Biography
He is an alumnus of the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, VA. He went on to study at The College of William & Mary, graduating with a major in English and a minor in fine arts, focused on architecture.
Working initially as a freelancer in the two years after college, Avellone wrote campaigns for Dungeons & Dragons-inspired fantasy role-playing games. After entering the video game industry through the company Interplay in 1995, he briefly worked on the development of the 1997 title Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. In 1997 he took over the development of Descent to Undermountain, which he later called a disappointment. Avellone contributed to the 1998 game Fallout 2 and continued to work on its franchise.
Interplay acquired the rights to produce a role-playing video game set in the Planescape campaign setting of Dungeons & Dragons with the development led by Avellone. The 1999 game Planescape: Torment removed character death as a motive and also won acclaim for its narrative.
Avellone worked on all the titles of the Icewind Dale fantasy role-playing game series, which were released from 2000 to 2002. As a designer Avellone contributed to the fantasy titles Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance (2001), Champions of Norrath (2004) and led the design of the cancelled Fallout title Van Buren, after which he resigned from Interplay and joined Obsidian Entertainment. For the company Avellone worked on the role-playing games Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II (2004) and Neverwinter Nights 2 (2006) and on the action role-playing game Alpha Protocol. He also worked as a senior designer on Fallout: New Vegas.
He worked as the project director and lead creative designer on Dead Money, Old World Blues and Lonesome Road Fallout: New Vegas DLC.
As of 2012, Avellone began working on Project Eternity as a narrative designer.
Read more about this topic: Chris Avellone
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