Crysis 2 Writer: Halo is "Full of Bullsh*t"

[hyperdrachen]

*focusing really hard to not hemorhage at reading a writer trolling "Halo is Sux"*

I mean while we're on the subject of vapid material. I've long ago acknowledged that bashing Halo has far more to do with how fashionable it is than anything actually contained in the game. Halos story and characters certainly won't be remembered alongside the many great incarnations of the joker, or badass unfold that is The Watchmen, but it's been turned into a whipping post by way of its success.

This reads to me like professional trolling. Ironic that it comes from somone who has signed on to write the sequel to Crysis, a game that quickly reduces to Graphics Accelerator Porn. Well he's got my attention, I'm looking forward to seeing his deeply original interpretation of Marines shooting koreans, or aliens or whatever we're gonna shoot in Crysis 2.

Halos story is a macro one, It's about the juxtaposition of the covenant and the humans, with very few focused characters, and most that are really pivotal to the story in the games themselves are the covenant prophets. The masterchief is not a deep character, hes a soldier he does soldier stuff, he's brave he's lucky he's a badass, he works for his role. No ones getting an oscar but he makes for a great avatar in a fun game. Even then, the quotes around "I'm gonna go up there and kill those guys" is funny cause I don't remember that line from any game.

Not all of us want our characters to start reciting poetry mid firefight, or in the precious seconds leading up to an important mission objective(metal gear solid) When characters do it, it comes off as a writer jerking off his hobby in spite of cohesion, or to put it bluntly, it comes off as bullshit.

I'll have to research some of Mr. Morgans work, I certainly hope I don't find any tough guys who always get the job done, female protagonist that use thier sexuality to thier advantage, or spazmatic smart guys who freak out at said tough guys abuse of the technology, ya know, none of that archtypical bullshit.

Bioshock does an amazing job of making the player take in the atmospher, an area in which Halo does not hold a candle to it,halo focuses on exciting the player about the action sequences and does well on that front, lets see if crysis 2 manages to find itself a place among the storied, atmospheric games, and not another graphical masturbation session crying in envy of halos sales. But I didnt come here to defend Halo from its detractors, thats a lost cause and not even a noble one, Halo is in no monetary danger after all, I came here to chastise a writer for flamming fanboy riddled trollbait and the sheer lack of originality. Let's hope your work on crysis two is above that line.

 

[Kayyyleb]

I like this guy. Maybe I'll get Crysis 2 for muah fancy new gaming laptop.

 

[Starke]

*focusing really hard to not hemorhage at reading a writer trolling "Halo is Sux"*

The Troll here is the interviewer. Seriously.

I mean while we're on the subject of vapid material. I've long ago acknowledged that bashing Halo has far more to do with how fashionable it is than anything actually contained in the game. Halos story and characters certainly won't be remembered alongside the many great incarnations of the joker, or badass unfold that is The Watchmen, but it's been turned into a whipping post by way of its success.

When it comes to posts on here, yeah, that might be legitimate. But, that isn't what's going on in this case. Here, you have a professional writer critiquing other work in the field he's been hired to write in. He's analyzing and in his opinion "Halo isn't bad, it's just kind of average." The interviewer tried to troll that into "Halo is bullshit" to provoke exactly this kind of a reaction from you.
Here's the real quote:

I don?t like the Halo series at all. Okay Halo is not actually bad, it?s just, you know, average. The reason that its fiction doesn?t work has nothing to do with the fact that you don?t get to see Master Chief?s face, it?s because of lines like ?Okay ? I?m gonna get up there and kill those guys?. Halo is full of these bullshit archetypal characters and there?s no real emotional effect.

This reads to me like professional trolling. Ironic that it comes from somone who has signed on to write the sequel to Crysis, a game that quickly reduces to Graphics Accelerator Porn. Well he's got my attention, I'm looking forward to seeing his deeply original interpretation of Marines shooting koreans, or aliens or whatever we're gonna shoot in Crysis 2.

That's because, barring the text above, you haven't read it yet. Here [http://www.nowgamer.com/features/638/crysis-2-richard-morgan-qa?o=0#listing].

