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[PotatoBoy]

Examples would help here. Dante was exploring the concept of unrequited and idealised love in a way very similar to Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby (early 20th century). There's been much debate about both over the years and many competing theories about what each was truly trying to imply. This is because both used their writing to pose questions, to table relevant examples and left readers to make up their own minds. Good writing does that, it leaves you with a sense of wondering, rather than a sense of having been told what you should think.

Hmm you should crack open the Inferno again. There's hardly a line about Beatrice, the whole thing top to bottom is his passing judgment (in his hilarious and charming way) on every person he can think of. Dante's argument for why someone ended up in this circle or that circle colors how people perceive them down to the present.

Of course you're right that there's this overall sense of mystery and awe, but his work is full of arguments for why certain people are worse or better than others (e.g. Aristotle was a decent guy but not Christian, put him in Limbo, Pope Boniface was a criminal artifacts dealer, put him in the toilet, and so on).

I'm sure if he wrote it today we'd find the Starfield writers somewhere down in the dumps getting tortured by imps.

 

[Lucie Goosey]

Good writing in an RPG means different things to different people. You might appreciate ..

It's clear to me for the first time what's been missing on this forum and in the industry as a whole. Maybe even across western society.

A lot of people don't value or know the depth and quality necessary for a story or person to become great.

And they may not know why it's important for us as human beings in our own development

No soulless piece of storytelling with so much poor dialogue and writing should have ever been placed above an 8/10. Not when it's clearly an important pillar of the game itself.

 

[Nigel]

Haven’t played an RPG in a good while where the companions lack any personality and are completely boring.

 

[MiguelItUp]

Yeah, I beat the game, and honestly the closer I got to the end the more I just started skipping dialogue and caring less. That always says a lot IMO.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

Haven’t played an RPG in a good while where the companions lack any personality and are completely boring.

Companions have strong personality in the game and can be annoying to player.

I keep Sarah around to piss her off. Everytime she dislikes something I am reminded of this thread.

 

[Varteras]

Hmm you should crack open the Inferno again. There's hardly a line about Beatrice, the whole thing top to bottom is his passing judgment (in his hilarious and charming way) on every person he can think of. Dante's argument for why someone ended up in this circle or that circle colors how people perceive them down to the present.

Of course you're right that there's this overall sense of mystery and awe, but his work is full of arguments for why certain people are worse or better than others (e.g. Aristotle was a decent guy but not Christian, put him in Limbo, Pope Boniface was a criminal artifacts dealer, put him in the toilet, and so on).

I'm sure if he wrote it today we'd find the Starfield writers somewhere down in the dumps getting tortured by imps.

What do you know? You're just a potato!

 

[BbMajor7th]

Hmm you should crack open the Inferno again. There's hardly a line about Beatrice, the whole thing top to bottom is his passing judgment (in his hilarious and charming way) on every person he can think of. Dante's argument for why someone ended up in this circle or that circle colors how people perceive them down to the present.

Of course you're right that there's this overall sense of mystery and awe, but his work is full of arguments for why certain people are worse or better than others (e.g. Aristotle was a decent guy but not Christian, put him in Limbo, Pope Boniface was a criminal artifacts dealer, put him in the toilet, and so on).

I'm sure if he wrote it today we'd find the Starfield writers somewhere down in the dumps getting tortured by imps.

Well, yeah, because that's the one where he descends into hell - Beatrice is the one who leads him out of purgatory and into heaven. Anyway, parking the Fitzgerald comparisons, the broader point stands: Alighieri adapts the ideas of biblical scripture, taking them to their full (often absurd) extent and creating this hugely imaginative tiered universe filled with strange contradictions. As a devout catholic, I doubt that was intentional, but he had the courage to let it be: he's doing his best to account for scripture, but ends up finding an inherent hypocrisy in theology - one that he never really resolves. As I put it above, he's 'explaining the world to himself', not the other way around.

I don't think bad writers have that courage - IMO bad writing assumes certain ideas are incontestible and contrives story and characters, even against common sense, to bear out the 'truth' of their ideas regardless. It doesn't just have to be political either, it can just be the laziness of deciding 'x' or 'y' is the good guy and forcing them into that mold even when the setup you gave them (that was probably based on your prejudices about what makes good or bad people) no longer support the character's behaviour or the story's developments. The same is true sometimes in the opposite, with a character being forced into a 'redemption' state that the writer is convinced of, but the audience isn't.

