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[Louella Dougans]

* Louella Dougans contemplates the existence of plush graelyn dolls in RL ...

 

[Yoshito Sanders]

Tony is the one saying that he wants big posters with pictures of Tibus Heth and Jamyl Sarum hanging next to Master Chief. The problem is that Tibus Heth and Jamyl Sarum aren't the stars of the Eve setting. The stars of Eve are Istvaan, Verone, the Mittani, Jade, Ladel, Hardin, Sir Molle...that's what he's forgetting. For me, anyway, good tie-in fiction (what little there is) is always about characters that show the potential of players, not that are basically 800 pages of exposition for metaplot wankery. Metaplot needs some mystery to keep the players interested. Revealing too much of the world behind the curtain is always a dangerous proposition, even if your metaplot is comparatively well written like say, my personal favorites Shadowrun and Heavy Gear. The players' collective imagination is almost always better than what you can come up with (at least to them).

Svet, as usual, nails it right on the head. The reason, say, the Black Mountain series is vastly superior to the novels is that Black Mountain is just about some dudes. Sure, they're involved in shady backstage dealings with "the fate of the cluster" or whatever on the line, but they're still just dudes. They don't have psychic powers, they can't kick billions out of school with a snap of their fingers, they aren't fighting ancient shadow wars. They're just these people who happen to get caught up in shit and don't attempt to overshadow the rest of the universe with their dangling boobs.

[Morwen Lagann]

They're just these people who happen to get caught up in shit and don't attempt to overshadow the rest of the universe with their dangling boobs.

Those are some pretty big dangling boobs if they're casting a shadow over the universe... 

[Caellach Marellus]

They're just these people who happen to get caught up in shit and don't attempt to overshadow the rest of the universe with their dangling boobs.

Those are some pretty big dangling boobs if they're casting a shadow over the universe... 

It's described as "ample" afterall...

[Morwen Lagann]

They're just these people who happen to get caught up in shit and don't attempt to overshadow the rest of the universe with their dangling boobs.

Those are some pretty big dangling boobs if they're casting a shadow over the universe... 

It's described as "ample" afterall...

Even in these dark times, Niraia can still find work. >.>

[Random Sentience]

Svet, as usual, nails it right on the head. The reason, say, the Black Mountain series is vastly superior to the novels is that Black Mountain is just about some dudes. Sure, they're involved in shady backstage dealings with "the fate of the cluster" or whatever on the line, but they're still just dudes. They don't have psychic powers, they can't kick billions out of school with a snap of their fingers, they aren't fighting ancient shadow wars. They're just these people who happen to get caught up in shit and don't attempt to overshadow the rest of the universe with their dangling boobs.

My view:

Tony either ignored (or, also likely, was not aware of) many concepts of "good" literature in order to tell an "epic" sci-fi story. This does not seem to be done intentionally; Theodicy and Ruthless have some of the same problems, but TEA and T1 take things to a new level. The same can be said about some of the post-"Abraxas Bi-Weekly Chronicles" fiction tied to the Sleeper storyline. It's as if all of the feedback Tony and the Fiction department were getting in regards to these novels was given to them by their best friends, with no regard to actually improving quality. This may also be a result of feedback from the community. I know that sounds counter-intuitive, but much of what I've seen of Tony's response to community input seems defensive. When someone gets defensive, they tend to retreat into that little corner they've made, and fortify their position. In this case, it manifested as explaining (at great length) how everything ties together.

In a fiction piece, that ends up becoming pages of exposition. My guess is that the defensiveness started before The Empyrean Age; Ruthless is a decent piece of fiction. Theodicy is... well, it's the start of the "ancient conspiracy" storyline. Empyrean Age really goes into the exposition, and retreating into previous works for safety. Threads started in Ruthless and Theodicy became heavily weaved into TEA. This culminates in Templar One; Grious, that one random pilot from Ruthless (who also happens to be a major NPC), the Retford crew...

It's a "me against the world" novel, through and through. There are even shades of characters of players who supported the "Enheduanni" bits in Theodicy and Jamyl's "voice" woven in there. Add in the fact that the chronicles dealing with the Sleepers can be seen as laying the foundation for everything in T1, it all points to both a defensive view of the "righteousness" of Tony's own view of EVE and a supporting atmosphere at CCP.

That's just my feel of the situation though. I love Tony's novels as nice, easy to read pulp science fiction. I probably won't read any more EVE novels by him though, simply for the fact that the setting (and community reaction) seem to be burying his writing potential. I also enjoyed the canon reveals, even though nothing was really all that surprising. It did help to solidify my view on the Sleeper story, and it did help to solidify my goals in EVE for the long term (though for the short term, I'm kind of stumped as to what to do).

PS: I've been doing a lot of soul searching and re-evaluating of pretty much everything EVE related.

[Arnulf Ogunkoya]

The base concepts behind DUST514 are much better suited to a horror story.

Your protagonist could be a faithfull Soldier of God and product of the human endurance program. The plot tracks him or her through training, augmentation and then the horrified realisation that, for them, there is no end to the fighting and killing. Possibly this might be the core of a motive to betray the secrets involved to the other empires.

