Millennial writing in video games

[Dr.Kisaragi]

I'm curious if there are many video games written in a millennial style—I haven’t seen any before. People criticize writers for this, so how do you spot millennial-style writing, and what is the stigma around it.

 

[newtype711]

The Saint's Row Reboot is a prime example. While taste is always relative the best description of the "millennial style" is anytime the story or dialouge apes a Disney marvel movie or anything written by Josh Wedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer).
Put in a more formal way it is a style that tries to challenge the tropes of entertainment to the excess of being trite or cilche.

 

[Doomsday519]

I think one of the bigger examples is Borderlands. The quirky characters & writing, sarcasm and the like. Criticism has always been that millennial writing is cringe or corny. Take a serious scene then insert unnecessary jokes, sarcasm, quips, "well, that just happened...", etc. For me I think a lot of the influence comes from one man and he didn't even write a video game. The man is Joss Whedon. I feel like he popularized that style and millennials in general just ran with it and kinda made it worse.

Post automatically merged: Today at 7:07 AM

The Saint's Row Reboot is a prime example. While taste is always relative the best description of the "millennial style" is anytime the story or dialouge apes a Disney marvel movie or anything written by Josh Wedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer).
Put in a more formal way it is a style that tries to challenge the tropes of entertainment to the excess of being trite or cilche.

Like minds mentioning "Joss Whedon" lol

 

[starseeker300]

this is because of metroid prime 4 isnt it.

 

[ThatOneLum ThatOneLum]

I think I can second most people's suggestion that Borderlands 3/4 both suffer from what we call "millennial writing", tough honestly it feels more like it's "currently trending hacky writing" than specific to any given generation.

I've not played it, but from what I understand, Forspoken had this issue as well. Overly quippy, grounded dialogue spouted by people in fantastical scenarios as much as it would be in an everyday scenario.

Personally, I'm not a fan, but there are so many projects outside of the mainstream system that don't suffer from it. I dunno how prevalent it has become in games outside of a few games that generally just failed.

 

[Neb Lleb]

I think one of the bigger examples is Borderlands. The quirky characters & writing, sarcasm and the like. Criticism has always been that millennial writing is cringe or corny. Take a serious scene then insert unnecessary jokes, sarcasm, quips, "well, that just happened...", etc. For me I think a lot of the influence comes from one man and he didn't even write a video game. The man is Joss Whedon. I feel like he popularized that style and millennials in general just ran with it and kinda made it worse.

Yeah. Millennial Writing and the creatives who use it are very influenced by Joss Whedon, and TBH? they don't know WHY his writing for shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer worked in the first place. Buffy was a sincere show even with the lampshades and in-jokes (I.E. "Nightmares", the highlight of that show's first season and one that is 100% sincere in its plot and the torment Buffy and the scoobies go through), and most millennial-penned works of fiction are anything but, mainly due to these people having insane egos the size of Arrakis (to quote one of my two threads on one of the worst offenders, Netflix May Cry).

Thing is, it's okay to tell a joke to alleviate tension. But you need to be genuine as you do so, and millennial writers lack this quality.