Is there any hope for CRPGs in the near future?

Yes perfectly and i feel they are good games anyone who says other wise i would like to hit with a fish. Has anyone ever heard of Arcanum by the way i think that it is a great game similar to Fallout but i think its kinda better.
 
Well then you better get ahold of a Great White, because there are alot of people here who disagree with you Shimmin.

You do not mention Fallout, Planescape or Wasteland in your post, have you played any of them? There are true RPGs in the classic sense of the term, among others.

Neverwinter Nights was designed to appeal to a mass parket and based its selling points off a 3d engine. Most of us here don't give a flying fuck whether a game is 3d. In fact we'd prefer a 2d if for no other reason than it implies they spent more time on the dialogue and balance. In Modern Times games sell themselves on their gimmicks and not their content, balance or gameplay. We of the True Path feel that this is a hollow realm, with no replayability and thus no longterm appeal. No long term appeal means no worthwhile community.

We are here because we feel passionately about RPGs in general, and that Modern Games like NWN are aberrations. I would appreciate your take on this argument, in all seriousness; discussion is always a good thing.
 
William J Shimmin said:
Yes perfectly and i feel they are good games anyone who says other wise i would like to hit with a fish. Has anyone ever heard of Arcanum by the way i think that it is a great game similar to Fallout but i think its kinda better.
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You may want to try to use punctuation it really is a great invention and it makes texts a lot easier to read even more so it will greatly enhance the impression you make on people.

Seriously, though, the time of great CRPGs has ended some time ago. I like to compare it to books, Dostoevsky is widely considered one of the greatest writers ever, but very few people actually read (and like) his writings: he doesn't appeal to the masses. The same goes for the RPGs most of us like: a game like Fallout can be terribly boring to people, most people, who like action games, and unless some great event happens that convinces everyone otherwise, this is not going to change.
 
Yes i have complete Fallout 1 and 2. And they are good games but i am not a man who dwells on old things. I am a gamer and will play all games and i am not stuck in one genre although FPS's are sometimes boring. How about KOTOR what are your views on that , surely you cant say that is bad.
 
KOTOR: A well produced game, but to linear for any real replayability IMHO..... Maybe If they tried anything else than the D&D-rules base it has it would be better...
 
William J Shimmin said:
How about KOTOR what are your views on that , surely you cant say that is bad.
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You are a funny, funny person.
Here's what was wrong with KOTOR:
-The battle system sucked.
-The game had the poorest engine I have ever laid eyes on.
-The story was largely boring and uninvolving.
-The quests were tedious and consisted largely of 'fetch!' or 'kill!' quests.
-The 'choices' between the evil and the good way made no difference whatsoever. None at all. Nothing you do throughout the entire game besides the last bit changes the ending.
-Freedom=zilch. "Give me your money or I'll kill you, shopkeep", "No!", "Oh, ehhmm......okay, I'm not allowed to kill you"
-Voice acting was poor.
-Dialogue was even poorer.
 
I dunno. I thought the voice acting was better than arcanum (which i just finished.) It was painful listening to virgil go from being completely cut off from you in relation to his past to coming out a changed man after his death. I guess that's also stupid dialogue, as well.
 
I will agree with the fact you couldnt stick anyone with your lightsabre. but all games have flaws you just have to bypass them. So do you guys play MMORPG's like Everquest which i really hope you dont diss as its an amazing game. And im starting to sound like a Fallout aggresor but i actually am fond of all the thigns you can do in it , plus i dont think ive ever seen swearing used so comically in a game. And believe me as a 24 seven gamer i know what games have in them. And smacking someon in the nuts and keeping them unconscius is so damn funny.

Plus on the Arcanum thing it is stil a good game but somewhat hard , and Virgil does moan a lot but there was comic value in it. And i actually think Arcanum is longer than Fallout 2 if im right.
 
