I only played Ultima 4 & 7, but I can’t remember much in the way of choice in them. Okay, sure, you could veer off the track of the plot and go randomly wandering around, but nothing much at all happened while you were doing so. Exploring wasn’t even up to the level of ‘side quests’, you’d just come across a hole in the side of the mountain, kill whatever pixelated beasties were inside, and collect random (or not) loot. You’d find some new town and the NPCs would have two sentences to say to you until you got there on the main plot. Killing every single thing in the world but Lord British with your Ultimate Spell of Ultimate Corp Por was amusing and all, but the option to totally break the story isn’t a real option in my book. The Might & Magic series wasn’t any better.
I’ve enjoyed all the many RPGs I’ve played over the years but I’m having a hard time thinking of any that were really all that deep in terms of what the player could interact with in the world. I think we may be looking back through some rose-tinted nostalgia.
As I recall, Gothic had a fair amount of choice, though probably not as much as something like Fallout 2. You could join multiple factions and accomplish things in a couple of different ways, though a lot of it was still admittedly pretty linear.
Arcanum had a TON of choice. Many many paths to walk in that one, including a lot of good diplomatic quests. One involved resolving a labor dispute between orcs (or ogres) and gnomish businessman, which had several different outcomes depending on who you sided with and how violent you got. There was one that involved trade negotiations between 2 nations, where you’re hired by one of the nations and given stipulations as to what points are important and what aren’t. You select from many different options for each point, and in the end are rewarded according to how you did for the country hiring you; but you could also be bribed by other interests. Or you could go with your conscience and try to do things fairly, or if you liked the other nation, you could skew things in their favor. How you did was reflected in the ending sequence in the game, which showed how well (or poorly) the nations did as a result of your choices.
If a game as visually immersive and beautiful as Fallout 3 had the level of choice that Arcanum had, my head would explode at the awesomeness.
Gothic and Gothic 2 were pretty awesome in that regard, and even the so-so Gothic 3 was pretty darn good in that way. They had no “ending sequence” where they magically told you all the results of your actions and how you altered the destiny of millions forever. But you could definitely affect the world in a very personal way.
And most of the choices were reasonable ones to make. For fun, try making an Idiot Savant (I think that’s the one…high intelligence, but stuck in an insane asylum from childbirth, so talks like an idiot) Half-Ogre. You can learn stuff, and you can be a technologist, but you talk like an idiot and frustrate the hell out of Virgil. Magnus will refuse to join your party, even if he likes you. And he’ll wish that the gods, in their infinite mercy, will grant you a quick and easy death, or some such thing. I forget exactly what he says. A character like this will miss out on many quests, but he CAN do things like persuade the maid to join the brothel (the Madam’s quest to get Cassie’s jewelry back) if he has enough Charisma, for instance. Arcanum has a TON of replay value.
There’s a mod that allows the main character to level up to 127, and his followers will level up while they’re with him. I highly recommend it, as otherwise it’s impossible to make some of the tech stuff that requires two high tech items to make. I really wish that just READING the tech manuals would improve tech skills, like reading the magazines did in the first two Fallouts. It was a pain to buy the books, load them onto my mule, take them back to the warehouse, and then keep them in a crate until I wanted to make a high tech item.
Save just before you exit the vault. As soon as you exit you can do whatever you want to your character. That way on subsequent playthroughs you don’t have to go through the tutorial again.
I know you don’t count this, because you’re all about change and dynamic plotlines (hint: These have never existed. Sure, a couple of games gave you some opportunities to alter the world, but these were few, far between, and are mostly remembered because they were rare, not because that was how games were.) but the folks behind Final Fantasy have pretty much come out and said “It takes a metric poo ton more resources than it used to to make an RPG style game that is up to modern graphical conventions.” Remakes of old JRPGs are currently off the table at Square Enix because of the sheer amount of work just doing a GRAPHICAL overhaul is going to take.
So in the near term, I think we can see a general decline in breadth and scope of games because the resources required to create modern visuals are simply too expensive and time consuming. EVENTUALLY, I expect we’ll hit some sort of point of diminishing returns where people will FINALLY REALIZE that running the game in 3600x2984 with triple backwards anti-aliasing and chocolate on top doesn’t actually improve the visual experience very much, and we’ll start to see costs falling again as developers have time to sit still and get better with the tech, and tools get developed for doing some of the painful stuff more cheaply. But it’s going to be a long time coming. In the meantime, I suggest you check out the indie scene, and stop shelling out money for shallow AAA graphics titles - if, in fact, graphics are not your A1 priority.
If they are, well, enjoy, but don’t ask why you’re not also seeing games with depth.
I used to think this, but I’m starting to doubt it. For one, games are tied to hardware, as long as hardware keeps getting better people are going to be yelling at them to use the new hardware they paid $500 for. With the current state of things, Nvidia and ATI are driven by the research and production of new hardware, the only way they could really survive without it is charging for each driver release (or requiring a subscription). I really don’t see that happening.
As long as the hardware treadmill keeps rolling, the software one will too.
