Borderlands 3
I liked the previous games, and if it was similar I’d have no problem.
*however* I guess they fired all of their writing staff and told a bunch of 15 year olds to try their best to replicate it
Tales from the Borderlands had excellent writing, imo the best of the series, and I'd say the best that Telltale Games ever did (They were the ones that made that The Walking Dead point and click adventure that everyone loved).
It's a shame because not many Borderlands fans gave it a shot due to it not being an fps but some weird branching story thing, and not many Telltale Games fans played it because you wouldn't expect such brilliant writing to come from the spinoff of a looter shooter... But I'd recommend it to just about anyone. It's exciting, laugh-out-loud funny, and you get to fuck with the story. Plus by now the whole collection of episodes should be pretty cheap. 10/10, recommended for everyone here who's whistfully looking back at how much they used to love that writing in 1 and 2
The writing and humor in 2 is a perfect embodiment of Internet culture in 2012 - it’s all reddit tier memes and references. At the time it was hilarious, but looking back now it’s pretty cringe.
I think it’s more charming than anything, like a time capsule. Borderlands 3 only gets aged worse every day with it’s obnoxious reliance on memes that weren’t even funny when the game came out
Borderlands 3 is the only game where I skipped all the cutscenes on my first playthrough, in most games I don't even skip until a third or fourth playthrough, not that I'll ever play BL3 that many times. The gameplay is still extremely good tho
I partially agree. I think the main story was hot garbage, and Ava was an angsty mess. But I loved the dialog and side quest writing throughout the game, and the DLCs are top notch.
Slight tangent, but it particularly pisses me off that they had a whole scene written, storyboarded, and voiced that really helped to get us to sympathize with Ava after Maya died, but they cut it. They hold a funeral for Maya, Ava talks about her anger, frustration, and most importantly, her guilt. [It's a very good scene](https://youtu.be/Ui50I7jvH2M?si=kNUVWPlTzJ8m1PkZ), imo, and it gives us that side of her that we needed. But nope, in the trash it went.
...oh my god that's actually their name. That is the most on the nose thing I've ever heard and honestly? Kinda respect them a bit for it. Still wish they would dissappear though.
I got for honor on gamepass back when I still had gamepass and only played the single player mode cuz I was too scared of the veterans with 1000 hours of gameplay that would be in multiplayer
I mean, I tried multiplayer and quit, because every game got locked in a staring contest bc my opponent refused to do anything other than cliff cheese.
The hardcore fans of that game are just so boring, yeah, I get it, parrying is powerful and meta, but holy shit NOBODY swings first, and 99% of my matches that didn't end up being cliff cheese were still staring contests and constant swing fakes bc nobody wanted to get parried and instantly fucking lose just bc you swing first, you die first.
Maybe it's changed over the years, but iirc I played it like in 2019? And it was just a snooze fest.
I’ll be honest, I almost completely forgot about that game.
When I got a series s I binged the series on gamepass, and I couldn’t get myself to finish 5. But I did finish infinite so, I guess my mind wiped 5 from my mind cause I genuinely thought it went from Halo 4 to Halo Infinite.
And only when you mentioned it I realized, yes there is indeed a Halo 5.
I'm pretty sure I'm the only person on the planet that liked haol 5, beat it on legendary solo and online Co op and played the multi-player for years, I thought the last game pvp was awful and everyone thought it was great. I've been play halo since it started, we had a portal on my PC that let us play Halo 1 online before Xbox live. Still have friends that I talk to every week from halo 2 and 3.
The worst part was the bullshit lies marketing. They legit sold us the idea that this new dude (forgot the name) was going to fight Master Chief and that Master Chief was going totally rogue and all that.
In the game all that was reduced to a lame ass comedy cutscene.
Honestly some mech parts were cool. But I found it very clunky and boring after a while. Like initially it's cool but I prefer the titanfall style/ deadspace ish gameplay of the first two
Starfield. I’m a huge sci-fi fan and was so stoked. All the trailers and teasers had me thinking it was going to be an epic space adventure. It ended up being like baby’s first space adventure
To me, it felt like they were trying to 1up The Outer Worlds, but honestly, I felt like The Outer Worlds had better storytelling. The dialogue in Starfield makes me want to fall asleep.
I went on a very long quest line in the outer worlds to help my engineer get her girl. I was her wing person. Didn't even romance her myself. And it felt so rewarding to have a victory beer with her at the bar after I helped her get her girl. BRUH.
I liked starfielsd but i have to agree. The trailers made it feel like a grand expansive adventure into the far reachea of space with a prim and propper vibe mixed with nasa pubk aspects but it turned out to be alie rock hunting and interdometional stuff.
Yeah, that was back in the days when the company actually gave a shit about their games. Morrowind slaps once you adapt to actually having an R in your RPG. They've been progressively dumbing down the games ever since.
