evilthecat said:
Sure, but I don't think we're in any danger of that right now. There are a lot of interesting and diverse RPGs out there, and the two you mentioned are both pretty good examples of games which don't follow the model of the hallowed RPG classics of yore word for word but are still pretty amazing.
And yet, aswe saw with Mass Effect trilogy, the dumbing down of actual options with each successive release.
I'm both similar and completely different. I grew up on oWoD and a few other similar, story driven RPGs like Fading Suns (which pretty much had to be story driven because it had the jankiest rules, but the setting information was very well written). D&D just never interested me outside of video games, until I borrowed a friends 5th edition rulebook recently and found it nice, well written and remarkably free of all the wierd, inaccessible nonsense I'd come to associate with D&D.
I don't know about 5th ed, haven't played it. But my favourite settingswere Planescape and Ravenloft and both were 2E.
I mean, if you wanted to, you could certainly bend Vampire the Masquerade's legs behind its head. Celerity was absurd, for example, and a lot of the unique clan disciplines clearly weren't written with the intention of making them available to players, or had such vague rules that they could be easily abused. Obtenebration was probably the worst offender, but viccisitude had some baffling decisions and serpentis was.. just oddly powerful. Then there's Necromancy, a discipline which appeared absurdly weak unless you had a copy of the rules to Wraith the Oblivion, but if you did it was the best discipline in the game..
And you know what, to some extent I can accept the catering to choice argument with some of these because it's a story driven game. Sure, it's unfair that the Tremere gets to be a fuckin' wizard in exchange for a clan weakness which the storyteller will simply forget exists while the Nosferatu gets to look like beef jerky in exchange for one of the most generic sets of disciplines in the game. It's unfair in universe too.
In a video game though, this kind of choice excuse becomes less important because the player generally isn't trying to tell a story so much as solve a predetermined challenge set up by the developers, and in this regards Dragon Age: Origins was ridiculously designed.
Well, sure oWoD had ridiculous splat builds. And even nWod series with things like Mage and hell,
even Hunter ... despite not actually being technically a 'splatbook' given how introduced professions and the capaity to pull out ridiculous rote rolling opportunities. But it doesn't come close in my opinion to just the ridiculous quadratic power magnification that could be achieved through PrC scumming. Just how saves worked in 3.5 meant through PrC scumming you often couldn't ever really fail a save.
Yeah, that seems a little unfair.
Well, say what you like, I can't help but feel like games tried to risk more to deliver more complete experiences. Regardless of their budgets. Games like
Transistor are wonderful experiences and all ... but at the same time I still can't help but feel designers tried to achieve more with games like JA:2.
The whole idea that your player character
can die ... but the game doesn't end. You don't respawn. Mercs die and you need to recruit more from a limited total pool.
Is it?
Is an RPG really just stats?
See, I didn't play Pillars of Eternity because it looked a bit too retro to me, but I did play Tyranny, and Tyranny was fun. It had a messed up, janky and pretty simple character system and mediocre combat, but I generally didn't care because that kind of wasn't the point. I found myself invested in the writing, and I appreciated that it was an original IP with a unique premise. I would say it was hugely preferable to just yet another D&D game.
I haven't played Tyranny. Have played Pillars, and it's garbage and the writing awful and the mechanics just bad. So yu're not missing out on much.
And yes, I'm not saying I want another D&D game, but there are instances in the old Fallouts where you have to take characters on their word. You need to follow physical instructions and directions written and delivered to the player. No map markers, no compass point you can follow.
You have to pay attention and actually find stuff through memory and talking with characters.
As I was saying. You can
complete Skyrim by turning off the audio and subtitles and reading only inventory and spell lists. When it gets to that level where there is
zero reason to implement your own brain cells and figure stuff out for yourself it becomes
immemorable.
