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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1613 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 3, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Also it is not about the wokeness, just that woke in the last 2-3 years pattern matches way too accurate to cringe and mediocrity.

As far as woke and cringe goes, it’s as woke and cringe as BG3 (which is to say very), but if you found that passable it’s not really worse.

Modern Anglo video game writers (whether the Brits, Americans and Irish who write for Larian or the Canadians and Americans who write for BioWare) are essentially incapable of nuance or subtlety or of any good writing.

People make fun of modern literary fiction and prestige writing in general, often for good reason, but literally anyone who has written even a moderately well-reviewed (non-musical) play or lit fic novel or non-superhero movie in the last 10 years could deliver a better script than any modern AAA video game.

Game writers can’t write. That’s because studios hire DnD nerds who have no interest or knowledge of actual literature, have either never read the greats or dismiss them out of hand, and basically don’t understand what makes storytelling good or powerful in any way.

As far as the writing in Veilguard goes, it’s not worse than countless other recent AAA RPGs and games in general (which again, is not to say it’s “good”), but has provoked a big reaction online because Bioware has been ‘woke’ for 15 years now, had been the subject of long lasting hardcore RPG fan hatred dating back to Dragon Age Origins being calls ‘dumbed down’ and ‘consolized’ by Codex grognards back in 2008, the Mass Effect 3 ending controversy, and other things long predating Gamergate.

Modern American writers of this kind of fiction appear unable to conceive of a world that does not have the same social dynamics as 21st century urban California.

There's also the shit pacing. Look, I understand that BG3 is an early access, multi-year-spanning project, but hot damn does the story have such an awkward and spasmodic flow to it. Act 1 is good, act 2 starts off barren and then builds up into this bizarre crescendo that (vibes-wise) could pass as the end of the game, and then spits you out into act 3 which is completely anticlimactic because it feels like you were just at Mordor but now you're back at Tom Bombadil's.

I hold the opinion that they should have figured out a way to swap 2 and 3.

Yup, pretty much. Would have felt better undeniably.

I never realized how massive the cultural gap between me and most of 'nerd culture' was until I saw how widely praised BG3's writing was among people who seemed trustworthy and tried the game for myself. There was nothing truly terrible, but if that's the peak of AAA wRPG writing then even the upper echelons of Chinese webnovels or Japanese RPGmaker hentai games are probably a closer point of comparison than modern litfic. (I'm not really joking, play Demons Roots)

I wouldn't call Demons Roots a hentai game, it's more of a regular RPGM game with two very unappealing small hentai games awkwardly bolted onto it to entice horny gamers to check it out.

Game writers can’t write. That’s because studios hire DnD nerds who have no interest or knowledge of actual literature, have either never read the greats or dismiss them out of hand, and basically don’t understand what makes storytelling good or powerful in any way.

But isn't this the opposite of what happened? Writing started going downhill the moment they stopped hiring nerds for writing positions and started hiring creative writing and English graduates with "geeky" popular culture interests.

To me it seems like there is an issue of people being hired who don't have interests outside of videogames/anime/etc, which makes the writing and it's influences very incestous. The influences aren't history or literary greats but previous videogames and TV shows, which makes everything extremely shallow and derivative.

I think that’s not clear at all. Firstly, the great majority of “classic” games before professional writers were also terribly, awfully written, even if they were terribly, awfully written in a slightly different way to games today. Secondly many of the great games were written by people who were nerds, sure, but had an amateur interest at least in good storytelling and / or screenwriting.

One of the problems in games (especially at Bioware and Sony Santa Monica) is that they had a big pipeline of writers promoted from QA, or games journalism, or level design, or other teams in the business to game writing, and were only then revealed to be bad writers. They don’t have a screenwriting background where you cover basic stuff that’s relevant to writing halfway decent dialogue.

I feel like a big part of the problem with modern games is that they just try too hard to be novels or movies. I miss the old minimalist approach that was more about establishing a tone and the outline of a plot, and letting you fill in the rest with your imagination, than about spelling out every freaking detail.

I realize that this was largely due to technical limitations, but some people just need enforced discipline.

Firstly, the great majority of “classic” games before professional writers were also terribly, awfully written...

I don't agree with your thesis that games have always been poorly written. Obviously individual works vary, but on the whole story driven games like RPGs used to be written pretty well.

For every Planescape Torment there were literally a thousand 90s games with terrible writing, including many RPGs, come on.

How many RPGs were even published in the 90s? Particularly if you're excluding Japanese games where the localization decisions would play a huge role in perception of writing quality.

No, I don't agree that was the case.

Most point and click adventures had decent and enjoyable stories (since they were carried or buried by them), RPGs were hit or miss because they had a tendency to rely on D&D clichés, but unless you're referring to some B-list stuff, this seems flatly wrong.

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