The opening section where some hotshot explorer just GIVES you his organisation’s only ship and robot has to be the most idiotic and unbelievable moment in gaming narrative history (at least in my experience).
THANK YOU for calling this out. The story is the most hamfisted, milquetoast, bland, unbelievable lazy writing I’ve ever seen in a video game. Hey, you’re a random miner on her first day at work, here’s a ship and a secret society you’re supposed to be in. Welcome to the video game.
Hahah yes exactly. I know Beth isn’t highly regarded for writing/narrative but it makes Skyrim look like Shakespeare.
I actually thought Skyrim’s environmental storytelling was pretty good to be fair.
And yeah I think you called it with “lazy”. As a writer myself I actually found it almost offensive how utterly dogshit and low effort it was from a company that has the resources to do so much better.
I sincerely got the bends from basically alt-tabbing from the middle of Baldur’s Gate 3’s superlative storytelling straight into “OMG I’ve never seen someone generically mine a rock as good as you” and I had to turn it off (I eventually played it for about 10 hours, but I also initially installed it to a slow SSD and it was also unplayable aside from the garbage intro.)
Oooo! That’s the phrase I’ve been looking for for a few years. Yes! You know what game has amazing environmental storytelling? The MMO RPG Guild Wars 2. It’s typical high fantasy on the surface with its own unique style but the environment slowly unveils that it’s really a post-post-post apocalypse world. I enjoyed that aspect the most. Leaving typical big city fantasy hub to find yourself swimming thru radioactive waters covering a submerged skyscraper. So cool.
Kinda like Elfstones of Shannara book fiction turned out to be.
THANK YOU for calling this out. The story is the most hamfisted, milquetoast, bland, unbelievable lazy writing I’ve ever seen in a video game. Hey, you’re a random miner on her first day at work, here’s a ship and a secret society you’re supposed to be in. Welcome to the video game.
Fuck off.
Hahah yes exactly. I know Beth isn’t highly regarded for writing/narrative but it makes Skyrim look like Shakespeare.
I actually thought Skyrim’s environmental storytelling was pretty good to be fair.
And yeah I think you called it with “lazy”. As a writer myself I actually found it almost offensive how utterly dogshit and low effort it was from a company that has the resources to do so much better.
I sincerely got the bends from basically alt-tabbing from the middle of Baldur’s Gate 3’s superlative storytelling straight into “OMG I’ve never seen someone generically mine a rock as good as you” and I had to turn it off (I eventually played it for about 10 hours, but I also initially installed it to a slow SSD and it was also unplayable aside from the garbage intro.)
Oooo! That’s the phrase I’ve been looking for for a few years. Yes! You know what game has amazing environmental storytelling? The MMO RPG Guild Wars 2. It’s typical high fantasy on the surface with its own unique style but the environment slowly unveils that it’s really a post-post-post apocalypse world. I enjoyed that aspect the most. Leaving typical big city fantasy hub to find yourself swimming thru radioactive waters covering a submerged skyscraper. So cool.
Kinda like Elfstones of Shannara book fiction turned out to be.