IvanJarvis said:
This is probably the best webpage for it: http://wasteland.rockdud.net/wasteland.html
Great old school RPG, probably the first post-apocalypse game made for PC.
Games like Fallout
- Thread starter skullmonkey
- Start date
This is probably the best webpage for it: http://wasteland.rockdud.net/wasteland.html
Great old school RPG, probably the first post-apocalypse game made for PC.
Sander said:
When the "roleplaying" options and decisions cease at the character creation screen, it then plays more like an Action-Adventure game instead. I would have liked to have played how I wanted to, but I kept getting railroaded into generic paths for each main class type, with subplots and other party characters available depending upon alignment, which is also firmly set in stone at character creation. 99% of the core aspects to RPing in most BioWare games are set in stone within the first five minutes of gameplay. The other 1%, clicking the mouse to pick a speech option (when most don't have much affect at all), or deciding whom to kill, isn't that impressive.
At least BIS tried to do an RPG with PS:T. Your alignment changes depending upon your actions, in some really good ways. I thought it was the best implementation of D&D into a CRPG because of that, even though the Inbred Engine screwed the combat to hell. It actually felt like a CRPG instead of a combat grinder in the D&D ruleset. The reason why BioWare gets a lot of good press and claims that they are innovative is due to kids in the gaming industry who think that gaming started when they first picked up their Nintendo controller and then "later", PCs arrived. By the time there was an OS to accommodate those too stupid to understand MS-DOS or use a config.sys file, there came Diablo, Fallout, and then Baldur's Gate.
Trust me, after you've had filet mignon, you'll probably turn your nose up at dog food with attractive packaging.
Yes, now.
The sheer volume of building, character, and NPC detail is quite impressive. The writing of most aspects, including speech and quest design, makes BioWare still seem like amateurs, yet they are regarded as gods in the "RPG genre" because they managed to attract the D&D crowd. The two major quests that can be solved in the first two towns not only feel like you're doing something natural (not a contrived quest), but are far more complex than I've ever seen in a BioWare game. To be precise, investigating the murder and the venom thief. In both of these, not only are you trying to solve a quest, but you really don't feel like it because you're also learning of the people and the world. If you read carefully enough then you can piece together some important aspects of the setting early on. There's also "territory" like in Gothic, where someone will get upset if you go where you're not supposed to, but also a bit of line of sight for stealing. Remember, as the Avatar, you're the epitome of the Virtues...but if nobody sees or catches you, it's your own conscience.
Also, check out the play in the game that has over 100 hours of guaranteed play time.
A nice in-joke there. Be forewarned, you might want to at least read a few summaries of the history, as there is a LOT of lore, and most of the games that came before are just as long in gameplay, maybe less. There's also an SVGA update for Ultima IV, and V-7 aren't that bad in terms of control and graphics, though Exult with the Super2xSAI engine makes it look decent though some things are still crude, including animations. Once you start playing, you'll probably not notice that. I have recently tried to run a couple on DOSBox, and that works well.IvanJarvis
It Wandered In From the Wastes
Do they have any screenshots?Montez said:
EyeMaster7
A Smooth-Skin
IvanJarvis said:
Have fun.
http://members.chello.at/theodor.lauppert/games/screen.htm
Talk with Ugly John and the iguana guy. (check the "hello I'm a noob" thread). They have avatars from wasteland. They can help you.
Ugly John
So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
I'm Ugly and you're not!...probably the first time you will die in the game.
system requirement for wasteland said:
True. Neverwinter Nights was even worse, and this aspect has completely turned me away from Bioware. Their inability to make anything resembling a decent engine or a decent game has destroyed everything they had built up with Baldur's Gate 2 and Planescape: Torment for me.
I must admit, though, that Baldur's Gate 2 was quite enjoyable, they did a good job getting you "in there" and getting a decent store running. The decisions were a bit more important and present, but eventually it all turned to the same point: the ending. Nothing can change it, and nothing can change the fact that you have to fight. And the part right before it where you have to make some choices for deciding solutions to problems determined, solely by those decisions, whether you became evil or not, regardless of your behaviour throughout the rest of the game. The game was enjoyable, but it wasn't good.
Planescape: Torment blew me away. I thought, and still think, it's on the level of Fallout. Great story, great character interaction, brilliant environment, fitting graphics and choices that actually matter.
