Where?s the interest for Ultima fans? Mostly in the kinds of worlds that Bethesda crafts. Obsidian titles aren’t necessarily open world epics, don’t necessarily feature weighty moral quandries, and don’t always tell hugely compelling stories…but they are almost always distinctive, inventive, and just a little bit different than the RPG mainstream. And there is, I submit, a very Origin Systems-like spirit at work there.

CelebritySC has a lengthy interview with Chris Avellone.

Here’s one of the more interesting questions they put to him:

What are your thoughts on the PC-console “rift”? Are you a “PC gamer” or a “console gamer”? How do the differences between the platforms affect the design process if at all?

I am both. It affects the design process mostly in terms of controls (each has a limited number of controls per platform) and memory management (memory and lag on a console needs to be carefully monitored to prevent the game content from slowing down the game).

Also:

What is your favorite video game (not a game you’ve worked on)? Why?

There’s a bunch. If I had two it would be (1) Wasteland for the unique character building system and the world design, and (2) System Shock 2 literally for almost everything — skill trees, enemy design and pacing, mood, and level design.

Of the games you have worked on, which one are you the most proud of, and why?

Planescape: Torment because it moved beyond traditional narratives and was able to include philosophy and new perspectives on existing RPG themes and cliches.

If you were to ask me why I say that Obsidian is able to offer something just a little bit off the RPG mainstream, I’d point you in the direction of Chris Avellone.

Speaking of Planescape: Torment…

Chris Avellone took some questions (and offered some answers) about the game in a post on his blog.

In many RPGs, including the Fallout games you’ve worked on and the tabletop games that are Planescape: Torment’s genesis, the design seems oriented towards giving the player a “blank slate” to play as. But PS: T has the player inhabit a fairly developed character. Why did the team choose The Nameless One as the main character?

So it was a juggling act — how do you give a player as much freedom to create a character while knowing you don’t have the art resources to create a lot of customization for that character? We purposely chose a single template and then used the narrative of amnesia and the curse to explain the role-playing range the character could have (each time you wake up, your personality has a chance to shape itself in new directions based on the player’s experience) and also changed the “armor/costume accumulation” in most RPGs to gathering tattoos and other items that wouldn’t drastically change the character model. Note that many of the companions had similar limitations, accounting for their largely static appearance throughout the game.

Note that if I’d had the resources, we would have had a much larger range of character customization options. It wasn’t our desire to limit it to a single character look, and while it did work, at the same time, it didn’t give you as much freedom as we would have liked.

It’s an interesting point he raises, detailing how budget limitations and the inability to create a wide range of character model-related assets shaped the nature of character development in the game. Not that it isn’t nice to have several hundred different pieces of armour in a game that can be combined to create a nearly infinite number of “looks” for a character…but it isn’t always necessary. And I would even argue that in some ways, the wide range of customization options is used as a stand-in for genuine character development and relatability.

The Fallout: New Vegas Ultimate Edition trailer!

I haven’t played New Vegas yet, but it’s been suggested to me that it is by far the best Fallout title ever crafted. If you’ve played it, chime in with your thoughts!