Board 8 > So why has the writing quality of games decreased over the recent years?

(+) Yeah! (+)

While I still think people are too harsh on modern games I can't deny, especially as I replay some of the older ones, that the older games had better writing and story. I mean, look at FFXV compared to FFXII or X. Nevermind the PS1 and older titles. Or how... underwhelming Skyrim is plot and quest wise in comparison to Oblivion. Nevermind Fallout 4 in comparison. I remember my rant in 'why did they lose' about Joel and, the more I think about it, the more true it really is. That modern characters really tend to not stick out as much and be as interesting as characters even as recent as the 360 and PS2 era's. I mean, Kos-Mos may not be the best character of all time, but by just looking at her I can tell she's got some interesting things going on. Ezio may not really be too strong but, at the same time, he still pulls off a very cool assassin style and everything. I know a lot of older games sucked, but the newer games seem to just... have nothing... in story. It feels almost like movies universally decided that they only needed to mimic Michael Bay and be all flashy and everything and screw story.
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Games have never had great writing relative to books and movies
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Nier Automata came out like last year.
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Ezio was literally introduced at the tail end of 2009. For comparison's sake, Skyrim, one of the games you decried as an example of bad writing, came out just barely two years after Ezio's debut.

KamikazePotato posted...

Nier Automata came out like last year.

Sure. But Nier is, like, just one relative drop. I'm not saying that good games don't come out. Just that the quality certainly seems to be falling apart.
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It is a sign of the coming Crash.
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Games writing is better than ever, you just can't always find it in the same series or from the same devs as 10 years ago. (Much less 20.)
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Voice acting ruined story telling
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Kenri posted...

Games writing is better than ever, you just can't always find it in the same series or from the same devs as 10 years ago. (Much less 20.)

"Western" AAA companies are too busy pushing globalist divide and conquer agenda (muh feminism, muh minorities, and other SJW nonsense) through games to bother writing good stories. Plus, when you push globalist agenda, creative talent flees, so even if you wanted to write a good story, there's no-one competent enough to do it.

Japanese AAA companies are too busy making mobile games.
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I think it is less that writing quality has decreased and more than the amount of focus that is on world building, etc. is less in a gaming environment where you are relying less on text to get your point across. The world building is less tell, and more show. Just in general, obviously there are exceptions.

Vlado posted...

"Western" AAA companies are too busy pushing globalist divide and conquer agenda (muh feminism, muh minorities, and other SJW nonsense) through games to bother writing good stories. Plus, when you push globalist agenda, creative talent flees, so even if you wanted to write a good story, there's no-one competent enough to do it.

At this point anyone who actually thinks this is a bigot in disguise.
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LinkMarioSamus posted...

Vlado posted...

"Western" AAA companies are too busy pushing globalist divide and conquer agenda (muh feminism, muh minorities, and other SJW nonsense) through games to bother writing good stories. Plus, when you push globalist agenda, creative talent flees, so even if you wanted to write a good story, there's no-one competent enough to do it.

At this point anyone who actually thinks this is a bigot in disguise.

what's the disguise?

bigot disguising as a bigot seems stupid even for vlado, which is impressive because he's the motherfucking stupidest most bigoted fucking idiot bigot in the history of this website

Seems unfair to contrast FFX with FFXV given FFXV's general development

Anyway imo it's better than ever so I must just be weird
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XIII_rocks posted...

Seems unfair to contrast FFX with FFXV given FFXV's general development

Anyway imo it's better than ever so I must just be weird

only if it's weird to like, not complain about how everything used to be better

I guess that is weird yes, most people don't appreciate new things, so you're weird for doing that

by the way i was kidding about anything being "stupid even for vlado", his lows will never stop amazing me

It's gotten vastly better, it's just that the kinds of games that value storyrelling the most have changed somewhat. Japanese AAA Square games, for instance, have such troubled development now that of course the writing will suffer. Conversely, a decade ago a platformer would have never had writing worth a damn, and now we have Celeste which has one of the best stories of the year.

Hell, compare the writing in RDR2 to RDR, it has improved a lot.

