I did not like the writing / story in Gold Road, but I know the problem is me. [Spoilers]

Syldras

Estin wrote: »

If you've been to the ESO subreddit in the past month or so, you would've seen a pretty credible reason as to why the stories feel one dimensional. Can't discuss it here though.

What a pity. I'm curious who's to blame this time.

ArchMikem

Pelanora wrote: »

There's a quest in reapers march of invading collovians into a bosmer village. The player blows up the village and defeats the collovians. Isn't this antagonism a long standing thing? I know nothing about lore but just did that quest the other day and thought 'oh is that the background to west weald'?

The Colovian Occupation quest was about a Cohort of the Colovian Imperial Legion being ordered by a relative of Tharn to open a Dark Anchor in the city. Colovia itself wasnt the perp of that attack.

Pelanora

ArchMikem wrote: »

Pelanora wrote: »

There's a quest in reapers march of invading collovians into a bosmer village. The player blows up the village and defeats the collovians. Isn't this antagonism a long standing thing? I know nothing about lore but just did that quest the other day and thought 'oh is that the background to west weald'?

The Colovian Occupation quest was about a Cohort of the Colovian Imperial Legion being ordered by a relative of Tharn to open a Dark Anchor in the city. Colovia itself wasnt the perp of that attack.

Ahhhh ok. Yes I recall the Tharn name popping up now.

Elsonso

Syldras wrote: »

Well, in the end, we don't know their motivations. I just have the impression that, how to describe it... that ZOS doesn't really write deep stories, or stories that show some more complicated philosophy or complex social or political developments. At least I don't see that in ESO. Especially in the later years, I would describe many characters as cliché and many storylines as quite obvious and linear. Even when they said they want to do something political instead of the "demonic being destroys the world" story for High Isle - I mean, what did we get? It wasn't really about political happenings, it was another weird cliché mad cultist type of enemy. And what we saw what would have been bordering a political topic, the rulers of the alliances, turned into another positive "we have to work together and become friends" story - but then still having no real impact on Tamriel in the end.

I can understand how ignoring certain things in the stories (from ZOS's side, because they don't want to make it a topic) leads to strange "messages", of course.

I don't want ZOS delving into real world societal or political issues unless they stop directing the outcome a certain way. ZOS is very opinionated with respect to the outcome of stories and we are just along for the ride. That makes societal and political stories with any real world parallel something divisive.


If they can manage to do it without intersecting real world events and situations, that is a different story. Literally.

Varana

Yeah, let's cut out all political content from the game at all, making it hollow and lifeless because Tamriel suddenly ceases to have politics. Great idea.

Every possible larger political issue that could arise in-game, is a hot topic somewhere in the world at any given time. Fantasy politics will inevitably overlap with real-world politics if done well, because only that way are they believable and relatable. We need politics in fantasy worlds because otherwise they would be dead and sterile. Snowflakes who can't stand seeing a position other than their own represented in a fantasy world can go snowflake somewhere else.

Syldras

Elsonso wrote: »

I don't want ZOS delving into real world societal or political issues unless they stop directing the outcome a certain way. ZOS is very opinionated with respect to the outcome of stories and we are just along for the ride. That makes societal and political stories with any real world parallel something divisive.
If they can manage to do it without intersecting real world events and situations, that is a different story. Literally.

Oh, I'm not talking about directly copying real world political issues, let alone recent ones. But enough fantasy or sci-fi authors have managed to write more complex (and most of all: more interesting) stories about wars and other conflicts then what we've seen in ESO so far. And if we take more personal human issues into consideration, there's plenty stories about that in classical literature - no matter if Greek tragedies, Alighieri, Shakespeare or Byron. Not that I expect ESO to be on that level, but I think they currently underestimate the players with their increasingly simple narrations.

Elsonso

Syldras wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

I don't want ZOS delving into real world societal or political issues unless they stop directing the outcome a certain way. ZOS is very opinionated with respect to the outcome of stories and we are just along for the ride. That makes societal and political stories with any real world parallel something divisive.
If they can manage to do it without intersecting real world events and situations, that is a different story. Literally.

