Chris Avellone: Dark Knight, Part One

[GameBanshee News]

Edge Online offers the first of a two-part profiling editorial on highly respected Black Isle/Obsidian developer Chris Avellone.

“We had the licence and very few developers to work on it,” he recalls. “Feargus [Urquhart, Black Isle CEO] asked if I wanted to be the first to work on the PC version; I said: ‘Hell, yes.’” Avellone’s central conceit with Torment was that death, in storybased games, was a punitive waste of time, and served only to slow players down. From this, the story emerged: players were cast as The Nameless One, a hideously scarred immortal amnesiac who would remember (rather than learn) new skills by coming into contact with relics from his forgotten past.

Death – or the lack thereof – was so pivotal to Torment’s gameplay that it could even be used to the player’s advantage. Say you needed to break into a morgue: you might attempt to attack the guards outside, but a much simpler (albeit perhaps more cringeinducing) method of entry was to simply commit suicide and be carted in, cadaver-style.

[DesR85]

Quote:

Avellone’s central conceit with Torment was that death, in storybased games, was a punitive waste of time, and served only to slow players down.

So? What is the difference of death in this game compared to others? I may not have played Torment, but based on this statement, I don't see any difference and most it did is to frustrate the player.

[fable]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DesR85 So? What is the difference of death in this game compared to others? I may not have played Torment, but based on this statement, I don't see any difference and most it did is to frustrate the player.

Death in PS:T is an ironic joke on the way it is in other games. The main character in PS:T finds he's continually brought back every time he dies--though in just about every other title, you bring your character back, courtesy of a saved game. So an unimaginative convention becomes in PS:T a sort of Eraserhead-style nightmare: the character can't escape from life.