This guy desgined this gameplay system, so I know he can make fun games". I would rather not try to have faith in a whole company as that has burned me in the past. Can someone lead me to some specific information or is this a question I should be asking of the devs themselves?

[Rabain]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feargus_Urquhart

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Cain

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Sawyer

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Avellone

 

Maybe not as up to date as they could be but somewhere to start. Cain, Sawyer and Avellone are the main guys for Project Eternity content. Feargus is the guy with the big stick in the background. I like that the wiki mentioned that in 1999 IGN gave Feargus the Unsung Hero of the Year award.

 

Also might be worthwhile listening to Feargus on this interview, I think he comes across very well:

 

http://www.puresophistry.com/2012/09/21/project-eternity-radio-interview-with-feargus-urquhart-ceo-of-obsidian-entertainment/

[Infinitron]

Actually, Josh Sawyer is the main guy for Project Eternity. Tim and Chris are helping.

[C2B]

Something about the Main Heads of the team

 

Josh Sawyer: Designer on IWD, Lead Designer on IWD 2, Lead Designer on the original Fallout 3 and Baldur's Gate 3 (both cancelled) Lead (I think) on Gauntlet Seven Sorrows but left with several of his contributions ripped off, Lead Designer on NWN2 during its last year after old Lead left, Lead Designer on Aliens: Cubicle (cancelled), Project Lead, Lead Designer and Lead System Designer on Fallout: New Vegas, Project Lead and Lead Designer on Project: Eternity.

 

Chris Avellone: So, so much. To keep it short: Lead Designer on Planescape: Torment, Designer on Fallout 2, Lead Designer of KOTOR:2, Lead Designer of the last version of Alpha Protocol, Designer on Mask of the Betrayer and Project Lead/Lead Designer on the New Vegas DLC's except Honest Hearts (Sawyer), writes (something on Eternity)

 

Tim Cain: Created Fallout (I mean literary, first guy on the project and had his hands in everything), Project Lead on Arcanum and Temple of Elementary Evil as well as a programmer on Vampire: Bloodlines. Responsible for Skills/Systems and some programming on Eternity.

 

Adam Brennecke: Programmer on many Obsidian titles, Project Leaad on the Dungeon Siege III add-on. Manly responsible for the production side of eternity.

 

Edit: Wrote this out of my head. So, if there's a fault please say so.

Edited September 23, 2012 by C2B

[Wirdjos]

Great post, C2B! The Tim Cain bit helps a lot. That give me specifics. The rest might be a problem I'm having with titles. Okay, so Chris Avellone was Lead Designer on Planescape which has well written characters. Did Avellone write/storyboard for these characters or did he supervise the team that did? I think my question might be more fundamental, requiring I know more about the organization of game development.

[C2B]

Great post, C2B! The Tim Cain bit helps a lot. That give me specifics. The rest might be a problem I'm having with titles. Okay, so Chris Avellone was Lead Designer on Planescape which has well written characters. Did Avellone write/storyboard for these characters or did he supervise the team that did? I think my question might be more fundamental, requiring I know more about the organization of game development.

 

He wrote the vast majority of the text in Planescape.

 

And depending on the dev, team and project the organization differs vastly.

Edited September 23, 2012 by C2B

[Darkpriest]

Just to name one of the best NPCs ever - Chris wrote Kreia from KotOR2 (as far as I know at least)

[C2B]

Just to name one of the best NPCs ever - Chris wrote Kreia from KotOR2 (as far as I know at least)

 

Yup.

[Wirdjos]

That's good news. Planescape does an excellent job of managing information and incorporating slang, so plus marks for Avellone. Do you happen to have source for that?

 

I was worried that might be truth of the matter as far as organization. I'll just have to look for more real information then. Thanks again.

 

I've heard a lot about Kreia, but haven't played the game. Still sounds like a plus for him. Thanks, Darkpriest.

