I'm sorry I've yet to play Heavy Five, and I might not ever because I'm weary of sci-fi titles because most of them suffer from the flaw of limiting technical capacity for the sake of some overwrought plot point, but I truly doubt that the writing is better than this game. A New Home seemed overly contrived, maybe the writing has improved since I last touched it. Freeloading Family is great, but it's great like a good sitcom. Which I guess is what some people want in their writing. I haven't played the DeLuca family yet because I can only take so many indebted-to-mafiosos type games and I'm currently working through 3 or 4 of them... But Naughty actually understands writing as a technical craft. I could take him not getting the overall award. But not getting the writing award? Really? Everything is subjective I guess, but still...
All jokes aside this is my issue as well. From a writing point of view this is the AAA Game or the Major league however you wanna call it.
Not only do you get writing for the characters that is believable to the point you actually care for them early on you also got a scene Setup that interacts with the written dialouge and the narration happens over said background in a scene or literally the background. Thats like understanding that your medium of writing is limited to imagination so you have to tell the emotion or situation over the scene and the background or sound because you could never express the feeling you want to transport over written words alone.
Understanding this issue is one thing. Nailing it from the start a completely different. To give some examples on what i mean.
Right at the start the drunken MC dreams (foreshadowing) of his wife when it is actually Macy. The Reader/Player has no clue yet what exactly happens aside from being drunk. Once the moment happens and he realizes it is macy and not his wife the reader/player also realizes that the same moment the MC does.
Later in the game you to the musem with denise and you can not only see her anxiety you can almost feel it. At first she enjoys watching pictures with you and discussing the topic you see which already can make someone feel out of place but then BOOM the museum gets crowded and denise becomes visible scared. The backround adds sound of a crowd and the dialouge tansfers the rest that it is better to go.
In the new update you get a comfy feeling by cuddling in front of a fireplace and rainfall dropping sounds in which again the dialouge is only the tip of the iceberg finishing the already established scene for the reader/player. That is literally understanding what your written words can and can not do. I see many games describing the scene instead of this.
Remember the bear? Absolutely pointless for some people. But no one can deny they started laughing once macy went full kung fu in the background only to see the bear approach and after he left macy almost jumping over the MC and Denise. Not a single word was used to transport this to the audience. This shit was hilarious from start to finish.
The point i try to make is this. Of course there are some very well written games out there. But setting the scenes to this level of narration without narrating a single word and doing it over the background, scene and added sound effects is something i have never seen anyone do to this level.
And the most important points. The Banana Dance. The Pirate message. The Demon Macy. While the first 2 are actually funny and serve a completely different purpose it is the Demon Macy who got to me. Not because she looks amazing (Thanks for that
naughtyroad) but because it reflects her inner demon and the struggle she put herself in. In her eyes she is a monster that needs to be chained down or she will hurt and probably kill everyone around her before ending up alone in a deep cavern again. Chaining herself up there in order to not hurt anyone again.
Denise while most of the time very naive is a loving sister who unchains macy because she knows deep down in hearth that her sister is a loving human being that deserves love and a family that cares about her.
You get that already by the dialouge and the events in the game but to actually portray her that way and give the audience the scene in which you see how she actually feels about herself and how she percieves herself in the world is not only a very powerful message for the future narration of the game, it is setting an example of how a writer would handle this fight with someones inner demon in a book or a novel with exactly this topic.
It also gives the shy and sometimes naive Denise Power over the inner Demon of Macy. Little by little the chains come off. The grief and the self doubt fall apart by the Loving care of Denise.
So you basically get 3 stories in one (MC and his wards fighting the grief they all suffer from including the MC letting his Wife finally go and focus on the future, Denise overcoming her anxiety and shyness in the world, Macy overcoming her guilt and self hatred) with excellent writing, portraying and scenes on a movie level.
That is FAR FAR beyond what anyone has done so far and deserves it's own price in my book.
Edit: And yes i could write entire pages about things that are almost perfect in this game but the mod would probably kill me if i do......
