Writing in video games

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/09/23/agdc-interview-with-game-writer-susan-oconnor/

Best written games? Two days into Bioshock, it's amongst the best written thing I've ever played.

star control 2 had pretty good writing IIRC. a story i was genuinely drawn into.

call of duty 4, too, was really well written. dialogue was pretty sharp, and never overdone, and the plotting was pretty smart too.

Call of Duty 4 was better written than most Tom Clancy (and/or Clancy-derivative) movies. Still, though, I don't think any game's story or dialogue have been as far from embarrassing as Bioshock's. Well, until maybe the very last cut-scene.

http://revolutionmedia.ign.com/revolution/image/article/702/702259/top-10-tuesday-worst-in-game-quotes-20060418064007443.jpg

although i don't know which has worse writing, metal gear 1 or metal gear solid

God of War I and II are both passable if generally crazy juvenile.
Then there's the question of what constitutes "writing"... are Katamari and Shadow of the Colossus "well written"?

dialogue was pretty sharp

re COD4, I haven't played it all yet but so far it's just been the standard cut and paste samples from Aliens and Predator

portal?

Portal was so perfectly realized that it's hard to imagine anybody actually writing it.

re COD4, I haven't played it all yet but so far it's just been the standard cut and paste samples from Aliens and Predator

― Ste, Tuesday, September 23, 2008 6:40 PM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ya it's basically dude talk but it didn't annoy me as much, maybe because it seems so matter-of-fact

PSYCHONAUTS

I think Madden 2009 is a contender. Given the amount of flexibility required, it's pretty amazing. Collinsworth does an amazing job of breaking down plays in-game, better than any sports game I've played.

I've not played it, but I have heard good things about the writing in Planescape: Torment. Thing is, even the best game writing is still pretty... bad?

http://www.gameaxis.com/img/blog/178/Image/leisure_suit_larry_magna_lsl.jpg

was the writing in text adventures the high point, or was it just as bad? i can't remember.

I'm not sure either... in text advantures is was all you really had apart from shitty graphics. Somehow it mattered more, in a way?

fire emblem series

fallout 1 + 2, duh

hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, obv

cosine on Psychonauts and Portal; made me think of all the great Lucasarts games: Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max, Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Monkey Island I / II/ sorta III, Loom....

I still haven't played fallout! I'll be buying 3 as soon as it hits though. Do 1 and 2 hold up enough that they're worth playing? Cuz they're like ten bucks total from http://www.gog.com/

Portal was so perfectly realized that it's hard to imagine anybody actually writing it.

Well said, the thought of this being even slightly fictional and not some real bizarre 'test' that I went through isn't something I want to think about.

http://www.sirlin.net/images/ydkj03small.GIF

Deus Ex and KOTOR were pretty well written iirc.

Mass Effect was pretty OK? Sex shenanigans notwithstanding?

didn't jeff already start a thread about getting Fallout 1 from GOG?

Curt1s OTM

Planescape: Torment, the BG games (particularly II) and KOTOR were all well-written. FF VII was reasonably well-written up through the halfway point, after which it turned into a gigantic bag of sick.

oh oh! the first couple wing commander games had pretty good writing (or at least i thought they did when i was in middle school).

http://www.abandonware-paradise.fr/Gifs/Abandonware/Wing_commander2_02.png
http://www.wcnews.com/articles/dcon2005/dc2005dayone31.jpg

Cosign on Grim Fandango, Fallout games. Definitely a bunch of great Interactive Fiction stuff - older stuff like A Mind Forever Voyaging, Eric the Unready, Planetfall, Leather Goddesses of Phobos, and then newer stuff; all of Adam Cadre's stuff (I-0, Photopia, Varicella), Emily Short's Galatea, Slouching Towards Bedlam.

Definitely agree that Bioshock writing is amazing.

http://www2.worldvillage.com/wv/gamezone/images/scrnshot/jack5.jpg

I miss this game

It's online I think!
http://www.youdontknowjack.com/
I also heard that they were coming to xbox, but who knows. Seems too easy. I really did love IDKJ in college; it was awesome to play with a group and drink.

Nintendo's writing has plummeted. SMGalaxy and Twilight Princess are packed with American colloquialisms which (in Zelda, at least) go against what the game is trying to achieve. That alone made Twilight Pricess unplayable, but really it's crap without the dialogue too.

No, YOU are wrong.

xp btw I'm referring to the 'English' (i.e. American) translations of those games.

No shit?

leave me alone, I am ill and therefore mentally challenged ffs

I remember really liking the writing for Super Mario RPG... and to a lesser extent, Paper Mario. Haven't tried the wii one yet though and you really can't argue that the story/writing for Mario Galaxy is crappy. Play is hella fun though.

Nintendo also needs to allow faster skipping of dialogue, e.g. that bloody lengthy spiel you have to sit through every time you feed starbits to that transforming pink thing.

yep the paper mario games had great writing. ditto superstar saga/partners in time

Yeah, those Mario RPG games clearly had translators that got what the spirit should be, at times really hilarious stuff. Even though they can be rife with anime cliche, FF VI and Chrono Trigger also deserve acclaim for the strength of their epic stories.

Yet another agreement with Planescape: Torment, the Fallouts, all the Lucasarts adventure games, and Star Control II having great writing. I also really liked what they did what the Quest for Glory series.