I'll play Ultima, by the way. If I can find a copy somewhere.
I never had the strength to finish PS:T, since my friend borrowed it and gave it back a few months later (about 6 months actually). By then I had forgotten about my progress, current quests, storyline, ... Besides I was playing other games. I really enjoyed it while I was playing it though, even though the AI wasn't always perfect.
I really liked Baldur's gate. I played with the same character through the trilogy, and it was great fun (Elven wild mage). Great story, nice FR references, and I found the combat to be nice, even though sometimes a little chaotic and hard (that's where the RTS part comes in, and if you suck at that, it's understandable that you don't like the game). The graphics were rather impressive, too. I don't hate games just because a particular company made it, or a particular group of people play it.
I bought NWN because of the hype. I was disappointed by the single player, but multiplayer was great fun, especially on PW (persistent world) servers, where you can't use level 40 characters right away. I heard the expansions are excellent, and I might buy them and finish the game. Too bad no party system like in BG though.
I have Ultima VIII, but I got stuck somewhere and could never make it work on XP, after buying a new computer. I also bought Ultima IX, which had potential, but got thrashed by all the game-crashing bugs... Got far, but got bugged too. What I like the most about the story is that you're this regular human dude who gets pulled in a magical world, that you have to save.
There aren't any oldskool RPGs coming out anymore. There's Fable, sure, but it seems too action-oriented. I don't like the FF games much, especially not the later ones. Fallout 3... *sigh*
I really liked Baldur's gate. I played with the same character through the trilogy, and it was great fun (Elven wild mage). Great story, nice FR references, and I found the combat to be nice, even though sometimes a little chaotic and hard (that's where the RTS part comes in, and if you suck at that, it's understandable that you don't like the game). The graphics were rather impressive, too. I don't hate games just because a particular company made it, or a particular group of people play it.
I bought NWN because of the hype. I was disappointed by the single player, but multiplayer was great fun, especially on PW (persistent world) servers, where you can't use level 40 characters right away. I heard the expansions are excellent, and I might buy them and finish the game. Too bad no party system like in BG though.
I have Ultima VIII, but I got stuck somewhere and could never make it work on XP, after buying a new computer. I also bought Ultima IX, which had potential, but got thrashed by all the game-crashing bugs... Got far, but got bugged too. What I like the most about the story is that you're this regular human dude who gets pulled in a magical world, that you have to save.
There aren't any oldskool RPGs coming out anymore. There's Fable, sure, but it seems too action-oriented. I don't like the FF games much, especially not the later ones. Fallout 3... *sigh*
Why must I constantly tell all kinds of people to *play* that game?
PLAY IT!
NOW!
*raises eyebrow*
No-one said that they disliked it because Bioware made it, rather that Bioware fucked it up.
Dude, why don't you re-insert all my lost memories of my progress so far in the game, dialogue by dialogue, quest by quest, and I'll start playing it again. Seriously though, don't worry, I'll play it again, sometime. And how did Bioware fuck up Baldur's gate? Pathfinding was ok IMHO. Maybe you just needed to pump up the pathfinding nodes. Or add checkpoints. Most people I know gave up after Nashkel and the mines, though. That's why I stopped playing Arcanum (someone I know calls it Poocanum for some reason); I just don't have the enthusiasm I used to have for CRPGs. Maybe it's all the bad ones.
PLAY IT! NOW!
Seriously, it's just as good as Fallout. Just start over if you don't want to lose all of the context, it'll be fun, I promise.
Did anyone here say the word pathfinding? I didn't.
Look, the game was decent, but it was...linear. And way too easy to powerplay. "Oh look, I'm a complete moron with an Inteligence of 3, but I just said the most intelligent thing you can say in the entire game."
Yeah right.
Your stats decide how good you are in combat, and it ends right there. Don't get me wrong, the game was certainly enjoyable, but it didn't even come close to the quality of Planescape and Fallout. Choices you made were practically irrelevant, once you got to the last three or four chapters everything went the same way no matter what you did, and that basically ruined quite a lot of it. I generally like going around and doing quests, mainly because you tend to have some choices (although practically all choices were ripped out of the quests there), but I do like to finish a game once in a while. ANd once you get beyond the quests, you need to be able to choose something, and those choices need to matter.
