Dragon Age Narrative Lead Claims BioWare 'Quietly Resented' Its Writers

@BlueBeemer EA isn't Bioware. He's literally saying Bioware's executives hated the writers. EA can be blamed for many things but Bioware's own bad writing? Not so much.

It's the same with how people get upset over some former defunct companies of EA, like Pandemic Studios for example, a company that put out several bad releases with bad gameplay and bad writing. That has everything to do with the game developers and writers.

The problem is most of new generations of writer is just not good, they spend too much of their time in twitter and though it's a real place.

I think in the end with some exception (for the really good writers), most executive will replace them with ai.

And here I thought Anthem reflected the highest standards of writing.

Same problem with square and forspoken where the experienced writers were scrapped and a bunch of actors/directors moonlighting as writers were brought in to write that Hemingwayesque masterpiece.

I'm starting to become weary of most writing in todays media. There are too many things writers have to pander to. It appears to me that there has to be a certain amount of inclusion for fear of being branded "this" or "that". Most of my favourite writers are dead and i would love to see how somebody like Hunter S Thompson would have dealt with todays issues if he had not checked himself out.@Phornix i agree with you 100%^

yea pandering this is why I cringe when I hear their bringing back a old favorite game tv show or movie.

Like. Oh my. I’m looking for a plug-in.

@wiiware Utter drivel of a generalisation. Disco Elysium, Citizen Sleeper, God of War, Wrath of the Righteous, Divinity OS2, Pentiment, Tyranny etc etc. I could go on and on and list recent games with fantastic writing, but sure go ahead and blame Twitter because we have some that are written badly. There have always been badly written games and tv shows. We have more games with better writing now than ever. To act like now is a particularly bad time is absolute nonsense if you take some time and look at the field of play, be it in gaming or tv. This lazy cliche needs to stop being regurgitated.

AAA SP games are f**ked aren't they? Publishers want all games to be grindy Destiny clones where the story is the bare minimum to justify running in circles and shooting orbs and/or bland robots. I've never bought a game like this and I'm flabbergasted that gamers are still surprised when games like this turn out to be crap

@ShadowofSparta Agreed. There are bad writers and there are good writers. Both kinds have some level of understanding about the complexity of Story in game: Characters, plot, story arcs, narrative, dialogue, relationships, etc. It's a fine balance getting all these together into a congruent whole. Some writers are better at one aspect and not the other. You've all referred to games where this didn't come together. Forespoken is a great example. It's an old story (nothing wrong with that) but one told badly in so many ways. A great story can be buried by awful designed game play but an awful story cannot elevate a beautiful game that has great mechanics etc.

@wiiware For someone with such an appreciation for good writing, your post was a mess.

@Shepherd_Tallon The weird thing is that these Anthem/Evolve/Avengers/Babylon's Fall type games frequently don't do that well, but they keep making them! I'm just praying that the Sony live service games are good as that could be a large amount of ps5 output

@Fyz306903 The Yakuza/Like A Dragon series takes great offense at this!

@burning_as_souls But don't those have a story?

@Shepherd_Tallon The thing is, two of my favourite games are Firewatch and Disco Elysium, so MP and/or LS games don't usually interest me. An SP games that gets regular updates is technically a LS game, so hopefully one or two of them will suit me

@nathanSF I don't blame Forespoken on the writers.
I thought the dialogue (during story, not any line spit out when off in battle) was perfectly natural and flowed. Neither the writing nor acting were issues for me.
The problem was the editing. The story was clearly chopped up and shortened, likely due to bad time management on other's part.
I can see a good story in there chopped down.
That lends weight to the guy in the article's argument of the developers themselves not giving enough priority, respect or attention to the plot or writers.

One of the problems is the same one as exists in music. In music, someone will be in the studio one day and think "oh, this will sound better if..." and they end up getting a writing credit for just one line in the song. Perhaps movies and games aren't as bad, but a lot of the time it does feel like a lot of writers are trying to make their ideas happen, when the problem is too many chefs spoiling the broth. It takes a lot of the flow and naturality out of a story or conversation.

Probably doesn't help that writing is the easiest creative art to get into, so everybody thinks they can do it.

I can't say I am surprised that in a race to the bottom to churn out never ending sequels that studios would value writers less and less. That said, I still think there are a lot of good games out out there with decent stories so perhaps it is not a universal experience.

Also, I saw some comments above mention Yakuza which have brilliant stories, but at the same time, the first thing that popped into my head is rubber bullets.

@burning_as_souls I'm not a writer and english is not my first language. What I said is the truth though.

@ShadowofSparta I rarely play western rpg so I mostly didn't know any game from that list, god of war is good though. I'm not saying all western story suck now, but it's waay worse than before.

@Northern_munkey Totally agree. My favorite is still Micheal Crichton. It's one of the reasons I decided to start writing science fiction. Sick of all the pandering that sacrifices potential good stories.

I'll go off on a more positive tangent here and hope that someday their game comes to more than just the PC. Stray Gods has a ridiculous voice cast, so hopefully Summerfall Studios/Humble Games brings that to the PS5 someday.

@burning_as_souls Perhaps you are right. I only played the free demo and was totally put off by the dialogue. I was looking forward to the game if not for the unbearable dialogue between Frey and Cuff, I would have very likely bought it.

I define "Writing" in games as the whole experience. Like a good playwright writes a live experience, a good game writer will do the same for the player. Every element in a game needs to support an artist vision.

Kojima, Ueda, Miyazaki, Yoko Taro, Takahashi, Team Silent back in the day, are all great examples.

I imagine the sentiment he's describing was probably present at quite a few companies, but the top dogs were just better at hiding it. There was a general panicked push towards online and GaaS for a while but hopefully, with the likes of GoW, Elden Ring and Horizon selling bucketloads and scrapping it out for awards, we'll see it swing back towards single player and writers will become a valued commodity again.

BioWare sadly is a far cry from what it once was.

I got the impression that the resentment is kinda mutual...