Bioware to Fix Error-Laden Mass Effect Novel

Fappy

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Jan 4, 2010
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That's one employer that shitty freelancer won't be getting another call from. Let Drew do the revisions!
 

Lunar Templar

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Grey Carter said:
Zen Toombs said:
Grey Carter said:
Zen Toombs said:
Grey Carter said:
And with this, gentle readers, we have come full circle. Bioware is going to patch a book. It's now only a matter of time before they announce extra chapters as DLC.
Professionalism at its finest my friends.

Professionalism at its finest.
Thanks, man. I try real hard.
Well, I was actually sarcastically referring to Bioware, but your comment was deserving of praise as well.
Ah, sorry! I thought you were being sarcastic. Some people don't like that I usually close my news pieces with a joke.
some jokes are pretty meh, but this one? gold, well done i say
 

Scars Unseen

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May 7, 2009
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I know it ruins the joke, but "book patching," commonly referred to errata(and not to be confused with erotica) predates game patching by quite a bit.
 

Crimson_Dragoon

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Jul 29, 2009
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SurfinTaxt said:
Beryl77 said:
It's good that Bioware listen to the fans and also takes action but I doubt that a number of changes are enough. This "book" is an abomination. The only way to rescue it, means it has to be rewritten by some other writer.
It's not just the lore that has many holes.
The characters are destroyed. They act completely different than before for no apparent reason. Kai Leng, Kahlee Sanders and David Anderson will never be the same again unless the book is rewritten.
The story is often stupid and nonsensical not just because of the lore. Certain things that happen just don't make any sense.
The writing is just bad. I don't know why he wrote in such bad style, I've read another book by Dietz and that was at least average. Here he writes like he has never written a book before.

You can say that I exaggerate but I think that there are just too many things wrong with this book.
Still, I appreciate it that Bioware at least wants to change it. To be honest, I did not expect that to happen. I thought that they would simply wait until fans forgot about this.
Its a VIDEOGAME BOOK, Of course its going to suck! Even if it got everything right canon wise it would still suck! Videogame books just fucking suck and it will always be that way. Just like paying your taxes
Whoa, way to generalize there. There have been some pretty decent videogame tie in books. Heck, the first Mass Effect book wasn't bad. It was a good intro to the universe even before the games came out and it gave us the backstory to Captain Anderson. And there have been other good ones too, like some of the Warcraft and Diablo books. Are these masterpieces by any strech? Hell, no! But do they all suck? No, as well.
 

Beryl77

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SurfinTaxt said:
Beryl77 said:
It's good that Bioware listen to the fans and also takes action but I doubt that a number of changes are enough. This "book" is an abomination. The only way to rescue it, means it has to be rewritten by some other writer.
It's not just the lore that has many holes.
The characters are destroyed. They act completely different than before for no apparent reason. Kai Leng, Kahlee Sanders and David Anderson will never be the same again unless the book is rewritten.
The story is often stupid and nonsensical not just because of the lore. Certain things that happen just don't make any sense.
The writing is just bad. I don't know why he wrote in such bad style, I've read another book by Dietz and that was at least average. Here he writes like he has never written a book before.

You can say that I exaggerate but I think that there are just too many things wrong with this book.
Still, I appreciate it that Bioware at least wants to change it. To be honest, I did not expect that to happen. I thought that they would simply wait until fans forgot about this.
Its a VIDEOGAME BOOK, Of course its going to suck! Even if it got everything right canon wise it would still suck! Videogame books just fucking suck and it will always be that way. Just like paying your taxes
Yes, it's a videogame book, that doesn't mean that there shouldn't at least be some amount of quality. If read a few videogame books which weren't bad, like the three Mass Effect novels before Deception. Deception is a book that I wouldn't touch with a 12 foot pole. "It's a videogame book" isn't an excuse for this atrocity.
 

Starke

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SurfinTaxt said:
Its a VIDEOGAME BOOK, Of course its going to suck! Even if it got everything right canon wise it would still suck! Videogame books just fucking suck and it will always be that way. Just like paying your taxes
I vaguely recall coming across the exception to that rule years ago, but I can't remember what it was for the life of me.

