Dead Space story producer Chuck Beaver says Gears of War has “literally the worst writing in games” and that it has atrocious, offensive violations of story basics”, but that it doesn’t matter much, because in games like Gears, story isn’t the top priority. However, he also admitted that Dead Space was a normal “haunted house story.”
“Story can only ruin a game for those people who care about story, so it’s a conditional answer,” he said while speaking with Eurogamer. “For instance, Gears of War. It contains atrocious, offensive violations of story basics. Yet it doesn’t seem to ruin it for many, many people. It’s literally the worst writing in games, but seems to have no ill effects.”
When asked if he ever feels the stories of the first two Dead Space games were kind of lacklustre, he said, “
Oh yes! We knew so little about story back then, and overruled our writers on a lot. Dead Space was just a simple haunted house story that we later pasted a personal aspect on top of – a lost girlfriend who is really dead.
“Dead Space 2 was a huge challenge. All these elements from the original game that were poorly thought through, like the Marker Lore, Necro ecology, etc., had to move coherently forward into the next narrative. The first story we had was a wreck of unrelated events and broken structure, so we cut our teeth getting that into shape, and didn’t fully make it.
“Plus, we got lost a bit in complicated lore and plot elements that didn’t come through. And don’t even get me started on the final boss sequence that they put in without me in the meeting! That was fun.”