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Developers that constantly feature bad writing in their games.
- Thread starter Corpsepyre
- Start date
threelights
Member
Yes, it's what I said. There's too much, YES THERE IS! They could use less codex as well IMO, but that doesn't mean it's poorly written.
Poorly written is a lot of scenes in FFXIII (which despite liking, some stuff there goes to the point of breaking characters), poorly written is the guy meeting a mayan god, getting matrix powers and running around sides of the buildings, for no reason whatsoever.
Stuff like MGS is not poorly written.
dragonbane
Member
"That tech" wouldn't exist without the "talentless hack" Cage. As flawed as his writing definitely is, he sure knows how to manage a business and deliver a game on time and on budget to satisfactory sales. Without that they wouldn't even exist today, let alone have good tech. And he is working on the writing aspect since he hired professional writers for the next game on PS4 years ago.
So you're telling me that love can bloom on the battlefield??
But that's still a metric of good writing. You can't somehow separate exposition bombs in both their usage and content from being something other than part of the overall experience. A movie can still run longer than it should despite that extra unnecessary length being consistent with the overall quality of the writing. That movie would be worse because of it and the overall evaluation of the writing would be lower. This working from the assumption that the content itself in MGS is good, which I disagree with.
Palculator
Unconfirmed Member
SHIMASANI!!!
I'm actually impressed QD managed to hit so low. Hopefully Cage learn from his mistakes, but past entries indicate a no.
Remember this cut after the native Americans fight ghosts? Corpses just phasing into the shot with little narrative merit or meaning?
dragonbane
Member
You see dead people all the time in the game appearing as if they were alive. I see nothing wrong with that shot, considering its something that was established of happening.
Principate
Saint Titanfall
That wasn't what I had a problem with, I mean the last act basically the final mission where your trying to warn them against nuking the aliens because it might make them stronger... which it did...
threelights
Member
How could a 5 year old even think about writing the Count of Monte Cristo? I don't think I understand what you said. I'm pretty sure no kid can write MGS levels of characters and story.
If the characters are good, the dialogue is enjoyable and the plot beneath doesn't break apart, what's bad about it? It's so clear they have too much dialogue as a choice rather than not finding a better way of telling it. You could cut half the dialogue in MGS games and have the same story, but that's not what the game is trying to do. It's not trying to be concise, it's trying to take half an hour to tell you stuff that should take 10mins, because it has to set up an entire conversation and relationships, and it succeeds.
Then that's because you don't like it, it's not bad. If the game's objective is not to just tell you a story, but it's creating characters and relationships along with it, why would that automatically be bad? A movie can't be longer because people have a set expectation, they won't stand 5 hours of movies that can be told in 1 and a half. Games are not like that. MGS sets out to tell much more than the story, and it tells it pretty well.
Sub_Level
wants to fuck an Asian grill.
It depends on what people mean when they say writing. MGS as a series is translated from Japanese so it won't have the nuances and smoothness as if it were written originally in English. There are a few exceptions such as Final Fantasy XII which had a great translation. One example of the translation hurting the writing is how Snake or Raiden ask questions everytime a character brings up something in conversation in the form of repeating what they just brought up.
The MGS story is the most expansive of any game series. With a plot spanning nearly a century in the games and 35 years in real life you could say it has built up quite a hefty amount of lore. And this is done not through Morrowind books, expanded universe Halo novels, or Dark Souls "environmental storytelling", but just the plain story in its own right is huge.
It's a series that utilizes the videogame medium to its strengths and heavily distances itself from other games that try to be cinematic (which I don't think automatically make for bad games, for the record). Ironic considering MGS is infamous for its plethora of non-interactive cutscenes. MGS2 in particular stands out as a special story that couldn't be accurately told outside of videogames. Fahrenheit 451, 1984, Brave New World, and the like have all been there done that, but if you're familiar with the story you'll know it involves the player in a way only possible with interactive entertainment. And it's not just about 4th wall hijinks, but the experience as a whole. And that kind of holds true for all the MGS games. They maintain their videogamey feeling while also having a heavily structured, linear plot. In the context of interactive storytelling, MGS may very well have bad writing (I probably dislike MGS4's story more than anyone else on this forum), but a perfect method of storytelling. Of course, there are plenty of people will swear up and down against that sentiment. Even the concept of non-interactive cutscenes alone get on some gamers' nerves.
Windom Earle
Member
Ubisoft thread. AssCreed deserves way more shit for the abysmal stuff they put into those games.
Blizzard definitely. Look at SCII to see that, Jim Raynor and Kerrigan having a thing again after the original ending going completely against that. The Swarm storyline was....yeah. As for WoW, they pretty much put out novels now that deals with major stuff that should be covered in game. Destruction of Theramore and Garrosh trial are great examples of this. Things are just waved away.
Bioware. They decided to focus on what studies and feedback from certain people tell them and it shows. Depth, maturity, not so much. Instead of epic they cast out a net to catch as many people as possible and it shows. They try to be grand but end up falling flat, see ME3 ending for that. It was nice to see them get called out on what they were doing for once.
Bioware. They decided to focus on what studies and feedback from certain people tell them and it shows. Depth, maturity, not so much. Instead of epic they cast out a net to catch as many people as possible and it shows. They try to be grand but end up falling flat, see ME3 ending for that. It was nice to see them get called out on what they were doing for once.
They stopped giving a shit after Morrowind.
Naughty_Doge
Member
Platinum Games.
Ground Zeroes.
Murder. She Wrote
Member
I'm curious how Guerilla Games rpg is gonna be like because they really dropped the ball in the writing department of the killzone franchise. Killzone never lived up to its potential story and writing wise.
threelights
Member
That totally non-experimental, stand alone, 60 hour long title the series has...
