The lull of RPGs

[Machocruz]

snip

Similarly, there is no need for many old-school RPg elements like "attributes" in modern RPGs when you can just make the game let the player swing the sword, or shoot the gun, themselves.
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In terms of characters, if you go back and actually LOOK at the dialog old RPGs had, you will see most of it was to explain details of the world, its customs, and societies, all of which existed because the world itself lacked the ability to show this itself, due to graphics being rather poor.

Again however, due to the advancement of graphics, and technology, which has allowed game makers to just have the details in the world, or in the case of games like TES and Fallout, via notes and books, the need for most of the dialog older RPG NPCs had has vanished, voice acting just came along at the same time.

Attributes didn't allow you to perform the actions. They gave/give you a metric by which to measure your character's abiltiy on a scale encompassing the high and low of the world in which they exist in. Video games have not reached the point where they can provide real time feedback of exactly how strong, smart, charismatic, wise, etc. relative to other inhabitants in the world, not with the granularity that numbers provide. Information is an important part of any simulation, which is what RPGs fundamentally are. My Fallout 2 character is a more specifically realized entity than any Skyrim or Fallout 3 character can possibly be with those games'comparatively simplistic character systems. And action RPGs and arcade games have been around since the 1980's and 70's, so technology had nothing to do with continued use of attributes in older RPGs.

The dialog in 'hardcore' CRPGs had several functions, some you describe. Extensive and varied dialogue options also

-enable and enhance the player's sense of inhabiting an identity unique to another player's character, or a different character build in a fresh playthrough.
-provide several ways to complete quests according to your character's persuasive skills and method (intimidation, charm, pleading, etc.)
-There is no inconsistency or lack of clarity on what my character will say, unlike Mass Effect where the tone of the dialogue spoken dialogue doesn't match the tone implied by the summarized choices
-lead you down different story paths, alter chain of events through verbal choices, bring upon certain consequences depending on how you respond to another character (Fallout 2's briefcase/New Reno quest is a good example of this). This is what made Deus Ex, Planescape, and Fallout different from early video RPGs, not (or not only) quality of writing, which adventure games reached a level of before CRPGs.

Older RPGs also had in-games books and notes, so that's a non argument. Also reams of printed lore and information in paper manuals, in-game flavor text, riddles. These dialogue heavy RPGs of the late 90s didn't lack for in-game, non spoken information. Another reason they are so much denser than your Hollywood blockbuster RPGs of today. It's like comparing Cliff Notes to the literature they are based on.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I think you'll notice most people are calling out specific games in the series. Those individual moments that have even small impacts on the character became fewer in each one. Most of the character building I'd say happened in ME1, with some in ME2, and damn near none in 3. And given how little previous character stuff was acknowledged across games and how much they changed I'd say it's fair to judge them individually on just how much of an rpg they were. ME3 you're pretty much limited to Paragon and Renegade choices, and the misleading dialogue wheel got worse. Not really fair to compare that to the other two really, since if you stayed neutral more often in them you were basically forced to break character.

ME1 and to some extent ME2 maybe. ME3 had the least amount of choices and quests out of the 2 other games. Not to mention they limited Shepard to only two dialogue choices, excluding the "investigate" option which doesn't really count. ME2 kind of started this trend, but at least it managed to keep SOME story choice. ME1 and to a lesser extent ME2 allowed you to even choose the order in which you some of the main missions. ME3 just let you choose between three quests on each hub world and the DLC.

My Shepard had her own character arc in ME3 due to a choice I made about halfway through the game. ME3 still has plenty of focus on the role-playing, my friends and I talked about all the different choices in the game for hours, something that doesn't happen with 99.9% of the RPGs we all play.

Examples of *some* RPG conventions (the more of these a game has the more of an RPG it is)

Player skill vs character skill (ie stats) ideally turn based (or RTwP) combat
Choices and consequences (ideally with cut content if you picked A over B)
Levelling and loot
Story driven
Exploration (ideally open world)
Multiple builds and approaches (eg can finish as a half-orc rogue or Barbarian cleric)
Quest based gameplay, ideally requiring some sort of 'joining of dots' by connecting various NPC info and lore

In a nutshell, a game that tests your thinking skills above your reflex skills. If a game has a lot of the above mentioned items, but tests mainly reflex, then it's called an "action RPG" or aRPG. If it were just "playing a role" then Football Manager or Call of Duty would fit the description.

You are way wrong. You only think RPGs need to test your thinking skills more than reflex skills. Just because RPGs really took off from pen and paper games, which inherently don't allow for player skill, doesn't mean RPGs themselves should not allow for player skill. The fact is RPGs have been around way longer than pen and paper RPGs and those games allow for plenty of player skill.

Funny, I remember being a lot of thinking about numbers and combat mechanics back when I was playing DnD.
Or is that not a RPG?

RPG's all come from the early table top games, and those games had two major aspects.
The Roleplaying.
and the Roll Playing.

The Roleplaying was about characters, exploration, dialogues and stories.
The Roll play was about combat mechanics, dice rolls, leveling up and picking perks.

Now some RPG's focus on the roleplay and some games focus on the roll play. Both come from the same root, and both are called RPG's.

DnD with just the numbers and combat mechanics wouldn't be an RPG, it would be a dungeon crawler. DnD is an RPG because it has role-playing, not because of the numbers. Lastly, RPGs existed long before pen and paper games and DnD.

An RPG doesn't need to have any complex mechanics in place, it just needs role-playing. Mass Effect has more role-playing than pretty much any video game RPG.

It does actually. RPGs are simulations of actions and reactions. What do you think "role-playing" is? It's interacting with various systems (environments, people) and dealing with various reactions according to your character's characteristics, which is enabled and enforced by complex systems. That's why RPGs are harder to make than action games, or platformers. Higher complexity.

All video games are simulations of action and reactions, that's already in every video game. Action games require better AI than turn-based games because the enemy has to react to player actions in real-time.

What determines a RPG is what you can do outside of combat, and fucking half of Mass Effect 2 is making choice after choice shaping your Shepard into his/her own character.

Combat is part of a RPG if the RPG deals with combat. If you're role-playing an Army Ranger on a mission, engaging in combat is a major part of your role. Role playing is not just dialogue choices.

An easy test to see if a game is an RPG or not is to ask yourself what kind of choice to you have outside of combat. Pretty much every JRPG fails in that regard as they are just adventure games with a tacked-on battle system. What do you as that Army Ranger outside of the missions. If you're not doing anything outside of combat, you basically playing any other shooter.

Mass Effect 2 and 3 are more RPGs than 99.9% of RPGs out there, past or present.

No evidence provided here. I doubt you are even aware of half of the RPGs that have been released over decades of video game development.

