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[Casiella]

Is this where I make the obligatory Aeris reference?

[Ken]

   Don't you speak her name!   

[Wanoah]

Games need more child mortality.

[Casiella]

I didn't play it, but did Heavy Rain do it "right"?

[Ken]

Having never played it either, I (at least) can't answer that.

[Amann Karris]

Personally there's nothing that can really be brought up in EVE that would top some of the things I've seen and heard about in reality.  The level of misery that can be delivered upon a human being by another human being is underestimated by a good many people that I know.  Even people that you can sit down with, talk, laugh, share a beer with have done things that I wouldn't want to repeat.

On the other hand, I really don't want to be desensitized to the suffering of others.  When you stop empathizing with your fellow human beings -- or believe that no suffering that you have endured can be less than that which you can inflict -- bad things happen.

Like I said, shades of gray trumps "Grimdark" in my book.  I'd rather question my morality, and potentially grow from the questioning, than to be desensitized to morality in general.

So, Casiella, do you really think that Amann/Niki will be making a return?  I don't think I will ever return to EVE.  There would have to be some huge shift in content (and I don't mean Incarna) to seduce me back.  I may write some fiction now and then.  In my eyes EVE has lost it's luster.  It has lost that shiny newness and that wide-eyed wonder-inducing beauty.

I'll always love EVE, even if I'm not in love with EVE. 

[Borza]

Grimdark away, and although this isn't a terrible case, it's no excuse to just have, for example, random, OTT, overly-explicit and completely unnecessary fictional descriptions of murder/rape/whatever.

It just becomes cheap.

Overly-explicit? Despite being a single throwaway line? You spin me right round baby, right round.

[Desiderya]

You're right with the G.R.R. Martin scene. It works better when you are attached to that character. But all the random deaths - the book is ridden with that - work, too. We can't compare the works directly: Martin is the better author and a novel can be far more luxurious with it's screenplay than the mission texts. I'd say the author of the OP's scene wanted to focus on the warped bunch of people responsible for it, and not on the victims.
The casual remarks used are 'efficient' in a way that they probably don't want to use large portions of text inflight and they manage to portray both customers and offenders as -I already used that word earlier. The superficial manner describes to me that not only the protagonists don't care, but that it isn't that extraordinary in the world of EVE.

[Lyn Farel]

I think Martin's "random deaths" work better for the only reason he is a way better storyteller. The examples written by Ken worked a lot better than the original ones quoted by Seri, for example, to my opinion.

You also need something else for grimdark to work. For every gloomy thing, creepy aspect, you need at least some of the opposite values. If you have none, you can't adjust the contrast (because there is suddenly none), and voila, tasteless whatever you try to achieve, because you have no 'good and emotionnal' reference anymore.

I think here the author tried to do kind of the same thing Gaspar Noé tried to do in his movie Irreversible. Some things work, while some other just look gratuitous. But unlike the movie, text based crude scenes are hardly very relevant when they come to that. Either you have to describe a lot more to make the player feel really dizzy, either you have to be more subtle to let him come to his own gloomy conclusions.

[Mizhara]

That's just it, Lyn, there are contrasting segments to Eve. You just can't expect every last facet of New Eden morality to pop up in a single mission. This one was on the harsh in your face end of the spectrum, while others show the other side of things. It's a quick and efficient method of showing the off-handed acts of atrocious evil committed without a second thought on a daily basis around New Eden, while letting other missions and other events show the flip side of the coin.

Having a 'narrative' and relatively long bits of fiction rolling over your screen in a mission is counter-productive as people will just barely skim it and get on with the pewpew. This is efficient, strong and warranted in a storyline such as this.

Sometimes the subtle tickle of a feather or just the slightest waft of a scent will be the most useful tool... and other times you just have to hit the player in the face with a sledgehammer. This is the sledgehammer and it worked beautifully. Want the feather or the scent? Play on, do some other missions. There's several of them that made me grin viciously in approval once I'd thought a bit and read between the lines.

[Casiella]

How about that Dolls mission? ^_^

[Mizhara]

How about that Dolls mission? ^_^

I WANT TO WEAR HIS FLESH SUIT!

[Borza]

It puts the lotion on it's skin

[Casiella]

I WANT TO WEAR HIS FLESH SUIT!

Personally, I thought this storyline did a great job. The missions varied so greatly from others that nearly any player would stop and read the text rather than just "gogogo pewpewpew", and when you do, it says just enough that I actually got creeped out.

YMMV. HTH. HAND.

[Lyn Farel]

That's just it, Lyn, there are contrasting segments to Eve. You just can't expect every last facet of New Eden morality to pop up in a single mission. This one was on the harsh in your face end of the spectrum, while others show the other side of things. It's a quick and efficient method of showing the off-handed acts of atrocious evil committed without a second thought on a daily basis around New Eden, while letting other missions and other events show the flip side of the coin.

Having a 'narrative' and relatively long bits of fiction rolling over your screen in a mission is counter-productive as people will just barely skim it and get on with the pewpew. This is efficient, strong and warranted in a storyline such as this.

Sometimes the subtle tickle of a feather or just the slightest waft of a scent will be the most useful tool... and other times you just have to hit the player in the face with a sledgehammer. This is the sledgehammer and it worked beautifully. Want the feather or the scent? Play on, do some other missions. There's several of them that made me grin viciously in approval once I'd thought a bit and read between the lines.

Honestly when I read the quotes Seri linked I am at best half convinced.

Sure, you can consider that the whole EvE fiction is one unique story, but its like any series of novels with the same universe. If in each chapter you only have one flat side, the story does not work. You just can't split it like this.

Though I agree on the fact you can't overflow the player screen with rolling text, thats why I think the examples shown by Ken worked just fine imo.