Chris Avellone got into computer games by being traded. He had been writing supplements for the tabletop role-playing game Champions for Hero Games, “for peanuts”, he said, and kept asking for regular work. “They traded me to the Interplay TSR division (called ‘Dragonplay’ at the time) in exchange for $300 worth of Interplay software.” That division became Black Isle Studios, and at his interview he was asked how he would begin a game in TSR’s Planescape setting, a licence Interplay owned but had not used. “I told him I’d start with the player waking from the dead in the Mortuary,” he told Retro Gamer. That is how Planescape: Torment begins.
Fast facts
- Before games: supplements for Hero Games’ Champions tabletop role-playing game.
- Interplay and Black Isle Studios: from the mid-1990s; lead designer of Planescape: Torment (1999); senior designer by 2001.
- Obsidian Entertainment: co-founder in 2003; lead designer of Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords (2004); chief creative officer until June 2015.
- Freelance from 2015: writing and narrative design for other studios’ games.
- 2020 to 2023: dropped by studios after allegations of misconduct; sued two accusers for libel; settlement and retraction in 2023.
Black Isle
Black Isle was Interplay’s new role-playing division in Irvine, California, and Avellone was one of its writers. On Planescape: Torment he was the lead designer, and the team remembered a man who “never came out of his room”, in the lead artist Tim Donley’s words, “a tiny half metre by half metre space, full of books”. He recruited writers in his own way: a tester who filed unusually good bug reports was asked to write a zombie as an “impromptu writing test”, and went on to design whole areas. The game came out in December 1999 with a script that Computer Gaming World put at “circa 800,000 words”. It won role-playing game of the year awards and sold modestly.
Avellone has always been candid about its weak spot. “Combat took a back seat to character advancement, creation, quests, areas, and the narrative,” he told Retro Gamer in 2013. “I regret this, and wish we had a systems designer assigned to the project.” He named the narrative as the game’s “One Thing”, and said he found its lasting popularity hard to believe. He co-wrote Sybex’s official strategy guide to Icewind Dale, and Retro Gamer lists Fallout 2, Icewind Dale and Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance among his Black Isle work.
His last big Black Isle project was never finished. In the early 2000s he designed Black Isle’s Fallout 3, code-named Van Buren, and for most of that time he was the only developer on it. He told Wireframe that he turned it into a pen-and-paper game so that he and the developers who would join the project could play through its areas and test its companions: “They could develop characters, explore areas I’d laid out, test certain companions for the game, and see what worked and what didn’t.” Interplay cancelled it and closed Black Isle in December 2003.
Obsidian
Avellone was one of the Black Isle veterans who founded Obsidian Entertainment in 2003, and its first game was a sequel to BioWare’s Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Electronic Gaming Monthly reported that when he first played BioWare’s game he “threw my controller down” and asked: “How are we supposed to do a sequel?” As lead designer of The Sith Lords, released for the Xbox in December 2004 and the PC in February 2005, he decided not to continue the first game’s hero: “I didn’t want to stomp all over anyone’s decisions from the first game.” Players instead told the game how they believed the first one had ended. He wanted companions who reacted to the player and who split off for parts of the story: “In the Star Wars movies, the friends all split up and do various things, so it made sense for us to do it here.”
He returned to Fallout with Fallout: New Vegas (2010), on which Edge noted that he and J. E. Sawyer had worked on Van Buren years before. When Kickstarter took off in 2012 he wrote that player funding was “proof certain genres aren’t dead”. inXile promised his involvement in Wasteland 2 if its Kickstarter reached $2.1 million, he joined Torment: Tides of Numenera, and wrote for Obsidian’s own Kickstarter game, Pillars of Eternity.
On 9 June 2015 he announced that he was leaving Obsidian, where he had been chief creative officer.
Freelance
As a freelance writer and narrative designer, Avellone worked on more games than ever. By early 2019 Wireframe listed credits on Torment: Tides of Numenera, Prey, Into the Breach, Omensight, the System Shock remake and Dying Light 2, and interviewed him about Degrees of Separation, a puzzle game for which he wrote a love story. “I hadn’t tried my hand at writing romance and relationships in games before,” he said. He also worked with Beamdog on the 2017 Enhanced Edition of Planescape: Torment, and was credited on Larian’s Divinity: Original Sin II, Owlcat’s Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Respawn’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.