Almost all video game RPGs are just adventure games with a tacked-on battle system. What's different than say The Longest Journey with a battle system and Final Fantasy? Throwing a battle system into an adventure game doesn't make it an RPG. The only developers really making RPGs are Bioware, Obsidian, and Bethesda. I haven't played the Witcher games but there's only 2 of them. I'm sure you can name a real RPG here and there not made by 3 developers I listed, but those are few and far between. Pretty much the whole JRPG genre are not RPGs (there are exceptions in there but at least 90% of them are not RPGs).

Action gameplay is one of the two main pillars of the ME series. Action that is combat oriented. The primary action in combat is firing your gun. Unless A. you're suggesting you can avoid all combat in ME2, which is false B. you can use other powers, which is a bit better reasoning, but enjoy being part of the 1% that limits themselves to just powers because you want to make a point C.you're not participating in combat at all, letting your team mates do all the work, which means you're not role-playing Commander Shepard who is a primary combatant in a military organization and is charged with the task (i.e. part of his role in the ME universe and his organization)to engage in combat.

I played a lot of characters in the ME3 co-op MP where you literally barely even shoot a gun if you're playing them right. I played an Infiltrator in the single player so I did plenty of shooting. The fact is you can easily play where you barely even shoot a gun in single player depending on how you made your Shepard, especially in ME3 where you can get the cooldown down to -200%.

If character skill doesn't take priority over player skill, then you aren't assuming the role of that character, you're just a player controlling a game pawn. That's why there are rules in these role-playing GAMES, so you don't do shit your character can't do. If you make a character that has poor marksmanship, no amount of skill in shooters should make him more successful in combat, in a proper RPG. That's what playing a role is, assuming the identity of someone with a particular set and level of abilities, particular personality and behaviors. If you make a common mage character with no melee skills whatsoever, in a proper RPG, no amount of Devil May Cry skills will allow you the character to be good at melee combat. Your live action claim is specious as well. So you mean to tell us that if your character in a LARP is a wheelchair bound academic who has never done anything athletic in his life, he should be able to run fast because the player in real life can run fast? Or he should be able to break out some Tae Kwan Do kicks because the player can? If so, then get rid of the R in LARP.

You can easily make it so a character in a video game is poor at shooting no matter how good the player is at shooting while allowing the player to control the character in real-time.

Obviously, you would have to be in a wheelchair (at least a regular chair with wheels) in a LARP if your character is wheelchair bound.

 

[SajuukKhar]

Attributes didn't allow you to perform the actions. They gave/give you a metric by which to measure your character's abiltiy on a scale encompassing the high and low of the world in which they exist in.

What a blatant lie, that's like saying the car battery does let you turn on the car, it just ive the engine electricity by which to turn on. Attribute ARE what allow you to do things, as without having them at the wholly arbitrary level the developer expects you to have them, you cannot do anything.

Video games have not reached the point where they can provide real time feedback of exactly how strong, smart, charismatic, wise, etc. relative to other inhabitants in the world, not with the granularity that numbers provide.

Nor did I ever say they have, I merely said technology has allowed for greater direct player action.

Not to mention that most of that "granularity" was pure filler, as 90% of attribute levels one could have had zero real effect on anything, due to the pass/fail skill check system older games used.

Information is an important part of any simulation, which is what RPGs fundamentally are. My Fallout 2 character is a more specifically realized entity than any Skyrim or Fallout 3 character can possibly be with those games' comparatively simplistic character systems.

So you are saying that your Fallout 2 character is more realized then a character in a game which lets you alter the very same attributes, just via skill level and perks instead of a traditional attribute system?

And action RPGs and arcade games have been around since the 1980's and 70's, so technology had nothing to do with continued use of attributes in older RPGs.

What a blatant misrepresentation of the point made, and the advancement of action games of the same time period as the old-school RPGs. Those old action games were far too underdeveloped technologically to allow for even half of the functions old-school RPgs performed.

The dialog in 'hardcore' CRPGs had several functions, some you describe. Extensive and varied dialogue options also

-enable and enhance the player's sense of inhabiting an identity unique to another player's character, or a different character build in a fresh playthrough.
-provide several ways to complete quests according to your character's persuasive skills and method (intimidation, charm, pleading, etc.
-There is no inconsistency or lack of clarity on what my character will say, unlike Mass Effect where the tone of the dialogue spoken dialogue doesn't match the tone implied by the summarized choices
-lead you down different story paths, alter chain of events through verbal choices, bring upon certain consequences depending on how you respond to another character (Fallout 2's briefcase/New Reno quest is a good example of this). This is what made Deus Ex, Planescape, and Fallout different from early video RPGs, not (or not only) quality of writing, which adventure games reached a level of before CRPGs.

-Which you can still do.
-which you can still do.
-Which is a total lie. In fact, old school RPGs often had more problems with tone not being what you wanted, because they were pure text, and lacked any sort of tone implication in parenthesis, unless it was a lie, to give the player any indication as to what the tone was.
-Which you can still do.

Older RPGs also had in-games books and notes, so that's a non argument. Also reams of printed lore and information in paper manuals, in-game flavor text, riddles. These dialogue heavy RPGs of the late 90s didn't lack for in-game, non spoken information. Another reason they are so much denser than your Hollywood blockbuster RPGs of today. It's like comparing Cliff Notes to the literature they are based on.

More misrepresentation.

Old school RPGs lacked anywhere near the same level of notes, or books, modern games do, due to the highly limited space of disks back in the day. Nor were they anywhere near as visible, due to the poor graphics of the time, and thus, the developer couldn't predict the player would actually read them, as modern day games books are.

 

[Machocruz]

All video games are simulations of action and reactions, that's already in every video game. Action games require better AI than turn-based games because the enemy has to react to player actions in real-time.

If it were only as simple as combat AI. Action games deal with a very singular, predictable and manageable type of interaction. And the typical action protagonist isn't nearly as complex as a player character in a game like Fallout 2. To quote a developer friend:

"True RPGs are very hard to code. They're also very hard to manage data for, because when you allow any sort of free-form/C&C (choices and consequences), you create co-dependencies in the world which you should track upon every change. There's a LOT of data to deal with due to every entity in an RPG having far more depth than just their health bar."

Any developer will tell you RPGs like the upcoming Wasteland 2 are more complex than action games. There is more going on than shooting or slashing people. The more freedom, quest variables, skill checks, influence on story, character build options, NPC interactions, delayed consequences, etc. you want to allow the player, the more complex the mechanics and systems have to be. Mass Effect has a certain amount of these variables, other RPGs have even more.

Complex games need more complex mechanics than simpler games. You can still create a good RPG with simpler ones, but that wasn't the point.

An easy test to see if a game is an RPG or not is to ask yourself what kind of choice to you have outside of combat. Pretty much every JRPG fails in that regard as they are just adventure games with a tacked-on battle system. What do you as that Army Ranger outside of the missions. If you're not doing anything outside of combat, you basically playing any other shooter.