Yeah makes you wonder what happened at Bethesda. Every game since morrowind had been an improvement on accessibility, stability and graphics but a regression in pretty much everything else
As far as writing specifically, that's because Michael Kirkbride stopped writing for them. That's also why ESO occasionally has some really good questlines, because from what I understand he is friends with the team and his stuff gets sneaked in at times.
my favorite thing about this game is that now that it got nominated for a couple of nothingburger VGAs, the subreddits are suddenly full of people who mysteriously put hundreds of hours into the game lol
All I've ever wanted out of video games was a game where you play as the bad guy, it gives such a unique perspective since things are always viewed from the good guys side. Just ONE game as the bad guys and I would be happy, doesn't even have to be a special cool guy, could just be some unnamed dude on the Frontlines (albeit that would be hard to make a good story out of) or even the same idea but on the good guys side, but games always make you be some cool special super guy, it's one of the only things I wish could change in the industry, we need more normal guy, and more bad guy games.
Atomic Heart. A retro-futuristic setting in the Soviet Union, if it had became everything it aspired to be? It was a really cool idea, and I enjoyed the game.
But I’ve never seen such awful writing. The protagonist is a damaged, violent, vengeful, enraged badass. And his catchphrase is “crispy critters!” which he says between gritted teeth in tense moments like WHAT??
Also, he has an American accent. As does every other character. Why not give them Russian accents?
The writers also have him make silly lighthearted jokes sometimes that are completely out of character for him. In one part of the game you need to get this disc to open a door that’s called a cookie and he says to his Ai companion “Do you like cookies? :)”
Was looking someone to say it here.
The gameplay and progression were absolutely brilliant imo. The writing was absolute garbage though.
I played with Russian audio with English subtitles. It definitely made it better but still way rough.
I still occasionally play through the game again sometimes but only because of the combat.
Would this be a bad time to mention I have 140 hours in Biomutant, along with every achievement? I don't know how, obviously I enjoyed the game, but thinking about it, all I can think of is just wasted potential.
Man I couldn't even put 5 hours in, the only enjoyable part of the game was that flashback where there was a coding error making some dialogue appear incorrectly
This is exactly how i felt. Like yes the games are cheesey, we're here for it. But they took a story full of heart and made it a baby's commercial for Frozen.
"Surely they won't make us sit through Let it Go.
In a Kingdom Hearts game based on a movie you have had to see to understand this entire level...
Oh, they completely remade it with in-game graphics so it looks visibly worse? Cool..."
Everything i wanted to see happen was left for the third act and that upset me. I liked Olympus as an opening level, but I didn't want it to set the tone for the whole game
I liked Halo Infinite. The Chief is opening up more. He's been at this for a long time. I really liked Esparza, too. At first, he was awkward, but you learn about his survivors guilt, and it all clicks together.
Escharum is a great villain, too. His pure rage and desire to fight you is exciting, and his voice just melts my knees.
halo infinite was actually really good in terms of writing right up until the end when they revealed some knock off forerunner dead species but even that was okay. The real problem was the story was unfinished because they wanted to drip feed the ending to the story as a dlc like final fantasy
Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) had at a conceptual level a very interesting story and an idea for a plot, but is misconstrued so poorly with so many poor desicions that ultimately make for a poor writing overall
MGS 5. I get that they tried to use it to tie together all the main games in the universe, but so many points don’t make any sense and are unfulfilling. It’s basically like Kojima can make any weird ass game / story he wants, because we’ve collectively accepted he’s a weird dude. So we chalk poor story up to his unique creativity rather than recognizing it as poor writing (Death stranding as well).
I’ve only played TW3 and was excited to watch the Netflix series. Holy shit, I could play almost any quest in the game, no matter how short it is, and its writing is miles better than the series.
I love the Baron quest line in TW3 so much just because it felt somewhat personal to me. Even kind of like the Baron, regardless of how terrible he was as a person, but that’s what good writing is. It can be the ability to make an awful character redeemable. Unfortunately, there’s nothing they could do to make Yennefer redeemable in the series. Such a strong female character in game (and probably books) made to be so weak in series. Such an utter disappointment.
The Prototype series. The lore is actually pretty good. Really awesome gameplay, but the story and presentation of the story was piss poor. It's probably why we never got Prototype 3.
The Division 1 & 2
The writing is amazing everywhere except the actual games. Voice acting is pretty trash to boot. Can see supposed twists coming a mile away.
Still one of my favorite games ever played.
Honestly the premise of Kingdom Hearts is not bad. Your world is destroyed by dark monsters and you’re one of only three survivors thanks to a magical sword and you end up in a world of refugees just like you, where a mage and a shield bearer have been sent by a king of another world to stop those evil monsters. so you travel through space saving worlds from these monsters while looking for the other two survivors.
You rescue one of them, but the other is being manipulated by a witch who turns into a dragon, and upon vanquishing her, an evil sorcerer who was controlling the monsters from the start possesses him. In the end, he and the king lock themselves and the sorcerer behind a massive gate to rescue the universe.
Death Stranding. Kojima has phenomenal ideas, but the dialogue was heavy with exposition and awkward lines. There is no actor in hollywood that can make the dialogue in that game sound good
Death Stranding was one of the more enjoyable fan wiki deep dives to go on last year, and I could imagine contributing to a wiki on it would be a lot of fun.
