The Writers of BioWare

PedroSteckecilo

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Feb 7, 2008
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Alister? Emo? Really? I actually thought "Finally, a male lead who isn't a weener like Carth or Kaiden"
 

Quad08

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Oct 18, 2009
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Still won't stop me from enjoying there games. Yes, they all follow the same formula but so does the Phoenix Wright games for the DS. Heck probably even more so and yet, I still loved them. Even though Bioware games seem to have repetitive plots/characters the games themselves are usually fun, and in the end thats what really matters
 

dante brevity

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Miki91 said:
Well, actually these standard characters appear quite frequently in both video games, movies, manga, anime and so on. They are some of the classic main-characters-cliche that fill a lot of entertainment today. Sure BioWare use these over and over again, but many do! I'm sure you could find the character cliches in Harry Potter if you gave it a shot, and I'm confident almost every anime out there will include some of the classic characters that we know and love. The dark one, the happy cheery and innocent one, the careless one and the mean one. D'uh...
Yes, thank you. These are character archetypes that go back to the foundations of literature. It's not that BioWare is writing with cliches, its that there are only so many types of personalities that writers can portray. The artistry lies, in part, in crafting unique variations on standard character types.

For example, I think that Tali from Mass Effect was an interesting take on the idea of "The Pilgrim" (to use Shamus's term). She was a quester (another archetype) removed from her nomadic, exiled culture; she was, in a way, she's a pilgrim's pilgrim. Add the weird face mask, the interesting social structure of her people, and their racial guilt surrounding the Geth. The result is a unique, well-formulated, intriguing character with an compelling story line.

Using archetypes is not bad writing or even tired writing. It IS writing.
 

saejox

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Mar 4, 2009
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MarsProbe said:
Xandus117 said:
I agree with you on most of these except for Alistair and Garrus.

How is Garrus emo?
Personally, I wouldn't even call Alistair emo.

alistair is not emo?!?
"OMG i dont wanna be the king", "to much pressure", "why dont you listen to me", "nobody understands me" always moody etc..
i hate alistair.
that's why;
i traded him with Loghain, he is evil but he is a real man.
 

Lord_Ascendant

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Jan 14, 2008
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Interesting article, Shamus and now that I think about it. As I play Jade Empire I'm seeing parallels with Mass Effect and KOTOR. I hope Alpha Protocol doesn't end up like this.
 

kinky257

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Apr 15, 2009
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level250geek said:
Honestly, I'll probably pick up Dragon Age because it seems to have a cool fantasy world in which to explore and some really good combat mechanics. I will not, however, expect an edge-of-your-seat narrative full of compelling characters and deep twists.
Interestingly enough i found it the other way round. The setting was dull and generic, even more so than Faerun which is an impressive feat of writing but probably not in the way they wanted. The game featured a typical Bioware story and structure, opening segment, then a choice of 3 locations, before railroading where you had to go in its final chapters, with little side quests dotted about to mix things up a little. Maybe its because they've written the same characters so much that they were so entertaining and one of the few things along with the combat that kept me going through it. The little asides they make whilst traveling with each other were often hilarious.

On Alistair:
I found that he fitted the emo archetype perfectly, the whiny little sod. He was fine until the whole prince thing turned up then he went a little insane and was constantly bitching about it, making me promptly forget every thing else he'd talked about/gone through, so i enjoyed trying to marry him off and then forcing him out of my party when i could.
 

Threesan

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SHREW: Why, because you're to stupid to comprehend the idea of north?
For the Ungrammatical was still characterized for me by nothing but his own Error, and therefore, on grounds of human tolerance, I maintained my rejection of personal attacks in this case as in others. But the Ungrammatical almost never achieves Correctness; it is the Correct who fall to the Ungrammatical. Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Mighty Creators: by defending myself against the Ungrammatical, I am fighting for the work of the Forum Lords. And so he [the Ungrammatical] advances on his fatal road until another force comes forth to oppose him, and in a mighty struggle hurls the forum-stormer back to 4chan. -- My Struggle

I'm increasingly catching myself making those kinds of mistakes. Regardless of whether this was intentional.
 

Wakefield

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Aug 3, 2009
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Shamus Young said:
Yes, I realized I omitted Kaiden after I'd submitted the article. He was more Emo than Garrius.
Thank you. I was going to point that out.
 

high_castle

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BioWare definitely uses archetypes, but their hardly carbon copies of each other. Calling Carth and Alistair remotely similar beyond both having tragedy in their background is a gross oversimplification. It's likes saying Tony Montana and Vito Corleone are the same character because their both mobsters.

Archetypes exist throughout literature. But it's the characterization of a particular archetype that makes him/her memorable. And certainly BioWare's done that. I don't mind that they fall back on archetypes, because they keep the characters fresh enough to prevent them from being stereotypes. And as far as I know, the so-called debate about KOTOR and its sequel is fairly one-sided. Most people (not all, big disclaimer here) seem to prefer the first.
 

