GameSpot - Writers Guild Award goes to...

Ryder said:

Please note however that I have not played either game and I only wrote that to get your blood boiling for a minute or two as I wanted to annoy you, whoever you are. Carry on been passionate, love your work.

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You big joker, you!!

Grifman said:

You're being silly. I can rip 3 lines of dialogue out of any game and make the game look bad.

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I wasn't trying to be unfair. Feel free to post some dialogue you loved. I couldn't find any good dialogue to post.

Brumbek said:

I wasn't trying to be unfair. Feel free to post some dialogue you loved. I couldn't find any good dialogue to post.

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Perhaps not but posting those three lines as indicative as the whole is misleading because they weren't supposed to be some great conversation discussing some deep issue. It was just Lara and Jonah heading up a mountain, talking like 2 people would.

Give me some great dialogue from TW3 so we can see how great it is

Grifman said:

Give me some great dialogue from TW3 so we can see how great it is

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I already did. I linked the intro video. It has subtitles to read.

Also, Witcher 3 hardly needs a defense. If you understand the basics of literature and writing characters, Witcher 3's incredible writing is obvious. Seriously, play it and see.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is just a simple action game with simple dialogue meant to propel the simple story forward. Witcher 3 is an epic, in the literary sense.

I'm beating a dead horse at this point, but there is NO CONTEST between Rise and Witcher 3 when it comes to writing. I mean shoot, one is a 10 hour pulp adventure, one is a 150+ hour RPG epic.

Brumbek said:

I mean shoot, one is a 10 hour pulp adventure, one is a 150+ hour RPG epic.

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You saying one is Tolkienesque gem and another is Danielle Steel's penny-a-line?

Check out Shamus Youngs take on Rise of the Tomb Raiders writing.

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=30608

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/art...mb-Raider-s-Story-Keeps-Interrupting-the-Game

Third, the game gives you bad and wrong advice. Lara whispers something like, “Be patient. Let them come to you.” Doing so will get you killed. If you tread water in a hole, they will see you long before they’re close enough for you to ambush them. If you hide under the surface, they will walk over to the hole, see you anyway, and shoot you.

And let’s not even get into the break in tone: This series has been all about this desperate struggle to survive cold, injury, and hunger, and now suddenly Lara is swimming in freezing water with no ill effects.

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Some of TW3's writing is merely serviceable, but there are multiple questlines that mop the floor with anything in ROTTR. Yes, ROTTR is pulp, but it's not particularly knowing or clever pulp; it does nothing new, while seeming unaware that it's merely going through the motions. And the major plot twist, revealed after about 25 hours of game time, is painfully obvious about 2 hours in.

But never mind all that. The game's most frustrating property is its total reliance on audio and print diaries for 99% of the backstory, modern as well as ancient. It's just as absurd as in the original F.E.A.R.: you magically find 500-year-old diaries sitting out on open surfaces in dank tombs; digital audio recorders (with exactly one entry, despite hundreds of MBs or even GBs of storage space) detailing betrayal and corruption are left on tabletops right in front of the soldiers they criticize; and you find everything in just the right order, as dictated by game's unfolding "story".

ROTTR's writing is tolerable, leaving aside the "He can't see me" expositional silliness, but the game's use of that writing - its narrative framing and delivery - is horseshit.

So the last three days I replayed ROTTR to see this award winning literary prowess.

I was treated to such amazing lines as;
"I can do this." "You can do this." "Lara you can do this." - Probably the most frequent lines in the game.

"What am I doing?" "What did I just do." "What have I done?" - Probably the second most frequent lines in the game.

Other treasured lines.
"I'm cold." "He can't see me from here." "This looks ancient." "I need to get down." "I need to get up."

The terrible exposition to drive the story is a verified moodkiller if you actually pay attention to it. I don't think there is a sentence longer than 10 words in the entire game. The only place that does is the diary entries, which appear to have all been written by a child with the exception of one series (Japanese spy).

I don't know if they felt sorry for putting it up against well written games, or what the story is, but as far as I'm concerned it falls short of deserving any literary game award. Like someone else said above, if this is the type of writing that wins the award, then clearly this award is a joke.

Wisdom said:

I don't know if they felt sorry for putting it up against well written games, or what the story is…

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The answer is actually very easy. Lara is a young, "strong" female protagonist dealing with both her prior emotional trauma and biggest challenge yet where she has to reach deep in herself and prove [fill in some social struggle]!

