Lunafreya Nox Fleuret
Member
The writing in the grimoire cards is top notch but we need that stuff implemented in game. I don't doubt that all that writing was built in the real project until it was scrapped into cards. Yes, it was a huge mess.
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Chris Schlerf (Mass Effect: Andromeda lead writer) no longer at BioWare, joins Bungie
- Thread starter shinobi602
- Start date
The writing in the grimoire cards is top notch but we need that stuff implemented in game. I don't doubt that all that writing was built in the real project until it was scrapped into cards. Yes, it was a huge mess.
From what's been said in the recent Destiny expose (by Kotaku), it reads like what was originally written for the game was potentially not very good either, by comparison.
New IPs!
family_guy
Member
Didn't sound like they treated their last writer that well.
shinobi602
Member
Why shouldn't he have been able to speak?
Sword Of Doom
Member
yup and hopefully with their new CEO, management will be better
Jibbajabbawockky
Member
I just have no clue what to expect out of Andromeda. That survey from a while back made it sound like the developers were taking on all the worst aspects of the soulless MMO bloat from Inquisition and extending that to the ME universe. Then you just have the fact that its not coming from the core Edmonton BioWare but their basically unproven Montreal branch.
I hope its cool but I just have a bad feeling about it.
I hope its cool but I just have a bad feeling about it.
Khaos_Knight
Banned
Dude leaves a studio that would actually make use of his work to join another studio that will just relegate his work to being glorified wiki entries.
I see this guy wants some challenge in his career.
I see this guy wants some challenge in his career.
Poodlestrike
Banned
Sovereign being able to speak led to probably the single coolest moment of ME1.
To be fair, The Taken King shows that Bungie recognizes the need for more conventional storytelling, i.e. cutscenes.
Hawkeye 131
Member
Sounds good, hopefully he can really make a solid impact with Destiny's sequel. Bungie has made tons of much needed improvements to many different areas of the game however, the story-telling of Destiny or lack thereof is still the absolute worst part of the game. It feels soulless, high-minded and incredibly pretentious. It lacks any sort of depth or complexity, it's devoid of context and sub-text, there's no interesting twists or turns and what little is there that is good is selfishly locked away and hidden in the grimoire cards. The characters, dialogue, story and writing as a whole is all completely forgettable, poorly executed and downright amateurish. I feel like the real tragedy is there's just so much potential within the universe, canon and lore that they've created yet they have somehow managed to do next to nothing with it.
Whompa02
Member
Game is being made. Some people leave. Some people don't. People on the internet speculate stuff. The usual.
George Oscar Bluth II
Banned
My theory is we'll have the same protagonist but the games will be set in different clusters of Andromeda. Helius Cluster in the first game then some different one in the sequel. The Ark will travel there so we have the same hub but everything else is new.
It was kind of a meme here in early 2014 when Hennig left.I've had to erase and re-type my post numerous times just to find a better way to express the frustration I felt when I first ran into that particular line of dialog.
I gave up :\
It's a terrible line that is entirely emblematic of the problems with that game at launch.
ToyMachine228
Member
The Taken King was indeed an improvement but they can still do so much better. Destiny has great lore but the actual story of Destiny has gone no where and we never get any real looks at anything in the universe.
It was hammy in ME1. The dead reaper in ME2 was absolutely terrifying without it needing to say a word.
ME1 was better than that.
I wonder if they are going to stick with original idea that franchise wouldn't at all go outside of our solar system. Destiny as franchise and as overarching story was visioned to be about mankind taking solar system back and basically going towards Golden Age 2, afaik.
shinobi602
Member
Huh...different strokes I guess. The conversation with Sovereign is usually generally regarded as one of the coolest moments in the trilogy from conversations I've seen here on GAF and elsewhere. I thought he came off as extremely sinister and foreboding.
Personally I found (him? it?) Sovereign talking just made it feel cheap. I mean it could have projected images of Shepard and co getting butchered and turned into husks directly into his/her head but instead just trash talks.
edit: I mean there's this monstrous brainwashing ship which looks intimidating and when it tries to communicate it gives me a baritone "We're better than you".
Orochinagis
Member
Bungie finally got decent writers this time?
I agree with your opinion, but I didnt mind it. Mass Effect isnt some well thought out 'hard scifi', it's space opera. It's just an hollywood action movie in space; it needs 'identifiable' villains.
PetulantChild
Banned
Bungie hired the writer of Halo 4? But why would anyone do such a thing?
NeOak
Member
Ever read the story of Marathon?
I know right. Because that story was so awesoZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
That's because we already got the whole projected imagery from Thorian in the same game.
Also having this supposedly god complex being yet doesn't even know how to do something as basic as communicate sounds even worse.
Pheace
Member
Bungie needs proficient help in almost all areas.
Now just hope they use the story that will be written.
It's a sign that Andromeda isn't going to be a trilogy to me, perhaps after the ME3 backlash they're going to go for standalones say.
Kind of disappointed at the fact all the negative backlash to Mass Effect's ambition over that big trilogy would result in Bioware being less ambitious. I guess they've still got some scope for inter-game connectivity happening in Dragon Age.
