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' caveraiders 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 companionJohn 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.
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 companionRose 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 漫画小说万路皆通, 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]
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]
“The biggest lesson [learned from Fallout 2] was if you give the player the ability to create a certain type of character, make sure that you honor the player's character build. What I mean by that is if you give a character the option to dump 500 points into speech, make sure they have an experience that's very cool and is appropriate for a speech based character. The same thing is true if you're a stupid combat monster, if you're a sneaky thief who no one ever sees... If you're allowing the players to build a character like that with the rule set, then make sure your content supports that experience.”— Chris Avellone, Extrasode episode 61
“There are issues with domesticating tribals and forcing them into one view of the world, there are issues with treating a wonder of the old world as nothing more than a bloody battleground, there are issues with propping old flags from Rome and California without a clear understanding of what those flags represent, and the long-range perspectives of many characters you'll encounter in the world have strong opinions about what's going on in the present, all born from the elements above. The question of the Old World making itself heard in the present - in the Mojave - is a core theme in Fallout: New Vegas, and whether overt or not, we hope it sinks in with the player as well.”— Chris Avellone on the themes of Fallout: New Vegas, User blog:Willooi/Developer Diary and Reflections from Chris Avellone and John Gonzalez
Gallery[]
Chris Avellone and Tim Cain on the set of fan project Nuka Break: Season 2
Chris Avellone's first appearance as "Chris" in fan series Nuka Break
Chris in the climactic shot of Nuka Break, wielding a bat upside-down
System Shock staff photo
Chris Avellone at the Alamo
Videos[]
Matt Chat 62 Chris Avellone's Early Days
Matt Chat 63 Planescape Torment with Chris Avellone
Big and Robot- Entertaining Guests - Chris Avellone
↑Chris Avellone on Twitter, September 23, 2022 (Archived): "Coffin Willie was mine, and Tom French and I did the design, I don't believe anyone else was involved except T-Ray (art lead) who we walked through his character's dialogue node by node to make sure it felt right to him. :)"
↑Joshua Sawyer on Twitter: "John Gonzalez was the lead creative designer (effectively "writing lead") on Fallout: New Vegas. He wrote the main plot from Chris Avellone's starting incident (shot in the head, dropped in a grave in the desert) and my end point (2nd Battle of Hoover Dam). 2/8"
↑Fallout: New Vegas 10th Anniversary Charity Stream Part 2 (reference starts at 5:52) Joshua Sawyer: "'When trying to start writing a game story script, do you start with thinking of the big themes to start from there? Or do the big things kind of arise naturally from other writing after a while?' I usually have one or two big events in mind and probably a theme or two, and then that develops. So in New Vegas, actually, the inciting incident was defined by Chris Avellone in the pitch for Bethesda, which is that you were shot in the head and dropped in a shallow grave. All the stuff about Benny and The Courier and the Platinum chip was not defined to them. That was all John Gonzalez. And then when I talked to John Gonzalez, I said, 'You do have to start with being shot in the head and dropped in a shallow grave, and at the end, you have to decide who controls Hoover Dam. Like basically, the Second Battle of Hoover Dam will occur, and you have to decide who will control the Mojave after that.' And then a third constraint I came up with, just because things were getting kind of fiddly with the platinum chip in the last half of the game, is that I told John that a requirement was that the Courier had to directly interact with members of the faction to progress toward the end of the game. And that was to humanize those factions and make their wants and needs more visible and important." (Transcript)
↑Question: "Who created and designed Legate Lanius, and why there are so many inconsistencies in his background(s) and his actual appearance? Like him being a legionnaire since 12 in one story, having his face destroyed (in-game he's OK) in another, and so on." Joshua Sawyer: "John Gonzalez and Chris Avellone." (Joshua Sawyer Formspring posts/2011)
↑Question: "Who came up with Lanius and was he inspired by anything in particular? Lanius is an amazing character by the way." Joshua Sawyer: "I think Lanius was developed by John Gonzalez, but Chris Avellone wrote the dialogue." (Joshua Sawyer Formspring posts/2012)
↑ 15.015.1Joshua Sawyer on Twitter: "Chris Avellone directed and did much of the character writing for Dead Money, Old World Blues, and Lonesome Road (and also wrote Lanius in base F:NV). Travis Stout also did character writing for Honest Hearts, OWB, and Lonesome Road. 6/8"
↑Fallout: New Vegas 10th Anniversary Charity Stream (reference starts at 2:19:16) Joshua Sawyer: "'What was the issue with Ulysses as a companion?' His dialogue was... his recorded dialogue was so big it literally wouldn't fit on the disk. [laughter] I don't remember how many lines it was, it was like... Cass was our second-biggest companion after Ulysses, and then Ulysses, was like, much, much, much more than her and literally just wouldn't fit. He was too big - too powerful. [...] 'Couldn't you cut a lot of his dialogue?' It happened so late in development that that didn't seem practical. Yes, if we had realized that earlier in development then probably, yes."