At no point would you have to involve any of the government leaders, and the basis of the tech could be made as clear or as vague as desired.

Hell, even a Rogue Trooper retread would have been better.

[hellgremlin]

The base concepts behind DUST514 are much better suited to a horror story.

Your protagonist could be a faithfull Soldier of God and product of the human endurance program. The plot tracks him or her through training, augmentation and then the horrified realisation that, for them, there is no end to the fighting and killing. Possibly this might be the core of a motive to betray the secrets involved to the other empires.

At no point would you have to involve any of the government leaders, and the basis of the tech could be made as clear or as vague as desired.

Hell, even a Rogue Trooper retread would have been better.

Oh god, this. I hope CCP doesn't puss out, I hope they add civilians to Dust. I mean, the warzone is cities and factories that should be teeming with citizens and workers. Blapping civvies should obviously incur some kind of penalty, like alerting local police. This would go a long way toward addressing the whole "every setting is an FPS level" feel of Dust as it's been seen in recent videos.

[Kade Jeekin]

Thanks for all the analysis above. Just finished reading it myself, so was holding off reading this thread. As with Emp Age most of this must have happened in some downtime, however:

• FW does not change sovereignity (That would be quite cool)
• Amamake has never been occupied by Amarr (that I can see anyway, if there was a flip then perhaps the story took place on that day)
• Amarr Navy entered Amamake through the Osoggur gate - ie from Republic hisec!
• Had to have been downtime as if PL were online those faction caps would have been hot dropped
• PS: Faction Navies need to take lessons in how to use capitals from PL, that titan lasted far too long.

Maybe the story happened on Sisi?

[Matariki Rain]

• Had to have been downtime as if PL were online those faction caps would have been hot dropped

[...]
Maybe the story happened on Sisi?

Had to smile at the comments above, especially the ones I've quoted.

I'm having a disjunction here, though: my strand of roleplay holds that what is perceptible in space and the markets is "real". Conversely, I'm (very) happy with people extending the lore consistently with what's already known, but I get antsy about people declaring happenings which should have been perceptible. Even if they're the game narrators. The thing they're telling me when they do that is that I'm living in a parallel universe which doesn't interact with their universe.

[Louella Dougans]

someone wrote something about "30ft tall posters of Jamyl Sarum, like the ones you get of Master chief or Cmdr. Shepard"

but, master chief and cmdr shepard, are the player characters. Jamyl is an npc, their story is not that of the player.

I don't understand.

[Svetlana Scarlet]

someone wrote something about "30ft tall posters of Jamyl Sarum, like the ones you get of Master chief or Cmdr. Shepard"

but, master chief and cmdr shepard, are the player characters. Jamyl is an npc, their story is not that of the player.

I don't understand.

That is exactly the point I made.

[Matariki Rain]

That is exactly the point I made.

It is. Svetlana summed it up nicely.

(I've been wishing you were around so I could pick your brains about Caldari matters as they ought to be, Svetlana.)

[Svetlana Scarlet]

That is exactly the point I made.

It is. Svetlana summed it up nicely.

(I've been wishing you were around so I could pick your brains about Caldari matters as they ought to be, Svetlana.)

Yeah, I've not been in game for ages...I poke around on Caldari threads here though out of some sort of desperate hope things aren't as bad as I think. I'm happy to discuss it but I don't really have much investment in the storylines for Eve anymore. :/

[Ulphus]

Ok, I finished Templar One a couple of months back, and I've been slowly processing it it the back of my mind.

First off, I think it's much better written than TEA or Theodicy. It really seems like TonyG learned a lot from what went wrong with TEA. The paragraphs do not make me gag, or want to throw my kindle across the room. The story is still not attractive though.

At least the Elders have fucked off.

It was not immediately apparent to me when the scenes in the book were supposed to happen. I thought at first that they had yet to happen, but with the DUST 514 beta being called "Mordu's trials" and the news articles about soldiers disappearing from the front lines (off to get fitted for the DUST equipment, I infer) it seems it happened in the past.

Do we know that?

Ishukone is practically at war with Heth. Have we seen any news articles to that effect? I know that when I was involved in discusions in EM about I-RED being enemies or friends, that sort of information would have been influential, but I'd never heard of it IC. (This is one of the reasons I assumed it had yet to happen).

A drake takes out a dreadnought because the dreadnought needs to fly at stupid height in order to bombard planet. Has TonyG even played the game?

Triggering phantom pain in someone can cause med-bots to disect them in the name of helping them, who'd have thought?

Templar Nine fights his way clear alongside Templar one, Someone says on the radio that they'll spare his life if he tops Templar One, and then to be helpful he shoots himself in the head, WTF?

the universe they are writing about one is not one that I am interested in much at all anymore. Certainly not one that I feel passionate enough about to want to devote a good chunk of time playing in and writing about.

Re-reading the thread before commenting on Templar One, and this sentence reached out and touched me.

As pathetic as it may be, Me too!

There's a point at which game worlds stop being places I want to explore. Eve has reached that point for me. Glorantha did it by trying to own the copyright on everything I wrote about the world, Eve has done it by changing the world until there is no role I can play in it that is currently attractive to me.