Edit: Also Vlado is an open fascist now (not even exaggerating sadly), how he is even allowed to post is beyond me.
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If you want good stories, don't look toward the big-name companies. Look toward the indie devs.
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MettanAtem posted...

If you want good stories, don't look toward the big-name companies. Look toward the indie devs.

the thing is, people who make complaints of this type either don't like what the indie devs are doing, or have decided not to like what the indie devs are doing

Yeah you basically can't look toward most big name titles for good stories anymore (there are some, but they're pretty few and far between compared to before) but I would say the overall writing quality has gone up over the years.

If you want good JRPG stories, for instance, you're much better off looking at things like the Trails series or Atlus's games (even non-Persona) than at Final Fantasy.

Basically all the good writing and creative ideas has gone to either indies or 'B' developers.

Final Fantasy XV has a much better writing than any pre-PS2 Final Fantasy, honestly.

Anyway, writing is not a focus of major game developers because it doesn't sell. Most of the best selling/most popular games have like no writing (Tetris, Minecraft, Call of Duty games, Fortnite, etc.) So they probably don't want to invest a lot of resources in that area.
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tcaz2 posted...

Yeah you basically can't look toward most big name titles for good stories anymore (there are some, but they're pretty few and far between compared to before) but I would say the overall writing quality has gone up over the years.

If you want good JRPG stories, for instance, you're much better off looking at things like the Trails series or Atlus's games (even non-Persona) than at Final Fantasy.

Basically all the good writing and creative ideas has gone to either indies or 'B' developers.

Oh yeah and I wanted to say this too >_>
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My understanding is that a lot of AAA games don't actually bring in a writer until late in the process so the writer is making a story to fit the designed game rather than the game being made to fit the story. That's going to really limit storytelling.
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I'm playing Tales of Berseria right now and the writing is fantastic.

I'd say it's less that the quality has gone down, there are just a lot more developers now that make games worth playing and the ones that used to have good writing (some, anyway) don't, but plenty of newer companies do. Average quality may have gone down but there's still lots of good stuff
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well i mean fewer resources are being put into heavily story driven games with the exception of a few games. Even recent great story games (Nier previously mentioned) are from lower budgets.

Gaming just shifted to online and boring open world games in 2007. Both of which are harder to have good stories (since so much open world crap is just fetch quest after fetch quest)
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Because Humanity has Declined
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Metal_DK posted...

Gaming just shifted to online and boring open world games in 2007.

is there any known reason for this?

STElNER posted...

Metal_DK posted...

Gaming just shifted to online and boring open world games in 2007.

is there any known reason for this?

"Thanks, Obama"
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Open world is definitely a problem area. Because you give players free roam and the choice to do what they want and see what they want, it's hard to write an engaging and well-paced story. Witcher 3, which is a great game, suffers from these pacing problems. "GOTTA FIND CIRI...but not before I help all these people with their problems."

Which makes sense in a way, cause it's his job, but I think it creates a lot of "So, what was I supposed to be doing again" for gamers.
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You're trying way too hard with the 2007 gimmick to apply it here, Metal_DK.
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IMO it's probably because they're so focused on appealing to a wider audience that they only go with the most watered-down stuff to try and appeal to the wide audience. Things that are more focused tend to bring in actual writing staff to help them out.
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I just noticed 8 out of 10 of the most popular games in the site are open world.

That said if you look for indies you can find some great writing.

This year I also played Transistor and A Hat in Time.

The former had writing worthy of a critically aclaimed novel, and the later had pretty creative writing for a 3D platformer.

It's not like anyone was ever gonna beat the writing for Bad Dudes anyway, so this entire discussion is pointless.
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my dude, a week ago you were bemoaning that people are too critical of modern games and holding on to relics of the past

Unbridled9 posted...

IMO it's probably because they're so focused on appealing to a wider audience that they only go with the most watered-down stuff to try and appeal to the wide audience. Things that are more focused tend to bring in actual writing staff to help them out.

You, a week ago: "don't try to make me play some crap like Gone Home by telling me it's wonderful when it's really just you gushing over it's lesbian message."
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iiicon posted...