TLOU II's Abby is a really strong example of the latter. If the writers had phrased it as a question: can an uncharacteristic bout of sympathy and selflessness absolve someone of being a total bastard previously, they would have reached the conclusion that most of the audience did: no. Instead, they decided the answer in advance and forced the story to bear that out, forcing a previously decent and measured person (Ellie) into unbridled acts of violence and self-harm just to 'prove' it. The entire game struggles with this, though, there is an unintentional meta-narrative in this that actually throws the spotlight back on the writers and if it's intentional it's genius, if not, it's hilarious.

 

[PotatoBoy]

They do understand it - they just can't bring themselves

Well, yeah, because that's the one where he descends into hell - Beatrice is the one who leads him out of purgatory and into heaven. Anyway, parking the Fitzgerald comparisons, the broader point stands: Alighieri adapts the ideas of biblical scripture, taking them to their full (often absurd) extent and creating this hugely imaginative tiered universe filled with strange contradictions. As a devout catholic, I doubt that was intentional, but he had the courage to let it be: he's doing his best to account for scripture, but ends up finding an inherent hypocrisy in theology - one that he never really resolves. As I put it above, he's 'explaining the world to himself', not the other way around.

I don't think bad writers have that courage - IMO bad writing assumes certain ideas are incontestible and contrives story and characters, even against common sense, to bear out the 'truth' of their ideas regardless. It doesn't just have to be political either, it can just be the laziness of deciding 'x' or 'y' is the good guy and forcing them into that mold even when the setup you gave them (that was probably based on your prejudices about what makes good or bad people) no longer support the character's behaviour or the story's developments. The same is true sometimes in the opposite, with a character being forced into a 'redemption' state that the writer is convinced of, but the audience isn't.

TLOU II's Abby is a really strong example of the latter. If the writers had phrased it as a question: can an uncharacteristic bout of sympathy and selflessness absolve someone of being a total bastard previously, they would have reached the conclusion that most of the audience did: no. Instead, they decided the answer in advance and forced the story to bear that out, forcing a previously decent and measured person (Ellie) into unbridled acts of violence and self-harm just to 'prove' it. The entire game struggles with this, though, there is an unintentional meta-narrative in this that actually throws the spotlight back on the writers and if it's intentional it's genius, if it's not it's hilarious.

I think you're being a little condescending to Dante but let's leave him aside since his tone is not one of absolute confidence. How about the Bible, then? Is it bad writing because it shoe-horns all these characters to fit its preconceived notion of how things work? How about Madame Bovary, which has the same absolute conviction in its thesis? Or Les Miserables, which literally explains the theory behind the story before "puppeteering" its characters to demonstrate the theory?

The point I am making is that when the writer demonstrates true and convincing understanding of reality, we perceive it as "good" (as long as it's expressed well, of course). I think you are over-mystifying the writer's process of making the story "feel real" to make it seem like everyone has some secret true intuition and writing is like summoning it forth. Maybe for lower-level hacks but the good stuff is always written by people who have a pretty good idea of what they want to say, even if they fill in the details with capricious imagination. Look at GRRM as an example of a talented guy whose whole project went off the rails because he didn't know what point he was trying to make.

I can't follow your TLOU analysis because I never played it.

 

[gaming_again]

I think you're being a little condescending to Dante but let's leave him aside since his tone is not one of absolute confidence. How about the Bible, then? Is it bad writing because it shoe-horns all these characters to fit its preconceived notion of how things work? How about Madame Bovary, which has the same absolute conviction in its thesis? Or Les Miserables, which literally explains the theory behind the story before "puppeteering" its characters to demonstrate the theory?

The point I am making is that when the writer demonstrates true and convincing understanding of reality, we perceive it as "good" (as long as it's expressed well, of course). I think you are over-mystifying the writer's process of making the story "feel real" to make it seem like everyone has some secret true intuition and writing is like summoning it forth. Maybe for lower-level hacks but the good stuff is always written by people who have a pretty good idea of what they want to say, even if they fill in the details with capricious imagination. Look at GRRM as an example of a talented guy whose whole project went off the rails because he didn't know what point he was trying to make.

