18 réponses à ce sujet

[sympathy4saren]

And was money the reason for him going there? Because Mass Effect is better than Star Wars. Period.

Modifié par sympathy4saren, 06 avril 2011 - 10:49 .

[Julie the bogan]

as far as I know, Drew still works for bioware but is making a joint project with lucas arts

[AdmiralCheez]

The groundwork for the trilogy was laid out before the first game even launched, I believe, but we don't know how much they have deviated from the original plan. It is unclear whether Drew left the Mass Effect team by choice alone or due to being unable to balance the workload between ME and The Old Republic. He could also have been ousted for some reason, but I doubt it.

I never considered Drew's writing to be too spectacular, anyway. He doesn't have Mac's flair for character writing. However, he knew how to piece together a large-scale and fairly coherent plot, something Mac needs to work on.  Badly.

Modifié par AdmiralCheez, 06 avril 2011 - 11:02 .

[XFemShepX]

AdmiralCheez wrote...

The groundwork for the trilogy was laid out before the first game even launched, I believe, but we don't know how much they have deviated from the original plan. It is unclear whether Drew left the Mass Effect team by choice alone or due to being unable to balance the workload between ME and The Old Republic. He could also have been ousted for some reason, but I doubt it.

I never considered Drew's writing to be too spectacular, anyway. He doesn't have Mac's flair for character writing. However, he knew how to piece together a large-scale and fairly coherent plot, something Mac needs to work on.  Badly.

I disagree on one point.  I think Drew's writing IS spectacular, and made the series better as a whole when he was Lead Writer, because like you said, he has a knack for drawing together a large scale, coherent plot...unlike Mac, who seems to kind of, well...butcher some things (which many, many people have given opinions on).

That's not to say Mac is a bad writer.  I just think his strength really lies in character development.

Then again, none of us really know where which writer ends and the other begins; we have snapshots of who wrote what character, or side mission, but as to where the plot's going...?  Who knows what has been predetermined.  I just know that I liked ME1 better than anything I've seen in the ME world since.  <_<

[JedTed]

AdmiralCheez wrote...

It is unclear whether Drew left the Mass Effect team by choice alone or due to being unable to balance the workload between ME and The Old Republic. He could also have been ousted for some reason, but I doubt it.

I'm pretty sure they transfered him to the sw:tor team because of his involvment in the original kotor.

[Rurik_Niall]

Not to mention his Darth Bane trilogy, they're my absolute favourites in the expanded universe, not to mention the Old Republic era.

[didymos1120]

AdmiralCheez wrote...

The groundwork for the trilogy was laid out before the first game even launched, I believe, but we don't know how much they have deviated from the original plan.

From what I've gathered from interviews, there was never any sort detailed plan worked out in advance.  Casey Hudson just had the very basic story and concepts worked out (a human soldier fights evil machines trying to kill everyone for three games, humans are galactic noobs, evoke the feel of 80s and early-90s SF films whenever possible, etc.) and knew where basically he wanted Shep and the galaxy to finally end up.  Everything else was ill-defined at best. The plot of each game isn't even worked out until development actually starts.  Or rather, when they do work out each game's main story, that pretty much defines the "start of development". 

It is unclear whether Drew left the Mass Effect team by choice alone or due to being unable to balance the workload between ME and The Old Republic. He could also have been ousted for some reason, but I doubt it.

Well, it looks very much like a pre-planned thing, decided on before ME2 went into full-production mode (regardless of whether he requested the new assignment or not.  There's basically zero info on that, so guessing is a waste of time).  He was sole lead on ME1, then for quite awhile into ME2's development, during the period when they would have been working out the main story and breaking down the various missions and handing them out to specific writers, he was the co-lead with Mac Walters.  I.e., it was essentially a way to show Mac the lead ropes before he became the sole lead writer. 

After Mac was handling all the Lead duties by himself (which seem to be, based on interviews with both of them, largely about herding all the other writers and making sure they don't go totally off the main-plot rails with their assigned sections of the game and talking with the Lead Designer and Casey Hudson a lot, while also doubling as a regular writer, with assigned sections like everyone else), Drew was still writing for ME2 while also writing for SWTOR.  It was only when he'd finished with his assigned portions of ME2 that he finally started working full-time on SWTOR.  Well, except for when he wrote that third ME novel, which was also sometime post-ME2.

