320 réponses à ce sujet

[Lotion Soronarr]

Il Divo wrote...

naledgeborn wrote...

Let's all bash on me now. Are you guys seriously defending an excuse for sub-par writing? Sure people will improvise in any given story, but chucking anything resembling a structure out the window and winging it are some ****ed up narrative skills. I can literally give you guys a wall of text on some of the ****ty decisions they made in their attempt to "make it up as they go along" I gravitate to this certain developer for the stories they tell. When they admit that not much thought is going into the series (which I've suspected since ME2) then I have a legitimate reason to call them out on it. Especially since story-telling is the defining trait that this certain developer likes push to the public.

That's great. And it's irrelevant. Go read Alan Moore's explanation for how he didn't know the ending of Watchmen until four chapters in. Go talk to Eidos about their original plan for Soul Reaver's Ending. Look into George R. R. Martin's original plans for A Song of Ice and Fire. Likewise with Lucas' original version/ending of Star Wars. Structure and plot points are always liable to change. Bioware, as per the interview, have a general structure, with specifics changing (Ex: Illusive Man as a plot device). You not liking a plot point is not evidence of anything.

There's a difference between having a structural outline and solid ideas for the entire trilogy and having only vauge ideas.
If Bio had the former, it surely doesn't show at all.

Story are liable to change as they are made, but not like this.
Frankly, does it even make sense to write an entire trilogy up front when you dont' know if hte IP will be sucesfull? You relaly belive they carefully planned up front? Yeah right... If they did, they would have done better then ME2.

[Darth Death]

MAZ77 wrote...

Hah Yes Reapers wrote...

When I've written stories, it does tend to go like this. You have a general idea in your head where things are going to go, how it's starting and how you plan to end it and most of the key points along the way.

But as you go, you change lots of things. You throw out stuff you had planned, and then pick up and expand on things you weren't planning to.

This is nothing to get all that worked up about, really.

Nothing you write has anything to do with "making it up as they go along"; what you describe is the normal process of developing a story.

Mapping out a trilogy in advance is the same as developing a story for a stand-alone-game.

The only difference is, in stand-alone games you don't have to care about how to tie together loose ends in a sequel. But in a trilogy, this problem will arise, that's why mapping it out in advance is necessary.

Mapping it out in advance is developing a VERY LONG story = far more work to do.

If you don't map it out, massive plot holes and "retcons" are almost inevitable - see Mass Effect.

But mapping out a trilogy with sufficient details to keep quality high takes time and money, which are in short supply in the gaming business, as it seems. Still, a good writer should get it right, but Mac Walters simply is not a good writer. He should be responsible for developing characters and their backgrounds (which he seems to do well), but the story/plot should be put in more qualified hands.


PS.: Did you people really understand any of the answers of Casey Hudson in that interview? He is incredibly vague, for example whast he says about TIM being a "story device" at first, without knowing what it will be in the end...excuse me? Am I supposed to just accept that gibberish for an answer? Do any of his answers make sense? This article is yet another example of how to get through an interview without saying anything.

Yes, finally someone who gets it. This is indeed true.

[Arkitekt]

Some people here are missing the point. The OP was trying to prove the idea that Bioware admitted they made **** up as they went along, and then quoted an interview where Hudson basically admitted that they hadn't designed every single aspect of every "part" of the trilogy in advanced, that they had outlined the biggest parts and arcs and let the details to be written afterwards.

These "admissions" that Hudson made do not prove what the OP was trying to prove, since what Hudson was talking about is how any competent writer / artist will go create his own material, since ever.

That's it.

The case that Bioware writes and did write awful stuff, that they did "make **** up" as they "went along", in Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2, DLCs, and so on, and so on, is an entirely different discussion. From my POV, there's clearly a lot of this "make stuff up as you go along" in Mass Effect, and I personally have really little problems with it. However, that was not the OP's point.

So all those comments saying that we shouldn't "defend" bioware's writing, etc., are just missing the point by millions of miles.

[jamesp81]

didymos1120 wrote...

Enh. This is nothing new. They've said as much in much older interviews.

I also don't see a problem with it.  Sometimes the best writing is done this way.

[mybudgee]

Absolutely. See King, Rice, Rowling, etc. Most good fiction is part improv. It just takes a certain creative flair

[MAZ77]

Arkitekt wrote...

Some people here are missing the point.

(...snip...)

So all those comments saying that we shouldn't "defend" bioware's writing, etc., are just missing the point by millions of miles.

No.

In fact, it is "Bioware-defenders" like you who are reading things into Casey Hudson's answers that simply are not there.

[Xivai]

Sounds like me trying to write, the hell if I know where my ideas come from. It's not always so structured. Then you go back for revisions, my GOD the revisions are endless. Perfecting over every little detail. Wondering if your using too much purple prose or being too conservative and using beige prose. Keeping track of all the nations, factions, character, plots, and sub plots. As I go along making it up and then revising it.

With a book it's a tad easier, but you have to get the biggest things done first. So the most critical things need to get done and stay done so you can edit the little things without changing whole plots and chapter strings.

Hell my rough draft of my book I'm writing was me forcing myself to write every day and just get something done. I had a vague idea of what I wanted. Form there it's all about revision and editing. The phase I'm in now. After that comes grammar and punctuation ect. It's a long process to write and design a world.

[KotorEffect3]

lol posters on the bsn pretending to be literary experts again.