This test ceases to apply if the adventure the writers intend for you to play is a protracted battle, like a multi-day siege. Unless you want to RP nervous chatter and sleeping between ducking machine gun fire. And it goes both ways. If you're just walking around shooting the shit with people, and not engaging in combat, you're not role-playing that particular character either. RPing isn't just social interaction. And adventure games have non combat choices too. Not a sole, defining feature of the RPG genre.

And why are you fixating on JRPGs? I see games like Fallout and Arcanum being held up as the standard in this thread, not FF. Most JRPGs are merely limited tactical games with a narrative drive.

Almost all video game RPGs are just adventure games with a tacked-on battle system. What's different than say The Longest Journey with a battle system and Final Fantasy? Throwing a battle system into an adventure game doesn't make it an RPG. The only developers really making RPGs are Bioware, Obsidian, and Bethesda. I haven't played the Witcher games but there's only 2 of them. I'm sure you can name a real RPG here and there not made by 3 developers I listed, but those are few and far between. Pretty much the whole JRPG genre are not RPGs (there are exceptions in there but at least 90% of them are not RPGs.

JRPGs aren't the standard being held up as the one modern games aren't meeting. Most JRPGs are still in the Wizardry or Ultima 3 phase, just with extra traditional storytelling. But I would also add Larian (Divinity series), Piranha Bytes (Gothic series, Risen series), Arkane Studios (Arx Fatalis), TaleWorlds (Mount and Blade), Sierra (Quest For Glory), Spiderweb (Avernum, Geneforge), Origin (Ultima series) to the list of companies that made RPGs closer to the tabletop standard of possibility, reactivity, and choice.

I played a lot of characters in the ME3 co-op MP where you literally barely even shoot a gun if you're playing them right. I played an Infiltrator in the single player so I did plenty of shooting. The fact is you can easily play where you barely even shoot a gun in single player depending on how you made your Shepard, especially in ME3 where you can get the cooldown down to -200%.

So it's only ME3 that lets you finish the single player (which is the RPG portion of the game to me, not the MP) without shooting. But guess what? Game is still a shooter. It's how it was intended to be played, that's how the majority of players play it. I've seen people clear levels of Doom and Quake without shooting, or just using the Berserk Pack -those games are still shooters. ME games have shooter combat. Even Bioware have stated this.

You can easily make it so a character in a video game is poor at shooting no matter how good the player is at shooting while allowing the player to control the character in real-time.

Obviously, you would have to be in a wheelchair (at least a regular chair with wheels) in a LARP if your character is wheelchair bound.

No argument here. I'm not arguing against real-time control. Even most action RPGs limit your ability in some way if your character's attributes are low. Elder Scrolls does it. In Mass Effect 1 you can totally gimp Shepard's abilities by not putting points in skills.

There are other arguments for turn based which have to do with micro-management of multiple, unique characters, but that's a topic for another time. I'll just say the more micromanagement of more characters there is, the more useful and sometimes necessary it is to be able to stop time, since character's can't think for themselves to any great degreee.

 

[Fox12]

RPG's are being streamlined. In some ways that's good, and in some ways that's bad. I'm not going to pretend that I miss hours of endless grinding. If a game requires skill and strategy more than level numbers than I have no complaints. A lot of the old games were also quite poor. Sure we all remember Deus Ex and Chrono Trigger, but they were gems in a sea of garbage. Mass Effect 2 was, in my opinion, the best, and it was not as much an RPG. The first one, by contrast, had extremely shallow characters.

Of course, there are "RPG's" that have absolutely no depth whatsoever. I simply consider them bad, or not an RPG. But if you think there are aren't enough good RPG's being made then you aren't looking hard enough. There are more Indie RPG'S being made than I can count, both western and Japanese. Many of them are more exciting than the big AAA titles. Cosmic Star Heroine looks amazing. It's like the people who complain about the state of the horror genre, and yet horror games are enjoying a renaissance through the Indie scene. Just look at SCP.

 

[kazann]

In Baldur's Gate II you had the option to romance Vicnoia, Jaheira or Aerie for the males and Anomen for the female PCs. Now each of the characters had a different personality and the approach to each romance was different too. At no point did the player know the right thing to say, or whether any particular conversation was even relevant. Understanding the character was the key to succeeding.

Jaheira was grieving for her late husband, a possible companion in the first game. She needed space to grieve, a sympathetic ear and no pressing hard. Aerie was shy, inexperienced and full of self doubt. Rushing her or being anything other than sympathetic about the loss of her wings led to a swift end to any romantic potential with her. Viconia is even harder to read. As well as being evil by nature, her upbringing and early experience turned her (not unsurprisingly) into a cruel, cold hearted, jaded *****. With her, sometimes saying what seemed like the entirely wrong thing was in fact the right approach. Non-stop perseverance and a refusal to rise to her baiting and needling was the only way to win her. I haven't got the foggiest idea about Anomen as I've never had him in my party quite honestly (he's a poor man's Kheldorn to be quite frank).

These romances developed over the course of the entire adventure with conversastions happening at the strangest of times. Aerie could have a baby, Jaheira could find happiness again and Viconia could change alignment. They could also leave the party, fight over the Bhaalspawn and bicker with each other. And all of the above doesn't account for the restrictions, such as the potential LIs refusal to date dwarves, half orcs, elves or gnomes (in varying combinations), for example. Simply because that's not how they roll.

In Dragon's Age II, you just clicked the conversation options with the glowing yellow heart on it as you went. At the end of Act II, you had sex and everyone would sleep with anyone. There was no in-fighting or jealousy and no one ever left the party. That's literally the entirety of the romances in DA2.

This guy gets it.

Forget about game play and mechanics for a moment and focus on writing, story and character development (outside of the protagonist). Whilst game play has improved over the years and graphics too, in rpgs the stories and details have gone down significantly and that's what I meant when I said "shallow" in the op because they lack the depth games had in the past.

I liked dao and if that's the best aaa can do then I'll take it.

 

[SajuukKhar]

This guy gets it.

Forget about game play and mechanics for a moment and focus on writing, story and character development (outside of the protagonist). Whilst game play has improved over the years and graphics too, in rpgs the stories and details have gone down significantly and that's what I meant when I said "shallow" in the op because they lack the depth games had in the past.

I would disagree that RPG stores and writing have gown down.

If anything, they have remained largely the same, except the overabundance of games using the cliches/plots/tropes/social commentaries etc. etc., has deluded the impact of each one to the point of nothingness.

That isn't to say some games, like DA2, don't do it worse then older RPgs, which isn't suprising given how many older RPGs were pure shit compared to BG and the like, but on avarage, they have remained largely the same.

