The writing is also important when a character gets named John J. Keeshan and was used as a toilet for five years

Bastion is still one of my best ways of showing this, even with all the narrator stuff Supergiant Games has in their games.

Goes hand in hand with people who say short games or low overt text//dialogue count games don't need writers. Do short games not need artists because they have fewer assets? Writing isn't pumping word counts. Its a critical skill to get as much mileage as you can out of whatever total run time you have for story time in your title.

Valve does it very well with their Half-Life franchise, or at least the very first Half-Life video game. Their narration comes entirely from the unique set pieces and atmosphere, watching helplessly as a security guard is ambushed by a zombie behind a bullet proof window and you can't do anything to save him, or climbing into a shark cage that is dangling precariously over a body of water where you just witnessed a hostile alien sea creature pull a scientist to the depths all because it holds a weapon that you can use to defend yourself against said sea creature. There aren't cutscenes or some voice acted narrator.

Wow, never asked myself the question but it's good to know how such large teams stay coherent to an idea, and it makes a lot of sense.

Spot on. One thing that’s also important to consider is that a game without a story is *not necessarily* a game with no narrative. A good example are fighting games. In, say, Tekken, you probably don’t care about the “story” (it’s weak, uninteresting), but the appeal is in the bts writing of the characters, stages, even menus. The way they look, they move, they sound, the facial expressions, it makes for a coherent narrative that many fans love. They are like a small window onto a whole world we can’t inspect directly. I prefer the older chapters (tekken 3 being my favourite) because of the low amount of poorly executed cut scenes in favor of a massive amount of charme with every character. Like: why is this dude wearing(?) a lion mask and grappling people on the top of a skyscraper with that majestic hi energy music? I don’t know, but it’s not just cool, it feels coherent and well placed in the game’s narrative. It’s the story you make of those feelings. It IS good writing.

I love that day9 is streaming elden ring. I wish I didn't work such a crappy job and was around to tune in from time to time. Been a fan since the sc1 days and elden ring is my favorite game so it's too bad. I hope you keep uploading your playthough to youtube!

Is there a way to see writing like this? Would love to see documents, of like their ps1 games or something, or DemonS/DS1.. for historical purpose

Reminds me of a video by Extra Credits that talked about fortnight's no theme theme having a large impact on the gaming industry bc of the seeming profitability of crossovers overpowering creativity (expensive, less reliable, less appealing to Business majors and shareholders)

Speaking of writing, Sean, have you seen the latest formula for PI that was discovered? How exciting is that??

Pretty much why I wanted to be and become a writer.

One of the two lead STS devs said the same thing about the enemies in his game. Everyone has seen a skeleton, but what about a 6 sided flaming ghost?

I still think that it’s not so much how good the writer is, but how thorough and consistent the team is in relating that writing. FromSoft took “Always Show. Never Tell.” and made an empire out of it.

What job description would this be? I feel like not enough studios have this position you are describing (from past experience as a writer wanting to join the video game industry),I might be wrong though..

So are they basically worldbuilders?

As someone who has looked into doing writing in that field you are talking about both writing and editing, where maybe the writer is good at spouting words but needs some handholding from someone who keeps them on track and goes and picks an artist for the cover and looks at other technical details of type style etc (and I don't know what all the titles would be in a publishing house and who would be herding all these cats, but I think it was the editor for a long time, as in a big author would have 'my editor'). In filmmaking it isn't the screenwriter but the director who makes sure that all the various elements come together. Perhaps it is because games are not considered 'real art' where you have to sell that it is well made artistically but it seems this job is not on the tip of everyone's tongue and it isn't necessarily a writing job. I'd have to have a lot more knowledge of the gaming industry to pick through some job titles and say mostly the person with this title should be in charge of this or maybe it isn't even consistent enough in the industry to figure this out.

Gotto love the rants Sean spews his guts as he puts the game aside.

dope

New World is a good example of a bad writer or cohesive idea. It is all over the place thematically.

Good writing brings coherence; bad writing leads to confusion.

100% this. Soulsborne games have some of the best "writing" there is simply because of consistent design choices and environmental storytelling. Having a ton of dialogue doesn't necessarily mean better writing. It's a communication efficiency that gives players the information they need if they look. Drives me bonkers crazy when a game has to go into long expositional rants of dialogue to explain to me what should just be communicated through the gameplay itself.