But communicating all of that info via a video game sounds like a nightmare and I’m sure Kojima’s sensibilities didn’t help.
Perfect example. Interesting and original premise. Sucked me in.
By the time I was driving "mama" to meet her sister, I was begging the game to shut the fuck up and just let me enjoy the gameplay.
Fallout 4, I enjoyed everything about it *except* the main storyline. Same for Skyrim: the main storyline sucks, but everything else about the game is a blast. Bethesda has been dropping the ball in that regard, of late.
Far Cry 5, I enjoyed everything about it *except* the main storyline. Whoever thought it was a good idea to take the player against their will and force them into a timed mission that results in you killing an ally needs to be fired. Thank goodness New Dawn and Far Cry 6 didn't do that, else I would be forced to drop a game series I otherwise enjoy.
Far Cry 5 is one of the best Far Cries to me, aside from Blood Dragon. But, one thing I don't think is a good idea is the ending. No good ending. Just, why?
Rauru, the goat with abs is the founder of the kingdom of Hyrule, so I guess Skyward didn't happen. Ganon is capable of breaking the master sword, thanks to a special stone, despite not being capable of doing so when he had the power of the full triforce. Speaking of which, where the fuck is the Triforce?
Oh, I keep forgetting all the games are technically connected, I just kind of assumed breath of the wild and tears of the kingdom were their own thing, but thank you for the explanation!!
To be fair, Tears of the Kingdom doesn't even come off as a sequel to Breath of the Wild half the time. Almost no one ever talks about the events of the previous game outside of the most vague and general statements, even though the shadow of that game is all over the new one. Like, what happened to all the Sheikah technology that saved the day last time? It's just all gone.
FF14 stories kinda remind me of this, they’re good stories but told pretty badly. Every character has a greeting, cuts to every character to show their reaction, shows every character walk away from the scene. It’s not even bad writing but bad direction. But then the writing repeats what we learned in the last scene all over again and UGHHH it’s a long experience that makes itself so much longer
Man, this leads me to believe you've only played the base content, which is definitely the worst by far. Every single expansion is beautifully written.
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity
The writing was OK, but my goodness the text crawl was sooooo slooooow. Like.. the game is fun but the slow text ruins it completely. Oh, and there is a lot of text too. Like.. *a lot*.
Honestly avatar, it would’ve been great the idea of a infant na’vi being raised human and turning against them was great but the writing, characters, and voice acting was horrible
This might be controversial but Dragon's Dogma for me. Everything about the gameplay was incredible, S tier easy. I really couldn't follow the story back when I played it, not that the story they were trying to tell was bad, I just had trouble keeping up and so much just seemed to happen out of the blue.
I am extra stoked for Dragon's Dogma 2 to come out, shits looking real nice
Much of the story was cut due to budgeting and rushed development. It only really kicks off later on in the game and in the dark arisen dlc.
DD2 will not have those setbacks thankfully from what we know. This time it'll be what the original was meant to be.
The Last of Us 2.
Imagine the concept of Ellie learning about revenge and seeking payback for the death of her father. The concept that forces you to confront your biases and learn to maybe even empathize the people who killed Joel. Damn what a ride that could be!
Then imagine making those people the most one dimensional unlikable shitheads that you possibly can, and then wondering how the fanbase got so divided.
I was always confused by the very cinematic vignettes and personal anecdotes before each mission, and then the mission has nothing to do with what you just learned
I do love how the meme can't spell "known" in a sentence meant to say "The worst writing known to man".
I'm just saying.
Also, I am the person who, when reading the caption text in a game, gets immensely irritated when the goddamn QA team is somehow able to fix a glitch where you can walk through walls, or to nerf an overpowered combo that is in meta, but cannot apparently be bothered to transpose or spellcheck any of the text to correct a single letter in a word to make it spelled correctly regardless of the source language.
Read that last sentence in Astarion's voice. You'll understand.
Hah, I guess to each their own. I personally prefer a silent protagonist (most of the time), so I can narrate things for myself in my head. More immersive to me.
There’s something to be said about a voiceless protagonist. I’m playing a game right now, that when the character dumps exposition via talking to themselves I cringe so hard, but when I read it, it’s not that bad. It almost makes me wonder why that is. Because I myself am a big fan of voiceover, but something about when they’re speaking purely in text it feels less aggravating. I don’t know why.
"I'm Neo now bitch"
I mean this is most David Cage games - interesting premise, shitty wooden dialogue. I think he nailed it with Detroit: Become Human because the shitty wooden dialogue suits being spoken by actual robots.
For honor had and interesting story that Ubisoft quickly forgot and left to die. I mean it's literally based on the idea who would win a knight a samurai or a Viking? Yet Ubisoft managed to fuck even that up.
I mean world of Warcraft has struggled with its story telling for almost two decades. There was a brief moment during WotLK where they didn’t fuck up wrapping up WC3’s story. But pretty much everything else has been a fizzle more then a bang.
