People News ObsidiLeaks: The Chris Avellone May of Rage Archive

[Atomkilla]

This may be slightly offtopic - but how many RPGs exist where you play as a well-written male character?

Depending on your definition of well-written - several or none at all.

 

[MRY]

It is not uncommon in the jRPGs that inspired PS:T. For instance, one of the first major jRPGs, Phantasy Star, featured a female protagonist. Final Fantasy III/6 focuses primarily on two female characters (Terra and Celes). Valkyrie Profile, contemporaneous with PS:T, is about an immortal gathering tormented souls to fight alongside her. Septerra Core, which like PS:T is an American RPG inspired by jRPGs, features a female protagonist.

Can't think of any wRPGs, though I doubt that would be true if Chris had been allowed to run with the female-protagonist Last Rites, since many would have followed in his lead (as they did with the male-protagonist PS:T).

 

[Atomkilla]

It is not uncommon in the jRPGs that inspired PS:T. For instance, one of the first major jRPGs, Phantasy Star, featured a female protagonist. Final Fantasy III/6 focuses primarily on two female characters (Terra and Celes). Valkyrie Profile, contemporaneous with PS:T, is about an immortal gathering tormented souls to fight alongside her. Septerra Core, which like PS:T is an American RPG inspired by jRPGs, features a female protagonist.

Can't think of any wRPGs, though I doubt that would be true if Chris had been allowed to run with the female-protagonist Last Rites, since many would have followed in his lead (as they did with the male-protagonist PS:T).

I should have iterated my original post better, I thought about wRPGs.
I'm going to believe you on the comment about jRPGs tho, since I have played none of those games but have heard about most of them.

 

[Lahey]

Alis from Phantasy Star is certainly an early example of a female protag, but she doesn't meet your criteria of well-written. Game had a barebones plot typical of the time. Also, while Terra and Celes were more central to the plot than some of the other characters and the former has retroactively become the face of ff6 in spinoff titles, they were originally conceived as part of an ensemble and to claim the game "focuses primarily" on them is revisionist. I haven't played the other titles Mark mentioned, and generally agree with the thrust of his post that there are more female protags in jrpgs than wrpgs, though being so close to anime in tone I am skeptical that many are well-written.

 

[MRY]

Oh, yeah, I ignored well written. As Neanderthal notes even male protagonists are seldom well written.

 

[mondblut]

This may be slightly offtopic - but how many RPGs exist where you play as a well-written female character?

Even one is one too many.

Almost every RPG I remember playing was... customizable character.

That should have been enough to get the idea.

 

[Cross]

many would have followed in his lead (as they did with the male-protagonist PS:T).

Which games are you referring to?

 

[Roguey]

This may be slightly offtopic - but how many RPGs exist where you play as a well-written female character?
And I mean female character by default, not a game where you can chose character's sex and build it from there.

I'm really intrigued by this ATM as I don't think I've considered it ever before. Almost every RPG I remember playing was either male character or customizable character. Not a single female-fronted one comes to mind (on the other hand, I'm sleepy and running on caffeine fumes, my brain isn't in top shape). Well, Horizon Zero Dawn does, but I have trouble calling that game an RPG.

Dex was all right.

There's also Anjali and Katarina from Dungeon Siege III.

 

[felipepepe]

Besides Dex there was Septerra Core - which is a FFVII clone made in the West - and Zanzarah, the Pokémon meets Quake game.

There's also Venetica, but it has some ridiculously sexist clothing (game's best armor is basically a night gown), so I doubt it counts in this regard.

EDIT: Transistor, if you consider it an RPG, and Child of Light.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

The best written female protagonist is obviously Lara in the Tomb Raider reboot.

Oh I'm so traumatized about all the violence on this island

*Proceeds to murder 500 people"

 

[Rev]

As I understand from Chris Avellone's recent post on the Vice forums ("we didn’t have much choice in making the Nameless One a male, which I didn’t support"), the Last Rites vision doc we've seen came after management required the story to be changed to be about a male protagonist and babes, rather than the female-centric story that Chris originally pitched. That vision doc clearly came after TNO had been locked into being male. (There's no way that vision document could reflect a "choose your gender" iteration.)

While I like your theory, I think he just meant to say that he would've preferred to give players the options of choosing between a male and female character.
You're right when you say that the design doc and well, the game itself and its themes seem designed over a male character and wouldn't fit a female one. My theory is: he designed it that way since the beginning, thinking about a male characters, hot babes as companions and all that stuff and without even thinking about a female perspective (we're in the 90s, so nobody in the press would criticize a game for not having strong women or whatever), then years later he thought "mmm I could've added the option to play as female" (maybe because someone complained about it or asked him why he couldn't roleplay as a woman) and said that it would've been better, without thinking how TNO as a woman wouldn't make much sense without re-designing half of the game.

 

[Atomkilla]

Dex was all right.