Plus, they put Drizzt in. And Drizzt asked you to help him defeat gnolls which he killed in a matter of seconds. And then everyone tried to kill Drizzt because of his equipment. There are entire guides of "how to kill Drizzt" out there.
Sander said:
Which is what pretty much killed it for me, after the nth mage with Protection from Everything or two you'd find right after entering into a door. Unless you have the right combination and amount of spells, you're hopelessly screwed. That is, if your mage doesn't have the occasional glitch of walking up to the enemy to cast a fireball, which only happened twice for me in BG2, as opposed to a more frequent occurance in BG.
And the part right before it where you have to make some choices for deciding solutions to problems determined, solely by those decisions, whether you became evil or not, regardless of your behaviour throughout the rest of the game. The game was enjoyable, but it wasn't good.
Try E-Bay or similar for a copy of the Ultima Collection, but only if it's not in EB or wherever.
Baboon said:
That's cute. That doesn't have ANYTHING to do with the topic. Just because you liked the game, that has no relevance to it being anywhere near Fallout's design, which, coincidentally, is a CRPG. I'm sorry if you're a little to naive to understand the differences between a CRPG and an RTS with a speech system, but please try to educate yourself before you make yourself into a fool.
While you're busy jerking off to the huge bitmap background and play Hunt the Pixel, I would rather have a bit more interactivity with the world in a game that is called an RPG by the pretentious license-whores who made it. I think that was the entire point of the discussion. Games that were like Fallout, not games that half-ass copied Fallout's speech system and skullfucked D&D into a barely-interactive RTS.
Try to keep up with the conversation and leave the flamebait out if you don't want to be flamed.
That was an interesting, if feeble, use of flamebait.
Duh, it doesn't have the environment it requires to run. Hence why I mentioned Exult and the utility by Baroque Dragon that has been around for years.
Apparently, the setting doesn't matter much for you. Else you might notice that UIX was fucked in terms of setting and it really wasn't liked NOT because of the bugs, but because it was crap.
That was so amazingly stupid, I have no flame to counter it.
Might I suggest you show a little less ignorance, please?
Let me guess, and this isn't a stretch, but they called it a CRPG when it wasn't one? It was merely an RTS with a speech system that also used the D&D ruleset, loosely at that.
Correction, you should have said "IMIO". Try to think about that that means.l
I've taken a 2GHz computer with 1GB of RAM to its knees to try and get some "better" pathfinding. Unfortunately, and a point BioWare has always missed (even in NWN), if the pathfinding is shit at a core level, it doesn't help to increase the amount it has to process its shit calculations into.
That's even more fun. Shall I tell you of the common problems with that, or should I let you try to figure it out on your own?
Maybe because it was due to the world design feeling like the walk around the World Showcase Lagoon at Epcot Center.
Maybe because you're probably too vapid or naive to understand that there's quite a few indie CRPGs around, more as of late. Many have several good things kept, and some new developers, like Pirahna Bytes, have shown that people do care about a CRPG that feels like a world. If there is no interaction with the world, then you are missing a vital component of P&P RPGs and why the CRPG genre was coined, to adhere to that kind of play. Which, games like Fallout, Arcanum, Ultima and Gothic all pull off fairly well, with some flaws in each. No game is perfect, but some just shouldn't paste the CRPG classification on something that isn't one in most regards. Then again, there's the industry push of calling anything a CRPG in order to cash in on people who enjoy the CRPG craze. Then they wonder why they do get flak when the game really isn't a CRPG.
Which was the point of the conversation before you started to fanboy for BioWare.
I never had problems with the pathfinding in BG, and if you did, too bad for you. I'm not "naive" or "ignorant" because I didn't.
Bah! BG series certainly weren't as good as Fallout or PS:T, but that doesn't mean they sucked. Who cares about linearity, only played through the trilogy once. Took me quite some time, and I probably won't do it again. So who cares?
Ah yeah, BG is an RPG. Then I suppose Gothic is a 3rd person action game, and Ultima 8 is a hack'n'slash game? After all, why not? The fighting system is apparently so damned important. Ya know, it was possible to finish the game without nearly any fights at all.
Even if UIX's setting had been correct relative to the rest of the series, it would've sucked. Just too many bugs. I mean, the game was completely unplayable. I suspect the game actually created new bugs every time I started a new game. What's so stupid about liking the story about a dude being pulled into a magical world? Original for a game. And that was the story throughout the series, even though it was too obvious in number IX (you had a PC, for fucking out loud!).
