She also wrote some of the tomb raider reboots and was an additional writer on BioShock infinite.
Specifically, she wrote the 2013 game and Rise of the Tomb Raider. Studio and publisher interference on Rise was so pervasive that she permanently quit writing for AAA games and someone else took over for Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
That explains why Shadow felt different.
Some of the Overlord series too 🙂
Banger of a theme song too.
I was just about to post a link to it haha
I played it and enjoyed it, but I don’t recall it having much in the way of writing! The plot felt like an excuse to tie the set piece parkour areas together. I mean, moreso than in other games.
Sadly that’s often the way of things in games - writers brought in far too late, when the bulk of the design and development is already done, and being told to ‘just write something that connects these levels together’.
I’m fine with that for most games. I don’t need a strong story if the gameplay is great, it’s more of an added bonus.
And that’s never true in reverse. I REALLY wanted to play The Witcher 3 for the story but I hated the combat too much
I’m 100% the opposite, don’t have time for beautiful games without a heart.
To each their own, the only time I really care about it is when my in-game decisions affect the story.
I play games for the interactivity of it so if the story is told “passively,” I don’t really care how good it is as long as it’s not obtrusively bad
Sure, just love a good LA noire or bioshock.
Popping people in the head repeatedly over the internet just seems like a waste of time to me.
No judgement if you like that, just wanted to counter that “the reverse is never true” part in your earlier comment.
I have a few friends who used to go to game jams, events where you get a bunch of people together, split them up into groups, and give them a set amount of time (usually a day or a weekend) to make a video game.
Most of the people who went to these were programmers of course, and there were a couple in my friend group who were techy people as well, but mostly they were writers, artists, and musicians.
And the groups they ended up in usually handed up doing pretty well. Having the whole team there and involved from the get-go helped them make a pretty polished game, where a lot of the groups that didn’t have that ended up with music, writing, or visuals that felt kind of tacked-on as an afterthought.
“They’re teaching the cops parkour… we can’t have that in this surveillance state distopia.”
Yup. It was a parkour game. I don’t remember much of a story either.
Sir Terry Pratchett was an avid gamer himself and contributed to a few mods for Elder Scrolls Oblivion and Skyrim.
Lovely guy, really. So shame his works doesn’t click in non-english languages.
Well at least regardings books, Patrick Couton did such an amazing work at translating them in French, he even received awards for it
I just recently played through Catalyst and I know it was divisive, but I’m firmly in the “I wish it had another 6 months to cook and it would have been a banger” crowd. The only major issues I had were with unreliable parkour, which I bet they could have resolved. It was so close to being a winner if it weren’t for that.
It was a seriously underrated game, my main complaints were too much clunky combat and not nearly enough indoor areas. It felt like I had to run the same outdoor loops dozens of times for what should be serious missions.
Edit: I really think the combat could’ve been awesome with some Ratchet & Clank style gadgets. Not the guns, but the things like the bundle of mini-robots that chase and attack enemies, or the sentry device you throw that slows down/freezes enemies. Feels like a good way to keep the asymmetric fighting where they have actual weapons but you need to be strategic.
As flawed as the original is, it’s one of my all time favourites. To me there’s a perfect harmony between gameplay, graphics (art direction), music and atmosphere. The soundtrack is easily one of the best game OSTs of all time. The story isn’t deep but the characters are interesting and the world has so much potential. On the other hand I love its “cult” status, on the other there was a lot of lost potential for a truly exceptional game franchise.
Catalyst is… not terrible. For me it’s just average and it never reaches that real Mirror’s Edge atmosphere of the original. It’s even worse today because it never got an update for PS4 Pro or PS5, so it looks kinda awful tbh, and I’m usually not too picky with graphics and fps stuff. Finished it once back then and tried replaying it a couple of years ago but dropped after a few hours.
Let’s see what my favorite 2000’s game critic had to say about it :D https://youtu.be/MqTreOK5YUQ
I fuckin love this game. The story, the style, the gameplay, the music. Easily in my top 5
Nepo baby?
Yeah, because writers have so much power in this world!
Hollywood is staffed by nepo babies like finance, medicinr, law etc …
That’s how this shit works.
You want to know a fun fact… USSR worked the same way lol
I was born in USSR, so I know a fact or two. But I also know that there’s a long line of shitty people who have power before you get to the ones who sit at home and type something.
Nobody suggested that the subject is a shiti person…
I know what you mean but it seems like she earned her credits. She’s been constantly putting out great works.
So we got a competent nepo baby… I guess it could worse like our dear leader so I should be grateful.
At least she is no a lebron James son who can’t dribble worth of shit
What on earth are you on about?
You are getting downvoted for your wording I think but I believe it’s worth pointing this stuff out especially now that people are trying to “restore” the “meritocracy”.
This one writer’s competency isn’t the question. The question is how many others won’t get a chance because this person already had a foot in the door.
Even without a single “nepo baby writer”, many others wouldn’t get a chance for whatever reasons. Writing in general is such a competetive field that you’d be a fool to not use your connections and every possible chance in order to support yourself as a writer. And video game writers might even be first to lose their jobs to AI in the near future, who knows.
you’d be a fool to not use your connections
And this folks what a class war looks like in nuts and bolts type example
Remember next time they preach to you about this “meritocracy”
The question is how many others won’t get a chance because this person already had a foot in the door.
A bootlicker doesn’t have the mental capacity to comprehend this concept…
They have been conditioned since child hood to worship other people’s “success” without realizing the people they worship were put into these positions . they don’t understand that conceptually that’s how a class system works and their simping enables it.
A nepo baby is peak class war… These people are the enemies no matter how “nice” or “good” they are.
At the end of the day, a good job is a super limited resource that goes to nepo babies first then remainder is dolled out on “meritocracy” basis.
