RPG General News - Chris Avellone on Writing Games

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Chris Avellone spoke with 80LV about writing and making game stories engaging.

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Do you prefer working on large game worlds with tons of characters or on more character-focused experiences where side characters are kind of helpers that develop main characters? What are the main differences?

In a perfect world, either one is fine. In a budget and constraint-driven world, however (like any business), I tend to find a smaller, more reactive cast is better, if only because those characters are forced to have considerable depth. And the more reactivity a limited cast can respond to, in detail, can result in story moments that shine.

In a world with thousands of characters, that's still achievable (example: Fallout 2, New Vegas), but the cost is considerable, as evidenced by having four voice-over studios working at once to record VO for New Vegas (and while I did write for New Vegas, it was nowhere near as much as others). This likely resulted in Bethesda telling us, "Because of that, you only have 10K voiced lines in all the DLCs."

Now, the good thing with that is it meant we were forced to have a small cast for the DLCs, which caters to how I prefer to design narrative anyway, so that was fine (I also liked it in Prey).

You've worked on so many games and stories. How difficult is it to find something fresh each time? What are the tricks to creating something that doesn't feel too familiar?

It helps that the writing is in different franchises, as each franchise has its own set of narrative bookends that influence the writing. There might be challenges put forth by the antagonists that can only work in certain settings, for example: The Transcendent One's attempt to sever itself from you in Planescape: Torment and the resultant damage to you as the protagonist wouldn't have worked in Knights of the Old Republic II, and Kreia's view on the Force as her agenda would have been similarly out of place in Planescape - the franchise helps dictate the stories you tell.

Also, if your themes aren't fresh, then that can be an issue. I usually find each project has a theme they're hitting either on purpose or not, and usually, there's a new "song" in each theme that's interesting to explore, and that helps as well. For example, in Prey, representing Morgan's isolation being reflected back at him by the chief engineers struggle was intentional, and seeing the "damage" that your relationship with your brother had caused to various NPCs, in audio logs, also was intended to showcase that even Morgan's minor actions in the past had serious consequences on others... and showcasing that one may believe their actions are isolated, serious ripple effects can occur.

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