Compared to everything else Portal 2's writing is great, because everything else is crap. Bioshock is another stellar example of good writing. I beat Portal 2 last night, and now I can't play anything else on my 360, because nothing meets the standard now set.
Portal 2
Game » consists of 20 releases. Released Apr 19, 2011
Portal 2 is the sequel to the acclaimed first-person puzzle game, carrying forward its love of mind-bending problems and its reckless disregard for the space-time continuum.
Portal 2 has best writing ever in a video game?!?!?!? i think so
" @captain_clayman said:Ricky Gervais is okay, but I love Stephen Merchant so much more. He was my favorite character in Extras and I think he's funnier on their podcast too. Is there anywhere I can see Stephen Merchant on his own, without Gervais? Shitty bit parts in American movies like Hall Pass don't count. Did he do anything in England aside from the Gervais shows?" @EuanDewar said:I agree, I love everything Stephen Merchant does. "" The writing is certainly good but its the voice work that puts it up on a higher level then every other game out there. Stephen Merchant is just so fucking good. "agree. "
I liked the part where it became BioShock.
I would have to say its the best writing in a video game along with the delievery of all those lines. its just great.
" @sofacitysweetheart said:I prefer to only remember good games." I liked the part where it became BioShock. "I think you have that part confused with where it became System Shock 2. "
" @august said:I'm mildy curious what your horrible reasons are for not liking System Shock 2." @sofacitysweetheart said:I prefer to only remember good games. "" I liked the part where it became BioShock. "I think you have that part confused with where it became System Shock 2. "
" @sofacitysweetheart said:Because snarky trolling is what all the cool kids are doing these days." @august said:I'm mildy curious what your horrible reasons are for not liking System Shock 2. "" @sofacitysweetheart said:I prefer to only remember good games. "" I liked the part where it became BioShock. "I think you have that part confused with where it became System Shock 2. "
" @sofacitysweetheart said:Because retrospective is a wonderful thing, and regardless of which came first, BioShock delivered a much clearer and considered version of what that type of storytelling is supposed to be. I think the only reason someone has to prefer System over Bio is some weird elitism for the vaguely obscure and maybe a preference for spaceships. I dunno." @august said:I'm mildy curious what your horrible reasons are for not liking System Shock 2. "" @sofacitysweetheart said:I prefer to only remember good games. "" I liked the part where it became BioShock. "I think you have that part confused with where it became System Shock 2. "
I've never seen people put so much time and thought into their interpretations of a game's story as some people have with Portal and Portal 2.
I think the mark of a good writing is when the reader, or player in this case, is an active participant in the story telling process.That article from way back that first went in-depth in theorizing about GLaDOS's bonded state and the possibility of her training Chell via the tests to kill her still blows my mind. The world of Portal is just so rich in detail while still being very minimalist in how it conveys information about its story and characters. It's really incredible.
" so after playing portal 2 i came to a realization that it had the best writing i've ever had the pleasure to listen to in terms of the dialogue of its speakers and voice acting. not to mention there's no more than 3 people speaking throughout the entire game (i.e. Cave Johnson, GLaDOS and wheatley) i'm sure i'm not the only one when i say i would literally stop what i was doing in portal 2 and just listen to the brilliant words that were being spoken especially the ones where Wheatley encourages you to "kill" yourself and Cave's memorable quotes. so portal 2 stands still as best writing in a game ever and best voice acting. if you think differently post below what you think has better writing/voice acting than portal 2 "Mild spoilers in your post - I'm sure most people coming in here will have expected that but still, when in doubt, spoiler tag please!
Agreed though - the writing is sharp and the story beats are well presented and come across as more human than most games ever manage. Which is especially impressive considering the mechanical nature of the game's protagonists.
In particular the Glados/Wheatley changeover was masterfully handled. Her screaming went from comical robotic to distressing feral shrieks in a way that really unnerved me.
" @august said:But I didn't say you had to prefer one over the other, or that I prefer one over the other. Just that the plot twist is closer to SS2 than Bioshock. Which I assumed was what you were talking about because, really, how in the world would you compare either of those games to Portal 2 otherwise?" @sofacitysweetheart said:Because retrospective is a wonderful thing, and regardless of which came first, BioShock delivered a much clearer and considered version of what that type of storytelling is supposed to be. I think the only reason someone has to prefer System over Bio is some weird elitism for the vaguely obscure and maybe a preference for spaceships. I dunno. "" @august said:I'm mildy curious what your horrible reasons are for not liking System Shock 2. "" @sofacitysweetheart said:I prefer to only remember good games. "" I liked the part where it became BioShock. "I think you have that part confused with where it became System Shock 2. "
I'm unsure whether I'd give it the title of 'Best Writing in a Video Game Ever', but the writing and voice acting are simply amazing.
