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[Shadow of Light Dragon]

Thanks guys I had to include the technology bit because...well, the capabilities of an RPG now are hugely different to 15 years ago, as we all know. Defining what an RPG 'should be' by today's standards would mean a lot of older games don't qualify, even if they were the pinnacle of the genre in their time. So the further we go, the higher the expectations bar.

Eg. I don't define Diablo as an RPG by the standards of its time. But I do define Ultima V as one.

Firky wrote...

Really, when it comes down to it, though, I'm having trouble coming up with too many examples of contemporary, comparable RPGs which actually evidence more meaningful, overtly player-driven choice. Certainly, Origins, with Morrigan's ritual etc. Open world RPGs are a different kettle of fish again. It's a good discussion.

To be honest, neither can I. Which is why I adore Origins so much! Choice and variations of endgames, effects you have on NPCs and companions, the content of this game was MASSIVE. Computer games will NEVER equal the open-endedness of a tabletop RPG, it's simply not possible to simulate, but Origins was *exceptional* in the way it gave us so many options. It could have been a lot more streamlined and pre-determined, as DA2 was. It would have been faster and easier to implement, not to mention cheaper, but it wouldn't have been nearly as impressive and immersive.

Am I saying *all* RPGs must meet this standard? No. But it's the kind of thing I *wish* RPGs could aspire to. That's why DA2, being Origins' successor, disappointed me somewhat.

I think that DAII was more an exercise in choice being realised in "powerless" ways; spoiler - class choice = you know what. (Personally, I like both overarching narrative style choices, and powerless.)

Things happening through a lack of power can be done well too, but it's when it keeps happening that I get irritated. XD *Especially* when combined with situations that make it look like you can have an effect on the outcome, when you really won't. No matter what. That kind of thing feels like a masquerade of player interaction; a novel instead of a pick-a-path adventure story, perhaps?

But like I said, I judge RPGs harshly, and DA2 (or any sequel) moreso because of expectations from its predecessor.

Edit:

Tommy6860 wrote...

As much as the hardcore traditional RPGers dislike Mass Effect (mainly because it has a shooter element), ME offered this very same criteria you describe and I was blown away. It showed me that a game with with sizeable shooter elements can be played as a true RPG. You can choose different endings and how your relationships turn out as you quest. These relationship tactics carried over very well into ME2, though ME2 relied more on action, than RPG elements. But still, it was a good follow up to ME since it carried the story over well, and you still had the effect of making the ending and character interactions vary greatly. In fact, outside of the weak boss at the end of ME2, I found it very
hard trying to get an ending where I wouldn't be sad or feel a deep sense of loss. I won't give
spoilers.

You are making me want to play ME2. I think I mentioned I tend to shy away from FPS (and space sims, and sci fi games (exception: Space Quest series!)), but I got ME and ME2 for Christmas and have been holding on to them for after DA2.   I will have to crack open the cases soon...

Modifié par Shadow of Light Dragon, 31 mars 2011 - 12:26 .

[Tommy6860]

Shadow of Light Dragon wrote...

You are making me want to play ME2. I think I mentioned I tend to shy away from FPS (and space sims, and sci fi games (exception: Space Quest series!)), but I got ME and ME2 for Christmas and have been holding on to them for after DA2.   I will have to crack open the cases soon...

Let me tell you this; I was wary of ME2 when reading player reviews hwo it was dumbed down and turned into an action shooter game. But, unlike how DA2 turned out to be what most player eviews thought, and was correct, ME2 was pretty good. When I played it through the first time, I was, "Oh no, this isn't good", but I realized how much dialogue I skipped when I played it the second time. If you listen to all of the dialogue, and you have the a save(s) from ME which carries over nicely (Why it didn't work in DA2 for Origins, is a mystery), you'll get an extra treat.