Sander said:
William J Shimmin said:
How about KOTOR what are your views on that , surely you cant say that is bad.
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You are a funny, funny person.
Here's what was wrong with KOTOR:
-The battle system sucked.
-The game had the poorest engine I have ever laid eyes on.
-The story was largely boring and uninvolving.
-The quests were tedious and consisted largely of 'fetch!' or 'kill!' quests.
-The 'choices' between the evil and the good way made no difference whatsoever. None at all. Nothing you do throughout the entire game besides the last bit changes the ending.
-Freedom=zilch. "Give me your money or I'll kill you, shopkeep", "No!", "Oh, ehhmm......okay, I'm not allowed to kill you"
-Voice acting was poor.
-Dialogue was even poorer.
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What? No, no, no. I agree with you on many of those things, but on some I think you are full of nonsense. The story? KotOR's story is a million times better than that of last two Star Wars movies together. It has everything I want in a SW story, and is told in a manner that is more than satisfactory. I'd even say it's at least as good as story of the original movie trilogy, which says a lot.

Dialogues and voice-acting? They are awesome - especially voice acting. KotOR has the best voice acting I've heard in years, and possibly the best I've ever heard in an RPG. Even the most mediocre voice actor in KotOR would have no problem upstaging the entire casting crew of Episode II. Thanks to these talented people characters in KotOR really come to life like in few other games.

KotOR is a game with many deep flaws, many of which you mentioned (and I could probably name a few more), but characters, voice-acting and storytelling are most definitely not among them. They alone made the game worth replaying for me, and without them, KotOR would have been a trainwreck on par with Neverwinter Nights.

I also think you aren't quite fair when calling KotOR quests "tedious" (they are actually pretty well-designed when compared to BioWare's usual work), but I agree they pale in contrast with sheer brilliance of PS:T and Fallout quests.
 
...
Whoa, huge difference of opinion.
Well, let's see, the story I found boring and unimaginative because it was hugely predictable. 'Oh, I don't know anything, but gee, there is this insane bad guy who no-one ever sees, wait, could that be me? Nahh.....'

As for the voice-acting: I don't know what you saw in it, but I really thought it was not good, okay so it wasn't all bad, but to call it the best voice-acting ever, as you are doing, is just silly. PS: T, Fallout and Vampire: Bloodlines have far superior voice acting.

As for the quests, I don't compare quest design to poor games, but only to good games. And then they are tedious.

So the only conclusion I can possibly draw is that Bioware is getting better....hurray.

Oh, and Jabbapop: 'Arcanum had flaws too', ehh...yeah, so? Does this make KoTOR any better, or does this make Arcanum worse? I'll give you a hint: it's the second option.
 
Sander said:
Well, let's see, the story I found boring and unimaginative because it was hugely predictable. 'Oh, I don't know anything, but gee, there is this insane bad guy who no-one ever sees, wait, could that be me? Nahh.....'
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Actually, they managed to fool me. All along I pictured Revan as a disfigured, middle-aged Sith master like Palpatine or Dooku, totally unlike my handsome young PC. I also jumped to conclusion that he was nothing more than a relevant historical figure BioWare invented only to provide further backstory for the arch-nemesis Malak (The whole master-apprentice thing is obligatory in Star Wars, no?). So I just played through the game paying no attention to some obvious clues about PC's true identity. The first time I actually became suspicious was when Admiral Saul mentioned "history between you two" (referring to my character and Malak, of course) - which is the point where 99% players are already fully aware of what's about to unfold...

I really should work on my skills of spotting the obvious...

PS: T, Fallout and Vampire: Bloodlines have far superior voice acting.
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Fallout and PS:T didn't have much voice-acting to begin with, but what voice-overs there were, I'd say they are of roughly the same quality as most of KotOR's acting. Not surprisingly, since half the acting crew of PS:T voiced some KotOR characters, including the best of them, Jennifer "Deionarra" Hale.

VtM: Bloodlines is another story. Voice acting is superb in that game. Curiously, certain actors from Bloodlines sound very familiar... can you guess from where? ;)
 
I have to agree with Ratty.

KOTOR had enough decent elements to land it somewhere in between "action-rpg crap" and "Fallout-type classic". I was pleased.

Ya the voice acting is near perfect and using the Star Wars universe for an RPG was so simply well-done it makes me wonder why it wasnt done earlier.

Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
 
I only had one problem with the voicea in KOTOR the damn repetition of those bloody aliens. The Selkath drove me mad with the same dialog repeating over and over. And the funniest guy in KOTOR has to be The old fart black guy or HK 47 who's constant yabbering about killing stuff was hilarious.
 