" @BulletproofMonk said:Better than Portal 2? The Darkness and Planescape: Torment, just off the top of my head. Maybe even Bioshock. Maybe." @KaosAngel said:What's better? Just curious because I really can't call anything to mind that I think is on its level. "" What about Metal Gear Solid 4? "Shitstorm engage.As for Portal 2, it had great writing, but I wouldn't say it's the best I've seen. Now, the voice acting might be some of the best I've heard."
" @sofacitysweetheart said:Ah. No, I was referencing being dropped into a decaying, hidden underground city of a past time. I felt let down when there was a huge statue of Cave Johnson towering over me anywhere." @august said:But I didn't say you had to prefer one over the other, or that I prefer one over the other. Just that the plot twist is closer to SS2 than Bioshock. Which I assumed was what you were talking about because, really, how in the world would you compare either of those games to Portal 2 otherwise? "" @sofacitysweetheart said:Because retrospective is a wonderful thing, and regardless of which came first, BioShock delivered a much clearer and considered version of what that type of storytelling is supposed to be. I think the only reason someone has to prefer System over Bio is some weird elitism for the vaguely obscure and maybe a preference for spaceships. I dunno. "" @august said:I'm mildy curious what your horrible reasons are for not liking System Shock 2. "" @sofacitysweetheart said:I prefer to only remember good games. "" I liked the part where it became BioShock. "I think you have that part confused with where it became System Shock 2. "
And I'm not trying to say SS2 is bad, just BioShock is a much more fondly remembered incarnation of that game for me.
Red Dead Redemption has terrible writing, and is overall one of the worst-told stories in any form that I have come across. I'm not trolling, RDR really is objectively bad in terms of story structure, pacing, and plot development, and wouldn't stand up to serious scrutiny in any medium other than in videogames where, frankly, we are so starved of decent writing that lots of things get praised beyond their due. Its greatest crime is that it forces the player to spend almost the entire game with people that are insignificant to the story, while simultaneously talking to those people (at great length) about the real story that happened offscreen. It's expositional hell." People have forgotten Red Dead Redemption already? "
I mean to go into this at greater length at some point, but for now consider this: John Marsten spends the entire game trying to rescue his family whom you've never seen, from some people that you hardly ever see, by capturing or killing some people you've never seen, for the bad things they did (that you never saw), and all because you used to do bad things (which were never shown) with them. Barely anything that ever actually matters happens on screen, it's all merely talked about as past events. The maxim of "Show, don't tell" has never been as badly broken as in this game.
Its only saving grace is that it wasn't as badly written as GTA IV, in which Dan Hauser (the writer of both games) outed himself as someone who fucking loathes women. I have a very high tolerance for everything from stereotypes to caricatures, and the need to exaggerate or distort reality to tell a specific story. But god damn, GTA IV (and to a lesser extent RDR) turns all women into either victims, whores, or damsels in distress. GTA IV also compounded the problem with some incredibly misjudged homophobia too.
In short, Rockstar make (mostly) great games, but they can't tell a story worth a damn for the most part.
Anyway point by point:
(A) The characters are not inessential to the story. In some cases they don't have much bearing on the events directly relating to Marston, but they always represent various social groups/classes/ethnicities that provide a shorthand way of representing American society at that time as well as satirising it (a characteristic of Rockstar writing since forever). The characters are types, something Lukacs' focuses on in his study of the novel , embodying not just individual eccentricity but a social grouping. I've always enjoyed how Rockstar manages to transfer the character types of the realistic novel into video-game form: narratively, the characters are a microcosm of American society as well as serving the mechanical function of delivering missions that structure the storyline and game. It's a way of having a more complex narrative without forcing the player to watch 30-min cutscenes like Kojima or read text wells from a menu.
(B) What happened offscreen is backstory. "Show don't tell" is a prescription for literature and cannot simply be transferred to video games - instead of telling the reader that a character is sad you should let that be obvious from the description and not just baldly state character x is sad. But this is irrelevant to a visual medium as everything is technically shown, as one can see the characters and events.
(C) One's quality as a writer isn't vitiated simply because one might have questionable ideological or political views (which of course depends on where one stands ideologically). Celine and Junger were fascist, etc etc.
tl;dr I disagree, I find Rockstar to have consistently good writing by vg standards, and the subtle illogicality of your post leads me to suspect you are in fact trolling, consciously or not. If you wish to discuss further take it to pms.