I know there are "indie CRPGs" out there, but I'm disappointed by the mainstream industry either not existing anymore, or spitting out horseshit. Anyway, linkage please?
I usually don't like Bioware games, but I won't hate a game because it's from Bioware. Too bad they've EA'ed a bit.
Meh. I give up. I liked BG, you didn't. Whatever.
Bah! BG series certainly weren't as good as Fallout or PS:T, but that doesn't mean they sucked. Who cares about linearity, only played through the trilogy once. Took me quite some time, and I probably won't do it again. So who cares?
Ah yeah, BG is an RPG. Then I suppose Gothic is a 3rd person action game, and Ultima 8 is a hack'n'slash game? After all, why not? The fighting system is apparently so damned important. Ya know, it was possible to finish the game without nearly any fights at all.
Even if UIX's setting had been correct relative to the rest of the series, it would've sucked. Just too many bugs. I mean, the game was completely unplayable. I suspect the game actually created new bugs every time I started a new game. What's so stupid about liking the story about a dude being pulled into a magical world? Original for a game. And that was the story throughout the series, even though it was too obvious in number IX (you had a PC, for fucking out loud!).
I know there are "indie CRPGs" out there, but I'm disappointed by the mainstream industry either not existing anymore, or spitting out horseshit. Anyway, linkage please?
I usually don't like Bioware games, but I won't hate a game because it's from Bioware. Too bad they've EA'ed a bit.
Meh. I give up. I liked BG, you didn't. Whatever.
Baboon said:I never had problems with the pathfinding in BG, and if you did, too bad for you. I'm not "naive" or "ignorant" because I didn't.
Maybe you'd like to try and explain that to the number of people who, despite waypoints, still had a character or two decide to dry-hump the side of the local tavern.
That is a pathetic response to your flamebait having little relevance to the discussion. I've noticed you're now using "linearity" as some point, but yes, it does matter. In fact, playing a role, as in a P&P RPG and not some children's semantics game, is the definition. I don't know how better to explain it to you unless I try it in Dr. Seuss fashion. *shrugs* Oh, well.
I'm still trying to get you to explain HOW, but you're too busy on bullshit that's unrelated to role-playing.
I think by now you've either ignored the parts where we've pointed out that picking out canned speech options (ones without any real relevance to the character, etc.) is hardly a CRPG, or you're just playing stupid. I'm betting it was a little of both. I thought I had a much higher respect for you, but I'm surprised you've gone off into this odd-ass tangent.
Most of the speech options led to combat or into some other such garbage. When it gets so bad that people turn to strategy guides and FAQs in order to escape the ultimately worthless text by talking only to the NPCs that matter, then there's a problem with the writing.
In addition, congratulations on coming up with bullshit classifications, but also you're having problems understanding game design. Ultima 8 was definitely an action-adventure game. Ultima 7 was not. Gothic is considered a CRPG because your actions affect the world and characters around you, which in turn affects how they respond to you. That is a fair bit more important than the lifeless quest dispensers BioWare often writes. I think I already pointed out the crap quest and story design (which is a vital part of a CRPG, shocking as that may sound), so then you have to try and argue by merit of the engine, regardless of actual mechanics and you couldn't even get that right?
Just donate some money and your reputation will be squeaky.
Game-stopping bugs have led people to like better-crafted games. Games like...Fallout 2? No, Ultima IX wasn't a CRPG either, mainly because there wasn't any possibility to really do anything other than complete the quests in Virtue Raider fashion.
No, I think I was referring to your total lack of knowledge in regards to the backstory. It's a little bit more complex than your version that would make David Gaider blush with envy.
I'm already having to waste my time, why should I have to waste more? Either you can or can't work a search engine.
Drop this moronic bullshit. That wasn't what was said. When I and others refer to BioWare, it is not personally, but rather a flaw found in their games, even if it is a flaw they make themselves by hyping a D&D fanservice RTS off as a CRPG.
Really?
Your personal opinion has jack shit in relevance to the discussion. Take another look at what was written before you go into another laughable snit. Games like Fallout. There's no other way to point out to you that in no real definition other than semantics or a hype whore manner could Baldur's Gate be considered a CRPG.