There's also Anjali and Katarina from Dungeon Siege III.

I know very little of Dex, but I'll check it out.
As for DS3...well...

Besides Dex there was Septerra Core - which is a FFVII clone made in the West - and Zanzarah, the Pokémon meets Quake game.

There's also Venetica, but it has some ridiculously sexist clothing (game's best armor is basically a night gown), so I doubt it counts in this regard.

EDIT: Transistor, if you consider it an RPG, and Child of Light.

It's funny when you think about Transistor - it has a mute protagonist that is better written than most of the video game protagonists out there. I don't think I'd consider it an RPG, but the character does fit the bill and it was a great game.
I'll check out Child of Light. I've actually played it a bit, but don't remember much.
Venetica is something different tho. Never heard of it before.

The best written female protagonist is obviously Lara in the Tomb Raider reboot.

Oh I'm so traumatized about all the violence on this island

*Proceeds to murder 500 people"

Ah, dissonance between story and gameplay, my favorite video games flaw.

 

[MRY]

My theory is: he designed it that way since the beginning, thinking about a male characters, hot babes as companions and all that stuff and without even thinking about a female perspective (we're in the 90s, so nobody in the press would criticize a game for not having strong women or whatever), then years later he thought "mmm I could've added the option to play as female" (maybe because someone complained about it or asked him why he couldn't roleplay as a woman) and said that it would've been better, without thinking how TNO as a woman wouldn't make much sense without re-designing half of the game.

Well, maybe. But I refuse to take what he said as bad faith or a mistake. Everything in these threads has shown that Chris is as careful and thoughtful with his posts as he is with his fiction. He said he "didn't support" "making the Nameless One male," which certainly doesn't sound like, "With 20 years' hindsight, but without considering any of the consequences of such a change, we should've allowed a choice." Hopefully we'll get an answer from the oracle himself and can stop speculating. But if there were a female TNO story, I think it would be amazing to learn a little more about it.

many would have followed in his lead (as they did with the male-protagonist PS:T).

Which games are you referring to?

Well, the only person I'm entitled to speak for is myself, and I was certainly inspired by PS:T to make Primordia. But I'm pretty sure I've heard other writers over the years speak of the game's impact on them. And other games show PS:T's mark. For instance, I think MOTB (which is plainly intended to have a male protagonist, even if there's a nominal choice) is strongly inspired by PS:T. And I think there were plenty of writers who were inspired not to make a PS:T knock-off but to make some game; and I bet those were disproportionately male because PS:T is written to speak specifically to men.

 

[The_Mask]

Besides Dex there was Septerra Core - which is a FFVII clone made in the West - and Zanzarah, the Pokémon meets Quake game.

felipepepe - Septerra Core's shells are numbered from 1 to 7 from OUTSIDE to core. Therefore Maya comes from Shell 2, not 5, as the scavengers resided on Shell 2 and got the scraps from The Chosen which resided on Shell 1.

This is the variant of the book I've read, if you fixed this detail, please disregard the preceding. https://crpgbook.files.wordpress.com/2018/02/crpg_book_1-0.pdf

Otherwise, with no disrespect intended, but there seems to be a big discrepancy between the level of knowledge you display here (about Septerra Core) and the level of knowledge displayed in the book.

 

[Fairfax]

(Or would the player have chosen gender? I had always figured that the predefined TNO was a jRPG-inspired decision to break from the norm in make-your-avatar or main-character's-a-cipher wRPGs, so I assume not...)

He wanted to support both genders and make TNO and the companions more customizable:

Sometimes resources also drive gameplay as well – we had to make a lot of choices in Planescape: Torment based on limited resources, so that affected the scope of narrative and gameplay as well.

As an example, the companions in Torment often did not have the budget for a wide range of armor and weapon sets, so we made narrative reasons as to why they didn’t switch their weapons (hey, Annah, always just liked stabbing people, Morte only gets teeth because he has no arms and taunts because VO is easy, and Vhailor’s always been an axe-man). This resource-starvation got a little claustrophobic when it came to the Nameless One, as one of the unfortunate things about the character is I’d preferred more customization and allowing for both genders, but we simply didn’t have the resources to do it.

Wouldn't be surprised if the female TNO was vetoed early in development, since it was always clear that the project wouldn't have a lot of resources. In early-mid 97, the PS:T team was just Chris, Tim Donley, Dan Spitzley, Eric Campanella, and Aaron Meyers IIRC (maybe another artist as well?). Even after the project was approved and more people joined, BIS had most of its resources focused on FO2 and Stonekeep 2, and PS:T was basically on hold until FO2 was finished. MCA has said even the companions almost didn't make it.

 

[MRY]

Hm. It's even harder for me to imagine a gender-choosing PS:T than it is to imagine the game with a female protagonist. The latter is a different, but definable game. I don't really see how you can have the same plot arc for both. "We're going to tell a highly personal story, the same way, regardless of TNO's gender" doesn't seem likely to work?

