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Notes -
Assume that you are Bioware executive - which will worry you more - that I have Dragon Age Veilguard pirated for 72 hours or that I haven't bother actually running it after I downloaded it?
Context: I adored bioware up until the launch of Mass Effect 2 (I disliked the party and character driven aspect compared to the knowledge quest of the first part), though that ME3 was too full of fanservice and had too shitty ending and haven't been seriously invested in them.
Also it is not about the wokeness, just that woke in the last 2-3 years pattern matches way too accurate to cringe and mediocrity.
As far as woke and cringe goes, it’s as woke and cringe as BG3 (which is to say very), but if you found that passable it’s not really worse.
Modern Anglo video game writers (whether the Brits, Americans and Irish who write for Larian or the Canadians and Americans who write for BioWare) are essentially incapable of nuance or subtlety or of any good writing.
People make fun of modern literary fiction and prestige writing in general, often for good reason, but literally anyone who has written even a moderately well-reviewed (non-musical) play or lit fic novel or non-superhero movie in the last 10 years could deliver a better script than any modern AAA video game.
Game writers can’t write. That’s because studios hire DnD nerds who have no interest or knowledge of actual literature, have either never read the greats or dismiss them out of hand, and basically don’t understand what makes storytelling good or powerful in any way.
As far as the writing in Veilguard goes, it’s not worse than countless other recent AAA RPGs and games in general (which again, is not to say it’s “good”), but has provoked a big reaction online because Bioware has been ‘woke’ for 15 years now, had been the subject of long lasting hardcore RPG fan hatred dating back to Dragon Age Origins being calls ‘dumbed down’ and ‘consolized’ by Codex grognards back in 2008, the Mass Effect 3 ending controversy, and other things long predating Gamergate.
Modern American writers of this kind of fiction appear unable to conceive of a world that does not have the same social dynamics as 21st century urban California.
I never realized how massive the cultural gap between me and most of 'nerd culture' was until I saw how widely praised BG3's writing was among people who seemed trustworthy and tried the game for myself. There was nothing truly terrible, but if that's the peak of AAA wRPG writing then even the upper echelons of Chinese webnovels or Japanese RPGmaker hentai games are probably a closer point of comparison than modern litfic. (I'm not really joking, play Demons Roots)
I realise I'm pretty late on this, and apologies, but I'm curious how you'd compare it to older WRPGs, from the 90s or early 2000s?
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I wouldn't call Demons Roots a hentai game, it's more of a regular RPGM game with two very unappealing small hentai games awkwardly bolted onto it to entice horny gamers to check it out.
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