Interview Chris Avellone talks to The Star

[Vault Dweller]

Tags: Chris Avellone; Obsidian Entertainment

A Malaysian site <a href=http://thestar.com.my/>The Star</a> has scored an <a href=http://star-techcentral.com/tech/story.asp?file=/2005/10/27/itfeature/12415623&sec=itfeature>interview</a> with <a href=http://www.obsidianent.com/>Obsidian</a>'s Chris Avellone:
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<blockquote><b>When was the last time you played a game and thought “Oh, my god... why didn’t I think of that?”</b>
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Aside from the chain weapon design in God of War (which I think was a great way to reinforce the action of the game as well as just looking cool), the next thing I can think of is Anachronox (an old Ion Storm game), the coolest part about it was that the interface was actually a character with its own personality, and it would talk to you through your journal, pop-up menus, and give you sass occasionally just so you didn’t take it for granted.
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Other than that, there were some moments in Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) that made me throw down my controller because we were looking for features to place in Star Wars: KOTOR II: The Sith Lords, and it seemed like all the cool things we’d hoped to do they’d already taken a first shot at in Knights I. </blockquote><b>MCA:</b> I have an idea! What if the Exile is actually some badass Dark Sith Lord with amnesia?!
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<blockquote><b>The younger generation of gamers are known to be less interested in experiencing long dialogues in story-driven RPGs, preferring the (sometimes mindless) fast-paced action FPS and RTS games. With this in mind, what’s your take on the future of RPGs? </b>
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I think there’s been a trend to more instant gratification in RPGs, which I don’t think is a bad thing – I think a lot of older RPGs (and even some newer ones) tend to paralyse the player with dialogue and cutscenes that force you to wait before you actually do anything. Some of these things are critical for passing along story information, but at the same time, there may be a better way to present that information.</blockquote>Hmm, paralyze the player with dialogues... That's a new one. It would go nicely with Spector's "tyranny of choices" and Bradley's "plaguing TB combat".
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[Drakron]

After KotOR2:TSL I decided to avoid any game Chris Avellone is a developer of.

 

[pseudo intellectual]

The interviewer does make a good point about the ADD Gen Y crowd driving future development (in this case away from story and dialogue). That PC exclusive RPGs are a dying breed reflects this market shift.

That I'm really not looking forward to any future, currently announced CRPGs isn't such a huge let down as the high game PC upgrade costs have really not been justified in the last few years IMHO.

Barring a miracle (e.g. a developer puts out an RPG that doesn't suck, not bloody likely) my next computer will be an Apple.

 

[jiujitsu]

MCA makes me sad.

Lead designer of PS:T! The fucking video book!

Now a console sell-out. :evil:

Please, Chris, don't paralyze me with those yucky... WORDS! Reading is work not fun!

This industry changes too quickly. We are already like old men and "back in the day" was only 5-8 years ago.

Fuck video games! They are for faggot little kids. I'M LEAVING FOREVER!

Unless MCA posts and says we are best friends. Then I "take it all back."

 

[gromit]

Well, look at the phrasing of those statements... "dialogue and cutscenes that force you to wait before you actually do anything," and "there may be a better way to present that information." I take that to be targeted more towards weighty chunks of exposition where you get talked at with nothing to do other than "click to continue" as some guy fills you in on situational information that could easily be presented by letting the player experience it, than dialogue that consists of actual gameplay, i.e. interacting with NPCs and making decisions.

For a decent example of non-verbal / cutscene exposition, take the very opening of Half-Life 2. Note the distinct lack of a character blathering on, saying "Breen is the leader, this is the capitol, the combine's really mean to us, and there are little spy-bots flying around everywhere, etc." Would those in any way have been more effective than Breen on the big screen spouting propaganda, the bots flying right up in your face blinding you with the flash, and the combine whacking you with tasers just for standing too close to them? The very same information has been passed to the player, but one method involves staring at Joe Windbag's face for several minutes, while the other is walking through the city and seeing it for yourself.