Halos story is a macro one, It's about the juxtaposition of the covenant and the humans, with very few focused characters, and most that are really pivotal to the story in the games themselves are the covenant prophets. The masterchief is not a deep character, hes a soldier he does soldier stuff, he's brave he's lucky he's a badass, he works for his role. No ones getting an oscar but he makes for a great avatar in a fun game. Even then, the quotes around "I'm gonna go up there and kill those guys" is funny cause I don't remember that line from any game.

Now you're just being obtuse. Oscars are given out for films, not games, and not books. Master Chief isn't a character, he's a walking archetype. Being a badass is not character depth, neither is brevity, luck, or any other character trait you might ascribe to him. Morgan's argument is that no character in the Halo games has any depth whatsoever, and base on my personal experience, he's right. I'm sorry if you got butthurt by the idea that your franchise isn't perfect, but it's not. What Morgan isn't doing is saying anything new. He's being honest, and sharing his professional opinion.

Not all of us want our characters to start reciting poetry mid firefight, or in the precious seconds leading up to an important mission objective(metal gear solid) When characters do it, it comes off as a writer jerking off his hobby in spite of cohesion, or to put it bluntly, it comes off as bullshit.

Yeah, and Kojima is completely fucking insane. Seriously. If the man revealed tomorrow that his next project is to build a moon base and hold the earth hostage by threatening to drop weaponized kittens on any nation that resisted him, I wouldn't be surprised. (If he actually did it? Slightly more so.)

That said, that is not at all what Morgan is talking about. Again, if you read the interview, or hell, even the interview he did with the Escapist, pay careful attention to how he is trying to sync his work up with the developers. That's what a writer does, not vomit verbal diarrhea onto the screen like you're Bioware or Kojima.

I'll have to research some of Mr. Morgans work, I certainly hope I don't find any tough guys who always get the job done, female protagonist that use thier sexuality to thier advantage, or spazmatic smart guys who freak out at said tough guys abuse of the technology, ya know, none of that archtypical bullshit.

I'm going to puke the next answer back up, because it was an answer to how do you take archetypal characters and keep them from being archetypal. (And it is archetypal, not "archtypical".)

Well, the first thing you do is you make it more complicated, you ensure that your characters have agendas which don?t line up with the player?s. So they?re not necessarily deliberately antagonistic to you, they?re not necessarily on your side, they?re just there, and they have their goals and sometimes those goals will line up with yours, sometimes they won?t. It?s a really basic technique, but it?s one that seems to be sorely lacking in games for the most part. I don?t think there?s any problem with enforcing fictional values into a game. It doesn?t really matter if the principal function of that game is to shoot shit. In the same way that there?s, you know, good and bad AI, so there?s good and bad fiction and no one would argue that, well, look, we?re only shooting shit so we won?t bother with complex AI. Well, no, because complex AI makes the game more kick-ass, so similarly, why should we bother with interesting characterisation?

Bioshock does an amazing job of making the player take in the atmospher, an area in which Halo does not hold a candle to it,halo focuses on exciting the player about the action sequences and does well on that front, lets see if crysis 2 manages to find itself a place among the storied, atmospheric games, and not another graphical masturbation session crying in envy of halos sales. But I didnt come here to defend Halo from its detractors, thats a lost cause and not even a noble one, Halo is in no monetary danger after all, I came here to chastise a writer for flamming fanboy riddled trollbait and the sheer lack of originality. Let's hope your work on crysis two is above that line.

The flaming fanboy troller is, again, in fact the interviewer, and then whoever the hell put up their news post for it. They flat out invented the "Halo is bullshit" quote. It doesn't happen in the interview, and they pull the most biased quotes they can out of context, and run screaming with them. For example, they pull out the "I don?t like the Halo series at all." quote and use it as an anchor quote on the page. It's bad journalism, start to finish. If you have a grievance, take it up with the site, not the writer.

This man can go sit on a pitchfork and rotate. If I felt any emotional response whilst playing Crysis, or if I feel any emotional response whilst playing Crysis 2, I swear to god I will blow my ears off with a claymore.

Oh, for fuck sake, he's not the goddamn writer of Crysis. How many times do I need to say that before people will actually read?

What a fucking tosser, to sum it up. Even if you don't like Halo, which I know is an insurmountable amount of people, be professional about it and keep your fucking opinions to yourself.

