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For the Fallout character, see Chris Avellone (Fallout). For the Fallout 2 character, see Chris Avellone (Fallout 2). |
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Chris Avellone is a developer who worked at Black Isle Studios as a designer on Fallout 2, as well as the chief creative officer at Obsidian Entertainment and a writer on Fallout: New Vegas, including serving as project director for the add-ons Dead Money, Old World Blues and Lonesome Road.
Career[]
Work on the Fallout series[]
Black Isle Studios (1995–2003)[]
Avellone joined Interplay Entertainment in 1995. He was invited by Timothy Cain to work on the original Fallout, but Avellone declined, as he was already working on Descent to Undermountain and pre-production for Planescape: Torment. Avellone said he eventually regretted this decision, but did recommend Scott Bennie for the project instead.[1]
Fallout 2 (1998)[]
Avellone soon came to serve as a designer on Fallout 2. By this time, Avellone was working full-time on Planescape: Torment, but he was brought onto Fallout 2 after many developers (including Timothy Cain) left to form Troika Games.[2] The Vault City designer notes include credit to Avellone as one of the designers on Vault City.[3] According to the Fallout 2 Official Strategies & Secrets guide, he was also responsible for designing New Reno, the mercenaries' cave raiders and various special encounters.[4] Avellone helped finish development of Vault City,[2] and was one of the primary designers on New Reno alongside Thomas French.[5] For New Reno, Avellone received a 1.5 page summary outlining the location from the previous team, and fleshed the city out from there.[2] He also designed the companion John Cassidy.[6]
Fallout Bible and Van Buren (2002–03)[]
Beginning in 2002, Avellone compiled the Fallout Bible, a collection of developer commentary featuring behind-the-scenes design information and developer statements about Fallout 2, as well as the series' development as a whole. Avellone's writings for the Fallout Bible were published on the Black Isle Studios homepage during this time.
During this period, Avellone also worked as a co-lead designer on the Van Buren project, Interplay's vision of Fallout 3, and Avellone wrote several design documents for the game. In 2003, Avellone left Black Isle Studios, and Van Buren was later canceled.
Obsidian Entertainment (2003–15)[]
Avellone joined Feargus Urquhart to found Obsidian Entertainment in 2003, where he became the new company's chief creative officer.
Fallout: New Vegas (2010)[]
When Fallout: New Vegas was first pitched by Feargus Urquhart to Bethesda Softworks (who had since purchased the Fallout IP), Avellone came up with the game's beginning plot point and story hook: that the player would be shot in the head and left for dead in a shallow grave.[7][8] Fallout: New Vegas was approved, with Obsidian Entertainment developing the game and Bethesda Softworks publishing it; Avellone finished work on Alpha Protocol and joined the development team in October 2009.[9] Avellone served as a senior designer on the game;[10] in the in-game credits, Avellone was credited as a writer and as the chief creative officer at Obsidian Entertainment. He was also the project director and a narrative designer for the game's add-ons.
Some of the specific contributions and story content that Avellone worked on for Fallout: New Vegas include writing the companion Rose of Sharon Cassidy (the daughter of John Cassidy),[6] writing for the game's ending slides,[11] as well as the Mojave Outpost alongside J.R. Vosovic and the REPCONN headquarters alongside Akil Hooper.[12] Avellone also wrote the dialogue for General Lee Oliver[12] and Legate Lanius, the latter based on a concept by John Gonzalez.[13][14][15] Avellone wrote the script for the graphic novel All Roads, a graphic novel released with the Collectors' Edition of Fallout: New Vegas.[16]
Avellone also designed the character of Ulysses, originally intended to be a Legion-sympathetic companion in the base game.[17] However, Ulysses was ultimately cut from the base game because his recorded dialogue was so large that it would not fit on the disk. Ulysses and Cass, both designed by Avellone, were the wordiest companions in the game, and the amount of writing for Ulysses greatly surpassed even that of Cass. The loss of Ulysses from the base game was a difficult one, as Avellone and project director Joshua Sawyer felt that the game needed a companion that was more aligned with Caesar's Legion, and he was involved in other story hooks from the game.[18][19] Additionally, concepts originally developed for Van Buren made their way into Fallout: New Vegas; in Avellone's case, examples of this include mentions of the Twisted Hairs by Ulysses, as well as the characters of Elijah and Christine Royce.[20]