Just because BioWare half-assed Fallout's speech system into Baldur's Gate, that doesn't make it a CRPG. Was the speech system reflective of your character? Not really, and they picked up some pointers after some people pointed out that Fallout had a far better design. Their work still wasn't too pretty, and NWN was also a good example.
The combat system has enough problems that I'll not mention them here for brevity's sake.
What else is supposed to make the game a CRPG? It can't be the world, as it's a non-interactive bitmap with glowy spots and Hunt the Pixel gameplay.
It can't be the story, as it's pretty much the same each time, differing only by such matters as sex, class, race, and alignment, which in BioWare's games, is all done in the first five minutes of play, as noted before.
Well, I didn't expect that...
Well, I was mainly responding to Sander's post about BG, where he was saying his opinion about it. You don't have to get rabid. Sure, every game has flaws, but I liked it. The topic changed a bit a few posts ago, in case you didn't notice. I never said BG was better than Fallout, but I still liked it a lot.
Fallout 2 definitely didn't have as many bugs as UIX. And you should know that the term CRPG applies to a large group of games. Tactical RPGs, action RPGs, ... Then there's the core RPG category, in which you have Ultima 1-6 and maybe Underworld (never played it, so I wouldn't know) for example. I know the story of the Ultima games was more complex, but maybe we should let people find out about that on their own, hmm?
You can't say that BG isn't an RPG because of it's combat system. Neither because your choices didn't always affect the world (try playing with a reputation of 1). It was definitely an RPG, even if the interactivity was shallow. You received quests depending on what you had done before, you had stats, an inventory, a dialogue system that sometimes depended on your stats (not always, story dialogue was often scripted). Sure, I was disappointed by the lack of interactivity, but the game was still a great experience, and it was an RPG. Not a hardcore RPG like those early oldschool ones, but still.
Fallout 2 definitely didn't have as many bugs as UIX. And you should know that the term CRPG applies to a large group of games. Tactical RPGs, action RPGs, ... Then there's the core RPG category, in which you have Ultima 1-6 and maybe Underworld (never played it, so I wouldn't know) for example. I know the story of the Ultima games was more complex, but maybe we should let people find out about that on their own, hmm?
You can't say that BG isn't an RPG because of it's combat system. Neither because your choices didn't always affect the world (try playing with a reputation of 1). It was definitely an RPG, even if the interactivity was shallow. You received quests depending on what you had done before, you had stats, an inventory, a dialogue system that sometimes depended on your stats (not always, story dialogue was often scripted). Sure, I was disappointed by the lack of interactivity, but the game was still a great experience, and it was an RPG. Not a hardcore RPG like those early oldschool ones, but still.
Jackass, there is no such thing as an "action RPG". It's a marketing buzzword, a phrase designed to attract gullible customers, but without any substance to it. The very term "RPG" excludes any notion of linear hack 'n slash. Please don't tell me you are one of the morons who will classify every game with stats and equippable items as a "CRPG". Items, stats and speech don't constitute an RPG, and what notion of it may have existed in BioWare's Baldur's Gate series was completely dissolved and lost in Neverwinter Nights and KoTOR.Baboon said:
I seem to recall that someone has a sig with a quote of David Gaider saying something about you being rabid (?). What's the story with you two? That guy wrote some of my favorite game characters (KoTOR NPC's), so I'm curious.Roshambo said:
Wait, I thought you *liked* KoTOR (which I still haven't played).
I think it mainly depends on how you want to define CRPG. Some call Diablo a CRPG.
If you take it literally, an RPG is a "role-playing game". Meaning you can play a role. Meaning that every single game even pong) could be classed an RPG. Let's not go that way.
Basically, though, you should class Baldur's Gate as an action adventure. It was about action, and it ended there. BG2 got a bit better with character interaction, but barely.
Getting people (guardsmen) to attack you because you have a low reputation is *not* the same as actual game interaction. Choices barely mattered for the coninuation of the game and what you had to do. You got most of the same quests and exactly the same story no matter what you did.
In other words, the effect of your actions on the story was zilch.
Baboon said:
In regards as to why it wasn't anything like a CRPG.
So? That's no reason to derail the topic with praise and adolation of the game that has no bearing upon the topic.
About as many show-stopping, and even more when it came to glitches that affected actualy gameplay mechanics.
Congratulations! You're now officially one of the cattle that bought the marketing and publisher hype.