[aVENGER]

Mobygames might be a bit more up to date than Wikipedia on this:

 

• Josh Sawyer
  
• Chris Avellone
  
• Tim Cain
  
• Feargus Urquhart
  
• Adam Brennecke
  

Edited September 23, 2012 by aVENGER

[Wirdjos]

Mobygames does a better job of listing credits than Wikipedia does, but still lacks specifics. I don't want to find out after the fact that say Sawyer worked on Planescape which is great, but had nothing to do with the elements of the game I enjoyed.

[Longknife]

First and foremost, this project sounds incredible! However, after the Bioware debacle with every new failure being blamed on another division or team, the thing that's keeping me from pledging is how little I know about the people making the game. I know some of the same people worked on Planescape: Torment and Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas, but what has each person actually done? I would really love to be able to say "This guy wrote this character, so I know he can write good characters" or "This guy desgined this gameplay system, so I know he can make fun games". I would rather not try to have faith in a whole company as that has burned me in the past. Can someone lead me to some specific information or is this a question I should be asking of the devs themselves?

 

If you played any of the Fallout New Vegas DLCs (save Honest Hearts), then Chris Avellone is largely responsible for the storylines, general character personalities and dialog options. If I may be so bold, I'd actually be willing to say he's quite literally the best writer in the video game industry. I'd give examples, but a story isn't really something that you can cite as an objective point, but rather something that has to be experienced yourself. However, I WOULD be willing to bet that a good amount of people in this thread will agree with me that he's one of the best, if not the best, writer(s) in the video game industry.

 

Josh Sawyer was the project director for Fallout New Vegas. This means that much of the basic design of the game, he takes credit for. He was at the top, making sure good ideas were produced and shooting down bad ideas. In particular, I'm a big fan of his work on weapon balancing. New Vegas is a game where EVERY weapon can be useful, it's just a matter of who holds it that decides whether or not it'll be useful or sub-par. I find this system does world's for a game's replay value, as games where the system is literally "steel is 20% cooler than iron," every character will end up with the same equipment by the end of the game, nor does the equipment ever change in it's application (how you use it, how you handle a fight) but rather it's the same the entire game.

Should also be noted that this guy did research into firearms (think he took up firearms as a hobby too, could be wrong) for the sake of developing New Vegas. Likewise, he took a biking trip through the Mojave and Las Vegas because they felt the game should have a personal feel for the people of the Mojave. Sure enough, much of the locations you'll find in New Vegas are real: The Prospector Saloon (and Goodsprings), Helios ONE, Primm, the Devil's Gullet, the Yangzhe Memorial, and tons more....ALL based on real life locations. You can google it and come up with Iunno how many blogs by people who took a trip through Nevada and found real life counterparts of New Vegas buildings. Personally I see that as a testament to their dedication and passion towards a project.

 

Tim Cain created Fallout dude. The entire franchise is thanks to him. The tone, the themes, the lore....yeah, him. If you like Fallout and think it's an exceptional RPG series, then basically you like Tim Cain by default.

 

 

 

I also have to say that as a huge fan of New Vegas, I frequented the New Vegas forums (on Bethesda's site) from release until....well actually I still hang out there. But one thing I really liked was that quite often we'd actually see Sawyer or Avellone on the forums. Whereas other companies, seeing a dev is like seeing a yeti, we probably saw them ~once a month. It was nice and refreshing to see developers that got engaged with the community and talked to us, whether it be answers to questions, status updates or just a simple "o hi."

 

So yeah, throw money at them.

[C2B]

That's good news. Planescape does an excellent job of managing information and incorporating slang, so plus marks for Avellone. Do you happen to have source for that?

 

I was worried that might be truth of the matter as far as organization. I'll just have to look for more real information then. Thanks again.

 

I've heard a lot about Kreia, but haven't played the game. Still sounds like a plus for him. Thanks, Darkpriest.

That's good news. Planescape does an excellent job of managing information and incorporating slang, so plus marks for Avellone. Do you happen to have source for that?