The only real difference is that in older games a exceedingly large portion of the quality came from the player's imagination, as the voiceless text, and overly repeated tile-sets, prevented the game from being able to express itself, by itself, however, due to the advancement of technology, gamers have gotten use to the game being able to express everything, or at least expect it to, and thus don't use their imagination as much, and there is no single greater force then the human imagination.

 

[scorptatious]

Chrono Trigger is nearly twenty years old, and it still does multiple endings and player choice better than pretty much any WRPG out there.

As awesome a game Chrono Trigger was, I have to respectfully disagree.

Yes, there's a lot of endings, but most of them you can't really access until you get to New Game Plus. Plus some of the endings aren't even really endings in a way. One of them is just a credits sequence with a Nu and White Koala thing chasing each other, the other is a bunch of rooms where you talk to the developers.

Personally, I think the Fallout games do a really good job in the aspects you mentioned. Each game had a slideshow talking about how all the things that happened thanks to your choices and influence. New Vegas in particular allowed you to join different factions in the main quest, and they each can affect all the places and minor factions you've visited in different ways in the endings.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I've noticed this with JRPGs too but where WRPGs have kind of become watered down, JRPGS have kind of...I don't know what the Hell happened to them! Western RPGS (like the OP said) seems to be turning into 3rd-person action games/3rd-person shooters with leveling elements and, incrementally better equipment. Japanese RPGs on the other hand seem to be turning into visual novels with bad combat (that looks pretty) or, anime OVA's with bad combat (that looks pretty). Bravely Default looks like it's going to be fun to play but I couldn't get into Ni No Kuni because of the combat system (same with Final Fantasy XIII). Shin Megami Tenshi was satisfying but the last JRPG to really grab and hold me (that doesn't involve catching em' all) was Attack of the Saiyans on the DS.

 

[briankoontz]

I love turn-based combat, for example, and I think a really spectacular turn-based RPG could be produced - like a Temple of Elemental Evil without all the bugs or need for patching - and it would sell like hotcakes among my friends and I.

As a genre, the "action" RPG style appeals less to me simply because I'm not a fast-twitch reflex gamer, nor am I trying to become one. "Terraria" moves about as fast as I like my games to move.

As somebody who grew up on "Gold Box" games like SSI's "Pools of Radiance" I miss those days because the FPS craze of today certainly isn't really my thing.

Here are some upcoming games you may wish to consider:

Baldur's Gate 2: Enhanced Edition - Nov 15
Wasteland 2 - late 2013
Divinity: Original Sin - Feb 28
Project Eternity - Jun 2014
Shroud of the Avatar - Oct 2014
Torment: Tides of Numenera - 2015

If you are willing to expand your RPG scope just a bit then Watchdogs (Nov 19), Dark Souls 2 (March), The Witcher 3 (2014), and Cyberpunk 2077 (2015 or later) should be on your radar.

Kickstarter has produced the potential for a resurgence in just the kind of games you are looking for. How well these developers execute on the hopes of gamers remains a big question, however.

 

[Machocruz]

What a blatant lie, that's like saying the car battery does let you turn on the car, it just ive the engine electricity by which to turn on. Attribute ARE what allow you to do things, as without having them at the wholly arbitrary level the developer expects you to have them, you cannot do anything.

Programming code, animation, and inputs are what allow you to perform the actions in a video game. Attributes in the CRPG sense describe the physical and mental composition of your character. They are visible information. Shit, Fallout 3 straight out ignored the attributes on your screen and let you do things at a skill level above what the numbers indicated you can do. Bethesda doesn't seem to agree with you. Your character sheet is not what enables the actions of a 3D model. It's not analagous to a battery in any way.

Nor did I ever say they have

Thus attributes are still useful for presenting character ability to the player. Modern games have not replaced them with anything equal or better.

Not to mention that most of that "granularity" was pure filler, as 90% of attribute levels one could have had zero real effect on anything, due to the pass/fail skill check system older games used.

In a system that only counts attributes up to 10 or 20, it can have a significant impact. But now we have crap going up to 99, so it is pointless for those games. Another ailment of modern game design.

So you are saying that your Fallout 2 character is more realized then a character in a game which lets you alter the very same attributes, just via skill level and perks instead of a traditional attribute system?

In Skryim you have no measure or display of intellect to begin with, outside of haggling/persuasion; no knowledge of obscure lore or monsters greater or lesser than what the player has, being less intelligent doesn't hamper your conversational ability like it does in Fallout. Your character is as intelligent as everyone else's character, unless you choose to LARP, but then the game doesn't recognize that so it's pointless. You have no innate characteristics besides Health, Magicka, and Stamina. Not even a comprehensive measure of Strength. You have Encumberance, which doesn't say much about physical strength in its various dimensions. They simply needed a wider array of perks and skill to enable the kind of character build variety that was possible in Daggerfall, or even Morrowind.

What a blatant misrepresentation of the point made, and the advancement of action games of the same time period as the old-school RPGs. Those old action games were far too underdeveloped technologically to allow for even half of the functions old-school RPgs performed.

Action games "let the player swing the sword, or shoot the gun, themselves." Those old RPGs didn't have attributes because they lacked the sufficient technology to allow the player to perform actions in real time, since that technology existed in action games, they had them because they were made by PnP fans who wanted to emulate PnP games. Same thing with turn-based combat, no matter how many times casuals repeat the easily torn apart "games were turn-based because technology wasn't there to do otherwise derpslurp" meme.

-Which you can still do.
-which you can still do.
-Which is a total lie. In fact, old school RPGs often had more problems with tone not being what you wanted, because they were pure text, and lacked any sort of tone implication in parenthesis, unless it was a lie, to give the player any indication as to what the tone was.
-Which you can still do.

-Modern games, aside from New Vegas and a couple of other RPGs made by 'old school' adherent like Larian, lack the breadth and variety of dialogue options to allow this to any respectable degree.
-Same as above, plus lack of skill checks, when they pay any heed to social skills at all. Modern RPGs that aren't made by Obsidian don't offer multiple quest solutions with multiple outcomes. A basic quest in Fallout or Planescape could offer you 4 or more different avenues , while Fallout 3 didn't even have that many for some of its major quests. Pathetic.
-You could easily discern whether your character was being friendly,unfriendly, sarcastic, sincere, etc. through the wording. What you selected was exactly what was said. In Mass Effect, not only does Shepard say things that are not implied by the summary given, he/she will take a completely different tact. A summary that reads as neutral or friendly, on the 'positive'side of the Paragon/Renegade spectrum will come out as a couple sentences rife with contempt. It's a common complaint about the series.
-Modern, mainstream RPGs not named New Vegas or TWitcher don't even remotely offer the same level of choice-and-consequence as the games being cited for excellence here. Deux Ex 1 alone puts the trivial efforts of Bethesda and Bioware to shame.