[AdmiralCheez]

Ah. Thanks for the info, didymos. I must know, where do you learn these wonderful things?

[JakePT]

I don't get the Drew loving and Mac hating. Near as I can tell they're both great writers, yet neither of them are innocent of a few continuity and canon issues here and there. Hell, Drew is responsible by far the biggest rejection of player choice in the series, the sort of things fans seem to hate. Anyone who's read Redemption will know what I'm talking about.

[didymos1120]

AdmiralCheez wrote...

Ah. Thanks for the info, didymos. I must know, where do you learn these wonderful things?

Interviews with both of those guys are the main sources.  Here's one where Mac Walters talks about the amount of planning, for instance:

Well speaking of that, you know the second game and third game are being written together, whereas the first game was sort of written off by itself. Do you ...

Ah, not quite. That's not really true with the way we handle that sort of thing. Like, I mean we had, essentially, with the first one we said, "Here's the art for the three games." Now obviously what's in Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 wasn't really fleshed out. We said, "We know basically where we want to go with it." But we wrote Mass Effect 1 with that in mind. You know, we said, "Here's where we want it to go." If you ask Casey Hudson, the producer, he knew where he wanted Mass Effect 3 to eventually end up. Obviously we had [Mass Effect 1] behind us. We still don't know where [Mass Effect 3's] going to go, and maybe it's shifting and changing a little bit based on where you want to be flexible too. But we still wrote it within that framework.

and a bit later in that same one he also talks about how the main stories are worked out:

Well what is the actual process when you set about writing a game like this. Do you just sit down in your room at a typewriter and bang out the overall story for Mass Effect? You have a lot of planning meetings? How does it work?

So, generally what happens is that early in the projects -- so early Mass Effect 1 or early Mass Effect 2 -- myself, Lead Designer, Preston Watamaniuk and then Casey Hudson, the producer, we'll sit down and we'll work on the big picture stuff. What's the art? Where do we want Shepard to start? Where do we want him to go? What are the obstacles that he's going to face? And we'll bash that around for a bit and then I'll take that back to the writing team and get feedback, and they get to contribute to it as well. But once that gets hammered down, then we start looking at "What are the different levels? What are the smaller areas?" And a lot of times that's when each individual writer starts. You've got control over that level, make it work. And then overall I'm just making sure that it all fits a theme.

and this one where Drew Karypyshyn says much the same thing:

IGN: How much of the writing comes from one person, and how much is a collaborative effort?

Drew Karpyshyn: At BioWare the process is a combination of collaborative feedback and individual effort. The writers (and other key people, such as the Project Director and the Lead Designer) constantly discuss the overall story line. But each individual writer is assigned sections of the game to write. For Mass Effect, each planet has one primary writer who is responsible for the majority of writing on that world. However, all the writers review each other's work to offer suggestions and criticism, and as Lead Writer I also have to make sure there is a consistency of style across all the various levels. So on the one hand it's very individual - you write what you think works for your own areas - but on the other hand it's a very collaborative process, as everything you do has to fit in with the rest of the team and the larger overall story.

There's an old post-ME1 one with Drew Karypshyn where he talks about his "rank", which should dispel any illusions about the Lead Writer being the one guy/gal with control over the story:

GS: Where exactly are you on the BioWare hierarchy?
 
DK:  As the Lead Writer on the project I’m pretty high up; I get a lot of input into creative decisions, and I’m directly responsible for the other 4-5 members of the writing team. But I still answer to the Lead Designer, the Project Director, the Design Director… I have plenty of bosses to make sure I don’t step out of line. Of course, the higher up you get in a company the more of your time seems to be spent in meetings. I already have too many meetings, so I’m pretty content to stay at the level I’m at.

Pacifien also put together a nice reference covering what we know about who did what on both games:

http://social.biowar...4217/blog/12839

There's a lot of dev posts linked there where you get an idea of just how collaborative the process for everything on the games is.