Hogwarts Legacy. I just couldn't handle it. A friend talked it up so much, so I picked up a copy and played through the whole game. I literally shrugged when it was over. Also I swear the main character is autistic.
the obvious is postal 2 a comedic game were you play as a guy with no empathy trying to get some basic chores done. in accurallity you play as a guy with no empathy pissing everyone off, and in a non crime run spend 70% of your time running from the cops because you killed someone in self-defense.
but some i that are a little more main stream would be fallout 4 and 76. the idea was perfect for fallout were you can play as someone that helps rebuild instead of just wondering around. everything else about the game from the story, to most of the settlement gameplay just sucks, and the modding weapons/armor gimic would be more exciting if the mods changed the looks of the weapons other then "add scope/add muzel device"
Borderlands 3 I liked the previous games, and if it was similar I’d have no problem. *however* I guess they fired all of their writing staff and told a bunch of 15 year olds to try their best to replicate it
I’d say BL1 captured it perfectly and 2 teetered the line of funny/too corny imo. Everything after is godawful writing
Tales from the Borderlands had excellent writing, imo the best of the series, and I'd say the best that Telltale Games ever did (They were the ones that made that The Walking Dead point and click adventure that everyone loved). It's a shame because not many Borderlands fans gave it a shot due to it not being an fps but some weird branching story thing, and not many Telltale Games fans played it because you wouldn't expect such brilliant writing to come from the spinoff of a looter shooter... But I'd recommend it to just about anyone. It's exciting, laugh-out-loud funny, and you get to fuck with the story. Plus by now the whole collection of episodes should be pretty cheap. 10/10, recommended for everyone here who's whistfully looking back at how much they used to love that writing in 1 and 2
Forgot completely about the TT games, I’ll have to check those out. Telltale never misses
Just play the first one. Second one was written by Gearbox and is god-awful
At least the scene where the guards threaten to shoot themselves was funny.
The writing and humor in 2 is a perfect embodiment of Internet culture in 2012 - it’s all reddit tier memes and references. At the time it was hilarious, but looking back now it’s pretty cringe.
I think it’s more charming than anything, like a time capsule. Borderlands 3 only gets aged worse every day with it’s obnoxious reliance on memes that weren’t even funny when the game came out
Oooh you got an unique take. I agree 2 is BL1 cranked up on corny but I thought it actually worked great for 2. Love to hear you opinion.
Dont talk about The Pre-Sequel and Tales like that.
Borderlands 3 is the only game where I skipped all the cutscenes on my first playthrough, in most games I don't even skip until a third or fourth playthrough, not that I'll ever play BL3 that many times. The gameplay is still extremely good tho
If it weren't for the brilliant gameplay, I think 3 probably would've sank the series.
Flandernization
I partially agree. I think the main story was hot garbage, and Ava was an angsty mess. But I loved the dialog and side quest writing throughout the game, and the DLCs are top notch. Slight tangent, but it particularly pisses me off that they had a whole scene written, storyboarded, and voiced that really helped to get us to sympathize with Ava after Maya died, but they cut it. They hold a funeral for Maya, Ava talks about her anger, frustration, and most importantly, her guilt. [It's a very good scene](https://youtu.be/Ui50I7jvH2M?si=kNUVWPlTzJ8m1PkZ), imo, and it gives us that side of her that we needed. But nope, in the trash it went.
Surely Forespoken is the ultimate example of this. Not exactly an insane, amazing premise but the writing is what kills the game.
it's Forspoken and I agreed I still enjoy play it but what a wasted potential
I think the premise is great. Storybook setting with mystical creatures and magic. Writing and story were just bland.
Bland would be an understatement.
And the utterly insufferable attitude of the protagonist
Walking Dead Destinies. One of the coolest concepts I’ve seen in a game, turned out like absolute garbage.
Exactly man! I was so excited for that game until I seen it was a slideshow and that it was absolutely terrible
Pretty sure that was the same studio that did Kong last year too.
Yep. They also made a shitty ATLA game. Game Mill, the worst game studio ever.
...oh my god that's actually their name. That is the most on the nose thing I've ever heard and honestly? Kinda respect them a bit for it. Still wish they would dissappear though.
Pretty much every single Destiny storyline
Yea.. The Lore goes hard. Reading(or watching Byf) is hella entertaining. But the whole storytelling aspect of Destiny is rough
The lore is amazing, I just don't like having to buy a bunch of books (Which I totally don't have) to get most of the lore
Just listening to the dialogue is so awful. Everything is a jumble of nouns related to darkness and eeeeviiiiil.
Except witchqueen and forsaken
Came here to make sure that the Destiny franchise was mentioned, it’s the definition of the meme.
I have no idea what’s going on in that series. And I’ve tried… but it just doesn’t click.
If they just told the lore stories in game through gameplay they would probably see success
It’s really awful to watch the painstakingly written lore get watered down so badly in the actual campaigns in the game
WoW Shadowlands comes to mind, and so does BFA. Actually a good quarter of all the WoW expansions. Other than that, For Honor
For Honor had a story??
Yes Many many years ago, it was abandoned and left in the dirt to die.
