The Outer Worlds Pre-Release Thread [GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Agame]

The problem is it's all media now tv,film,music,books etc..The level of writing is fucking awful some tv shows blow my mind with their bottom tier sub-human shit.
Characters have no consistency and do the most stupid things imaginable,have no charm,no proper motivations the script will be full of plot holes that's a guarantee.The dialogue as always will be aimed at 3 year olds with learning difficulties and couple this with the modern retarded "right side of history" politics everything becomes unwatchable/unplayable.
The younger the writer the worse it gets,they have no life experience,limited education and a single mindset of creating a communist utopia.

The issue is not that modern writers "suck". Modern writers are equally good to past writers. The issue is something else that most of you never considered either because you are young or because you don't really follow societal trends really well... Or both.

What is the problem in a nutshell? People don't have much leisure time anymore, and their attention spans are shortened on average. Western civilization is AGEING. People have no patience for shit, they want/need instant gratification. Capitalism has made life harder for everyone but the rich 1% who never lift a finger in their lives. In the past you might have spent 2-3 hours watching a show or playing a video game, today you spent half...

So any writer needing to be successful, must get his priority straight: Blow people's minds as often as possible with as cheaper gimmicks as possible! Writers care about excitement, not about quality. They want to make sure that for the little time you are going to spend with their shit you are going to get as much excitement explosions as possible, and be happy...

Of course nerds complain about it because they spend more time on entertainment than the average person and thus get annoyed a lot more about the drop in quality.

Grandpa its time for your brain medication again.

And maybe you should go have a nap before you damage anymore of those few functioning brain cells you have left.

 

[Flou]

Call me crazy, but I think there's a way to call out bad writing as such without conflating it with gender. Are there zero male writers on The Outer Worlds to critique or are we only looking at the women on staff? Because I'm pretty sure if you dig into almost any contemporary video game writer's body of work, you'll find some subpar samples.

You are crazy. This is the Codex, everything that has ever gone bad, will go bad or can go bad in the world is naturally the fault of women that were allowed to work instead of raising children and cooking meals for their husband.
And who ever came up with hair colors deserves to be stomped to death by a stampede of elephants.

 

[Flou]

Didn’t we go over this a few weeks ago? Starks wrote pretty much everything in Fort Deadlight and The Gullet, the two best areas in Deadfire by far—genuinely good content. Roguey I know you hates KIS, but you loved the writing in Tyranny—Bleden Mark was your main quest-giver—do you really think he was poorly written? De gustibus non est disputandum, but even if you dislike the character as Fairfax does I would say it’s more a matter of taste. You may think the character is poorly conceived; that’s not the same as poorly executed.

I’m not going to defend every piece of short fiction written by the new generation of writers at Obsidian—some of that stuff is truly awkward and some of it’s really not my cup of tea.

However, here is a Megan Starks short story—about an unraveling marriage with one light fantasy element—and while I don’t think many of us will connect with the subject, I maintain that it’s well written, even if the symbolism becomes somewhat heavy handed. Again, keep in mind, you are not the intended audience.

You are fighting a fight you just can't win. This same drooling mass of people will in 5 years be salivating after the person who wrote Bleden Mark or Fort Deadlight when she has moved on to Blizzard or some other bigger company.

I personally couldn't care less what kind of shitty literature Obsidian's writers write on their freetime. What matters is their skill in writing computer games. Part of what goes into the game is always up to the Project Director and the Lead Writer on the project. Making video games is not something you can do on your own, even if you are a writer. You are still working with a team of people to set the tone right.

 

[Funposter]

This is happening because of gym culture.

Gym culture is a Liberal hatched subversive tactic designed to make men become less educated and thus never reach the full potential of their intellect

just read in-between sets

 

[AwesomeButton]

Codexians are so gullible that it hurts.

Well, I'm just here to bash everything, but then I'm not exactly a Codexian. :D

Oh but you will be,the corruption sips in slowly.

When I joined here, I had already been a codexian for 15 years. You'll get around.

