I feel like often, discussions around the best RPGs end in nostalgia. I have no doubt that titles like Icewind Dale, Baldur's Gate, Planescape and Fallout (1,2) were incredible, but such a focus on the 'classics' detracts from the amazing roleplaying games that the (roughly) past decade (2004-2013) has seen.
While I have taken care to include games that did not perhaps reach their 'full potential', I have discounted those that were blatantly incomplete/had major issues, even if they had good ideas, such as Alpha Protocol or VTM: Bloodlines. This list also focuses solely on Western RPGs, since I don't think I've played enough 'Eastern' ones over the past few years to pick the 10 top ones.Would you add anything? Change anything around? Please comment
10) Jade Empire [2005]
A curious beast, Jade Empire seems more like a 'spiritual successor' to Knights of The Old Republic, than a forebearer to Mass Effect. One of the earliest games built out of Bioware's split into two teams, many veterans of Jade Empire went on to work on Dragon Age, rather than on Bioware's 2007 Sci-Fi epic.
From the remote tropical paradise of Master Li's academy to the jungles of Two Rivers, and from the vast mountains of sky to the grandeur of the Imperial City, Jade Empire's Steampunk Wuxia world was something truly unique. It represented Bioware's first foray into real-time action combat, and into building it's own IP, and was broadly a success on both fronts, despite a rather simplistic combat system.An awkward game released at the very end of the last console generation, on a system even Microsoft considered a 'failure', Jade Empire (despite some very high reviews) never got the commercial success it deserved, though it did get a PC port (courtesy of 2K games) in 2007.
9) Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of The Betrayer [2007]
The original Neverwinter Nights 2, released by Obsidian in 2006, was heralded as something of a disappointment. With a bland, cliche plot, boring characters, and a classic fantasy art style that couldn't compete with the previous year's Jade Empire, let alone the upcoming next gen RPGs, it was overlooked by most mainstream gaming sites. After all, they said, at the dawn of a new console generation, why play a PC game that looked straight out of 2004?In late 2007, Obsidian proved them wrong.
Mask of The Betrayer, an 'expansion' (though in reality it's 25 hours stretch longer than most modern RPGs) is often called the 'spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment', and for good reason.Dealing with the meaning of what it is to be a god, and taking the player over an incredible wintry landscape, from the depths of a mysterious forest to the utterly magical Wizard's Academy in Thay (pictured), Mask of The Betrayer is utterly ethereal, and the characters you meet are often so deep and complex, (and actually related to the main plot) that they have frequently been quoted as inspirations for characters in the upcoming Project Eternity, and Torment Kickstarted games.Though the mechanics are still clunky, NWN2 is *FAR*easier to get into that older infinity engine games, and is certainly manageable for the modern gamer.
8) Deus Ex: Human Revolution [2011]
Deus Ex did the (almost impossible), and managed to resurrect a franchise with both commercial and critical success, all while preserving what made the original game great in the first place.As well as an interesting story, Deus Ex deserves a mention for it's use of choice in combat. As 'cinematic RPGs' have become more prevalent over the past few years, choice in actual combat has seemingly evaporated. For all the decisions you make in Mass Effect, during combat you still run down a series of endless corridors, fighting the same enemies in similar ways every single playthrough.In Deus Ex, you can use stealth, hacking, weaponry or even conversation skills to get yourself out of a tricky situation. DE:HR brought with it the kind of choice we haven't seen in RPGs for years, and for that, as well as for the awesome game it sits on top of, it deserves a spot on this list.
7) Fable II [2008]
To some, this will be blasphemy. "How", they will cry, "can you rank this dumbed down nonsense, over The Lost Chapters?". The answer is simple: Albion.
A snowy winter's night in Bowerstone segues into a paradise in the countryside. The depths of an ancient forest lead into a vast network of underground caves. The authoritarian, brutal, landmark of the Spire, during which you spend a terrible, hopeless year seeing the world from your enemy's perspective sets the player off on a journey to the dark, depressing and poverty-stricken hellhole of Bloodstone. And this entire world, from the beautiful to the depressing, is populated by a colourful cast of characters from across the British isles. With the odd spurt of trademark humour and the vast world of a 'fairytale with a twist', if Albion has one thing- it's charm.
Choice and consequence in Fable is almost always binary- one is good, or one is evil. But this belies the point- that Fable is an 'adult' fairtale, it is supposed to be binary. And unlike many other, more modern RPGs, Fable actually lets you be evil, rather than just "the hero with a mean streak.
