Comment on Baldur's Gate 4 Isn't Next For Larian; Something Bigger Is Coming | Spot On | Gamespot
li10@feddit.uk 3 months agoIt can have both.
You could have a fully man made storyline, but then expand the world in a way that is currently impossible.
Even if you train a model for main characters/stories, it would still be built off the work of writers, the model would simply be the character they’ve written.
lanolinoil@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I think the way video game devs/people are (from what I can see from outside) they are well poised to realize someone making an LLM or a finetune or whatever you want to call it – that produces master level dialogue/stories/whatever is (will be) a skill just like storytelling/writing is.
If I were a JRR Tolkien or Herbert with a universe in my mind, it would be so much more pleasing to make an engine that generates anything from that world that to just write out a few stories from it.
Sounds cool to me
rustydrd@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Tolkien was a linguist with a deep fondness for nature and spirituality. He loved creating languages and building beautiful, natural worlds around them. I can’t imagine a single person who would be less enamored by the idea of machinistic language devices that people use to “generate everything”. I think he would be either bored by this possibility or deeply disturbed.
bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
Tolkien also had a deep disdain for industrialism and automation, which is what inspired Isengard in the books. When he says Saruman has “a mind of metal and wheels”, it’s implied that the reader understands why this is a way of saying that Saruman is evil. He definitely wouldn’t be a fan of MindOfMetalAndWheelsGPT.
lanolinoil@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Perhaps but I can’t see anyone who is interested in creating and communicating fake worlds eschewing the idea too much. If you make a fake world, there’s no way you could ever ‘get it all out’ since you’re just one guy. This would open up that possibility to make a world bigger than yourself and what you can get out of your brain
bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
One of the foundational tenets of good writing is that worldbuilding is just masturbatory unless it serves the story. You don’t create a cool world and work your way backward into a story. You create a great story and craft a world around it which supports the story you’re trying to tell. The stories are the thing that have value, not the setting or the lore.
Telling a great story is a completely orthogonal skill to worldbuilding, and it requires creativity, emotion, and authorial intent. Star Wars and Harry Potter are both dogshit at worldbuilding, but they’re both some pretty rad stories. Avatar: the Legend of Korra is set in one of the best fantasy worlds ever created and it was a very mediocre story.
Womble@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Given that is the opposite of what Tolkien did i think you are overstating your case to say it’s a foundational tenet.
bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
Not the opposite at all. Tolkien didn’t know what the One Ring was when he wrote about Bilbo finding it in the Hobbit.
Honytawk@lemmy.zip 3 months ago
Strange, because that is the opposite of every D&D game ever.
The story gets written at the table, at which point the world building should have already been mostly created.
bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
I’m a DM, and I can tell you that as fun as worldbuilding is, no information about your world is real until players learn and remember it. And if you try to loredump ok them, they won’t actually remember stuff.
Worldbuilding is fun, but it’s also masturbatory; it’s only fun for the DM until the game’s story makes it matter for everyone else.
KingOfSleep@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
I agree with everything you said.
However, fiction world building and game world building are hugely different.
bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
Are games not fiction?