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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28890 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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I think if you enjoy good (largely classic) literary fiction it's still pretty mediocre and does indeed read like the kind of fiction aging Baltic communists who overestimate their English writing ability would create, but by game standards it's certainly in the 99th percentile, I think it would be hard to dispute that.

by game standards it's certainly in the 99th percentile, I think it would be hard to dispute that.

As they say, there is no accounting for taste. I'd say it's probably close to 30th percentile, only avoiding going lower due to generally being coherent and internally consistent, grammatically correct, and lacking typos.

Fair enough, happy to disagree. What would consider the best (not necessarily your favorite) game writing, of what you've played?

I'd say Ico is probably the one game with the best writing I've played (aside: don't read the novelization Ico: Castle in the Mist; it takes a 5 hour game with a fairy-tale-basic story about a cursed boy and girl, a castle, and an evil queen, and stretches it to 400+ pages, including the first 100+ focusing on the religious back story of the boy and his village), though Bloodborne came close in the similar minimalistic style. For a game with lots of dialogue, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis stands out to me as one with particularly good writing, though I'd probably place the original Knights of the Old Republic and Odin Sphere at around the same level.

though Bloodborne came close in the similar minimalistic style.

I think Bloodborne is an interesting game to bring up because it's an example of how comparing the writing in games to that of other media can be a difficult exercise. Many of the things that go into making the narrative of Bloodborne what it is, like item descriptions, optional NPC interactions as well as mandatory cutscenes etc are things without obvious parallels in films/novels. In particular, the ways these elements synergise mean that a Bloodborne film/novelization would necessarily provide a very different experience from playing the game, even from a strictly story-focussed point of view.

With all that said, I agree that Bloodborne is a well written game but I prefer to make that argument less in terms of the actual quality of something like the dialgoue (for example) in comparison to that found in films or books and more by emphasising how effectively it leverages the storytelling options that gaming provides and that no other medium does.

I think it's not that great compared to all the games you dismiss as being terrible. I absolutely dispute what you're saying. How do we go about resolving this? What criteria are you using?

I don't know, do we agree on books? On film? Some of my favorite books of all time are Ulysses, Brothers Karamazov, Wuthering Heights, Mansfield Park, Dorian Gray, The Leopard, The Waves, almost everything by Waugh (esp. Sword of Honour trilogy, but also Brideshead of course). All very classic /lit/ babby's first canon stuff, I don't claim any esoteric taste. My favorite films, likewise, are Before Sunset (not the other two) and Taxi Driver. Metropolis is good. All basic again.

They're all stories that have something to say, that are written in an entertaining and well-flowing way. They largely respect their characters, treat human motivation as both suspect and organic, deal with interesting themes. They're obviously immensely well-known for a reason. Disco Elysium doesn't remotely approach their heights, but it respects its characters, has something to say (even if it is, of course, something I disagree with), respects its genre(s), understands people in a way that well-written fiction does. We can agree to disagree.

They're all stories that have something to say, that are written in an entertaining and well-flowing way. They largely respect their characters, treat human motivation as both suspect and organic, deal with interesting themes.

Those are good criteria, but the only one games are habitually not fulfilling is "having something to say", the thing is I don't think that makes them horrible. In fact, having something to say but doing it badly is way worse than knowing your limits and focusing on the other parts of the story. That's why I think most games aren't so bad, and why Disco Elysium is not so hot.

edit @ArjinFerman, you deleted your comment, just wanted you to see my reply.

Sorry for the mess, was hoping to avoid it by deleting.

No problem, I do this occasionally only to find someone has replied to a deleted comment, it happens!

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