6) Fallout: New Vegas [2010]
An absolutely masterful game that once again built on it's predecessor, Obsidian took the Fallout universe and gave it the deep, interesting and entertaining storylines it deserved. Set in an incredible new world, and as much a product of Fallout 1 and 2 as it was of Bethesda's open-world epic, New Vegas provided players with dozens of hours of deep and enjoyable adventure.
Holding it back from going further up this list are the usual Obsidian problems of lackluster graphics (for it's time), and lack of polish/bug-testing, as well as core issues with the gamebryo engine and the way it handled rendering and/or combat in F3.
5) Dragon Age: Origins [2009]
In development since 2004, Dragon Age was a fantasy epic more than half a decade in the making when it released to incredible reviews and high sales in late 2009. As a successor to Baldur's Gate, DA:O provided players with a highly polished (if slightly simplified) version of the pause-and-play combat they'd enjoyed in older D&D games, but updated with more modern graphics, animations, and storytelling.
Though the silent protagonist returned, every NPC in the game had full voice acting.While the world and main storyline of Dragon Age were cliched, and tied heavily to fantasy stereotypes, the sheer depth of the supporting characters, the world itself, and the vast lore that underpinned it made the 50 hours or so that the average player spent in the game feel all the more epic.
Dragon Age: Origins is the kind of game that might never again be made. A Baldur's Gate with the budget of Mass Effect, it only happened because it was far enough into development when Bioware was purchased by EA that they were willing to fund it through to completion.Though DA:O was a commercial success, it's sequel(s) show that the 5-year development cycle simply cannot be justified for a game on such a scale, or such a budget.
4) Demon's Souls [2009]
Demon's Souls, it could be argued, brought open-world RPGs home. Though 'beaten' in terms of sales by both its sequel and Skyrim, the game gave players a phenomenal, complex and challenging world in which to enjoy deep and immersive combat.
Demon's Souls pushed the genre forward in other ways, too. Narratively it's world was almost blank, bare except for a few hints during the campaign. If the player dug deeper, however, they uncovered a rich and interesting backstory that could rival almost any major RPG. Most importantly, the game had mystery, and in an age where all you need to do is pull up the codex to uncover the entire history of the universe, it let the player discover a world for themselves.
3)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim [2011]
Skyrim is the pinnacle of the pure sandbox RPG genre. What it lacks in narrative depth or engaging characters, it more than makes up for in terms of sheer freedom. To explore, to kill, to change the world how you see fit. If cinematic RPGs are about choosing how a story develops, then open-world ones are about building a story yourself, creating your own tale in a vast world of frozen mountains and rich alpine forests.
2) The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings [2011]
A masterful fantasy RPG, The Witcher 2 did what the original could not, and forced it's competition to sit up and take a lot at the work of a little studio in Poland. Despite an estimated budget of $8 million (the average price of a game like Deus Ex or Mass Effect is at least $20m), The Witcher 2 is one of the most beautiful games ever made.
It's Eastern European take on dark fantasy may be relentlessly brutal, full of torture, rape, racism, war and suffering, but it is beautifully realised. The forests around the region of Flotsam are actually haunting, in a way that very few games are.
The Witcher 2 is also innovative on many other levels. Its main storyline revolves around politics and diplomacy, rather than a 'hero's journey'. Its levels are neither the open worlds of Skyrim or Two Worlds, nor are they the linear corridors and small hubs of Mass Effect or Dragon Age. They are 'zones', almost in the MMO sense, small regions that the player is free to explore, wonderfully crafted and full of side-missions and enemies to fight. The choices in the game have huge consequences as well, the second third of the game is entirely different based on the player's choices.Even more than that, however, The Witcher 2 proves one thing conclusively- just because you're making an action RPG, doesn't mean you have to dumb it down.
1) Mass Effect 2 [2010]
Mass Effect 2 is a journey. Not just the journey of a broken Commander Shepard, or a journey through the lives of the characters who join you, characters who can become begrudging mercenaries or your closest friends. It is a journey across the stars.
From the neon airport lounges of the citadel to the grimy depths of the Quarian Flotilla, the incredible science-fiction city of Ilium to the nuclear wastelands of Tuchanka, from the murky deep-space underworld of Omega to a brilliant sunset on Bekenstein, Mass Effect 2 is a galaxy of worlds unlike any other.Coupled with characters you grew to care about, and major improvements to numerous game systems, and Mass Effect 2 became an excellent game.
But the immersion it created, the sense of exploration it fostered, the feeling that you were part of a universe so much greater than yourself, is a feeling few, if any, other games have ever replicated.
Thanks for reading. Do you agree?
[images from DeadEndThrills, Gamespot and other sources.]
As you might have guessed, I wrote this for my blog, but decided to repost here to see what you think
Modifié par Cimeas, 07 avril 2013 - 05:38 .
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