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Linguistic comparison of IE games with Nu-Games

Cross

Arcane
Joined
Oct 14, 2017
Messages
3,037
I doubt anyone is surprised that the modern games are linguistically weaker. But I don't know if analyzing the amount of unique words is such a good idea considering PoE and TToN suffer heavily from 'thesaurus syndrome' where the writers seemed to be falling over themselves to come up with the most flowery way to say something very basic and straightforward. Does this analysis include the backer NPCs from PoE?

And vocabulary is one thing, but I would argue prose and style of speech are more important. Planescape: Torment has hundreds of named NPCs and even the most minor of them have more distinctive dialogue than most main characters in other RPGs. Item descriptions in Planescape: Torment are also much more memorable than in any of the other games, although this analysis seems to be restricted to NPC dialogue.
 

ERYFKRAD

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Strap Yourselves In Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
PoE and TToN suffer heavily from 'thesaurus syndrome' where the writers seemed to be falling over themselves to come up with the most flowery way to say something very basic and straightforward.
Damned odd thing, to attempt to write prose like Vance wrote dialogue. Worse still the abject failure of the attempt.
 

CanadianCorndog

Learned
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Feb 2, 2021
Messages
158
Kind of interesting to a dingus like me who skimmed over your data. Mainly what I notice is none of them are really unique, there are no Cormac McCarthys or H.P. Lovecrafts.
 
Vatnik
Joined
Sep 28, 2014
Messages
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USSR
Funposter suggested I run readability tests and I did.

TLDR: It was a waste of time.

What these tests take into account is
- words length
- sentences length
- occasionally they will define "difficult words" either as words longer than ~7 characters or by using a database of 3000 simplest words

The methods are very simple.
Some of their formulas to give you an idea of what they do:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunning_fog_index
7322c2d1e75bc0531a7f7588582560a8.png


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMOG
63b089ac656a3b8956782a7d139a6474.png


Etc...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleman–Liau_index
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch–Kincaid_readability_tests
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lix_(readability_test)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale–Chall_readability_formula
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_readability_index

7f3de72a1973d216d75da02d575fac70.png


What these results mean:

1- All these games can be easily understood by 10-13 year old children (varies depending on test), but all come very close with no significant difference
2- Tyranny uses the lengthiest words and the lengthiest sentences, scores highest on "reading difficulty"
3- I threw in the first Drizzt book "Homeland" by Salvatore to see how it compares and it blew all games out of the water with its supposedly "much more complicated language".

The conclusion that I'm drawing is that these tests were NOT made to analyze dialogue/speech. They were made to make sure drug instructions are simple and clear, or that the literary descriptions are easy to understand. Natural sounding speech is simpler both in terms of structure and vocabulary, it needs to be analyzed with other tools.

Also, inadvertently, my conclusion about Trump's supposed speech "written for 6 graders" is that he just TALKED, instead of reading from the teleprompter.

In the end, all these tests are nothing but a fancy was of representing these 3 simple factors:
41c54628951c9e9e90b6bb8b0bc37a37.png
 
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Lacrymas

Arcane
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Sep 23, 2015
Messages
18,780
Pathfinder: Wrath
Tyranny is such a chore to read and maybe the constant repetition of the unique terminology might be a reason why, apart from everyone speaking like everyone else.
 

deuxhero

Arcane
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Flowery Land
How about some fantasy literature as comparisons? I'd pick the The Fellowship of the Ring, The Hour of the Dragon (Isn't it the only full length Conan novel?), Fool Moon, and Monster Hunter Vendetta. If you can be assed, add Eragon and The Eye of Aragon so we have known shit as comparison.
 

laclongquan

Arcane
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Searching for my kidnapped sister
Kind of interesting to a dingus like me who skimmed over your data. Mainly what I notice is none of them are really unique, there are no Cormac McCarthys or H.P. Lovecrafts.

Unique is overrated~ Unique word is just a way for mediocre writers exhaust their laughably creative to cover for their subpar writings.

Another sign is unnecessarily lengthy sentences. In English, novel lines have no business being long. And that was a long time standard "Brevity is the Soul of Wit".
 