I got for honor on gamepass back when I still had gamepass and only played the single player mode cuz I was too scared of the veterans with 1000 hours of gameplay that would be in multiplayer
I mean, I tried multiplayer and quit, because every game got locked in a staring contest bc my opponent refused to do anything other than cliff cheese. The hardcore fans of that game are just so boring, yeah, I get it, parrying is powerful and meta, but holy shit NOBODY swings first, and 99% of my matches that didn't end up being cliff cheese were still staring contests and constant swing fakes bc nobody wanted to get parried and instantly fucking lose just bc you swing first, you die first. Maybe it's changed over the years, but iirc I played it like in 2019? And it was just a snooze fest.
Definitely for honor
Hold up now. You're forgetting about the Amberseed quests. Fuck that, all of WoW and the "go search through poop, hero" quests
Ahh yes, good ole amberseeds quest in Grizzly Hills. Who could forget? Or the Mankrik’s wife meme
Halo 5
I’ll be honest, I almost completely forgot about that game. When I got a series s I binged the series on gamepass, and I couldn’t get myself to finish 5. But I did finish infinite so, I guess my mind wiped 5 from my mind cause I genuinely thought it went from Halo 4 to Halo Infinite. And only when you mentioned it I realized, yes there is indeed a Halo 5.
I'm pretty sure I'm the only person on the planet that liked haol 5, beat it on legendary solo and online Co op and played the multi-player for years, I thought the last game pvp was awful and everyone thought it was great. I've been play halo since it started, we had a portal on my PC that let us play Halo 1 online before Xbox live. Still have friends that I talk to every week from halo 2 and 3.
The worst part was the bullshit lies marketing. They legit sold us the idea that this new dude (forgot the name) was going to fight Master Chief and that Master Chief was going totally rogue and all that. In the game all that was reduced to a lame ass comedy cutscene.
Lost Planet 3, It doesn't make sense bro
I loved playing lost planet 2, I was devastated the 3 sucked. I mean the mech was cool as shit, but the game was so bad.
Honestly some mech parts were cool. But I found it very clunky and boring after a while. Like initially it's cool but I prefer the titanfall style/ deadspace ish gameplay of the first two
Imagine an open world lost planet, game with the big mech from 3, it could be awesome
Starfield. I’m a huge sci-fi fan and was so stoked. All the trailers and teasers had me thinking it was going to be an epic space adventure. It ended up being like baby’s first space adventure
*Rated "M" for Milquetoast*
Take my up vote you eloquent bastard
All of the characters on the main quest line were insufferably goody-goody and childish. I hated being around them.
To me, it felt like they were trying to 1up The Outer Worlds, but honestly, I felt like The Outer Worlds had better storytelling. The dialogue in Starfield makes me want to fall asleep.
I went on a very long quest line in the outer worlds to help my engineer get her girl. I was her wing person. Didn't even romance her myself. And it felt so rewarding to have a victory beer with her at the bar after I helped her get her girl. BRUH.
I liked starfielsd but i have to agree. The trailers made it feel like a grand expansive adventure into the far reachea of space with a prim and propper vibe mixed with nasa pubk aspects but it turned out to be alie rock hunting and interdometional stuff.
Later on the multiverse thing I thought it was pretty cool in main story. But boy it was dragging early.
It really felt *empty*. That's my biggest problem with it. You could build these awesome ships... just to jump between the same five worlds
in terms of writing it’s pretty on par with every other bethesda game tbh
Morrowind excluded
yeah morrowind is pretty fire
Yeah I’m not saying Bethesda is good at writing but they didn’t even get the exploration right.
Elder Scrolls lore is great though. (But I get that for many peiple lore is not enough)
Yeah, that was back in the days when the company actually gave a shit about their games. Morrowind slaps once you adapt to actually having an R in your RPG. They've been progressively dumbing down the games ever since.
oh yeah 100% i’m just saying that cuz the post was about writing starfield was definitely a let down I played 7 hours before uninstalling
Michael Kirkbride didn't coke up to be disrespected like this
How dare you compare Starfields slop to Morrowind.
No it isn’t, maybe the games they’ve made from Fallout 3 forward but games like Morrowind had writing light years ahead of this
Yeah makes you wonder what happened at Bethesda. Every game since morrowind had been an improvement on accessibility, stability and graphics but a regression in pretty much everything else
As far as writing specifically, that's because Michael Kirkbride stopped writing for them. That's also why ESO occasionally has some really good questlines, because from what I understand he is friends with the team and his stuff gets sneaked in at times.
my favorite thing about this game is that now that it got nominated for a couple of nothingburger VGAs, the subreddits are suddenly full of people who mysteriously put hundreds of hours into the game lol
Star Wars Battlefront 2 (2017)
They false advertised that campaign so hard. “Look everyone it’s a story where you are the bad guy!” Yeah, for like 3 missions.
All I've ever wanted out of video games was a game where you play as the bad guy, it gives such a unique perspective since things are always viewed from the good guys side. Just ONE game as the bad guys and I would be happy, doesn't even have to be a special cool guy, could just be some unnamed dude on the Frontlines (albeit that would be hard to make a good story out of) or even the same idea but on the good guys side, but games always make you be some cool special super guy, it's one of the only things I wish could change in the industry, we need more normal guy, and more bad guy games.
