UPDATED: Dead Space Producer Slams Gears of War Script Pages PREV 1 2 3 | |
Gotta love the update. You can almost hear the backlash he received that would make him flip-flop like that. On a personal note I played GoW 1 and that was it. Not saying its a bad game because I had a blast with my friend, but not too "rabid" a fan. | |
Honestly, all I got from this article was that some developers/producers have NOTHING better to do than yell at other games for how bad they are. Neither game has great storytelling. Dead Space is really just another horror game. It's really fun and awesome, but it's nothing crazy (story wise). The same applies for Gears, crazy fun and all that, but in reality it is another solid good-fun shooter. Also, I felt more emotion in Gears 3 than I did Dead Space 1 or 2... It was hard to feel anything in the first Dead Space, I feel like Issac maybe said like, three words the entire game ( I'm exaggerating a bit:P ). Two was a big step up, but it's still just a horror game. | |
That's not "clarifying", that's kissing ass. Look, to say the things that need to be said, you gotta sound more cruel than you really are. Maybe he thinks it's a great game, but he wasn't talking about the gameplay or the structure, but the story. It's rubbish. I thought it was rubbish to begin with, but then I remembered that first trailer where they used Gary Jules's "Mad World". Mad World is about people, not alien monsters from beneath the crust! Oh sorry, that has nothing to do with it, just me rambling. Anyway, that trailer put the emotional expectations high while the game was about as deep as a half-dried puddle. A puddle of... manly guns... and chainsaws. In short, I think he should have stuck to his guns instead of "clarifying" how much he doesn't want to make enemies. Come on. Even the guys who wrote for Gears of War knew they weren't exactly shooting for an Oscar! The sales speak for themselves anyway, so nobody's that offended. | |
He probably got a talking to from a higher up or realized what he had just said afterwards and wanted to do damage control. | |
While yes, the story of Gears isn't that great, it isn't bad and can be pretty entertaining. The biggest issue is the third game, which tries to incorporate the extended universe waaay too much without giving enough in-game references to help those who haven't read the books. Though reading the books and comics for Gears is recommended. Though not the best writing ever, they're pretty decent and they spend a good deal of time on the non-shooty parts of the Gears universe that explain a great deal and make you see pretty much every character in a different light. Biggest example: Everyone complains that Marcus is an emotionless lump of meat in the game, but after reading the books it actually makes sense and is understandable why he is like that. But he who wrote the trainwreck that is the Dead Space story should keep his mouth shut. | |
I'm just amazed that they think we would possibly believe what he's saying now. | |
Totally true. GoW 2 and 3 pissed me off so much. The saddest part is that they were so close to being good games. Just a little bit of tweaking with a few critical story elements would have made it work. | |
I think he was probably forced to retract his statement by his bosses in order to avoid a lawsuit. | |
PR damage control retraction notwithstanding, what did he say that isn't patently obvious to most gamers? The quality of stories/writing/characterization in games needs to improve. Gears of War may be low hanging fruit but given the preponderance of swaggering 'roided up macho douches in games maybe it bears repeating. Was that this a case of the pot calling the kettle black? Possibly, but the point stands. | |
Meh, I'm not a huge "Gears Of War" fan, but I will say that stereotypical productions that do their thing well are important. Basically if it wasn't for the Marcus Fenix type of hero forming a baseline for what a shooter hero is, there would be nothing to compare those who "break the mould" to. It's sort of how in comics, if every hero some some dark, edgy, anti-hero, and there aren't any straight forward White Knights who successfully save the day doing things the "normal" way, the counterpoint loses a lot of it's meaning. By all accounts "Gears Of War" doesn't break any new ground for the action hero or the way a scenario is scripted. Marcus pretty much being another version of "Rambo" and his ilk, but that's a good thing when it's depicted well (which this was). It makes other shooter heroes like say Issac Clarke or Gordan Freeman stand out as exceptions. I'll also say that for all criticisms doing a "normal" script well can be harder than going off in wierd directions. There are plenty of games like "Gears Of War" that