The romance is good (and so is the humor), character interaction is awesome and you can really relate to your companions as they all have a story to tell about themselves, and it is hard to get to know them and make the right choices. Without giving too much away, if you don't do things right, the ending can be real sad. But there was one aspect in ME2 that really took the story higher and I didn't discover until my second playthrough, and that was asking Liara a little more deeply why things happened. I won't tell much because it is hard to get to that part of that revelation, but if you find out from her, and then relate the factions and characters from ME to ME2, you'll be more than stunned.

Play ME and pay attention to every conversation and do ALL of the side missions, no matter how tedious a few of them get. The romance is awesome, and lots of humor and many many character and NPCs to engage. The game should take at least 60 hours, minimum. Then when you play ME2 and do it intensively, you'll see what I mean. If you want advice on what to skip in ME, message me and I will give hints :-). My wife still plays ME she loves it so much.

EDIT: when tyou mentioned what you defins as what Diablo is, Ia gree and don't define it as an RPG; It is a dungeon crawler hack-n-slash, but I still loved the games. I recommend (highly) if you want a little reminiscing of Diablo, is to play Torchlight, I love it.

Modifié par Tommy6860, 31 mars 2011 - 01:11 .

[abaris]

Shadow of Light Dragon wrote...

You are making me want to play ME2. I think I mentioned I tend to shy away from FPS (and space sims, and sci fi games (exception: Space Quest series!)), but I got ME and ME2 for Christmas and have been holding on to them for after DA2.   I will have to crack open the cases soon...

Take it from me: I hate shooters and never was into scifi beyond the original star trek. But when I found both MEs at a second hand, I took the risk and was blown away.

Its not a shooter although there's a lot of fighting involved to reach the goals. But the companions are strong and the possibilities to build your very own Shepard, making his/her own game influencing choices are pretty good.

[Caralampio]

I prefer DAO over DA2 absolutely. I wouldn't say I'm hardcore RPG because I play many other genres (TBS my favorite), but I'm certainly old school. I got started on RPG's with paper-book D&D.

[Ygolnac]

I used to be "old school hard core rpg-er" 10 years ago. Now time has passed and i think i would be bored from the very same mechanics i enjoyed in the past. In that days the narrative possibilities were less due to technical limitations and all rpg-ers came from table games, so we needed very complex mechanics, rulesets and an inventory that required an excell sheet to be sorted. You could die by thirst in the middle of a dungeon, got killed by a were-squirrel becouse you finished arrows, or you had to backtrack 30 minutes to find a tavern to replenish your mana. Nowaday all of that wouldn't be fun anymore, i prefear games with more accessible mechanics and a superb plot to drive them.

In short i like the direction rpgs are taking, if ME2 and DA2 are the future, i like it.

[Tarante11a]

Hey Shadow

You are making me want to play ME2. I think I mentioned I tend to shy away from FPS (and space sims, and sci fi games (exception: Space Quest series!)), but I got ME and ME2 for Christmas and have been holding on to them for after DA2.   I will have to crack open the cases soon...

You really should!  They are great.  You may have to get over that what ever character design choices you make beginning are almost ignored by the game and you pretty much get a preset Shepherd face whatever you do, albeit in the colour-way of your choosing.  And the fact that there are fewer choices to be made.  But the choices you do make are significant.  I played my first ME2 run 'vanilla' and then played the next go with a save import, purely to see what changes to the plot there were.  There were lots!  The ME story is great, romances a bit thin on the ground but that was 'then.'

As you say, RPGs are changing enormously.  And in some ways, DAII is better at things than Origins was, I think the romances, for example, work better even if I wish they were more in depth.

Actually, I reckon DAII (limited sets aside) didn't need a hell of a lot more adding to it to make it as deep a game as Origins.   I'd like to see a choices 'map' to compare the two. And my complaints about the plot could have been there had the game been more like DA:O.  Hmmm, I'm finding it hard to explain what I mean.  I *think* I mean that there are separate things going on.  Yes, I would like to have more character choices throughout the game, but my annoyance about the ending is about crappy plot planning and could have happened anyway.  Does that make sense?  Oh dear, I think I sound like twit!  Oh well. *hides in bunker to avoid bricks and rotten fruit*

[v_ware]

 Old school, new school, pssh.