I agree fully. In a few generations games WILL look like good computer animation in film today. Along the lines of Pixar and movies like 9. I’d say fifteen to twenty years or so.
I think part of the problem is that you’re asking for two different things that are at odds with each other–namely, the ability to choose and make a difference in the world, and a good plot.
The problem is that good plots, by their nature, are exceedingly linear. Poems, books, movies, and so on, have all been linear. Up until video games, the only plot-based creative work I can think of that involved any sort of audience choice is improv comedy. And nobody goes to see improv comedy for the plot. If an improv team creates a decent plot, they are lauded in spite of the audience limitation. And frequently, improv teams will use plants, so as to avoid the danger.
And what danger is that, you may ask? What problems could user choice induce? Simple. If you allow someone to act off-script, there’s a chance they could do something stupid. Or incredibly out of character. Or just plain boring. The more influence the player has on the environment, the less likely it is that the scenes meant to have any impact…have impact. Mother 3*, for example, which has an incredibly emotional plot, is entirely linear, from start to finish. Meanwhile, Spore, which allows the player to influence pretty much everything, eventually, has pretty much no plot (and the little it has is frequently criticized as the worst part of the game).
So I think that, while graphics certainly enter into the equation, this is more of a problem of the developers trying to sandwich two opposed ideals, and ending up with both of them being kind of sucky.
Oh, and to answer the question, I hope they split into two groups: sandbox RPGs and plot-based RPGs.
*yes, I bring it up all the time. That’s because a) it’s pretty much a one-of-a-kind game, and b) the game has barely any exposure, despite its quality.
I dunno; I get the feeling already that at least in the console space, the race is slowing down. There’s all this talk about the “10 year lifespan” of the PS3 (Which has only just recently dropped into what most people consider an “affordable” price point) and the fact that the Xbox 360 was released just above four years ago, and, unlike the last console generation, there’s ABSOLUTELY NO TALK about anyone having new consoles under development. (PS3 was announced - not rumored, not hinted at, out and out announced 5 years into the PS2’s life.)
So there’s room to debate that the console market, at least, is starting to slow down its hardware iterations - maybe it’s just the cost of the hardware, I don’t know, but the fact that we haven’t heard anything about a PS4 yet gives me hope that, in fact, current hardware is going to be “good enough” for a while to let people get good at it. Now, none of this applies to PCs, except in the sense that they receive lots of ports from consoles (To the considerable annoyance of the PC hardcore, I’m sure), so the PC space might continue to run itself into the ground as it has been doing (I don’t have any numbers, but I get the sensation the PC game market hasn’t been doing the growing that the console space has over the last few years).
Only time will tell, but I’m not ready to cry doom and gloom yet.
Edit: I quite agree with **pedescribe **too, but the two issues are not necessarily mutally exclusive. There’s definitely a reason that you see MANY more JRPGs on handheld systems these days, even though handheld systems are really a terrible choice for RPG titles (Being better suited for games that DON’T take 60 hours to complete)
Definitely. I hate progress. All of this great technology has definitely hurt us. Think if we’d have just stuck with an Atari 2600, we wouldn’t have had to buy new stuff for 25 years!
I knew I could count on you. Mr. Beef, to put things in perspective. Clearly, if we just replaced all our hardware every month, we’d have holographic games by now.
See how much fun it is to completely misrepresent something?
Not even you can argue with the fact that making a cutting edge game has gotten a lot more expensive with time.
But I never said anything remotely like what you just put in my mouth, whereas you seem to be saying you hope that the current generation of hardware stays that way as long as it can. What I said is a logical extrapolation of that position, whereas what you said is not a logical extrapolation of mine.
As far as making cutting edge games being more expensive - of course. So what? You can still make a quirky text based adventure or something if you want to, the technology is still there. If the market has changed to demand certain things, then (much like the current state of television) you can blame the market. It makes little sense to blame the advancement of hardware.
Choice and good plotting are not mutually exclusive; this is a false dilemma.
I’m not looking for a game to produce a Scorsese-level plot for each of my choices; I’m merely looking for a game to provide engaging storylines for many (not necessarily all) of its quests and locations, and allow multiple resolutions for many (not necessarily) all of them. And have them at least make some rudimentary sense. This is not impossible; it’s already been done!
**Fallout 1 & 2. Arcanum: of Steamworks and Magick Obscura. Gothic. Planescape: Torment. **
My standards are not unreasonable, as those games are all far from perfect. It’s just that recent games have required so many resources for just producing one resolution for a given storyline, that producing several resolutions seems too demanding for many developers. I would definitely be willing to accept games with the graphics of late 90’s Gothic and Baldur’s Gate, if they gave that type of meaningful choice within a decent storyline and world (and I’ll still play the Fallout 3’s and Half-Life 2’s of the world, I just want some games to cater to a different side of gaming).
Someone mentioned indie games; are there any that provide what I’m looking for?
Hey, if you can put words in my mouth, I can put words in yours. No, I exagerated your obvious point the same way you exagerated mine. The end.
