BFA feels like a TV show that had 5 different producers/directors replaced one after the other, and none of them continued the plot threads of the previous one.
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But those things weren’t just delivered through dialogue. They also required people to create environments, NPC models, animators, cut scenes, music, etc. I doubt the person simply writing the dialogue had that much creative control over all those other elements.
And that “scene with this new windchime talking to him” resulted in said windchime being revealed to actually be a malevolent force connected to the Light before being destroyed and her parts used to fuel the Crucible. Xe’ra’s exchange and destruction wasn’t just an isolated event. It also impacted the entirety of the rest of the Argus plot, as well the cosmology and future characterizations of the Naaru and the Lightbound. It even impacted core game mechanic progression!
I’m pretty sure the writers received a lot more notes.
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If you’re talking about the hypothetical I gave, most of that scenario could have been self-contained to the Warbringer cinematic and built upon with dialog and flavor text. It didn’t need all that much effort put into it.
Yes, that’s what it resulted in later. But in terms of the book, it’s really just one or two self-contained scenes.
He did receive a lot of notes, but it was mostly general information relating to the universe and the topics he’d be writing about. Less “Write all of this in”, and more “This might be useful to you”.
But the story isn’t just restricted to the cinematic. And your cinematic also seem to be limited- notice how the ONLY characters that get fully rendered faces are Sylvanas, Thrall, Sarufang, Anduin. That’s all on the animation department. You, as a writer, can only write scenes where only those characters are allowed to get close ups and emote.
Or you can use the semi-animated ones consisting of still images and minimal animation. But those get a lot less attention and relevance in the narrative. Those too requires artists, voice actors, and takes them away from their jobs elsewhere. There’s a reason why they don’t just crank those out every week either.
The easiest way to deliver a cut scene is just having characters walk around using in-game assets. Like the extra scene Sylvanas loyalists got. Cool, but nothing like the 6+ minute fully rendered CGI scene everyone else got. And that’s likely because there was time/budget/resources allowed for the that- even if the writing team was able to crank out a script for the loyalist storyline.
And as a writer, you don’t set the time/resource/financial budget regarding how many cutscenes you get, how long they last, etc.
But we’re discussing the story in the actual game. Sure, in books, you can do anything. There’s no limit. That’s why being able to produce a well received novel doesn’t necessarily translate into being able to produce a well received game narrative- as Goldie perfectly illustrated.
If we’re not actually talking about the bad writing in BfA, the game? I apologize for the tangent.
I was talking about the Warbringer cinematic, not the CGI cinematics. Nobody’s face needed to be shown, nobody needed to be voiced, the Zandalari fleet would just need to be shown. Everything else could’ve been done through quest text.
We’re discussing the limitations and freedoms of what the writers can write. The limitations of the game doesn’t explain why, say BtS was so bad, nor why so many things in the story which aren’t necessarily limited by the game are so bad.
No, no, no. You’re missing the truth behind it all. See, what happened was that, all those years ago, we lost that battle against the Lich King and were raised as Death Knights. Everything else after that has been stories we’ve been telling ourselves to cope with the horrors we’ve committed.
Sylvanas will waken us all from the Lich King’s control in the next expansion, and we’ll realize the horrible things we’ve done. Instead of saving Pandaria it’s now an undead paradise. WoD was Wrathion’s attempt to save Azeroth with the Iron Horde, but we made it into another undead Paradise. The Legion tried to stop us. We’ve since raised Argus as the Titan of Undeath.
World of Warcraft: Rise of the Lich God
Pre-Launch Event: We begin to wake up and start to notice how those pesky enemies we’ve been killing for our quests randomly start to look like regular individuals running away in terror.
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Bosses we’ve killed are actually alive and fighting against us. Elisandre. Neltharion. Rastakan.
[Edit]: Sylvanas actually SAVED Teldrassil from us. All those nelves are actually alive.
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9.1 Launches with Sylvanas and the notdead Night Elves freeing us atop ICC. Then we fly on Neltharion over a desecrated and undead Azeroth to Teldrassil, the last bastion of life on Azeroth. We learn the horrors we’ve done over the past 7+ years.
EDIT: First raid boss is the four undead Aspects who’ve also committed themselves to serving the Old Gods. Neltharion, the only remaining aspect, helps us to fight them back and stave off the undead assault.
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All this time we’ve been hastening Azeroth’s death by stealing it’s life blood.
Ashara was trying to get N’Zoth, Champion of Life, to stop us, but we killed her and sealed him away again.
Sylvanas worked with Azshara to free N’Zoth to stop the Scourge and save Azeroth.
We raised some Goblins and sea creatures from the dead to stop both of them.
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But you’re probably not going to get a whole Warbringer short just to show the fleet and provide context for the coming battle. In fact, I’m pretty sure the writers don’t even get to decide what the Warbinger shorts are even about. They just get told what the short’s about and write for them.