You, a week ago: "don't try to make me play some crap like Gone Home by telling me it's wonderful when it's really just you gushing over it's lesbian message."

He's right, though. It's a terrible, boring game with zero appeal that only those supporting its agenda could possibly like. For comparison, many could argue Undertale also pushed some SJW nonsense... That was a good game by its own merit, however.
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The more popular and mainstream gaming gets, the more attractive it is to money hungry business types who only care about milking the players for as much money as they can, not about making great games.
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Gone Home is a bad videogame (imo based on lack of actual gameplay, and a couple quirks with the plot), but a great experience, which for its' price is very fair.
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It's a terrible experience, too. Oh, you get to walk around a house and read a story of Sonic fanfic-tier quality scattered around it. It's a total waste of a couple of hours.
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Vlado posted...

It's a terrible experience, too. Oh, you get to walk around a house and read a story of Sonic fanfic-tier quality scattered around it. It's a total waste of a couple of hours.

The story was great outside of a few misnomers, that some will love and others like myself will just wish it had been more. It's a coming of age tale, and the writing was done brilliantly to emphasise the characters... and according to a lot of people, make them relatable. Not entirely sure, why I'm bothering discussing this with you when I know you just enjoy beating on it to be mr edgy, but hey fuck it it's nearly christmas.
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kevwaffles posted...

You're trying way too hard with the 2007 gimmick to apply it here, Metal_DK.

How so? That was around the time period where this shift started. The person above you says the opposite. Open world games don't offer great stories. Open world games, combined with whatever flavor of the year online game(s) also have shit stories (CoD4 to Fortnite today)
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Horizon had a really fun story

The pacing of said story is an issue because of the open world though. That's really an issue all over.
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Man, I disagree with this. The writing of older games is very much lacking in the connective tissue that provides internal logic to characters.
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MenuWars posted...

Vlado posted...

It's a terrible experience, too. Oh, you get to walk around a house and read a story of Sonic fanfic-tier quality scattered around it. It's a total waste of a couple of hours.

The story was great outside of a few misnomers, that some will love and others like myself will just wish it had been more. It's a coming of age tale, and the writing was done brilliantly to emphasise the characters... and according to a lot of people, make them relatable. Not entirely sure, why I'm bothering discussing this with you when I know you just enjoy beating on it to be mr edgy, but hey fuck it it's nearly christmas.

Dude. The story was cliche and blatant. I figured out exactly what was going to happen come that Street Fighter bit. She was going to fall into a lesbian love relationship, have a bit of trouble especially with people not accepting her, and end up running away. I was legitimately more invested in her sister WHO HAD NO REAL DEFINING CHARACTERISTICS because they were at least not cliche'd characteristics or politically motivated. Gone Home had the writing quality of a ten year old who thinks that they're being deep because they wrote about something controversial. Heck, there were multiple ways that I feel the story could have improved. Like maybe the father resents the daughter for being more creative at writing than him and that's what actually pushed him over the edge as opposed to the lesbian thing. Or the mother disapproves of how her attitude has shifted ever since they moved and it's come to a head with the lesbian bit and she's convinced it's the influence of her daughter's lover. But just... SOMETHING that was actually interesting!

my dude, a week ago you were bemoaning that people are too critical of modern games and holding on to relics of the past

And I do feel that they're too critical of modern gaming; especially since I've seen quite a few people act as if the modern stuff is complete trash not even worthy to be mentioned in the same sentence as their beloved older title. At the same time it's hard to ignore that the majority of actually good stories and characters are, at the least, not coming out of the AAA department now-a-days. It feels like those few indie and B-list titles that have good story and character are basically the only place where story and character happen.
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I'd agree with the folks saying game writing is actually at its best right now. We are sorely lacking the insanely well-written point-and-clicks and WRPGs that we used to be drowning in, but across all other genres I'd say the bar has been enormously raised. As was mentioned in the OP's last topic (which curiously enough seemed to be coming from the exact opposite position >_>) it boils down to there being a lot more crap easily visible these days - if you know what you're looking for there's quality unlike anything we've ever had before.
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Polite reminder that the console industry died in 1983 because they couldn't stop releasing too many bad games.