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Baldur's Gate 3 thread (no spoilers outside of spoiler tags) - reviews, technical matters, griping etc.

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If Disco Elysium and PS:T didn't impress you sufficiently, you'll be waiting for a long time. Video game writing generally sucks.

Yes it does, and I wish videogame developers would acknowledge that and just trim the text in favor of focusing on the gameplay - but people play wordy games no matter how badly I think they're written, so what do I know.

There have been thirty (30) World of Warcraft novels. None of them will ever be considered literature.

A lot of people don't need writing to be high quality to enjoy it.

Tie-in novels are generally second-rate, with few exceptions (e.g. if the novelist is already established/a name in the field). That's because (going by Star Trek fandom when the first lot of novelisations came flooding out), there's a ton of interference by the studio/rights holders about what characters you can use, what they can and can't do, if you can create OCs at all, how the world can or can't change and so on. You're not allowed contradict established canon (unless or until something is shown in an episode of the TV show or in a movie) and in general there's lines you have to stay within. That's to protect the property, of course; if the fans want another book about Erwin Skullcrusher the superhuman warrior and berserker, you can't turn Erwin into a pacifist (or if you do, it can't stick) and in part because if you have twelve different writers churning out books, to keep the characters the same they have to be bland stereotypes.

Hey, I've read the Brigador novel and four Battle Brothers stories. Somestimes you just want to read more about a setting you already spent much time in.

But for me that's interesting only if the game world was well-done to begin with.

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