Poll: RPG's: Old vs New

[mabassi]

If morrowind is old, then old are best. although new ones are good they are always dumbed down too much, like in oblivion when they took the ability to choose between blunt, long blade, short blade, axe etc. and put it down into blade and blunt, as they did with armour and pretty much with the factions as well. That annoyed me.

 

[Humble85]

Shameful I know, but go try Fallout 2. It's amazingly difficult compared to the first.

What do you mean by that, exactly?
OT: Old. I have yet to see a current generation RPG with story/characters that even remotely compare to P:T, an atmospheres like Arcanums or the freedom of Fallout 1 and 2. Maybe its just me, but I have the feeling that the newer ones are just... too formulaic, idk.

Fallout 2 is freaking hard?

Fallout 1 was easy going and forgave you a little early on -encounters were easy to escape from if you got in over your head- but Fallout 2 punishes you to succeed from the off, pitting you solo against overwhelming odds. And with one key difference: You couldn't loot armour from enemies. Just popped that raider boss, fancy yourself his suit of Metal Armor? Tough Bananas, that's not how it works in THIS game!
It didn't make the game any less awesome however, and just made the successes all the sweeter.

Wow, i never noticed that you couldnt loot armour. Ive been playing that thing three or for times now, and never noticed. But I didnt find fallout 2 any harder then the first one, but maybe i have to play them both again, one directly after the other.

 

[Dragunai]

snip

I have seriously never seen so much hate for FF7 nor for it's fans(wtf?).

And what's wrong with choosing the characters you want? And I think Sephiroth was cool because he was insane. Not because of his clothes.

Kuja, Kefka, Garland, Edea and Yevon were all insane.
The FF series rarely changes its formulae.

Every game has a cid, theres always one emo, theres always one airship section, the GFs / summons / Aeons make an appereance in some form or another, the big bad guy gets taken out at the last minute for a new bad guy.

Necron> Kuja > Garland (whoever the fuck the necron is...)
Seph > Rufus
Kefka > Garland (thats 2 for 2 Garland, find a new profession other than evil bastard)
Edea > Ultimecea
etc

I think my major beef with FF7 is because a dude I used to hang out with once told me that all FF games suck, then he started cosplaying and because hes a major suck up who just wants people to make him the centre of attention he started saying that FF7 was the best movie / game ever even though when he watched the movie with me he said it was shit.

So I took up my nerd rage banner and carried it deep into the heart of europa... I mean the cosplay conventions to announce that they are all fanboys of mediocre games.
The only reason the dirge of cerebus didn't cause Square Enix to file bankruptcy or mass lay offs is because all the FF7 fanboys wanted to buy it so they could rip off Vincent the vampires image for the next cosplay convention, incedently the 2nd emo character in FF7.


I heard unconfirmed reports a few months back that they were considered relaunching 7 for the PS3 with all new up to date graphics and though to myself, for the love of god can you please get over this game. 9 was superior, remake that with modern graphics and voice actors because I'd love to hear Jude Law playing the voice of Zidane with Anne Hathaway on Garnet (yes big bugdet on voice acting but at this point I think Square should focus on quality of gameplay and immersion over how pretty can we make the environments while totally selling out on gameplay like they have done since the inception of 10 - 13)

 

[MeleeIsland]

I voted new, especially the current HD gen, I think in 10 years people will look back and see this a golden era of RPGs.

Single player story based rpgs: The Witcher, Mass Effect, Dragon Age and NWN2:MotB are better games than anything I've played in the past, including Pools of Radiance, Baldur's Gate II, Planescape.

Single player story based rpgs (non hd): From new games but non-hd-gen, Kotor, Kotor II and Vampire:Bloodlines were pretty awesome. Only new games I couldn't get into are NWN 1 and Jade Empire.

hack & slash: Torchlight, Diablo II, Oblivion and Morrowind (I also liked Demonstone) pretty much blow anything old, can't wait for Diablo III. PS3 owners I envy you, Demon's Soul looks awesome

MMOs: no question, nothing can beat WoW and the very old mmos were terribad in comparison to what we have now.

JRPGs: can't really compare, I stopped playing these after I stopped playing on my SNES, I'll give Final Fantasy III remake on the DS a thumbs up tho.

I'l give a couple of plusses to old games tho,

- BG II:SoA has a better villain & story than DA:O but I usually compare DA:O to BG I, both are pretty generic games introducing the player to a setting. My guess is that DA II will blow BG II's villains & story. On total DA:O > BG II.