I actually kind of love the Metal Gear Solid games, because it seems to take itself incredibly seriously and not seriously at the same time.

I was addicted for a while when YDKJ came back online, pretty fun. Would be a perfect console downloadable title for parties.

Animal Crossing to thread!

http://www.gamershell.com/static/screenshots/753/18955_full.jpg

Thing is, even the best game writing is still pretty... bad?

― THERE IS NO VULCAN DEATH GRIP (Will M.), Tuesday, September 23, 2008 3:37 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

god, so otm

anyway, i nominate Rose & Camellia: http://nigoro.jp/game/rosecamellia/rosecamellia.php

Do not discount the resolve of the lowborn woman!

Nothing mentioned on this thread so far rivals CUSTER'S LAST STAND

is that the game where the object is to rape an indian chick

Fahrenheit (aka Indigo Prophecy) had some pretty awesome writing. Well, at least as good as a CSI episode.

That's a good interview linked up there. I thought this was funny:

But, the player who is driving the whole game action is, of course, your antagonist. And he's the one who's the most fully filled out and the most fleshed out and the most interesting. In a movie, you'd never do that, right? You'd never have this like, "Hello, I'm the hero. Must kill all people." Right?

I should mention that at the 4/5 mark, the writing in Fahrenheit aka Indigo Prophecy suddenly hopped down off its stool and began blowing goats.

It's a common problem. Somehow, the writing in almost all games, even the somewhat better ones (Portal and Lucasarts aside), flips on its back and starts wiggling inanely once the final big boss comes on the season. I guess it's cause the suspension of disbelief gets shelfed; remember with God o' War II when fighting Zeus and losing means seeing the stupid cutscene where he kills you over and over again? It stops being a storyline and starts being a game of craps where you have to roll just right or else the story goes kabloom.

best writing in a JRPG: vagrant story
best writing in a FPS: deus ex holds up REALLY well all around - you'd think it'd be pretty dated by now, but nope. too talky tho - the concept of 'less is more' is one that all the conciously 'smarter' videogames have trouble embracing. which leads me to:

metroid prime. there isn't a line of dialogue in the whole game, nor is there much in the way of cut scenes. there's still a story that you can elect to follow tho, by reading in-game data files and following clues, but it has no impact on how you play the game. this is easier to pull off with a game like metroid, where it's based on that feeling of isolation & discovery and there aren't supposed to be any other characters to interact with. but it's still a model that other game designers need to look at, one where the narrative is embedded into the game instead of basically being a book or a movie (or both, like in MGS) plopped on top of an unrelated game.

i tried replaying deus ex last year and i could barely make it past the intro, jeez

"Aquinas spoke of the mythical city on a hill - soon that city will be a reality and we will be crowned its kings - no - GODS"

^ so dumm

I never actually played any of the Marathon games (early FPS games which put Bungie on the map) but I remember obsessing over their storylines, which involved three spaceship AIs going SKYNET on the player and leaving clever messages and musings for the players. Reading Neuromancer at about the same time may have had something to do with it.

You can find complete transcripts of all three games here: http://marathon.bungie.org/story/

wow @ the Aquinas thing but on the other hand as a player of vg's since the early 80s I get kinda pumped up by ridiculous philosophical mumbo jumbo in games.

I played the Overlord 2 demo for the 360 yesterday, and thought the writing was surprisingly good. Maybe in the vein of something like Psychonauts?

I think maybe a part of the problem is that video games do a lot of things which are like writing but aren't

I'm not sure where exactly to draw the line there

Silent Hill 2 does a lot of the like-writing stuff really well but most of the stuff you can point to and say 'yes, that is writing, that's definitely a piece of writing' — a lot of that stuff is awful

actually maybe I just think of stuff as being 'like writing' because I'm hopelessly biased towards written rather than filmic or theatrical ideas of text, you know, whatever

I think maybe what I mean might be something like 'style'

yes, when I perceive the writing as having pretensions toward "real literature" then I tend to groan, but usually when I see this it's in an RPG that frankly is probably aimed at teens, and so I brush it off. I think it would be different if I were playing a game "aimed" at adults like (maybe) Deus Ex...maybe aimed at adults is not right, maybe it's more like games that are self-consciously mature. Whereas when the writing is ridiculous yet pretentious in like a Mario game (e.g. Super Paper Mario) then it's what I expect at this point and it makes me happy and sappy.

It's a good question as to how writing in games compares/ought to compare with writing in film.

well the comparison with silent hill 2 would be something like day of the dead which is some respects not very good but contains potential to alienate, disturb, bum me out v significantly not despite but because of that

the 'performances' are v key in creating the er 'text' there though

the little cg muppets in persona 4 are looking to me now like actors trained to repeat a classical vocabulary of gestures

i don't really know what i'm getting at

the writing for the telltale sam and max is basically the only reason to go near the game in the first place.

It peaked in the 90s; the writing has become dumber since then.

i remember an old speccy game, where you flew ww2 bombing missions at night. The magazine ads came in two parts, with a picture of a boat or a plane against the moon. Both ads had a short enigmatic description that depicted the movement of the vehicles.

Me and my mate loved them and I recall one of us saying something like "that's such a cool description, they must have got someone who writes books or something to come up with that!"