How often do you hear/read people saying things like; "I haven't actually finished the main quest, I Just do my own thing." In terms of every Bethesda RPG post-Morrowind? The saving grace of Skyrim over Oblivion is character stat systems and skills selections allowing you to tweak things, or give you extra options ... You can be that travelling Destruction focussed witch that just blows the fuck up every bandit that crosses your path with special tweak skills that emphasise tyhe particular magic you like to use. Allowing you to summon shields will shooting bolts of lightning. Or dual-cast empowering a fire spell for a particularly powerful blast.
But it still doesn't hold a candle to Morrowind's spell creation systems that let you fly ... or at sufficiently high levelsallowing you to recreate Icarian's Flight spell and traverse the
world by jumping once or twice.
Speed runs of the game measure in
minutes, and the game
embraces it.
BotW is the last open world game where I can actually think of situations where I had to make a location on a map using the viewer otherwise I would
lose my way getting to that location. It created this idea I was creating my own adventure, setting out nav points to follow that required me to have lines of sight to ultimately where I wanted to end up.
That tickles my personal fancies because I occasionally do orienteering. That fun you can have trying to navigate and traverse terrain as quickly as possible. Free climbing, swimming, using a topographical map and setting a compass to it and calculating for the differences of true north and magnetic north. It's great fun.
Just see how fast you can cross a section of the Blue Mountains, for instance. It'[s a refreshing way to spend a weekend out of the city.
Naturally BotW isn't that complex, but it's the only game that at least tries to offer a slice, a modicum of that type of experience.
Again though, do RPGs really just mean complexity of interaction? Is complexity of interaction the only valid measure of fun? If you can play a game half asleep or just have a chill time wandering through virtual landscapes, is it impossible that this could be as worthwhile experience as mashing your numbers against someone else's numbers to try and deplete their numbers before different numbers deplete your numbers, and making meaningful decisions like whether to wear the +10 pants of alacrity or the +10 pants of numinosity before giving up and just looking up some cookie cutter "meta build" on the internet.
No, it need not have to. Arguably a game could try to deliver a sense of ennui through having
entirely self created reasons of being and doing stuff in an unfathomably vast frontier. And that can be a phenomenal game experience. Like Minecraft. Or Microsoft Flight Simulator.
But the problem therein lies in the fact that games are reducing complexity, even as they ape the idea of you being an agent of incredible designs within it.
SoM tries to tell a pre-LOTR story with you as a central protagonist. Skyrim says
you're the Dragonborn. Fallout 3 tells the tale of the
Lone Wanderer.
You're not meant to be stricken with ennui, looking for meaning. It's handed to you in a hamfisted, juvenile, stupid way ... but it's there.
It delivers a sandbox with a story that
you don't even need to pay attention to to complete. If the characterization and player interaction in a world designed as a platform for that espoused interaction and story,
kind of imperative that it requires a certain level of engagement required.
Otherwise all it does is leave you with the sensation that everyone else is just
fucking lazy.
One of the reasons why I think BotW gets that balance right. The world is
broken. You see sombre ruins. And some are hinted to be fairly recent such as a settlement that looks as if it was torched. You have travellers wandering lonely roads simply tryinbgto find meaning. Whether that being a flower that will bring them good luck, or looking for ancient treasures, or simply to sell and buy stuff along the way. The largest numbered examples of civilization are effectively
halfway house stables.
A lot of your armaments aren't even made by contemporary people, but are relics of a past. Aged and copious only in so far that there was once
far more people than the survivors can actively employ. It feels as if people are stuck in this limbo state of being economic and conflict refugees. And some examples of people
trying to develop the land perhaps only years or a few decades prior game start that have been destroyed by monsters.
You can build vehicles and usingthe slate powers you can power it across the land.The sheer options you haveat your disposable for directly meeting the environment are impressive. That allows you to """chill""".
It delivers a world that is both beautiful and sad, and the player interaction in that is
purely so the situation doesn't become somehow worse. The disaster happened, civilization fell, and you're merely saving the pieces of it remaining.