What game series do you think needs better writing

[Depression Moon]

Nah Necron made plenty sense. (SPOILER)He represented life, existence itself. After Kuja destroyed the crystal and tried to take everyone's life along with his, Necron emerged to remove the universe out of existence. Destroying the crystal is what summoned him. Zidane saw him as an extension of Kuja's anger and fear. Kuja attempted to wipe everyone out from existence and hear comes this god-like being of the universe to end all their lives. Vivi had questioned his own existence and this Necron proved to him that he very well exists and to take arms up against the being who wished for it to end for him, his brothers, and his friends.

When the party defeated him it proved the power of hope, love, and the will to live is the more sturdier than a 30ft thick titanium wall.

[Mo-Nercy]

All fighting games. I grow tired of the clichéd stories that always come up in fighting games. I'd really like some in-depth, character-exploring cutscenes to link the individual fights in a Story Mode together. The Bouncer had something of the right idea going, in my mind, but that was more of a beat 'em up, action fighter than a straight-forward fighting game. Later installments of Soul Calibur are doing it a bit too, with the world map view and your character roaming around it. It could use a bit more than a few lines of text to link the previous fight to the next though.

[Wolf Kanno]

The Metal Gear Solid games.

Okay, so MGS1 and Snake Eater were damn fine examples of how to write self-contained stories that also lend themselves well to the overall continuity. Sons of Liberty and Guns of the Patriots, however, were examples of how too much retconning, deus ex machinas and overzealous plot decisions can make a story exhausting. I haven't played anything other than 1-4, and I love the overarching story, but the way the deceptions and plot twists and all that stack up by the time I finished MGS4, I was wishing Kojima would just tone it down a lot.

Actually... MGS1 and 3 did far more retconning than 2 and 4. MGS1 rewrote a lot of MG and especially MG2, while MGS3 rewrote most of what was established about Big Boss in the first three Metal Gear titles. Hell any game that stars Big Boss pretty much retcons the timeline.

Beyond that, I will agree that MGS2 took the series into a weird direction by being a bloated conspiracy theory with an Evangelion inspired finale but to be fair to MGS4, it was a title trying to tie all the pieces together and it had to drop into some weird territory to connect the titles and bring a conclusion to Solid Snake's story. Its not really as bad as MGS2 was, even if 4 did have a lot of questionable story elements. I'm just surprised it was all worked together into something coherent, I was worried it was going to drop into a VR "it was all just a dream" cop out ending so what transpired really did work out for the best imho.

[blackmage_nuke]

Nah Necron made plenty sense. (SPOILER)He represented life, existence itself. After Kuja destroyed the crystal and tried to take everyone's life along with his, Necron emerged to remove the universe out of existence. Destroying the crystal is what summoned him. Zidane saw him as an extension of Kuja's anger and fear. Kuja attempted to wipe everyone out from existence and hear comes this god-like being of the universe to end all their lives. Vivi had questioned his own existence and this Necron proved to him that he very well exists and to take arms up against the being who wished for it to end for him, his brothers, and his friends.

When the party defeated him it proved the power of hope, love, and the will to live is the more sturdier than a 30ft thick titanium wall.

Well they shoudlve said that in the game

So i guess it was bad writing

[NeoCracker]

Nah Necron made plenty sense. (SPOILER)He represented life, existence itself. After Kuja destroyed the crystal and tried to take everyone's life along with his, Necron emerged to remove the universe out of existence. Destroying the crystal is what summoned him. Zidane saw him as an extension of Kuja's anger and fear. Kuja attempted to wipe everyone out from existence and hear comes this god-like being of the universe to end all their lives. Vivi had questioned his own existence and this Necron proved to him that he very well exists and to take arms up against the being who wished for it to end for him, his brothers, and his friends.

When the party defeated him it proved the power of hope, love, and the will to live is the more sturdier than a 30ft thick titanium wall.

Well they shoudlve said that in the game

So i guess it was bad writing

No, bad writing is explaining why something is symbolic, which is exactly what Necron was.

The big FF IX story flaw was that most characters started to lack importance less then half way through the game, and seemed more like tag-alongs, albeit highly interesting and entertaining Tag-alongs.

[blackmage_nuke]

Nah Necron made plenty sense. (SPOILER)He represented life, existence itself. After Kuja destroyed the crystal and tried to take everyone's life along with his, Necron emerged to remove the universe out of existence. Destroying the crystal is what summoned him. Zidane saw him as an extension of Kuja's anger and fear. Kuja attempted to wipe everyone out from existence and hear comes this god-like being of the universe to end all their lives. Vivi had questioned his own existence and this Necron proved to him that he very well exists and to take arms up against the being who wished for it to end for him, his brothers, and his friends.

When the party defeated him it proved the power of hope, love, and the will to live is the more sturdier than a 30ft thick titanium wall.

Well they shoudlve said that in the game

So i guess it was bad writing

No, bad writing is explaining why something is symbolic, which is exactly what Necron was.

The big FF IX story flaw was that most characters started to lack importance less then half way through the game, and seemed more like tag-alongs, albeit highly interesting and entertaining Tag-alongs.