 

[One-and-a-half-Ivan]

From RPG Site's interview with Megan Starks:

It's a strength of Leonard (Boyarsky) to create characters with different types of personalities, relationships, and motivations, and when we have a team of writers all bringing their varying strengths forward, it creates a really interesting mix.

You know who to blame in case the characters end up being bland

 

[Agame]

"I wanted to tell you, in case opportunity absents itself forever, that it doesn’t matter. That your magic is algorithmic, that mine is an abstraction of reality. That yours demands cartographic soliloquies, every verse a phrase and a phase of mathematics and momentum, every word you speak a part of the map, and you build the rules as you recite them. That mine is raw sensation, synesthesic, sinewy as sex, worthless with context, worth everything on the ledge at the end of time.

Hold.

We have to hold the line.

That I can speak through my spells and you can’t. That you have the world tessellated in amber, while nothing of my magic will mark this earth, only a faint lambency, as though of candlelight staining the black-gold kintsugi bowls your mother gave us. That our friends are dying, that the gods are coming, many-bodied and million-eyed, that the fucking door won’t open, although we’ve made it keys of our bodies, keys of bone and breath and broken promises. All of this doesn’t matter.

What matters is the night when I first met you and how cold the air was, and how the ice needled my breath, and how you stood there with your hangdog smile, your hair rough-tangled, and the light in your eyes, sacrosanct in its shyness, was better than anything the heavens could stitch from the suns. What matters is that I asked you to run away with me and you said yes, and that we kept running even after our Orders came hunting for us, seven to a coven, like we meant something, like we were bigger than two people making vows of the salt-silver rain."

Thats a perfect example of pretentious, hack writing, thanks for sharing.

Considering what we have seen from POE 1&2, Nu-Torment etc its hardly surprising.

If they keep hiring pulp fantasy trilogy tier writers we will keep getting this purple prose rubbish.

Overhype Studios Battle Brothers (to use a recent example) has better writing than Obsidian which is frankly embarrassing.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Besides the narrative quality, how bad is the lefttard lecturing in Pillows of Eternity: Dumpsterfire? I will definitely play the game, I just want to know if I should plan on buying or pirating (you can sue me if that hurts your feelings).

You should buy it. It makes you a part of a very elitist club of only about 200 000 people from around the world.

Scokel used "we" in a (now deleted?) tweet talking about TOW, so I assumed he was on it, but he later said he's "still on Deadfire".

Probably figured out he has accidentally disclosed that Obsidian is double-billing him on two projects.

 

[Makabb]

I guess it explains why it's a lesbian planet.

 

[Wunderbar]

I guess it explains why it's a lesbian planet.

it's a boy from "Pathologic", not lesbian.

 

[AwesomeButton]

It's not the existence of women, it's the shit they create, show me a good game made by a woman and I will give her all the props she deserves.

'Showing up' and 'being there' is not enough to hand out awards and praise.

Patel actually wrote books in a sci-fi/fantasy universe that seem to have found a following. That's better than 99.9% of game writers can say, most games including RPGs are often not good in terms of writing as any moderately good book.

That's the problem. She wants to write books, not games. Writing games (badly) is just a hobby that pays for all 3 of them.

Writing books isn't for people who "want to write books" though. Her shittily-written games are at least played by people for other reasons. Leave he writing as the only selling point, and her books will be bought by no one but her closest of kin, maybe after a little convincing.

 

[Riddler]

Didn’t we go over this a few weeks ago? Starks wrote pretty much everything in Fort Deadlight and The Gullet, the two best areas in Deadfire by far—genuinely good content. Roguey I know you hates KIS, but you loved the writing in Tyranny—Bleden Mark was your main quest-giver—do you really think he was poorly written? De gustibus non est disputandum, but even if you dislike the character as Fairfax does I would say it’s more a matter of taste. You may think the character is poorly conceived; that’s not the same as poorly executed.

I’m not going to defend every piece of short fiction written by the new generation of writers at Obsidian—some of that stuff is truly awkward and some of it’s really not my cup of tea.