Are you done spewing out someone else's marketing line, or are you ready to come back to reality? Just because something has a few levels, stats, and equippable bullshit, that doesn't make it into a CRPG. That's what ACTION-ADVENTURE is, moron. ACTION-ADVENTURE, DUNGEON-CRAWLER, ETC.
Are you going to be this stupid to try and tell me, of all people, what the genres are and what classic games were in what genre?
Excuse me? What was that bullshit? Ultima 1-6 were not "core" CRPGs, I don't know where you grabbed that bit of amentia. They weren't really in the genre until around
Before then, people used the term dungeon-crawler, or when they used "role-playing", gaming was still a bit primitive and it was hard to design for a P&P RPG experience upon the computer, which was, of course, the entire
RPGs are in the Adventure sub-genre. Adventure has a lot of sub-genres, including the traditional Adventure, Dungeon-Crawler, Action-Adventure, Adventure RTS (which is actually what BioWare's games are mostly and is sometimes considered a hybrid genre between RTS and Adventure), and a few others.
You're right. If I did that much longer, people may actually download Exult, buy the Ultima Collection, then regard BioWare as overhyped/overhyping frauds paddling around in the kiddy's pool of CRPG design.
Why not? It is precisely an RTS with a speech system, since there's little role-playing in the game.
That doesn't mean a reputation system, when it's as shallow as the one created for Baldur's Gate, has any defining point for a game to be called a CRPG. JA2 has a reputation system, as do many other games.
Could you buy your way out of bad karma in Fallout or in other real CRPGs? Not really, you had to actually play your way out of becoming known a bad guy.
But let's take a look at how it is for Baldur's Garbage:
In BG, you couldn't really "repent and do good deeds", because most people would have loathed you then or it would have been mind-numbingly cliché. So it was the corny "donate to the church and make me a good guy instantly" routine. That was cheesy as hell. Oh, let's not forget that playing such a character with low Reputation, was FUCKING USELESS TO THE GAMEPLAY. So was having any alignment, as it wasn't really used to any real effect when it could have been (see the real CRPG on the Inbred Engine, PS:T). All it was there for was to keep "good" characters, but I've had "good" characters with a 1 Reputation. I've had Paladins get a better prices for goods at the Thieve's Den in BG2 than a thief, just because of the stupid design of the Reputation system having an effect upon shop prices.
So please explain more of the bullshit. I'd love to hear it. No...I've heard it all before, by many fans over the years. Most of which didn't have a clue and their "first CRPG" was Diablo or Baldur's Gate.
I also thought that your actions having an influence and affect upon the world was the point of calling a game a CRPG, but maybe not according to the marketing cattle handbook.
Now that you're able to understand that, consider what is the defining point of CRPGs. Give than the interactivity is even admitted to you as being "shallow", then why define a game's genre by a minor aspect? In other words, you're subscribing to the same mentality as the marketing cattle who would like to define anything with stats or used to be in the genre of Adventure as a CRPG, just to cash in on console trends like Final Fantasy and other, real CRPGs.
That's funny. You list a shitload of game mechanics that are common to many other genres, but excuse the game as a CRPG because of them and then essentially say that it doesn't matter if a game doesn't have the P&P RPG interactivity that is the defining point of the genre. I know this comes as a no-brainer to some, but if it lacks the point of being called a CRPG, then it would be in the Adventure genre and befitting one of the other sub-genres since it (pay close attention here) has little to no role-playing to it.
Next time, try reading what I wrote and not what you'd like to read. I would also suggest that you educate yourself about the subject if you want to be taken seriously after this point. Many of what you'd like to consider "oldschool CRPGs" were in fact in other genres, or were considered dungeon crawlers, another sub-genre of CRPGs. In which, Baldur's Gate and most of BioWare's work (including having loot barrels ready for the taking near poor farmers and beggars, etc.) has been more fitting than a CRPG.
They look a little promising with Dragon Age in getting some CRPG mechanics right, but in practice, it looks like they're taking the vignette idea (not new to ToEE either) and making it more like "select your own background" and have that have some story interaction down the line based upon it. Meh, I wish instead they would try that with one character background, but actually offer some role-playing.
Ratty said:
The man has little respect from me, nor will, until he shows that he can do better than make NPCs and come up with poor excuses for design "limitations".
