The gems in Oblivion, Fallout 3 and such were little caves and crevies where it felt like some lone, unhinged dev went wild with environmental storytelling. You know, the posed skeletons, wall graffiti, the zombie you just read about, the mad painter or mad Daedra or mad robot or Vault social experiment or stuff like that. They were these self contained, cheap to produce but plentiful stories you'd stumble into.

...But writing stuff cinematically (and railroaded) feels more like a team thing. It must *be harder to eek good writing out of that, especially if they aren't used to it.

[–] massive_bereavement@fedia.io 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Probably my favorite part of both games and the reason their worlds still felt lived. The same applies to Cyberpunk.

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

Yeah.

KCD II as well. This is even where 'fillery' games like AC Odyssey shine.

A successful dev strategy seems to be 'let writers go mad in mini quests/dungeons'

[–] Snowpix@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 week ago

And these little stories to find are what keeps the game fresh on every playthrough, even a decade later. There's always something new I haven't seen before, new little gags and hidden stories I had previously overlooked. And the best part is that many of them are very far off the beaten path, encouraging you to actually explore and take in the world instead of just fast traveling everywhere and rushing through it.