I can't follow your TLOU analysis because I never played it.

Hmm. A tension between the two ideas is evident in Bovary, I think.

Les Miserables is an interesting example because as wonderful and moving as it can be, the sudden change in Jean’s personality was never convincing to me. The story succeeds in spite of this, imo. A slower and most fraught conversion would have been better.

The bible… it’s too messy to look at as a complete work, imo. Some stories in it are bad, some are good.

 

[BbMajor7th]

I think you're being a little condescending to Dante but let's leave him aside since his tone is not one of absolute confidence. How about the Bible, then? Is it bad writing because it shoe-horns all these characters to fit its preconceived notion of how things work? How about Madame Bovary, which has the same absolute conviction in its thesis? Or Les Miserables, which literally explains the theory behind the story before "puppeteering" its characters to demonstrate the theory?

The Bible was never written with the intention of being a bestseller. It has dozens of different authors (the Pentateuch alone probably had five), all of which have been heavily edited, revised and translated multiple times - if you did want to examine a holy text, the Qu'ran is a better shout, but I've not read a great deal of it, so I couldn't comment.

What holistic moral truth is Flaubert pushing with Emma? That women who run up debts they can't pay shouldn't be allowed to live near apothecaries? That bucolic life drives flighty farmer's daughters into the arms of local cads? Flaubert's whole point was objective realism, it was to hold up a mirror to society, as dispassionately as possible, not to cast judgement. Maupassant took this to even greater lengths with Bel Ami and Boule de Suif - wholly dislikeable characters offered up not as a moral teaching, but an observation - a vignette. You get much the same with Henry James in Washington Square or The Aspern Papers. In all three cases, the act of keen observation is about bringing the world outside as it is, into your writing, rather than fabricating an imagined world, scenarios or characters that support your own prejudices.

The point I am making is that when the writer demonstrates true and convincing understanding of reality, we perceive it as "good" (as long as it's expressed well, of course). I think you are over-mystifying the writer's process of making the story "feel real" to make it seem like everyone has some secret true intuition and writing is like summoning it forth. Maybe for lower-level hacks but the good stuff is always written by people who have a pretty good idea of what they want to say, even if they fill in the details with capricious imagination. Look at GRRM as an example of a talented guy whose whole project went off the rails because he didn't know what point he was trying to make.

This is an awful lot of word salad saying not much at all, but, no, what I'm saying is that good writing explores a premise, a set of ideas, or a theme, through a fictional lens, and may ultimately arrive at unexpected conclusions as a result. A bad writer assumes the conclusion and then structures the fiction to make that point regardless of how much sense it ultimately makes when recreated in the abstract.

 

[PotatoBoy]

The Bible was never written with the intention of being a bestseller. It has dozens of different authors (the Pentateuch alone probably had five), all of which have been heavily edited, revised and translated multiple times - if you did want to examine a holy text, the Qu'ran is a better shout, but I've not read a great deal of it, so I couldn't comment.

What holistic moral truth is Flaubert pushing with Emma? That women who run up debts they can't pay shouldn't be allowed to live near apothecaries? That bucolic life drives flighty farmer's daughters into the arms of local cads? Flaubert's whole point was objective realism, it was to hold up a mirror to society, as dispassionately as possible, not to cast judgement. Maupassant took this to even greater lengths with Bel Ami and Boule de Suif - wholly dislikeable characters offered up not as a moral teaching, but an observation - a vignette. You get much the same with Henry James in Washington Square or The Aspern Papers. In all three cases, the act of keen observation is about bringing the world outside as it is, into your writing, rather than fabricating an imagined world, scenarios or characters that support your own prejudices.



This is an awful lot of word salad saying not much at all, but, no, what I'm saying is that good writing explores a premise, a set of ideas, or a theme, through a fictional lens, and may ultimately arrive at unexpected conclusions as a result. A bad writer assumes the conclusion and then structures the fiction to make that point regardless of how much sense it ultimately makes when recreated in the abstract.

Let's use Madame Bovary, since it has such a clear argument. Emma is pulled into all these romantic activities, piano, adultery, gazing into the prairie, dreaming of paris, *reading way too much.*

The apothecary, very obviously representing "scientific progress" and meannes of spirit, ends up killing her, causing her to vomit out all the black ink she consumed, clearly a mocking metaphor for her over-reading and lack of groundedness to her real position.

