But it’s half assed turn based combat that has been retrofitted onto a real time engine. I was really hoping for a game that would be a cross between Fallout and Final Fantasy Tactics, I remain waiting for that kickass game idea to be realised.
Speaking of which, I’m going to go play Halo right now, for the umpteenth time. Man, that game’s got more replayability than almost any PC game I can think of. 
Um, no it wasn’t. It used the same engine that was used in both of the Fallout RPGs, which was specifically designed for the Fallout games, and which has always been turn based. The real-time combat option in Fallout Tactics was grafted (poorly, IMHO) to the turn-based engine that had served ably since the first game.
OK, here’s an example of what I’m talking about: they got rid of the hexes. That works OK with realtime combat, but with turn based combat it’s just a pain and loses some of the tactical element. I realise there was a “reserve move” option to save AP to use your weapon, but say you have enough AP to shoot twice and move two spaces… with hexes on the map that would be easy, without it’s a pain in the ass and reserve move would only save enough AP to shoot once. With hexes on the board you could easily keep your snipers just out of the bad guys range.
It’s been a while since I’ve played Fallout Tactics, and even longer since I’ve played Fallout 2, so bear with me. I may be confusing some of the game play with the Jagged Alliance games, to which Tactics bore more than a passing similarity.
Getting rid of the hexes has nothing to do with real time/turn based. They simply used a different method of tracking movement, one that was significantly more precise than the old hex-based system, as it allowed your characters to take only one or two steps. I dislike hex-based movement in computer games, because it’s a useless hold-over from table top gaming, where it was useful in streamlining game play. But on the PC, where you’ve got this powerful processor to calculate movement, it’s a redundant holdover. Hexes also makes combat feel more “gamey,” as what you could do was constrained by artificial movement rules. Plus, it allowed for things like “keeping your snipers just out of the bad guys range.” That’s not playing the game, that’s exploiting a loophole in the game design. Tactics was more realistic, in that you had to estimate ranges, not count terrain tiles. And, again, this really has nothing to do with real-time v. turn based, as these mechanics could have worked under either style.
I guess this is a “strokes for folks” thang, because I don’t consider “more realistic” to be a good thing in games. Jet Grind Radio is a really good game, and it certainly isn’t realistic to be rolerblading down the side of a skyscraper.
Anyway, my point is that the type of turn-based, space-based-movement RPG that many people like has been abandoned by PC games but lives on in console strategy RPGs.
I still stand by my point that there has not been a PC RPG to equal the depth of gameplay in Front Mission 3, to name just one title. More “realism”? I guess. More open ended story? Definitely. More depth of gameplay? not by a long shot.
Well, realism is largely relative to the type of game your looking for. Saying Super Mario Brothers is unrealistic is pretty silly, but it would be a fair criticism of a hard-core flight sim. But I digress.
What I was trying to get at about the hex thing is that it’s a hold over from another type of game. Both table top games and computer games are trying to simulate reality to one degree or another. However, by using the rules that were invented for table top gaming in a computer game, you are removing the game from reality by another level. Instead of simulating the real world, you’re simulating the simulation of the real world. This bugs me, although like you said, different strokes.
I agree with you that the current cycle of PC development has largely abondoned turn-based RPGs, which is a shame. (Of course, a few years ago, pundits were saying that the RPG in tot was dead on the PC, and now it’s every where you look. Meanwhile, the same pundits are throwing an equally premature wake for the Adventure game, but I digress. Again.) I prefered the deliberate, tactical combat of the original Pool of Radiance to the manic click-fest combat of the hugely over-rated Baldur’s Gate.
However, I have to disagree with you that the consoles can be considered the “true home” of the electronic role-playing game. I admit that my console experience is sadly limited (I stopped playing consoles entirely between the demise of the original Nintendo and the release of the PS2). And I’ve never even heard of Front Mission 3. Still, I’ve been doing my best to catch up, to the extent that I now have a PS2 and an Xbox. And I have yet to play a true roleplaying game on a console. I played Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior on the old Nintendo. Great games. A lot of fun. Not roleplaying games. I played the shit out of Final Fantasy X and took a mighty whack at Summoner. Also really good games. Also, not roleplaying games. Actually, FFX barely qualifies as a game at all, more like a really good, semi-interactive anime. But I really enjoyed it, and feel that I got good value out of that purchase.
See, a roleplaying game ought to involve some, you know, roleplaying. Console games, in my (limited) experience do not have any roleplaying in them. You are assigned a character, complete with personality, goals, and ethics. A roleplaying game ought to give you the opportunity to create a character from the ground up, a la Fallout, or barring that, give you some actual input to how your pre-made character reacts to the events in the game, as was done most memorably in Torment. Most console games that I’ve played don’t do that. They don’t even come close. They’re not bad games, mind you. They might even be better games. They’re just not roleplaying games.
