Some people will insist that they are right, and whatever reailty says, they'll just work it into that. I'm eager to see what becomes of his new endeavors Edited Januby Gruftlord

He seems happy with his decision to actually follow that career. This whole situation might indeed explain why we saw him a lot and joked about him appearing as a living stretch goal. And he climbed the ladder too high at Obsidian to be able to continue to do it (and maybe got into a position where, despite being a founder, didn't allow him to force any of his creative ideas, for better or worse). So to me it sounds like he realizes that it's the creative hands on tinkering with individual writing aspects of a game (or novel) that he enjoys the most. This seems to be contrary to how he describes his daily duties as creative director. However, he seemed to only consider the more boring managing tasks in the evening, when is creative mind ran empty for the day. His work schedule puts heavy emphasis on the creative aspect of writing, which suites itself well for writing all kinds of stuff from companions, side quests or main storylines (or working as a living stretch goal). It seems Chris enjoys the more hands on parts of game writing, with seeing an idea of his through development from start to finish. While i got the same impression as aname, i also read a few other things between the lines. The fact that Feargus was willing to let him work for InXile and then FTL could have been an attempt at a sabbatical, or it could have been a recognition of the growing distance between Avellone and the rest of the company.

It was probably a bit acrimonious, but if I had to guess he was probably feeling this way long before Pillars. I think that just confirms what a bunch of people are saying. And that leads to great games, but it also leads to a lot of people out of work and unfinished games. Sounds a bit like Tim Schaefer, development should always empty out all bank accounts. So he wasn't making stuff he was happy with. And he couldn't force other people to do what he wanted them to do because the other leads / admin didn't have his back (probably because of money). Take the whole interview together, it sounds like he was frustrated because he couldn't do what he wanted to do at Obsidian because of money.

I never got into this industry to get rich, I got into it so I could live my hobby, and I'm content with that. The most freedom I've ever gotten in all the companies over the years is when no one above really cared much about the game I was working on until it was far along. So I don't know if enforcing that common design vision equates to freedom, but it's worth saying that most collaborative efforts require that degree of compromise, especially in games, and it's a group effort from top to bottom. He has however, since last time I saw his twitter, added the game to his list of some of the stuff he has designed.Įven if his departure wasn't on the best of terms, both Obsidian and Avellone seems to be in pretty good places now. I'm not going into the speculation game here, but it's obviously not the title he is most proud to have worked on. I have seen several places, his lecture etc, that he often doesn't mention PoE when he talks about his back catalogue. I think something must have happened afterwards. For example, see him lavish praise on creative lead Eric Fenstermaker here: I'm left with the impression that Avellone left, at least in part, because of creative disagreements over PoE.īut during the period immediately after the game's release, he seemed to be taking a pretty 'glass half full' approach to Pillars of Eternity.

Obsidian on the gamebryo engine