The book is very beautiful and gripping but Flaubert is cruelly torturing a specific type of person (similar to himself) to make a point about the flaws of such people, and the society they live in.

You gloss over all this in the name of "objective realism." I think you don't actually understand what you are reading and are bringing it all down to your level.

Apply the same thinking to Lord of the Rings. Do you really think we arrive at an "unexpected conclusion" based on an arbitrarty premise?

 

[DeepEnigma]

What’s the deal?!?

But make sure you subscribe to their only fans. Slay! Just not in your film or games.

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

This randomly came up on my Youtube feed and it's amazing

lol

As pointed out in the yt comments, he alternates reloading his gun like a pistol and like a revolver. They are apparently missing some animations in certain poses so it just randomly switches and makes zero sense.

 

[BbMajor7th]

You gloss over all this in the name of "objective realism." I think you don't actually understand what you are reading and are bringing it all down to your level.

If I only I was as intelligent as thee, sir. I read these books and don't even understand them.

Guess I better stand down before you hand any more of my ass to me.

Edit:

Spoiler

By god, he took it literally...

 

[Last Hearth]

What I read in this post is "it was easier to ignore the socialism and overall progressivism of OldTrek due to the writers of the time needing to be somewhat subtle about the message but now that the ideals inherent to the very core of Star Trek are becoming culturally mainstream and accepted I can no longer focus solely on the meritocratic militarism of Starfleet and pretend that the franchise isn't just about verbally or literally slapping the shit out of ugly aliens and slapping cheeks with the hot ones."

No, it’s more “when the story is compelling and the product is entertaining, and the messaging is subtle enough that I can choose to ignore it. I am willing to consume the product and overlook its flaws. When the messaging is beat you over the head, and the rest of the product is boring and uninteresting, the product has no entertainment value to me and I want no part of it.”

 

[Last Hearth]

Lol yeah what’s the deal? And this isn’t just Starfield, showing off female beauty is apparently shameful today. And I don’t get it because it’s not like that outside in the real world. Not where I live at least, people are proud of their curves. I literally see minimum 80% women up to like age 40 walk around in seemingly painted on gym tights proudly showing off the booty and hip gains. Doesn’t matter if they plan to work out or not, it’s the new jeans.

And those who have bigger breasts certainly proudly show that off as well, always have always will.

And wider hips, thicker thighs without being fat, tight waist, Brazilian curvy fit. Very very popular.

And the classic hour glass figure is still as popular as ever, if you have it then you don’t hide it.

In Starfield it’s literally impossible to create any of that, the body morphing tool only allow thin, fat and muscular. Go for thin to tighten up the waist and you get a flat ass. Go for a fuller body and you get a fat stomach. Go for muscles and you get Abby and could just as well create a male character.

And on top of that they let men and women wear the same clothes.

What’s the deal?!?

They also made all the men and women the same height. Every adult I the game has the exact same height. Also this might be true in all previous BGS games as well.

 

[Fredrik]

Also this might be true in all previous BGS games as well.

Different races are of different height in Skyrim, some races have differences between male and female too. But the differences are small.

 

[GymWolf]

I have no idea why people think the women in this game are frigid and not sexy.

This is clearly an example of a woman burning with passion that know how to seduce a man...or an asteroid.

Spoiler

 

[violence]

I have no idea why people think the women in this game are frigid and not sexy.

This is clearly an example of a woman burning with passion that know how to seduce a man...or an asteroid.

Spoiler

Hint hint

 

[Humdinger]

I'm impressed to see Dante and Flaubert being discussed in a thread about Starfield. It's getting mighty classy up in here.

I don't expect much in videogame storytelling, personally. It used to matter more to me. 15 years ago, you would've heard me bemoaning the state of videogame characters and storytelling, pining for something better. Now I see the direction most AAA developers have gone with that -- embracing cinematic storytelling, inserting hours and hours of a movie (usually a bad one) within a game. I regret my earlier desire for better storytelling -- or rather, I regret to see the direction that game developers took, in order to improve storytelling. It is no improvement; it is a regression.

That criticism is not aimed at Starfield, which, afaik, does not have hours and hours of cutscenes. Starfield's story and characters seem to fail for different reasons.