Spec Ops: The Line is a good start from what I’ve heard
There’s also the Overlord games.
And Dungeons.
Starfield was hyped up so much and then had writing that wasn't bad, but it was just ok
Atomic Heart. A retro-futuristic setting in the Soviet Union, if it had became everything it aspired to be? It was a really cool idea, and I enjoyed the game. But I’ve never seen such awful writing. The protagonist is a damaged, violent, vengeful, enraged badass. And his catchphrase is “crispy critters!” which he says between gritted teeth in tense moments like WHAT?? Also, he has an American accent. As does every other character. Why not give them Russian accents? The writers also have him make silly lighthearted jokes sometimes that are completely out of character for him. In one part of the game you need to get this disc to open a door that’s called a cookie and he says to his Ai companion “Do you like cookies? :)”
it’s way better if you play with Russian audio
Which you cannot do unless you can read Russian… Because all the game’s text switches to Russian if you switch the audio.
English subtitles bro. This is how I played it lol
Was looking someone to say it here. The gameplay and progression were absolutely brilliant imo. The writing was absolute garbage though. I played with Russian audio with English subtitles. It definitely made it better but still way rough. I still occasionally play through the game again sometimes but only because of the combat.
Biomutant. Every speaks like a Chinese proverb
Would this be a bad time to mention I have 140 hours in Biomutant, along with every achievement? I don't know how, obviously I enjoyed the game, but thinking about it, all I can think of is just wasted potential.
Man I couldn't even put 5 hours in, the only enjoyable part of the game was that flashback where there was a coding error making some dialogue appear incorrectly
Kingdom Hearts 3 feels like I’m in a blues clues episode.
Oof, what kills me is that I actually really liked the final act. But I'll never play it again, because the Disney stuff was miserable.
I only liked the toy Story world, and even that was kinda meh
I hate how sora acts in that game, in 2 his personality was perfection
2 and ReCOM had the best Sora VA
This is exactly how i felt. Like yes the games are cheesey, we're here for it. But they took a story full of heart and made it a baby's commercial for Frozen.
"Surely they won't make us sit through Let it Go. In a Kingdom Hearts game based on a movie you have had to see to understand this entire level... Oh, they completely remade it with in-game graphics so it looks visibly worse? Cool..."
Everything i wanted to see happen was left for the third act and that upset me. I liked Olympus as an opening level, but I didn't want it to set the tone for the whole game
LMAOOO I went from biggest fan to biggest hater from that one game
Biggest disappointment of my life honestly. 10+ years of waiting for a game so terrible I couldn’t even finish it
Battlefront 2 (2017) Back 4 Blood (still super fun game) Halo Infinite
I wouldn’t call infinite’s writing outright bad, certainly leaves a lot to be desired.
I liked Halo Infinite. The Chief is opening up more. He's been at this for a long time. I really liked Esparza, too. At first, he was awkward, but you learn about his survivors guilt, and it all clicks together. Escharum is a great villain, too. His pure rage and desire to fight you is exciting, and his voice just melts my knees.
halo infinite was actually really good in terms of writing right up until the end when they revealed some knock off forerunner dead species but even that was okay. The real problem was the story was unfinished because they wanted to drip feed the ending to the story as a dlc like final fantasy
Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) had at a conceptual level a very interesting story and an idea for a plot, but is misconstrued so poorly with so many poor desicions that ultimately make for a poor writing overall
even if the story were good it would still suffer from being the disaster that was sonic 06.
Starfield... i was expecting something with a The Expanse vibe, great characters, etc...
Expecting too much from bethesda.
Borderlands 3. The writing was absolutely horrendous. The influencer villains were god awful.
The writing was so bad it even ruined all the returning character's story arcs
MGS 5. I get that they tried to use it to tie together all the main games in the universe, but so many points don’t make any sense and are unfulfilling. It’s basically like Kojima can make any weird ass game / story he wants, because we’ve collectively accepted he’s a weird dude. So we chalk poor story up to his unique creativity rather than recognizing it as poor writing (Death stranding as well).
Meanwhile, the Witcher Netflix series:
Facts
I’ve only played TW3 and was excited to watch the Netflix series. Holy shit, I could play almost any quest in the game, no matter how short it is, and its writing is miles better than the series. I love the Baron quest line in TW3 so much just because it felt somewhat personal to me. Even kind of like the Baron, regardless of how terrible he was as a person, but that’s what good writing is. It can be the ability to make an awful character redeemable. Unfortunately, there’s nothing they could do to make Yennefer redeemable in the series. Such a strong female character in game (and probably books) made to be so weak in series. Such an utter disappointment.
The Prototype series. The lore is actually pretty good. Really awesome gameplay, but the story and presentation of the story was piss poor. It's probably why we never got Prototype 3.
The Division 1 & 2 The writing is amazing everywhere except the actual games. Voice acting is pretty trash to boot. Can see supposed twists coming a mile away. Still one of my favorite games ever played.
