I still think Bioware at the very least are doing a terrible job at PR. They should get their act together, they come across as pretty damn stupid.

You want to drag sense into something as nonsensical as this thread? Surely, you jest.

http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Jennifer_Hepler

I guess that is what she is responsible for? More or less.

And you and the rest of the "angry games" aren't?

Sense is perhaps too much to ask for, how about you settle for understandable?

Fair enough, you can start though. Explain the rationale behind the vicious ire that you and many others has spewed over mrs. Hepler.

Yeah, I am pretty jealous in fact, knowing that you have all twilight romances with George Lucas dialogues and hentai in the world whereas I have none.

I find it funny, that people still bother to ***** about these things.

Ed: I forgot the total **** pirate lady. She probably didn't have a lot of leeway there either - I'm sure mgmt told her to make a caricature woman for everyone to salivate over.

Also it is not my job. But I can promise you this, if I made comment like her on behalf of my company I would get fired. I try to avoid talking about ***** and start confrontation on my job related twitter accounts.

That's nice. She didn't start the whole confrontation, she merely responded to an organized harassment campaign which was started for incredibly stupid reasons.

And it's only bad PR if you're an immature fanboy. Some of us appreciate that Bioware's management is willing to tell immature fanboys to STFU and quit whining (this isn't the first time), and are more likely to buy a game as a result.

I'd rather ***** about starvation.

You do not have to play, enjoy, or even like video games to write a good story for them. The only concern here is her ability to do her job. She does not have to play video games, or like them, in order to write a story.

That is a concern, yes. Jennifer Hepler is an absolutely terrible writer, no better than an unusually literate fanfic enthusiast. In a story-centric game, that's completely unacceptable. I didn't notice anything amiss until Dragon Age II GÇö but after viewing an extensive selection of scenes from DA2 on YouTube, I wanted to fill a pressure washer with brain bleach, insert the nozzle into my ear, and empty the tank. I've seen better writing in made-for-TV monster flicks.

Personally, I harbor no ill will toward BioWare for the decline in writing quality. They're pandering to their wider customer base, and I can't blame them for that. I simply don't play their games anymore. (Not that terrible writing is the only reason GÇö the Origin digital distribution service, the fact that TOR is a blatant WoW clone, and the day-one paid DLC scheme for ME3 are also contributing factors.)

The nerd rage toward Hepler stems from the fact that she doesn't stick purely to writing. She also has opinions on gameplay (such as the well known "skip combat button"), and as a BioWare employee, her opinions are perceived as being influential. Moreover, the story itself is an important part of gameplay in BioWare games.

I do think it's a legitimate concern when someone who doesn't like video games is proposing changes to their core gameplay models.

The nerd rage toward Hepler stems from the fact that she doesn't stick purely to writing. She also has opinions on gameplay (such as the well known "skip combat button"), and as a BioWare employee, her opinions are perceived as being influential. Moreover, the story itself is an important part of gameplay in BioWare games.

I do think it's a legitimate concern when someone who doesn't like video games is proposing changes to their core gameplay models.

40 hours for $60? no thanks. for the original xbox i can accept this but not on 360

Jennifer Hepler isn't to blame for every single ****** romance plot.

Having personal opinions =/= having influence.

As a writer she may have personal opinions on the subject, but it's her professional role that matters. She has zero control over gameplay features, and the people who DO have control over those features are not going to be convinced by her random personal opinions unless it's something they also want to do. If it's not a good opinion, the people who get paid to develop good gameplay are simply going to veto it and move on.

. . .

How exactly is a "skip combat" button a huge change? Did you miss the part where you don't have to use it if you don't like it? FFS, it's not even a multiplayer game we're talking about. Does it really bother you that much that someone else could "play" the game differently?

She's not solely to blame for every character and scene, no, because she doesn't write every character and scene, nor does she work on every BioWare game. There are surely others to blame for the overall decrease in writing quality at BioWare, and not just in romance scenes.

Like it or not, though, Hepler is the figurehead for BioWare's new direction GÇö and BioWare has issued strong public statements supporting and endorsing her writing style. That to me is an indicator of what future BioWare games will be like.

Imagine a CCP employee proposing unpopular changes, changes which are subsequently endorsed by official CCP public statements and/or press releases. The blame for these proposed changes now shifts to the entire company, not just that one employee.

TL;DR: Who you choose to endorse matters.

EDIT

Bioware are so bad at PR they decided to go to extra expense and print a double sided cover for all retail boxes, allowing fans to choose the gender on the box is a truly terrible PR move.

Bioware romance plots have always been **** though, they have **** since 1998 so whatever she has done its not part of any kind of decline in overall romance plots.

Do you even realize yourself how stupid you come across with every single post you make on these forums?

Good PR=2 sided covers for a game box???



Oh boy, selling you a game is like stealing candy from a baby.

She doesn't only write romance plots, though. She also writes characters, races, quests and storylines:

"Hepler was responsible for most of the dwarven NPCs in Orzammar, and the Dwarf Commoner Origin. She also wrote the Anvil of the Void quest line, including Branka and Hespith."

"Hepler wrote Anders, Bethany, Leandra, Elthina, Cullen, and Sebastian Vael. She also wrote most of the Legacy DLC for Dragon Age II."

http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Jennifer_Hepler

Look how dumb you are, fans have been complaining about the canonisation of Shepard being male and the fact that in the first two games he was the singular poster child.

So yes it is a nice gesture to the fans.

What do you mean, Jenny?

http://imgur.com/imYw1 And again, never stop posting.

snipped

DA2
OK story
better combat
game was shorter
all the quest were in hallways, but worse, the SAME hallways.
DA2 lasted about 40 hours doing 99% of quest.

DA2's problems weren't just those things. The main general problem(outside personal taste issues) was it screamed of halfassed implementation and lack of effort in almost every area of the game. Generic items with no unique pictures just color coding on the same icon, constant recycled environments and dungeons, minimal number of different equipment models, weak and fractured story telling on the main plot, little/no difficulty balancing and enemies in most fights constantly spawned from nothingness to extend the fights and try to give them at least a little tactical. It all made the game very unenjoyable for me and that's just the list I remember from the top of my head with personal taste issues kept to a minimum.

The game is simply filled to the brim with all kinds of corner cutting and lazyness. I can't recall the last time I played a game that so clearly showed the lack of effort and caring from the dev team. They did a bad job with the game and frankly it's totally unacceptable from such a high profile game.