I was initially going to write a post about these books I bought; they are a series of novels that run parallel to the Mass Effect games, and I bought them after completing the games recently.
But, I ended up going down a bit of a rabbit hole, and realised that the man who penned these (Drew Karpyshyn) had a hand in creating some of my favourite games, and actually has some connection to another writer, who was also a major creative component in some of my favourite games.
Drew Karpyshyn was the lead writer for Mass Effect 1 and created most of the lore for the series, as well as the characters and general narrative of that game. He also worked on Mass Effect 2.
At the same time as doing all of that, he was writing the first three novels in this series of books.
He also worked on KOTOR, which is one of my favourite Star Wars RPGs of all time; he also wrote a few Star Wars novels, which I love.
The Bane trilogy. As well as The Old Republic: Raven, and annihilation, which are all brilliant.
Among many other games, he worked as a writer on The Old Republic MMO, which is my favourite MMO of all time, and it resonated with me due to the great writing.
Apparently, this one isn't that good compared to the first three, due to lore inconsistencies. But I had to buy it anyway, and will read it just to finish the series.
Anyway, while looking up his work and seeing KOTOR there, I was curious about who wrote the second KOTOR game.
Knights of the Old Republic is a great game, but I always thought the second game was better.
After looking that up, I realised that Chris Avellone was the lead writer for it.
The first KOTOR was produced by BioWare, and the second was produced by Obsidian Entertainment, two of my favourite game developers. Which, up until now, I didn't realise.
Chris Avellone and Drew Karpyshyn have never worked on a game together, but they are connected.
Drew worked on the first KOTOR game, and Chris worked on the second. Drew also worked on the first Neverwinter Nights game, and Chris worked on the second.
I played the first Neverwinter Nights game when I was younger, but I never fully got into it fully (most likely due to my age at the time, maybe 11 or 12). However, I recently bought a Humble Bundle of RPGs, and the first Neverwinter game was among the bundle. So, that is going to be at the top of my list of games to play, and when that's finished, I'll be buying the second one, which I never played.
Among those games was also Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale, which Chris Avellone also wrote for, so those are two other games from the bundle that I really want to get into, too.
As well as those, he wrote for Fallout 2 and Fallout: New Vegas, which, in my opinion, are the two best Fallout games of the series.
Video Game Writing
Stories have always resonated with me, and some of my all-time favourite games have held my attention based primarily on the writing.
I find it funny that these two have had a major hand in producing some of my all-time favourite games, while having a connection through a couple of franchises, even though they haven't worked together.
I don't know if anyone else is as interested as I am about these two intertwined careers, but I thought it was interesting and have been talking with Aimee about it all morning.
Mass Effect, Fallout, and Star Wars are at the top of my favourite franchise list, and Drew and Chris are big reasons for that.
Anyway, I think I'll leave it there for today. Thanks for reading my incessant drivel.
