Review And Book Review He Did

poocolator · Oct 10, 2009

WanderingThrough2 said:
These hours. . . . The gurgling started again — but how slowly a man died! For this Maric knew — the Orlesian could not be saved. Indeed, he had tried to tell himself that the man would be, but at noon this pretense broke down and melted before his groans. If only Maric had not lost his hand-bow crawling about, he would shoot him. Stab him he could not.

By noon Maric was groping on the outer limits of reason. Hunger devoured him, he could almost weep for something to eat, he could not struggle against it. Again and again he fetched water for the dying Orlesian and drank some himself.

This was the first of many he had killed with his hands, whom he could see close at hand, whose death was his own doing. Katriel and Rown and certainly Loghain had experienced it already; it happened to many, in hand-to-hand fighting especially—

But every gasp laid Maric's heart bare. This dying man had time with him, he had an invisible dagger with which he stabbed the young prince: time and Maric's own thoughts.

The boy would give so much if the Orlesian would but stay alive. It was hard to lie there and to have to see and hear him.

Click to expand...

Emoluv FTW!

NotAnAlt · Oct 10, 2009

That writing is literally making me sick.

Very, very bad.

I mean, Jesus:

They awoke in the middle of the night. The earth boomed. Heavy fire was falling on them. They crouched into corners. They distinguished spells of every nature.

Each man laid hold of his things and looked again every minute to reassure himself that they were still there. The dugout heaved, the night roared and flashed with Severan's magic. They looked at each other in the momentary flashes of light, and with pale faces and pressed lips shook their heads.

Every man was aware of the sorcery tearing down the parapet, rooting up the embankment and demolishing the upper layers of stone. When a spell burst in the trench they noted how the hollow, furious blast was like a blow from the paw of a raging beast of prey. Already, by morning, a few of the youngest knights were green and vomiting. They were too inexperienced. . . .

Doesn't the guy read his stuff back? One scan through this and anyone could recognize it as shit.

I may go through and fix it so it's readable but right now im just to disgusted.

:cry:

God it's bad.

muds_animal_friend · Oct 10, 2009

Reading DA: The Eye of Argon is like watching a train wreck. Sure it’s horrific, but I just can’t tear my eyes away. Gaider obviously had no (competent) editorial support on this.

The sentence ... — ... structure:: the typography … it … burns — IT;, BURNS!!!! — 111 — !!!!;!11!! … so it does; burns. … … burnygrittymature — dark. ... Darkness and inversion of cliché -- tall dwarves who hate mining …………. MOAR. NEED MOAR. POST MOAR PROSE.

Pegultagol · Oct 10, 2009

What would happen if a blind peson would read a brail version of this book? So bad he or she will begin to see again, only to chop the fingers off their hands that have had been blighted the vile, corrupting, evil that is this book. Truly the stuff o' miracles, this book is.

just trying to gauge the hyperbole heaped upon this book, folks. Just post the damn review and leave the poor man alone.

muds_animal_friend · Oct 10, 2009

Hyperbole?! In regards these extracts? I've seen none, but I'll take the challenge:

Perhaps a masturbating chimpanzee could produce similar results to Gaider's prose upon shedding its load over a keyboard. Consider: a random spattering of semen globules is as likely to terminate a paragraph with an em dash as any literate human being.

Is that good enough? I'll concede my exaggeration rests only in terms of physics because chimp cum is unlikely to contain enough mass to depress the keys. Nevertheless, if the spray of an excitable chimp taking one off the wrist could type, then the results would amount to little better than what we've read thus far.

Elzair, post the fucking review already.

TNO · Oct 10, 2009

The DA: the calling preview is being written atm.

Should I post on the forums, pm it to someone, or what?

TNO.

WanderingThrough2 · Oct 10, 2009

All right, it's time to let the cat out of the bag.

The quoted passages I supplied were not from the Dragon Age novel. They are from the rather famous All Quiet on the Western Front (as Lumpy and then Poocolator recognized), and in fact are among the book's most celebrated scenes. I just moved the scenes into the past tense, changed character names, and where necessary changed modern weaponry to medieval. Here are the unaltered scenes:

Horse scene (It's "extract 2")

Trench scene

Dying man (It's about halfway in)

It's of course quite possible that All Quiet on the Western front is a terrible work of literature in your view, poorly written or at least poorly translated or perhaps reduced to silliness by taking it out of a WWI context; that it compares unfavorably to George RR Martin; or something.

It also strikes me as possible that any prose I had pasted in would've been met with outrage and scorn though. Perhaps a bit of anti-Gaider bias?

JarlFrank · Oct 10, 2009

TNO said:
The DA: the calling preview is being written atm.

Should I post on the forums, pm it to someone, or what?

TNO.

If you want it to be official Codex content, PM it to DU.
If you don't give a fuck, just post it in RPG General or something.

DreadMessiah · Oct 10, 2009

Anti bioware on these forums?...naaaah. :lol:

Elzair · Oct 10, 2009

I decided I was tired of waiting it and posted it.

Elzair · Oct 10, 2009

BTW, can someone with a Bioware forum account link to the review on their boards?

Tuonela · Oct 10, 2009

Elzair said:
BTW, can someone with a Bioware forum account link to the review on their boards?

Why don't you do that yourself? Shouldn't take too much time to make an account.

Vault Dweller · Oct 10, 2009

WanderingThrough2 said:
All right, it's time to let the cat out of the bag.