Anyway, hopefully Chris will stop in to sort it out. It would be nice to hear how the plan was going to work. (The Last Rites vision doc is clearly meant for a single-sex TNO, so the decision must've been made before then.)

 

[Trashos]

There was that sensory stone where you manipulated Deionarra and at the same time felt despair about it. I could never tune in to it. That's probably all there is to it, but it always looked to me like it wasn't written from a man's perspective. Now I am wondering whether it was a leftover from the days that the protagonist was supposed to be a female.

 

[Chris Avellone]

Hm. It's even harder for me to imagine a gender-choosing PS:T than it is to imagine the game with a female protagonist. The latter is a different, but definable game. I don't really see how you can have the same plot arc for both. "We're going to tell a highly personal story, the same way, regardless of TNO's gender" doesn't seem likely to work?

Anyway, hopefully Chris will stop in to sort it out. It would be nice to hear how the plan was going to work. (The Last Rites vision doc is clearly meant for a single-sex TNO, so the decision must've been made before then.)

Was away from computer for part of the weekend (family issues), but did want to say before the doc was even written, there were marketing department concerns (although not from Fargo) and a resource decisions that were involved as well - there was no way we could have done the range of models like BG, for example, and the management, marketing, and resource hurdles were known before the vision doc was written to pitch to Interplay.

Lengthier explanation to follow, though, those are good questions.

 

[Nutria]

Maybe I'm just imagining this, but I believe I've heard that the tattoos were also a way to save on the art budget, since they don't actually have to be drawn onto the character like armor would be. Looking back in hindsight, I'm glad they had those limitations. MCA and the team thrived within them. Me choosing what class of weapon to equip Annah with isn't as interesting to me as Annah being her own person who decides for herself.

 

[Latro]

The best written female protagonist is obviously Lara in the Tomb Raider reboot.

Oh I'm so traumatized about all the violence on this island

*Proceeds to murder 500 people"

Best written female character in a videogame is Heather Mason from Silent Hill 3.

 

[Cross]

Hm. It's even harder for me to imagine a gender-choosing PS:T than it is to imagine the game with a female protagonist. The latter is a different, but definable game. I don't really see how you can have the same plot arc for both. "We're going to tell a highly personal story, the same way, regardless of TNO's gender" doesn't seem likely to work?

Have you played Kotor 2, also by MCA, by any chance? Because that game (which incidentally is also about a protagonist haunted by their past) attempts to do that to some extent, with your gender choice affecting whether one of two gender-exclusive companions can join you and changing your interaction with some of the antagonists. Whether it succeeds at that is another story.

 

[Cross]

many would have followed in his lead (as they did with the male-protagonist PS:T).

Which games are you referring to?

Well, the only person I'm entitled to speak for is myself, and I was certainly inspired by PS:T to make Primordia. But I'm pretty sure I've heard other writers over the years speak of the game's impact on them. And other games show PS:T's mark. For instance, I think MOTB (which is plainly intended to have a male protagonist, even if there's a nominal choice) is strongly inspired by PS:T. And I think there were plenty of writers who were inspired not to make a PS:T knock-off but to make some game; and I bet those were disproportionately male because PS:T is written to speak specifically to men.

Primordia is an adventure game though, which typically have fixed protagonists. And while MoTB may have been inspired by PS:T, its protagonist certainly isn't. Just compare the scope of both games; MoTB has you dealing with interplanar politics and coming face to face with several gods (one of which you get to destroy), whereas I don't think PS:T has even a single mention of any deity (apart from the god of Portals being name-dropped like once) due to how focused it is on telling the personal story of the Nameless One.

The decline of CRPGs shortly after PS:T's release meant very few developers were even left to inspiration from PS:T (or any other cRPG), even if they had wanted to.

 

[Grape_You_In_the_Mouth]

Hate to be a negative Nancy here but are we really going to keep asking MCA questions after we have 100 pages of answers? Because if we're going to then I'd like to request another response on why IHaveHugeNick is a terrible person? This is something I've had faith in for years and it's refreshing to hear someone else feel the same.

 

[Grauken]

What do you expect us to do, play games?

 

[FeelTheRads]

Have you played Kotor 2, also by MCA, by any chance? Because that game (which incidentally is also about a protagonist haunted by their past) attempts to do that to some extent, with your gender choice affecting whether one of two gender-exclusive companions can join you and changing your interaction with some of the antagonists. Whether it succeeds at that is another story.

Except in PST it's more than about having a gender exclusive companion and changing a couple of dialogue lines.

The game clearly was written for a male TNO. You couldn't just drop in a female one and adjust a couple of things here and there and make it work.

Also, if the game had to be written for both genders I'd guess a much larger part of it would have suffered from lack of resources, not only the second half.