Incline Chris Avellone Appreciation Station

[ERYFKRAD]

articulate or not, I earn a living writing

My condolences

 

[NecroLord]

starfield had actually interesting gameplay, the whole crafting and production chain was great autistic fun, kotor 2's writing was a bit too pretentious for me

I could buy that someone may like some elements of Starfield (after all, there are people who think of Oblivion as their favourite RPG/Bethesda game!), but shitting on KotOR 2's writing at the same time has to be trolling, because I would be hard-pressed to find a Star Wars story that's more complex than the basic "Dark Side vs Light Side" trope.

I didn't get very far in the story, but I didn't like the tone and how serious the game took itself, dry as sand on tatooine

is the sand on tatooine drier than other sands

 

[Vic]

it's coarse

 

[Vic]

^ and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere

jesus christ do you people even star wars

 

[Bulo]

^ and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere

jesus christ do you people even star wars

Are you from a poor country where autism isn't diagnosable?

 

[0sacred]

^ and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere

jesus christ do you people even star wars

it certainly got in your vagina

 

[ropetight]

 

[Vic]

^ faggots

 

[fantadomat]

^ and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere

jesus christ do you people even star wars

Fuck off boomer loser.

 

[Vic]

loser

Bulgaria

 

[fantadomat]

loser

Bulgaria

Ahhh the delusional westoid....but yeah now that i think about it. Bulgaria is total dump,it is terrible,please westoids don't come in here,it is poor and the worst place in the world.....like the whole of balkans. When you decide to run away from your glorious nations of capitalism and prosperity....go in mexico or somewhere else,far better than bulgaria...here is really really bad.

 

[Elttharion]

 

[MjKorz]

This is the gayest thread on the site and I've seen aphatmc~ ramble about multi-headed dicks in retardoland.

 

[NecroLord]

 

[Roguey]

Avellone reveals that Bioware considered themselves superior writers to the Black Isle staff and sneered at anyone who submitted a writing sample that read more like a Black Isle game.

BioWare apparently used to chastise any applicant who used a Black Isle writing convention as being beneath them.

Also, as an added bonus, one of BioWare's editors subsequently asked if she could have a copy of our writing style guide. (This is a violation of just about every company's policy on sharing confidential documents.)

When I brought that up, she replied, “oh well, I’m sure we’re already doing everything you all do anyway, I just wanted to make sure.”

 

[Yosharian]

Damn I want a copy of that writing style guide

Someone pester him for it

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Cook Cook did nothing wrong.

 

[Infinitron]

What sort of Black Isle writing conventions? I'm thinking it might have been something like having dialogue choices prefixed by [Lie], PS:T-style.

 

[Semiurge]

What sort of Black Isle writing conventions? I'm thinking it might have been something like having dialogue choices prefixed by [Lie], PS:T-style.

Bioware is now above writing fraudulent main characters.

 

[Roguey]

What sort of Black Isle writing conventions? I'm thinking it might have been something like having dialogue choices prefixed by [Lie], PS:T-style.

https://x.com/ChrisAvellone/status/1815751198433018171

At BIS and Obsidian we used to have writing style guides for each project for dialogue formatting, conventions, aesthetics, etc, tailored for each project.

These documents would be anywhere from 30-100 pages of breakdowns for narrative conventions and could be as detailed as dictionaries and breakdowns for inventory items (convention for "stimpak", do you capitalize or not, etc.).

The fact that BioWare would simultaneously express contempt for applicant using those conventions and simultaneously then ask to see confidential guides to how we approach it seemed hypocritical. Shocker

It makes a lot of sense to have a guide like that; we had style guides back when I wrote for a newspaper, and in the courts for lawyerly citations. It's very odd to think of a company that relies on writing for its product turning up its nose at an applicant using a style guide.

I think the contempt was more "we don't do it the way -they- do it". Obviously, they didn't hire her, but I would hope it wasn't because the applicant was trying to use a modern RPG conventions in their submission, which would be all kinds of stupid.

I will say that this weirdness from BioWare continued when the owners of BioWare called Brian Fargo to complain about an email he wrote where one of BIS's projects was better written than BG (this was a project the BW owners had also expressed earlier contempt for).

The next fun thing is this same project they had laughed at - when they realized that the in-developement BG2 was using some of the same tropes, they called and wanted to (gulp) make sure they weren't copying it too closely. You can't make this shit up.

I had to then walk them through the basic development convention that "execution is what matters and sets things apart even if tropes are the same."

I told them it was very doubtful the executions were anywhere close. I didn't mean it meanly, but it's something that most writers are aware of. It did make me realize there was some dev fragility at BioWare, but whatever.

To their credit, without their engine, Black Isle's legacy would have been much less (no Infinity Engine games ever), so we owed them a lot, especially after Iplay kept screwing them with contracts until BioWare rightly had enough.

Also, to be fair, there were some prominent designers at Black Isle and Obsidian who literally hated BioWare games (they're still there in very high positions), so it's not like we were always saints either.

Guessing the project in question was Icewind Dale.

Also... "her"? That's peculiar, Black Isle didn't have any female writer/designers. Annie would be the first at Obsidian.

Prominent designer who hates Bioware games would be Sawyer of course.

 

[Infinitron]

Guessing the project in question was Icewind Dale.

Nah, he's talking about PS:T. Bioware's concerns about its similarities with BG2 have been mentioned in the past.

 

[Roguey]

Nah, he's talking about PS:T. Bioware's concerns about its similarities with BG2 have been mentioned in the past.

Weird how they would have contempt for a game that was taking a very different approach to what they were doing.

 

[Angnomynous Wasp Scholar]

Feargus was reassuring journalists during BG2's marketing that it wouldn't have long paragraphs of boring shit to read, unlike...a certain other CRPG recently published by the same company.

 

[Tyranicon]

Feargus was reassuring journalists during BG2's marketing that it wouldn't have long paragraphs of boring shit to read, unlike...a certain other CRPG recently published by the same company.

Journo's can't read, can't play games, can't write.

Man, wtf can they do?

 

[Herumor]

Man, wtf can they do?

Get paid for nothing.