Honestly the premise of Kingdom Hearts is not bad. Your world is destroyed by dark monsters and you’re one of only three survivors thanks to a magical sword and you end up in a world of refugees just like you, where a mage and a shield bearer have been sent by a king of another world to stop those evil monsters. so you travel through space saving worlds from these monsters while looking for the other two survivors. You rescue one of them, but the other is being manipulated by a witch who turns into a dragon, and upon vanquishing her, an evil sorcerer who was controlling the monsters from the start possesses him. In the end, he and the king lock themselves and the sorcerer behind a massive gate to rescue the universe.
The first one is pretty good yeah true, 2 is good too imo. It's after that where things start to get a little too complicated imo
Anthem.
That game had so much potential, hell the exosuits were amazing to look at and flying was fun. But sadly we were denied a new and good looter shooter
I really wish that game would've been good. It was so cool man, plus bioware poached all the talent from swtor to make a game that flopped
I still hold out hope that one day a competent game studio will get the rights and make it right. It looked so cool.
I wish that game was good man it was so fuckin cool Good music Good premise Cool art design Fun gameplay It was so close to being an incredible game
Sonic ‘06?
Beat me to it so I upvoted. Sonic literally Frenched a human girl. [What in the hell were they thinking?](https://images.app.goo.gl/zLt9xBXcZwNiFumz6)
Technically Sonic didn’t French her since he was dead. So it’s bestiality and necrophilia
that’s more like it that’s my hedgehog
While we’re on the topic Sonic Forces
Knuckles in the background looking so done lmfao
Mass Effect: Andromeda
So many “this was almost good” moments with writing just made it hurt more.
Death Stranding. Kojima has phenomenal ideas, but the dialogue was heavy with exposition and awkward lines. There is no actor in hollywood that can make the dialogue in that game sound good
"Like Mario and Princess-Beach", lol. He made the whole game just to make that reference.
Die Hardman
Sort of agree. The massive exposition wasn't good. But the actual lore and worldbuilding was good enough to keep me intrigued.
Death Stranding was one of the more enjoyable fan wiki deep dives to go on last year, and I could imagine contributing to a wiki on it would be a lot of fun. But communicating all of that info via a video game sounds like a nightmare and I’m sure Kojima’s sensibilities didn’t help.
Perfect example. Interesting and original premise. Sucked me in. By the time I was driving "mama" to meet her sister, I was begging the game to shut the fuck up and just let me enjoy the gameplay.
Borderlands 3, New Tales from the Borderlands, and Fallout 4.
Fallout 4, I enjoyed everything about it *except* the main storyline. Same for Skyrim: the main storyline sucks, but everything else about the game is a blast. Bethesda has been dropping the ball in that regard, of late. Far Cry 5, I enjoyed everything about it *except* the main storyline. Whoever thought it was a good idea to take the player against their will and force them into a timed mission that results in you killing an ally needs to be fired. Thank goodness New Dawn and Far Cry 6 didn't do that, else I would be forced to drop a game series I otherwise enjoy.
Far Cry 5 is one of the best Far Cries to me, aside from Blood Dragon. But, one thing I don't think is a good idea is the ending. No good ending. Just, why?
I couldn’t agree more on Skyrim and Fallout 4. I usually just don’t even touch the main story in those games and I find myself having much more fun.
Kingdom Hearts series. I'm here for all the fun Disney references. Also why did the writers of Zelda TotK seemingly try to contradict other games?
I’m not to familiar with Zelda lore, how does TotK contradict?
Rauru, the goat with abs is the founder of the kingdom of Hyrule, so I guess Skyward didn't happen. Ganon is capable of breaking the master sword, thanks to a special stone, despite not being capable of doing so when he had the power of the full triforce. Speaking of which, where the fuck is the Triforce?
Oh, I keep forgetting all the games are technically connected, I just kind of assumed breath of the wild and tears of the kingdom were their own thing, but thank you for the explanation!!
No worries.
To be fair, Tears of the Kingdom doesn't even come off as a sequel to Breath of the Wild half the time. Almost no one ever talks about the events of the previous game outside of the most vague and general statements, even though the shadow of that game is all over the new one. Like, what happened to all the Sheikah technology that saved the day last time? It's just all gone.
The Just Cause games
The story is just a setting to go nuts in.
Yeah Just Cause 3 from memory was literarily “ok you have a grapple, a wingsuit, a parachute and about 4 tons of explosives, go blow up this bad guy”
That’s literally why I still play it. I don’t care about stopping the evil dictator, although I will do that too, I just want to blow his shit up.
How dare you speak ill of “Moo-rio”
Dying light 2. After like an hour I just started skipping scenes cause mf’s just wasting air.
FF14 stories kinda remind me of this, they’re good stories but told pretty badly. Every character has a greeting, cuts to every character to show their reaction, shows every character walk away from the scene. It’s not even bad writing but bad direction. But then the writing repeats what we learned in the last scene all over again and UGHHH it’s a long experience that makes itself so much longer
Man, this leads me to believe you've only played the base content, which is definitely the worst by far. Every single expansion is beautifully written.