Old school RPGs lacked anywhere near the same level of notes, or books, modern games do, due to the highly limited space of disks back in the day. Nor were they anywhere near as visible, due to the poor graphics of the time, and thus, the developer couldn't predict the player would actually read them, as modern day games books are.

They didn't need the same level of notes and books to provide equal or greater density of information and story detail. Crafting robust,intertwining, and branching conversation threads requires more ingenuity and planning than writing linear passages in books. Books are not a satisfying replacement for dialogue exhcnages, unless you're one of the knuckleheads who think watching movies in GTA5 is an awesome feature

 

[The Gnome King]

Here are some upcoming games you may wish to consider:

Baldur's Gate 2: Enhanced Edition - Nov 15
Wasteland 2 - late 2013
Divinity: Original Sin - Feb 28
Project Eternity - Jun 2014
Shroud of the Avatar - Oct 2014
Torment: Tides of Numenera - 2015

If you are willing to expand your RPG scope just a bit then Watchdogs (Nov 19), Dark Souls 2 (March), The Witcher 3 (2014), and Cyberpunk 2077 (2015 or later) should be on your radar.

Kickstarter has produced the potential for a resurgence in just the kind of games you are looking for. How well these developers execute on the hopes of gamers remains a big question, however.

I'm backing Torment: Tides of Numenera (I actually bought the PDF that Monte Cook just put out for the tabletop game 'Numenera' as well - he's one of my favorite game systems authors) ... I own BG1: EE and I absolutely love it. (The licensing issues a few months back were odd.) I'm also looking forward to Wasteland 2.. so yeah, there are a few things to look forward to.

Do you have any experience with Shadowrun Returns? I hear it's a decent turn-based RPG from some folk and from others that it's mainly a cool "toolset" to play with. I'm considering picking up the Deluxe edition off Steam.

 

[SajuukKhar]

Programming code, animation, and inputs are what allow you to perform the actions in a video game. Attributes in the CRPG sense describe the physical and mental composition of your character. They are visible information. Shit, Fallout 3 straight out ignored the attributes on your screen and let you do things at a skill level above what the numbers indicated you can do. Bethesda doesn't seem to agree with you. Your character sheet is not what enables the actions of a 3D model. It's not analagous to a battery in any way.

What an idiotic argument that completely ignores the entire original point!

Attributes in an RPG are what define if you pass or fail the arbitrary attribute checks littered around the gameworld, which control every major aspect of the game.

And no, Fallout 3 ignored nothing about the attributes on your screen in any way... really... where did you get such a preposterous idea from?

Thus attributes are still useful for presenting character ability to the player. Modern games have not replaced them with anything equal or better.

I would disagree.

Skyrim for example took the 1-100 attribute system, got rid of all the minor "upgrades" that added no visible development to your character, such as how increasing your STr by 5 points rarely had any noticeable effect on an enemy unless it had a million hp, and even then it was low, squished it down into a series of 5 main perks that offer 20 levels worth of improvement in one go, making them actually defining, and then filled in the now vacant progression areas with more perks that actually did something, not only allowing it to give the same damage increases the 1-100 STR attribute did, but also throw in tons of optional upgrades that were non-existent in past games.

Its far from perfect mind you, but Skyrim's system offers more total customization, at least, effective customization, then the bog standard 1-100 attribute system ever did.

In a system that only counts attributes up to 10 or 20, it can have a significant impact. But now we have crap going up to 99, so it is pointless for those games. Another ailment of modern game design.

Not really. Even in Fallout's 1-10 system, going from 1-2, or 2-3, or even 2-4, has little real impact on your character.

Its only going from like 2-5 do you see any real effective change. a lower number system has exactly the same problems the higher number systems do, only slightly lessened.

However, lower number systems often have even worse problems, in that, because they have such low numbers, they hardly let you actually level up your character's attributes, in order to prevent becoming god, which nullifies a lot of the point of character progression in RPGs.

In Skryim you have no measure or display of intellect to begin with, outside of haggling/persuasion; no knowledge of obscure lore or monsters greater or lesser than what the player has, being less intelligent doesn't hamper your conversational ability like it does in Fallout. Your character is as intelligent as everyone else's character, unless you choose to LARP, but then the game doesn't recognize that so it's pointless. You have no innate characteristics besides Health, Magicka, and Stamina. Not even a comprehensive measure of Strength. You have Encumberance, which doesn't say much about physical strength in its various dimensions. They simply needed a wider array of perks and skill to enable the kind of character build variety that was possible in Daggerfall, or even Morrowind.

Besides your total magicka.... which is based off of INT, aka however many point your put into magicka.

As for Daggerfall and Morrowind, those games actually had lesser numbers of total builds then Skyrim because of the broken attribute system. Due to past Es games +1/3/5 system, a player would always finish leveling their primary attributes by level 20, because all of their skills gave lager bonuses to said attribute when leveling up.

However, the game's max level was around 70+, so that means the player would then have around 50+ levels of forced level ups to their secondary attributes, and due to how attributes tarted off at around 20-30, this means everyone ended up with 70-80 in all their attributes.

While 20-30 in an attribute may seem like a lot, due to the way attributes calculated things, such as magicka, the difference was negligable. A mage with 100 INT, because he focused on it, and a warrior with 80 INT, because he was forced to level up his INT since all his other attirbutes were maxed, had a difference of 40 magicka, or 1-2 mid level spells.

The simple fact of the matter is, in Morrowind and Daggerfall, the most diverse your character ever was, was at level 1, and from there, you just became more of the same.

However, since Skyrim took the qualities of attributes such as STR, and split them up into their individual parts
-Melee damage going to the melee skill
-Carry weight going into stamina
-health increases going into Health itself
etc. etc.

and making raising each of these things 100% optional, it has utterly prevented the same problems the past game's attribute systems had, and allowed for more truly diverse character making then past games could ever offer.

Action games "let the player swing the sword, or shoot the gun, themselves." Those old RPGs didn't have attributes because they lacked the sufficient technology to allow the player to perform actions in real time, since that technology existed in action games, they had them because they were made by PnP fans who wanted to emulate PnP games. Same thing with turn-based combat, no matter how many times casuals repeat the easily torn apart "games were turn-based because technology wasn't there to do otherwise derpslurp" meme.

And you utterly ignore that PnP games are only the way they are because the real-world doesn't properly allow for anything else.

-You cant fight dragons, or orcs, or explore dungeons full of traps IRL, so you have to create a proxy world.
-You cant fight in this proxy world yourself, so you have to create a character to serve as a proxy for you.
-You cant control this proxy character in this proxy world yourself, so you need another system of proxies to simulate things like the ability to hit
-Thus exists attributes.

