» Sat Feb 16, 2013 4:50 pm
Ok, whenever people hammer BGS's writing and worship CDPR's writing and saying "BGS ought to be at the level of CDPR," I just wish people would pause to consider how much more challenging writing for TES is than writing for Witcher. CDPR and the Witcher have it a lot easier than Beth. Yes, their audience is still their protagonist as in most any game. But his name is Geralt of Rivia, his basic morals are the same for every player, there is a set "main cast" that never really changes that much. So they don't have to account for nearly the number of variables BGS does with TES. The story is linear though branching and is the major focus of development. Also, since Geralt is fairly determined, writing a convincing dialogue exchange for him is not as difficult; there are many traits about him that are always constant and therefore you can fall back on those for matching up tone and dialogue choices to a situation. TES, on the other hand, is a game where the audience is the protagonist and the devs know nothing about him. Not his race, six, name, moral values, place of origin, path he will take, etc etc etc. Thus writing a convincing story on this character is extremely challenging. You can't use their name, THEY never speak and thus the storytelling is more difficult to convey. You have to create a number of dialogue choice that can cover a TON of types of characters. It's just a whole other animal. They have to write so that the dialogue choices and responses would make sense for the whole spectrum of character types; CDPR has to focus on a very narrow portion of the spectrum (basically, full rainbow vs just the reds). That is why BGS relies so heavily on plot devices (Morrowind: prophetic dream delcares you the chosen one; Oblivion: dying wish/premonition declares your destiny; Skyrim: divine providence and prophecy). Not saying BGS can't improve, but to make it sound like CDPR is doing the same thing as them but better when it comes to writing is absurd.