Anyone else tremendously disappointed in the writing?

[Neomaxim]

I will keep this spoiler-free, but having finished the game, I am actually shocked by how Saturday-morning-cartoon its level of writing becomes by the third act. The macro-concept is great, and the world-building is strong, but the moment-to-moment writing, and characterizations are just horrible.

Its essentially solid except for any occasion where our protagonist, or the antagonist opens their mouth, and which point it is a caricature of strong, motivated characters.

I think my dilemma was being told that this would be an exceptional smart bit of "body horror" in a sci-fi setting, and instead receiving a rookie outing miming Harlan Elison, with a little Lovecraft in there. In an effort to sound incredibly smart, the game just feels forced.

I really want to like it more than I do. I definitely respect it as a well produced package from a tiny team, who absoutely nailed things like art-direction, music (where present), audio, etc... But the area I think I hoped would most succeed feels like it just barely works.

[Seanspeed99]

I would say yes, but this is something I tend to feel about every video game ever, even the so-called 'well written' ones. By video game standards, it's fine.

[sturmkoenig2k]

I like reading the logs, but it is stressfull, because the text is hard to read for me. Yes, the dialogs are strange, hard to say what's wrong with them. They are often feel disconnected from the current situation. They also make the characters very flat, i feel nothing for them.

[Helvetica]

I think the story suffers from over hyping, I hear things like "ohh its very event horzion or dead space" and it really isn't. The writing is ok, But suffers a bit in dialogue. The girl for example is not well voice acted. John seems fine. Malan is a bit of an adventures of tin tin type villan.

This could just be that the team was not familar on how a screenplay works in differance to the writing of the PDAs. I wasn't expecting Joss Whedon levels of batter but perhaps on a par with Fallout in its interactions.

I think its fair to say we care enough about this world to be annoyed it wasn't as polished in the story and delivery as we would have liked. It had a lot of potenital even if it was a hard pill to swallow that the story was more clone than any novi.

[SneerfulOwl]

The writing is.... not that great. Especially the main antagonist. It seriously destroyed the immersion of this game because of how ridiculously laughable the character is. "I'm so eeevil!" type of characters ruins every serious writings.
I honestly think the game's writing would've been much better if that character did not exist at all. This game didn't need that type of character. It ruins the mood.

[bliss]

I'm still in the first act I think. The PDAs aren't always believable in tone, and they're a missed opportunity for dramatic effect imho.

When you first come across an exterior portal, it's weird that there's no surprise or even comment made about being in low Neptune orbit (all indicators before were they were drifting through space the past 3 months). I'm not sure how realistic it is just how low in orbit they seem to be either; well inside an apparently dense atmosphere. Not that I know much about the properties of Neptune.

As for the archetypal villian, so far he's still quite mysterious so it hasn't been an issue for me - I can just assume he has only shown the side of himself he wants John to see.

[SneerfulOwl]

Diposting pertama kali oleh ʞoɯɐ:

As for the archetypal villian, so far he's still quite mysterious so it hasn't been an issue for me - I can just assume he has only shown the side of himself he wants John to see.

The villain in this game is the most laughable part of this game. He's hysterically so eeeevil! to the point where he could pass as your typical cartoon villain. He's your ordinary mad scientist who just want to "conquer the world!".

[xemplate]

I agree, Malan and some of the other "evil" scientists were pretty one-dimensional, with the exception of the guy who discovered belatedly that death was more exciting than life. It almost felt as if depictions of a grey area were being shied away from to make the atrocities being depicted and the fact you end up killing real people -- which John and the player had not had to do before -- more palatable. Same with Te'ah at the end; the bit with her husband was quite sympathetic, but it was immediately chased by the detail about monetary compensation, as if to wash that away and let the player feel better about doing what needed to be done.

Still, there were a bunch of side characters whose personal details I thought were some of the stronger parts of the game. Some of them include:

- The poor bastard in the sewers who revealed that there's a "death lottery" for the families of the poor
- The love triangle between Jupiter's owner, the shipping chick and her stalker
- The tragic "friendship" between the unstable engineer and the rich kid who used a thesaurus to make himself sound smarter (surprisingly gut-punchy, since you read the engineer's log first and know how much of a disconnect their relationship was)
- Akiza from the queen chamber, who was trying to outrun her relative's eugenicist legacy on a ship full of people who idolized him
- Eleanor's status as one of the only scientists with a conscience

I also really enjoyed the addition of emails and other exchanges on the PDAs, which were nice indications of a character's relationship with another and the division within the general Cayne staff and those involved in human experimentation. This was also the only time I felt Malan got any kind of secondary characterization (Lincoln naively describing him as helpful, for example), so they were clever little bits.

[HIM]

Honestly, most of the voice acting was pretty cringe worthy. A few times I nearly outright laughed and it borderline ruined the experience for me. All the intended "emotional" sequences had the opposite effect on me because of these issues. A few prime examples:

-Alot of the daughter or child voices sound like a female version of microsoft sam. Wierd and disconnected pronounciations straight out of ventrillo or skype.

-Practically all conversations between John and Te'ah. The one that really stood out was the shouting match between them when John reads the young dead security guard(anderson?)'s log. How could Te'ah even know what John is reading at the time? Why does she care? Why is this so awkward and disjointed?"Have a heart Te'ah!" LOL!!

-All dialogue with the main villian. He says "I AM A GOD!!" in the worst type of slow talking james bond villian voice. His goofy as hell portait doesn't help either! HE HAS NO PURPOSE IN THIS GAME.

-Most awkward lullaby ever...Just listening to it made me want to put myself into stasis.

-The dying woman in hydrophonics gurgles and silly portrait made me laugh out loud. I don't think that was the intended effect.

-All the heavy arse breathing for no reason! Sometimes John is just standing there and he sounds like he ran a marathon!

-All the important scenes near the end had a strange, off kilter dialogue and interactions.

I'm not sure why the writing quality is so drastic between the PDA's and the spoken dialogue.
An option to disable all spoken dialogue and opt for traditional text would go a LONG way in making this a SCARIER game.

In short, I'm not trying to be mean or a jerk. It's just when the dev said he was inspired by sanitarium I assumed he meant its gameplay and surrealism/themes. Not its god awful, cringeworthy dialogue.
Luckily, the game's saving graces are the immersive graphics and decently written PDA's.
I look forward to another Stasis game.

[krayzkrok]

I thought John's character did a decent job with the VO, and when he's muttering to himself it works well. The other characters are a lot less convincing, but let's not forget they had a very limited budget for decent voice work. I agree though, a volume slider for the dialog would have been great.