 

[BouncyFrag]

The game strikes me as surprisingly uncreative in many ways. It's the year 2330, there are near infinite worlds to explore (in the games lore) and the famous tea store has "earl grey, chamomile" and some other normal ass tea on offer that I forget.

Also, the generation ship, I think it's called ESC constant, that's from old earth before grav tech......it has all the exact same equipment on it that all the modern ships have...and it hasn't interacted with anyone in over 200 years....it has eggmund speakers. Computers running "starware." The exact same lockers you find on modern ships. The list goes on. Its just creatively lazy.

I wanted to explore worlds but the game doesn't just let me do that, every colonized world has to have citizens talking about every planet worth visiting as I walk by so the game can give me a quest telling me to go there. I can't just be left to find it on my own.

I'm about to quit playing too I'm finding it rather boring.


Fucking "starware" was kojima given co-writing credits?

The colony ship quest is terrible. When I noticed the colony ship had all the same equipment with the rest of the game, I knew I was done with Starfield. I hacked out a few more quests to be sure and then dropped it.

 

[MasterCornholio]

Flawed in interesting, charismatic, vividly human ways that draw you into their stories.

As opposed to needy, controlling, dull wet blankets with layers of baggage and insecurities to unravel and strap to your back.

So Starfield is an NPC backpack simulator?

Never thought of it that way but it makes sense.

 

[UnravelKatharsis]

The colony ship quest is terrible. When I noticed the colony ship had all the same equipment with the rest of the game, I knew I was done with Starfield. I hacked out a few more quests to be sure and then dropped it.

I made it about an hour after completing it. Haven't gone back since and don't plan to.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

Surely its a bug wtf

It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

 

[anthraticus]

Amazing, I haven't played Starfield but the OP captures exactly what is currently making the entire gaming industry into a braindead committee project.

It seems clear to me that games at large scale (I mean: company scale) simply can't be made with quality. It's impossible. Once your team size is large enough, you end up with a thousand corporate middle-managers and employees just drawing a check in 50 layers of chairs, and every bit of authorial spark that might have ignited a unique experience is systematically squashed. You'll farm out many individual components like the dialogue and mission design to a set of people who have no genuine technical skill or vision of the project, so you end up with their bland and safe corporate-approved contributions all over the game, and every character you meet is simply insufferable.

The greatest games of all time were made by smaller teams of dudes working around the clock on passion projects, and it's fundamentally impossible to beat that. The corporate gaming world of today exists to avoid having a few exceptional dudes pursue their uninhibited taste and vision--it's a giant apparatus designed only to Karen-ize every fact of their lives, wrap identity nonsense and progressive values around every loose edge or idiosyncratic idea that might have been great, and push those brilliant developer minds into the background.

These games are now primarily made by people who don't understand the systems or genres at all, who are mediocre employees rather than the exceptional talent that should be given full reign, and who fundamentally resent the fact that a few men created all these systems and genres on their own as a hobby.

Bingo. 'Too many cooks spoil the broth', as they say.

As far as recent sci-fi RPGs go, check out some Starsector (and mods), Space Wreck coming out Oct. 10 and Colony Ship: A Post Earth RPG should be out before the year's up.

 

[YeulEmeralda]

Bingo. 'Too many cooks spoil the broth', as they say.

As far as recent sci-fi RPGs go, check out some Starsector (and mods), Space Wreck coming out Oct. 10 and Colony Ship: A Post Earth RPG should be out before the year's up.

I read on 4chan that a lot of the production of Starfield was outsourced.

 

[Denton]

Hah, Dan Vávra (Kingdom Come director) is playing Starfield and just reached the same stage EviLore complains about, his short post about it (google translated with manual fixes):


So I got married in Starfield. The first sentence my wife said to me after this ceremony, where she cried with emotion and explained how much she loved me, was: "You really pissed me off". I would like to point out that during the ceremony it was not possible to say that I did not want to get married and before I married her, it was not possible to complete some quests, so I had to marry her. And if you want to know what I pissed her off about, it was by working with a "bad" person to eliminate the threat of an alien invasion, and after I discovered how the aliens reproduce, I refused to solve it by releasing untested alien-killing bacteria into the atmosphere and chose a longer but less risky method. And they say that difference of opinion on vaccination does not divide marriages. I hope I can cheat on her