>Seems like a silly thing to say. Of course what is good or bad writing is a matter of personal taste. I'm not conflating anything.

It's not silly because there's no point in talking about writing quality if 100% of it was opinion based and wildly different among everyone. Obviously we're talking about a common shared opinion on what good writing is. What I'm saying, again, obviously, is that your opinion, is NOT part of the shared opinion. But do I really need to spell it out? No. This is pedantry. Details only alluded in response to your mechanical retorts. You're fully aware of what I'm saying here but likely were unaware of what you're doing. It's fine I'm redirecting the conversation back on course.

>That's effectively the same thing. One just feels more video-gamey, but the game's linearity

Of course it's effectively the same thing. It's like saying python is the same as rust if the program output is the same. As for the linearity, there's more branches in the BG3 version, but less branches in the fallout version. Generally though the branches for both games converge on a single ending. But even BG3 here as many many more permutations on that ending. It's uncountable I believe.

>That's just, like, your opinion man.

No it's the shared opinion. Which your opinion is not a part of. Man.

>Plot and choices are part of writing, no? This seems seriously nitpicky.

Nope it's not nitpicky. You can have good writing for a shit plot and bad writing for a great plot. Bad writing includes things like grammar, poor word choice, miss-spellings poor descriptions. Plots can be made without writing. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIPV1iwzrzg This is an example of a plot with no writing.

>Writing isn't just "the act of putting words into a sentence", it's all of the decisions that led to that sentence existing.

Those decisions don't have to lead to writing. See above. writing is about conveying the intent. The act of conveyance is complex and nuanced. It can mask and influence the intent. For example the English translation of popular wushu novels just don't carry the same weight in the US as they do in China.

>If I complained that the dialogue often sounded like it came from a high school student (Karlach doing fist pumps and shouting "Hell Yeah" whenever she likes something, for example) would you similarly complain that I'm not talking about the "writing" but the "prose"?

Prose is part of writing. But prose refers to like the "flavor" more. Writing in general also encompasses structure, detail, descriptions outside of the flavor. Like for example imagine you have chatGPT generate a picture of a flower. Then you have chatGPT generate the same picture of that flower but as a water color paining. Two different flavors. But the angle of the camera and the time of day of capture and the details in the foreground or the background would be the "writing". Plot requires a middle beginning and end which most pictures don't have but some pictures can have an aspect of it.

>By the way, I didn't disagree when Shadowheart seemed so easily swayed. I just thought she was a poorly written character to have her strong convictions overruled so easily.

It was probably by design. They wanted a feel good story where she ended up taking the redemption route. In that case I would say the plot was also excellently designed. I think although they allow for the existence of alternate paths, they have the choices designed in a way where you are a bit funneled down a most probable path. That path is shadowheart being redeemed. It just wasn't designed for the kind of high brow ultra realistic character studies you seem to like. If you want something catered to your tastes try Disco Elysium if you haven't already.

>Same with Lae'zel when she turned on the Gith queen basically because I told her to.

It's done purposefully as I said. There's still randomness here. I only got all the characters to do what I want because I was save scumming like a mad man. The save scumming is permitted which is ALSO a design choice. The plot is engineered well, but likely not for you.

>Two characters that never once expressed any doubts about their divine missions, both turned away from them based on a single choice I made.

I believe most people were supposed to Fail that persuasion check with shadow heart. I saved scummed it like crazy so I got passed it like you did. But the algorithm wanted to bend the path in that direction anyway. You COULD convince her to kill, but you might have to save scum that too. It depends.