That's not to say that different mediums don't have different requirements. Of course they do, but there are still underlying rules of storytelling that can't just be thrown out and hand-waved away. The very fact that this is an interactive form of storytelling means that exposition is even more critically misjudged than in say, a movie. I can cite example after example in RDR where the chance for building a genuine emotional connection to characters was squandered, where all the events in the game could have been tied to people and places that actually matter through the entire story instead of being wheeled in as the obstacle of the moment.
For now, let's just look at just one example of that. The game, like all Rockstar sandboxes, has the equivalent of an extended tutorial in the form of helping Bonnie on her farm. You get to drive wagons, herd cattle, lasso horses. All kinds of basic stuff to give players the option of being eased into things. But here's the rub. I don't care about Bonnie. She's a nobody, who just magically turns up to find and rescue Marsten at the start of the game and then teach him how to farm (which by all accounts he should already know how to do). Shortly after, she's left behind and basically discarded for the entire game, apart from one final callback in an incredibly misjudged non-mission. Her only purpose in the game is to act as a mission-giver, and her role could have been played by anyone. Literally anyone. As such, she is not a compelling character, she is not part of the story, and she doesn't generate any emotional response from the player.
Now think about this. What if that same role had been played by Marsten's wife? How about all the learning to farm, getting used to the game mechanics, "shit you need to learn before getting stuck in" stuff was done while meeting, and learning to care about, Marsten's wife and family? Because I played through hours of that game doing nothing but being told, occasionally, that Marsten cares about them. Instead of Marsten telling Bonnie that he cares about his wife, while herding cattle, I could have watched Marsten caring about his wife while herding cattle. And then maybe, when the goons turn up to drag her away to act as hostages, I'd also feel Marsten's sense of loss and outrage.
Calling all of this merely "backstory" is silly. This is the story. This. Marsten is supposedly a man with a haunted and dangerous past, who is trying to change his ways. I want to see that play out on screen, not be led to a bunch of people who all repeatedly do the same thing. And that same thing is to be wheeled in, hand out a bunch of missions on a "Well if you do X, Y and Z for me I'll eventually do that one thing that I could do right the hell now for you".
But no, I get endless conversations sitting on carts, sitting on horses, or sitting on sofas, where Marsten's past is endlessly talked about, and never shown. Are you honestly going to defend these insipid radio plays as being good writing, when we could have actually been playing through the events that were talked about? Really? If Marsten used to rob banks and trains, kidnap people, and do bad guy stuff, then that would have been amazing gameplay, and would have built up all the characters that later on need to be encountered. A young man in deep with a gang of bad guys, a misused woman that rescues him from falling into darkness, a chance of redemption and a new life, and then having it all snatched away and forced back into carrying a gun in order to save his family. This could all have been on screen, instead I got a by-the-chapters set of disposable stereotypes who were almost always loathsome.
There's another challenge, name some characters you were sympathetic to in RDR. And I don't even mean you need to like them, just characters that engaged you in some way. Because aside from Marsten, I can't think of a single one and I finished that game. Eliciting sympathy for characters is the writer's job, and if can be done for even the most evil and obviously villainous of people. I'd cite the recent movie Four Lions as a great example of this, which is a movie about 4 guys planning to become suicide bombers and kill civilians. Obviously they are planning to commit atrocities, and yet they still came across as sympathetic and understandable.
There are some good examples of good video game writing starting to come to the fore, but RDR is very much not it. Like a lot of the supposed triple-A titles it has some wonderful moments of narrative, but a terrible sense of story overall. Not to the extent of Modern Warfare 2 which is the classic example of narrative: good, story: bad.
The most telling part of your post is where you called Rockstar's writing "good by video game standards". That's the essence of the problem right there. Too many people are just happy if the setting, gameplay, or the mechanics of playing the game are good that story is just a nice bonus. Storytelling, in any medium, needs to be judged by its value as a story. If video games are going to continue to mature (and I mean grow up, not just show more tits and headshots), then we need to set the same expectations for quality writing as we would if the story was told in any other form. Movies grew up. So did comic books. So did everything else. It is not enough to say "well it's only a video game" and lower the bar. As long as people continue to do that, we'll still get badly written games.
