I remember I had a poignant conversation with the writer at Treyarch (Call of Duty: World at War), who was brow-beaten into writing filler plot to explain the events of the game. Designers would say, “Let’s do a level on Okinawa!” and he would have to figure out how to explain it. That being said, I think he did a stellar job with what he was given. The story is fairly compelling for the genre.

With Mirror’s Edge, I think Pratchett dropped the ball a bit (possibly not her fault.) One glaring point is the unexplained need to go rescue Faith’s sister Kate twice in a row, and the unnecessary killing of Merc (imo).

Overall, I don’t believe narrative design will be given due priority as a practice until game development as a process is simplified. When we have a team of 40 designers versus 1, 2, or 4 writers–also taking into account the inevitable strong-willed personalities common in the industry–narrative would need a strong backing from the head of the studio to survive.

How cliché of a plot is this? I was hoping for a bit more from a Splinter Cell game. Was nicer when it was all tangled up in politics and such. I mean, it’s just an angry asskicking superspy thrown in the mix of a predictable B-movie plot to take over the world.

Could have done without the Iraq part, as it merely felt like a reskin of Gears of War.

My thoughts exactly on the receptionist in Third Echelon. Was the cutscene I saw the most times in the whole game. Fucking annoying.

And what’s with the anti-air missiles after the bloody EMP blast? Ought their guidance systems not be fried? Hitting with a simple RPG-7 is out of the question at that altitude.

Yes! Recently we have been gunning down badguys in the White House quite a bit. In fact the whole EMP thing in Washington DC reminds me of a little game called Modern Warfare 2..

All bitching aside I was eating it all up. As usual the quality and presentation is top-notch. I for one didn’t have serious stuttering issues on the PC, though it did run rather slowly on low settings. I’m very much looking forward to play the coop part with my brother soon. Loved it in Chaos Theory. Hope this will be as memorable although different.

You missed one of the cardinal rules for writers in the Mass Effect universe, however. That is “any character we want the player to like has to bad mouth the government at every possible opportunity.” What an oh-so-subtle commentary there, BioWare. That shit got boring in a hurry, especially since there were so few in-game cases of government incompetence to justify this Don’t care about my dreams? Gov’t suxx! I think it just got ramped up in the sequel.