“autonomous, intelligent, in-game NPCs”

I’m just tired of every fucking game turning into Destiny.

The Potter series isn’t unique in this way, but its always bothered me that in so much media ambition is considered inherently evil. Its morally neutral. Bravery and loyalty aren’t inherently good either. 

Definitely agree. If anything, Slytherin should be representative of some of the very best wizards in history as well as the very worst. The entire framing of it could have been “Drive and ambition and thirst for power and glory can lead to great success, but it can also be the most corrupting.” Instead you get a…

Really the idea of a magical hat deciding the trajectory of your entire high school career based off whether it thinks you’re a Hero, a Nerd, an Asshole or too boring to fit into the other three is a fucked system to start with.

I don’t think he does game them out, because they’re too predictable but he certainly structures them in a way that is very reminiscent of videogame fights, or bad manga/anime.

Personally I’ve always considered Sanderson more of the shonen manga of fantasy books, since stuff like DBZ and One Piece is very much about power progression.  The whole connected universe of cosmere does make it very similar to the MCU of fantasy books.

Agreed. I love Sanderson’s worlds but they are not high level writing. What attracts me to Sanderson’s books is the world building and creative/unique magic systems that are all connected. And the fun and escapism, and sometime hilarious characters. Arguably the same could be said of Wheel of Time and Song of Ice and…

He reads to me like he games out his books. The magic stuff especially. And his fight scenes often read like a transcription of a video game fight. It’s very off putting to me, I can practically hear the dice rolling.

Calling Sanderson’s work the MCU of fantasy books is wildly overgenerous, yet does have some truth in it.

“The MCU of fantasy books” is such a perfect description!  And I’m saying that as a general fan!

I’ve long felt the most notable thing about Sanderson is his fanbase’s rabidity.

I assume it will mostly be porn

Yeah, I dont believe it. Not one bit.

I was talking to friends recently about why we all enjoyed AC Odyssey so much more than Valhalla even though on a technical level they are just as competent as each other. And aside from a much more visually appealing setting, the thing I realised was how enthralled all the NPCs were with the world they occupied. Even…

On the surface it sounds good. But I’m really suspicious that it’s a tool for a role that teams loooove to skip hiring for. Watch as game designers start using this to delay hiring a writer for even longer/reduce how much writing from an actual writer they need to pay for.

Otherwise it doesn’t sound too bad. If it’s…

As if Ubisoft’s writing wasn’t wooden enough.

Get used to it. First it’s gonna be NPC barks, then reusable assets, then who knows.

One of the more interesting and applicable functions I could see for the ChatGPT-style bots in the very near future, would be as NPC integration in games. The idea of being able to deepen the dialogue trees through interaction rather than a series of preset choices is very appealing. Even just finding different ways…

More honest PR: “We’re looking into firing our writers but want to be sure they train the ML text generation script long enough for it to handily take their jobs”