Most of my fav games have no writing, checkmate.

Makes you think about the missing context inherent when devs rely too heavily on procedurally generated content.

Gotta have something to skip am I right?

Omg I just started rewatching your videos and I'm shocked by your hair vacating. Noooooooo😢

I'm not into souls games or any games like this but elden ring will definitely be the 1st game I buy of it's kind because I see a lot of beauty despite the lack of "story" but the "writing" is what inspires me too buy it. The only other game I've player quite similar is shadow of the colossus and I loved it but I felt like once I understood their attacks it was pretty easy. I don't get this feeling from elden ring but I've never played it. I appreciate your rants and wish you would play some broodwar and stream it 😂😂

yeah, but the head writer of bethesda says it's unimportant.

Bro teaches gaming theory on stream, educate the newer generations.

There may be a lot of "lore" writing in Elden Ring. However there's not a whole lot of narrative writing centered around my character and its progression. And this leads to a whole lot of confusion as there's no real context to why I'm doing what I'm doing in the game. Why does everyone want to kill me right from the start for example? No one knows me. I haven't done anything to anyone. Still everything I encounter outside a hand full of quest NPCs wants to kill me. You could understand why for example wild animals might attack me or bandits but right from the get go we encounter soldiers and they want to murder me as well. Elden Ring with its content lacks context to what is happening with your character within the environment your moving around in. Also the goal from start which is pushed on your with no context to the why is to find the Elden Ring and become Elden Lord. Why? No idea but basically everything you moves towards that goal. But what does that actually mean for your character? Why should I care to become the Elden Lord? Everyone wants to kill my character. I have basically no supporters and even the other "tarnished" (whatever they even are) are basically just competitors and not friends. So what happens when I find the Elden Ring? Again there's no context and even the ending of the game lacks context no matter which one you get. The most fleshed our are Ranni and the frenzied flame and even they are lacking proper context. I guess with frenzied flame everyone dies but how is that different from dung eater ending? With dung eater they will suffer more before they die? This is the general issue with Elden Ring and other fromsoft games. It lacks proper narrative "guidance" and I don't mean hand holding but giving me something to actually give a shit about.

Best way of explaining how the better the writing the less you have to read

I literally quite Nine Sols because the writing made me so uneasy. The character is very mysterious but clearly has his own motivations that are kept secret from you. As I'm going through the areas, I'm constantly wondering "Why am I doing this?" because I have no idea why the character I control is doing this, but I know that the character can answer those questions. By contrast, Link never talks and neither does the main character in Hollow Knight, so even if they have their own hidden motivations, none of that matters because I'm not told there's something hidden.

With good enough gameplay, you don’t need writing

You should do EFAP, you're exactly the smarty pants that would fit in there. They've been talking the latest Elden Ring update lately.

Got it - Writers are consistency consultants. Which makes bad writing | || || |_

Sean makes a good point here, writing is very relevant not only to the player but to the individual dev teams to help them understand the general tone of what they're going for. But I'll also say, Sean's self-admitted to be the type to see a line of text anywhere in any video game whatsoever and say 'f$^k writers' and immediately turn away. So, I'm gonna say he's not the best source for the overall philosophy of writing in a video game.

Ehh

day9 giving an excuse for why he doesnt read text in other games...... because the writers helped design the graphics to visually tell me the story so i dont NEED to read...... lol

How come you look much older than your brother? :(

or you could just make a game with no writing. Like StarCraft 2 multiplayer, or any extraction shooter.

His example of bad writing is Bloodborne: you have aliens, you have typical anime characters (the hunters) and you have horror and victorian fantasy combined. The truth is you don't need a writer to shape the worlds Miyazaki creates, just aesthetics. "Land of Shadow" what things are shadowy? everything black/dark like death or coal or pitch or smoke or just obscuring light sources. Those pillars Sean pointed to really have no particular reason for them to be spiral, they could be anything else and your brain would still reach out and fill in the gaps most of the time. The strangeness of ER critique is how when the director makes a connection that is obvious it's hailed as genius although it's literally just taking an extra step to point out a relationship between two areas or monsters. It's work but hardly a feat of the mind. If you want another example, take how Disney manages to create such vile abominations of everything they acquire "make it lame and gay" aesthetic is pervasive throughout their work.