Guild Wars 2

While I applaud the idea that the writing could be tighter, I am not one for melodrama, just for melodrama’s sake. Pulling out the “Marjory becoming distant and pushing her friends away” is, imo, hack-writing 101. Next we will have NPCs suffer from amnesia, or maybe one has an evil twin, which will lead to all kinds of misunderstandings and hijinks. Gah. No thanks.

New dye pack introduced with 50 shades of grey?

Ah sorry. Wrong sort of adult storytelling.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

You mean Neverwinter Nights, right? (Note: this is a Bioware staple to their games, and another company which did good with it was Black Isle Studios.)

Yeah, I’ve noticed it is a staple for them. I just used KotOR as an example cause it’s one of my favorites.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Holy crap, someone else who knows who Lord Lieutenant Miles Vorkosigan is.

You bet I do! (Sorry for the delayed response, I’ve been at the in-laws for two days). I picked up Shards of Honor when it first hit the bookshelves and was an instant Bujoldophile. The Vorkosigan novels are the only hugely prolific series I’ve kept up on without losing track of which ones I had and had not read — I’m looking at you, Turtledove, Martin, Weber, and Butcher — and I had the joy of playing Miles’ wife in a 4 hour LARP once. The guy playing Miles was tall, but he spent it all on his knees, while consuming many Pixie Sticks to enhance his manic energy, and at one point when I came up with a clever plan to solve our diplomatic dilemma he flashed a pure Miles smile at me that had me on Cloud 9 for weeks. In the recent Ivan novel, at the end, I completely choked up. Won’t say why, because spoilers suck.

The thing about the Miles books (and the Sharing Knife series by the same author) is that Bujold manages so clear a writing style you stop seeing the words. Sometimes I want eloquent and poetic, which she offers when she feels like it, but sometimes I just want a darn good story with characters I would love to meet, and she delivers that in spades, time and time again, without resorting to formula writing. Nor are the books dark even though they can deal with fairly dark places like Jackson’s Whole. Plenty of engaging shenanigans and good guys triumphing, here!

It could be hard for an MMO to become that perfectly transparent, to let the player forget s/he is looking for story and simply experience it. Perhaps impossible. Yet why not try? Why not put so much immersion in that people needn’t resort to 3rd party discussions to know who the key NPCs are, what their personalities are, something of their history? Enough to let players refer to events or locales and other players understand the reference without needing explanation, without even knowing one might be needed. Enough to see the world reacting to major events and localities reacting to local ones. Sure you can’t progress some things in cyclical events, can’t ever say the Claw is perma-dead and the like, but Tyria is changing here and there and those changes should be globally marked.

I said it could be hard. Yet I’ve been slowly playing ESO in my spare time and that game manages an incredible amount of immersion in the world via text quests, voice acting (once I was crossing a bridge in a city in the Pact, though I’m playing a Redguard, and I swear a guard said out loud “We don’t usually see Redguard here”), and variety of quests that are appropriate to the quest giver. As well as definitely adult themes, and branching questlines based on player choices that can lead to a variety of outcomes for the individual player (likely easier in a game designed with phasing like ESO than in the fully persistent GW2). So it’s doable.

Apologies for the wall of text, I had a lot of points in mind over the past two days and no way to deliver them.

I just want the story to be told more like Game of Thrones and less like Lost…

Xenon.4537:

I just want the story to be told more like Game of Thrones and less like Lost…

I’d rather it be more like Fringe, honestly.

. . . what? I can see Walter as an asura.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Xenon.4537:

I just want the story to be told more like Game of Thrones and less like Lost…

I’d rather it be more like Fringe, honestly.

. . . what? I can see Walter as an asura.

Never seen Fringe lol. But what I’m getting at is this:

GoT style:
1. Exposition
2. Rising action
3. Climax
4. Falling action
(you know… like normal friggin storytelling…)

Lost style:
1. Exposition
2. Plot twist
3. Climax
4. Cliff hangar
5. Plot twist
6. Plot twist
7. Rising action
8. Plot twist
9. Cliff hangar

Basically I’m afraid of journal episodes falling victim to the writing cliche where they force a plot twist where none was called for; the sole purpose of which is to force you to stay tuned to find out what happens in the next episode. But then they pull the same crap in the next episode so that you have to keep checking back in each subsequent episode with no real resolution in sight. It’s the latest ham-fisted approach to television shows, and it sickens me.