However, here is a Megan Starks short story—about an unraveling marriage with one light fantasy element—and while I don’t think many of us will connect with the subject, I maintain that it’s well written, even if the symbolism becomes somewhat heavy handed. Again, keep in mind, you are not the intended audience.

You are fighting a fight you just can't win. This same drooling mass of people will in 5 years be salivating after the person who wrote Bleden Mark or Fort Deadlight when she has moved on to Blizzard or some other bigger company.

I personally couldn't care less what kind of shitty literature Obsidian's writers write on their freetime. What matters is their skill in writing computer games. Part of what goes into the game is always up to the Project Director and the Lead Writer on the project. Making video games is not something you can do on your own, even if you are a writer. You are still working with a team of people to set the tone right.

Let's be real, while people might be going overboard with their criticism, I doubt they would suck Starks dick if she worked at Blizzard. She, and the other writers have produced a lot more bad writing than good.

While people harp on about women being bad in particular that is not really the case here, most modern (NA) video game writers are really bottom of the barrel. Writing in American movies, TV series and games have taken a steep nose dive in past decade and that's hardly limited to women.

As for why people only are complaining about women at obsidian in this thread, who else are they supposed to complain about? The power puff girls are the only people, besides Leonard, that have been announced as narrative designers except for Chris L'Etoile, who had to leave the project due to family issues. It seems to me that the issue primarily is finding any decent young writers, not whether they are male or female.

If there was some bad millennial male writer attached, with as cringe-worthy baggage, he would be trashed in this thread as well.

People keep bringing up fort deadlight as a supposed writing merit when the writing is very unspectacular. It's the quest design that was remarkable, which was done by Jorge Salgado, not the writing.

Finally, excusing their side projects as all not being intended for the gaming demographic is not really doing them any favours, despite all gaming media's efforts, the RPG consuming demographic is still well above 85% male. Why are they hiring writers whose all merits are related to catering to a very different demographic? Using writing styles widely derided outside of female genre fiction/erotica? Would we want Erika Leonard to be hired as a writer at obsidian just because she sold a ton of books to horny women? I would hope not.

 

[Riddler]

"I wanted to tell you, in case opportunity absents itself forever, that it doesn’t matter. That your magic is algorithmic, that mine is an abstraction of reality. That yours demands cartographic soliloquies, every verse a phrase and a phase of mathematics and momentum, every word you speak a part of the map, and you build the rules as you recite them. That mine is raw sensation, synesthesic, sinewy as sex, worthless with context, worth everything on the ledge at the end of time.

Hold.

We have to hold the line.

That I can speak through my spells and you can’t. That you have the world tessellated in amber, while nothing of my magic will mark this earth, only a faint lambency, as though of candlelight staining the black-gold kintsugi bowls your mother gave us. That our friends are dying, that the gods are coming, many-bodied and million-eyed, that the fucking door won’t open, although we’ve made it keys of our bodies, keys of bone and breath and broken promises. All of this doesn’t matter.

What matters is the night when I first met you and how cold the air was, and how the ice needled my breath, and how you stood there with your hangdog smile, your hair rough-tangled, and the light in your eyes, sacrosanct in its shyness, was better than anything the heavens could stitch from the suns. What matters is that I asked you to run away with me and you said yes, and that we kept running even after our Orders came hunting for us, seven to a coven, like we meant something, like we were bigger than two people making vows of the salt-silver rain."

Thats a perfect example of pretentious, hack writing, thanks for sharing.

Considering what we have seen from POE 1&2, Nu-Torment etc its hardly surprising.

If they keep hiring pulp fantasy trilogy tier writers we will keep getting this purple prose rubbish.

Overhype Studios Battle Brothers (to use a recent example) has better writing than Obsidian which is frankly embarrassing.

What is the common denominator here? The good writers aren't american (specifically Californian).

 

[Makabb]

100 pages and a year from release !

 

[Quillon]

100 pages and a year from release !