Allegations, lawsuit and settlement
In June 2020 two women publicly accused Avellone, on Twitter, of sexual misconduct. Studios ended their work with him within days. Techland, the developer of Dying Light 2, said: “We treat matters of sexual harassment and disrespect with utmost care, and have no tolerance for such behaviors – it applies to both our employees as well as external consultants, Chris among them.” Paradox Interactive said his involvement in Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 had been brief and that his work would not be in the finished game.
In 2021 Avellone denied the allegations and sued the two women for libel in California. In March 2023 he published a joint statement with them announcing a settlement. In it, the two women said: “Mr. Avellone never sexually abused either of us. We have no knowledge that he has ever sexually abused any women.” They said their words had been “misinterpreted to suggest specific allegations of misconduct that were neither expressed nor intended”, and that he deserved “a full return to the industry”. Avellone announced that the case had been dismissed with prejudice and that he would receive a seven-figure payment, which included his legal costs. He asked people to respect the women’s privacy.
Sources
- IGN Unplugged issue 6, September 2001, p. 21: “Into the industry” feature (Avellone as senior designer at Black Isle; Hero Games and Champions; traded to “Dragonplay” for $300 of Interplay software).
- Retro Gamer issue 113, April 2013, pp. 34–39: “The making of Planescape: Torment” (the interview and the Mortuary; Tim Donley on Avellone’s room; the zombie writing test; December 1999; Avellone on combat; his other games).
- Computer Gaming World issue 188, March 2000: Planescape: Torment review (“circa 800,000 words”; see the Planescape: Torment entry for its awards and sales).
- Computer Gaming World issue 194, September 2000, p. 89: Sybex advertisement for the official Icewind Dale strategy guide “from Black Isle designers”, Chris Avellone among them.
- Wireframe issue 2, November 2018, pp. 19–23: Avellone on tabletop and computer role-playing games, and on Van Buren as a pen-and-paper game.
- Electronic Gaming Monthly issue 179, June 2004, pp. 76–82: Knights of the Old Republic II feature (Obsidian’s founders; “I threw my controller down”; companions and the split party).
- Computer Gaming World issue 239, June 2004, pp. 61–67: Knights of the Old Republic II feature (lead designer; “I didn’t want to stomp all over anyone’s decisions”).
- Edge issue 214, May 2010, pp. 34–35: Fallout: New Vegas preview (Avellone, Sawyer and Van Buren).
- Edge issue 239, April 2012, p. 12: Avellone on Kickstarter.
- Retro Gamer issue 103, June 2012, p. 8: Wasteland 2 Kickstarter (Avellone and Obsidian to be involved). Issue 116, July 2013, p. 11: Avellone joins Torment: Tides of Numenera.
- Wireframe issue 7, February 2019, pp. 48–49: Degrees of Separation interview (his freelance credits; “I hadn’t tried my hand at writing romance”).
- Alex Wawro, “Obsidian co-founder Chris Avellone has left the company”, Game Developer, 9 June 2015 (web, secondary). https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/obsidian-co-founder-chris-avellone-has-left-the-company
- Joe Juba, “Chris Avellone no longer working on Dying Light 2”, Game Informer, 22 June 2020 (web, secondary): Techland’s statement. https://www.gameinformer.com/2020/06/22/chris-avellone-no-longer-working-on-dying-light-2
- Andy Robinson, “Chris Avellone has been dropped from Dying Light 2 following sexual harassment claims”, VGC, 22 June 2020 (web, secondary): Techland and Paradox. https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/chris-avellone-has-been-dropped-from-dying-light-2-following-sexual-harassment-claims
- Andy Robinson, “Chris Avellone ‘awarded seven-figure payment’ after sexual harassment claims settled”, VGC, 25 March 2023 (web, secondary): the 2020 accusations; the lawsuit; the joint statement; Avellone’s announcement. https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/chris-avellone-awarded-seven-figure-payment-after-sexual-harrasment-claims-settled
- Evgeny Obedkov, Game World Observer, 25 March 2023 (web, secondary): the June 2020 accusations, Techland and Paradox, the June 2021 libel suit in the California Superior Court, the joint statement. https://gameworldobserver.com/2023/03/25/chris-avellone-settlement-barrows-bristol-seven-figure-payment
- TheSixthAxis, “Chris Avellone’s abuse accusers retract all claims, settlement reached”, 26 March 2023 (web, secondary): the joint statement; Techland and Paradox. https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2023/03/26/chris-avellones-abuse-accusers-retract-all-claims-settlement-reached/
- Wikipedia, “Chris Avellone” (web, secondary): his work on Fallout 2, Pillars of Eternity, Divinity: Original Sin II and Pathfinder: Kingmaker. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Avellone