What Are You Playing: 9 Years since the Last Dragon Age

[warty goblin]

I am so sick of Sci-Fi writers using "the [noun]" as a naming scheme for everything. It's not like it's never worked, I like Bungie games well enough and they're lousy with it, but it can really try my patience sometimes. Feels like everyone's doing it now.

I think it's a thing where doing it once or twice, with a name that actually makes sense and is for something that genuinely matters to the story is generally fine. The Reapers? Cool, functional name for the omnicidal robots. Halo? Perfect for a giant space donut with religious overtones.

It gets a lot less interesting when it's for every last rando bit of plot junk you need to pick up. And one of them is probably like the Conduit or the Catalyst, which is just dull at this point because dear me have I brought a lot of Catalysts to a lot of Conduits.

You're not wrong, but at least that trend means less names that looks like a cat walked across the keyboard, with little care for consistency or sometimes even pronounceability.

I've always liked silly fantasy names for stuff. Done right and you can get some world building or sense of character in there. Done badly, at least it can be slightly weird.