Let's take a step back, breathe deeply and think about this for a moment. You like Halo. Fine, great. It's not a bad game, that's fine. You think it's good. That's a mix of personal opinion and personal preference, and it's certainly an opinion that has some validity to it. (Not, you know, a lot, but certainly some.)

Richard Morgan is a professional writer. As a writer he does research. He got hired by Crytek to write their next shooter. As part of preparing to do this he reviewed a lot of popular games. (Bioshock, Arkham Asylum, Modern Warfare 2, Halo, both Drake's Fortune games, and Gears of War have all been mentioned in interviews with him to date.) He's complementary to some, he specifically talks about how Bioshock creates texture, and how the dev team on Drake's 2 improved on a lot of their writing mistakes from the first game.

The point is, he's trying to look at what's already been done to generate a framework of how to put a game story together, and what he found, relatively reasonably is it's crap.

Now, I'm sorry this is the first time you've seen a professional writer actually do a critique of Halo, but, honestly, as an industry we don't have much in the way of journalism. The big sites can't afford to attack major sacred cows like Halo because mindless fanboy trolls would storm the fuckin' castle. They'd piss off the publishers, who are the only reason they can do early reviews, and who pay insane amounts of money in ad revenue. The result is a compromised system. Not universally, but, if Halo 3 honestly earned it's critical acclaim I will eat my own goddamn hat. The game simply isn't that good, and yet it's got a metacritic score of 94. The user review score is 75. When there's a difference that sharp, you really need to start asking some serious questions about journalistic integrity.

This is referring to people actually in the profession, of course. Flaming from fans of Tod of Moore 3 or whatever the latest Sony franchise is is fine.

Again, this guy isn't flamebaiting. He's acting like a professional. The only reason he's saying what he's saying is because he literally doesn't realize how insular and cannibalistic this industry is. The journalists in the industry have been feeding the fanboys crap, for... shit, decades now. The games are crap, the writing is bad, and then they tell you how awesome the writing is so that sites like this can avoid exactly this kind of shitstorm.

That said, one of the few reasons I stick around here is because The Escapist is better about that sort of thing. But, even so, the staff here is walking a tightrope between what they can and cannot say without pissing everyone off.

 

[DrHoboPHD]

Nothing irritates me more than when the stupid douchebags who play nothing but Halo and CoD try and say that shooters are not about the story and that shooter fans just want to run around shooting things.


Excuse me? Speak for yourself fuck wit, I have always been a fan of genuinely good storytelling in fact it's one of the few things I am genuinely passionate about. Just because you're a frothing at the mouth moron whose diet consists of beer and weed doesn't mean everyone is.

God, it'd be like if you went to discuss art and someone started talking about how people just want to look at hardcore pornography and that there is no one who likes art.

 

[DrHoboPHD]

Nothing irritates me more than when the stupid douche bags who play nothing but Halo and CoD try and say that shooters are not about the story and that shooter fans just want to run around shooting things.


Excuse me? Speak for yourself fuck wit, I have always been a fan of genuinely good storytelling in fact it's one of the few things I am genuinely passionate about. Just because you're a frothing at the mouth moron whose diet consists of beer and weed doesn't mean everyone is.

God, it'd be like if you went to discuss art and someone started talking about how people just want to look at hardcore pornography and that there is no one who likes art.

 

[Starke]

fuck that guy. i like the halo universe and i think its interesting

There is better stuff out there, you know? Besides, he wasn't bashing the universe, the games, or anything else.

Nothing irritates me more than when the stupid douche bags who play nothing but Halo and CoD try and say that shooters are not about the story and that shooter fans just want to run around shooting things.


Excuse me? Speak for yourself fuck wit, I have always been a fan of genuinely good storytelling in fact it's one of the few things I am genuinely passionate about. Just because you're a frothing at the mouth moron whose diet consists of beer and weed doesn't mean everyone is.

God, it'd be like if you went to discuss art and someone started talking about how people just want to look at hardcore pornography and that there is no one who likes art.

The hilarious thing is, Bungie was one of the forerunners to introducing complex story material into the games, which makes the fanboys you're talking about look even more idiotic. I'd say you were strawmanning an argument... but I know you're not, because they keep storming in here, flipping out, getting confused, and wandering off. The fact that the very next post lacked capitalization is so hilariously appropriate.