Yes, you're right.
And I'm being sarcastic.
Naughty_Doge
Member
They hired the writer of Fallout: New Vegas. I didn't play that game, but people say the story was decent.
Astral Dog
Member
Square, especially the Toriyama team.
Ubisoft
Sonic Team.
Ubisoft
Sonic Team.
It's not bad because I don't like it -- that's solipsistic. I don't like it because it's bad. "Telling much more than a story" is Kojima's problem. He doesn't understand the relationship between someone who has written a piece of dialogue and the person who experiences it for the first time. At some point a piece of writing finishes what it needs to tell me causing me to then reflect back upon it. Depending on how that reflection goes is how one usually judges the quality of writing. Kojima's issue is that he either attacks a theme with a lack of restraint or such utter specificity that you stop caring about your own thoughts and realize that you are simply a bystander to this developer who is about to masturbate for 15 minutes to what amounts to a D-grade essay on nuclear proliferation and the balance of power.
My point is that someone can make up interesting characters and stories but not be able to convey them in a well written manner. Imagine Alexandre Dumas wrote out the basic plotline for Monte Cristo. Then someone else with no where near the writing capability wrote the actual book. Honestly some of the scenes in Metal Gear are a pretty low level of writing quality. I'm not even saying that as a criticism really; I love the campy, stupid, overblown, dialogue and moments that don't connect properly but I'm not going to kid myself that makes it good writing.
You literally just described bad writing in your second paragraph. I think you're thinking I'm saying MGS is bad because it has bad writing. I love that series. It's like a crippled dog I found on the side of a street and has been with me since I was 7. Yeah he's a bit wonky and he might occasionally have an accident but it's all part of his charm, and I love him for it. You are allowed to criticise things you love, in fact it's good. Not being able to see fault leads to fanboyism.
Sub_Level
wants to fuck an Asian grill.
I dunno about the plot (setting, events, twists), but some of the dialogue and monologues are really well written in New Vegas.
"May there be a hell for you. A Tartarus...bleak, unending... "
That was for their upcoming game, not Killzone.
But good luck to whoever has to write something believable in a game with robot dinosaurs.
threelights
Member
So every game has to give you nothing but the absolutely necessary for you to understand the plot? Any more and it's a "masturbation to D-grade essay"?
You should play FFXIII then, it might be just the game for you, always directly to the point without any exposition whatsoever...
Good writing means that the dialogue fits the character, it means that the story doesn't crumble on itself, it means that it is interesting to hear about and the characters have good things to say. If they decide to tell you the story via exposition instead of subtle nuances why would that mean it's bad? They don't need to all follow the same patterns for story-telling to be good.
But that's the point of those scenes. It's not bad, it's how they decided to do it, it's not traditional, sure, but not following a set list of rules doesn't make it bad.
Poodlestrike
Banned
I gotta ask; what is it about robot dinosaurs that prevents believable story telling? Genuinely curious here. I can see how you could make the argument that the ridiculousness of the setting prevents a serious plot, but that's just a small part of the writing (and I'd argue, the least important part).
dragonbane
Member
I think Dark Sorcerer was pretty flawless at what it attempted to do. Something less serious seems like a good idea though. But yeah, I'm glad he decided to hire two co-writers in 2012, so I'm expecting improvements for his next title.
Naughty_Doge
Member
Because nothing can have a good story unless it's believable. And yes, I was talking about their upcoming RPG.
Aces&Eights
Member
Honestly, I truly believe that there is a great story to Destiny and that early on Bungie was going to make it all inclusive in the game. I believe that Activision insisted that the story be cut up into fragments and dished out piecemeal style to us over the next 10 years. What we see today in the Destiny story arch are just tidbits of what most likely is a pretty rich story.
Goddammit, Activision.
OT: Call of Duty post cod4 has the absolute worst writing.
semiconscious
Gold Member
level 5. most all of their games seem to me to be written by an ai programmed to be generic, inoffensive, & utterly vapid...
Parakeetman
No one wants a throne you've been sitting on!
Modern Bioware.
Lord Panda
The Sea is Always Right
Hehe pretty much. Great writing tends to be the exception rather than the norm in the gaming industry for some reason.
I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm saying it makes it more difficult.
E.g. good luck having relateable characters with believable motivations and emotions, or addressing the human condition when you have motherfucking robot T-Rex walking round and about.
Uhh but they had a guy on staff who actually gave a shit write lore books 15 years ago, so that somehow makes their current writing good and not complete dogshit
And he can only speak for himself too so, you know, I wouldn't pay any attention to comments like that
I'm usually more lenient with Japanese games, due to thinking that the language barrier might be making their dialogue worse that it should be. But even so, Platinum and Kojima games are shit-tier for story, dialogue and often voice acting too.
MGS4 is the worst film ever made, only salvaged by the fact you had lots of little interactive playable sections between each scene.
MGS4 is the worst film ever made, only salvaged by the fact you had lots of little interactive playable sections between each scene.
Dr. Black Jack
Member
Should have been the first post.
Not every story needs to have this and sure as shit not every story should try. You can replace relateable and believable with "likeable" and "logical" and that's about all the context necessary. They tried serious political allegory with KZ. 4 games later -- it didn't work. The worst thing for them to do is think that a world filled with robot dinosaurs is ripe for commentary on the human condition. Hint: It probably isn't. No one wants another Rico. And tone where a Visari-like character would work would probably spell doom for the rest of the NPCs.
I've heard terrible stories about the working conditions at Bungie. I'm sorry to hear about your friend.
Based on how Guerilla always attempt serious tone in their narratives, I think it's probable that they'll go for something serious yet again. But we'll see.