Might have been the Alpha Centari stuff.

SurfinTaxt said:
Beryl77 said:
Yes, it's a videogame book, that doesn't mean that there shouldn't at least be some amount of quality. If read a few videogame books which weren't bad, like the three Mass Effect novels before Deception. Deception is a book that I wouldn't touch with a 12 foot pole. "It's a videogame book" isn't an excuse for this atrocity.
Oh please dont think Im excusing this "atrocity" as you put it, I think book tie ins are just loathsome in general. All it ever amounts to is subpar filler, written so quickly and so lazily that they can be called nothing but a mainpulative cash grab
Could be worse, they could thread the game's story line into it so that certain junctures only make sense if you've read the tie ins, or introduce characters without any explanation as to who they are if you haven't read the book. I mean, Bioware would never do something like that to one of their franchises like Mass Effect or Dragon Age.
 

Bara_no_Hime

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Grey Carter said:
The teams at Del Rey and BioWare would like to extend our sincerest apologies to the Mass Effect fans for any errors and oversights made in the recent novel Mass Effect: Deception. We are currently working on a number of changes that will appear in future editions of the novel.
And with this, gentle readers, we have come full circle. Bioware is going to patch a book. It's now only a matter of time before they announce extra chapters as DLC.
Great.

So they're going to patch the 100 or so tech, lore, and obvious plot errors.

However, unless they just rewrite the book from scratch, they aren't going to be able to fix the flat (and therefore boring) descriptions of action scenes, characters acting entirely out of character, or the terrible story that makes your typical tie-in novel look like fucking Shakespeare.

the blatant fridge-stuffing of three beloved characters for no reason.

Sorry Bioware - no. Too little (albeit right on time). Releasing a mildly altered version where Quarians aren't running around in rags and the guns work right doesn't fix the larger issues - Dietz is a hack and should not have been given this project in the first place.

Bioware, if anyone there is reading this, just cut your losses and declare the whole mess non-cannon.

Honestly, I'm not sure why you decided to go with this book in the first place. If you declare it non-cannon, you can release some ME3 DLC featuring Gillian. I'd pay $10 for a Shadow Broker-esque DLC mission featuring Gillian. I won't pay $7 for a novel with writing that terrible. In fact, I won't pay ANYTHING for it. Ever.
 

Bara_no_Hime

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ChromaticWolfen said:
Good to know. I had planned to buy some of the Mass Effect books in the future. Saying that I would have probably not noticed the errors.
The first three, all by Drew Karpyshyn, are actually quite good. The pacing in Ascension (book 2) is a little off (it takes a long time to get going) but the story and character are really well done. Books 1 and 3 have better pacing and equally good stories.

Of course, Book 4 (I can't bring myself to type its name) is written by Dietz, who is a hack. He was wrong for the material, wrong for the universe, and just... ugh. I just want to punch the misogynistic bastard.

SurfinTaxt said:
Its a VIDEOGAME BOOK, Of course its going to suck! Even if it got everything right canon wise it would still suck! Videogame books just fucking suck and it will always be that way. Just like paying your taxes
That's the thing, the first three weren't bad. They were actually pretty good. Not great, but good stories about interesting characters doing interesting things. They had the feel of the Mass Effect games, and they provided back story and character development to Anderson.

Prior to this, Mass Effect's tie-in books were actually of surprising quality. Still kinda lame when compared to real sci-fi lit (see Lois McMaster Bujold or Orson Scott Card's early work), but a lot better than the average shlock.
 

Denamic

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Aug 19, 2009
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Grey Carter said:
And with this, gentle readers, we have come full circle. Bioware is going to patch a book.
I just had a moment to let that sink in.


This is amazing.
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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You know, as I've been saying since my PnP RPG days, it would be nice if in situations companies like this not only declared something non-canon, but actually instituted a recall and refund on products.