The emulation of PnP games is the emulation of the limits of PnP games, which is to say the same limitations as early computer games.

However, unlike the real world, which can never, unless we gain the godlike ability to create worlds and defy physics in the far future, remove these limitations, thus, will always need them, computer games are not forever limited, and thus, have no reason to keep them besides to pander to the nostalgic.

snip

Again, I would have to disagree, I have yet to encounter a situation where I couldn't role play any believable role in a modern RPG

-Every single sidequest in Fallout 3, except Riley Rangers, offered at least 2 ways to complete it. And the main quests
--Following in His Footsteps
--Galaxy News Radio
--Scientific Persuits
offered three ways to beat them, do what the NPcs asks, persuade them to just give it up, or bypass it entirely by finding your dad.
--Tranquility lane had two ways to beat it(do what Braun says or activate the failsafe)
--Rescue from paradise had multiple ways to free the kids, and could be bypassed entirely just by using speech to make Mayor mcreedy let you in.
--The American dream lets you kill Eden or Spare him
--Take it Back let you either use the FEV or not.

the only main quests that dont have optional ways ot beat them are the waters of life, and picking up the trail.

-Except you could not as pure text lacks any sort of tone or implication in it, to say otherwise is an outright falsehood, and I never denied that Mass Effect had problems, just that it tended to be more clear a greater percentage of the time.

-Choice and consequence in New Vegas, the witcher, and deus Ex, consists of a bunch of post ending cutscenes telling you stuff, while the only real in-game effects being "group of generic NPcs and one named NPC from A faction get replaced by a bunch of generic NPCs and one named NPC from B faction"

In terms of in-game reactions, which are the only thing that matters, they really don't offer anything other games don't.

They didn't need the same level of notes and books to provide equal or greater density of information and story detail. Crafting robust,intertwining, and branching conversation threads requires more ingenuity and planning than writing linear passages in books. Books are not a satisfying replacement for dialogue exhcnages, unless you're one of the knuckleheads who think watching movies in GTA5 is an awesome feature

Crafting those dialog trees is also a entirely unneeded waste of resources when the vast majority of said information could, and in most cases would, come off more naturally from books then NPc dialog.

That it takes more skill or planning really doesn't negate how pointless it is, and how much it often does more harm then good by breaking the believability of the world by allowing your character to ask, and for NPCs to respond to, question on the level of asking what a car is in a game set in the modern day.

Books natural existence makes them a FAr better replacement for dialog about the world in most cases, because they do less to break the believability of the world.

 

[not_you]

Dark Souls to me is still a great RPG... (Although skeptical about DS2)

That being said most RPG's where you get to CREATE your character seems to skip over a few details in my book...
Hell, GTA is more of an RPG than most other games because you're playing the role of a character that is already created...
It's why I prefer to play games like The Walking Dead and... uhhhhh.... Fuck it... that's my example...
You're playing the role of a character that is already created... I found myself playing the game (Walking Dead) more and more of how I saw Lee as a character... And THAT to me, is more RPG than any of the random "create your own avatar" stories that most games go for now-a-days...

So, yeah... in terms of which is the better RPG: GTA > SR4 purely because "create your own characters" isn't role-playing in the same degree...

 

[Machocruz]

What an idiotic argument that completely ignores the entire original point!

Attributes in an RPG are what define if you pass or fail the arbitrary attribute checks littered around the gameworld, which control every major aspect of the game.

Your argument was that RPGs don't need attributes anymore because the game can let us just swing the sword, shoot the gun, etc. when we want. The attributes weren't responsible for being able to perform actions, just the degree of success of those actions. I could swing a sword in Ultima Underworld no matter what the stats said. I'm talking about the actions themselves, you're talking about results, which have nothing to do with your character being physically able to use a weapon. Be more careful with your word choices if the latter was your intended point.

And no, Fallout 3 ignored nothing about the attributes on your screen in any way... really... where did you get such a preposterous idea from?

And yes, I had a low Small Guns skill plus low Agility -the governing stat- and I was still able to get regular headshots at low % in VATS. I could open high level locks with low lockpicking skill in FO3 and Oblivion, because the gave the player a way to circumvent poor skill choices with a mini-game. Bethesda has a light touch now when it comes to the "rules" of their RPGs. They're all about never making the player be less than awesome. This is why big budget games become more simple minded every year, the belief that the masses won't come unless they can be winnarz all the time. But role-playing is as much about limitations as it is ability

I would disagree....

And still no other measure of Strength besides weapon damage, of intelligence besides magic use and shopping. So Skyrim is Hexen with 80s level RPG mechanics.

Not really. Even in Fallout's 1-10 system, going from 1-2, or 2-3, or even 2-4, has little real impact on your character.

Fallout 1 and 2 recognized degrees of statistical difference. It wasn't a system they pulled out of their butts, it was based on a PnP system which also recognizes these degrees of statistical difference. It also used RNG that modified these stats by degrees. Just like in real life, one or two degrees of ability can impact efficiency. It can give you just enough damage output in a particular circumstance, or put you into another round of combat. Not that efficiency is of prime importance in a game.

However, lower number systems often have even worse problems, in that, because they have such low numbers, they hardly let you actually level up your character's attributes, which nullifies a lot of the point of character progression in RPGs.

10 to 20 is a sweet spot, which is why so many PnP and video game systems use them. I have not played a decent RPG that used anything lower than 10. Level scaling nullifies the point of character progression even worse, but guess who loves that...

Besides your total magicka.... which is based off of INT, aka however many point your put into magicka.

Which still doesn't indicate how intelligent your character, their level of knowledge, their vocabulary, etc. It's like CRPGs never advanced past the Wizardry stage...

As for Daggerfall and Morrowind... and allowed for more truly diverse character making then past games could ever offer.

Yet I can't make a levitating spearman who speaks Centaurian in Skyrim or Oblivion. So much for more diverse character possibilities. Admittedly this is a matter of skill and spell selection, but this is further testament to the shrinking of possibility space in the modern RPG.

The emulation of PnP games is the emulation of the limits of PnP games, which is to say the same limitations as early computer games.

Which is a design choice, not forced because computer games couldn't do real time combat or real time feedback, which is the tired argument that keeps getting repeated because Jeff Vogel wanted to rationalize his desire to make simpler games for bigger audience draw (a correlation that the Industry has yet to provide evidence of), and the defenders of mediocrity and sloth jumped all over the statement like they found the smoking gun that proves the more advanced and knowledgeable RPG audience wrong.

However, unlike the real world, which can never, unless we gain the godlike ability to create worlds and defy physics in the far future, remove these limitations, thus, will always need them, computer games are not forever limited, and thus, have no reason to keep them besides to pander to the nostalgic.