Actually, on another topic entirely, I find it really sad that so many people cannot accept that their fandom of choice isn't some kind of gift from the heavens. So any criticism of it sends them into (apparently) a frothing rage.

 

[Danpascooch]

Tomorrow: "Crysis 2 Writer says Gears of War is 'majorly fucking retarded.' "

He does seem to enjoy dissing mainstream games, especially their stories. I supposes Crysis 2 will have to prove that he isn't just talking out of his ass.

I agree, It's fine for him to say this, but only if Crysis 2 has a great story

 

[luckshot]

Tomorrow: "Crysis 2 Writer says Gears of War is 'majorly fucking retarded.' "

He does seem to enjoy dissing mainstream games, especially their stories. I supposes Crysis 2 will have to prove that he isn't just talking out of his ass.

I agree, It's fine for him to say this, but only if Crysis 2 has a great story

and if it sucks then...what, halo apparently had an excellent story?

and others have pointed out the "quote" is a mashup of two very different parts of an interview taken out of context

and it makes sense (at least to me) that someone about to write for a game would want to see what has been done, what worked, and what didn't

 

[Baneat]

Crysis' story wasn't much to talk about either.

All I could gather was, Koreans had nukes on an island, you wear goofy suits with other guys, crazy alien shit goin on, everything freezes, mushrooms were involved at some point in the story I'm sure (mainly when you go in that big alien thingy with low gravity), and you blow some big alien up and eveything is solved.

All in all, that's pretty much what goes on with Halo.

I don't play Crysis for the engaging story, it's for pretty explosions.

 

[Starke]

What a fucking tosser, to sum it up. Even if you don't like Halo, which I know is an insurmountable amount of people, be professional about it and keep your fucking opinions to yourself.

Let's take a step back, breathe deeply and think about this for a moment. You like Halo. Fine, great. It's not a bad game, that's fine. You think it's good. That's a mix of personal opinion and personal preference, and it's certainly an opinion that has some validity to it. (Not, you know, a lot, but certainly some.)

That, right there, is why I'm not taking any of your posts seriously. You're in the same league of douchiness as this fellow, obviously. I do like Halo, yes, but I couldn't care less about people saying it's a bad game and giving valid reasons why they think this. This man is trolling.

Then you might have missed actually reading the interview. You know, the one where he actually talks? When you go through it he does provide reasons for his opinions. He explains how he would improve it. It really ends up in the range of constructive criticism. Unless "not liking it" is somehow unprofessional.

Richard Morgan is a professional writer. As a writer he does research. He got hired by Crytek to write their next shooter. As part of preparing to do this he reviewed a lot of popular games.

I hardly see how reviewing other peoples games counts as experience or research towards writing the new Crysis which, if it's anything like the original, will have the emotional impact of an off peach sitting in the far corner of the room from me, very, very vaguely filling the room with the smell of off peach.

The point of research is to try to avoid writing another game like the original Crysis. Now, understanding that you're not a professional writer, and I'm not a creative writer, why he approaches this the way he does isn't entirely apparent to me either, but I know a lit review when I see one, and that's what's happened here.

In simple terms he's trying to get a handle on the environment he's writing in. A writer doesn't simply sit in a corner and dream up how the world works (or at least they shouldn't, I can think of a few who try). And when they do try, the results are fucking horrifically bad.

Now, I'm sorry this is the first time you've seen a professional writer actually do a critique of Halo, but, honestly, as an industry we don't have much in the way of journalism.

Are you kidding? It's actually rather fashionable for reviewers to take a slice out of Halo, ever since Yahtzee did it, because it shows that they "don't care about the success of a game, just the content", or some rubbish.

Mindlessly gabbling off whatever Yahtzee did last is a different kind of attention getting. It's trying to attract people to your content through being anti-establishment, or something. You're right, I should have addressed that and didn't. The fact is you can generate as much traffic by pissing people off as by being their friends. It doesn't change the reviewer/publisher relationship fundamentally, however.

The big sites can't afford to attack major sacred cows like Halo because mindless fanboy trolls would storm the fuckin' castle.