This is a Portal thread isn't it? I haven't picked up the sequel, so I can't comment on that yet. The original Portal was one of the best examples of good writing in video games though. If the story hadn't been as good, I'd not have cared for the game as the mechanics of the game are just interesting at best to me. It's clever stuff, but strip out GladOS and the narrative and it would be an empty experience. RDR was kind of the opposite, where being able to ride around in a beautiful setting and shooting stuff was just enough fun to carry it past all the flawed story. Fact remains, that I felt more attachment to an inanimate cube in Portal than I did to anyone in RDR. Having the game tell me for 20 hours that "Marsten loves his wife" wasn't enough for me to love her too.
Because I'm bored, I'll just address a couple of your specific points though.
@owl_of_minerva said:
The characters are types, something Lukacs' focuses on in his study of the novel , embodying not just individual eccentricity but a social grouping. I've always enjoyed how Rockstar manages to transfer the character types of the realistic novel into video-game form: narratively, the characters are a microcosm of American society as well as serving the mechanical function of delivering missions that structure the storyline and game. It's a way of having a more complex narrative without forcing the player to watch 30-min cutscenes like Kojima or read text wells from a menu.
As well as being a tad pretentious, this doesn't even address the point that the characters are meaningless. They are literally the same as in every other GTA game that exists. You can take them out of one game and drop them into another wholesale. It doesn't change the fact that you could change these stock characters, who mean nothing, for people who do matter to the story. I already gave one very large example, replacing Bonnie Alreadyforgothername with Marsten's wife. And the fact that despite putting over a full day of my life into RDR I can't remember the wife's name is a very telling example of how wrong that went. She's the protagonist's reason for doing everything, and she gets pushed aside in favour of some random rancher's daughter?
@owl_of_minerva said:
But we didn't see the characters and events. You gloss over my original point that I made. WE DIDN"T SEE THEM. I never saw Marsten's family being taken away. I never saw him running with a gang of bad guys. I never saw the terrible things that they did. The game literally waits until you are about to enter Mexico before even mentioning the name of one of the guys you are hunting, it's just a case of "Oh yes, we forgot to tell you about this guy 8 hours ago but you need to catch him too". There is a climatic confrontation with him, which I'm supposed to care about, but which is meaningless as I've never met him before. He doesn't even try to kill me, he just tries to run away. The character i'm controlling has been seen doing more bad things than the supposed villain of the moment.
(B) What happened offscreen is backstory. "Show don't tell" is a prescription for literature and cannot simply be transferred to video games - instead of telling the reader that a character is sad you should let that be obvious from the description and not just baldly state character x is sad. But this is irrelevant to a visual medium as everything is technically shown, as one can see the characters and events.
@owl_of_minerva said:
(C) One's quality as a writer isn't vitiated simply because one might have questionable ideological or political views (which of course depends on where one stands ideologically). Celine and Junger were fascist, etc etc."No idea what you are going on about here. My only point wasn't that GTA IV was bad because it contained homophobia and misogyny, but that it was a badly written game and contained homophobia and misogyny to make it even worse. A creator's personal views is separate from the quality of their work, though may sometimes serve to push an agenda but that's another issue. I wasn't suggesting it was intentional in any way, it's merely an example of a writer being incapable of handling gay and female characters to such an extent that they ended up making them offensive to anyone that stopped blowing up police cars long enough to notice.
And I am aware of the irony of needing to take a break from a murder spree to think about the story, but that's why I notice the flaws in the writing and is likely why so many others kind of let it pass. Doesn't make me wrong though.
While I don't think Portal 2 has the best writing ever, it's still pretty awesome.
It does an excellent job of logically expanding the story and situation composed in the first game.
It is a solid story, told very compellingly.
Which, by the way:
@Parkingtigers said:
I'm wondering, do the words in the title of the game mean anything to you? I mean, I'm sure you know 'Red' and 'Dead' but are you familiar with 'Redemption'?For now, let's just look at just one example of that. The game, like all Rockstar sandboxes, has the equivalent of an extended tutorial in the form of helping Bonnie on her farm. You get to drive wagons, herd cattle, lasso horses. All kinds of basic stuff to give players the option of being eased into things. But here's the rub. I don't care about Bonnie. She's a nobody, who just magically turns up to find and rescue Marsten at the start of the game and then teach him how to farm (which by all accounts he should already know how to do). Shortly after, she's left behind and basically discarded for the entire game, apart from one final callback in an incredibly misjudged non-mission. Her only purpose in the game is to act as a mission-giver, and her role could have been played by anyone. Literally anyone. As such, she is not a compelling character, she is not part of the story, and she doesn't generate any emotional response from the player.
