Now, Ollie is a very talented developer. Broken Home is one of the game's most innovative quests. Dishonour Among Thieves contains one of my favourite puzzles in the game. And he's done great work with Mazcab and in other areas of the game. But he's not a storyteller.
At this point, I can't really blame Ollie for this. Osborne, Connor, Mark et. al should have, at this point, come to recognize his strengths and weaknesses, and ensured he never had to deal with any more story content. But, here we are.
Ollie's approach to storycraft begins and ends with "hey, wouldn't this be cool." His characters undergo no appreciable arcs. His narratives lean heavily on popular modern story tropes. His command of lore is, charitably, lacking. And he can't write dialogue to save his life. I believe he approaches quests like a fan, thinks what characters it would be cool to see, what events it would be cool to see, how neat it would be to have all these people assembled here. But he never follows through on story. WHY are these characters here? WHAT are their motivations? HOW have they come to this place, and how will they respond to each other? A storyteller has to understand that simply giving the audience everything they want makes for flat, non-provocative storytelling. Where a dev like Raven approaches his characters with deep empathy, and allows them to guide their stories, Ollie treats them as cardboard cutouts, only existing to serve whatever trajectory he's already decided.
Without giving characters any room to breathe or grow, and without a storyline that doesn't pivot on cliche, it's hard to feel especially enthused for Fate of the Gods 2. Perhaps Ollie will prove me wrong. I thought he did a swell job on Beneath Cursed Tides. But if DAT and MPD have been any indication of his capabilities with larger storylines, the Fate of the Children of Mah doesn't look good.
20-Sep-2016 11:00:03
- Last edited on
20-Sep-2016 11:02:02
by
Rondstat