have tried to do the same exact thing (before and after it) but failed because they weren't as well written or put together. See, the reason why someone like Gordan Freeman is awesome is that he's as Miracle of Sound put it "Chuck Norris in a geek form", a scientist who looks like a typical science weenie doing the kinds of stuff a Marcus Fenix type would normally do. If it wasn't for characters and stories like "Gears Of War" and the games that came before it, Gordan probably wouldn't stand out as the counterpoint that he is. Sometimes I like my offbeat heroes, but sometimes I want the traditional versions as well. To use comics as an example again, dark, brutal, nasty heroes and stories have their place, but sometimes I want to see Superman save the day and show that it's possible for good to win in of itself without having to stoop to those levels. Right now for all of his "recanting", I think the bottom line is that it's currently chic to knock people who do anything "normal" or "straightforward" within a genere, oftentimes by people who fail to realize how important that mould actually is to everything else. | |
"Allow me to further clarify what I meant by that previous statement, which was taken out of context: They're a good company." Uh, huh... | |
I actually find the story quite enjoyable for the other two games. I know alot of people say Kratos became totally unrelatable, but when you consider he's tormented by the fact that even after becoming a literal god he can't bring his family back to life, it makes sense that, with nothing to live for, he'd become progressively more insane with a blatant disregard for human life, even going so far as to My biggest problem with the story was that GoWIII had the perfect opportunity to bring a satisfying conclusion --and did-- but then pulled out and spunked all over the sheets with a cliffhanger ending. | |
I like Gears of War's over-arching story, but the plots are based too much around set pieces rather than relevant places, and the dialogue is just... awful. Then again, I got into Gears of War for the action, I never really expected classy writing. My only annoyance with the lack of it is the strong impression that Epic were trying to achieve it. The books especially give this impression as they deal with the more serious side of it all. | |
so the raven is calling the crow black, what else is new? | |
I think his own beef with the end boss highlights the biggest barrier to games becoming recognised as an art form, and that is the balance between the creation of art, and the creating of an entertainment product, for every Journey or Okami, there will be several Racoon Citys or Zombie add-ons, with pointless and gratuitous set pieces and bosses. I know this is like comparing Hugo to Transformers, but that's kinda how things are. Gears had a terrible script and a pointless story, but it wasn't the worst, and no one really plays those games for their story do they?. | |
You know what I'm reading in the update?
I have a feeling someone told him off. I agree with him though, Gears of War has a horrible story. | |
I think you are looking at this wrong. The man has a set standard of what he thinks is good writing that all works, including his own, has to meet. I'm sure he could go own for hours on why he thinks Dead Space didn't work, or what he would fix if he had the time. Still, if he has such standards, he can still criticize another game for failing to meet said standards. Let me give you an example, say Michael Bay criticized the work of someone like Uwe Boll. Now, Bay has made some less than stellar films, but they still are decent and Bay himself is a decent overall director. If he criticized the work of Boll on purely directing standards, I don't think that is a problem. He would just be doing what we all do: making an opinion. I'll give you another example: Ken Levine, the creative director of Bioshock, has criticized games like Dead Space for having the narrative trope where you meet someone on the other side of glass or a radio, but never face to face. Yet, he admits that he might have created the trope. Does that not mean he can still make a criticism of that trope? No, because he has standards and feels that gaming in general can go beyond such a trope. So, no, I have no problem with this man criticizing Gears, though I would say its not the worst writing out there. Bionic Commando's is pretty horrible. | |