Oh, I'm not talking about directly copying real world political issues, let alone recent ones. But enough fantasy or sci-fi authors have managed to write more complex (and most of all: more interesting) stories about wars and other conflicts then what we've seen in ESO so far. And if we take more personal human issues into consideration, there's plenty stories about that in classical literature - no matter if Greek tragedies, Alighieri, Shakespeare or Byron. Not that I expect ESO to be on that level, but I think they currently underestimate the players with their increasingly simple narrations.

I recognized that you were not talking about that and added to what you said. There seems to be a real world thing where entertainment companies feel a pressing need to weigh in on social and political situations. My thinking is that ZOS is no exception. If they do that, I want full freedom to pick an outcome that I want, which may or may not be the same as they want, including ignoring it.

SeaGtGruff

OgrimTitan wrote: »

<snip>
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Note_to_King_Nantharion
<snip>
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:The_Vashabar_Threat
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Save_Skingrad!
<snip>

I just ran into issues with the first and third links, so I'm posting fixes for them:

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Note_to_Nantharion
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:The_Vashabar_Threat
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Save_Skingrad!

I guess they removed "King" from the first one because it was written by someone to whom Nantharion was no king and who would not have used such a title when speaking to him.

The third link was typed correctly, but because it wasn't added with the "link" option the exclamation mark gets lost when the browser auto-converts it to a clickable link. I've used the "link" option for all three.

spartaxoxo

Syldras wrote: »

Not that I expect ESO to be on that level, but I think they currently underestimate the players with their increasingly simple narrations.

It feels to me like the Marvel Method of writing this stuff has made it's way into the game. I know that Marvel didn't create any of this stuff or that it even created it's popularity. Stuff like it always existed. But Marvel's domination of the box office seems to have effected the writing of many US productions and made the style of writing more prevalent. And it kind of feels like that's made it's way into video games as well. Where even the stuff that used to be more complex and mature has dumbed down to the Marvel style.

Vaguely touch on an issue but rarely ever say anything substantial.

Happy Endings

No killing of major characters unless they are newly introduced. If you break this rule, they come back somehow or it was fake.

Constant quips and witty banter from all characters. Even ones that should be more serious.

Undercutting anything too complex, serious, emotional, or even just villainously epic, with humor

Half baked romances

Characters that feel more like archetypes to project onto than complex people with a variety of emotions

Pelanora

And yet game of thrones took the tv world by storm.

But I agree with the trend, I've read the writer of sopranos saying TV execs want stuff people can watch "while they're on their phone". It's hard to find interesting tv. Some good apple shows in among the fluff.

Syldras

Elsonso wrote: »

There seems to be a real world thing where entertainment companies feel a pressing need to weigh in on social and political situations. My thinking is that ZOS is no exception. If they do that, I want full freedom to pick an outcome that I want, which may or may not be the same as they want, including ignoring it.

Let's say I'm also not a fan of media making obvious statements, having a "moral" or "teaching" undertone or deciding for the public what moral choice they have to make. That might work for children's media (although, to be honest, I disliked lecturing stories already as a child), but I think that media for adults should present a situation and let people have their own thoughts and make their own choices. People have a brain after all, they don't need to get everything presented on a platter.

And especially when it comes to roleplaying, I'd like to have as much freedom as possible (although I understand that companies might want to put a limit at some point) to let my character react on the story, no matter if it's the morally "right" way or not, or what I might think about the topic in real life. But of course it gets increasingly difficult as there are people who expect statements, and who fail to understand that showing something immoral doesn't mean celebrating it, and that roleplay behaviour doesn't mean that the person shares the same views in real life.

I_killed_Vivec

Pelanora wrote: »

And yet game of thrones took the tv world by storm.

It did occur to me that if ZoS were following the GoT playbook then we'd have the death of an important NPC for the "Oh my goodness, I don't believe it! They just killed X!" effect.

Like one of the alliance leaders...