ESO Writing Team: Please...stop it.

Apollosipod · November 26

I'm currently playing through eastern Solstice and I am struggling due to the writing decisions this team has made. At one point you actually have our character make the comment "How did the assault go? I was busy rescuing prisoners and stuff."

Am I the only one that really hates this? I don't find it clever or funny. It's just immersion breaking. Why can't any of the dialogue be written like it's not an episode of a sitcom?

Radiate77 · November 26

Preach. 🙏

There is nothing worse than feeling like you’re playing a story designed for edgy teenagers.

Know your audience, ZOS.
MMOs are not favored by young gamers.

colossalvoids · November 26

Issues is that feedback like this getting drowned by "#esofam" on twitter, etc. if this folks are still around. Writing is getting worse with each and every year so not holding my breath for a sudden turn from the "funny haha" fest we're having in this theme park. That's like writers did saw the amount of humour in single player titles but the style went over their heads and landed somewhere in the modern marvel universe instead.

Syldras · November 26

It seems nothing is taken seriously anymore in writing, so why would the player take the story seriously? It can't work.

I'm not entirely against humour, of course. The game always had humourous content and characters. Cadwell is a good example. But it was a type of humour that fit the world and the story much better.

whitecrow · November 26

Yikes, that is terrible.

Syldras · November 26

The other thing they seem to be going for now is "romance". I fully expect them to include lots of random flirting next year (with "fan favorites", of course), probably believing that people will find that awesome and will ignore all flaws over that.

colossalvoids · November 26

Syldras wrote: »

The other thing they seem to be going for now is "romance". I fully expect them to include lots of random flirting next year (with "fan favorites", of course), probably believing that people will find that awesome and will ignore all flaws over that.

Well most of those new options seem quite... Excessive? Or too specific for the writer that I rarely was able to force myself to check those out, as they seemed too "off". It's interesting that they went with a new approach but it felt so flat and borderline useless, at least for me personally.

whitecrow · November 26

Great, ESO is now fan fiction.

BardokRedSnow · November 26

Romance is optional and popular so good luck convincing them not to go that way, I dont see anything wrong with it. As people have said its a story for adults. That said I wouldnt call what was in solstice romance, more flirty comments as it leads to nowhere. People loved it with Naryu, dunno why there's people hating on it now.

As for that bit of dialogue though, yea I didn't appreciate my character being made to sound like a terminally online millennial. But honestly I think eastern solstice did more right than wrong. In this case, sounding like an idiot should have been optional.

I think the real problem in the case of not just eso but games in general lately is that they're being written by millennials that actually talk like this. And stuff.

Jaimeh · November 26

In recent years I've noticed a type of meme-y humor as well as internet-speak in the dialogues, and like OP said, it's immersion breaking, poor quality and not up to the standards of earlier writing. I don't know if the team has undergone changes, but it's keenly felt in the quality of stories and dialogues as of late.

Syldras · November 26

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

Romance is optional and popular so good luck convincing them not to go that way, I dont see anything wrong with it.

There's nothing wrong about "romance", the thing that's wrong is if it starts to feel like content releases begin to rely on fanservice as a substitute for interesting stories and deep lore. Lore-wise, East Solstice was just sad.

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

As people have said its a story for adults.

I find it interesting how "for adults" always seems to mean more or less bawdy content (although what ESO has in that regard is super tame - I find it silly and clichéd, that's my whole problem with it), but never deeper characterisations, the avoidance of clear black/white schemes and other clichés, and complex stories not shying away from "difficult" topics (like moral dilemmas or questions of philosophy). That's what I would call "adult".

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

That said I wouldnt call what was in solstice romance, more flirty comments as it leads to nowhere. People loved it with Naryu, dunno why there's people hating on it now.

People have different opinions and I also found the Naryu "flirting" (or Jakarn in High Isle) silly. That's the problem: It's just so stupid. Herp derp! Bed! Wine! Bathing! "I also know a game I want to play with you! Hehehe...!" Gods.

Danikat · November 26

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

People loved it with Naryu, dunno why there's people hating on it now.

"People" are not a uniform group with one opinion between them. Some people liked it, others will have disliked it or been indifferent. Maybe the people who didn't like it didn't feel the need to mention it until it became clear it was going to be a reoccuring thing.

I know I was indifferent to Darien when he was an occasional side character in a few storylines I could forget about afterwards, but was more put off by ZOS informing us that they have decided we all find him attractive and want him flirting with our characters at every opportunity.

Yes romance storylines are popular with some people, but it needs to be a choice, not just a flat yes or no but a choice of who and how and when. My characters are all very different people and not only is it impossible to design a character they'd all find attractive, they'd all go about it in very different ways and without those options it's going to fall flat for me - I'd rather skip it entirely than waste my time on a storyline I have no interest in because it's full of things my characters would never do.

(Very different situation but it's the same reason I didn't like many of the chapter-specific tutorials. How you came to be sacrificed by the Worm Cult was left open so I could come up with all kinds of ways it happened to fit the characters. It's a lot harder to explain everyone being on a boat to Vvardenfell (especially if they leave immediately) or in an Elseweyr monastery or whatever.)

wolfie1.0. · November 26

I am surprised anyone takes the writing seriously. When characters that are dead, sacrificed to the gods, or supposedly transcended to a different planet of existence suddenly return...

And no real consequences for choices. And the ones you think you have get overridden or forced to be inconsequential.

Syldras · November 26

I also don't think it necessarily has to do with millenials being game writers nowadays, by the way. A good writer has the ability to write in a style that's appropriate for the story and medium they're writing for. It doesn't matter how they might talk or write in everyday life with their friends, it should be clear if a dialogue is supposed to be for a medieval fantasy game, it should sound accordingly. Let alone not all people born between 1980 and 1995 talk like that. I surely do not, and my friends of roughly the same age don't talk like that either.

Alphawolf01A · 1:44AM

I physically cringed at the end of an eastern solstice quest where a ghost sends you to tell his wife he died and you are given the option to flirt with her after delivering the news. Just low class.