The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition - Obsidian's first-person sci-fi RPG set in a corporate space colony

[cvv]

The other part not so much. Helen Hindpere wrote a lot of Disco Elysium and her work is top.

I hope no "great female writers exist too" disclaimers are necessary here. Because of course they do. We have one on one of our banknotes.

 

[Haplo]

I'm not looking for high art here, just passable writing

Gimme quality on the level of Betrayal at Krondor, Torment, Dragonfall, Witcher 3 or Kingdom Come and I'm a happy clam. I don't need Umberto Eco either, just solid, well-executed craft.

I'd argue that Planescape: Torment goes far beyond well executed craft. Unless you meant Numa-Numa.

 

[Prime Junta]

Another strange observation - female coders tend to be more proficient with SQL, when guys are better with java and frontend.

IME (and where I'm from) this is true for the older generation of women coders -- my age and above. There's not much difference between men and women among the twentysomethings. Same applies for the other other stuff (patterns, coding styles, rigorous architectural designs, etc). It used to be like that ten, fifteen years ago but it's much less so now.

Another observation: some Chinese women are really good at programming: they've got the full deck, patterns, architecture, rigorous design, attention to detail, conformance to standard. Chinese men not so much, they tend to be supremely arrogant without having the understanding to back it up.

Yet another observation: I haven't yet worked with any really top-drawer Russian woman coder, whereas I've worked with two Russian women QAs, both of whom were top. Whereas I have worked with Russian men who were cutting-edge, amazingly good programmers.

My working hypothesis is that education and engineering cultures in different countries produce these different outcomes.

 

[Atchodas]

A Name of the Rose game would be extremely cool. All 53 people who'd buy and play it would enjoy it tremendously.

INSPIRED

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

This is an issue for every single character and faction in the game and it makes the game’s narrative and writing thoroughly unenjoyable. It is required for practically any sort of writing: jokes, satire, social critique, drama etc. and it is missing.

This.

If you're writing a RPG, even if it's a comedic one, you need to make a world and then write characters that inhabit that world. You can't just drop in a bunch of vapid twentysomething middle-class Californians in brownface and expect it to work. They were so desperate to represent everyone they ended up representing no-one other than themselves.

Take the characters of FO and FO2. Are they deep? NOPE. Yet those game work. Why? Because they didn't think that motherfucking cRPGs were supposed to be novels, that's why. The moment these narrative designers or game writers became a thing, it was all over. NPCs and companions aren't supposed to sophisticated characters in order to work. If they happen to be, that's a bonus, but the idea that developers should try to achieve that is part of the problem already. It's this mentality that will attract second rate racks to fulfill their creative ambitions at the expense of their audience and the medium.

 

[Prime Junta]

A Name of the Rose game would be extremely cool. All 53 people who'd buy and play it would enjoy it tremendously.

Sign me up.

 

[Haplo]

This is an issue for every single character and faction in the game and it makes the game’s narrative and writing thoroughly unenjoyable. It is required for practically any sort of writing: jokes, satire, social critique, drama etc. and it is missing.

This.

If you're writing a RPG, even if it's a comedic one, you need to make a world and then write characters that inhabit that world. You can't just drop in a bunch of vapid twentysomething middle-class Californians in brownface and expect it to work. They were so desperate to represent everyone they ended up representing no-one other than themselves.

Take the characters of FO and FO2. Are they deep? NOPE. Yet the game works. Why? Because they didn't think that motherfucking cRPGs were supposed to be novels, that's why. The moment these narrative designers or game writers became a thing, it was all over. NPCs and companions aren't supposed to sophisticated characters in order to work. If they happen to be, that's a bonus, but the idea that developers should try to achieve that is part of the problem already. It's this mentality that will attract second rate racks to fulfill their creative ambitions at the expense of their audience and the medium.

They don't need to be deep... I guess that's right. But they should be cohesive. Have some motivations. Making paper cutouts is not sufficient either.

 

[Theldaran]

A Name of the Rose game would be extremely cool. All 53 people who'd buy and play it would enjoy it tremendously.

Sign me up.

There was a home Spanish game for The Name of the Rose in the 8-bit era. Cool game.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

They don't need to be deep... I guess that's right. But they should be cohesive. Have some motivations. Making paper cutouts is not sufficient either.

Nigger... pleeeease! Most quests in FO2 are banal fedexquests. Kill those evil plants for me, fix the well, find my dog, etc. Most of them are not that complex.

