DarkSign: Yes - if this were being done for all text in the game. Since it's only gauging reaction and commentry (perhaps in too much detail) on a small subset of game text, it's hardly design by commitee.
It's more a focus group used correctly (one hopes) - i.e. to give an idea of the best approaches to use for the rest of the text; not to write the text themselves.
Whatever comes of this, I think it'd be a mistake to involve more than two people in writing the majority of the text [perhaps excepting the possibility that different writers take individual characters]. I also think it'd be ideal if VD can re-write parts himself (perhaps a few times) with editor input. Perhaps there's not time, I'm not sure.
I also note occasional moments of Pratchettism VD. That's no bad thing, since he's easy to read, dry and funny IMO.
That's mostly lost in the change to the second version (though there are many improvements). A shame I think.
ichpokhudezh said:
We're discussing here a phrase with less than 20 words, and you are pointing out that having a comma four words from the start is "too late ... to flow". Are you yanking my chain?
No. Currently some readers would read some way into the sentence with the wrong interpretation, then going back and re-read to get the right one.
This gets in the way of flow since things don't flow when you need to re-read sentences. [the writing might "flow", but that's no great thing if it only flows on second reading]
I am absolutely not "yanking your chain". The fact that it's four words in is immaterial. If many readers end up reading something twice through misinterpretation, that's a bad thing (when the aim is to put over information smoothly). Four words is less important than twenty, but an issue nonetheless.
In any case, if a guy stops reading mid-sentence, fuck him if he doesn't get what that sentence meant.
Not the issue. Anyone who doesn't bother to go back and read the sentence again might not be worth bothering with (probably not in the target market for this game).
However, my complaint is against the need for people to read things twice (not because they want to, but because it's necessary due to imperfect presentation). This is less than ideal. Just because I'm willing to read sentences twice or three times, does not make it ok for a writer needlessly to write stuff I'll misinterpret half the time.
Sometimes it might be the lesser of two evils to leave many players needing (not wanting) to read something twice. It's never (almost never??) a good thing in itself. If it can be remedied, that helps the flow of the writing and the game.
This is a good thing.
If the aim is to have players focusing to a degree on sentence structure, and poring over text like literary scholars, then by all means have them need to read things three times.
If the aim is to put over ideas and information smoothly, then readers should rarely
need to read anything more than once. If they
want to read things more than once, that's great of course.