But computer games are limited right now. We haven't gotten to the stage where we can abandon all the abstract elements. Games can't represent granular levels of character intelligence, knowledge, personality traits (most players left to their own devices will not have their character behave in a manner consistent with an established code of ethics or personality type)via in action feedback alone. Attributes are as much for the player's mental confirmation as they are for pragmatism. They want to have an image of a specific character in their mind, since video games still can't give them this feedback in action. Not to mention unholy existence of features like level scaling, which severely compromises the ability to provide feedback on where you are compared to where you were.

Again, I would have to disagree, I have yet to encounter a situation where I couldn't role play any believable role in a modern RPG

I prefer interesting and diverse choices to "believable" ones. Having more skills and spells to choose from is more interesting than having less. Skyrim's incremental upgrades to things you can already do, Mass Effect's powers, Dragon Age 2's skills are just not interesting. If believable mattered, I'd just stick with ARMA.

-Every single sidequest in Fallout 3, except Riley Rangers, offered at least 2 ways to complete it. And the main quests
--Following in His Footsteps
--Galaxy News Radio
--Scientific Persuits
offered three ways to beat them, do what the NPcs asks, persuade them to just give it up, or bypass it entirely by finding your dad.
--Tranquility lane had two ways to beat it(do what Braun says or activate the failsafe)
--Rescue from paradise had multiple ways to free the kids, and could be bypassed entirely just by using speech to make Mayor mcreedy let you in.
--The American dream lets you kill Eden or Spare him
--Take it Back let you either use the FEV or not.

A.) Most of the small towns had no more than one sidequest, and those had no more than two solutions, most of the time with the same approach: combat B.) Small towns in Fallout 2 not only had multiple quests, the quests had more solutions and more outcomes than most of the major quests you listed. Not to mention greater degree of quest from different locations overlapping, quests conflicting with one another.

-Except you could not as pure text lacks any sort of tone or implication in it, to say otherwise is an outright falsehood, and I never denied that Mass Effect had problems, just that it tended to be more clear a greater percentage of the time.

Come one now. If you get text that says: "I wan't information and I'm going to strangle you if you don't give it up, scum" you know exactly what the tone is. In Mass Effect the dialogue wheel will give you something like "What about ____?" which turns into "Tell me what I want to know, and don't waste my time!" Maybe I didn't want my Shepard to take that tact. The dialogue wheel is widely criticized, even by ardent fans. There is nothing more clear about short statements at odds with actual spoken dialogue. It's simply a means not to confuse or bore impatient or attention deficient players.

-Choice and consequence in New Vegas, the witcher, and deus Ex, consists of a bunch of post ending cutscenes telling you stuff, while the only real in-game effects being "group of generic NPcs and one named NPC from A faction get replaced by a bunch of generic NPCs and one named NPC from B faction"

In terms of in-game reactions, which are the only thing that matters, they really don't offer anything other games don't.

Neither Skyrim, Fallout 3, Fable, Mass Effect, etc. has anything comparable to the Anna Navarro situation in Deus Ex. Its noted as one of the greatest examples of emergent gaming for a reason. The former games are completely static in comparison, with bulletproof NPCs and tight developer strictures on plot progression. And the moment in which things turn isn't even sign-posted, not to people first experiencing the game. The Witcher implements delayed consequences for choices you made earlier in the game, unbeknownst to the player. However you feel about the magnitude of the results, it's far more than these other games mustered. ME series is notorious for not having player choices matter in the end.

Crafting those dialog trees is also a entirely unneeded waste of resources when the vast majority of said information could, and in most cases would, come off more naturally from books then NPc dialog.

Books are not a replacement for conversation which reveals character motivations, opens or closes plot avenues, lets you express your character's personality, ethics, beliefs. There is no back and forth between in-game book text and the PC, no expression on the part of the player beyond "my character reads."

That it takes more skill or planning really doesn't negate how pointless it is, and how much it often does more harm then good by breaking the believability of the world by allowing your character to ask, and for NPCs to respond to, question on the level of asking what a car is in a game set in the modern day.

People talk to people in the real world find out about that person and use that information for their own purposes, which you couldn't do with books unless everyone in the world has a biography. In fiction, people talk to people to advance the plot in a character driven manner. I'm not talking about info dump, but character interaction. Verbal sparring, give and take, persuasion, diplomacy. You can't do those with audio logs and codexes. I can't imagine you've even played some of these games if you think all they offer in their extensive dialogue trees is general information on the level of "what a car is." I'd like to see an exchange between you and, say, Chris Avellone on the topic. Vegas money would not be on you, friend.

Books natural existence makes them a far better replacement for dialog about the world in most cases, because they do less to break the believability of the world.

Completely non-sensical statement. Not being able to have lengthy conversations with people if you choose breaks the believability of a world. And Bethesda fans have no business speaking on believability or immersion. I don't find quest markers believable (a detailed journal is much more "natural" than a digital icon hovering in mid air). I don't find no more skill requirements for guild rank advancement believable. I don't find merchants hiding some of their wares away in invisible chests believable or immersive. I don't find Perks believable. I don't find level scaled enemies or items believable. It's not believable for major NPCs in Skyrim to have four lines of dialogue that go no where. I don't find servants not serving food believable (something Ultima accomplished in 1992.) I don't find no polearms in a medieval fantasy setting believable. I don't find no farming or discernible food production in FO3 believable (which NV rectified), or that in 200 years people are still living like the bombs dropped yesterday. Games are only becoming less immersive, with icons popping up all over telling you what you need to do or where to go, button prompts for things you've done 20 times already, refusal to restrict the player, refusal to let the player make choices that will "lock off content" (Bethesda's own words). The less believable the games are, the more fanboys claim they are immersive.

 

[briankoontz]

Here are some upcoming games you may wish to consider:

Baldur's Gate 2: Enhanced Edition - Nov 15
Wasteland 2 - late 2013
Divinity: Original Sin - Feb 28
Project Eternity - Jun 2014
Shroud of the Avatar - Oct 2014
Torment: Tides of Numenera - 2015

If you are willing to expand your RPG scope just a bit then Watchdogs (Nov 19), Dark Souls 2 (March), The Witcher 3 (2014), and Cyberpunk 2077 (2015 or later) should be on your radar.

Kickstarter has produced the potential for a resurgence in just the kind of games you are looking for. How well these developers execute on the hopes of gamers remains a big question, however.

I'm backing Torment: Tides of Numenera (I actually bought the PDF that Monte Cook just put out for the tabletop game 'Numenera' as well - he's one of my favorite game systems authors) ... I own BG1: EE and I absolutely love it. (The licensing issues a few months back were odd.) I'm also looking forward to Wasteland 2.. so yeah, there are a few things to look forward to.

Do you have any experience with Shadowrun Returns? I hear it's a decent turn-based RPG from some folk and from others that it's mainly a cool "toolset" to play with. I'm considering picking up the Deluxe edition off Steam.

