Intrepid hires Wynne McLaughlin as Senior Narrative Designer.

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.

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McShave

I didn't get into ESO because of the combat, but I hear high praise for the story of ESO. I'm looking forward to what he can do with Ashes 👍

Xerheart

Awesome! Sounds like a solid pick-up. Big congratz to Intrepid and Wynne!

Brendane

I played ESO for many years and enjoyed both the game play and the writing a lot, however....

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.

George_Black

Brendane wrote: »

I played ESO for many years and enjoyed both the game play and the writing a lot, however....

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

Okeydoke

Brendane wrote: »

There are a few quests and throwaway characters that are political in nature and a little immersion breaking.

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.

George_Black

Okeydoke wrote: »

Brendane wrote: »

There are a few quests and throwaway characters that are political in nature and a little immersion breaking.

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.

ferretstalker

Curious to see what kind of work he can do. I'm not sure how much of a narrative Ashes will have throughout the game itself, seeing as the "story" of the world and the quests within will, in theory, be different across each server. If his focus is more on writing out the histories of the various realms of Verra, however, that could prove interesting. The Elder Scrolls has a vast history to draw from, but again, if I recall correctly a lot of that was Kirkbride's doing almost twenty(?) years ago.

In regards to the quality of ESO's own narrative, I'll just agree that

George Black wrote: »

The quality of eso writting went downhill during and after wrothgar

George_Black

Another example is a drag elf in Novigrad, witcher 3. Such a well crafted character. Excellent dialogue and the funniest line in all of the witchers games delivered by this LGBT elf.

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.

George_Black

I can go on an on since I take issue with the way people treat one another on 2021. Here is another non PC LGBT quality character.
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...

George_Black

I rly tried to avoid responding to these news. Very scared about the reception but I hope this is taken as constructive feedback for the betterment of AoC and not an attack on mr Wynne.
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.

Brendane

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,

Okeydoke wrote: »

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.

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.

Okeydoke

I don't read quest text George. But I'm certainly hoping for well written stories from the gay and the non gay npcs, for the sake of the game.

Okeydoke

I get what you're saying Brendane. Believe me. I know this country is losing it's mind. And it's probably just a matter of time before we don't have to worry about that anymore, because there will be no country left.

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.

unknownsystemerror

Maybe Steven and his husband don't care if he has an "agenda"

Sathrago

Nerror wrote: »

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.

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.

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