Here's another interview with Mac Walters where he gets into some of the same topics above (how much was planned, the process, etc.):

http://www.crispygam...s-effect-2.aspx

As far as Drew still working on ME2 after Mac took over, his website, via this thread from the old forums:

http://meforums.biow...11188&forum=144

There's also a quote somehwere from, I think, Mac Walters about how Drew wrote Liara in ME2, but I can't remember where that was right now.

Anyway, put all those pieces together, and you can draw some reasonably solid inferences about what happened with the Lead Writer changeover, who got and keeps the ball rolling on the games (Casey Hudson), etc.

Modifié par didymos1120, 07 avril 2011 - 05:17 .

[Chala]

So for what I read, if Drew takes care of the long term story of the trilogy (and the background/base story of the universe) and Mac is in charge of the characters and most inmediate story of the games.
The game could have a perfect story... or at least a strong and coherent one.
Or at least this is my idea

Ps: sorry if I wrote something wrong, I speak spanish

[LPPrince]

El_Chala_Legalizado wrote...

So for what I read, if Drew takes care of the long term story of the trilogy (and the background/base story of the universe) and Mac is in charge of the characters and most inmediate story of the games.
The game could have a perfect story... or at least a strong and coherent one.
Or at least this is my idea

Ps: sorry if I wrote something wrong, I speak spanish

You generally have the right idea.

Drew working on main story and Mac working on characters would be the ideal situation.

Unfortunately, we don't have the ideal situation.

[didymos1120]

El_Chala_Legalizado wrote...

So for what I read, if Drew takes care of the long term story of the trilogy (and the background/base story of the universe) and Mac is in charge of the characters and most inmediate story of the games.

That's not how they do things though.  There isn't a " Lead Plot Person" and a "Lead Character Person".  The main story of the game comes first, and it's the work of multiple people. The Lead Writer is only one of those people, and they're not the boss of the process.  Then the game is broken down into different sections and handed off to individual writers, or teams of writers. 

And then you have cases where someone may come up with, say, the plot for one mission, write it all themselves, and then someone else ends up taking that part of the game over and re-writing the entire thing.  And different people will all write the same exact character in different parts of the game (for instance, pretty much everyone writes Shepard at one point or another). And sometimes that will happen even within the same part of the game (Kirrahe on Virmire in ME1 had at least two people writing his dialogue).  The characters themselves are also created by multiple people, and the person who created it may not be who ends up doing most of that characters writing.  So on, so forth.

Modifié par didymos1120, 07 avril 2011 - 05:48 .

[didymos1120]

LPPrince wrote...
Drew working on main story and Mac working on characters would be the ideal situation.

Unfortunately, we don't have the ideal situation.

You're predicating this on the notion that Drew didn't have any significant involvement in the main story of ME2 and that he was the main individual responsible for writing the main story of ME1.  Neither of those are true.  That's not how they do things. See the quotes above. 

ETA:  Oh, and see this quote from Drew too, regarding Ascension (bolding mine):

But that doesn’t mean the books have no connection to the games. Anyone who reads Revelation can see how it set the stage for the first Mass Effect game. Ascension does the same thing for the second Mass Effect game. It’s actually a bit frustrating when I see people complain that the second book doesn’t tie in with the game story line, because it DOES! I know it does, because I’m writing them both.

So, yeah, I think that's pretty clear: Drew, according to Drew himself, was involved in writing the main story of ME2.

Modifié par didymos1120, 07 avril 2011 - 05:54 .

[LPPrince]

I'm not saying he didn't have a hand in writing ME2's main plot. Hell, he's in the credits.

I'm making my judgement based on where I feel Drew and Mac are strongest.

[CroGamer002]

Drew didn't left Bioware.

He is just working on project that is co-operating with Lucas Arts.
And Bioware still does most of the job.

[rooky91]

Hes not left, just working on Old Republic

[E71]

AdmiralCheez wrote...
I never considered Drew's writing to be too spectacular, anyway...

Sorry for bringing back an old thread but I was a little peeved at this and couldn't stay silent. Both are great writers, however Mass Effect pretty much exists because of him.

Besides, I wish I knew who wrote Sovereign's dialog because if it was Drew I'm going to be extra bummed out that we're not going to have anything like that again... Harbinger's childish taunts just don't cut it...