Bungie isn't going to change its spots, now or ever. They're defo hiring and putting on even more developers to cope with the extreme workload Activision has them under, but the release schedule Destiny fans demand is absurd, and their production pipeline is shit.
Destiny fans demand a new expansion every single year, in an MMO environment not a single player environment. That's the kind of work-curve that Ubisoft has for AC, and Activision employs two studios for Call of Duty.
Destiny isn't going to improve unless Bungie have the opportunity to give more time to their game. How they're supposed to re-engineer Destiny for PC/Xbone/PS4 a true next gen architecture is beyond me. Even given the reduced production goals and increased employee count, Bungie is in too deep. I'd expect deep slippage on Destiny 2.
Kind of disappointed at the fact all the negative backlash to Mass Effect's ambition over that big trilogy would result in Bioware being less ambitious. I guess they've still got some scope for inter-game connectivity happening in Dragon Age.
Bungie isn't going to change its spots, now or ever. They're defo hiring and putting on even more developers to cope with the extreme workload Activision has them under, but the release schedule Destiny fans demand is absurd, and their production pipeline is shit.
Destiny fans demand a new expansion every single year, in an MMO environment not a single player environment. That's the kind of work-curve that Ubisoft has for AC, and Activision employs two studios for Call of Duty.
Destiny isn't going to improve unless Bungie have the opportunity to give more time to their game. How they're supposed to re-engineer Destiny for PC/Xbone/PS4 a true next gen architecture is beyond me. Even given the reduced production goals and increased employee count, Bungie is in too deep. I'd expect deep slippage on Destiny 2.
The Silver
Member
Sovereign talking was by far the best part of ME1 for me, it was the "blow the doors open" moment. He really felt alien and godlike, Harbinger by comparison felt way too human.
However he made me laugh a lot and I'm still pissed that Harbinger was pretty much dropped in ME3 after all his build up and shit talking in ME2.
However he made me laugh a lot and I'm still pissed that Harbinger was pretty much dropped in ME3 after all his build up and shit talking in ME2.
Ivory Samoan
Member
The same thing happened with Read Dead Redemption and many other great games and they turned out fine. The writing was no doubt finished, they should be in alpha stage now either way. I'm pretty sure the story of ME:A will fine... (like, 99 Bionic Winds out of 100 sure).
AHA-Lambda
Member
He was a writer on Halo 4? Yeesh :-/
Anticipation lessened in Andromeda then
Anticipation lessened in Andromeda then
I'm betting they're going for a Hawke situation, where they'll look at the reception of the game and move forward from that.
Because everyone does realize that Hawke was designed to lead more than one game, right? It was the public's rejection of DA2 that led to him being shunted to the side.
I laughed out loud reading this. This is stuff I wrote during my emo phase when I was 15 and trying my hardest to sound deep. These are the lyrics to a Linkin Park Song. This is certainly not top notch writing.
Writing is done. What do you expect the writer to do? Twiddle his thumbs?
Diablohead
Member
I thought that the story in destiny 1 was fine, the issue was that the parts they worked on in-game either felt rushed or done in a stupid way. the cards on the website help a lot sure but the game just needed better cutscenes and interaction to the characters.
let's all pretend ME 3 never happened, things work out better that way.
let's all pretend ME 3 never happened, things work out better that way.
I imagine planning and writing for the inevitable dlc would be the usual circumstance.
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Yep, definitely agree with this. ME1/2/3 had us access to the entire Milky Way, and just added new systems to travel to when relevant via DLC or in each game, because you weren't really "exploring the galaxy" so much as clicking on icons to load new hubs. Going by the leaks/gossip Andromeda instead hands you a portion of the galaxy (in this case the Helius Cluster) and gives you full control over exploring the space and portions of planets.
If this is indeed the case it makes sense to offer a smaller slice of the galaxy compared to the trilogy, due to the difference in navigation, and simply have subsequent games take place in other parts of Andromeda.
I also don't know why people think Schlerf leaving suddenly rules out the possibility of this being part of a multi-game arc. While it's nice to think that writers sit down and plan huge arcs, this is rarely the case. Shit changes. Story changes. And this is especially true in a medium where investment in each story is millions of millions of dollars with no guarantee on return.
Mass Effect is a pretty successful IP from where BioWare and EA sit, and I imagine they'll push Andromeda hard. Unless there's some catastrophic market disaster, or the development process was so bad it kills the IP, we'll see Andromeda 2 (or whatever) at some point. And given a persistent protagonist and supporting cast is a staple of the series, and will doubtlessly be something fans expect to experience all over again, I can't imagine they'll abandon it.
The lead writer generally only does the main story and narrative, DLC is left to the other writers.
ToyMachine228
Member
I'm cool with it staying in our solar system, I think that's a great decision. I just mean we never really got any insight into anything in the universe of Destiny in the game. Yeah we saw enemies and structures and whatnot, but with very little depth.
Even with dlc that basically works like an epilogue?
Do people talk to ants they're going to kill off with Raid?
To be clear, Bungie has no shortage of incredible writers.
The problem is and always has been the way they chose to tell the story in game, which we know is because they had to scrap the original story and change the entire game to meet their original release.