Counterpoint: Marvelization has also completely rotted mainstream lib writers brains and convinced management that snarky but flavorless and textureless slop is the profit maximizing formula.
There’s like a 50/50 between Rockstar’s writers having kept their sharp satirical edge and irreverence but simply learned to not have characters scream slurs at the player, and those writers having been fed through a homogenizing stylistic-woodchipper/industrial mixer combo and blanched until all that remained was a perfectly smooth and featureless slurry algorithmically printed in place to create a corporate-safe simulacrum of the vague idea of their prior work.
Well senior writer is the RDR2 guy so hopefully not! Worth noting the GTA4 was when Rupert Humphries and Michael Unsworth joined the team, and they’re on this one too. I think that was the moment that the writing for the games really grew up from juvenile stuff into characters with properly fleshed out backgrounds and motivations, it all became more adult (amid the juvenile stuff) when they joined.
Roger Drew is new to the team but he has a background in British television writing. Last work before joining Rockstar was The Thick of It which is good. The junior writers all look like they have some sort of BBC writing background too. BBC news might be shit but BBC television remains very good quality with mixed class themes still all over the programming. These are all very competent people, the thing with BBC too is that nobody’s really working there for money because as far as acting and television wages go it’s pretty low. Most of the BBC television workers are there because they want to make good things, none of those people are poisoned by money or profit like hollywood writing or whatever as it’s all taxpayer.
Counterpoint: Marvelization has also completely rotted mainstream lib writers brains and convinced management that snarky but flavorless and textureless slop is the profit maximizing formula.
There’s like a 50/50 between Rockstar’s writers having kept their sharp satirical edge and irreverence but simply learned to not have characters scream slurs at the player, and those writers having been fed through a homogenizing stylistic-woodchipper/industrial mixer combo and blanched until all that remained was a perfectly smooth and featureless slurry algorithmically printed in place to create a corporate-safe simulacrum of the vague idea of their prior work.
Well senior writer is the RDR2 guy so hopefully not! Worth noting the GTA4 was when Rupert Humphries and Michael Unsworth joined the team, and they’re on this one too. I think that was the moment that the writing for the games really grew up from juvenile stuff into characters with properly fleshed out backgrounds and motivations, it all became more adult (amid the juvenile stuff) when they joined.
Roger Drew is new to the team but he has a background in British television writing. Last work before joining Rockstar was The Thick of It which is good. The junior writers all look like they have some sort of BBC writing background too. BBC news might be shit but BBC television remains very good quality with mixed class themes still all over the programming. These are all very competent people, the thing with BBC too is that nobody’s really working there for money because as far as acting and television wages go it’s pretty low. Most of the BBC television workers are there because they want to make good things, none of those people are poisoned by money or profit like hollywood writing or whatever as it’s all taxpayer.