For the game's add-ons, Avellone had a more direct, "hands-on" development role, as the project director on Dead Money, Old World Blues and Lonesome Road. He did much of the major character writing for these add-ons (alongside Travis Stout for Old World Blues and Lonesome Road) and came up with most of the high level concepts and plots for the three add-ons he directed.[15] For Dead Money, Avellone was inspired to make a horror experience first, and a survival experience second, with a "dime store comic book" short story feel that still had strong narrative themes (such as greed and the human condition).[21] According to Joshua Sawyer, Avellone wrote all of the characters in Dead Money.[22] The decision to re-introduce Ulysses as an overarching villain throughout the three add-ons he directed came near the end of Dead Money's development, although other add-on hooks (such as Elijah's presence in Dead Money) had been envisioned since the base game's development.[6] Lyrics of the song "Begin Again," featured in Dead Money, were co-written by Avellone.[23]
For Old World Blues, Avellone sought to make a more "humor-oriented" expansion,[24] though it still had a thematic thread of what Avellone described as "the optimistic atomic future of what might have been."[25] Avellone also sought to provide explanations and backgrounds for some of the stranger and more unusual story elements in the base game, such as unexplained creatures and events in the Mojave Wasteland, including the presence of cazadores and night stalkers.[25][26] Avellone split the primary writing duties with Travis Stout; Avellone wrote the members of the Think Tank.[27] Lonesome Road fully brought back Ulysses as the central character of the add-on, with Avellone redeveloping his initial concepts of the character in a new context (his original script for the base game was not recycled, but the character itself was).[28] Avellone sought to explore themes of abandonment, in a mirror image of the original Fallout's ending,[25] as well as giving a more personal connection to the player character, the Courier, and tying them to Ulysses and his motivations.[6]
Other work[]
In 2015, Avellone left Obsidian to pursue freelance work.[29][30][31] He has since worked on other role-playing games such as Divinity: Original Sin II and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order as a freelance designer and writer.
Employment history[]
| From | To | Company | Role |
|---|---|---|---|
| January 1995 | May 2003 | Black Isle Studios | Lead Designer |
| June 2003 | May 2015 | Obsidian Entertainment | Creative Director Chief Creative Officer Co-Owner |
Credits[]
Fallout series[]
| Year | Title | Credited as/for |
|---|---|---|
| 1998 | Fallout 2 | Designer |
| 2003 | Van Buren | Co-Lead Designer |
| 2010 | Fallout: New Vegas | Writer Chief Creative Officer |
| 2010 | Dead Money | Project Director |
| 2011 | Honest Hearts | Narrative Designer |
| 2011 | Old World Blues | Project Director |
| 2011 | Lonesome Road | Project Director |
Other work[]
| Year | Title | Credited as/for |
|---|---|---|
| 1997 | Star Trek: Starfleet Academy | Additional Mission Design |
| 1999 | Planescape: Torment | Lead Designer |
| 2000 | Icewind Dale | Designer |
| 2002 | Icewind Dale II | Designer |
| 2004 | Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords | Lead Designer |
| 2006 | Neverwinter Nights 2 | Creative Director |
| 2010 | Alpha Protocol | Lead Designer |
| 2011 | Dungeon Siege III | Chief Creative Officer |
| 2014 | Wasteland 2 | Highpool/Ag Center |
| 2014 | South Park: The Stick of Truth | Chief Creative Officer |
| 2016 | Torment: Tides of Numenera | Writing |
| 2016 | Divinity: Original Sin II | Additional Narrative Design |
| 2018 | Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire | Additional Writing |
| 2019 | Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order | Story and Writing Consultant |
| 2021 | Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous | Narrative Designer |
| 2022 | Weird West | Additional Design |
Behind the scenes[]
- Player characters may encounter a mercenary named Chris Avellone in Fallout.
- A person named Chris Avellone is mentioned on a grave in Golgotha in Fallout 2.
- A character named Mayor Chris Avellone appears in Fallout Tactics, but Avellone did not provide voice acting for the role and was opposed to its inclusion.[32]
- A location named Avellone is mentioned by guards at Bunker Gamma in Fallout Tactics.
- After leaving Obsidian, Avellone criticized the company's upper management, feeling they had a "lack of ethics" and "serious flaws that need to be addressed" because they attempted to restrain his ability to speak freely about the games he has worked on in the past.[33]
- In 2022, Avellone started Fallout Apocrypha, a series of posts on his Medium page, in which he would answer more fan questions.
- In Fallout Apocrypha, he refuted the fan notion that he must hate Bethesda for their changes to Fallout, saying that Bethesda added a "deeper layer of open-world exploration" and keeps the series popular and alive.[34] In a Twitter post from around the same time, he complimented Todd Howard, calling him a good guy who was always nice and respectful.[35]
- Avellone also mentioned he does not really care to fully play Fallout 4 or Fallout 76, feeling both entries, based on his impressions, lack the same level of seriousness from previous games.[36]
- In 2024, Avellone reviewed the Fallout TV series as part of Fallout Apocrypha and found it rather disappointing.[36]
Quotes[]
Gallery[]
Videos[]
References[]
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