 

I was worried that might be truth of the matter as far as organization. I'll just have to look for more real information then. Thanks again.

 

I've heard a lot about Kreia, but haven't played the game. Still sounds like a plus for him. Thanks, Darkpriest.

 

The source is bascially me (a man with the scary and disturbing ability to make out people he has never met out of a picture with obsidian devs) for the moment. But for a specific I can look it up though it may take a while as it's sometimes hard to remember where exactly I read it.

 

Will post soon.

Edited September 23, 2012 by C2B

[Darkpriest]

That's good news. Planescape does an excellent job of managing information and incorporating slang, so plus marks for Avellone. Do you happen to have source for that?

 

I was worried that might be truth of the matter as far as organization. I'll just have to look for more real information then. Thanks again.

 

I've heard a lot about Kreia, but haven't played the game. Still sounds like a plus for him. Thanks, Darkpriest.

 

If you haven't played KotOR2 go and buy it now on steam! :D

[C2B]

1. 
   Colin McComb: I hate to say it again, but Chris did the major work on the game. I would estimate that although he had seven designers on his team, he did about 50% of the work on the project. Keep in mind that he did all this while he was working on Fallout 2 as well. The man is truly prolific.
   For the major character dialogues, I based my work on the original dialogues that Chris had created – some of them were just snippets, but they all held the germs of fascinating ideas - because I felt that the game would be better served to move forward with his vision as the signpost. If I misremember anything I’m about to list, I plead the passage of years and the indulgence of my coworkers.
   The areas I did included Smoldering Corpse bar and its attendant quests and dialogues, Many-As-One and the Warrens of Thought, the Great Foundry, some of the Lower Ward (John Deiley did most of the other parts), Lothar and the Bones of the Night (though I don’t remember if I did Mantuok), Many-As-One, Curst, Under Curst (and certain dialogue nodes with Vhailor), Carceri. Trias the Betrayer, and Fhjull Forked-Tongue. I helped smooth out certain kinks in the flow of the game, and suggested some of the chaos that might ensue when Curst shifted into Carceri and helped design the mechanic that would allow the player to return the city to the Outlands. I think I did some other stuff too.
   I should mention that Curst-in-Carceri would not have been nearly as fun without the aid of Scott Warner and Adam Heine, both of whom helped turn a fairly stale location into the awesome run of chaos and super-scripted events that it became. Scott’s a lead at Pandemic Studios now, and based on his performance on Torment, he definitely deserves to be.
   I would also add that Dave Maldonado deserves a huge portion of credit for the Clerk’s Ward. He did a fantastic job and was fearless in exploring the possibilities.
   Scott Warner, Jason Suinn, and John Deiley did a hell of a job on creature design, item design and placement, stores, and all the thankless stuff that people don’t tend to notice when it’s done well, but definitely notice if it’s not. So I hereby would like to make sure they are thanked, and that very loudly, in public.
   Chris was almost entirely responsible for the dialogues between the Nameless One and the party NPCs. We could add a few nodes of dialogue here and there, but Chris did almost everything with those characters.

Colin McComb: Avellone had at least a broad outline of the entire game from start to finish, with all of the major characters sketched out, by the time I’d joined the team. The rest of the design team added minor characters, stuff not exactly crucial to the main quest, and other fun stuff, and fleshed out the stuff he couldn’t get to. Avellone is a madman, I’ll tell you that – it was only with the greatest regret that he passed off Fhjull and Trias to me, and I heard him weeping bitter and solitary tears in his office when he assigned the Brothel to Dave Maldonado.

Working with the Torment team was incredible. It was really a fantastic bunch of people. We all did the very most we could to help each other out, to make each area as good as it could be, and to incorporate as many ideas as we could. Eric Campanella, one of our artists, came up with a pile of crazy and creepy monsters, and we made up some names and stats for them and threw them into the sewers.