Correcting "errors" in something like this is kind of pointless, and hurts the lore and franchise. It's sort of like how companies like Palladium and WoTC/TSR/Hasbro/whever has D&D have made revisions within differant printings of the same "edition" of a PnP book, or how sometimes there will be differances between printings of a given novel. I remember actually sitting down with differant printings of RIFTs, say the main book or Silver Anniversary copy and finding other pre-Ultimate Edition copies that had differances in them. A major shock in that community came about when the now-ancient "RIFTS Japan" was released and some of the classes were listed as having special abillities referancing mechanics that were not in the game originally. Say if you had an original copy of RIFTs, explaining that some Ninja could make a dodge against ranged weapons with less of a penelty was a "WTF" moment. It was referring to the stupid addition of a -10 to all dodges against ranged attacks without the defender being able to use his dodge bonus (now infamous) that simply wasn't in the game before more recent printings and thus probably like 90% of the people were oblivious to. Not to mention how paticularly dumb this rule was to begin with, even if you understand the reasoning which is an entirely differant cup of beans.

The point is that companies need to take responsibility for the things they do, and crap printed products that do damage to an established property. Just as a toddler toy that represents a choking hazard gets recalled with a sincere apology, the same should happen to bad RPG books, or lore-destroying novels like this one.

To be honest, I'm avoiding "Deception" intenitonally, even if I don't normally read much game tie-in fiction. I would however like a side by side analysis as to whether or not this is a worse affrong to the established universe it claims to represent than the famed Harry Potter fanfiction "My Immortal" (which I did try and read... but it causes almost physical pain, I kid you not). Perhaps an idea for an episode of "No Right Answer"? Perhaps an extra long pod-cast edition featuring readings of both works one after another... the guys from Drinking games could stop by with booze to help kill the pain part way through. :)
 

The Pinray

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What upset me the most wasn't the errors, it was the fact that the Executive Producer of the damn games said that he read and enjoyed it on his Twitter.

Sadness. :(
 

teh_gunslinger

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. did it better.
Dec 6, 2007
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SurfinTaxt said:
Crimson_Dragoon said:
SurfinTaxt said:
Beryl77 said:
It's good that Bioware listen to the fans and also takes action but I doubt that a number of changes are enough. This "book" is an abomination. The only way to rescue it, means it has to be rewritten by some other writer.
It's not just the lore that has many holes.
The characters are destroyed. They act completely different than before for no apparent reason. Kai Leng, Kahlee Sanders and David Anderson will never be the same again unless the book is rewritten.
The story is often stupid and nonsensical not just because of the lore. Certain things that happen just don't make any sense.
The writing is just bad. I don't know why he wrote in such bad style, I've read another book by Dietz and that was at least average. Here he writes like he has never written a book before.

You can say that I exaggerate but I think that there are just too many things wrong with this book.
Still, I appreciate it that Bioware at least wants to change it. To be honest, I did not expect that to happen. I thought that they would simply wait until fans forgot about this.
Its a VIDEOGAME BOOK, Of course its going to suck! Even if it got everything right canon wise it would still suck! Videogame books just fucking suck and it will always be that way. Just like paying your taxes
Whoa, way to generalize there. There have been some pretty decent videogame tie in books. Heck, the first Mass Effect book wasn't bad. It was a good intro to the universe even before the games came out and it gave us the backstory to Captain Anderson. And there have been other good ones too, like some of the Warcraft and Diablo books. Are these masterpieces by any strech? Hell, no! But do they all suck? No, as well.

Im sure there are some ok vg books, but why waste time reading an ok book? Go read game of thrones again, or a dance with dragons (You can tell Im a George rr martin worshipper).

VG books are terrible because they have to bring a writer in from the outside to write in most cases. They have to write in a world they didnt create, so it just feels alien
Why go read a pretty average book like Game of Thrones? Go read Foucault's Pendulum or The Name of the Rose. (You can see I'm a Eco worshipper.)

A Song of Ice and Fire books are dreadfully tedious and drones on an on and never fucking stops and everybody is an arsehole.

See how it goes both ways?

If people want to read video game books I have no problem with that, just as people are free to read tedious dross like GRR Martins books.
 

Abedeus

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Reading some of those errors made, I am strongly inclined to believe that the person writing the book has never played either of the games.