Seriously people, this isn't complicated. The judges are these modern progressive enlightened types who will give a game an award solely, SOLELY, because it has a "strong" female protagonist dealing with emotions.

Again, these types value "games as change" tenfold more than the actual quality of the product. Add to it that Geralt is a handsome male protagonist who can sleep with women…and Lara easily wins "Outstanding Achievement."

Remember what Outstanding Achievement means: a game the pushes forward the social agenda of the judges. It has nothing to do with quality, in an empirical sense.

joxer said:

You saying one is Tolkienesque gem and another is Danielle Steel's penny-a-line?

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I'm saying something close to that…except I've never heard of Danielle Steel…I guess I'm really out of touch with the "classics" the Writers Guild reads. BURN!

Brumbek said:

I hate to say [etc.]

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Do you really hate to say, though?

Because you come off less as someone who is reluctant to broach an awkward topic, and more as someone who has found a pretext to trot out one of his well-ridden hobby horses.

That said, it certainly is a surprising choice in strong overall year for game writing. A friend happens to be playing through Rise of Tomb Raider now, and from what I've seen over his shoulder there just isn't any more dialogue in the game than you'd expect for a Tomb Raider title -- Lara is mostly just runnin' and jumpin' as she has done for many years.

Zloth said:

Tomb Raider? Seriously?? I haven't played the second but the first's writing was really weak. It was easily predicted and used extremely over-used character types that seemed to come straight out of an old 80's slasher movie.





I'm afraid the gender call-out may actually be valid in this case. Looking back through the list on Wikipedia, the number of games with a female lead character and/or lead writer seems high for a male dominated industry. There have only been 8 awards, though, so I wouldn't condemn them yet. It's just looking a bit dubious.





No RPGs on the list is more significant. These things seem to go by the publisher submitting a script. That might work out a lot better for a nice, linear game like Uncharted or Tomb Raider than an RPG where you're got multiple stories going in parallel.

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Yeah, Witcher 3 wins hands down for me, but like yourself I have only played the 2013 TR game, not Rise.

I'll say this, I think the actress who portrayed Lara in the 2013 game was absolutely stunning with her performance. The brutal nature of her journey, the game itself, and her vulnerable yet determined take on the character really helped create a top experience for me. Even that 80s slasher vibe worked.

But writing was fairly run of the mill. Not sure hoe Rise can make such allegedly massive leaps forward.

Hexprone said:

Do you really hate to say, though?

Because you come off less as someone who is reluctant to broach an awkward topic, and more as someone who has found a pretext to trot out one of his well-ridden hobby horses.

That said, it certainly is a surprising choice in strong overall year for game writing.

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By what basis do you believe I look for reasons to trot out this hobby horse? Have I ever gone after the Writers Guild before? No. Rhianna Pratchett? No. Lara Croft games? No. But please feel free to post evidence of my well-ridden hobby horse if you have any.

I do "hate to say" what I said because I'd greatly prefer to not call people out and look like a jerk. For instance, what I said has made you think I ride hobby horses. I've never even ridden a real horse. FACT.

I do admit though, that the bias toward picking winners based on "social change" is something I find highly destructive. When we pick winners not based on merit but based on what trends we want to encourage…that is totally unfair and misguided.

I think that's why Rise was picked...because the judges value social issues over quality writing.

But Hexprone, let me be clear: my wild accusations are unsubstantiated. It's not like I can read their minds at the Writers Guild. What I can read, though, my friends, is the scripts for both games…and the best script is right there in black and white.

Falksi said:

I think the actress who portrayed Lara in the 2013 game was absolutely stunning with her performance.

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Camilla Luddington did a great job in both games. She's a really excellent Lara actress. She whines far too often…but that is the script she was given.

Brumbek said:

By what basis do you believe I look for reasons to trot out this hobby horse? Have I ever gone after the Writers Guild before? No. Rhianna Pratchett? No. Lara Croft games? No. But please feel free to post evidence of my well-ridden hobby horse if you have any.

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I whole-heartedly apologize if I seemed to suggest that you had the slightest interest in the Writers Guild, Rhianna Pratchett, or Lara Croft games. I never for a moment thought that you did.