Its not on PoE thread levels around its announcements.

PoE is Codex' jam, everybody loves posting about it.

 

[Jarpie]

To be fair to the Patel & co, their prose doesn't necessarily indicate the quality of their writing on The Outer Worlds as they will be limited on it being 3D/first person, so the writing will mostly be dialogue. I still don't really trust them given how Eternity 1 and 2 turned out, but we will see.

 

[fantadomat]

All fucking Bethesda fans must fucking hang.

As if there are any left.

 

[fantadomat]

100 pages and a year from release !

Its not on PoE thread levels around its announcements.

PoE is Codex' jam, everybody loves posting about it.

Yeah,the codex is like a victim of domestic violence.
The next time it will be like before,it will be a good game,obsidian will change and become what it was. This time it will be different for sure.

 

[Makabb]

100 pages and a year from release !

Its not on PoE thread levels around its announcements.

PoE is Codex' jam, everybody loves posting about it.

PoE was Codex jam, untill everybody played it and it turned out to be shit.

 

[Makabb]

They need 3 female writers and the writing will still not be on the standard that MCA by himself would write.

 

[ArchAngel]

Ah I see we've arrived at the inevitable "bitch about millennial female writers" part of this game's lifecycle. Might as well get it over with.

But look, this isn't a thing that's going to go away. In fact it's going to get worse. And it's not really about California. Look at the demographics. Which of the two sexes reads more books today? Which one earns more college degrees, especially in literature and the humanities?

We're not going to return to the era where most of an Obsidian RPG's writers were overeducated dudes who were born in the 1970s and played Planescape: Torment in college. That generation has moved on. You should actually expect majority-female or even all-female RPG writing teams to be the norm in the future.

I guess it is a good idea that I already switched my gaming habits to mostly playing Diablo like games and only fitting one or two real RPG during one year if there are such to play (like Pathfinder).

 

[aweigh]

"I wanted to tell you, in case opportunity absents itself forever, that it doesn’t matter. That your magic is algorithmic, that mine is an abstraction of reality. That yours demands cartographic soliloquies, every verse a phrase and a phase of mathematics and momentum, every word you speak a part of the map, and you build the rules as you recite them. That mine is raw sensation, synesthesic, sinewy as sex, worthless with context, worth everything on the ledge at the end of time.
.

THIS IS FUCKING TERRIBLE.

 

[Haba]

So how do you bad hombres feel about it? Is it good, or bad, or simply not aimed at you?

That I can speak through my spells and you can’t. That you have the world tessellated in amber, while nothing of my magic will mark this earth, only a faint lambency, as though of candlelight staining the black-gold kintsugi bowls your mother gave us. That our friends are dying, that the gods are coming, many-bodied and million-eyed, that the fucking door won’t open, although we’ve made it keys of our bodies, keys of bone and breath and broken promises. All of this doesn’t matter.

What matters is the night when I first met you and how cold the air was, and how the ice needled my breath, and how you stood there with your hangdog smile, your hair rough-tangled, and the light in your eyes, sacrosanct in its shyness, was better than anything the heavens could stitch from the suns. What matters is that I asked you to run away with me and you said yes, and that we kept running even after our Orders came hunting for us, seven to a coven, like we meant something, like we were bigger than two people making vows of the salt-silver rain.

This is some of the most disgusting drivel I've read in a very long time. My high-school literature teacher (who was a published author himself already then) would tear the writer a new asshole and refuse to accept the work before it was HEAVILY edited.

If you're unable to see the problems in that writing then you require immediate assistance. Consult a neurologist as soon as possible.

 

[aweigh]

sacrosanct in its shyness lmao

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

It’s a really short story and I recommend finishing it before passing judgment. The whole monologue is a spell, hence the unusual style for Khaw who typically writes funny stories about a cannibal chef.

Edit: I will stop bashing my head against this wall lest I provoke more attempts at close reading.

Edit 2: just to be clear, Khaw is not working on The Outer Worlds. I wanted to see how people would react to this story’s impressionistic style.