Series, franchises, and companies that don't have good plotting or writing

I'll start with Bioware.

Starting the thread with dubs is an excellent choice. As someone who avoided the 360 like a furry at an anime con, what actually drummed up the hype for the original mass effect? Was there actual substance that diminished over the sequels, or was it like skyrim and plebians were suckered in by effective marketing?

As for actually contributing, I'll go with capcom:

Pretty much. The world had a lot of potential and the first game was happy to flesh out the universe with little details where later games just shit the bed. It also really doesn't hurt that the writer changed just before 3, the writing for 1 & 2 wasn't amazing, but 3 absolutely shat the bed.

One of the core problems of the writing going to complete shit was how ME1 had only Drew Karpyshyn doing the writing, then the ME2 it was a cooperative effort between him and Mac Walters and that was also where suddenly bits and pieces of the established lore started being retconned or just dropped entirely. Then ME3 just had Mac Walters and it all came tumbling down.

Not that writing was the only core issue with the Mass Effect games, but the trilogy probably would've turned out a lot different if Drew Karpyshyn was the only writer for the whole way through, the sort of consistency that would create may have gone a long way.

I've always wondered why companies are so keen to give head writers the boot when fan reaction makes it abundantly clear they like that author's voice. 3 sticks out in my mind because it shows how far a fan base will go in cucking itself–nearly every fan of ME I knew tried to damage control the three snow cones ending, and one faggot actually sent bioware a cake as a thank you for such a great game.

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I don't get it. Do you mean the slavery sells her to the man she wanted or makes him watch others fuck her?

Have you not seen the movie?

Hardly.

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Drew hijacking ME can be seen at how Cerberus was reinvented from its ME1 appearence and became so important (while also being repeatedly reinvented) that it overshadowed the Reapers as the main opposition in ME3.


His planned ending was just as weak as the one we got.

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no, make a positive thread

I know this kind of game is a weird thing to criticize, but it tried so hard to be more so I think it's fair. Shovel Knight's campaign for Spectre Knight had a totally hollow story. There's the whole "twist" where the guy you play as in the flashbacks, and Spectre Knight, turn out to be the same person. It was so incredibly obvious from the beginning, I didn't even realize it was supposed to be a twist. It tried so hard to be tragic, but it was just melodramatic and forced. They just throw stuff in with your partner and his poor little kid, just so they can have something bad happen to them.

Spectre Knight is also a gigantic pussy, by the way. He beats this evil kid in a fight, then for the rest of the game he just lets the kid smugly talk to him like he's a dog, and he never even objects. He defeats the Enchantress, then for no reason just gives up right after that and submits to serving her. Because apparently, her pathetic gloating after the fight proves that she's too strong to beat. There's really nothing I hate more than a spineless protagonist, especially when he's spineless with no reason to be that way.

inb4 Obshitian and "great" FNV story

The mistake ME made was focus on reapers.
Fixed the entire story.

Bethesda is numero uno on any list of companies with no good plotting/writing.

No one can justify the inability of the player to expose Ulfric as the Thalmor agent he is, or Little Lamplight, etc.

I'd also add Rockstar, whose idea of good writing is seeing how far up their own asses they can get. George Carlin wants his gimmick back, fellas.

Fucking exactly.

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Telltale.

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I can see why the Council races wanted to keep humanity out of the Spectre program. Look what we did to the fucking entry standards.

All of them; video games are not a writer's medium.

I would fuck the right one and call the cops on the left.

Mass Effect was doomed as a frachise as soon as it was decided to not only make the big villain a bunch of giant flying cuttlefish, but also make them giant flying cuttlefish who've genocided the galaxy repeatedly with nobody stopping them.

Making them giant cuttlefish stopped Shepard from being able to face them directly since ME is a TP Shooter with RPG elements while monsters like the Reapers are better suited to games like RTS ones. Making them repeatedly genocide a galaxy not only forces you have events happen with the knowledge of galactic genocide incoming, but also raises the question of how you are suppposed to stop them when millenias of galactic civilizations failed to (see the aspulled Crucible with its Space Magic).

It doesn't have good writing anyway so you can count it in the bioware shitshow

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