GDC Awards nominated MCA!

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Odin

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That's right, the Game Developers Choice Awards have nominated Mr. Chris Avellone for his writing of KOTOR 2:<blockquote>Writing

* Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Rockstar North / Rockstar Games)
- Dan Houser, James Worrall
* Half-Life 2 (Valve Software / Vivendi Universal Games)
- Marc Laidlaw
* Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude (High Voltage Software / Vivendi Universal Games)
- Matt Entin, Ed Kuehnel, Eric Nofsinger
* Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (Intelligent Systems / Nintendo)
- Nate Bihldorff, Ryota Kawade
* Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords (Obsidian Entertainment / LucasArts Entertainment)
- Chris Avellone</blockquote>Both Obsidian (Chris Avellone, Chris Jones, Darren Monahan, Chris Parker, Feargus Urquhart) and InXile (Brian Fargo) was nominated for Best New Studio. Congrats guys!
Link: GDC Awards Nominations
Thanks goes out to Briosafreak for informing us.
 
Half-Life 2 isn't an automatic ticket to winnerville. Sure, it had a good pace, and things occurred naturally, but it lacked any narrative to speak of beyond, "Hey Gordon, 'sup? I need you to do a favor for meh."
 
How the fuck did Magna Cum Laude get up there?! I was told that the dialogue was so bad it made you want to fuck your cousin.
 
They should give him a reward for Torment while they are at it. Not to mention a bitchslap for New Reno.

Murdoch said:
How the fuck did Magna Cum Laude get up there?! I was told that the dialogue was so bad it made you want to fuck your cousin.
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What's wrong with fucking your cousin? FYI, all my cousins are drop-dead hot.
 
I haven't played any of those games.

Didn't Bloodlines have above average writing, though? Dialogue-wise, they managed to make even the most banal things interesting.
 
LSL:MCL was a pretty short and overly simplistic game in terms of story and playing, but the multi-path conversations that you would get was the best comedic writing I've seen in a game for a while, imho.

And no, I did not buy this game, my roommate had it.
 
***WARNING SPOILERS IN THAT MESSAGE***

I loved KotOR I, and the way the NPCs in your party were handled. Each one had their story, each one their goal and their secret.
While playing KotOR II, I was like "wow cool, many mysteries, and NPCs to party with, that's really exciting".

But in the end there's one thing I really HATE about KotOR II : the writing/storytelling. I think it's really poorly done. The NPCs in your party are TOO important, and they do things you will really hate in some cutscenes. But no, you can't kill or ban them from your party.
You know they are bad guys (or gals) but the game forces (may be with you) you to stay with them and act like nothing happened. Because your character have no knowledge about it.

I think I know what they wanted to do in KotOR 2. It's like a thriller, when you know that the best friend of the hero is the killer, but the hero doesn't know it, and you're very anxious about his fate.
But KotOR 2 is a video game, and WE are supposed to act, to do what we want, not to be forced to do things. Too many times in KotOR 2 your character is captured, stunned, jailed... And then you take the role of someone else in your party to deliver him. I think it's really a bad design choice...
The only moment in KotOR 2 where this is well executed is the beginning of the game (you play T3-M4), and the attack on Onderon (one part of your party raids one objective while the other part attacks another objective, as in Return of the Jedi).

And I don't mention the fact that you're even MORE upset after you've beaten the game, because you will REALLY want to get rid of those party members on your next game (dark/light side), but you won't be able to do so...

Also I'd like to talk about your not-so-complete-amnesia. Amnesia is an easy way to clear the past of a character, either because you need to discover something really important, something that will be a big revelation about your quest. In KotOR 1 you're Darth Revan, and that's a big turnover! Or because it's an easy way for characters to tell you about the background of the game. "You've lost your memory ? Then let me tell you about the events of the last year."
In KotOR 2 you're SUPPOSED to recover your memory, bit after bit, during the game. But that's poorly handled. You know nothing, but NPCs talk to you like you should know. And you can't ask them "Tell me more about the past, what have I done before ?", only sentences like "well I think I remember that event". But NO you don't. The discussion with Bao-Dur or Atris are perfect examples...
 
Jabbapop said:
I haven't played any of those games.

Didn't Bloodlines have above average writing, though? Dialogue-wise, they managed to make even the most banal things interesting.
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Aye, I was thinking the same thing. I thought the story in bloodlines was bloody good. Beat some of the stuff they've on the list...

Congrats to Avellone though.
 
Ozrat said:
LSL:MCL was a pretty short and overly simplistic game in terms of story and playing, but the multi-path conversations that you would get was the best comedic writing I've seen in a game for a while, imho.

And no, I did not buy this game, my roommate had it.
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Very true, while it didn't had the same refined humor of the previous games most of the time the dialogues were extremely funny. I actually cheated my way through the other minigames only to get the dialogues. The one where you are playing RPG is hilarious, I almost fell of my chair laughing...
 
Le Jedi Fou said:
But in the end there's one thing I really HATE about KotOR II : the writing/storytelling.
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I agree with you for the most part. I think that if they had been given much more time to complete the game and added about 20 hours worth of gameplay it would have lived up to it's potential, but as is the plots and overall story got summed up or cut short much too quickly and end up being very unsatisfying. I like MCA but I don't think he can win this time around.

And does anyone else think it's funny that Obsidian's first game suffers from pretty much all the same faults people level at Troika's games, yet they created neither their own property or game engine? Maybe funny isn't the right word, but it's pretty interesting. I hope for their sake they can shape up a bit before NWN2 comes out.
 
Montez said:
And does anyone else think it's funny that Obsidian's first game suffers from pretty much all the same faults people level at Troika's games, yet they created neither their own property or game engine? Maybe funny isn't the right word, but it's pretty interesting. I hope for their sake they can shape up a bit before NWN2 comes out.
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Yep. I'm very tolerant about bugs. I think Vampire Bloodlines is a very good RPG, despite of its bugs, as Fallout or Arcanum were.
But I must admit that KotOR 2 has many bugs too. Crashing, black screen, several bugs with speeder races, MANY bugs with dialogues (repetitions, unlimited XP, or worse, unable to to complete some quests), sliding of actors/position of the camera during dialogues, pathfinding...
This game is sure more bugged than KotOR 1. But as others RPGs, I'm tolerant about it so it's not really a problem for me.
 
I haven't finished KotOR 2 yet so I don't know how dissapointing is the ending. But the fault is entirely of LucasArts. They forced Obsidian to finish the game for it to be out by christmas on the XBox. Check this out...

http://www.gamespy.com/articles/588/588057p1.html

So who's to blame for this? Well, my friends, I did some digging around on the Internet, spent some time on various forums, and found some interesting information. There are massive endgame sequences fully scripted (in the screenplay sense, not the programming sense) that give your sidekick characters much more robust endings. There are even paths that can be taken where some of them will kick off, sacrificing themselves for the main character. Some of the dialog is startlingly moving and all of it would be much better than the poor attempt at Fallout's "glimpse into the future ending" that the game provides.
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I agree, but only concerning the bugs and maybe some side quests (I heared they wanted to add the HK factory as a special place to visit). Nothing more than Fallout 1/2: bugs here and there, quests removed (Sulik'sister, spy in the cathedral).

But there are some bad DESIGN decisions in the narration and storytelling. In some ways they have done a great job about the freedom and impact you can have on some planets (Dantooine is a great example), but too many times you have no choice. Too many custscene where you can do nothing, just watching the events going on. Each time I was like "give me the controls and let me change that FFS".

Frustrating... And it's Obsidian's fault.
 
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