General News - Chris Avellone Interview

Chris Avellone was interviewed by PCGamesN about Baldur's Gate 3, Fallout: Van Buren and Pillars of Eternity.

Is there something special about Baldur’s Gate that its spiritual successors haven’t captured yet?

The charm of the companions, for starters. One challenge I came back to after Pillars of Eternity (and I admit, I wrote two companions) is that a lot of the companions had lost a sense of charm that the original Baldur’s Gate cast had. It hit me when I got involved with the Enhanced Editions, because they reminded me of the companion design of the original game and made me realise that following a formula had taken Obsidian largely off the beaten path. I say Pillars 1, as I didn’t play Pillars 2, but the Pillars 1 companions with the possible exception of Eder just didn’t carry the same punch as the Baldur’s Gate crew. The Baldur’s Gate crew felt like your friends, rivals, and even your conscience at times, but none of the Pillars companions had that charm about them. Again, I felt partly to blame for that.

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