RPGWatch Forums - Obsidian Entertainment - From Torment to Eternity: Chris Avellone

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Obsidian Entertainment - From Torment to Eternity: Chris Avellone

Chris Avellone has been interviewed at Gamasutra in a feature titled From Torment to Eternity.

Quote:

For Project Eternity, you've gone with a more traditional fantasy setting than in Torment. Was that always your intention?
CA: The way we approached it was we got Josh Sawyer, who was the project lead on Fallout: New Vegas, and we got Tim Cain, me, Feargus [Urquhart] and our other project director Adam Brennecke in a room, and we listed out all the points that we enjoyed about Infinity Engine, and notably dungeon delving, and a lot of the discussion came back to a lot of the strengths that the Forgotten Realms setting had. What they would do is they would create a lot of interesting spaces and sort of build cultures around these cool dungeons, and it was resonating with just about everybody, that they wanted a more traditional fantasy setting.
I do think that the ways that we're approaching the fantasy setting… It's not [entirely] "traditional fantasy." You'll see some similar races, but the takes on the races are going to be a bit different than people expect, so I think that'll be enough to set it apart.

There's also an audio interview with Chris at a site called Koobismo (thanks, NMA).
More information.

Interesting interview. Thanks.

The last thing this industry needs is generic puffy D&D fantasy settings. Even adding a good amount of Steampunk elements would make this a much more interesting setting, add a bit of conflict of magic versus technology/industry and you retain the lure of fantasy, yet incorporating a new spicy element to make the haggard RPGers of yore feel some wonder yet still.
Really, give us something we haven't seen before, but if they are to chicken to even add steampunk elemtns, give us a trully alien fatasy world, something like the Hyborian world of Conan, or Ars Magica, or Warhammer Fantasy RPG worlds, not another basic Greyhawk clone again.
There are hundreds of penand paper tabletop RPG settings that have unique and extremely cool backdrops that would be really cheap to license that almost no video/PC gamer has ever seen, yet they create an original- generic/vanilla/Greyhwak clone world just like every other hundreds of similar gameworlds done over the last 30+ years?
There is no really good reason for this.

As much as I enjoyed Planescape, I also enjoy, very much, the D&D system. I'm really glad they're keeping it conservative here. But with guns, I guess.