The Current State of CRPGs

The Game Room
1

Back in what I think of as the Golden Era of Fallout, Baldur’s Gate and even Diablo, there were news sites that kept me up to date on what PC titles were in development and what I could expect from them. I would be ready to buy them as soon as they came out. Nowadays most of the old sites seem useless to me – GameSpot, RPGVault, RPGPlanet (and GameSpy in general, especially since the death of The Daily Victim now longer draws me in). Even on RPG sites you mostly get MMORPG news, which doesn’t interest me much. It takes an Oblivion to make any headlines, it seems, but companies are still releasing RPGs. What’s the story with these?

The Witcher - It’s just as well I didn’t buy this when it came out, because I’m now learning that the English release was somewhat gimped, and they’re now planning to come out with a de-gimped version.
Two Worlds - A friend of mine liked it on the XBox, but it’s not clear that it’s going to be a big thrill on par with, say, a Vampire: Bloodlines or even a hardcore RPG like Gothic.
Silverfall - Fairly recent, but it looks like a hack-n-slash game.

There are of course also the bigger titles like Oblivion and Neverwinter Nights 2, which I already have. But those are the recent ones I’m aware of. Are any of them any good?

I’m looking forward to some upcoming titles:

Fallout 3 - The negativity of some hardcore fans aside, I’m looking forward to seeing what they’ve done for a sequel to the 2nd greatest CRPG ever made.
Space Siege - Dungeon Siege… In Space! Not a whole lot being said about this, but they’ve pretty much got my money whenever they churn this puppy out. Although I found Dungeon Siege gorgeously done although in the long run too tediously redundant and light on story to play through to the end, the designers are now promising to be more story oriented. Also, I like to support science-fiction CRPGs.

There is also an add-on for Neverwinter Nights 2 in the works, and a PC version of Mass Effect, which is the important title on the immediate horizion for my money.

So, what else is going on in the CRPG field, and what do we think of what’s out there now?

2

Quite frankly, the state of CRPGs sucks. Oblivion and Neverwinter Nights are not bad games, but their predecessors (Daggerfall/Morrowind and Baldur’s Gate, respectively), IMNSHO, were much better games. The games seem to be trading eye candy and fancy gameplay for plot and depth. Maybe it is because I prefer a different type of gameplay than the masses, but I much prefer a branching plot and would love to see alignment not always be so black and white as it is in the games (and that includes many of the really good ones).

One of the things that had great cross-sex appeal in Baldur’s Gate II were the romances and cross-party interaction. You would think that the Neverwinter Nights teams would have noticed and built that into the games, but they didn’t. Instead, the NPCs barely acknowledge one another, and you get, at most, a single romanceable NPC.

Other types of CRPGs, in the Might & Magic and Wizardry style, were never as appealing to me, and I guess many others, as you don’t see either type anymore.

Currently, marketers seem to slap an RPG tag on any game where you can have any individuality to the PC’s skills. It’s a shame, as console RPGs are glorious exercises in simply playing to trigger the next cut scene. I got so disgusted with the last one I played (on the PS2) because I don’t think there was 10 minutes of gameplay in the first 45 minutes.

3

I’m waiting for the de-gimped version of the witcher too :slight_smile:

And yes, there isn’t anything big on the horizon in terms of CRPG’s, atleast not this year. I do hear that there are a lot of changes being implemented on Bioware’s Mass Effect and not just better graphics (yay PC!) but improved game play mechanics and UI so that’s looking like a game to get.

About the only other CRPG I’m looking forward to is DragonAge, but that probably won’t ship until next year some time, hopefully along with NWN 3 and Elder Scrolls V :wink:

I’m so starved for some good RPG fun that I’m thinking about loading up Oblivion again, even though I already finished every single quest in every city, every guild, etc on my first and second play through. Maybe shivering isles will be worth it.

4

Other than the fact that I’d probably take NWN (1 or 2) over Baldur’s Gate, I agree with pretty much everything else being said. CRPGs might as well not exist aside from two, maybe three big titles a year. I like my MMOs, but I wouldn’t give for, say, a Might and Magic game that was both modernized and good!

5

I wish I’d done so also. I still can’t play it for more than a few minutes without crashing.

6

What does the C (RPG) stand for?

In case anyone missed it, the Fallout 2 Restoration Project was a lot of fun…

7

Computer Role Playing Game

8

Oooh, that reminds me: Bethesda is likely to release Fallout 3 sometime late this year!

9

When I first saw this thread, I thought it meant Console RPG.

Is there another acronym for THAT? I would’ve thought that CRPG would go to consoles and PC ones would get PCRPG or something.

10

Thank God.

Who are these Bethesda people anyway? What happened to Black Isle and Interplay?

11

Bethesda are the developers of the elderscrolls games. Black Isle was shut down just before publisher Interplay closed shop back what, in 2003?

12

Because “CRPG” can be confusing for just that reason, you also see “JRPG” and “WRPG” (for Japan-style RPG and Western-style RPG, respectively) used a lot.

Not that the console/computer divide is as distinct as it used to be anyway; witness the success of Mass Effect and Oblivion on consoles.

13

CRPG is a term that’s been in use since at least the mid-80’s by gaming nerds. If consoles want an abbreviation they need to find their own. :stuck_out_tongue:

Oh and as a CRPG fan I haven’t seen a CRPG released that I’ve enjoyed in nearly ten years so I’d say the field is dead.

(Or to be more specific mutated off to become MMORPG’s leaving those of us who liked the old games behind.)

14

You didn’t like KOTOR?

15

Not especially. Bioware has yet to make a game I enjoy. Their adaptation of the the d20 system trying to cram it into real time breaks any tactical considerations and their writing is uniformly terrible.

I will grant you that it is their best game over all but that’s not saying much.

16

MDK2 is BioWare’s best game, but everyone forgets they even made it.

17

MDK 2 is hard as fucking hell.

I love it.

And CRPG had stood for Console RPG every time I’ve seen it. I’ve always heard PC RPG to describe RPGs on a PC.

18

It’s kind of a shame when the most exciting things going on in the field are the mods for ten year-old games. I’ve recently been playing BGTutu, which allows me to play Baldur’s Gate I using the Baldur’s Gate II engine.

Sadly, the mod community didn’t quite go nuts for Arcanum, though Vampire: Bloodlines seems to receive a new fan patch every week. The Temple of Elemental Evil has a number of improvements added through fan patching, and some modders are eagerly working on implementing the classic module Keep on the Borderlands with the ToEE engine.

System Shock 2 is still being tweaked by fans, and at least one modder is producing adventures that can be played with the engine.

Of course, none of these can match the experience of playing these games for the first time again, but I did check out the Fallout 2 Restoration Project, and it does lend at least some sense of newness.

19

You’ll be able to download the new content for free, don’t worry. I’m not sure it’ll fix any crashing problems though. Are you patched up to version 1.2? I never had crashing, but 1.2 helped the load times tremendously for me.

20

I wanted to say that Silverfall sucks. That is all.