To that I'd recommend that "the big sites" harden the fuck up. The majority of Halo fans are not fanboy trolls. I am a fanboy, but a rational fanboy, and I like to think that the majority of proper Halo fans are similar. You are describing Valve fans and the sort of people who sit on Halo 3 Multiplayer 16 hours out of their day "teabagging" the "noobs" they "pwned".

With respect to you, and some of the other Halo fans in here, it's not a blanket statement, but it does happen. That you're frothing at the mouth now is an indicator that I'm not completely off in the wilderness here.

Again, this guy isn't flamebaiting. He's acting like a professional.

Fucking bullshit he is. I really do apologise for whatever this man has done to get you into his debt so deep that you've spent the majority of at least one page (I'm not going to go back and see how long you've been whining, because honestly I can't be arsed). I'm sorry, but claiming that Halo is full of "bullshit archetypal (sic) characters" is NOT "acting like a professional". If it is, then you, my friend, are a fucking asshole. That is MY professional opinion, as a professional Asshole Spotter with the Australian Government.

What pisses me off, really pisses me off are the idiots who come in here blindly praising Halo, giving him the finger and saying, he doesn't understand the pure genius that is Halo. It really does. That I'm still here after most of the people who agreed with me only indicates how deeply bullshit like your uninformed blathering gets on my nerves.

Out of deference to you, I'm not going to pick up the snark bait regarding your job title. It'd be too easy to have something stupid and pejorative, that wouldn't be funny.

The other thing is we are fucking drowning in shitty writers these days. People who can barely put a coherent sentence plot together and we're fucking venerating these incompetent shits as the height of videogame writing. I'm old enough to remember when games actually had good writing, so holding up shit like Mass Effect and saying this is good (you haven't, but others have), or claiming that all he's doing is bashing games (because whomever can't be bothered to read the fucking interview) really pisses me off.

The only reason he's saying what he's saying is because he literally doesn't realize how insular and cannibalistic this industry is. The journalists in the industry have been feeding the fanboys crap, for... shit, decades now. The games are crap, the writing is bad, and then they tell you how awesome the writing is so that sites like this can avoid exactly this kind of shitstorm.

If we're still on the subject of Halo here, then Halo has amazing writing and backstory involved. This isn't as a fanboy, it's just fact; upwards of half a dozen novels, three (I think?) comic runs, five (soon to be six) richly detailed gameworlds, god knows what else.

Peter David is seriously a fantastic writer. The guy made the fuckin' Hulk an interesting character to read. A fact that still blows my mind to this day. Brian Michael Bendis is probably one of the best (and most prolific) writers working in comics today. As I mentioned before, from people who know what they're talking about the Halo EU is probably one of the best Video Game EUs out there today. The problem is, none of that is relevant to the case at hand.

Halo is competent in that it doesn't mandate the EU novels to make sense (at least as far as I can recall.) But, as a subject of analysis, the EU is completly irrelevant for analayzing the games themselves. Which is what's going on here.

Bioshock is amazing, too, I don't deny that. But Bioshock is an insular story (or at least it should have been until Bioshock 2 came along and sort of ruined that).

I do like Bioshock, but it's rapidly headed towards contracting a terminal case of Resident Evil syndrome.

Halo is a saga, and a single game cannot be taken out of it and the full experience be given. It'd be like watching The Empire Strikes Back, and saying "Hell, that wasn't any good, there was no beginning or ending, I won't bother with the others".

Except for two things. One Halo has an ending. The game ends, the credits roll. It's not over, but there is closure... well some. Halo 2 is a lot like ESB, it ends on a fuckin' cliffhanger. It's also supposed to be part 2 of 3. So, Halo, and Star Wars are trilogies. Parts of a larger whole.

The issue, and I'm not sure if you misunderstood, or let your attention wander, is, you don't need the EU to make Halo work.

In contrast we have Mass Effect, where the EU novels are the only way to glue chunks of the stories together. It's a shitty design decision by Bioware that the game's writing suffers (more) for.

As for this writer's (and I use the term very loosely, based upon how he's presented himself) opinion of Halo, I could care less about his opinion as an individual. But by spewing it in an interview, he's just shown himself to be the arrogant prick that he is. "Okay... I'm gonna get up there and kill those guys" was never a line in any Halo game, and teh only thing I can think of that even comes close is "Thought I'd try shooting my way out. Mix things up a little". As for the Master Chief being faceless, yes, he is. Despite this, he manages to emote more in his posture and the delivery of the few lines that he has than most game characters do with fifteen pages of witty one-liners and flirtation with the lead female character. Which is rather depressing when you think about it.