Now think about this. What if that same role had been played by Marsten's wife? How about all the learning to farm, getting used to the game mechanics, "shit you need to learn before getting stuck in" stuff was done while meeting, and learning to care about, Marsten's wife and family? Because I played through hours of that game doing nothing but being told, occasionally, that Marsten cares about them. Instead of Marsten telling Bonnie that he cares about his wife, while herding cattle, I could have watched Marsten caring about his wife while herding cattle. And then maybe, when the goons turn up to drag her away to act as hostages, I'd also feel Marsten's sense of loss and outrage.Calling all of this merely "backstory" is silly. This is the story. This. Marsten is supposedly a man with a haunted and dangerous past, who is trying to change his ways. I want to see that play out on screen, not be led to a bunch of people who all repeatedly do the same thing. And that same thing is to be wheeled in, hand out a bunch of missions on a "Well if you do X, Y and Z for me I'll eventually do that one thing that I could do right the hell now for you".But no, I get endless conversations sitting on carts, sitting on horses, or sitting on sofas, where Marsten's past is endlessly talked about, and never shown. Are you honestly going to defend these insipid radio plays as being good writing, when we could have actually been playing through the events that were talked about? Really? If Marsten used to rob banks and trains, kidnap people, and do bad guy stuff, then that would have been amazing gameplay, and would have built up all the characters that later on need to be encountered. A young man in deep with a gang of bad guys, a misused woman that rescues him from falling into darkness, a chance of redemption and a new life, and then having it all snatched away and forced back into carrying a gun in order to save his family. This could all have been on screen, instead I got a by-the-chapters set of disposable stereotypes who were almost always loathsome.
Does that word somehow factor into why we are not playing Marston's past, maybe, you think? Even just a little?
Playing a game called Red Dead Redemption where the main character is a violent outlaw kind of fucks the whole thing up, wouldn't you say? And you can still be a complete shit in the game and rob and kill everyone you meet. Is that not enough for you? Or are you actually pissed that you're supposed to play the game as a redeemed outlaw?
The plight of a 'man with a haunted and dangerous past, who is trying to change his ways' does indeed play out on screen right in front you. The number of times John has to restrain himself from putting a bullet into one of his 'helpers' is ever-present. Does having to wade through a shit-ton of outlaws not make you think that John's recalling some old traits?
Did you need some kind of hey,-look-over-here! nonsense to get that same point across? Frankly I'm glad there were no "Hey, look, I'm not being an outlaw!" moments.
And speaking of the 'helpers' you are annoyed by the fact that Marston had to perform tasks for people before they'd do something for him, and I ask: in what fantasy reality do you live where people help a stranger for nothing in return? This seems like a ludicrous criticism to be honest.
And it's funny how you shit on the game coming and going. First you whine that there isn't enough of John ranching and loving his wife, but when those missions actually appear (to give the calm before the storm part of the narrative) you dismiss them as 'misjudged non-missions'.
Are you sure that the real problem isn't that the game never lived up to what you personally thought it should be?
As an example, I have a friend who hated Inglorius Basterds because he was under the impression it would be Tarantino's remake of the Dirty Dozen, when it wasn't. In turn, he found everything he didn't like a film-breaking flaw (especially the fact that the Basterds had very little screen time). I feel that this same effect is happening with you: you didn't want the story R* were telling, so you've decided it's poorly written.
Perhaps the problem is that you wanted a different story than the one presented in the game, and so you decided you'd invest no time connecting with it?
If that's the case, then it's not poor writing, but personal preference.
I'm not sure if Portal 2 has the best writing in a video game ever, but It's definitely high on the list--at least in my book.
" When it comes to writing I favour some of the older PC RPGs, Baldur's Gate especially (go for the eyes, Boo!)as for spoken dialogue and voice acting I'd put Portal up with my other favorites;Dragon Age Origins, Mass Effect and .. wow Bioware all over. "Agreed. I'd probably pick Baldur's Gate (both + addons), Planescape: Torment, The Longest Journey, Sam & Max Hit the Road or Grim Fandango from the older games and Mass Effect 2 > DA:O and RDR from the newer games.
I now understand why Valve wants to do films of their games themselves rather than farming it out to a production company. So many game franchises have been ruined for me after they came out with a terrible film. Whether it be a Half-Life or Portal film I'd love to see one but the thing is Portal 2 plays out pretty much like a film. I don't know what they could really do differently to make it any better.
I just finished it, and I might agree. It's not the deepest piece of writing, but it's very well paced, interesting and fits the game so well.
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