"Divinity: Original Sin developer Larian Studios have announced that veteran RPG developer Chris Avellone will be joining them to work on the game's super-successful Kickstarted sequel. Avellone, whose credits include Planescape: Torment, Star Wars: KOTOR II, Fallout: New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity, left Obsidian earlier this year, and with news of his availability circulating, RPG Codex launched a campaign to make Avellone's involvement in D:OS2 a stretch goal. Many, many upvotes later, Avellone signed on the dotted line with Larian.

Avellone helped to co-found Obsidian Entertainment back in 2003 after working at legendary RPG studio Black Isle for several years.

The list of celebrated role-playing titles on his portfolio is damn impressive: excluding the titles previously mentioned, he's worked on Icewind Dale I&II, Fallout 2, Neverwinter Nights 2 and the divisive Alpha Protocol. All games with devoted fanbases, and they're generally darker in tone than Divinity: Original Sin. "

http://www.pcgamesn.com/divinity-original-sin-ii/chris-avellone-joins-larian-to-help-write-divinity-original-sin-2-draws-adorable-doodle-to-mark-the-occasion

Really great news, Chris is one of the best designers/writers (if not the best) in genre, what is shaping to be a great game will get even better with him - it's again great time to be a cRPG fan, this few years feel a lot like late 90's and Interplay's Infinity engine period.

Wow this is great news. Pillars of Eternity had a great story while the original Divinity: Original Sin had a laughable story to be honest.

I thought the writer of Fallout: New Vegas joined Guerilla.

That's John Gonzalez, he was lead writer and one of designers on it.

Chris was one of co-founders of Obsidian and creative director, he was involved pretty much in everything they worked on, and honestly, I'm bit worried about Obsidian without him - there are still great people there, most of the Black Isle staff, but Chris was always bringing something special to the table.

Glad for Larian though - cRPGs are in another renaissance, Larian seems to be making them for the core audience with no intention of mainstreaming, and it's fantastic to have Chris with them, since pretty much every cRPG fan know who he is.

I didn't even know they were making a sequel. This is awesome!

thats pretty awesome news, but on the other side, this is a hit for fallout, the studio that made the better fallout game is falling apart...

Yeah, it's bit worrying, sure they had success with Pillars, but it seems they are struggling if they need to make those F2P MMOs - then again, if that brings in money so they can focus on RPGs, all the better.

On the bright side, there are still lot of famous RPG designers in Obsidian, they have licensed Pathfinder, so that could be huge for cRPG fans. I find it a bit strange that Chris left when they have such an important license in their hands, but I'm guessing it's not too surprising, given that he was already working outside of Obsidian on Wasteland 2 and Numenera.

Sounds good. I liked Original Sin and I put a lot of hours into it but I didn't finish it. The story was so nebulous and vague that one day I was just like, "eh, let's try something else." There was simply nothing compelling about the story. It was really just point A to point B quests and I'm sure I put close to 100 hours into it. I have no idea how close I was to any kind of resolution.

Also, the approach to crafting where you need to have a spreadsheet open when you play, after awhile I just ignored it. As someone who likes crafting, that's disappointing.

i dont think pathfinder is such a great IP, and they didnt get fallout 4 1/2. so i guess he was bored.

he wasnt heavly invested in pillars(you know if you  played it, its a good game but in no way his game).

they should have made fallout 4(i bet the game will be as shitty as fallout 3 and not as grand as fallout new vegas), it would have been so great, with perfect humor and not stupid plotlines.

Well, Pathfinder is as close as we'll get to them making D&D I guess in near future, that's why I said it's important license.

As for Pillars, yeah, really good game, but not as good as those gems from the Black Isle/Bioware's era...let's wait and see how Numenera turns out, for some strange reason, from the reveal I was expecting it to top Pillars.

I'm not that harsh on Fallout 3, sure, it is nowhere near the greatness of Fallout 1/2, but I see the way it turned out as Bethesda's inherent incompetance in being nuanced, clever and refined, and not being dicks to fans of franchise on purpose (unlike some other devs - *cough* Tomb Raider *cough*).

Honestly, I think Obsidian should just invent new Fallout cRPG (under fdifferent name of course), after all, I think most of the key people who created F1/2 are with them (while we're at wishful thinking, new Vampire the Masquarade wouldn't hurt either).