TarkXT

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Sorry, I just can't see how that is really a bad thing. Writing for a game, particularly one as open ended as Dragon Age or the various other Bioware games (including Neverwinter Nights), is hard. Very hard. When you have to repeat the process over and over again with very different settings and very different mechanics then you find yourself recycling concepts and fitting them into a comfortable niche. When you take the work out of something like that you save money and precious development time.

Believe it or not that entire list is ridiculously versatile for character tropes. Some were characters to have in your game, others were not, some will have compelling stories that are worht the time it takes to do their sidestories, others exist only for comedy value.

Similarities in story and character do not detract from a good gaming experience. If such a thing were true. JRPG's would have faded and died long ago, before Bioware put a voice to a murderous android.
 

Odoylerules360

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Aug 29, 2008
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You can already put all of the known characters of Mass Effect 2 into those categories.
nice. :(
 

toapat

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i honestly doubt if i was given these charicters i would write the same story 3-4 times, that and the shrew would end up being the badguy. dunno, never wrote a dick charicter
 

ark123

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Feb 19, 2009
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You could draw parallels with characters from basically any RPG in the world, dice or mouse-based. It's because they all drink from Lord of the Rings.

Also, water is wet and fire WILL burn you.
 

Shamus Young

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high_castle said:
BioWare definitely uses archetypes, but their hardly carbon copies of each other.
I never suggested they were.

The point wasn't to suggest that the characters were all the same, but merely how they were all the product of a small team who return to themes they like.

You could make a similar list about Stephen King archetypes, that doesn't mean he's a bad writer. It does mean that it would be tough to replace him without people noticing.

Which I think is interesting. They could fire all of their programmers and hire new ones and we wouldn't likely be able to tell the difference. This is not true of the writers.
 

Noone From Nowhere

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Feb 20, 2009
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Bioware's writers aren't so much in a rut as they are a comfortable groove.
I don't know if the same could be said for Square-Enix's writers pre-Final Fantasy 12 changing of the guard. Then again, the changes to their writing staff was not necessarily to their betterment.
It might not hurt them to try something new or maybe they could end up with their own equivalent of Star Ocean 4.
 

Danpascooch

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Apr 16, 2009
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As long as they throw a new skin on em' I could care less if they stayed right in this formula forever.

It's just THAT good.
 

Bayushi_Kouya

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Mar 31, 2009
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Good God I am sick of Pilgrims. Or any character that doesn't at least acknowledge a swatch of gray in their world view. I left Mission on the boat every chance I could in KOTOR1, and I didn't give Tali the chance to open her mouth, since she sounded like a carbon copy of Mission's relentlessly sunny attitude. Now I come to find out that as I start Dragon Age, I'm headed straight for another character of that archetype, and my character's choices for romance options are her and the Shrew? ::Bangs head against the wall until a bloody smear is left::

I had noticed that the characters were incredibly hit-or-miss in Bioware games. There's a bit of cognitive dissonance between Dawn Star's "I'm not sure what's going ooooonnnn . . . " and the fact that she can carve a guy into quivering jiblets without hesitation. Mission and Zaalbar I'd like to dump out airlocks, but some characters can be whiny without being feeble (Carth is a good example, so is Wrex).

I was so glad that there was a complete lack of whiny characters that need to be lead around by the nose in KOTOR2. The Handmaiden came close, but she managed to pull off sheltered without being annoying. See Liara for further evolution of the concept.

::Clears throat:: More on topic, however, I might contest that these are not so much archetypes Bioware uses as archetypes writers use. In the format of the adventuring party, having someone who's a wide-eyed young'un, a guy who's too old for this sh!t, a hot-headed rebel, an ally of questionable motives, and a lovable animal character are all sensible, tested concepts that can make for good group dynamics.

I also feel obligated to point out that there are many characters not mentioned in this article that do not have clear mirrors in other BW games. The Disciple and the tech spec from KOTOR2 leap to mind, as does Juhani from KOTOR1.
 

TheAmazingTGIF

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Aug 5, 2009
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I feel like it is unfair to call Bioware on using archetypes and then citing examples from games they did not make (KotOR 2). While they might have started the universe they had no bearing on it.
And at least they can tell a captivating story with decent gameplay unlike 80% of the other crap.
 

ReepNeep

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Jan 21, 2008
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Bayushi_Kouya said:
I also feel obligated to point out that there are many characters not mentioned in this article that do not have clear mirrors in other BW games. The Disciple and the tech spec from KOTOR2 leap to mind, as does Juhani from KOTOR1.
I feel I should point out that Bioware didn't make Kotor 2.
TheAmazingTGIF said:
I feel like it is unfair to call Bioware on using archetypes and then citing examples from games they did not make (KotOR 2). While they might have started the universe they had no bearing on it.
He used Kotor 2 and NWN 2 as examples of games that were built upon the same world and events as a Bioware game but by a different writing staff, thus with much different results. Writing in Bioware games does tend to be rather samey, particularly in terms of the cast.

Also, shame on you for calling Garrus emo, Shamus. He was Dirty Harry: a bitter, frustrated, angry, space cop and definitely not emo. He is one of the few Bioware characters that doesn't have an analogue in another one of their games.