Yes, and we already know a lot of peoples’ major complaints with the story, and it’s not the quality of the dialogue. It’s not the delivery. It’s mostly the plot points: Faction war, Burning of Teldrassil, focus on Sadfang, the Battle of Drazar’alor, Sylvanas becoming an out and out villain, etc and we know a lot of those decisions aren’t necessarily made by the writers.
And then they’re working within those limitations, and trusting that when they write that there’s a massive Zandalari fleet, that the animation team can animate it. Or when they write one hundred pages where Sylvanas giving her rationale for the war, that it actually makes it into the game.
I know it sounds like I’m trying to excuse the writers and acting like they wrote a masterpiece that just got mangled by the game. Nah. I don’t think WoW, or MMO’s to be all that great when it comes to writing and consistent narratives. WoW isn’t winning any awards when it comes to narrative.
But it’s a lot more complicated than, “Replace the bad writers with good ones” or “Write better stories”.
And for what it’s worth, the dialogue in game, when Xe’ra and Illidan actually do talk is pretty terrible. The guy who brags about everything he’s sacrificed and is willing to sacrifice turns down the offer of a Naaru that is suddenly really really pushy in a way no Naaru has ever been, culminating in one of the hammiest and edgiest lines the franchise has ever produced. I’ve always been of the opinion that the writing in Legion was as terrible as it’s always been in WoW, but the artifact gear, class design, dungeons, steady stream of content, etc was so good that everyone kind of overlooked that.
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You don’t need a whole Warbringer short, you just need the same Warbringer short that already exists except there are some Zandalari ships in the background who fire the shots. Everything else can be done through quest text.
But it is. All of the major plot points could be far better simply through the added context of in-game dialog and text. They don’t need all the flashy high-production stuff to make the plot at least tolerable and have it make sense.
That’s also a cinematic though.
But the dialogue is where we found out the Zandalari have a huge fleet. That the animators didn’t actually animate a bunch of ships is a failure of the animation, not the writing team.
But they do. All the time. How we digest the story means we don’t usually look at it like that, though. There are still a whole lot of people who think that all is fine between the Horde and Alliance, that all the Sylvanas supporters were instantly forgiven, and other things because they mostly follow just the mainquests/cutscenes and don’t pay as much attention to all the dialogue which- while not a masterpiece- do indeed present a much more nuanced situation.
And the Zandalari/Kul Tiras stories- when they don’t intersect with the war campaign- have likewise been considered a lot better regarding their stories, dialogue, and characterizations. I’m pretty sure the writers had fewer mandates there about how the plot should play out and the least amount of limitations, as creating quests and random NPCs here and there probably takes up less time/money/resources than cutscenes and cinematics.
And my criticism of the scene lies the dialogue, the actual lines. That’s why I used it as an example of bad writing.
But they did show ships in the short. In terms of development, it’s not a major change. It’s not like they’re fully modeled or animated anyway.
No, they don’t. As you yourself point out, the people who only follow stuff like the cinematics already don’t care or have major problems with the story. That’s why you use things like quest text and dialog to add context, meaning, and depth for people that actually care. But Blizzard has explicitly said that they try not to tell any story through those avenues, which is why it’s so often bland and meaningless, they don’t expect people to read it so they put no effort in.
Writing dialogue for a cinematic and having dialogue in a quest are very different things.
Something to add to OP’s list of lazy writing examples:
The Tidestone of Golganneth. How did Azshara get it? Did she attack the Broken Shore? Was Suramar attacked as well? Dalaran? Was anyone even guarding the freaking Pillars of Creation, or did we just leave them sitting unattended in the Tomb of Sargeras? Is it going to sit in Nazjatar for the rest of time? How is it possible that a plot point like this was utterly ignored?
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Hey guys! Caught up on the conversation and wanted to thank ya’ll for the conversing and the corrections/extra details given. Just wanted to point out that reason #9 Isn’t meant as a way to Harass Christie Golden in any way, I agree that she has contributed great works to the warcraft universe (Arthas novel is easily one of my favorites) That being said she has had a hand in more than just what Blizzard executives tell her to write, for example the Calia Menethil deal was pushed by her, something I think was poorly executed. In my opinion most of the writing she contributed to BFA has been poor, which is why I think she deserves criticism. I /know/ she is capable of better.
Also, as Tilgath mentioned “The Tidestone of Golganneth. How did Azshara get it? Did she attack the Broken Shore? Was Suramar attacked as well? Dalaran? Was anyone even guarding the freaking Pillars of Creation, or did we just leave them sitting unattended in the Tomb of Sargeras? Is it going to sit in Nazjatar for the rest of time? How is it possible that a plot point like this was utterly ignored?”
This still has not been addressed in-game or otherwise and is another lazy way of getting about story.