Edited September 23, 2012 by C2B

[Wirdjos]

Longknife, that is exactly what I wanted to know! It shows dedication and willingness to address the community from all parties. I would ask though, what effect do you feel the people giving Sawyer the ideas he rejected or implemented had on the process?

 

To be perfectly honest, I haven't played a lot of their games. This is my first playthrough of Planescape which I am enjoying to no end and I've heard great things about Fallout from people I trust. As far as KotOR2, do I need to play the first before I play it?

 

Highfive, C2B! Not that I didn't trust you, but it's great to be able to seperate preception from fact.

[Infinitron]

As far as KotOR2, do I need to play the first before I play it?

 

Yes, you should, just so you can understand how cleverly the sequel plays off of it and improves on it. Don't forget the Restored Content Mod for KOTOR2, the game is incomplete without it.

Edited September 23, 2012 by Infinitron

[C2B]

Highfive, C2B! Not that I didn't trust you, but it's great to be able to seperate preception from fact.

 

Information is my buisness *smugface*

 

@KOTOR2 You should install restoration patches and so on. Here:

http://pcgamingwiki...._The_Sith_Lords

Edited September 23, 2012 by C2B

[Longknife]

Longknife, that is exactly what I wanted to know! It shows dedication and willingness to address the community from all parties.

 

Ya I know because I'm the God Damn Longknife and I'm awesome like that.

 

You're welcome.

 

I would ask though, what effect do you feel the people giving Sawyer the ideas he rejected or implemented had on the process?

 

Well I dunno the guy personally so of course I can't really say that, but his formspring is very active and open for questions AND discussion. Trust me, the New Vegas forums have been following it for a while now and we've actually gotten some lore-based questions answered, as well as questions about cut content, design decision regrets, etc etc.

 

I also recall that he answered one question about what skills someone needed to be a game developer. Among experience with RPGs, experience with other things (said one should have a hobby and enough experience with it that they can recreate it in games) and good analytical skills, I believe he listed "the ability to admit when one is wrong."

Edited September 23, 2012 by Longknife

[Leferd]

To get a better idea about what Avellone is about, look up:

 

1) The Planescape: Torment Design Document/ Vision Statement

 

2) The Fallout Bible

 

Both available in the internets. (contains massive spoilers)

Edited September 23, 2012 by Leferd

[Wirdjos]

That Fallout Bible is awesome. Right and proper what I'm looking for. I'll probably stay away from the Planescape document til I finish the game though. Thanks for the help, Leferd.

[Leferd]

No problem.

 

Also, both Avellone and Sawyer have running blogs on this site. Look at the top right corner of the page for the blogs link. As already mentioned, Sawyer also has his mindspring as well.

[GhostofAnakin]

Just to name one of the best NPCs ever - Chris wrote Kreia from KotOR2 (as far as I know at least)

 

For this reason alone, I'll buy any game that Chris writes character dialogue for.

[Monte Carlo]

The Obsidian developers are, basically, the A-Team abut without the jewellery, fear of flying and poor marksmanship scores. They went rogue and hit the LA Underground after a series of bad Metacritic scores. They use dubious funding sources. They are currently locked in a shed making a CRPG using acetylene torches, pieces of corrugated iron and the big end of a 1978 Chevvy Impala. They even managed to rescue Tim 'Howling Mad' Cain from Troika a lunatic asylum.

 

Col. Ferg 'Hannibal' Urqhart loves it when a plan comes together.

[Darkpriest]

The Obsidian developers are, basically, the A-Team abut without the jewellery, fear of flying and poor marksmanship scores. They went rogue and hit the LA Underground after a series of bad Metacritic scores. They use dubious funding sources. They are currently locked in a shed making a CRPG using acetylene torches, pieces of corrugated iron and the big end of a 1978 Chevvy Impala. They even managed to rescue Tim 'Howling Mad' Cain from Troika a lunatic asylum.

 

Col. Ferg 'Hannibal' Urqhart loves it when a plan comes together.

 

This made me laugh... seriously... :D