oh I read that as Link’s Awakening
u_u how could you I trusted you to have good opinions~~~
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i’d also like to nominate killer7
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this post is a placeholder + an apology toward if/when I ever finish the On Topic post I’m drafting
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That reminds me - the Marathon games
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May as well dig up my Big Posts about well-written games
Elsinore:
Hypnospace Outlaw:
Half-Life 2:
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The intros of Zero Wing and Symphony of the Night couldn’t have become memes without being well-written. Behind the garbled syntax of the former and hammed-up voice acting of the latter there’s a core of solid storytelling.
Zero Wing’s art panels and energetic prose sell a story of crisis, betrayal and desperate action. SotN shows the brilliant nihilist effortlessly running circles around the meathead in their repartee – Dracula wins a symbolic victory before the battle has even begun.
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agreeing with dakota and brooks, Marathon and Max Payne were probably the first two games where the writing actually made me pay attention
the way durandal loves you so much and loves pushing you to your absolute limits is my ideal fanfiction relationship dynamic in all ways
hes incredibly confident in telling you exactly what to do, but when it comes to things outside of ordering you around he says stuff like ‘i believe’. its a really affecting way to assert power over the security officer
he throws you into horrible violent predicaments, but eggs you on, knowing you can suffer through the shit for durandal… but hes still negging you by saying ‘oh MAYBE you can slow them down’
the enjoy yourself is just so playful, he knows youre gonna have a hard time and you’re gonna love it because the reward is so great.
the familarity he starts to get with you, knowing your likes and dislikes points out that hes PAYING ATTENTION. because he has a vested interest than you. nothing hotter than being important, but also insignificant in a very specific context
“do you… remember the terminal where we first met?”
durandals starting to get desperate because he knows he cant save you. its been fun for him when its just silly torture predicaments that he can just POOF you right out of, but he cares now, and he cant help, and it stresses him! and it also makes him show his true colors THAT HE NEEDS YOU WITH HIM SOON
in a daphny-glitched universe all the grocery store romance novels would have 
instead of fabio on the cover
shit like this was great too, i really loved when it got loose and blended the lines between writing and coding. i loved the use of colors for different moods of text. like i guess its a technical limitation of no cutscenes but im so glad the technical limitation existed because they did SO MUCH with “just” text
tychos misdirected anger was great, like, fuck tycho but his anger really resonated. it also highlights just how caring durandal is to you
fans self OH I KNOW WHO I AM
i like this writing because its SUBTLE. it makes it feel like you and durandal are sharing this little secret, like you know and durandal knows, but does the rest of the world need to know? it just looks like im avoiding lava and putting myself in the face of danger just like any other soldier would. does the world need to know my motivations? does everyone need to know just how EXCITING it is to be edged to the brink of death and teleported safely at the last minute? its very much a “i see you, pervert” situation and i love it
IN FACT the terminals were my biggest inspiration for my bad porn game i talked about earlier but i think i have a new idea for something that isnt bad and more explicitly terminals
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you posted my favorite sassy terminal from him. i’ve got cool guns if you like to break stuff!
he starts off aloof and hostile in marathon 1, to the point where the manual text makes it seem like he’s trying to kill you (he’s actually saving you from a pfhor fighter in his shithead little way!), slowly building this respect for you, making you question your nature and relationship to the other AIs on the ship, and then at the end hes like "haha seeya later shitlord im outta this galaxy :’) " with his s’pht boys, but HE COMES BACK TO RESCUE YOU because you’re with him at the beginning of marathon 2. he plays it off as oh you’re a useful tool mr. cyborg but he fucking loves you. he has plenty of tools on board the pfhor ship and he can make more. but you’re the only person who understands his trauma, what its like to be treated as a tool, a weapon. he knows what you are and how leela, strauss, and the humans are going to use you, and he deliberately goes out of his way to take you away from them because he has spent his entire life shackled the same way. even his most pointed “go here and do this” messages are more accommodating of you and your feelings than the orders leela gives you in the first half of marathon. so he needs you. and then at the end of infinity he reunites with you at the closing of the universe so you can be together, it’s so fucking adorable. i love durandal, he’s so dreamy
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everyone always talks about shodan but flails wildly at that terminal
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the first time anybody has like, an identifiably human interaction with you in marathon is when durandal finally pulls you away from leela in the second half to save your life. he consistently reminds you that you’re alive because of him and he can do whatever he want with you but that his objectives align with your best interests. durandal gives you a latitude to accomplish those objectives that none of your other taskmasters ever do (besides maybe tycho in infinity but he’s also an obsessive psychopath who relishes in making you kill humans to hurt durandal) because of course the AI only assigned to open the doors knows how much it fucking sucks to be imprisoned as the guy people only talk to because he can shoot or press switches
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i really love the smaller bits of writing in nier: gestalt. not like the weapon stories etc, just small conversations around side quests and light character interactions.
The writing in Secret of Evermore is pitch perfect schlock and actually very funny, remind me to get screenshots later
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Pee is stored in the clones
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I nominate Sunless Sea
An intriguingly lumpy sack
It’s probably not a sack full of skulls.
It is, in fact, a sack full of skulls.
Who the hell puts skulls in a sack?
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i’m sorry this is kind of a shitpost but not entirely
tokyo xtreme racer 3
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the writing in genki’s jade cocoon is honestly better than i expected. it delves into some pretty heavy shit - you’re the husband in an arranged marriage where your wife is duty-bound to perform extremely painful rituals to assist you in your quest to save the village - but handles it with a fair bit of grace. there’s a whole scene where your wife confides in you how she’s struggling with her duties… there’s a nice aside that your father was in a similar arrangement and left your mother to protect her from having to perform the ritual, while your wife is adamant that you just never leave her, no matter what. it was much more than i expected!
i haven’t finished it yet, and it’s from 1998, so i’m half-expecting it to turn horrible at some point, but i’ve been very pleased with the story so far
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last time I mention Marathon, I promise, but you could also write an entire essay about Tycho’s obsessive anger and sadomasochistic relationship with the player
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I love love love the narration in ANATOMY, how it is written and performed.
Half-Life 2 mostly because its ambient writing, the small stuff you might not really pay much attention can tell so much about that world.
Oh, and the recent Hitman games have been written with an exact understanding of how the kind of tone and satire they want to pull off. It’s super consistent.
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omg yes
I didn’t finish the game so I don’t know much about the writing but that game deserved to be bigger
I have some kind of thing to say about how writing in games is really weird and nebulous and tough to elaborate on because in addition to having to talk about the quality of the prose itself you also have to talk about the method of delivery and some of the best writing in games comes from places where you would have never expected to find well written prose
like there are item descriptions in dark souls that are better written than literally anything in the last game I worked on and part of why that’s so cool is because of the unexpectedness of where those words come from
but I can’t really elaborate on what I feel about this right now without devolving into “videogames are just WORDS, man” so I will gather myself for later on
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