Given that the situations in RPGs are often much more complex, this obviously isn't a perfect example. There's almost certainly always going to be SOME expositional dialogue in all but the most experimental of RPGs, if only due to the fact that you can't get every bit of information first hand without completely stepping out of the character for a cutscene, and that different characters' perceptions of an event or situation play a crucial role in the player forming decisions and allegiances. There is, however, a lot of room to trim the fat from the old "this is what's happened the last six months in THIS town."

When it comes to raw exposition, the old writer's adage "show, don't tell" has always worked famously.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Well, I'm not a big fan of cutscenes in CRPGs. I tend to agree that cutscenes tend to break the experience since you go from having control of a character or party of characters to NOT controlling anything but merely watching. That said, when dealing with dialogue, I am playing a participation role typically. If I'm participating and selecting choices, I don't see how that's being paralyzed so long as the dialogue has meaning in gameplay. I'm affecting some outcome, so I am moving myself towards a goal.

I would love some clarification on what he means by that.

 

[Claw]

Hmm, paralyze the player with dialogues... That's a new one.

Actually... it reminds me of an idea I had. You played Gothic, right? Do you recall an incredibly annoying NPC by the name of Mud who'd keep forcing dialogue?
Well, I found out that due to a bug you could actually break out of dialogue while he kept talking.
I thought this was a great feature actually, and it'd be a cool model for a "freeform" dialogue, where NPCs don't actually force you into a dialogue mode, just talk to you (and I don't mean Morrowind throw-away lines), leaving you free to respond or walk away.
Dialogue mode should be less rigid, possibly allowing you to leave and re-enter it without interrupting the dialogue. You could talk to an NPC while walking, as opposed to the common method (also prevalent in Gothic) where you first talk, run to a destination, and talk again.
If the system was just a little clever, if could even decide automatically whether or not you should stay in dialogue mode or not after you said your line.
For instance, in Gothic there is at least one scene where an NPC attacks once he finishes talking, which is a bit annoying since it leaves little time for reacion and the attack isn't even supposed to be suprising. If I wasn't stuck in a rigid combat mode, I could actually prepare myself the moment the NPC announces that it's time to fight.

 

[Sol Invictus]

It's the same too with books. Some writers, Like Terry Brooks and the J.K. Rowling tend to meander on and on with expositional dialogue that explains the setting of the world, what's been going on, and detailing the characters actions with elaborate descriptions instead of allowing the reader to experience the character for itself through his actions and words.

Needless to say, it's unnecessary and writers like George R.R. Martin, Steven Erikson, Robin Hobb, Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett and China Mieville employ much better methods of detailing the characters. Instead of saying something along the lines of, "The Evil Lord John slaughtered countless villagers and is a cruel man with an iron fist. His brutality is witnessed by the skulls mounted on spikes throughout the castle's walkways", or even "I'm the Evil Lord John. I slaughter millions of people and if you disobay me I'll slaughter you too!" both of which seem incredibly contrived, they might instead allow the protagonist to witness one of these acts of brutality occuring as it is happening, or simply allow the protagonist to look at the skulls on pikes. The conclusions, although left to the reader, would be obvious given such scenes, and no exposition was ever necessary.

The brutality in certain scenes alone would be enough to explain most things to the reader without explaining what's going on in boring narrative prose. The reader would have to be absolutely stupid or young not to understand the depth of what the scenes impart.

For instance, if Rowling were to have written the scene of Snape killing Dumbledore with Dumbledore fighting for a last breath and Snape giving him an evil grin, it would have been a much more powerful scene than having Harry Potter come up with some exposition to the other guy about how he just saw Snape kill Dumbledore. It seems to me like that bit was tacked on for the lowest common denominator readers just in case he didn't figure out that Snape had killed the old wizard.