Did he have a hand in Dead Space 2? Abject failure of a sequel that removed any semblance of tension and added a cookie-cutter script and plot that insulted my intelligence. Voicing Isaac was also a big error, I never finished the game whereas I really quite enjoyed the original. Gears of War doesn't take itself so seriously all the time, I'd certainly buy another game in that particular franchise (even if the third's writing was worse than the first two) but will probably avoid another Dead Space sequel. That says it all, which is a shame because the first Dead Space was very promising and one of my favourite games of 2008. Still, as Mr. Beaver is so endearing it might be just desserts if his next game fails. | |
Except unlike ME, nobody cared about Gow's story and characters. So when they never explained why the feck Myrrah looked human or all of the plot holes created by reconning the lambent so they were around before E-day, we all just shrugged, thought "well that's silly" and went home. Worst story ever? No, but it was pretty flat. Most of the plot action is just you going places and fixing things and character development/exploration is either minimal or badly handled. "MARIA!!" And of course after three games Marcus still has no personality. Doesn't help that alot of it depends on backstory you need to read the books to get. Because Cliffy never bothered to add it into the game. "Nope, need muscles and chainsodomy!" It's all just a big bleh with no emotional involvement. | |
Wow, and Dead Space is a shining example of brilliant writing? I'll admit Gears 1 was pretty bad but I liked Gears 2 and 3 was really good. Dead Space is essentially "Oh no alien zombies." and nothing else. | |
Actually, you may want to try paying attention to Dead Space again. Sure, there are alien zombies and silly cultists, but there's also quite a well presented story about a man coming to terms with grief in there. Pity the second game basically shat all over that by redoing it in a significantly less interesting way. Of course, nothing that Dead Space 2 did to damage the story of Dead Space was quite as terrible as the horrors unleashed on Gears of War by Karen Traviss. Seriously, why would you get Karen Traviss to write your sci-fi nonsense when she has the almost unique reputation of being the only person to fuck up Star Wars worse than George Lucas. | |
Gears 3's ending was as bad as ME3's but for different reasons. In Gears 1, you get a magic I win bomb, set it off, and make everything catastrophically worse. In Gears 2, you get a magic I win bomb, set it off, and make everything catastrophically worse. In Gears 3, someone else gets a magic I win bomb, you show up at the last minute to set it off and make everything magically better. The logical progression of the ending would not have been another magic I win bomb, because the first two games have established the theme that these do not work. | |
He strikes me as the sort of man who doesn't know what 'literally' means. Or at least he thinks it means something much different than what it does.
I smell a cop-out coming on. Nobody ever trashes their own work to defend the trashing of another person's without trying to qualify their alleged 'failure.'
Oh, they put it in without you? In one meeting? They scripted, animated, and produced the entire endgame without your knowledge? Yeah. That sounds likely.
Then make a new 'Brothers in Arms' that feels like the original and 'Road to Hill 30' did. Don't make a sci-fi story about fighting underground bug monsters if you want it to feel like Band of Brothers.
Oh, God, that was hilarious. I could practically hear him panicking when he realized that he was taking a very public piss on top of one of the biggest franchises in gaming, not to mention every person involved with its development. So that just leaves a very simple question: how can you take out of context things like "atrocious" and "literally the worst writing in games"? Is it just me, or has the phrase 'taken out of context' just become a label for the speaker to say 'I didn't think you'd write that down'? | |
Oh, man, I remember that trailer. Damn good one, too. But the Mad World trailer was about the war with the Locusts. It ended with a Corpser, for Christ's sake. The emphasis was placed on the ravaged world, and (to use the designers' buzzwords) the destroyed beauty of the planet. When I played the game, that trailer had me focusing that much more on the environment, and it really gave depth to the experience. You don't really grasp the full extent of the damage to the planet until you realize how much of the world is in ruins.
As I side note, I tend to only see the term 'Stick to your guns' being used right before someone is metaphorically shot to death. But those are two very different things. Just because they weren't "shooting for an Oscar" doesn't disqualify them from having written a decent game. And it certianly doesn't make them targets for having produced "literally the worst writing in games." There's no room for interpretation in there: he's calling them the worst writers in gaming. Ever.