PC and console RPGs are very different, but what is called a “strategy RPG” on a console is quite a bit like the old “gold box” games. Final Fantasy Tactics was a very linear game, but the battles were really good- like an updated version of the “gold box” games. Front Mission 3 was even better- the storyline was still fairly linear, but there were many different paths depending on what you did. If you blew up the dam in one battle, the enemy downriver would be alerted to your presence.
My favorite CRPGs ever, console or PC are the gold box Buck Rogers games, BTW.
Hopefully not with Monteray Jack or Fatcat…
“I played Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior on the old Nintendo. Great games. A lot of fun. Not roleplaying games.”
Sure they are. :b After all, you got to pick what classes they were and they were mute, so one could make up dialogue or personalities. Then, there’s Wizardry, where you made your own characters and went into a maze and the characters could have been whatever you wanted them to be. I LOVED Wizardry. HEeheehe and Wizardry 2. They were both NES games ported from the PC. I just wish I could play Wizardry 4 sometimes…I loved Werdna…
“Most console games that I’ve played don’t do that. They don’t even come close. They’re not bad games, mind you. They might even be better games. They’re just not roleplaying games.”
Then, what are they then? I don’t think “semi-interactive anime” would apply to NES/SNES games…eeheheh. See, I think in the case of consoles, the makers were damned if they did and damned if they didn’t. If the characters had to have been generated by the player and mute, players would bitch about how there’s no character development. But, if there IS pre generation in it’s entirety, then it’s “waaa…we didn’t have any choices”.
I think an example of a console game that can have the role-playing you want would be Digital Devil Story(Shin Magami Tensai) where you decided what stats each character would have, you would decide all the party members names and the main character was mute, so you could make him say and be whatever you wanted him to be pretty much. Hehe
Whichever I prefer simply depends on the game. I can’t see Suikoden or Final Fantasy X having elements of Wizardry or Diablo, but I can’t see it being the other way around either. Heh
I was over the hump in 15 minutes, in an hour my friend who owned the game was seriously impressed at how well I was playing.
it still plays like shit, no first person shooter should be played on anything other than a mouse/keyboard combo.
if you want you can bring your gamepad into a game of tribes 2 and you and I can duel, I will honestly be impressed if you claim it isnt the pad thats getting your ass kicked for you.
with a mouse you control how fast you spin left, right, up and down. you arent hampered by the gamepads regulated speeds for movment, if I can react fast enough to drop 3 critters in as many seconds I fail to see why I should have to spend 6 or 8 seconds doing that job because of a lame controller.
Jurhael: Sorry, but mute characters != roleplaying. If it’s not in the game, it’s not part of the game. In a real roleplaying game, your character’s personality has to have some effect on the outcome of the game.
And it’s absolutely not a case of “damned if they did, damned if they didn’t.” Player generated characters do not have to be mute. My character in Fallout 2 wasn’t mute. My character in Baldur’s Gate 2 wasn’t mute. Nor were my characters in Deus Ex, Torment, or Arcanum mute. In all of these games, I had control not only over what my character was (class/skills/attributes) but over who he or she was. I didn’t have to play as a good guy. I got to choose who to be nice to, and who to tell off, and how I treated people influenced how people treated me back. Hell, Fallout 2 even let me choose my sexual orientation! That’s what makes a game a roleplaying game. Final Fantasy et. al. aren’t roleplaying games, they’re adventure games with character advancement and a lot of combat. Again, that’s taxonomy, not a value judgement: I loved FFX. But since the game mostly consisted of fighting monsters until I got to the next pre-rendered cut-scene, it simply can’t be considered a role-playing game.
That was cool, but there was really only one guy/guy possibility in the game. In Final Fantasy 7 I had Cloud go on a date with Barrett.
In Front Mission 3 there aren’t really “good” and “bad” sides, but you can wind up fighting for either side- and which characters are allies or enemies depends on your choice.
Certainly the open endedness of the game is one area where some PC RPGs excell (You wouldn’t want me to bring up Diablo and Ice Wind Dale…) Some console RPGs are also quite open ended, I never played it but Star Ocean was supposed to be insanely open ended.