There's been far better death scenes in other books, with an important character being pierced brutally by a spear, or some other important character having his head cut off and his bowels strewn out by two men simultanously, midsentence. Such scenes are a lot more lucid and powerful than having some boring exposition about how "X killed Y" just in case the reader didn't get it.

 

[Twinfalls]

The interviewer does make a good point about the ADD Gen Y crowd driving future development (in this case away from story and dialogue). That PC exclusive RPGs are a dying breed reflects this market shift.

That I'm really not looking forward to any future, currently announced CRPGs isn't such a huge let down as the high game PC upgrade costs have really not been justified in the last few years IMHO.

Barring a miracle (e.g. a developer puts out an RPG that doesn't suck, not bloody likely) my next computer will be an Apple.

Don't get too despondent just yet. Gothic 3 and AoD are on the horizon, both look excellent. Age of Pirates looks to feature complete non-linearity. And if sophisticated prose-based gaming is what you want, it's never been better - check out all the IF around the place.

 

[Shagnak]

I would love some clarification on what he means by that.

Me too.
Is he meaning massive chunks of jarring dialog?

Because let's face it, when a lot of us say "we like good dialog", we are really meaning two things:
(1) "Good lines" (to put it simply)
(2) Intelligently branching dialog.

Not big tracts of text that force the player to be "innactive" while they digest it.
Maybe I should read the article.
Naaaaw.

 

[Shagnak]

Actually... it reminds me of an idea I had. You played Gothic, right? Do you recall an incredibly annoying NPC by the name of Mud who'd keep forcing dialogue?
Well, I found out that due to a bug you could actually break out of dialogue while he kept talking.

You can? I can't remember finding that out.
Geezus fucking holy Cthulhu he was annoying.
I just attacked him and he ran off after that every time I got close to him.
No one seemed to mind.
I think.

 

[Section8]

I think Bioware pioneered that notion of forcing annoying characters and crap dialogues on the character.

Bioware: "OMFG! This will be so funny! Look how frustrated the player gets with this inane shit! You know what else would be funny? Moving the interface buttons around when the mouse cursor gets close, so the player can never click on them! Let's put that on a list of things to do. Hot damn, we're comedic fucking geniuses."

 

[geminito]

Has Chris Avellone ever heard of Final Fantasy?? It is on a console and features lots and lots of dialog! Tons of cutscenes. And it continues to be a huge success.

However the dialog and paralyzation scenes in Final Fantasy games tend to be much more interesting to watch than anything in KOTOR. KOTOR dialog was so awfully cliche I wanted to stab myself in the eyes.

 

[Sammael]

I cannot believe I'm seeing the words "interesting" and "Final Fantasy" in the same sentence...

 

[TheGreatGodPan]

I'm all for getting rid of EVERY cutscene in EVERY genre. And dialogue should be interactive.

 

[Chris Avellone]

Clarification/Confusion

Some clarification and random stuff to throw out:

1. Cut scenes in Halflife and System Shock 2 make me happy (or happier). They're cut scenes, but I'm right in the middle of it, or at least have the illusion of it being immersive and giving me some freedoms. If there was some way to make them even more interactive and be able to stage those cool events in the middle of gameplay without it causing programming difficulties, then I would dispense with cut scenes altogether. Unfortunately, there are times in order to pull off a dramatic effect or event, you need to limit what the player can do while those things are occurring. ("Paralysis.")

This is what generally happens during dialogue sequences as well - you limit the player's input and cause them to "wait" on some level, which works, but isn't as much fun as it could potentially be.

2. And I do wonder if there is some way to have a dialogue or communicate information to the player that allows you to do something more interactive than just reading or listening while the PCs are communicating information to you and still allow you to make meaningful choices. Do I have a good solution for this? Not yet, but I'd like to try. I do think that a lot of older PC RPG dialogue interactions are mostly passive until you make the choice selection. Dealing with the consequences afterwards is generally when the excitement level starts ramping up.