I prefer my games to be good.

[Matchy Pointy]

v_ware wrote...

 Old school, new school, pssh.

I prefer my games to be good.

Qouted for truth, I don't really care (or even know why there should be a difference between the "schools"), if it's good, I like it and I liked DA2.

[daemon1129]

Matchy Pointy wrote...

v_ware wrote...

 Old school, new school, pssh.

I prefer my games to be good.

Qouted for truth, I don't really care (or even know why there should be a difference between the "schools"), if it's good, I like it and I liked DA2.

I do agree as long as the game is good, it deserves a try at the very least.  But a lot fo people complain about things being dumb down or streamlined or w/e.  I think I can understand why, and I think I am a victim of this dumb down trrend that is not likely to be going away in the foreseeable future.  I really a single player game that I can invest a lot of time into getting really good at it.  The last non RPG I actually "train" myself in was DMC4, and when I get S on the hardest mode, its amazingly rewarding. But there just isn't more of these rpgs, pehaps Demon's Souls could be the one, but I dont have ps3. 

I never expect a Bioware game to this type of RPG, but I do find it too forgiving for my liking.  

[SoulRebel_1979]

I know I'm hardcore when I sink more time into Plants vs Zombies than any other recent game.

[Dark83]

Sacred_Fantasy wrote...

Modern RPG have long lost it's direction ever since Final Fantasy 7 became popular..

Lies.
Wizardry 8 came out 4 years after.

I was a big fan of BG 1 when it first came out (as I've been playing D&D tabletop for a long while now), but after finishing it - it really was pretty much a D&D combat simulator. The story wasn't bad, of course, but there weren't all that many choices. BG2 was superior in terms of giving us the illusion of affecting the game world.

Modifié par Dark83, 31 mars 2011 - 04:04 .

[Seifz]

Dark83 wrote...

Sacred_Fantasy wrote...

Modern RPG have long lost it's direction ever since Final Fantasy 7 became popular..

Lies.
Wizardry 8 came out 4 years after.

I was a big fan of BG 1 when it first came out (as I've been playing D&D tabletop for a long while now), but after finishing it - it really was pretty much a D&D combat simulator. The story wasn't bad, of course, but there weren't all that many choices. BG2 was superior in terms of giving us the illusion of affecting the game world.

Final Fantasy VII dates back to 1997.  That's before every BioWare RPG ever.

[AkiKishi]

I could never really understand the fuss about FFVII. Maybe if I played it when it was released I probably would but I sort of went backwards from FFX my first one.

It's quite recently that Bioware have started doing the pre-gen character thing. KOTOR , well kind of but only ME and now DA2 have had true pre-gen characters and a lot of Japanese story pacing influences.

[Purgatious]

I am a fan of good games. "Good" being ones with proper care taken with their IPs, respect for their fanbase and time spent in development.

[AlanC9]

BobSmith101 wrote...
It's quite recently that Bioware have started doing the pre-gen character thing. KOTOR , well kind of but only ME and now DA2 have had true pre-gen characters and a lot of Japanese story pacing influences.

Wait a minute. The BG1 protagonist is only different from the DA2 protagonist in possibly having different racial statistics. Whatever race you are, you were raised by humans. In Candlekeep. By Gorion. With a known mother and father. And a sister. And a brother. OK, half-sister and brother, but still...

[Eternal Phoenix]

I like most RPGs apart from turn based ones.

Modifié par Elton John is dead, 31 mars 2011 - 05:08 .

[Seifz]

AlanC9 wrote...

BobSmith101 wrote...
It's quite recently that Bioware have started doing the pre-gen character thing. KOTOR , well kind of but only ME and now DA2 have had true pre-gen characters and a lot of Japanese story pacing influences.