Im all for Subtlety and symbolism but symbols shouldnt come up completely at random without any explanation of why theyre there besides *I AM AGAINST EXISTANCE, NOW I SHALL DESTROY YOU*!! It was a ridiculus change from the rest of the game.

[black orb]

>>> Right now, Final Fantasy..

[NeoCracker]

Nah Necron made plenty sense. (SPOILER)He represented life, existence itself. After Kuja destroyed the crystal and tried to take everyone's life along with his, Necron emerged to remove the universe out of existence. Destroying the crystal is what summoned him. Zidane saw him as an extension of Kuja's anger and fear. Kuja attempted to wipe everyone out from existence and hear comes this god-like being of the universe to end all their lives. Vivi had questioned his own existence and this Necron proved to him that he very well exists and to take arms up against the being who wished for it to end for him, his brothers, and his friends.

When the party defeated him it proved the power of hope, love, and the will to live is the more sturdier than a 30ft thick titanium wall.

Well they shoudlve said that in the game

So i guess it was bad writing

No, bad writing is explaining why something is symbolic, which is exactly what Necron was.

The big FF IX story flaw was that most characters started to lack importance less then half way through the game, and seemed more like tag-alongs, albeit highly interesting and entertaining Tag-alongs.

Im all for Subtlety and symbolism but symbols shouldnt come up completely at random without any explanation of why theyre there besides *I AM AGAINST EXISTANCE, NOW I SHALL DESTROY YOU*!! It was a ridiculus change from the rest of the game.

It didnt' change the tone at all. The entirety of the struggle against Kuja and Garland is a fight to prove the validity of their existence, as it were. When Kuja destroys the crystal, Necron comes as at he embodiement of all that they have been fighting since the very beginning, the very will to see the end of them.

I'm really wondering what you think the actual tone of the game was now.

[Wolf Kanno]

I think you are missing blackmage_nuke's point NeoCracker. Its not about symbolism and change of tone as much as it was the fact the final boss is a literal 11th hour villain. At least CoD and Zemus had a bit of villain time instead before the big final battle. The fact the Ultimania is required to even understand why the guy is there is pretty bad as well in terms of writing.

[NeoCracker]

Except you don't need the Ultimania to understand why he's there, you just need to read his dialogue.

[Wolf Kanno]

Why he's in the game

[Shoeberto]

The Metal Gear Solid games.

Okay, so MGS1 and Snake Eater were damn fine examples of how to write self-contained stories that also lend themselves well to the overall continuity. Sons of Liberty and Guns of the Patriots, however, were examples of how too much retconning, deus ex machinas and overzealous plot decisions can make a story exhausting. I haven't played anything other than 1-4, and I love the overarching story, but the way the deceptions and plot twists and all that stack up by the time I finished MGS4, I was wishing Kojima would just tone it down a lot.

Actually... MGS1 and 3 did far more retconning than 2 and 4. MGS1 rewrote a lot of MG and especially MG2, while MGS3 rewrote most of what was established about Big Boss in the first three Metal Gear titles. Hell any game that stars Big Boss pretty much retcons the timeline.

Beyond that, I will agree that MGS2 took the series into a weird direction by being a bloated conspiracy theory with an Evangelion inspired finale but to be fair to MGS4, it was a title trying to tie all the pieces together and it had to drop into some weird territory to connect the titles and bring a conclusion to Solid Snake's story. Its not really as bad as MGS2 was, even if 4 did have a lot of questionable story elements. I'm just surprised it was all worked together into something coherent, I was worried it was going to drop into a VR "it was all just a dream" cop out ending so what transpired really did work out for the best imho.

Haha, good point. I'm glad it didn't degrade into that, either. Mostly I thought it was silly (SPOILER)having Big Boss still be alive but aside from that, you are right. It did a pretty good job of tying it all together - I guess the long-winded nature was a result of the other games messing up the continuity a good bit.

[Skyblade]

Pokemon, i love it but holly c@&$% it'd be nice if i had a better goal than just catching all the pokemon and beating the champion. how about some convoluted conspiracy by a government agency (or a government of any kind for that matter, lol), or a war about to break out between two of the towns.

The Gamecube games were definitely the best written of the Pokemon series. They cut out a lot of stuff (gyms, HMs, random battles), but what was left was surprisingly well done. I still wish Nintendo would make another game continuing the saga of the Shadow Pokemon.

Most recent Square-Enix games. Their writing has just gotten terrible lately. I mean, heck, even their games that I've loved, like FFTA2, suffer from some serious writing problems.

[Jessweeee♪]

Final Fantasy? My God have none of you played a Star Ocean game? I just finished one not too long ago and it was really terrible. The battles were pretty fun, but the writing...just...ugh. I thought maybe it was the black sheep of the series and took at look at the others, but no, they're all pretty terrible. If we're talking about giving a series better writing let's give it to the ones that really really need it. Not the ones that are pretty good but not perfect

[Wolf Kanno]

That's just a Tri-Ace thing, almost all of their games have pretty awful writing and it doesn't help their VA work is pretty bad too...