Clearly some people didn't like what he said. Sales or not, insults like this hurt, especially from another writer. And it probably didn't help that he insulted his own co-workers while he was at it.
Just to play Devil's Advocate, I don't think Gordon Freeman had much character at all. I love the Half-Life games, but frankly, Freeman might as well be a skinless Terminator: he just runs around breaking stuff and killing people while the plot happens around him. I think it's a testament to Valve's ability to write well that made it work, but seriously, imagine the games from a third-person point of view. If you can force yourself to focus on Freeman from an outsider's standpoint, the storytelling falls apart. Can you imagine a story where characters regularly talk with the main character while he stares at them, emotionless, and never uttering a word? I'll never understand how people can say anything more than a sentence or two to him before they get so creeped out that they just stop talking.
Agreed. Morally ambiguous heroes have roles...but most times, they don't. That's why the Punisher has a one-man operation while the Justice League has dozens of heroes. I'm crossing DC and Marvel there, but the point still stands.
Yeah...I've been baffled by that trend, especially when I think about the original Halo. A lot of that game played out like a console-variant of Half-Life, except that the hero actually spoke when spoken to...which apparently rendered Master Chief a bland, power armored macho protagonist while Gordon Freeman gets to keep his super-strength and power armor without criticism because he doesn't talk. | |
I agree with him but seriously, he's one to talk? "Gears had bad story blah blah blah but yeah, let's not focus on Dead Space. Cuz we all don't even wanna think about the story in that game." Don't dish it out if you write for shit. | |
There was a script? MW had a plot? UT wasn't about killing people of other colours? DS was about more than cheap scares and confining controls? | |
Funny coming from an EA employee considering the way Mass Effect 3 ended. | |
Well to be honest I think a lot of the problem is that people in the gaming media are trying to present being "macho" as a bad thing, which I don't think it is. After all it's the kind of mindset that people in these kind of video game situations are realistically going to possess. I've honestly felt a lot of it is simply that your dealing with angry nerds who got recieved the equivilent of having sand kicked in their face one too many times, getting upset over the glorification of a mindset they feel victimized by. A problem that has been coming to the forefront now, because with games being mainstreamed you don't just have to deal with the he-men in games, but also the "bros" in the player base actually playing the games and sort of bringing it to the forefront. The He-Man protaganist really wasn't an issue until the industry decided to try and bring so many casuals into the market. That said I'm a big fan of the silent protaganist, I think voicing protaganists tends to be a mistake, one of those situations where technology has gone wrong. Rather than stepping into a story, a voiced protaganist frequently gives me the impression that I'm watching someone else's story even when I'm in control.... which is an issue. But again I think it comes down to the tastes of the mainstream as opposed to serious gamers. When it comes to Gordan Freeman, the thing about him is that while he was silent, you could tell a lot about him just through the enviroment and how people reacted to him. Despite everything you might insert into the character by stepping into his shoes, he's a scientist, his colleagues and peer groups are largely academics, and people don't react to him like they do to say a Marcus Fenix, not to mention how much the artwork itself showing the character said about him. Gordan basically gets to be the pencil necked scientist who happens to be able to fight like one of those He-Men, which is a bit differant, and that image is reinforced throughout the entire game. That said, when ALL your heroes are pencil necked weenie-looking guys it tends to get silly, you need the regular tough guys for a comparison. As a side point, I think a lot of this also comes out in the arena of movies as well. You might notice for example that MovieBob, one of those guys who seems to decry anything "macho" or traditionally manly, had a massive rant-a-thon over the "Expendables" movie and still goes off about it getting a sequel. Basically he'd rather see some meterosexual actor do the action stuff with special FX, than someone who looks like they could actually do that stuff. To be honest I think one of the things that has hurt the action movie genere (aside from politics) is Hollywood going too far in that direction. While by no means a great movie, part of the appeal of "The Expendables" is to have a bunch of actual he-men (even if they are getting old) doing the stuff that they do, and it sold very well because it happens to work. Sadly it doesn't seem like the message is getting through. Generally speaking to do this kind of thing perfectly they kind of need to get some actual He-men who can play the straightforward "macho hero" role fairly well and then use the FX budget they'd use for the other guys. To an extent that's what made the Arnie/Cameron team, they had the best of both worlds, even when Arnie couldn't really act. The point here basically being that the typical "macho military dude" thing is a stereotype for a reason, and really it's something that needs to exist for the exceptions to stand out, and a good game (or movie) following for that formula means a lot. Basically shooter fans (despite my opinion of the genere in general) and science fiction gaming fans in general, have Master Chief and Marcus Fenix to thank when they see a game with a hero that isn't from that mould, because without them forming the backbone, it probably wouldn't work. | |
While the writing certainly isn't the stand out part of the Gears franchise, the writing in Gears 3 was much, much better than the other two. | |
That's probably why I felt like Opposing Force was a good deal more...let's say 'realistic' in its choice of protagonist than the original Half-Life was. At least a Marine has an excuse for being skilled with a variety of firearms and weapons. A physicist? Not so much.
