Your ability to converse with souls most commonly comes to the fore via "soul stories," stories you can read from certain non-player characters depicting events from their lives or past lives. I was a bit surprised to learn, after doing some research, that all of the soul stories and the NPC's they're connected to were by backers of the games Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign, which raised nearly 4 million dollars in 2012. Anyone who donated a whopping $1000 or more was able to design an NPC who would appear in the game, with a soul story written by the backer. These small pieces of backstory on their characters (and, despite the game making it clear the souls held stories from past lives as well, every backer seems to have written stories from their NPC's point of view) led me to thinking: Could a game have NPC's written by their fans? Could you take those small, personal pieces of lore, and put their creation in the hands of the crowd?
With this in mind, I took note of many of the stories in the game, as a sort of tester for the concept. The positive aspect of this crowdsourced storytelling is the sheer variety of stories on display. There are happy stories of times enjoyed in pubs, stories of lonesome children being found and accepted, of pub fights provoked and won. Each person put in a story of their own choosing, and it's good to see such a variety in the game.
Unfortunately, that’s about all the positive I can say about these stories. Once I started really looking at the quality of the pieces, I realized that the writing in these "soul stories" ranges from alright to pretty bad, and none that I've seen have been up to par with what one would expect from stories written by the staff at Obsidian. Worse still, some of the stories are eyeroll-inducing in their content. One story I read went on and on describing a scene that an assassin set up for a target to come home to, the assassin gleefully anticipating their reaction before continuing their dark work, or whatever; who cares. I'm sure the writer thought it was super wicked and cool, but I just groaned at the idea of someone being so much of an edgelord that they decided this is what their awesome character had done in the past. Perhaps the effect would have been better if the NPC was located somewhere more appropriate than a bar in the main hub city in the game, or doing something more sinister than milling about with other patrons.
On top of that, some peoples’ views are...well, shitty, and those views sometimes come through in what they write. If you've read only one of the backer-written pieces in Pillars of Eternity, it's very likely to have been the following in-game epitaph, which garnered a fair bit of attention and criticism:
"Here lies Firedorn, a hero in bed
Once was alive, but now he's dead,
The last woman he bedded, turned out a man,
And crying in shame, off a cliff he ran."
Ignoring the fact that it's poorly written and has terrible meter, we also get a nice dose of transphobia, implying that sleeping with a trans woman is so bad, dudes would feel ashamed to the point that they'd commit suicide. That's real cool, jackass. Obsidian, for their part, quickly requested a replacement epitaph from the backer in question once they learned of it's content and implications, though that begs the question of why it was allowed in the game in the first place.
Initially, I was very interested and excited by the possibility of putting some minor creative control into the hands of fans. But honestly, that initial excitement around the possibility has cooled to the point where I don't think it's really feasible. Stop me once you've figured out my issue: First off, if you're not a company with fans already, like Obsidian is, you'll have to put some advertisements out to spread the word that you're looking for writers. Next, you'd want to ensure only the best writers are included, so you'd ask for writing samples, maybe give prompts and evaluate their stories. Of course, if you're going to be interacting with them significantly in the process, you'll also want to talk to them personally to ensure they're competent and pleasant to work with, and hold views that don't significantly conflict with those your company wishes to represent. At the end of it all, you'll want to ensure that the hard work of those writers is properly compensated with fiscal rewards and whoops you're not crowdsourcing your lore anymore you're just hiring more writers.
Obviously, Obsidian wasn't going to be picky with what they allowed into the game if they were willing to have people buy their way in at a significant price. But to do anything besides let everyone in, to have some level of standards and process of elimination for contributors, means you're just hiring people, even if it's only on contract or, worse, "for exposure." That initial concept, the Utopian ideal of everyone being able to help shape a project… it was great to think about. But when push comes to shove, you just end up with a lot of written debris. At the end of the day, your fanbase and the audience at large can give you support, but unless you're hiring, their involvement should end there.
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