Got banned again from Steam for posting the below: just a critique of a badly written character, no mention of LGBT, woke, etc.
I will bring up what Steam mentioned to me about a Larian mod deleting the previous content and banning me, because it has happened again and this is a disgrace. Fictional characters are not immune to being criticised as rubbish in terms of writing.
I’m going to keep this critique of the writing crisply neutral, with no mention of politics or sexuality.
There was a stealth-removal of the previous thread I’d created to critique this character’s laughable writing. Steam informed me it was a Larian employee who deleted it. I believe it was SaloAtLarian, as he appears to be the only one left after the other guy got fired.
What do you call companies who censor negative opinion of their product?
To prove the writing of this game is a dumpster-fire of amateurism, I don’t need to wheel out the usual canons people deploy against Larian (and don’t get deleted/banned for the firing shot).
But if merely proving Larian isn’t The Second Coming means automatic deletion, that’s a statement in itself that Larian will have to live with, if that’s the level we’re at now. Just as they had to live with the embarrassment of deleting the ‘cut content’ thread, and banning the dude that posted it.
The Critique
This is an abbreviated version of the deleted thread:
1. Aylin spends 100 years in a hell dimension, tortured, killed repeatedly, and when she emerges is fully coherent and gets straight to talking shop with SH about the Shar crap as if it never happened
2. Trusts SH to be a vital ally in her personal war within seconds of SH going from wanting to kill her to throwing away the spear – no questioning of it, no pause for doubt, just one-dimensional acceptance. This is because the main plot needs to be forwarded along a predetermined path, and allowing the characters to surprise us via self-awareness would make their writing job moderately difficult. Reason? They’d have to accommodate natural, unexpected character development which is the tinder of good fiction
3. She’s presented as mentally stable – more or less – throughout all dialogues, despite her 100 year ordeal, and goes bonkers mad when desecrating Ketharic’s corpse. Random, repellent, teenage-angst-level hissy-fit. Could they not have thought of a more dignified way for her to express her ‘release’, with, I don’t know, words? She comes off as an animal, rather than someone you can respect
4. Comically florid, antisocial line: ‘Now, you will leave us. We must take succour in one another’s bodies and words’ in response to the MC’s innoccous remark that he’s ‘just going back to camp’. Appears out of the blue, is gratuitous and only inserted to heavy-handedly broadcast a particular ‘political message’, instead of organically adapting it into the natural flow of the narrative
Aylin’s a god-child, so is immune to torture yada yada
Just to address this remark before it crops up again.
For those who don’t like opinion, there’s a technical term for this tripe called ‘deus ex machina’. It means using an event – or here a circumstance – to ‘magic away’ any responsibility to have to address a glaring plot hole, or otherwise inexplicable character development.
Either way, it’s the most succinctly boring approach to writing her reaction to the 100-year ordeal, because the whole thing is made out to be irrelevant. As in, why even include it in the story if it has no bearing on the character’s recovery?
She just shrugs it off. Who’s impressed by that – the Aylin fans? What have they contributed so far, because my recollection of the previous thread was that it was only insults and accusations that I was ‘obsessed with woke’.
Don’t even mention it in the critique. I could if I wanted to, and should be allowed to – everyone else does so here on Steam without repercussions – but I’m not going to give them even the scantest fodder.
