Gears of War Writer Talks Shop
By Andrew on Thursday, May 31st, 2007 at 1:01 AM PST In Gamer Life, Games Industry
Ever play a game that was really cheesy? Chances are, the writing sucked.
Over at the ars Technica website, there is a feature on Sandra O’Connor, who has helped develop games like Bioshock and Gears of War. She has a few good things to say about the art of writing in video games.
“You’re trying to craft a story for the player. He’s the star,” O’Connor said in the feature. “But who the hell is he? How is he going to act?”
The feature even suggests that writing in video games isn’t progressing like it should, even though graphics definitely are. This writer even agrees.
Why do you get into a game like Half-Life 2 and not even care about another? Okay, there are lots of reasons why this could be, but there are also lots of reasons why the writing in a game makes it turn in so many wrong directions that you really don’t know why you started playing it in the first place.
Oh, so, apparently newer games focus on graphics and not plot? Wow, that’s…surely something I hadn’t worked out…years ago.
Few games now have good writing, fewer still give the time to devote to actually writing long stories that take more than 10 minutes to complete. Sure, sometimes you want games that look graphically awesome, but if I pay good money for games, I want a good game in return. I don’t consider a game with 2 hours life-span but amazing graphics to be a good game.
Two words: Grim Fandango.