Grupo 97: Interview mit Chris Avellone

[Lexx]

Vor einigen Tagen hat die spanische Webseite Grupo 97 ein Interview mit Chris Avellone veröffentlicht. Das Interview dreht sich hauptsächlich um Alpha Protocol, ist aber auch sonst recht lesenswert. (Im Übrigen wird auch, wie schon in der 1UP Gesprächsrunde von vor einigen Tagen, wieder über RPGs von heute und damals gesprochen.)

Ein paar kurze Auszüge:

You're a big fan of RPGs, not only as creator but also as a player. What's your feeling about the genre nowadays?
It depends on the presentation, really, but I think we're seeing a lot of good RPG content coming out consistently from RPG developers over the world (BioWare, Bethesda, CD Projekt, just to name a few), that I have a lot of faith in the genre. I think BioWare's Dragon Age and their way of taking the genre conventions and giving them a twist (elven slavery) is pretty good, and Bethesda's really driving home exploration and open worlds in their games.

I think there's a lot of promising stuff being delivered in the action RPG market as well - Borderlands and Torchlight seem to be generating a lot of positive buzz. I haven't played Borderlands yet, but I'm really looking forward to Torchlight (and eventually Deathspank), if only because the art styles of those games really strike a chord in my nerdly cartoony heart.
[...]

The noticeable ambiguity of some moral decisions we had to adopt in Planescape Torment are hard to find in video games now, although technical means used today are much higher. Is it a problem for designers, for editors or for the public?
The problem is for designers. Note in some instances, the range of moral decisions complements the license (Star Wars), where morality is usually black and white. In a world like Aliens, however, the moral decisions are more psychological grey areas, since much of that franchise is about not only the presence of the aliens, but the dangers that the human psyche brings to any survival equation. Exploring that on Aliens was really fun and Josh Sawyer created some really great characters that showcased that psychological vulnerability.
[...]

For many multiplatform games, the PC version will usually get damaged (simplified/dumbed down) mainly because not all computer possibilities are used, and the PC audience is no taken into account either. It will not always happen, but more oftenly that we would like to. Are there any differences between consoles and PC version?
Consoles are a stable tech platform, and that's an advantage, but we try and design our games so our build process does the PC version, the Xbox version, and the PS3 version all at once. All of our art assets are focused on the high-end (the PC) and downscaled for the console versions, although admittedly, we do have to be careful on how we lay out levels and place enemies because of console memory constraints.

Link:
Grupo 97 Interview mit Chris Avellone

[Mr.Wolna]

Hm nicht mein Thema, das Interview, aber Chris Avallone ist so eine nette Person. Wenn nicht die netteste von allen Ex Mitarbeiter.

[Micky]

Von neuen Computerspielen halte ich mich derzeit fern. ^^

Wobei ich Wolna zustimmen muss. War (Ist) ein sehr netter Kontakt gewesen damals.