3. Do I think node after node of chunks of text, spoken or otherwise, is fun? Probably not for most people. I enjoyed writing on Torment, but if there had been anyway to make those scenes more interactive or show a lot of the stuff described taking place, it would have made design sense to do so - and I firmly believe it would have made the game more fun as a result.

Anyway, don't know whether that was confusing or made things more clear or not.

Chris

 

[Vault Dweller]

Re: Clarification/Confusion

I enjoyed writing on Torment, but if there had been anyway to make those scenes more interactive or show a lot of the stuff described taking place, it would have made design sense to do so - and I firmly believe it would have made the game more fun as a result.

When you say fun, do you mean fun for casual players who are not into reading? The game could have sold more, but I doubt it would have been better. I think that PST dialogues and even the level of interaction in them (catch a thief, break a neck, manipulate an object, etc) are the best example of writing in a game. Some things can't be shown and seen, they could only be experienced on a different level, and your dialogues did a fine job there.

Thanks for clarifying anyway.

 

[Micmu]

I recommend hand gestures & farting.

 

[FrancoTAU]

I wouldn't drop all cutscenes, but jesus.... don't strive to be Xenogears/Xenosagas. I can't think of any cRPGs that frustrated me with cutscenes.

I don't really see how you get around cutscenes/blocks of dialogue in a story driven game.

 

[Ellester]

I'm all for getting rid of EVERY cutscene in EVERY genre. And dialogue should be interactive.

I agree, I’ve never been a fan of cut scenes, especially when I’m shown something in an area I’m not current at. How the heck am I supposed to know about this? I would rather experience it in real time or in person, rather than having a plot or story element be shown to me in a cut scene.

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

JE sawyer and MCA are back again to make sweet butt love together.

 

[jiujitsu]

Hey, he posted.

I'll take back the console sell-out part. For now.

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

With Planescape it might of been hard to show all the stuff happening like what was being descriped. Like if you were to break someone neck I'm pretty sure that wuld be hard to animate, but if you had TNO go into combat mode then have each other fight for one round or whatever that DnD rules say, then if he missed you would stay in combat and if you succeede then combat wuld end and in the text it would say that you succeeded in braking his neck. Of course you could only use your hands in the first attack. I dunno but ya.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Re: Clarification/Confusion

3. Do I think node after node of chunks of text, spoken or otherwise, is fun? Probably not for most people. I enjoyed writing on Torment, but if there had been anyway to make those scenes more interactive or show a lot of the stuff described taking place, it would have made design sense to do so - and I firmly believe it would have made the game more fun as a result.

The problem I had with Torment's dialogue was that a lot of it was a minute of speech followed by, "Go on." or "I've heard enough for now!" I think it would have worked a lot better if it were more broken up and allowed for players to dig a little or use attributes to find out new information. For example, a wisdom check to access certain key pieces of an NPC's backstory would be nice, or a charisma check to get them to talk about stuff they didn't want to normally talk about.

I'm not sure how to make the dialogue more interactive than listen and reply, since that's really all conversation is. About the only thing I could think is to allow the character to interupt what an NPC is saying, but that would annoy both the player and should probably have a negative reaction for the NPC. Dialogue really is what it is.

I guess you could add hand gestures, but who would use those? And what would they do? You could perhaps point to an object and ask, "Tell me about that, please!" but that's really something that would give designers fits. It would also be a pain if you wanted to have voice acting for everything.

The case could be made for allowing the player to type in key words like the older CRPGs and Fallout did, but I never really liked those systems and they allowed for too much of the hidden dialogue things which mostly became easter eggs.

Personally, I have no problem with dialogue trees if they're done well the way they exist currently.

 

[Volourn]

Dilaogue tress are awesome. Period. Fuck yeah. Anyone who wants to destroy them needs help. No offense, Mr. Obsidian Dude.