I really am trying to be less harsh on you than I've been elsewhere, but, seriously, reading comprehension. "The reason that its fiction doesn?t work has nothing to do with the fact that you don?t get to see Master Chief?s face..." That bolded text is what's called a negation, it means the statement afterward is in the negative.

"...it?s because of lines like ?Okay ? I?m gonna get up there and kill those guys?." In this case, the bolded text is providing you with a simile, it's not a literal quote, but attempting to replicate a perceived understanding of the meaning.

If the best you can do at bitching him out is to accuse him of making a false quote himself and missing a negation, then I really can't help you.

Also, considering that Crysis 2 features a faceless man in a suit of power armour fighting an alien invasion, I can't help but think that perhaps he's just a tad of an conceited fuckstick.

It's possible. I don't know the man. His comments aren't in line with that perception, but, if that's your perception, fuck it.

But hey, that's just my professional opinion. I'm also Official Fuckstick Detector with the Secret Air Service.

I didn't realize the SAS retained creative writers. Not that it's really relevant to anything. It's not like being a special operator in this context means... well, anything really. So, congratulations, I guess?

 

[luckshot]

Crysis' story wasn't much to talk about either.

All I could gather was, Koreans had nukes on an island, you wear goofy suits with other guys, crazy alien shit goin on, everything freezes, mushrooms were involved at some point in the story I'm sure (mainly when you go in that big alien thingy with low gravity), and you blow some big alien up and eveything is solved.

All in all, that's pretty much what goes on with Halo.

I don't play Crysis for the engaging story, it's for pretty explosions.

nor did you play crysis for this author's writing...because he did not write for that game

 

[Baneat]

Crysis' story wasn't much to talk about either.

All I could gather was, Koreans had nukes on an island, you wear goofy suits with other guys, crazy alien shit goin on, everything freezes, mushrooms were involved at some point in the story I'm sure (mainly when you go in that big alien thingy with low gravity), and you blow some big alien up and eveything is solved.

All in all, that's pretty much what goes on with Halo.

I don't play Crysis for the engaging story, it's for pretty explosions.

nor did you play crysis for this author's writing...because he did not write for that game

Whoops, I assumed they'd be using the same guy for the story between the games.

 

[dududf]

If we're still on the subject of Halo here, then Halo has amazing writing and backstory involved. This isn't as a fanboy, it's just fact; upwards of half a dozen novels, three (I think?) comic runs, five (soon to be six) richly detailed gameworlds, god knows what else.

Back story that is not in the game doesn't mean a game has good story, this is applied to any game. Merely that the universe it's set in is story rich, not that the game itself is.

*goes back to lurking, and generally speaking not caring*

 

[Weaver]

I'm not going to read all of this thread, but I'll just offer my own opinions here.

Firstly, i agree with him on both his public denouncement of the story of Halo and Modern Warfare 2. Keep in mind he is slamming the characters and plot presentation, not the games themselves.

An argument I've frequently heard is "But you're game's not even out yet! You have no right criticizing a game until yours is out." This is horrible, half-brained logic. Did Roger Ebert make a bunch of movies before critiquing them? No he didn't and he's one of the most respective movie critics of all time.

Richard Morgan is a respected science fiction author, is educated in literature, well versed in story telling and knows a heck of a lot about character and plot structure. His critique of MW2 and Halo are completely valid. Just because the story is presented in a game does not exempt it from the standards of narrative in a medium.

 

[aemroth]

Spoiler

Nope, there isn't. There are "opinions" that are factually inconsistent with reality. And, that, my dear friend isn't an opinion, it's being an idiot.

While an opinion may or may not be idiotic, that doesn't stop it from being subjective. Also, don't bother referring to me as your "friend" not when you are trying to accuse me of immaturity and pretentiousness.

I'll admit, I've been condescending towards you.

Confusing? No. Poorly written and inconsistent with its own setting.

Most other people would disagree with you, although no doubt as you disagree with them that probably makes them objectively wrong.