A good story has a beginning, middle, and end. And when you get to the end, you start a NEW story. You don’t try to prolong the first story ad nauseam. That’s called being a hack. Hacks don’t know how to write new material. They use plot twists the same way Michael Bay uses special effects. I’m not saying we will never reach Mordremoth, but the journey there doesn’t need to be a convoluted pile of spaghetti noodles.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Xenon.4537:

I just want the story to be told more like Game of Thrones and less like Lost…

I’d rather it be more like Fringe, honestly.

. . . what? I can see Walter as an asura.

OMG, no! I forbid this from happening. Walter as an asura would….no. Just no. This post needs burning before the observers see it and tweak the devs to make it happen.

Xenon.4537:

A good story has a beginning, middle, and end. And when you get to the end, you start a NEW story. You don’t try to prolong the first story ad nauseam. That’s called being a hack. Hacks don’t know how to write new material. They use plot twists the same way Michael Bay uses special effects. I’m not saying we will never reach Mordremoth, but the journey there doesn’t need to be a convoluted pile of spaghetti noodles.

As someone who loves to use plot twists in his own writing… ouch.

But I do see your point. I think plot twists are ok myself, but they should make sense within the context of the story. If they feel forced (and I have seen force-looking ones in TV shows… cough, latest Blacklist episode…) then it defeats the whole point of it being a twist. Instead, it just becomes a potential plot hole.

IMO, a good story arc is just as strong at holding peoples’ attention as a good plot twist. Breaking Bad did just fine with basically zero plot twists because the narrative weaved naturally through each episode. A show like The Blacklist, on the other hand, has a clear beginning, middle, and end, within each episode. Its main narrative continues through each episode, but the episode-specific narrative needs to have a clear beginning and end every single time.

Whereas BB could get away with leaving major loose ends and pick them up on the next episode.

When I look at how the Living Story compares to those shows, I think it could be more like the structure of BB, but it actually falls closer to the design of The Blacklist. Which might explain the leaning on plot twists.

Torsailr.8456:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Xenon.4537:

I just want the story to be told more like Game of Thrones and less like Lost…

I’d rather it be more like Fringe, honestly.

. . . what? I can see Walter as an asura.

OMG, no! I forbid this from happening. Walter as an asura would….no. Just no. This post needs burning before the observers see it and tweak the devs to make it happen.

Fine, I will settle for Peter reincarnated as a human engineer.

Xenon.4537:

Never seen Fringe lol. But what I’m getting at is this:

GoT style:
1. Exposition
2. Rising action
3. Climax
4. Falling action
(you know… like normal friggin storytelling…)

Yeah . . . no. It doesn’t flow like that, with no “plot twists” in there. There are twists, at least three of them which caught people so off guard they swore off GoT forever (and still came back for the next season). I’m not spoiling them though.

There were plot twists in the books and in the show, and the casting of Sean Bean as Ned Stark was criminally giving away one of the things from the first book which was surprising.

Lost style:
1. Exposition
2. Plot twist
3. Climax
4. Cliff hangar
5. Plot twist
6. Plot twist
7. Rising action
8. Plot twist
9. Cliff hangar

I’d argue with this but that’d be nitpicking. It wasn’t so much “plot twists” as “answer something in a way to leave two more questions”. Like dealing with a hydra, cutting one off just makes more come out to play. It got better after they got served a notice of “three more seasons and that’s it” because then they had an end timeframe to shoot for.

I get what you’re saying but . . . Lost isn’t the king of that sort of thing. Daytime TV (“soap operas”) are the king of it, reigning forever. The only one I halfway liked when I could catch it in syndication was “Dark Shadows” . . . even then it was a lot of . . . ugh . . .

A good story has a beginning, middle, and end. And when you get to the end, you start a NEW story. You don’t try to prolong the first story ad nauseam. That’s called being a hack. Hacks don’t know how to write new material. They use plot twists the same way Michael Bay uses special effects. I’m not saying we will never reach Mordremoth, but the journey there doesn’t need to be a convoluted pile of spaghetti noodles.

