Video game writing - For those who like narrative and story to sperg about it

I hate overuse of slang and pop culture references. It will undoubtedly get dated. Those Courtney Love jokes on Lunar SSSC don't hold up so well now, do they? There's retarded TikTok speak in Pokemon Scarlet/Violet. :roll:
 
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I like shooter games that justify why you're doing something alone. I've played too many shooter games where you're one of many soldiers or you're attacking with you're group an you're tasked with doing what would realistically be suicidal nonsense while the rest of the characters stand back like lemons. I think even badly 'lampshading' the fact that you're player character is put in the position of a one-man army is better than never acknowledging why you're with a team of people that never help you do anything. It just becomes impossible to feel anything for the characters in your squad because you can only think about how useless they are.
 
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Absolutego said:
I generally think RDR2 is the better actual game, but will forever prefer RDR1 because setting that game at the dead end of the Western era was a brilliant writing decision. That's the trick that makes all the themes of the characters snap into place.
And what makes the ending so tragic
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yes! 100% prefer RDR1 storywise, even though Arthur Morgan is, as the kids would say, mai husbando. I think John Marston's growth in RDR1 is a perfect standalone, but RDR2 made the "sequel" that much more dramatic in hindsight.
RDR2 is a better game, gameplay wise and it has a lot of quality of life-improvements compared to the first. I do love both stories very much.
For me, RDR1 is the perfect "GTA clone" (ignoring that it's Rockstar) and the setting allows for a lot of really interesting characters and character development.

I could use fewer cougars in the first. Fuck those cats.
 
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Prophetic Spirit said:
Oh, i got you.
Bottles from Banjo & Kazooie.
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Er... more like Brok and Freyr in God of War Ragnarök, as a conscious example I was thinking of. Never actually played Banjo-Kazooie, even though I loved other Rareware games like Star Fox N64, Star Fox: Adventures, and Killer Instinct.
 
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Dysnomia said:
I hate overuse of slang and pop culture references. It will undoubtedly get dated. Those Courtney Love jokes on Lunar SSSC don't hold up so well now, do they? There's retarded TikTok speak in Pokemon Scarlet/Violet. :roll:
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They're not writing for the future, when everyone will buy the next Pokemon game and move on.
 
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Writing style seems to be really dependent on time period and genre, while there are some mainstays like RPGs being novel like, you have the following trends:
1980-1989: Due to limited memory you had most of the plot in supplemental material and it was usually novel like. But pure gameplay ingame.
1990-2001: Console games were very much cartoon/anime style with minimalist story and emphasis on style. PC gaming were more modern tv show style.
2002-2010: The cinematic decade of gaming. Short games with emphasis on setpieces.
2011-now: Games written like tv shows, either HBO (RDR2), Adult Swim (Borderlands) or general lowest common denominator slop (Suicide Squad).

You have Dark Souls inspired games with more pick and choose plot depth, but even the company who made it have an issue repeating it.
 
AnsemSoD1 said:
I love Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, and the rest of Square Enix's games for their sheer insanity that they call "story".
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I'm the exact opposite, Final Fantasy's story kept getting more and more retarded with each game and after they pretty much also ditched the gameplay I liked with 12 I didn't stick around.

I very much like Larian writing pre Baldurs Gate, oh wow, Sword Coast again instead of using any other place in that world or any other campaign setting but anyway, Divinity: Original Sin games are my shit and while you're not ever gonna get a satisfying payoff really as Larian always botches the third act, the buildup and world building are very cool, I just wish they'd stop retconning details between games, even though the "Elves are trees and cannibals" turned out pretty alright what with the ship and all. Fuck, I like Dragon Commander just for the world building it does, even though some of it changes with later games. Back then skeleton people were super homophobic, good times.
 
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Dysnomia said:
I hate overuse of slang and pop culture references. It will undoubtedly get dated. Those Courtney Love jokes on Lunar SSSC don't hold up so well now, do they? There's retarded TikTok speak in Pokemon Scarlet/Violet. :roll:
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This but with duke nukem. i mean 2 shitty platformers,mid as fuck shooter that makes any 7th gen brown and gray shooter look good, again mid as fuck platformer and a absolute disaster of a sequel aside, what makes duke nukem so special when compared to other shooter icons ( ffs gordons a fucking mutie and has more character than some tryhard chuddy nigger ), oh yeah he makes funny pop culture references that DEFINITELY won't age badly.
 
Maude Snew said:
I'm the exact opposite, Final Fantasy's story kept getting more and more retarded with each game and after they pretty much also ditched the gameplay I liked with 12 I didn't stick around.
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FF12 has the most tedious combat in the series, I can't believe they thought that was a good idea.
 
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Dysnomia said:
I hate overuse of slang and pop culture references. It will undoubtedly get dated. Those Courtney Love jokes on Lunar SSSC don't hold up so well now, do they? There's retarded TikTok speak in Pokemon Scarlet/Violet. :roll:
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Working Designs' games all need fan retranslations, the pop culture references are a total abortion
 
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One of my many frustrations with recent Paradox games is that whoever wrote the flavor text clearly got replaced by a bunch of diversity hires.
CK2 started out pretty solid. It wasn't Chauncer-level incomprehensible to modern English speakers, but it felt medieval.
Then they realized youtubers were a good marketing vehicle and every DLC addon added funny maymays and sounded increasingly like reddit speak. (EU4 being the greatest victim of it, imo).
Now CK3's out and honest to God modders are writing better flavor text for events than the people paid to write it. Comparing the difference in quality shift between CK2 to CK3 and their corresponding Game of Thrones mods is alarming.
 
Maniacal Foreigner said:
Blame Working Designs and their "localization" (read: butchery), not the writers.
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Arc the Lad II was pretty wild since I think WD just gave up on translating NPC dialogue towards the end of the game. Most townspeople just started spouting pop culture references at you.

They kept it out of the main plot, though, thankfully.
 
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AnsemSoD1 said:
I like happy endings where the hero gets the girl. Pretentious fags who don't like that can BTFO.
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Squall got the girl by the way and lived happily ever after. The weird ending was just late 90s/early 2000s trippy effects that were popular at the time due to Y2K shit. Link also probably lived and got with Malon hence why Twilight Princess Link is a farmhand, the symbolism in Majora's Mask was probably just that, symbolism. With that being said, pretentious sadfags BTFO.
 
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SSj_Ness said:
FF12 has the most tedious combat in the series, I can't believe they thought that was a good idea.
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What? It's FF2 the most tedious one.
FF8 is very easy to understand and how to exploit with some GF abilities.
FF12 is just FFX-2 but much more aggressive. Just invest in gambits and you are ok.
AnsemSoD1 said:
Squall got the girl by the way and lived happily ever after.
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Man, i prefer a thousand times Quistis than Rinoa. She's sometimes so insufferable.
 
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