Shadowrun Returns is mediocre. RPGs really benefit from ambition and the complexity and scope of the world. Shadowrun Returns has very little atmosphere compared to Planescape: Torment. It's a linear not very interesting story, a linear world, generic characters, writing not up to industry standards.

It has tactical turn-based combat, but is likewise mediocre there. I think most of the people who enjoy the game are just nostalgic for a Shadowrun game, and this is the best they can get so they convince themselves it's a good game.

A little known RPG gem is Anachronox, if you're looking for something to tide you over. It has one of the best stories ever in an RPG, turn based JRPG style combat, great characters among the best in RPG history, and a great sense of humor. If we're lucky Tom Hall will do a Kickstarter campaign for Anachronox 2 - the game was originally planned to have more content.

 

[aozgolo]

I think the "lull" at least as far as consoles are concerned is due more to "where we are" in console life expectancies. If you think back to PS1, N64, PS2, etc. were any of the crowning RPG Titles for those systems released in the console's infancy? Generally speaking, no they aren't. You rarely see a groundbreaking RPG as a launch title for a system, unless it's already been out.

As far as JRPGs are concerned, their developers actually learned they don't need to meet expensive budgets, voice acting, or high end graphics to make a good game, but due to consumer expectation they've opted to release predominantly on handhelds. If you look at the PSP, DS, and 3DS I guarantee you will find a plethora of JRPGs, many of which are amazing.

With Western RPGs, which seems to be the big favorite in the Escapist crowd, I would say look at the portfolios of the big developers of these titles. Bioware and Bethesda took some forays into MMOs which let them take a little more time in their announcement window to fine-tune their next big games (Bethesda is obviously working on SOMETHING, they still have their internal game studio that isn't concerned with what all they are publishing and repping for their sister company, ZOS). CD Projekt Red of course only has two titles to it's name which are coming along nicely. As an earlier comment mentioned, there's a slew of companies going a virtually indie route with kickstarters and smaller game budgets to produce awesome throwback RPGs like Planescape, Wasteland, and Shroud of the Avatar. The thing about Western RPGs is that there's only a few big powerhouses that churn out the ones we consider "Great", Bioware alone is responsible for the majority of fan favorites from the late 90s.

I think it's just a wait and see environment.

 

[briankoontz]

I'd like to address some issues related to what Machocruz and SajuukKhar are talking about:

Old School Dungeons and Dragons, the original concept, is not about monster-slaying. Monsters were merely one type of obstacle - the point of the game was role-playing, teamwork, and using a variety of skills well to progress past a variety of obstacles - puzzles, traps, monsters, special complex situations. That's why the original warrior class was called a Fighter - he was the only character focused around combat. The Magic User was there to figure out the arcane, ancient, and mysterious aspects of the dungeons. The Thief was there to help the party past traps, find secret areas, and gain additional treasure. The Cleric would heal the party during the adventure to allow many fewer trips back to town to rest and deal with unholy monsters.

Along the way the amazing creativity of the original concept was degraded more and more in favor of slaying monsters. Video games likewise degraded the same way, with Neverwinter Nights 2 being a terrible example of "monster blasting".

The *reason* the original spell list for Magic Users was so long, there was so much variety and amazing creativity, was to allow dungeon masters vast creativity in how they constructed the dungeon, which could then be countered by a crafty and well prepared Magic User. Subsequent degradation focused the magic user more and more on combat, with players overly selecting magic missile and fireball spells due to how "useful" they were relative to the other spells.

Compare the original concept of Dungeons and Dragons with, say, Skyrim. Puzzles, traps? A few, with the traps only an annoyance at worst and the puzzles the *player* figures out, not the character. Most of Skyrim gameplay is travel, inventory management, skill management, and of course murdering lots and lots and lots of creatures.

The phrase "dumbing down" doesn't cover it. It's a loss of variety, of creativity, of the basic quality of the game experience. It's a loss of realism in favor of superpowering the protagonist.

In the original Dungeons and Dragons concept, players were fragile. If they did stupid shit in a dungeon, they had a decent chance of dying. Level 1 Magic Users were terribly prone to death. But a constant line of degradation since then has seen characters become nearly death-proof, with stupidity or poor decisions resulting in mere inconveniences.

One of the cool things in dungeons and dragons was that monsters often didn't even have to be killed. Some could be bribed, some would be friendly if one of the characters (usually the magic-user) knew their language, some would be friendly if the players had useful information to share with them. I hardly need to point out that this kind of social interaction and complexity has pretty much disappeared from gaming as a whole. Monsters were *respected* in the original dungeons and dragons - goblins had their own societies for example, they didn't just exist as goblin-shaped bags of loot and XP. They weren't (typically) there to be killed.

Precisely because in later iterations of D&D and of course video gaming monsters DO exist merely to be slaughtered, the player characters need to be more powerful, in order to ENSURE that the slaughter is successful. So literally every character in a modern RPG is combat-based, they are "balanced", by which is meant balanced in their combat power, an utterly ridiculous notion in the original D&D concept, and they are very powerful (in combat, not creative thought) compared to the original D&D notions of player power.

We make fun of gibbering ignorant Call of Duty cretins, but the chickens have merely come home to roost - video games are producing the very players who are worthy of playing what games have become.

The better the game the better the effect it has on the human being playing it. Make shitty games and the humans playing them become shit themselves.

 

[aozgolo]

snip.

While I certainly agree with your sentiments on the "variety" not being there in terms of most video game RPGs being combat based, I have difficulty coming up with any examples outside of Planescape Torment where we really "had" this D&D feel in video games? If you look at other Infinity Engine games, even the ones with D&D license did not really embrace this sense of variety in gameplay, as all classes are essentially combative, and what noncombative skills were there ultimately felt even more niche or superfluous by the lack of situations in the gameplay where they'd be particularly effective.

I won't go any further back in time because I feel that CRPGs really peaked with the Infinity Engine (A far cry better than old SSI RPGs).

I really don't feel like we got close to this "variety of gameplay" until you hit upon the age of the sandbox games which didn't fully take off until the 2,000s with games like Morrowind. While yes there's been "dumbing down" in that series in general, the ability to directly mod those games gave us the option to pursue non-combative playstyles, I recall one of my most enjoyable experiences in Oblivion being playing a scared Imperial merchant who wouldn't fight and would bribe thieves to leave him alone, mods gave me the playstyle option to be a trader wandering town to town, hiring mercenary guards, owning businesses, and even investing in a medieval stock market. Almost no game would allow that same level of freedom to me, and no game I've seen would dare risk going full "niche" on that end.

I think as long as we have RPGs we can mod on the PC we will always have the option to play alternate playstyles, and I see the age where that happens more often to be ahead of us, not behind.