Funposter

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Oct 19, 2018
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Australia
How about some fantasy literature as comparisons? I'd pick the The Fellowship of the Ring, The Hour of the Dragon (Isn't it the only full length Conan novel?), Fool Moon, and Monster Hunter Vendetta. If you can be assed, add Eragon and The Eye of Aragon so we have known shit as comparison.
Add one of the Harry Potter books to the mix, probably the third one, before they all ballooned to 600+ pages.
 

oscar

Arcane
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NZ
Tyranny and PoE1 sucked in different ways but PoE's was much more annoying. I think because Tyranny was more self-aware of itself while PoE came across as ludicrously pretentious (as well as having the horrible practice of giving bizarre clumsy names to established fantasy conventions to give a false sense of originality).
 

Eirinjas

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RPG Wokedex
Tyranny and PoE1 sucked in different ways but PoE's was much more annoying. I think because Tyranny was more self-aware of itself while PoE came across as ludicrously pretentious (as well as having the horrible practice of giving bizarre clumsy names to established fantasy conventions to give a false sense of originality).

You didn't find Tyranny's writing ludicrously pretentious? The Tyranny I played had the edgiest of edgelord writing, was populated entirely with irreproachable feminist characters, used excessive verbiage in mundane dialogue, and repeatedly described to the player that which could be seen by the player's own eyes for seemingly no other reason than to add word count to the game.
 
Vatnik Wumao
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Messages
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Another sign is unnecessarily lengthy sentences. In English, novel lines have no business being long. And that was a long time standard "Brevity is the Soul of Wit".
To be fair, it depends on the author's particular style. I am quite fond of Hemingway's concise prose, but more flowery styles can work as well (such as Ol' Willy's aforementioned example of Lovecraft).
 
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Joggerino

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Tyranny and PoE1 sucked in different ways but PoE's was much more annoying. I think because Tyranny was more self-aware of itself while PoE came across as ludicrously pretentious (as well as having the horrible practice of giving bizarre clumsy names to established fantasy conventions to give a false sense of originality).

You didn't find Tyranny's writing ludicrously pretentious? The Tyranny I played had the edgiest of edgelord writing, was populated entirely with irreproachable feminist characters, used excessive verbiage in mundane dialogue, and repeatedly described to the player that which could be seen by the player's own eyes for seemingly no other reason than to add word count to the game.
Yeah, that was my experience as well. Had to stop playing after 20 minutes and uninstall.
 

Eirinjas

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Tyranny and PoE1 sucked in different ways but PoE's was much more annoying. I think because Tyranny was more self-aware of itself while PoE came across as ludicrously pretentious (as well as having the horrible practice of giving bizarre clumsy names to established fantasy conventions to give a false sense of originality).

You didn't find Tyranny's writing ludicrously pretentious? The Tyranny I played had the edgiest of edgelord writing, was populated entirely with irreproachable feminist characters, used excessive verbiage in mundane dialogue, and repeatedly described to the player that which could be seen by the player's own eyes for seemingly no other reason than to add word count to the game.
this he shits out using the word 'verbiage'
irony heh

Sorry, I forgot about our special ed readers here on the Codex.

*makes note to dumb down all future posts just for Maxie. Will use something he can understand: ebonics.
 

Terenty

Liturgist
Joined
Nov 29, 2018
Messages
1,470
I dropped Tyranny like a hot potato when my companions decided to rape me with their word diarrhea disguised as a dialogue. So the OP seems to be on point.
 

Vlajdermen

Arcane
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Nov 19, 2017
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Catholic Serbia
And vocabulary is one thing, but I would argue prose and style of speech are more important. Planescape: Torment has hundreds of named NPCs and even the most minor of them have more distinctive dialogue than most main characters in other RPGs. Item descriptions in Planescape: Torment are also much more memorable than in any of the other games, although this analysis seems to be restricted to NPC dialogue.
Case in point, Bloodlines. Very basic, low-brow vocabulary, and it's still brimming with personality. The base difference between good writing and bad writing, at least in RPGs, is whether the dialogue feels organic or forced. In other words, whether the writer was thinking ''The characters will say this and this because it feels right'' or ''The characters will say this and this because it'll make me look smart''. Same goes for the humour in Kingdom Come as opposed to The Outer Worlds, angst in the Witcher games as opposed to nier automata, et cetera. I'd also use ATOM as an example for pop culture references, but that game lives in a world of its own.

That's not to say vocabulary isn't important. A writer's vocabulary is his toolset, and tools are good to have around even if you're not always gonna use them.
 

luj1

You're all shills
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You cant even make a character in POE without being bombarded with historical events, locations, treaties

It will always stay remembered as the king of lore dumps. Tyranny is like it's half-retarded younger brother
 

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