The quoted passages I supplied were not from the Dragon Age novel. They are from the rather famous All Quiet on the Western Front (as Lumpy and then Poocolator recognized), and in fact are among the book's most celebrated scenes. I just moved the scenes into the past tense, changed character names, and where necessary changed modern weaponry to medieval. Here are the unaltered scenes:

Horse scene (It's "extract 2")

Trench scene

Dying man (It's about halfway in)

It's of course quite possible that All Quiet on the Western front is a terrible work of literature in your view, poorly written or at least poorly translated or perhaps reduced to silliness by taking it out of a WWI context; that it compares unfavorably to George RR Martin; or something.

It also strikes me as possible that any prose I had pasted in would've been met with outrage and scorn though. Perhaps a bit of anti-Gaider bias?

Well done!

Fat Dragon · Oct 11, 2009

WanderingThrough2 said:
All right, it's time to let the cat out of the bag.

The quoted passages I supplied were not from the Dragon Age novel. They are from the rather famous All Quiet on the Western Front (as Lumpy and then Poocolator recognized), and in fact are among the book's most celebrated scenes. I just moved the scenes into the past tense, changed character names, and where necessary changed modern weaponry to medieval. Here are the unaltered scenes:

Horse scene (It's "extract 2")

Trench scene

Dying man (It's about halfway in)

It's of course quite possible that All Quiet on the Western front is a terrible work of literature in your view, poorly written or at least poorly translated or perhaps reduced to silliness by taking it out of a WWI context; that it compares unfavorably to George RR Martin; or something.

It also strikes me as possible that any prose I had pasted in would've been met with outrage and scorn though. Perhaps a bit of anti-Gaider bias?

Clockwork Knight · Oct 11, 2009

Shoulda changed the names to Torment characters

best book ever, etc

MetalCraze · Oct 11, 2009

Well now we at least know that DA does have something in common with BG2 - terribad writing.

Gragt · Oct 11, 2009

Awesome. Most fun I had in ages on the Codex.

Armacalypse · Oct 11, 2009

That was a great experiment. No matter how you look at it, it shows how taste in writing is affected immensly by factors around it. The association with Gaider makes people see the flaws everywhere in the text, and even if you consider the text to be nothing special, it could be that the good in it is only seen because of the fame of the book and the brutality of a war you know was real.

TNO · Oct 11, 2009

All right, it's time to let the cat out of the bag.

The quoted passages I supplied were not from the Dragon Age novel. They are from the rather famous All Quiet on the Western Front (as Lumpy and then Poocolator recognized), and in fact are among the book's most celebrated scenes. I just moved the scenes into the past tense, changed character names, and where necessary changed modern weaponry to medieval. Here are the unaltered scenes:

Horse scene (It's "extract 2")

Trench scene

Dying man (It's about halfway in)

It's of course quite possible that All Quiet on the Western front is a terrible work of literature in your view, poorly written or at least poorly translated or perhaps reduced to silliness by taking it out of a WWI context; that it compares unfavorably to George RR Martin; or something.

It also strikes me as possible that any prose I had pasted in would've been met with outrage and scorn though. Perhaps a bit of anti-Gaider bias?

Well played. To be fair, one could complain that All Quiet on the Western front can properly use idioms and writing that would be inappropriate for a DA novel. Alternatively, though...

WanderingThrough2 · Oct 11, 2009

TNO said:
Well played. To be fair, one could complain that All Quiet on the Western front can properly use idioms and writing that would be inappropriate for a DA novel. Alternatively, though...

I think that's a fair point -- that the passages suffer both from being taken out of the WWI context and from being put into a high fantasy setting, where the typical mode is high mimetic. It just happened that it was the best grimdark novel of high acclaim that I had a firm memory of that could be easily transposed into a fantasy setting. Would've been hard to do American Pastoral or something.

DefJam101 · Oct 11, 2009

I dunno. Experiment would have been better if you had not:

- Changed something from present tense to past tense
- Changed the point of view from first person to third person
- Changed the setting so that none of the descriptions made sense

But nice job. Although the verb usage in the actual text still seems a tad forced.

Gragt · Oct 11, 2009

The Makers reference are kind of cringe inducing. That kind of stuff always feel like difference for the sake of difference — which is actually one thing DA seem to be going for, using staple foes of the rpg genre with different names.

muds_animal_friend · Oct 12, 2009

WanderingThrough2 said:
It's of course quite possible that All Quiet on the Western front is a terrible work of literature in your view, poorly written or at least poorly translated or perhaps reduced to silliness by taking it out of a WWI context; that it compares unfavorably to George RR Martin; or something.

It also strikes me as possible that any prose I had pasted in would've been met with outrage and scorn though. Perhaps a bit of anti-Gaider bias?

Or perhaps you can't write worth fuck in either German or English? This is evident from the above post. However, your personal incompetence does not qualify nor compensate for any other individual.

WanderingThrough2 · Oct 12, 2009

Because I wrote All Quiet on the Western Front, after all. :roll:

Just take your licks like a man, my illiteratus.

Clockwork Knight · Oct 12, 2009

Hey, Wandering, love your books, write some more

Review And Book Review He Did

Erudite

Educated

Arcane

Erudite

Arcane

Augur

Scholar

I like Thief THIS much

Liturgist

Cipher

Cipher

Novice

Commissar, Red Star Studio

Arbiter

Arcane

Arcane

Arcane

Scholar

Augur

Scholar

Arcane

Arcane

Arcane

Scholar

Arcane