↑Joshua Sawyer on Something Awful forums: "Ulysses was cut because his character VO literally would not fit on the disc. His dialogue node count was something like 2x or 3x higher than any other companion, including Cass, who had the second highest (hers was ~615 IIRC and I think Ulysses was... ~1500??). I genuinely consider "original" Ulysses being cut as a big loss for F:NV overall because Avellone's original critique was right: we needed a Legion-sympathetic companion."
↑Joshua Sawyer on Something Awful Forums: "In the DLCs, Avellone wrote all of the characters in Dead Money, some (most?) of the characters in Old World Blues (Travis Stout wrote some/many as well, IIRC), and all of the characters in Lonesome Road (IIRC). He also directed those three DLCs. I directed Honest Hearts and wrote Joshua Graham and Daniel. Travis Stout wrote most of the other HH characters (Follows-Chalk, Waking Cloud, etc.) and John wrote the Survivalist logs."
↑Fallout: New Vegas 10th Anniversary Charity Stream Part 2 (reference starts at 1:27:16) Joshua Sawyer: "'Was it planned from the beginning that the existence of Cazadores would be found at Big MT?' No. I think Chris or someone else had that idea. They were like, 'Well, this is all scientific experiments, and we had the night stalkers and we had Cazadores.' And I did not make efforts to explain exactly where they came from during the development of Fallout New Vegas, just that they were mutated creatures, and they just took it from there." (Transcript)
↑Kickstarter campaign description: "To help shape and direct the existing narrative of System Shock, we've enlisted the help of Chris Avellone, who is best known for his work on a number of role-playing games, including; Fallout: New Vegas, Wasteland 2, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, Planescape: Torment, and Fallout 2. Chris will be working closely with Stephen Kick (our Creative Director) and Jason Fader (our Project Director and Senior Producer from Fallout: New Vegas) as well as several other key developers from Fallout: New Vegas to bring modern AAA quality into the world of System Shock." System Shock (Archive)
↑Chris Avellone on Twitter, April 25, 2015 (Archive): @AgentC1983: "Hey Chris, quick question, are you able to confirm if you voiced the character “Chris Avellone” in fallout tactics?" @ChrisAvellone: "I did not, no. To my shame, I had forgotten "I" was in there (and if I'd known, probably would have asked them to take it out)."
↑Fallout Apocrypha (Archive): "I BET YOU HATE BETHESDA FOR WHAT THEY DID TO FALLOUT Nope. If anything, they kept it alive, and then added a much deeper layer of open-world exploration than anything we'd been able to do at Interplay. Also, the marketing department at Bethesda had a much stronger push than anything Interplay could have made happen, and arguably helped Fallout enter the mainstream more than Interplay ever could have done. There's a reason you'll see Fallout shirts at Target, and that alone is a pretty big accomplishment (whether you agree that's an accomplishment or not)."
↑Chris Avellone on Twitter, February 24, 2022 (Archive): "Todd's a good guy and was always nice and respectful toward us. In fact, he would often say that we should check with him whenever anyone in his studio would say, 'well, Todd said...' because chances are, he didn't."