 

[cvv]

I'd argue that Planescape: Torment goes far beyond well executed craft. Unless you meant Numa-Numa.

Well some here would claim TOW writing is well executed craft. That's not what I mean. I have much higher standards.
Plus if you really wanna further highlight one of those highlights it'd be Witcher 3, not Torment.

 

[Infinitron]

BTW, since they're not up on Mobygames yet, here's the crucial snippet from the credits:

My sense is that the developers who perform tasks associated with "area design" in the past would have also done the writing for those areas. Professional game development have evolved towards separating and specializing those roles.

 

[Prime Junta]

They don't need to be deep... I guess that's right. But they should be cohesive. Have some motivations. Making paper cutouts is not sufficient either.

Also "deep" doesn't mean "long-winded." You can have a fully-realised character sketched out in a few lines of dialogue and some visuals. In fact you need to actively resist the "let me tell you about my mother" thing RPGs so commonly do. That doesn't mean that the author shouldn't have this shit figured out, it's just actively counterproductive to unload all that on the player.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

My sense is that many of the people who perform tasks associated with "area design" in the past would have also done the writing for those areas. Professional game development have evolved towards separating and specializing those roles.

Narrative design is a staple of modern cRPGs. IT's AIDs and the root of all evil.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

Also "deep" doesn't mean "long-winded." You can have a fully-realised character sketched out in a few lines of dialogue and some visuals. In fact you need to actively resist the "let me tell you about my mother" thing RPGs so commonly do. That doesn't mean that the author shouldn't have this shit figured out, it's just actively counterproductive to unload all that on the player.

How many characters in FO are deep? I don't mean long-winded, but deep. Very few, if any.

 

[vortex]

Oh. I checked it out - wow, so Parvati is Indian with asexual crash on Chinese lady. It is so... inclusive exotic.

Fixed. Inclusive is so last year.

Inb4 Sawyer releases Disco Elysium iike game inspired by The name of the rose and its actually good

Yes. Only The name of the rose with hard core occult /fantasy flavour to spice up the world. Also, improved Deadfire gameplay/combat is a must have.

 

[Theldaran]

So, LGTBQ are people of exotic sexuality?

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

It's pretentious people like Prima Junta that are the root of the problem. They take themselves and cRPGs too seriously, compare them with other mediums using aesthetic criteria that don't make sense, one category mistake after another. Players that think this way will make it okay to have developers that think this way. This discussion is all pretentious misguided nonsense. We shouldn't be even having this conversation in the first place.

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

I don't see Boyarsky under narrative design. What gives? Was he credited separately as lead?

 

[you know what time it is]

Narrative design is a staple of modern cRPGs. IT's AIDs and the root of all evil.

I don't think you understand what's narrative design is supposed to be. To be fair, I don't think Obsidian does either.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

Narrative design is a staple of modern cRPGs. IT's AIDs and the root of all evil.

I don't think you understand what's narrative design is supposed to be. To be fair, I don't think Obsidian does either.

I'm all ears.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

This. You become a writer by living, not by reading. You live a lot, and then, if you had it in you, you will be a writer. But the problem of graphomania has been around forever.

By his own admission, Chris Avellone was a fat meganerd when he wrote Torment.

 

[Infinitron]

I don't see Boyarsky under narrative design. What gives? Was he credited separately as lead?

Yeah:

 

[Van-d-all]

My sense is that the developers who perform tasks associated with "area design" in the past would have also done the writing for those areas. Professional game development have evolved towards separating and specializing those roles.

Isn't that inherently connected with said areas becoming 3d, thus requiring professional graphic artists with actual modelling skills and understanding, instead of writers just dropping general ideas about an isometric area. Verticality and traversability are no longer as banal as they used to be.

 

[just]

i've worked in a company with 90%+ women and it was like playing a rpg. you had different factions and they all tried to persuade you to join their side
you could befriend or made enemies based on who you talked to or do quests for(helped them)
i went true neutral playthrough which in the end was a mistake coz nobody liked me and without strong allies it's hard to survive in that enviroment. also didnt pass a steal check which was automatic game over
point is women are ok but they dont know how to use computers

 

[cvv]

My sense is that the developers who perform tasks associated with "area design" in the past would have also done the writing for those areas. Professional game development have evolved towards separating and specializing those roles.

In the golden age most games didn't even have "writers" listed in the credits, just designers, programmers and artists, with those brackets often overlapping.