- Planescape was more original than MotB, but it's pretty close. Overall as a game MotB is still much better though, PS:T is way too old to get into these days.

- Some combat mechanics did make the games more interesting, e.g. needing acid to kill trolls, or changing the memorized spells for specific fights.

- Older games didn't have payable DLC, *all* content was on the CD.

- Older games had more content. Today games as big as BG II+ToB are hard to make because the effort it takes to make these voiceovers & detailed graphics doesn't allow it.


--------

* I'm not commenting on some recent rpgs claiming to be old school, never tried them, never will, their graphics seem worse than some of really old school RPGs (they beat only pools of radiance graphics-wise).

* can't comment on the Fallout transition, I hadn't finished FO2 back then and I haven't played FO3 because I'm not terribly fond of the scaling in Oblivion and a friend told me FO3 scales as well, maybe I'll give FO:New Vegas a shot is battles don't scale.


Overall New > Old but it's not like *all* recent games are gems and all old ones are rubbish, I'll always keep my Baldur's Gate & PS:T CDs.

 

[ItsAPaul]

Don't kid yourself; Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn is still the best rpg, and its highly unlikely that'll change.

 

[Miumaru]

Mid. My favorite RPGs are Torment, NWN (which I reeeeally want to play because of Dragon Age) and Morrowind.

 

[ICanBreakTheseCuffs]

well I'm kind of stuck here,new have better story but old has more sense of humor

 

[MeleeIsland]

Don't kid yourself; Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn is still the best rpg, and its highly unlikely that'll change.

BG II is solid on the RPG elements, but my eyez hurt when I try to play it these days. On total, as a game, it can't compare to today's RPGs

 

[Axolotl]

well I'm kind of stuck here,new have better story but old has more sense of humor

New have better stories? What definition of "new" are you using?

 

[MeleeIsland]

well I'm kind of stuck here,new have better story but old has more sense of humor

New have better stories? What definition of "new" are you using?

I'd say stories per se, are about on par. Not much difference in learning Sarevok is who he is (meh no spoiler tags here :/) and learning what Morrigan wants from you. Both have a twist on a main storyline. Same holds for kotor as well, you start doing what you do until a "revelation" comes that's supposed to change everything. I'd say most Bioware games, from BG I to Dragon Age, share a quite clear story pattern.

In fact this is much older than Bioware, can't tell which game 100% because it's been a long long time since I played these but wasn't it Bard's tale where your main quest giver turned out to be an "interesting" persona introducing a plot twist?

PS:T's pattern, learning about yourself, is present on Mask of the Betrayer, whose dev team shared a couple of people with PS:T's team. Obsidian/BI people are very good on this type of storyline.

If anything this gen's games are based on new IPs, rather than using pre-existing game worlds, which is certainly fresh. Even ones that do use gameworlds from novels, didn't use a world so well known as Forgotten Realms, nwn2 being the sole exception that I'm aware of. I'd give them a plus for that.

The big plus of the new ones is HD graphics and full voiceovers, the gap imho is as big as the gap between text adventures like Zork and Sierra's graphic adventure games.

Of course there is still much to come, I can't wait for the day when I'll play an RPG with 3D glasses on & control my character without mouse & keyboard.

 

[slipknot4]

There has only been one good old RPG game. Pokemon blue.
I never liked any old rpg to be honest. They were all limited by their engine and system.
/thread

 

[Savagezion]

player: i am looking for my father. HE IS A MIDDLE AGED MAN.

I chuckled. There is more of them too. I didn't notice this one as I have come to expect Bethesda's dialogue options to be pretty cookie cutter I guess. I know you say a couple when you "rescue" that guy from 'the family' in the subway. Although, I don't remember what they were offhand.

OT: Old. I will also state that I have no problem using new graphics engines for them. Arcanum with a 3rd person view would be pretty awesome if it were remade by Bioware. I don't trust many companies out there today.

Dragon Age and Mass Effect for one (well, two)

I will grant DA:O and ME are exceptional games. Now that we have those two out of the way, let's see where the list goes. They are made by an old school company really so its old games that stepped into the market. I will admit that Bethesda competes in sales for a reason I have a hard time understanding outside my belief that alot of Bethesda fans are unfamiliar with older PC rpg titles and have a hard time giving them a fair shake today due to graphical appeal that modern day engines offer very easily. (Bethesda products do LOOK good)

Basically, 2 games of today that I can think of - that you named - get good marks. SO I have to go with old, where I own a small library of them.