[AlanC9]

Walker White wrote...

Newsflash: All fiction is handled this way. The Wheel of Time was supposed to be a trilogy (pitched to publisher that way). Song of Ice and Fire was meant to be five books. Writers have very rough outlines of the overall plot, and a few major scenes. But everything else changes in the telling.

Hell, sometimes they don't even have that much in advance. Gene Wolfe has said that he just keeps writing, and when he finishes the story and sees how big the stack is, that tells him whether he's written a short story, a novella, a novel, or a trilogy.

According to Wolfe, The Book of the New Sun started from two things -- Wolfe wanted a character someone could cosplay (he was tired of never seeing one of his creations at the conventions), and he wanted to do something set on a dying far future Earth. Once he cooked up Severian's look his profession was obvious, and after he cooked up the Chatelaine Thecla for a plot hook, Wolfe just started writing. But after he finished the novella he had intended to write, he had too many characters and ideas in it so he ended up turning it into a trilogy, which the publisher insisted on splitting into a tetralogy, although for some reason it's printed these days as a ...duo-ology? Is there a word for a two-book work?

And those books turned out pretty damn fine.

The problem, of course, is that you can have a lot of a print trilogy written before publishing the first volume (some writers write all of it before the first volume comes out). Not really applicable to games.

Modifié par AlanC9, 26 janvier 2012 - 07:53 .

[Ice Cold J]

Depends. If they made it up right after they finished 2, I'm fine.

If they were making it up, say, a MONTH ago...

[Darth Death]

KotorEffect3 wrote...

lol posters on the bsn pretending to be literary experts again.

LOL ikr?

[Medhia Nox]

@KotorEffect3: Just ask them to PM you with their body of literary work - that "should" shut them up.

[GodWood]

jamesp81 wrote...

didymos1120 wrote...
Enh. This is nothing new. They've said as much in much older interviews.

I also don't see a problem with it.  Sometimes the best writing is done this way.

The majority of the time it isn't.

This is one of those times.

[GodWood]

Medhia Nox wrote...
@KotorEffect3: Just ask them to PM you with their body of literary work - that "should" shut them up.

This is such a ridiculous fanboy defence and you know it.

[string3r]

How reassuring. So much for planning out a trilogy.

[AlanC9]

Saphra Deden wrote...

I wish they would have planned it out in greater detail from the start.

Plot holes and pointless twists could have been avoided that way.

Or they bake bad ideas into the plan and are stuck with them.

I don't trust Bio to make a good long-range plan any more than I trust, say, Ron Moore to. It's just not one of their strengths.

Modifié par AlanC9, 26 janvier 2012 - 08:49 .

[Iakus]

Il Divo wrote...

That's great. And it's irrelevant. Go read Alan Moore's explanation for how he didn't know the ending of Watchmen until four chapters in. Go talk to Eidos about their original plan for Soul Reaver's Ending. Look into George R. R. Martin's original plans for A Song of Ice and Fire. Likewise with Lucas' original version/ending of Star Wars. Structure and plot points are always liable to change. Bioware, as per the interview, have a general structure, with specifics changing (Ex: Illusive Man as a plot device). You not liking a plot point is not evidence of anything.

Sure lots of material starts out with a bare bones plan that gets filled in over time.  But that's the expectation:  that it will get covered over in a piece of uniform flesh...

Okay this analogy is turning morbid.  

At any rate, if the story gets filled in well, and connects well, that's great.  But if it turns into a Frankenstein-style patchwork of nonsensical plot points that don't really connect to each other, you have a problem.

Let's take the Illusive Man as an example.  It sounds like Bioware wanted a morally grey character Shepard would team up with in ME2 for this Suicide Mission.  It sounds like proto-TIM was not necessarilly going to be Cerberus.  I dunno, maybe it would have been the Shadow Broker.  Or the batarians, or the geth, or a completely new faction.  But in the end, it was Cerberus.

The problem here is Cerberus already had a history.  They were a rogue Alliance black-ops organization hell-bent on human advancement at any cost.  Problem was, to make TIM at all palatable, they had to turn them into "kinder, gentler Cerberus" the semicompetant mad scientists who treat safety protocols as loose guidelines, wear brightly colored uniforms, and like to put their logo on all their stuff.

This is the danger of not planning ahead.  Depending on the plot point, a skilled writer can fill in the blanks so smoothly you'd never know there was a gap.  Mass Effect 2 was...not so smooth.  I can only hope ME3 smooths things over some.

[Seboist]

It was obvious BW was just making **** up as they go along and didn't know what they were doing otherwise Cerberus,the Shadow Broker and the Collectors would have received more development in ME1 or LOTSB would have been part of ME2's main story instead of a bunch of irrelevant daddy issues.

[Scary Shepard]

ME3 RUINED FOREVER yet again? Oh BSN, you never disappoint.

[Lotion Soronarr]

Seboist wrote...

It was obvious BW was just making **** up as they go along and didn't know what they were doing otherwise Cerberus,the Shadow Broker and the Collectors would have received more development in ME1 or LOTSB would have been part of ME2's main story instead of a bunch of irrelevant daddy issues.

QFT.

Anyone trying to convince me otherwise is having his work cut out for him....

[Nizzemancer]

What's wrong with that? When I wrote Fanfiction I did my best work by making it up as I went along then refining it to remove plotholes and such. I only had the start and the goal figured out from the start.