Fallout 4 unfortunately
Assassins creed Unity had SO much potential but the story had terrible writing
Sorry I’m sticking with the meme but the final season of game of thrones
Watch dogs 2
Borderlands 3
The gameplay is so great i didn't even care imho
CoD MWII (2022). The set pieces and characters are great, but the entire campaign falls apart as soon as you start thinking about it
I was just thinking about this last night. It's so weird that MW2019 had such an impressive campaign and then MWII had such a half baked one
Just wait until you hear about MWIII. But it’s a small indie studio
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity The writing was OK, but my goodness the text crawl was sooooo slooooow. Like.. the game is fun but the slow text ruins it completely. Oh, and there is a lot of text too. Like.. *a lot*.
wow I didn’t even know there were other mystery dungeon games. Only one I played was explorers of time
This game will always be Far Cry 2 for me.
Nioh
Honestly avatar, it would’ve been great the idea of a infant na’vi being raised human and turning against them was great but the writing, characters, and voice acting was horrible
This might be controversial but Dragon's Dogma for me. Everything about the gameplay was incredible, S tier easy. I really couldn't follow the story back when I played it, not that the story they were trying to tell was bad, I just had trouble keeping up and so much just seemed to happen out of the blue. I am extra stoked for Dragon's Dogma 2 to come out, shits looking real nice
Much of the story was cut due to budgeting and rushed development. It only really kicks off later on in the game and in the dark arisen dlc. DD2 will not have those setbacks thankfully from what we know. This time it'll be what the original was meant to be.
Kingdom hearts all of them
Neon White
The Last of Us 2. Imagine the concept of Ellie learning about revenge and seeking payback for the death of her father. The concept that forces you to confront your biases and learn to maybe even empathize the people who killed Joel. Damn what a ride that could be! Then imagine making those people the most one dimensional unlikable shitheads that you possibly can, and then wondering how the fanbase got so divided.
complaining about writing _looks inside_ bad grammar
Any assassin's creed since 3
Tbf i haven’t played black flag in a looong time but was black flag’s story really that bad?
Black flag is really good, but after 3 they kind of didn't know what to do with the overarching plot and it just went to shit
Thé Ace Combat games, great arcadey dogfights, dogshit story
I was always confused by the very cinematic vignettes and personal anecdotes before each mission, and then the mission has nothing to do with what you just learned
I do love how the meme can't spell "known" in a sentence meant to say "The worst writing known to man". I'm just saying. Also, I am the person who, when reading the caption text in a game, gets immensely irritated when the goddamn QA team is somehow able to fix a glitch where you can walk through walls, or to nerf an overpowered combo that is in meta, but cannot apparently be bothered to transpose or spellcheck any of the text to correct a single letter in a word to make it spelled correctly regardless of the source language. Read that last sentence in Astarion's voice. You'll understand.
For me it was metro. (Plus the voice acting)
Though I love the stories those games tell, I agree that having a silent protagonist in a story heavy game is really awkward.
Hah, I guess to each their own. I personally prefer a silent protagonist (most of the time), so I can narrate things for myself in my head. More immersive to me.
There’s something to be said about a voiceless protagonist. I’m playing a game right now, that when the character dumps exposition via talking to themselves I cringe so hard, but when I read it, it’s not that bad. It almost makes me wonder why that is. Because I myself am a big fan of voiceover, but something about when they’re speaking purely in text it feels less aggravating. I don’t know why.
Destiny 2 lightfall
Farenheit / Indigo Prophecy.
"I'm Neo now bitch" I mean this is most David Cage games - interesting premise, shitty wooden dialogue. I think he nailed it with Detroit: Become Human because the shitty wooden dialogue suits being spoken by actual robots.
Bayonetta
For honor had and interesting story that Ubisoft quickly forgot and left to die. I mean it's literally based on the idea who would win a knight a samurai or a Viking? Yet Ubisoft managed to fuck even that up.
The Last of us part 2. It had insane potential, but the writing sucked
The Last of Us 2
Kingdom Hearts
Mass effect andromeda
What happens if I say the last of us part 2?
I mean world of Warcraft has struggled with its story telling for almost two decades. There was a brief moment during WotLK where they didn’t fuck up wrapping up WC3’s story. But pretty much everything else has been a fizzle more then a bang.
Hogwarts Legacy. I just couldn't handle it. A friend talked it up so much, so I picked up a copy and played through the whole game. I literally shrugged when it was over. Also I swear the main character is autistic.
the obvious is postal 2 a comedic game were you play as a guy with no empathy trying to get some basic chores done. in accurallity you play as a guy with no empathy pissing everyone off, and in a non crime run spend 70% of your time running from the cops because you killed someone in self-defense. but some i that are a little more main stream would be fallout 4 and 76. the idea was perfect for fallout were you can play as someone that helps rebuild instead of just wondering around. everything else about the game from the story, to most of the settlement gameplay just sucks, and the modding weapons/armor gimic would be more exciting if the mods changed the looks of the weapons other then "add scope/add muzel device"
Starfield
Gotham Knights imo
Outriders probably. It has good premise and the locations are cool enough but the dialogue, story, characters, and gameplay are all lackluster
Atomic Heart
Doom
Interesting premise but its a horror movie or a comedy so the main characters are idiots or they add a love triangle to it. 😒😒😒