In addition, he also defended the idea of FOOL at RPGCodex, using one of the idiot's tag-line. "...if done right..." Just do a search on his name there and you should find his cop-outs and excuses to be numerous. He first had the nickname "Exponential Boy", mainly because he said that multiple story paths involved "exponentially more work". That might be so for someone who is used to Fed-Ex, but when it comes to scripting in a bit of depth, all I have to do is point to some examples where people did it right and did it well.
After which, I kept calling him "Excuse Boy", because he's more than earned that perk with his pernicious excuses.
Sander: Pretty much how you have it, except the genre was coined to denote games that had the gameplay similar to P&P RPGs, but designed for the computer.
Apparently, BioWare is full of munchkins and Monty Haulers, so it's obvious as to what they would consider to be a CRPG. Real CRPGs, like P&P RPGs, offer gameplay options to both role-players and those who just want to kill things. It doesn't work in the reverse when munchkin & Monty Haul design is supposed to appeal to those who like P&P CRPGs and munchkins both.
You just have to find a good DM, as is a rule in any P&P game, and BioWare really isn't one. Their stories are pretty much...ugh. I've seen stock adventures for $5 at a gaming shop that promised more interesting things than continuing off a few other published storylines and characters in nothing less than puerile fanservice. It's a good thing that KoTOR was set long before the modern Star Wars mythos, else you'll have Boba Fett hopping around and there'd be kill guides on him.
Sander said:
I agree. I liked BG2 as a whole (I could stand the combat because it was the first PC game I bought, didn't know anything else), but choices were essentially meaningless, and the focus was on action and combat no matter what role you took - the classes were basically just different approaches to combat, rather than different ways of acting/reacting to or within the world of BG; in other words, it all came down to your ability to fight. It was basically Diablo with dialogue and a story. Not a bad game neccesarily, but a poor "role-playing game" since you really didn't have any flexibility or options in the way you played your role beyond the superficial D&D combat system and meaningless dialogue trees. It was completely linear as well.
Bioware is great at making massively appealing games that have lots of eye-candy, long storylines, and just enough depth and RPG-like elements to appeal to the casual player, but they aren't good at making rpgs. Or rather I assume they aren't, as they really haven't made one yet.
Montez said:
That brings up another point, one I'm not too surprised about. With the Cowled Wizards and wizard goods being considered black market, then wouldn't the populace pretty much fear what would most likely be a "hidden" Cowled Wizard in their presence, or perhaps a rogue mage?
After all, one of the core rules of any fantasy setting, including Forgotten Realms, would be that commoners are afraid of magic and those who use it. This is particularly so for places where magic isn't used out in the open and illegal, and hoarded by a ruling caste.
I hate it when D&D is turned into Disneyland. There's so much potential for creativity and using the imagination within the universe and especially with the Outer Planes, but some people make some rather uninspired dungeon crawls that dry-hump every franchised leg of Forgotten Realms and are praised for it.
Child of a God and your half-brother wants to kill you? I've seen far better when those who were writing that "story" were still in grade school. The setting and story are important parts for a CRPG, but in terms of a CRPG, they both fall a bit flat or use Drizzt or similar as a crutch.
If BioWare had started off with Dragon Age instead, then their masses of D&D munchkins and Monty Haulers might have been lessened and they might have had some chance of releasing a real CRPG with the right coaching. Too bad they're still stuck into their shallow and formulaic design, egged on by The Lowest Common Denominator. I can't see how anyone can call The Lowest Common Denominator something special in any other way than monetarily.
That still doesn't make for a good game, no matter how many people you have on your team, as BioWare has proven. Can they prove otherwise with Dragon Age? Well, without some license and setting to fanservice and use as a crutch, and how it fairly well promises to be an uninspiring close to D&D, I'm not really holding my breath. I have yet to see them develop role-playing to a sufficient extent, especially in terms of evil, to be called CRPG developers.
And yes, Geneforge 3 is on the way, so that looks promising. Shareware kicks BioWare's ass in terms of CRPG design, too!
That is another game that looks like it will be much like Fallout. I can say this with speculation only, as I've only played the first one and haven't gotten into the second, but the world design and how the NPCs were written are improving with Vogel's next release. The same goes with the quests (most of which are practical versus some Exottik Fed-Ex!), plus this offer a good bit of role-playing and choice in how to progress. The combat in the Ganeforge games is much like Fallout's, too.