The lull of RPGs

[GoaThief]

Look outside the big names, I've recently completed Mars War Logs which I picked up for around £7 and absolutely loved it.

Sure it's a bit rough in places, but extremely ambitious for a low budget indie title and really liked where they went. The love the developers have for it is clear and I think in the coming years we'll be hearing more stories from a post - cataclysmic Mars.

As for those saying go JRPG, I disagree entirely as they're very far removed from my tastes and I assume the OP's. Not really relevant.

 

[Talvrae]

Deus Ex is a RPG now? Since when? It's an open game with many approch to how to advence, and a progression system... But it,s still a shooter in most ways... A genius game, but a RPG?

 

[Signa]

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

If there is no negative penalty for making your character do things they are inherently NOT good at, then it's not a RPG. ME2-3 are action/shooters with RPG elements. Yes, you do "role play" Sheppard in your dialogue choices, but the gameplay is not that of a RPG.


Agree fully OP. I suggest you get on Steam and find yourself a copy of Legend of Grimrock if you haven't already. It was exactly what I was looking for in this RPG drought.

 

[Galletea]

So many acronyms, my head hurts.
I can't even remember what I was going to add, other than that I disagree, and you can't just discount half the genre because you don't like it.

Good is obviously a very subjective thing here...and RPG seems pretty subjective here too for that matter.

 

[Teoes]

Deus Ex is a RPG now? Since when? It's an open game with many approch to how to advence, and a progression system... But it,s still a shooter in most ways... A genius game, but a RPG?

Since release! As far as I've ever known Deus Ex has always been considered an RPG. Yes, it's in first person and you can fire guns in it, but considering it's perfectly viable to get through the game without doing much shooting it's not really an FPS; plus the FPS mechanics are all rather clunky. Call it an FPSRPG, FPRPG, or even an action RPG or somesuch, sure. There's too much in the way of character build/progression (with corresponding proficiency or lack thereof with regards skills such as combat and infiltration, depending on the character build) and NPC interaction for it not to be labelled an RPG or conversely to be labelled simply a shooter.

In my opinion, of course. Your mileage may vary.

 

[Maximum Bert]

A decline in RPGs eh and yet as usual no one can even agree on what constitutes an RPG instead we get answers like you play a role which answers nothing as you do that in almost any game and lets not get started on what constitutes a game.

Anyway OP I think you need to rethink some of your prejudices then you will likely find RPG ish type games are just as popular as ever although it ofc depends on what your definition is. What I would call CRPGS though are definitely not as popular as they once were although to be fair I never really liked them much anyway although kickstarter is seeing some new ones come out so maybe that will satisfy you.

I will finish Planescape Torment one day (great concept) but that gameplay ughhhhh.

 

[joest01]

Mass Effect 2 and 3 are more RPGs than 99.9% of RPGs out there, past or present. I really hate when people say ME2 and ME3 aren't RPGs because people just don't understand what an RPG is. RPGs are all about the role-playing, it's what separates them from other genres. You can have any kind of battle system in an RPG because RPGs have no gameplay requirements whatsoever. ME2's battle system is a TPS for example, Deus Ex's battle system is a FPS, the Tales series is a hack and slash, and many have turn-based combat. 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. If that's not a fucking RPG, then I don't know what the fuck is. As you can see, it greatly annoys me when people say Mass Effect is not an RPG and it's instead a Shooter with RPG elements or something of the sort. Literally, one mission in Mass Effect has more role-playing than the entirety of the whole Final Fantasy series, yet Final Fantasy is 100% RPG and Mass Effect is a shooter...

^^ This. If an RPG requires the players to constantly think about numbers and the combat mechanics, you're not roleplaying, you're simply playing a game. Not to say I don't enjoy that style of gameplay; I enjoy tactical combat and moving around my characters to fulfill different roles like in games such as DA:O. But when you put that in front of immersion, story telling and getting into your character, then it's not roleplaying.

really? to me the main qualifier for an RPG is that character skill is more important than player skill. And that is what makes the genius of deep stat based games. You have soo many options to tweak a character in those games.

 

[Eldritch Warlord]

Honestly, the last good RPG i played was DAO, it may have been your typical fantasy, elfs orcs rpg thats been done a hundred times, but it was good.

There's no orcs in Dragon Age.

Do you really think there's a lull in RPGs? It seems to me like they continue to grow more popular, you however are just arbitrarily not counting certain series and ignoring the human tendency to believe the past is more full of memorable items than the present.

What you're looking for is story-driven Western RPGs. However the Western RPG tradition has always been more focused on self expression than storytelling. Meaningful choices are what they aspire to create, most commonly through character customization and/or dialog.

The JRPG tradition has been more focused on storytelling, you may want to look to them to satisfy your desire instead of dismissing them. Square Enix isn't the only JRPG developer you know.

 

[lacktheknack]

Welcome to the plight of adventure game fans. We used to rule the world, and then we promptly died.

At least WRPGs are getting a big boost from Kickstarter. Adventure gaming gets to look forward to Broken Age and... whatever Cyan Worlds is working on... and that's it.

 

[Dr.Awkward]

Personally, I wouldn't mind a RPG with barely passable combat but delivered well in the story department. Maybe that's the problem here - RPG developers are putting so much time into trying to make combat fun, that they don't work on the quests and story as much anymore, and that's the part more people are going to remember.