 

[ItsAPaul]

Don't kid yourself; Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn is still the best rpg, and its highly unlikely that'll change.

BG II is solid on the RPG elements, but my eyez hurt when I try to play it these days. On total, as a game, it can't compare to today's RPGs

Actually I prefer it since the uncanny valley is very immersion-breaking as it is, plus you graphics-over-gameplay types are the ones killing the industry as a whole anyway =D

 

[Mister Awesome]

i'm going to have to go with new rpg's. i can get into the story a lot more in those.

 

[MeleeIsland]

Don't kid yourself; Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn is still the best rpg, and its highly unlikely that'll change.

BG II is solid on the RPG elements, but my eyez hurt when I try to play it these days. On total, as a game, it can't compare to today's RPGs

Actually I prefer it since the uncanny valley is very immersion-breaking as it is, plus you graphics-over-gameplay types are the ones killing the industry as a whole anyway =D

Graphics has always been important in the industry, even in the BG days. BG made the difference exactly because it could provide a solid party-based RPG with modern graphics (modern was isometric back then, only a couple of 3D games were out). If BG was done in the "Gold Box" format, it wouldn't have succeeded.

Besides, I don't think that gameplay has gotten worse over the years, if anything it has been improved.

 

[|Ookami]

New? Old? Eh...can I just say, "The ones on the PS2?" Tales of the Abyss, Persona 3, Shadow Hearts Covenant, The Xenosaga Series, Tales of Symphonia (though that was for GCN originally; I have both), FFX, KH2??those are games I can get behind.

Though I must say, Resonance of Fate is a wonderful new RPG (one of the best I've bought in a while), and older ones like Golden Sun and Rivera: The Promised Land are also really good. Not to mention Tales of Phantasia, originally on SNES. People'll hate me for this I bet, but games like Fallout and Dragon Age, I never really liked. I feel like I wasted my money getting them; I played them for a few hours, tops..

But really, I'm not sure what would be considered the cut-off point between "old" and "new"... The truly old RPGs, I probably have never played.

 

[cerebus23]

old before they had to all have voice acting like fallout 1 and 2 had much deeper conversations systems. i mean common in fallout 2 if you had an intelligence of 1 you would "speak" in basically caveman and people would teat you like you were. up your stat to 10 and you would have a much different experience in the coversations nevermind game play.

the older rpgs like fallout 1 and 2 baldurs gate captured the truest feel of the thing that all rpgs were based off of and that is the pnp rpg games. you had multiple ways to do many quests in the older games. much more diverse coversation choices.

now days your locked into just different ways to kill your way through most rpgs, use rifles, hand guns, melee weapons, magic, stealth or rambo your way thru and that is basically it.

or how about the ending of the old fallout games vs fallout 3, fallout 2 every decision and choice was reflected in the ending and you got little bits about what happened after your did whatever you did. your clan would shun you and curse you if you went thru the game like a butcher doing evil.

fallout 3 you one of what is it? 3 fairly generic endings, you can go thru the game like a sociopath and not much changes because your locked into a set bunch of quest triggers.

now dont get me wrong i liked my fallout 3, i loved my mass effect 1 and 2, and dragon age, but the pen and paper feel of the old school rpgs is long dead and gone. and they were more complex in every way, but in great ways.

maybe one day we will get back there once storage spaces are no concern and games can be 50 gig or whatever it takes and if companies want to spend the money to record 100s of hours of dialogue to cover every conceivable stat difference, choice, and dialogue tree.

but money and space are the issues long as games cost so much to make vs the old days of just sitting down writing a few 1000 lines of dialogue trees, creating some 2d sprites and a world for those sprites to inhabit.

maybe if a game ditched the voiced stuff entirely it could be pulled off, but noone seems willing to do any of that these days, and it doubtful gamers raised on voice acting in games would take kindly to it. nevermind the amount of extra triggers and game mechanics that would need to be built into the engines if you really could do what you could do in the older games with the amount of choices you had via simple triggers and providing mutiple options and skills you could use to solve things.

 

[Flying Dagger]

I can't even play fallout1 without getting bored.
Morrowind was ridiculously inaccessible.
Action elements make the games more fun for me.

Though I don't expect a D&D experience from a RPG, probably due to having never played D&D.
I like the directions RPGs are taking by "dumbing down"