Ehh...I'm not so sure about that. I think it comes more down to the inherent unlikability of what I call the 'Straightfaced Duke,' mostly in light of Duke Nukem Forever. Duke Nukem began as a parody. That much is pretty simple. He was a character made from a distilled mixture of every other tongue-in-cheek action hero of his era, and it worked pretty well. The problem, however, was when we were given a wider view of the world Duke lived in...and it turned out that the entire unironic world loved him for equally unironic reasons. Before, he had been more an avatar than anything else, but suddenly, he was an actual person, and he was being massively rewarded by a world that by all rights ought to have given him some medals for saving the planet then slowly moved the spotlight away from him.
But bear in mind that the 'Enter your name' intro screen is virtually gone. I can think of only one console game that did it within the past couple years, and that was Neir. The point is that you are playing as a character. And I really don't think that gaming has gotten all the worse for the inclusion of voiced protagonists. As stories grow in depth and depiction, a mute protagonist becomes a relic of the past. Look at Fable 2: I can't count the number of times I wanted a goddamn voice to raise some sort of objection to the stupidity I was being subjected to, but no. The writers had their story to tell, and heaven forbid I, the player, interfere with it.
Well...yeah. But isn't that just because he's a different character? Marcus Fenix is a soldier, and people he interacts with treat him as thus. Similarly, most of the people he interacts with are also soldiers. Replace 'soldier' with 'scientist' and 'Marcus Fenix' with 'Gordon Freeman,' and you've got Half-Life. And oddly enough, I can't remember the last time Gordon ever did anything remotely scientific for someone of his supposed expertise. Lots of people call him 'Dr. Freeman,' but he doesn't show much of anything for it.
But 'The Expendables' was supposed to be a tribute to movies that those guys would star in. That was the entire premise. If you did the same thing with less-known actors, it would just be a bad action movie. It'd be like ordering a bacon cheeseburger, then requesting that the bacon and patty be replaced with non-meat substitutes. It completely defeats the purpose of the originally requested item. And I'm not sure why you describe someone who doesn't look like Sylvester Stallone or Bruce Willis to be 'metrosexual.' Maybe you think it means something else, but aren't you just trying to say 'average'? Because I don't classify Matt Damon as the same sort of actor as the cast of The Expendables, but I think he did well in The Bourne Identity.
But you don't need to be completely jacked to fill that kind of role. In fact, most modern soldiers aren't like that. Knowing how to fight while making yourself stronger yet compact is a lot more valuable than just being huge. | |
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Sounds more like a man desperately clutching at straws to his boss.
"Yeah I know my story for a mediocre third person shooter kinda sucks but look! LOOK! Another mediocre third person shooter, it's story is way worse than mine see? It has 4 muscle bound tools in it instead of my 1 space mechanic tool! Please don't fire me."