Wait a minute. The BG1 protagonist is only different from the DA2 protagonist in possibly having different racial statistics. Whatever race you are, you were raised by humans. In Candlekeep. By Gorion. With a known mother and father. And a sister. And a brother. OK, half-sister and brother, but still...

And your character's story was essentially written before you began!  I never did understand all the whining about having to play Hawke in DA2.  Is it because his name is preset?  Is it because you thought that they would continue with the "origins" idea that was very obviously crafted for that one game?  I just don't get it.

[Seifz]

BobSmith101 wrote...

I could never really understand the fuss about FFVII. Maybe if I played it when it was released I probably would but I sort of went backwards from FFX my first one.

I don't know.  I played FFVII when I was in middle school and it was my first FF-style game.  I very much enjoyed it at the time.  Looking back, I have no idea why.  I think it was competition with a school friend to finish first that I really enjoyed.  The game itself isn't very good.  The characters are bland, the story is full of holes and doesn't make much sense, and the combat system is trivial.  The music is pretty awesome, though.

But I feel the same way about BG/BG2.  They were revolutionary for their time (just like FFVII), but now they're painful for me to play.  I've actually never finished either one.  The graphics suck, the companions have very little dialogue, the story isn't fantastic, the combat system is attrocious, and there isn't much voice acting at all.

It's all a matter of timing, I think.  

[Sacred_Fantasy]

Dark83 wrote...

Sacred_Fantasy wrote...

Modern RPG have long lost it's direction ever since Final Fantasy 7 became popular..

Lies.
Wizardry 8 came out 4 years after.

I was a big fan of BG 1 when it first came out (as I've been playing D&D tabletop for a long while now), but after finishing it - it really was pretty much a D&D combat simulator. The story wasn't bad, of course, but there weren't all that many choices. BG2 was superior in terms of giving us the illusion of affecting the game world.

Sorry. I'm not a fan of Baldur Gate, Wizardry and streamlined version of Advanced D&D 2nd Edition.

[keginkc]

I'll just mirror the people who say they like good games. I've played everything Bioware's put out (on PC) since the late 90s. I think I'm somebody who's probably more into the storytelling aspect than most, but I prefer cinematics to reading journal entries (ironic for somebody who reads at least a novel a week). I don't really care all that much about inventory. I do care about combat to a point, since it's the thing I'll be doing the most of in any given game, although it's not the most important thing by any stretch. In the end, I think DA2 is basically what I've always wanted in a game, more of the things I've always loved about RPGs and less of the things that I haven't. I'm just in act 3, but so far I think it's an amazing game.

It's not a perfect game, or I think Bioware's best game, but I don't spend 80 hours playing a game on Nightmare difficulty if I think it's bad. And it's not a fanboy thing. I was once a huge fan of Elder Scrolls games, but I didn't make it more than 25 or 30 hours into Oblivion. I gave Fallout 3 every chance, but it didn't work for me, and I never finished (never even got New Vegas). Basically, if I don't like a game, I'll simply stop playing, and find something better to do.

Right now I'm a little frustrated by the Maker's Sigh glitch (have to backtrack 3 hours, to before the Arishok fight, which I'm not doing a second time on Nightmare - call me lazy), but other than that I'm eagerly awaiting DA2 dlc and hoping there's a DA3.

[88mphSlayer]

Seifz wrote...

BobSmith101 wrote...

I could never really understand the fuss about FFVII. Maybe if I played it when it was released I probably would but I sort of went backwards from FFX my first one.

I don't know.  I played FFVII when I was in middle school and it was my first FF-style game.  I very much enjoyed it at the time.  Looking back, I have no idea why.  I think it was competition with a school friend to finish first that I really enjoyed.  The game itself isn't very good.  The characters are bland, the story is full of holes and doesn't make much sense, and the combat system is trivial.  The music is pretty awesome, though.