Aside from RPGs, another area where console games excell is in having totally new styles and genres. PC gaming is incredibly stagnant, how long has it been since a game came out that reviewers had trouble assigning a genre label to? On consoles we have abstract music games like Frequency, rythm based shooters like Rez, whatever the hell that Animal Crossing game is, a mosquito flight sim (Mr. Mosquito)…
The reason why I included mute characters was because you can simply add your own dialogue and MAKE it part of the game, even if it’s not. But, that’s just me. I don’t think I said that the characters necessarily had to be mute. Because I know in Diablo, you generate the characters, but they certainly speak.
“If it’s not in the game, it’s not part of the game. In a real roleplaying game, your character’s personality has to have some effect on the outcome of the game.”
Oh, I know that. Just that in a console game, the choices are more limited to a “yes/no” or “say this or that or that”.
"And it’s absolutely not a case of “damned if they did, damned if they didn’t.” "
Yes, it is. I’ve seen it first hand from fans. :b
The thing is, consoles just don’t have the same capacity for large amounts of choices as PCs do, that’s why PC games tend to be more true to “RPG” form. But, the console RPGs are STILL considered RPGs and are still called that whether or not they actually are or not. I consider them RPGs, so we’re going to have to disagree because I don’t consider Final Fantasy an adventure game and certainly not any other kind of game. So, that leaves RPG. But, it’s pointless to argue about this because it’s one of those things that will never likely be resolved. 
"Some console RPGs are also quite open ended, I never played it but Star Ocean was supposed to be insanely open ended. "
I’ve played Star Ocean 2 and yes, it most certainly is open. The characters are pre generated, but yea, the story has a lot of Private Actions and you can choose who the character gets to be with.
Saga Frontier was also open ended in terms of story, but very difficult.
PC games would be great if they didn’t always try their best to uninstall, corrupt, or otherwise screw up in the middle of a game. It’s heartbreaking, like having your new kitten run away. Which is a shame, because games like Baldur’s Gate and Fallout are a hell of a lot of fun and not really possible to do on a console.
While I haven’t played Halo I agree with this. I had a lot of fun playing Goldeneye on the N64, but after learning to use a mouse and a keyboard I went back to the game and found the control system far too annoying.
Hopefully most games will be like Morrowind and have both a console and PC version. Though the PC version was a lot better because you could download mods and there will be an expansion coming out for it as well as the whole ability to make mods. Honestly I don’t understand why Blizzard isin’t going to make a PC version of Starcraft:Ghost game because they even made Mac versions of their games.
Jurhael, what emulator are you running Shin Megami Tensei on? Since it doesn’t work on ZSNES I’ve been having a hard time working with SNES9X because of what seems to be the lack of a frameskip option.
Jurhael: Except that they do have the capacity, or at least now they do. Someone mentioned Morrowind, which I have on the PC, but it’s also available on the Xbox. So there’s one real RPG on a console. However, as much as console inovate, they are in someways just as hide-bound as PCs. For example, why on Earth do consoles still cling to the antquated and supremely annoying “save point” philosophy of game design? There’s absolutely no excuse for this any more. On the PC, I’d frequently refuse to buy games that used save points. There’s no surer way to suck the fun out of a game than to make the player repeat the same ten minute stretch of game over and over (and over and over and over and over and over…) Sadly, when it comes to consoles, I can’t afford to be so picky. But, yes, I agree that consoles in general have much, much more innovation than PCs. Just not when it comes to RPGs.
And, yes, I know that everyone calls games like Final Fantasy and Diablo RPGs. Everyone is wrong. Why? Because “RPG” stands for “role-playing game,” and there is no role-playing in any of these games. Yes, you can pretend to roleplay them, but if you’re going to do that, do it right: call up some friends, crack open the Player’s Handbook, and role-play the way God and Gary Gygax intended. Meanwhile, I’ll be over here trying to come up with a better description for these sorts of games.
grendel wrote: “That was cool, but there was really only one guy/guy possibility in the game”
True, but that’s one more than any other computer game I’ve ever played. Plus, there were lot’s of opportunites for lesbians. Which is somehow unsurprising, but still, a gay character is a gay character, right?
Oh, and please don’t bring up Icewind Dale. I beg of you. I’ll give you money. Good lord, what an awful, awful game.
[I am about to unleash the lamest hijack in history]
In Xenogears Billy Lee Black, one of the coolest characters in videogame history is very strongly implied to be gay. In Final Fantasy 7 your main character is presented with two female love interests, but you can choose to ignore them and wind up going out with another guy. (a big black guy with a machine gun arm at that.) In SaGa Frontier, which was a very open ended console RPG two of the major heroic characters were a lesbian vampire and a gay male mage. These all stem from the fact that console RPGs are rooted in anime style, and such storylines aren’t uncommon in some of the better anime.
[/lame hijack]