ME and DA:O have difficulty levels, and played at their hardest they rival Fallout 1 and 2 or Baldur's Gate.
Claiming that ME/DA rival F1/F2/BG in challenge isn't really claiming that much since those games are not really challenging games either. In all of those 3 games the challenge mainly comes from wandering, unprepared, into a hostile zone.
The difficulty in ME1/2 comes from the patience of not exploiting either AI stupidity or the cover system. The challenge in DA comes from having enough patience to chip away the stupidly humongous mountains of HP that monsters have. Or the greasy collision-detection, which allows enemies to slide through your tanks to whack your back-row fighters. Large part of it is the problem of the actual combat systems, which are abysmally bad. ME1/2 are basically just uninspired shooters, while DA is offline MMORPG. If you are good at shooters, you are good in ME. If you know the mechanics in WoW, you are golden in DA.
they also look insanely good, are fully voiced and rendered in 3d HD
Really bad excuse for lacking content. 80% of content in DA is meaningless filler combat. Much of the lore is hidden inside the Codex just as it is in ME. It does get referenced in-game but not nearly enough for you to actually be required to read it. Voice-acting is a bane of the industry as Shamus Young has demonstrated and while ME face-animation finally rivals Bloodlines from 2005, DA is not a "insanely good" looking game at any measure, considering its an AAA title from one of the big boys. Still, even if we acknowledge your argument, it doesn't help combating the general lack of challenge that these games have when compared to their predecessors.
Yeah, let's talk about Pool of Radiance. It was a RPG in name only, in that it amounted to a reskinned roguelike. Not plot, no characters, no story.
Maybe you should play it again. And this time with the Adventurer's Journal. Since the plot is revealed through the use of that Journal as technical limitations of the era prevented all that text being in-game. Later Gold Box games were already much better about it. Yet, PoR had a plot - nothing spectacular, but a solid working plot without giant holes in it - it had characters, it had a story. It's certainly not a re-skinned rogue-like, if for nothing else than it has a party-based tactical combat on a grid.
in that the focus is on storytelling and they take combat and skill checks as a necessary evil that you should try to keep from interfering
Awesome philosophy. Maybe you should stick with FF13? I hear it should be perfect for you - nothing much game-like to interfere with that storytelling that's so important.
cRPGs are NOT RPGs because they have no story. "They are the combat rules of RPGs ripped off of the actual game and packaged around mindless quests consisting only of combat."
Just like what Bioware and Bethesda have done in their latest games?
You've sort of mixed the history of CRPG's which started with the combat, as that was the simplest thing to model. But through the 80s and 90s, adventure games and RPGs got closer and closer to each other until you had some pretty good amalgamations of wargames/RPGs/adventure/CYOA-books lumped together. And then someone decided that consoles were the future and console-gamers are idiots, so the tide turned and instead of increasing complexity we get "more immersion, more emotional engagement, more visceral action!"
Heck, even Gold Box games and many of the blob-combat RPG's gave you a way to avoid combat, by bribing/bluffing/running away. Try to do that in DA or ME except for few scripted encounters.
Most journalists are actually honest about their praise.
Oh yeah? Do explain why Oblivion was the best game everywhere, until F3 came and took the crown? Or how ME1/2 and DA have metacritic ratings (from reviews) as 91/96/86 for Xbox and 89/92/91 for PC? Especially when you take into account what are the reasons behind any critique - it's either not pretty enough or it's not simple enough or not easy enough. "Bwaa my trio-RPG has micromanagement that is barely on the level of WoW and my reviewer's brain can't take it!"
What I don't think is acceptable is that you present your likes and dislikes as signs of the impending demise of human race in a sea of progressively dumber gamer kids.
Hey, it's the only thing left to me! My taste is note catered for at all, except for few indies and even there Diablo-clones easily outnumber the good ones since only Knights of the Chalice has really been something that I could really get into. I'm certain that well-made, tactical, sensible and well-written RPGs can sell as long as their sales figures don't have to rival GTA - which they have to because of the inane, foregone conclusions that the industry has.
have such agonisingly unoriginal and unfunny out-of-gameworld-character monty python references and scientology references?
Hey, don't blame Fallout for the dumb shit that F2 introduced. Though there isn't really anything wrong with the religious cults in either of the first two games or did that satire come too close to the mark for comfort? Anyway, F1 had few well-done easter eggs and for some reason F2 multiplied their number. F2 also had Wanamingo "aliens", talking Deathclaws, sentient Keeng Rat, organized crime families etc so we can argue that the decline started there already. But F2 still at least had a solid plot, some great characters and improved game mechanics from the first game where F3 has a recycled plot, retarded/annoying characters and completely trashed game mechanics where nothing matters except reaching arbitrary skill levels so you get into minigames.
Can you explain the roleplaying game merits of the start of Fallout 1
Thanks for asking, I'd be delighted to! The beauty of the start of F1 is that it paints a grim situation with strong heroic undercurrent, only to slap it on the face of the player as the previous "hero" is a rotting corpse in front of you and the people you are trying to save have "technical difficulties" in opening the door, meaning that you cannot get back.
In short, it creates a black, grim world without soaking everyone in blood while leaving the actual character a fully blank slate for the player to fill in - as the game so well allows you to.
into a dull corridor full of hostile rats
Which serves as a way for the player to RP their character - will you run out past the rats, will you kill only those threatening you or will you mercilessly hunt each and every rat in the cave. It doesn't matter what you do, since the amount of XP is minuscule.
Can you explain exactly what the extra strategy in Fallout1/2's turn based combat is?
Yes, I can. While F1/2 does not reach the levels of squad-based tactical/strategic games like original Rainbow 6 or X-Com and Jagged Alliance, it does present you with options and it especially punishes you for stupid choices, something that, unfortunately, not many modern games do. At least you have six different skills to use for combat (small guns, big guns, energy weapons, throwing, unarmed, melee) with a plethora of different weapons - in essence, you have a reasonably big tool kit to use in any situation. This is much better than in ME1/2 where weapons and skills don't matter at all or F3 where there is hardly any difference since you can kill three supermutants with the 10mm pistol you get when escaping Vault101 with a low skill thanks to the built-in cheat/exploit-mode called VATS.
Basically my gripe is that these games which are supposed to build upon the foundations laid by previous games are actually, mechanics-wise, inferior to their predecessor. Even if the combat in original Fallout isn't really that strategic, at least your character matters. F3 allows you to run up to that supermutant, empty your laser pistol with skill 0 in his face with VATS and then run behind cover to let it regenerate. Thus, the combat mechanics which are built to coddle the player ensure that the game mechanics are ruined.
