My Top RPGS? What are yours?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Arin Matthews
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RPG's are my favorite games but unfortunately there are very few that I like:
1. Fallout 1 and 2
2. PsT
3. Arcanum
4. Diablo
 
You liked Two Worlds? Gameinformer made it out to be much more than it was, and for that I was disappointed. Not because it was a bad game, but just because Game Informer made it sound like it was going to be the RPG of the year. And then after all the hype, when it came out nobody was really buying it. I know because when I tried to turn my into Gamestop about a month after, Gamestop told me they could old give me half the price the other new games were getting on return because no one (not literally, but as in realitvely small numbers of people) was buying the game


Oh really. I never even heard of the game until I bought it out of discount bin.
 
Mass Effect series
Baldur's Gate + TotSC
Fallout 1 + 2
Fallout: New Vegas
KoTOR series
Dragon Age series
 
Generally, the most important thing an RPG needs to offer is to allow the player many solutions to a single problem, and many outcomes for these problems. It also needs to allow the character to be able to freely pick what solution to take on each problem.

I thought roleplaying games were games where the main emphasis was about choosing a role to play. Do we need new names to consider those games ?
This comment is not particularly pointed toward Bigboss, but i get the feeling that RPG lost any meaning and that we need new words to convey the need to play a role...
 
For me, an RPG means to take the role of a character,usually through creating one and progressing/evolving that character.
 
I consider Mass Effect 3 a RPG, because it operates by the standards of what I consider an RPG to be...
Kind of like the stalker who considers lurking around outside a girl's house with binoculars to be participating in a relationship with her.
 
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The RPG term has grown out of its pants with all the sandbox type of stuff out there.

What matters is how much you can get out of it in terms of developement, choices and challange (quality challange). Planescape Torment (or other classics like Fallout, Baldurs Gate etc.) and ME3 might share the same genre, but one is the blue line, the other is the green one:

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I heard one of veterang RPG creater(maybe Brian fargo?) said "RPG is adventure, quest and rule."
 
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When i see roleplaying, i tend to interpret it litterrally as role being the point.

On that angle, the sims seems more roleplaying as the emphasis is about the role of various characters and their social interractions.
Games like Diablo or Fallout 3 seems more like adventures games, in which you have various way to explore dungeons and kill monsters, but in the end, you always do the same, and haven't much the ability to play a role and get social interactions. Those aspects could become non existent, or so much in the sideline, that it seems irrelevant to use Roleplaying to qualify them. It's like saying that Fallout New Vegas is a card game. Indeed, you can play cards in that game, but that aspect is minor compared to killing monsters or talking to npcs.

But in the other hand, if Diablo, Fallout 3 or Deus-Ex aren't RPG, what genre name could be qualified to use for them ? Is it possible for the game industry to change the genre name, to become more accurate ?
 
...if Diablo, Fallout 3 or Deus-Ex aren't RPG, what genre name could be qualified to use for them ?
I would call Diablo an arcade game or an action game. It has a few role playing elements, but then so do lots of old cabinet arcade games like Black Tiger.

Fallout 3 is a FPS. It has a few role playing elements, but then so do lots of games.

Deus Ex is much closer to an actual role playing game. I would call it a first-person, action-oriented cRPG.

The term RPG has become blurred because, in the absence of a hard definition, various marketing departments have used it to increase sales. They'll call anything a RPG if it will get you to spend your money on it. That's a thoughtless way to allow such a definition to be crafted, however.
 
It's not hard to tell what an RPG is. It's just that publishers put the rpg label on action adventure games with rpg elements.
 
I would suggest that a cRPG ought to be, in essence, a simulation of a PnP RPG with most of the die-rolls and calculations handled by the machine.
 
@UniversalWolf
Pretty much what I consider a RPG. Stats, die rolls, and a simulated experience of PnP through choice and consequence, considerate of different character builds and previous decisions made. The whole "I play a role, therefore it's an RPG" argument holds so little water it always leaves me bemused. I play the role of a WWII fighter pilot in IL-2, does that make it an RPG? In a broad sense I guess it does, but then is not nearly every game ever made an RPG? What should we call what I consider an RPG then?
 
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My point of view was more about the emphasis of playing a role rather than the ability of playing a role.

It should be a core aspect not a side feature, at least as i see it.

On one other hand my first steps in RPG were in a pretty linear game that i am still fond off, but hardly consider as one. (Land of Lore)
 
Dice rolls? depends on the situation and game. Morrowind's combat would never work in a modern game. That's not to say it's a totally bad idea: a dodge mechanic modified by agility stat would be great in a modern game, to add variety to melee. But dice-rolls can be very, very bad, especially in FPS games
 
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Another way to look at it is to ask, "Would this computer game work as a PnP RPG?"

For Fallout or Arcanum or Baldur's Gate you would have to say yes. Deus Ex: I would say yes. Diablo, no. Which is not to say Diablo is a bad game, necessarily, but it's not a role-playing game.
 
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