I've read some well thought out defenses of Mass Effect 2, and I've seen some very viable favorable opinions regarding the quality of it's story.

You have offered neither.

Only when you look at it from a certain perspective. Mass Effect takes a great many pains to create a plausible universe. Mass Effect 2 fucks a fair amount of that up.

In. Your. opinion.

Yes. Also. In other people's too. Sorry to burst that bubble for you.

Except it isn't. Quantifiably Mass Effect 2 isn't part two of a trilogy. It's a pointless filler episode that produces nothing.

This is starting to get repetitive. It expands on previous characters, introduces new allies, and motivations and sets up the final battle. The Geth, Quarians, Krogan and potentially the Rachni are all ready to fight the Reapers. The Reapers are personally trying to destroy Shepard for killing Sovereign and they attempted to absorb humanity like the Protheans but failed. It added a hell of a lot really.

In your (alleged) role as a professional writer, what narrative components are actually different at the end of Mass Effect 2, compared to the end of Mass Effect 1?

Nothing offended me. You just used a very shitty logical fallacy in your argument. I drew a big red circle around it.

Like I said, minus a few words, my sentiments were the same as Andrastes, if my points were so different then I don't think she would have quoted me stating "This", now would she?

My, well you've got me now. You see, in your original post, the one we've turned into ground chuck through quote splices. In that you rambled incoherently for a paragraph or so and then pointed to her post and said "THIS!"

Now, what she said, and what you said aren't the same thing, so, either, you don't know how to communicate through written text, or you misunderstood her point.

It's not "the way you write", it's your use of grammar, and your incorrect usage of a couple homonyms. Whatever you do for a living, I'd wager it doesn't involve writing, at all.

Uh-huh. I guess the fact that I am writing on a forum and not officially would have nothing to do with how I write, it's considerably better than a lot of peoples (more on this later).

Yeah... see... this is the counterpart to what you said earlier. In simple words, you say something that suggests you know how to write, I say, "no you don't, because of 'the way you write,'" and then you say, "I'm writing casual."

In reality, that doesn't happen. You see, writing is one of the few skills that you practice constantly if it's your job. You don't have a choice. Even when you're fuckin' around, you still understand how to write.

Put it this way, a race car driver knows how to operate a vehicle at unusually high speed. When he's driving on the city streets he doesn't use the same skills, but his proficiency still has an effect on his driving.

Writing operates the same way, if you're a professional writer, and you come onto a forum, you're not going to start posting like a non-writer. You'll start posting in a way that is more casual than you usually will write, but it doesn't result in the same thing. You, don't write like someone who's come off of work and started working off a more relaxed form of your job in here.

Maturity isn't a factor.

Clearly it isn't.

Because where's the fun in that?

Andraste is a writer, professionally, for this site. The difference between the way she writes and the way you do, reinforces my earlier assumption.

I already stated her point was worded in a better way than mine was. The way I write depends on how quickly I want to reply and for what purpose. You don't seriously think I'd write a real letter like this do you? (don't bother answering that Mr Presumptuous).

So, by your own admission. Someone else who is a, you know, professional writer, posting, to this thread, writes better than you, but it's all okay, because the way you write in here is worse than the way you write in here because you're really better than that? Right...

Civilized has a Z, not an S.

Not in the English used by people from England it isn't. That'd at least explain why you keep trying to insult my use of the language.

Your use of language? No, your spelling? Yeah, that's explained. On this single topic you have my apologies.

No, it's not confrontationalism. It was my tolerance for self-indulgent idiocy, like yours, deteriorating over the course of the day.

The pot calls the kettle black? "confrontationalism" isn't a real word either.

So, you're a, you know, "real writer," and that cliche is the best you've got? Riiight...

Culturally we've gotten to a point where we say, it's my opinion, it can't be wrong. You used that argument yourself, almost verbatim, in the post I'm responding to. The problem is, opinions should be backed by some kind of facts, or at least a logical underpinning. Otherwise, they're not really even opinions, they're "I wishes" or "I believe on faith". To your credit you did try to back your opinions with arguments. It's just that you did it very poorly.

That's what opinions are. That doesn't make them good ones and I never stated otherwise.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt here. Someone fucked up the definition of opinion on here recently. I thought it was you, hence the infodump.

