The Great Transfer - Wherefore art thou, writers?

I've started to play an old game called Planescape: Torment. Due to this, lots of effort in writing and work, I don't really have a subject which I can expound upon today. I think that we don't make games of this quality any more, that we concentrate so much on graphics and existing legacies of sequels that we ignore something as trivial as gameplay and plot.

Most games companies don't even hire a writer to work on their games and things such as dialogue and the story are just done in-house, by designers or producers or whoever is available. This often shows.

It's almost sad that the current generation are not going to experience beautiful stories in their video games; they won't have the heart-wrench when Aeris dies, or the mind-expansion of the Ultima series, or the truly epic nature of Shenmue. They'll be stuck with plot being behind how it looks, how cheap it is to make and how it's the third game in a series.

The movie industry is suffering from the same kind of thing, but thankfully the elite, exclusive nature of the Oscars ensures that some originality is forced into what films are made; meaningful, interesting films have to be made if they stand a chance there.

The World Ends With You is the first game in a long time that gave me the buzz of being involved in a fantastic plot, a rich gaming-world and really deep characters. Thank god that the Japanese have been able to keep sight of how important the story is in a game.