Chris Avellone

For the Fallout character, see Chris Avellone (Fallout).
For the Fallout 2 character , see Chris Avellone (Fallout 2).
For the Fallout Tactics character, see Chris Avellone (Fallout Tactics).

Developer
Chris Avellone
Biographical data
Other names	Christopher Frederic Avellone MCA
Date of birth	September 27, 1971Birth date
Involvement in Fallout series
Games	Fallout 2 / Van Buren / Fallout: New Vegas / Dead Money / Old World Blues
External links
Wikipedia	Chris Avellone
Wikipedia	Chris Avellone
IMDb	Chris Avellone
IMDb	Chris Avellone
MobyGames	Chris Avellone
MobyGames	Chris Avellone
Other links	Twitter Profile

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Christopher Frederic Avellone (born on September 27, 1971) is a video game designer who has worked on Fallout 2, Van Buren (the canceled Fallout 3 by Black Isle Studios), and Fallout: New Vegas. He has also compiled the Fallout Bible.

Career

Before Interplay

Avellone is a descendant of Sicilian immigrants. After receiving his high school diploma at the renowned Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, he attended the College of William & Mary in Virginia (with Todd Howard) and completed with a Bachelors in English. During that time, he wrote short stories and scripts for role-playing games, some of which were published in the Dungeons & Dragons magazine Dragon.

Through Bruce Harlick, then editor with Hero Games, he received the chance to write a book for the role-playing game Dark Champions. After several publications with Hero Games, he decided that game design was a career option.

Black Isle Studios

Steve Peterson, one of the founders of Hero Games, provided Avellone an interview with Interplay, a large game publisher at the time. His knowledge of role-playing games and his ideas impressed Interplay, and he was offered a position as a game designer. Around 1995 or 1996, Avellone moved to Orange County, where Interplay was located.

Although he was offered the opportunity to work on Fallout, he instead worked on Descent to Undermountain, a decision he later came to regret.

Avellone got involved with the Fallout series when production was started at Black Isle Studios on Fallout 2. While many feel that his "feel" for the Fallout canon was lacking, the design of New Reno has been praised by just as many and Chris says that other areas (such as the raiders area) were perhaps lesser developed due to the extra emphasis he placed on this area; Following the completion of New Reno, he helped complete Vault City and worked on the special encounters as well While he enjoyed his work on the game he felt that a lot of mistakes were made during development including the lack of overall control over a united feel, mistakes that would go on to become the basis of his game design philosophy.

Later, he became the lead designer of a project codenamed Van Buren, which was canceled in 2003 and revealed to have been Black Isle's attempt at developing Fallout 3. He wrote the Tibbets Prison design document.

Aside from Fallout games, Avellone was also the lead designer of Planescape: Torment.

Obsidian Entertainment

After leaving Black Isle Studios, Avellone, together with Feargus Urquhart, founded Obsidian Entertainment. At Obsidian, Avellone has worked on such titles as, Neverwinter Nights 2 and its expansion, Mask of the Betrayer, and was lead designer on Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II and Alpha Protocol. He also wrote All Roads, a prequel to Fallout: New Vegas, and has also written a few Star Wars comics such as Unseen, Unheard for the Star Wars Tales series of comics and a few issues of Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures comic series, such as Heroes on Both Sides and Impregnable, all of which have been published by Dark Horse Comics. He was a writer on Fallout: New Vegas and lead designer on New Vegas add-ons. He also co-wrote the lyrics for the song "Begin Again" featured in Dead Money add-on.

On June 9, 2015, Avellone announced on his Twitter account that he had left Obsidian Entertainment.

Notes

Chris has been referenced directly in many Fallout games. In Fallout players can encounter a mercenary who bears his name, and in Fallout 2, when fighting alongside Marcus, he will yell out "Chris Avellone loves you!!" before attacking. Avellone is also referenced in Fallout Tactics through both an off screen location and as the Mayor of Springfield.

When asked about the Fallout Tactics dialogue, Chris Avellone stated that if he had realized the character was being included he likely would have asked that it be removed due to it breaking the fourth wall.

Quotes

“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 honour the player's character build. What I mean by that is if you give a character to option to dump 500 points into speech. Make sure they have an experience thats 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

Employment history

From	To	Company	Role
1996	2005	Interplay Entertainment/Black Isle Studios
2005	2015	Obsidian Entertainment
2015	2015	InXile Entertainment
2015	2015	Beamdog
2015	Present	Larian Studios

Credits

Fallout series

Year	Title	Credited as/for
1998	Fallout 2	Designer
2002	Fallout Bible	Writer
2003	Van Buren	Lead Designer
2010	All Roads	Writer
2010	Fallout: New Vegas	Senior Designer
2011	Dead Money	Project Director Writer
2011	Old World Blues	Project Director
2011	Lonesome Road	Project Director

Other work

Year	Title	Credited as/for
1999	Planescape: Torment
2015	Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear
2016	Torment: Tides of Numenera
2016	Divinity: Original Sin 2

Videos

Template:Video gallery

Gallery

Chris Avellone and Tim Cain on the set of fan project "Nuka Break: Season 2"

Chris Avellone at the Alamo

External links

• Chris Avellone on Twitter
• Bethesda Blog: Inside the Vault - Chris Avellone
• Fallout Official Site: Developer Diaries - What's Old is New Again
• Chris Avellone at Wikipedia
• Chris Avellone at Wookieepedia, the Star Wars wiki