But I feel the same way about BG/BG2.  They were revolutionary for their time (just like FFVII), but now they're painful for me to play.  I've actually never finished either one.  The graphics suck, the companions have very little dialogue, the story isn't fantastic, the combat system is attrocious, and there isn't much voice acting at all.

It's all a matter of timing, I think.  

yeah i went back and replayed FF7 again last year and it really didn't hold up very well

same goes for Xenogears, which was amazing when it came out... but now it just feels awkward

i've been recently going back to older games like baldur's gate 2 and planescape torment as well for the first "real" time (i've owned BG2 since it came out but i never really played it, too much addiction to Diablo 2)... PST was still impressive but BG2 so far has just been kind of "run here then here then here" and i don't think i'll be finishing it like i raced to finish PST

[Sacred_Fantasy]

Seifz wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

BobSmith101 wrote...
It's quite recently that Bioware have started doing the pre-gen character thing. KOTOR , well kind of but only ME and now DA2 have had true pre-gen characters and a lot of Japanese story pacing influences.

Wait a minute. The BG1 protagonist is only different from the DA2 protagonist in possibly having different racial statistics. Whatever race you are, you were raised by humans. In Candlekeep. By Gorion. With a known mother and father. And a sister. And a brother. OK, half-sister and brother, but still...

And your character's story was essentially written before you began!  I never did understand all the whining about having to play Hawke in DA2.  Is it because his name is preset?  Is it because you thought that they would continue with the "origins" idea that was very obviously crafted for that one game?  I just don't get it.

Hawke suffer personality disorder as victim of voice protagonist. Try maintain sarcastic/joke or aggressive then use investigate option. His "good tone" investigate line of dialogue in between his dominant sarcastic or aggresive personality is priceless. Voice acting is still bad for personification. I can't imagine how anyone can think Hawke as his character.

[keginkc]

Torment is great, even now, if you can get it to run (been a couple of years since I tried). It looks as dated as it is, but it's such a good game.

[AlanC9]

Sacred_Fantasy wrote...

Seifz wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...
Wait a minute. The BG1 protagonist is only different from the DA2 protagonist in possibly having different racial statistics. Whatever race you are, you were raised by humans. In Candlekeep. By Gorion. With a known mother and father. And a sister. And a brother. OK, half-sister and brother, but still...

And your character's story was essentially written before you began!  I never did understand all the whining about having to play Hawke in DA2.  Is it because his name is preset?  Is it because you thought that they would continue with the "origins" idea that was very obviously crafted for that one game?  I just don't get it.

Hawke suffer personality disorder as victim of voice protagonist. Try maintain sarcastic/joke or aggressive then use investigate option. His "good tone" investigate line of dialogue in between his dominant sarcastic or aggresive personality is priceless. Voice acting is still bad for personification. I can't imagine how anyone can think Hawke as his character.

So it's not really that the character is pre-generated, it's that the VO implementation sucks?

Note that you can get something just as incoherent if you flit around between hostile and friendly responses in DAO or BG (can't do sarcastic in those games because the dialog options usually aren't there). However, I suppose VO may make it harder to ignore the incoherence.

[Salaciouschicken]

     I started a run through Baldur's Gate 2 after years of not playing it. I hate to say it makes DAO and DA2 look like complete crap for so many reasons it's sad. DAO was close however to evoking memories, DA2 is just....lame. Here's the thing about games like BG and IWD, they were hard, and rewarded each fight. 
     The difficulty was less in the battles themselves and mroe in the preperation, something that I absolutely LOVE about the D&D style games. And then there's the loot and character creation. You can make your character ANY WAY you want to with as much time as you want to. You can spend hours or just do a basic class.
    The items are what really rewards the player, as they add a lot of strategy. Items actually vary greatly in their strengths, be it good against undead or what not. Bioware needs to take their time and create an experience like that in DA3. It won't appeal to the COD crowd, but their not a company that should be competing anyway, they should go back to the basics.