 

[Someone Depressing]

As both games and gamers alike become more and more casual, strategy, numerical values, variables and limited retro graphics are going to take a backseat.

Just remember this: Fallout 3 is an RPG because of its roots, and that strategy is a big part of it.

Call of Duty is by no means an RPG. It's trying to widen its audience, and it fails horribly at that. Especially when its audience is most of the PS3 owning world.

Also... not all JRPGs are like that. The Shin Megami Tensei games are a series of philosophical, realistic and grim games about life after the acopolypse. Oh, and human-eating monstrosities are everywhere.

RPGs are falling into a decline, but there'll always be a number of RPGs every year that are still RPGs at their core.

 

[Gennadios]

"Why the fuck do they need to be voice acted?"

Because AAA publishers refuse to fund non-voice acted games. They're currently trying to ape movie blockbusters, and if you take out voice acting you kind of kill appeal to gamers... with less of an attention span.

There was a pretty long discussion about the possibility of voiceovers on the Wasteland 2 boards immediately after the Kickstarter.

The biggest dissenters came from two groups. One group didn't want full voiceovers because they felt that ever line of dialog would make the game more linear, and the other group felt that it would make MODs less immersive because it makes any fan created content feel cheaper if they don't have access to the same bells and whistles that the developers do.

Welcome to the plight of adventure game fans. We used to rule the world, and then we promptly died.

Committed suicide more like it. Who in their right mind harbors fantasies of being the character that chases black cats with duct tape because he needs fur to make a mustache to look more like the picture on their stolen passport?

 

[FPLOON]

I vote to change the title of this thread to "The lull of WRPGs"... Who's with me?

OT: If you haven't played any of the Mass Effect games, then you should... You would most likely enjoy them... Other than that, I don't play that many WRPGs according to your OP... Most of my time has been playing JRPGs, where not every character has spiky hair or oversized weapons... like any of the Tales of games, for example... or any of the Persona games...

There's not so much of a "lull" as their is a "niche"... Once you do broaden your search for RPGs in general, I'm sure you'll find something that you would not have thought you would like in the first place... ("Looks can be deceiving" or something like that...)

 

[Darmani]

Sorry but the answer is this. The main benefit of rpgs was role taking, story, and leveling up. Sports games do that shit now and can do it with more individualized experiences as to a single compromise style of the menu driven combat.

It doesn't help that the action rpg is virtually cliche now thanks to a slight flood of Zelda, GoW, and GoW clones, DMC, Bayonetta, etc. And seriously can you imagine playing the ridiculous story of of modern soldier forced to take arms to defend your homeland in a more emersive and diverse way THAN Modern Warfare 2 with its SA slum ambush run, ice level climbs, ski jumps, No Russian, and WOLVERINES? The only way it could be improved is being able to play through the parts inbetween the shooty parts and the numbers have spoken with regards to Splinter Cell and Alpha Protocol, people ain't interested in that.

Besides Extra Credits(6:18 specifically) has a much better and more rounded assessment especially noting how much easier it is to put storytelling into any game and make FPSes

 

[Bix96]

I vote to change the title of this thread to "The lull of WRPGs"... Who's with me?

OT: If you haven't played any of the Mass Effect games, then you should... You would most likely enjoy them... Other than that, I don't play that many WRPGs according to your OP... Most of my time has been playing JRPGs, where not every character has spiky hair or oversized weapons... like any of the Tales of games, for example... or any of the Persona games...

There's not so much of a "lull" as their is a "niche"... Once you do broaden your search for RPGs in general, I'm sure you'll find something that you would not have thought you would like in the first place... ("Looks can be deceiving" or something like that...)

I definitely would... I was just about to come in here and tell the OP about SMT4, Fire Emblem Awakening, and Etrian Odyssey IV all great JRPGs that just came out this summer then I see that JRPGs don't count "just because"

 

[IllumInaTIma]

Yeah, that discussion isn't really going anywhere since people can't even decide what really constitutes an RPG.

 

[veloper]

Best RPG ever? Bards Tale 2*

*may not actually be the best RPG ever but it was the one that hit that magic curve of youthful wonder while being old enough to play it properly. Being an Arch-mage (a real one who leveled up all the levels, not just to level 3 then skip class) meant you were an ARCH-MAGE and rightfully utterly kicked everyone's arse.

Was there ever a time that we could call the golden age of CRPGS, I wonder.

Bard's Tale 2. The game is often held up as an example by grognards and other purists, but I don't see the appeal.
I played the game back in the day and for most of the time all you did was walking around, drawing maps on paper and chipping off hitpoints from monsters with dull melee attacks and hundreds of variants on the straighforward damage spell. Then there were some lame riddles and the puzzles consisted of things like teleporters and dark areas messing with your mapmaking efforts.
Most blobbers were pretty dull in the strategic and tactical sense IMO. I'd make an exception for a game like Realms of Arkania, which switched to a battlemap for tactical combat, but that's a pretty rare exception in the world of blobbers. Usually combat was a real-time cluster-fuck like in Eye of the Beholder or a bits of flavor text scrolling past a la BT, while you went through the motions of ordering your meatshields to perform the one basic attack and having mages cast damage spells.
Good RPGs have always been rare.