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Witcher 3, Assassin's Creed Syndicate Among the Nominees for Writing Award

Rise of the Tomb Raider and Pillars of Eternity were also nominated for "outstanding achievement" from Writers Guild of America.

By Eddie Makuch on January 11, 2016 at 11:24AM PST

The Writers Guild of America on Monday announced the nominations for "outstanding achievement" in video game writing for 2015. Four games were nominated, including The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Assassin's Creed Syndicate, Pillars of Eternity, and Rise of the Tomb Raider.

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To be eligible, games needed to have been released between December 1, 2014 and November 30, 2015 and must have included on-screen writing credit(s). Submissions from WGA members and non-members alike were accepted.

Winners will be announced at the 2016 Writers Guild Awards on Saturday, February 13, across concurrent ceremonies in Los Angeles and New York City. Games were judged by a panel of Video Game Writers Caucus members and/or Writers Guild members from the video game field.

Last year's winner was Naughty Dog's The Last of Us: Left Behind, written by Neil Druckmann. It beat out Alien: Isolation, Assassin's Creed Unity, and Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag - Freedom Cry.

2016 Outstanding Achievement in Video Game Writing Nominees:

Assassin's Creed Syndicate:

Story by: Marc-Alexis Cote, Hugo Giard, Corey May, Jeffrey Yohalem
Narrative director: Corey May
Lead writer: Jeffrey Yohalem.
Assistant narrative director: Melissa MacCoubrey
Scriptwriters: Russell Lees, Mark Llabres Hill, James Nadiger, Jared Schincariol, Travis Stout, Ceri Young
Additional writing: Judith Flanders, C.J. Kershner, Gabrielle Shrager, Danny Wallace
Additional senior writer: Paul Monk

Pillars of Eternity:

Lead writer: Eric Fenstermaker
Writers: Carrie Patel, Olivia Veras
Additional writing: Chris Avellone, Jeff Husges, Matt MacLean, Jorge Salgado, Josh Sawyer, George Ziets

Rise of the Tomb Raider:

Lead narrative designer: John Stafford
Narrative designer: Cameron Suey
Lead writer: Rhianna Pratchett
Additional writer: Philip Gelatt

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt:

Lead writer: Marcin Blacha
Lead English writer: Borys Pugacz-Muraszkiewicz
Writers: Arkadiusz Borowik, Aleksandra Motyka, Bartosz Ochman, Karolina Stachyra, Jakub Szamalek
Additional writers: Marcin Batylda, Michal Galek, Tomasz Marchewka, Robert Oglodzinski, Rafal Praszalek, Artur Sliwinski, Stanislaw Swiecicki, Pawel Zych.
Story: Marcin Blacha, Jakub Szamalek

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Geralt: Wait, another prize coming?

Yennefer: You made it happen my dear... Well, together we did it actually.

Geralt: But my lines were very short?

Yennefer: Yes, you're not a talkative type but I am. My lines were much longer then yours.

Geralt: And?

Yennefer: And I will take all the publicity if you don't mind.

Geralt: Whatever.

Upvote • 9 years ago

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Edited By baszzer

Kudos to whoever's involved in writing Syndicate and Rise of the Tomb Raider. But we all know who's going to win this award. Right, Ciri?

5 • 9 years ago

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Edited By Antarte

Can't understand the title, is not just The Witcher, also Tomb Raider, Assassins Creed and Pillars of Eternity. Is great to know that a game funded by gamers is among millionaire franchises... well earned Pillars of Eternity!

4 • 9 years ago

Solid_Answers12

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Edited By Solid_Answers12

@Antarte: It better be, the amount of text in that game made my oldschool cRPG nerd-self really happy.

2 • 9 years ago

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@Solid_Answers12: not mention the difficulty to match all possible options, in terms of plot and writing it has the best chances to win (in a fair play of course).

2 • 9 years ago

Solid_Answers12

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Edited By Solid_Answers12

@Antarte: Yes, but the award is going to Witcher 3, obviously, well-deserved though, the expansion "Hearts of Stone" had the best questline I have ever played in an RPG.

Not to mention not once did I feel a sidequest in that game to be half-assed, sadly I felt that in PoE.

4 • 9 years ago

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Edited By heguain

@Solid_Answers12: I'm glad that you appreciate the side quests in TW3 more, because some people actually call them a ''filler''. Not because they were too many then they're a filler, but yes, yes, to each his own thoughts. :P But, some people are obviously trolling/hating..I'd call Bethesda games the filler of sidequests, ones. Or sadly (for me), Ubisoft games.

2 • 9 years ago

Solid_Answers12

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Edited By Solid_Answers12

@heguain: Anyone that calls the sidequests of Witcher 3 to be filler should really check on his/her brain, unless they mean the smuggler caches.

2 • 9 years ago

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Edited By heguain

@Solid_Answers12: Well, the smuggler caches had different rewards/loots, most of the time.

2 • 9 years ago

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@Solid_Answers12: It is probable (mostly because its notoriety I'm afraid), but TW came from real books so they've already has all the universe and most characters already created, while PoE has born from scratch... ;)

2 • 9 years ago

Solid_Answers12

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Edited By Solid_Answers12

@Antarte: Of course, but that doesn't mean CDPR had an easy time, arguably it is far more difficult to be a "sequel" to a book series than to just come up with entirely new lore, because you have expectations and rules to follow.

3 • 9 years ago

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@Solid_Answers12:yep, both has its pro/cons, I can't understand when a videogame DESTROYS a saga to sell a bunch more to the casual market cofcofGothic4DragonAgeInquisitionDiablo3cofcof... sorry, that cough... To assume a deep saga preserving its lore/style/genre deserves our deep admiration.

2 • 9 years ago

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AC Syndicate FTW!

Upvote • 9 years ago

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Witcher... obviously.

3 • 9 years ago

deactivated-5d762a7e1423c

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Edited By deactivated-5d762a7e1423c

Haven't played Pillars, so no opinion there. Witcher's story was average (its atmosphere was the best of any game I played this year, but that is different from story), Syndicate was a fairly generic story; of these RoTR was the best story (and game) I played. Still not sure there aren't better examples of writing that occurred this year as I wouldn't have thought of 1 of these off the cuff....I vote for Red Dead Redemption....still the best.

Upvote • 9 years ago

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these games come no where close to the writing of The Witcher the amount of dialogue in the game surpasses all of these even if they was put together.

7 • 9 years ago

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Witcher 3 had top-notch writing no other game on this list comes close IMO.

4 • 9 years ago

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After going off AC for a while im really enjoying Syndicate, loving the London setting and it has interesting stories, i would probably say ROTTR has the weaker story, interesting premise though not explained well really, and not delivered as well, the previous one was much better, but each to his/her own

Upvote • 9 years ago

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@wretch1d: couldn't agree more. I stopped playing AC for the repetitiveness and I hated going back to that sleeping tube future science crap. Took away from the atmosphere...

I'm a few hours in syndicate and yes the game does get repetitive with typical dumbass ubisoft AI but the character dialog between the twins and other characters is nicely written and acted.

The win has to go to the witcher though. After that disgustingly bad latest season of game of thrones and those piss poor actresses playing the sand bitches the witchers story was a perfect way to forget about that.

Cdpr deserves the win.

Upvote • 9 years ago

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Assaassin's Creed Syndicate is actually fun to play~~~~

love Jacob and Evie so much

Upvote • 9 years ago

Use your keyboard!

ESC

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