. . . ehhh, being a hack is a lot more than just dragging out the story as long as you can. Being a hack involves a lot of other Sins of Writing foremost, because even good writers have pushed stories and characters through longer and longer things. (Note, not ‘great writers’ but ‘good ones’ . . .)

George R.R. Martin is exactly like that, for as good as the writing is . . . somewhere it starts feeling like it’s being stretched and dragged out for the sake of filling a book. Not as bad as old R. Jordan, but there’s still plenty of sense the guy is lost in his worldbuilding mind rather than his plotting mind.

Vayne.8563:

There are many things that make stories adult stories. In the case of O’Henry, who’s considered one of the great short story writers of all time, it’s about the target audience which was adults. The topics he wrote about wouldn’t generally interests children. We were forced to read some of them in school and I can assure you most of the kids weren’t happy about it.

Adult means just that. It’s a story written for and targeting adults. Guild Wars 2 with it’s teen rating can’t really just target adults, because there are people playing who aren’t adults.

And there are people playing who don’t really read or follow stories all that well.

The violence comment I made was in response to another post. It has nothing to do with whether there is violence in Guild Wars 2 or not. My comment was about whether things like sex and violence are necessary for adult story telling.

I don’t believe they are.

I do agree about the violence, sex etc. not being a requirement. Although I still think you have the wrong idea behind what makes a story adult.

I wouldn’t say it’s about what interests people, but moreover it’s the comprehension or lack thereof. That’s not to suggest that a story needs to be “super smart”, yet there is still a bar to be surpassed.

The way I see it, there are two core parts that make an adult story (or a good one at least). Firstly is indeed the level of complexity. Having to think rather than simply turning your brain off to enjoy the ride. This is the crux of why I believe mainstream “PG-13-esque” stories are degrading. Secondly, you’ve got emotions. With any rational & open-minded person (basically mature), dealing with less conventional material is what makes the enjoyment. So it’s not that “darker” themes are better, it’s that they allow for deep thought.

Blackmoon.6837:

I do agree about the violence, sex etc. not being a requirement. Although I still think you have the wrong idea behind what makes a story adult.

I wouldn’t say it’s about what interests people, but moreover it’s the comprehension or lack thereof. That’s not to suggest that a story needs to be “super smart”, yet there is still a bar to be surpassed.

The way I see it, there are two core parts that make an adult story (or a good one at least). Firstly is indeed the level of complexity. Having to think rather than simply turning your brain off to enjoy the ride. This is the crux of why I believe mainstream “PG-13-esk” stories are degrading. Secondly, you’ve got emotions. With any rational & open-minded person (basically mature), dealing with less conventional material is what makes the enjoyment. So it’s not that “darker” themes are better, it’s that they allow for deep thought.

First, “esque” is what you want, not “esk”.

Second . . . I much agree but there is a thing as “too much complexity”, and “too emotionally connected”. A story can be pushed to be too complex for its own good. (See: Lost, Doctor Who (when it takes itself way too seriously, and Primer), or rely too much on emotional connections . . . which have no guarantee of forming with some of the audience. This is how some films/shows/stories get “this was GREAT” people having no idea why some people just can’t like it.

And again, it’s possible to provoke deep thought or interesting stories without dipping into the mature/darker themes.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

First, “esque” is what you want, not “esk”.

Ya learn something new every day. Thanks.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Second . . . I much agree but there is a thing as “too much complexity”, and “too emotionally connected”. A story can be pushed to be too complex for its own good. (See: Lost, Doctor Who (when it takes itself way too seriously, and Primer), or rely too much on emotional connections . . . which have no guarantee of forming with some of the audience. This is how some films/shows/stories get “this was GREAT” people having no idea why some people just can’t like it.

And again, it’s possible to provoke deep thought or interesting stories without dipping into the mature/darker themes.

Too complex might be possible if connecting the dots becomes overly difficult or leads to contradiction. As for being too emotionally inclined, that boils down to the viewer and their abilities at little self-control. Arguably, that point is probably why taboo material is frowned upon.