Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Intrepid hires Wynne McLaughlin as Senior Narrative Designer.
Nerror
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Wynne McLaughlin is the former lead writer and narrative designer for The Elder Scrolls Online, where he worked for 9 years.
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6844242553630400512/
I like the ESO stories, so I see this as a good hire.
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6844242553630400512/
I like the ESO stories, so I see this as a good hire.
7
Comments
There are a few quests and throwaway characters that are political in nature and a little immersion breaking.
In a reddit AMA With The ESO Writing Team, a user praised the ESO team for including those sorts of missions and ZOS_Wynne_McLaughlin responded: "This is one of the things about our game that I'm most proud of, and every time I hear from someone who appreciates our efforts the way that you do, it always makes my day. So, thank you!"
https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/2g0x5l/ama_with_the_eso_writing_team/
Just a heads up.
The quality of eso writting went downhill during and after wrothgar
Political and immersion breaking because a character in a quest is gay? Gay or gay tendency people exist. And it's likely that they have existed since near the beginning of humankind.
I'm aware that political propaganda, especially from a certain side, is being shoved down everyone's throat in damn near everything these days. Anyone who denies that is either blind and deaf, or lying.
But I don't see it here in your example. Quests with gay people. Also known as quests with people. Unless it's done in a purposeful, agenda driven, blatant shove it down your throat kind of way, I don't see what your problem is with it.
Dorian from dragon age inquisition was a gay character. And Dorian was well written. Sera as well.
There are many characters in eso that are not well written gay or not.
Eso was plagued with comic relief, happy-go-lucky characters that were immersion breaking.
It just happens that I play rdr2 right now. The outlaws and lowlife are portraited just like that. In eso the thieves guild and assassin brotherhood are depicted as "cool" in the lamest way possible.
No depth, no suspension of disbelief, no emotions provoked. In most story driven games I dont skip dialogue (or voice acting).
With ESO I stopped carring very quickly.
It was not engaging at all once they started rolling out the dlcs and chapters.
In regards to the quality of ESO's own narrative, I'll just agree that
It was a believable character. In ESO I didnt come across a believable LGBT npc. I couldnt pin point what it was in every encounted but I just felt like it was placed there to deliver a real life message instead of being a Tamriel citizen.
The story Venus and Tig from sons of anarchy. They moved me to tears.
Venus was the best well spoken character of the entire series, up there with Gema.
Quality written characters. Deep and developed. A true powerful female character dealing with real, heart breaking problems.
And on the otherside we have the likes of Captain Marvel and.... I forgot the name as I type this. From the latest stsrwars.
People want to label and judge others as haters when they critisize the quality of writting when PC is involved, when the issue at hand is not intolorance.
People dont want to be lectured. They want to enjoy the story. If the writter is there to lecture the story will suck.
If the writter is there to serve the story the characters will be loved.
Anyway. Here is to hoping for good writting.
"rAnT" over...
I do admire people achieving recognition in the show biz and I think everybody deserves congradulations on lifelong hard work, instead of harassment.
My 2 cents.
While the AMA I linked focuses on a specific thing, it is indicative of a larger theme. A little anecdote from my eso days:
When Amazon first announced New World, and people were hyping it up in ESO zone chat, I remember half-trollingly saying; "Anything from Amazon is going to be woke trash."
To my surprise, rather than argue the point, those magnificent scrubs countered with; "And what do you think you are playing now?" (And similarly pithy statements.)
To which I replied; "Touche."
Okeydoke, your post is well written and thoughtful,
but...
If McLaughlin is "most proud" of those side quests as he said in the AMA, that right there indicates an agenda. At the very least it's virtue signalling and all that comes with it.
And therein lies the problem.
But pick and choose your battles, imo. McLaughlin could and probably is just proud that he included some gay storylines and that they touched certain people. That could be the agenda and nothing more. If the agenda was to piss off anti gay people (which includes people from both sides of the political spectrum), then that's a bigger problem. It cheapens and belittles the game and it does an extreme disservice to the people in question, gay people.
But we don't know what the intention was. My guess based on what I read is that the intention was good, and just about being inclusive. But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. I know the virtue signaling you mentioned, see it all the time these days. If this was the worst example of it in the world, we'd be just fine.
I don't know. I played ESO, didn't read the quests. Was the quest about gay people being chased and persecuted by Christians? Extreme virtue signaling and paranoid hysteria. Was it about two same sex people being in love? Well that happens every day. I call it freedom.
The one thing I can really say I enjoyed about ESO was the quest chains that actually told a story. If this be that dude I am quite happy to see him on the team.