Well, i get the feeling what i'm about to do is roughly the equivalent of insert my penis in a wasp's nest, given your apparent knack for getting into "intellectual cockfights", but here it goes anyway:

You need to chill. Seriously, take a step back, breathe, and calm down. I can't help but get the feeling your back-and-forth with Machines (or Legion now, as it seems), does somewhat seem like taking matters to a personal level. And he's not the only one, you've been insulting people throughout this thread, which i feel doesn't really help get your points across. Most of which i have to concur with, honestly, though it seems you have an unhealthy obsession with having the final word on matters.

My apologies if this is incorrect, but i get the feeling you have a negative bias towards Bioware, and jumped on him at the slightest sign of praise, and i *really* hope it has nothing to do with Bioware vs. Relic during MM (tentative extrapolation due to repeated mentions of Warhammer 40k). But anyway, what i really would like to correct, is that you were apparently so eager to tear apart and eviscerate his post, that you actually misunderstood him (while ironically accusing him of misunderstanding). He was referring to this post, her follow-up post (which you essentially praised) came later as an effort to rationalize the less logical, more empirical initial approach:

Well, isn't he just Mr. Chatty McChat lately?

I love someone who's willing to disagree with the inertia of groupthink as much as the next chica, but now he's talked a big mountain for himself to climb. Writing a great game is waaaay different from writing a great book.

I agree with him 100%, but that kind of comment is best left to when your new game is out already and has raving reviews about fantastic characters and story lines.

If Crysis 2 doesn't deliver on both fronts then he will become a laughing stock.

This.

And incidentally, his assumption that Bioware's writers would have it easier to make that sort of claims wasn't technically incorrect either. Whether you or a like-minded small group of people may agree with it or not, the general consensus among gamers and gaming press is that their writing is good. If this pans out objectively or not is pointless. As for Mr. Morgan, he his acclaimed as a writer, yes, but he has yet to prove himself in writing for games. This is irrelevant, i agree, the basic elements that constitute good story-telling transcend mediums, and the rest is a matter of adapting the output process, but it's not unreasonable to assume that the bulk of the gaming audience and press will look shiftily at his claims until he proves himself in this particular field. Again, i agree that it shouldn't be the case, but it's understandable. The crux of the matter is, that if the story of Crysis 2 is anything short of spotless, someone will remember what he said, and this will come back to bite him in the ass. It shouldn't, really, if it was mandatory that opinions and work output in the same field should always be congruent, most critics that dedicate themselves exclusively to opinion would be living under a bridge.

Anyway, your latest posts seem to have been toned down a bit, so i guess my point is a bit moot by now, but take it easy. Everybody makes claims and decisions without basing them on facts and logic, and while this may look asinine to a hyper-rational kind of personality, sometimes it's the healthier thing to do. Over-thinking and over-rationalizing is stressful, can be counter-productive (after all, procrastinating is essentially an obsessive tendency to over-weigh every little decision and eventually avoiding it altogether, akin to maladaptive perfectionism), and quite frankly leads us closer to emotionless automatons, denying the big emotive part of our very nature. That judging by a few of your outbursts, not even you are exempt from, and even make mistakes in the process (as i pointed above). Really, have we learned nothing from the character of Jon osterman? I don't mean by this that one shouldn't make an effort to educate people, but the response is generally better when one expounds oneself politely instead of breaking out the you're-an-idiot-hammer.

And yeah, i do realize that i'm somehow shooting myself in the foot, because denying primal urges to bash people in the head when they don't make sense is in itself an example of over-rationalizing, so in a sense, i'm even worse. Ah well, i knew i should have at least used a protective cup

EDIT: @Andy Chalk

Next time, please consider changing the original title. It only perpetuates the fallacious nature of the interviewer's intention to everyone that spots this, reads only the title and maybe the original post vertically, and misses the point altogether. Just a little suggestion.

 

[TIMESWORDSMAN]

In other news, The sky is still blue, H.P Lovecraft is still the most consistently scary author of all time and Valve is still awesome.
Seriously, Halo is mediocre on almost every level. I believe we knew that, Just move on.

 

[zombays]

What a jerk! I mean, I'm not going to defend anyone on this, but jeez, I don't think anyone should ever use such harsh language to any pretty decent game out there!