The Witcher - Nominated for Writing Award

GameBanshee has a press release from the Writers Guild of America nominating The Witcher for a games writing award:

WGA Announces First-Ever Videogame Writing Award Nominees

2008 Writers Guild Awards Winners to be Announced Feb. 9

LOS ANGELES, NEW YORK -- The Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW) and the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) have announced nominations for the Guilds' inaugural Videogame Writing Award, honoring outstanding achievement in videogame writing during 2007.

VIDEOGAME WRITING

CRASH OF THE TITANS, Written by Christopher Mitchell, Sierra Entertainment

DEAD HEAD FRED, Written by Dave Ellis and Adam Cogan, D3 Publisher

THE SIMPSONS GAME, Lead Writer Matt Selman, Written by Tim Long and Matt Warburton, Dialogue by Jeff Poliquin, Electronic Arts

THE WITCHER, Lead Story Designer Artur Ganszyniec, Dialogue Sebastian Stepien, Additional Dialogue Marcin Blacha, Writers Sande Chen and Anne Toole, Atari

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More information.

A much deserved nomination.

Ditto, best story written in a game since Planescape and few others that escape my memory right now.

I can't see how it would lose. Dead Head Fred is fun, but not great by any stretch ... certainly not at any level near The Witcher.

I'd say this was a political nomination list - I don't play everything, but I'm sure "The Shimpsons Game" is not that great storywise. Still, yay for the Witcher.

Just as long as they don't get a voice acting award.
The wicher was fun, but had some of the worse voice acting

It also had some of the best voice acting.

And no, I'm not kidding.

The story was great but I don't think the writing, at least the English translated version, should be up for any great awards, it was full of grammatical errors.

You're probably right bjon045. I'm only still in Chapter 2 after a save-game setback. But so far I haven't found too many translation problems or errors. Maybe they get worse?

I get the impression sometimes that what seem to be errors are actually correct and just fly over the heads of gamers who aren't in tune with the vocabulary. One instance in particular that was cited in at least one review for being terrible dialogue was where a dwarf says "They get not." In modern English this sounds silly, but in old English, this sentence would be "They get naught" - which makes perfect sense. IMHO the devs (or at least the tranlation team) should get kudos for making the game more authentic with odd little grammatical nuances like that one, they just need to work on their spelling a bit!

This is a really weird list. I love The Witcher, but not for the writing. It could be a translation issue, but I'm not convinced that the original Polish was that much better. Bioshock had absolutely fantastic writing. I didn't play Mass Effect so I don't know. I'm really surprised that both of them were not nominated. Bioshock had the best writing that I have seen in a game in a long, long time. At least since Vampire: The Masquerade -- Bloodlines.

Jabberwocky said:

It also had some of the best voice acting.

And no, I'm not kidding.

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No it didn't it, the witcher only talks in monotone. that is NOT good voice acting, It's dull and boring.

Unregistered said:

No it didn't it, the witcher only talks in monotone. that is NOT good voice acting, It's dull and boring.

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No... it.. didn't...it... Witcher.... talks....

One good voice actor was Dandelion. Second best was Carmen. The rest had way too many fubars vs. normal voice acting IMHO.

Do you have some specific examples Cm? I'm not being smart, I would really like to know. I for one thought there were several good voices. There was Vesimir, who brings a smile to my face just because he was the old Diego in Gothic. Alvin did a more than adequate job as a child, and the other children were good too. I also really liked the Brogue of Zoltan Chivay. Eskel and Lambert were fine. The Salamander bandits truly sounded like vile thugs, the drunkards sounded drunk, the ambient conversations couldn't have been better, Shani's old hag landlord's voice would curdle milk, and the Reverend gave one of the most stirring speeches (end of chapter 1) of any game I've ever witnessed. For that matter, Geralt himself, while far from Oscar material, came across well enough, neither annoying nor bland imho, and fitting for his character.

While there are odd tonal inflections in nearly every game for whatever reason, I would rate the Witcher as above average in the voice category.

I've yet to see any game where people didn't have complaints about the voice acting, so I have to wonder what exactly is being expected??

I'll throw my opinion in with yours, Jabberwocky, though I think some of the Polish voice acting I've heard may have been a little higher caliber. I liked Geralt's voice, even though it had that monotonic quality. I just watched The Maltese Falcon and while listening to Bogie drawl his great lines as Sam Spade I was reminded of Geralt. The only main character's voice I disliked was Shani; though Triss had some really bad lines at times, she delivered them in a nice contralto.

As far as the writing nominations, I agree the lineup is a little odd. I also would have expected to see MotB, Bioshock, and Mass Effect, though ME may have missed the Nov 30th deadline. Maybe they picked a game from each platform or something.

Related blog entry: http://www.steve-ince.co.uk/blog/2008/01/writing-awards.html

Steve Ince was also heavily involved in all "Broken Sword" adventure games - and in "Beneath a steel sky".

Hmm... Shani. Well Magerette, to me it depends on what aspect of her voice you're looking at. I thought she sounded more valley girl than medieval for sure, but conversely she was also one of the most expressive voices in the game. Her personality really comes out in certain instances (most recently in my own playing during the autopsy, when she chided Geralt about her willingness to help, but making it clear she was no investigator, and that he should be taking the lead.)
So if you are speaking purely in terms of delivering colorful lines that make a character come alive from a written script, Imho she is one of the best, and therefore one of my favorite characters so far.

Oh and I completely forgot Sigfried. He was awesome! How can you not listen to him at the first encounter in the sewers and not immediately love his character??