Simple: It used to be possible to make “modern” games in certain genres. Now in many cases it is no longer financially feasible due to increased costs. Clearly, some people in this thread realize this. They are sad because they would like to see these games made. It’s not a “blame the market” thing - demand for different types of games is not what is driving this. The same niche of people who bought Planescape Torment back when would buy a similar game now, but it’s no longer financially feasible to make a modern game on that model, because the costs of that model have increased disproportionately compared to, say, the costs of making Halo 4. So even though the number of people who would buy Halo 4 vs Planescape Torment 2 has not changed, the latter has become prohibitively expensive to do with modern technology. Note: With Modern Technology. This isn’t about people’s abilities to make games with 8 bit era graphics, or quirky text adventures - the indie scene is already doing that. This about the ability of people to get games in their genre of choice with shiny modern production values. Because yes, people like shiny graphics in their games.
And to clarify the point that you so deftly exagerated, I’d like the current consoles to stay around long enough that it might again become affordable to make more niche genre games on them without those games looking like they were developed on a PS2 - because, you’ll note, that people like to see progress. But the genres that some people like to see can’t currently turn a profit in the current environment. And why is that? They -used- to be profitable! Has the demand changed? No. The cost has. Therefore, these people would like to see it become cheaper to produce games for modern hardware. That is not going to happen unless the hardware sticks around long enough for developers to get better at it, and for the tools to emerge to streamline the process and reduce costs. Hence, a longer console cycle - since it certainly seems unlikely to happen in the PC space.
It doesn’t seem a popular place for indie games to go - the stuff you ask for is simply too time consuming for the average independent developer to put together. That said, a little bit of quality time going over http://www.indiegames.com/ and http://playthisthing.com/ might turn something up. I’ve heard good things about Mount and Blade, but haven’t looked too closely, so hesitate to make a recommendation.
No, you didn’t. And even if you did - the position you’re criticzing is that if things went my way, we’d have super realistic holographic games? OH THE HORROR, you’ve shown me the error in my ways. You said you hope the current hardware stays around. What is it that I said that you feel like somehow discredits me equally?
So what? How do you blame the actual technology advance to this? You could still make Planescape Torment. The compilers are still there. The programming libraries are still there. So why don’t people do that? Because the market has changed - people expect blockbusters.
When CGI became cheap and really good, lots of bad movies that were CGI-fests came out. Did CGI ruin movies? Should we try to hope that CGI doesn’t develop any further? No, of course not. CGI can still be used to make great art even better than we could in the past, and similarly, advanced technology lets us make games that are greater than anything we’ve had in the past.
The fact that those games aren’t in demand is a market change. The market wants 3d graphically advanced game with voicework done on them. Now that the technology allows this doesn’t somehow prevent old style games from being made, it’s just that, similar to TV and movies, the big budget blockbuster stuff caters to the lowest common denominator.
I don’t like some of the implications of that either, but I think it’s absurd to blame the advancement in hardware which has only given developers more options and tools to make what they want.
What sort of games are you talking about? Planescape torment? Military sims? Strategy games? Those aren’t viable anymore not because consoles are advancing quickly but because consoles are the dominant form of gaming currently. The console crowd wouldn’t want to play Planescape torment, both because it’s too sophisticated and for practical issues. It’s hard to read massive amounts of text on a TV screen - even on HD screens because you sit 6+ feet away. And there are severe limitations on control issues. If the PC were still the dominant form of gaming, you’d still have lots of planescape torment type games.
Yes, of course. With the shifting demographics of gaming, different types of games are viable and others aren’t.
It would be cheaper to make Planescape Torment today than it was 10 years ago, because a lot of the libraries and APIs have developed considerably. Now I’m not saying a version of planescape torment that looks like dragon age - I mean a game exactly like planescape torment. People could still make it, the technology is still there - it’s just that the demand dried up. People would rather have shallow games just like with movies and TV. If there’s such a big market for this sort of thing, why isn’t it being done anymore?
I don’t think you understand the current development cycle. Consoles just use crappy, outdated versions of ATI and NVIDIA graphics cards, but they’re all just using the same DirectX codebase. It’s not like old consoles where it was complex to design for that specific architecture (this is true somewhat still of the PS3s processor, but not GPU). Whatever work you do now would transition onto the next generation of consoles.
Hear, he… wait, what ? GOTHIC ? Don’t get me wrong, I love the games, but you really can’t accuse them of being strong, plotwise. Or allowing choice in that department. Railroad city, man. They’re great game exploration-wise, but there really is only one way of doing things, once you’ve made the game’s one choice of which side you’re going with.
OK, it’s actually been a long time since Ive played it, so the rose-colored glasses may have stealthed themselves onto my nose. The point still stands for the others, though!
OK, I think you’re missing the point of Gothic. Your choice of allies is just that - your choice. Just because you don’t completely alter the storyline doesn’t mean no choice exists. It alters quests, reactions, and opportunities all around you. Plus, while it’s a significant choice, it’s also just one and only one choice. Gothic is an implicit choice game. You just do what you do and things come out of it. It definitely affects how you view the world and whom your friends are. Plus, the games got mroe and more choice as they went on.
Seriously, you don’t think Gothic 3’s ability to wipe out whole factions in a simmering war isn’t choice?