My only huge gripe with KoToR (besides the linearity) was the lack of replayability.

I just can't imagine myself doing all those same things in that linear fashion over again, even if I can make a couple different choices along the way.
 
That's a damn correct point , i have done the game a few times and i now cannot play it again due to myself hating the blooming first planet. I mean its fun once you get jedi because you can mess about and do silly things.
 
The more I think about it, I don't know if CRPG's, as a whole, has that bright of a future.

But I think the Fallout scene has a great future ahead of it. It's hard right now, because all we have are a few fan-made patches and simple mods to goof with.

But the incredibly bright people of this passionate community are cooking up some awesome things. Take a look in the different modding forums and take a look at the things some people have already done.

These simple patches and mods will only get more complex and elaborate with time. Pretty soon (as in a year or more) we will have a couple full fledged fan made FO3's.

The modding tools will get more intuitive as non-scripter interest booms.

I see good things in time, but for now it's pretty boooring :lol:
 
Ratty said:
Actually, they managed to fool me. All along I pictured Revan as a disfigured, middle-aged Sith master like Palpatine or Dooku, totally unlike my handsome young PC. I also jumped to conclusion that he was nothing more than a relevant historical figure BioWare invented only to provide further backstory for the arch-nemesis Malak (The whole master-apprentice thing is obligatory in Star Wars, no?). So I just played through the game paying no attention to some obvious clues about PC's true identity. The first time I actually became suspicious was when Admiral Saul mentioned "history between you two" (referring to my character and Malak, of course) - which is the point where 99% players are already fully aware of what's about to unfold...

I really should work on my skills of spotting the obvious...
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Yes, yes you should.

Ratty said:
Fallout and PS:T didn't have much voice-acting to begin with, but what voice-overs there were, I'd say they are of roughly the same quality as most of KotOR's acting. Not surprisingly, since half the acting crew of PS:T voiced some KotOR characters, including the best of them, Jennifer "Deionarra" Hale.

VtM: Bloodlines is another story. Voice acting is superb in that game. Curiously, certain actors from Bloodlines sound very familiar... can you guess from where? ;)
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*shrugs* Never noticed it. It could have been my prejudice towardsa game on the NWN engine that made me think so, though I really can't remember just one believable sentence....
Meh, I'll give you this one, though.
 
The omens have been better, but this morning an eagle circled the camp three times...OK, I just got my hands on Rome: Total War and that opening speech is stuck in my head. Anyways, I don't think CRPGs are going to fall off the map, there is still a fanbase for them. They are just going to be produced at one or two, maybe three great ones a year. This year, the only high class cRPG to come out was Bloodlines. I thought I was playing a mix of Fallout and Deus Ex with it. This year we'll get the port of the Sith Lords, maybe Oblivion, and some others. I'm not counting Dungeon Siege though. I'm not against action RPGs, but when taken down to the level of Diablo it is really a step back in the advancement of RPGs.

As for KotOR, here's my big beef with it. First, it was a Dungeon Crawler. To go from A to B you had to fight a hoard of enemies. That was the game's core-- not a story or inteacting with the environment. Then, just how screwed up the ending segment was. I played my first time through as a rogue/consilor...so I had little combat skills but a lot of combat support skills. This worked great since I'd always have a big heavy like Zalbaar or Juhani with me. I reach the last two bosses and they take away the party! Only those really high quality first aid kits saved me. Then, I reached Malak, and he's immune to force powers...my only weapon. He was able to kill me in just a few blows so the whole fight was pointless. I restart this time as a soldier and Gaurdian and concentrate solely on strength and hit points. I could have slept through fighting Malak. If you are going to base a game on combat, you have to make sure that combat is more than one sided. Plus the story, I thought, was very predictable and uniteresting. Be good and save the world from destruction, or be bad and do the opposite. Been there, done that.

Alright, I'll probably still by the Sith Lords, though. Fans of cRPGs can't be too picky.
 
It pisses me off that nobody knows the difference between an adventure game and a role playing game

Final Fantasy = Adventure...
actually
Final Fantasy = Interactive Movie

Nevertheless

Fallout = RPG
 
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What was once a staple of PC gaming has become pretty much non-existant.
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huh? Sierra, SSI, OSI, M&M makers, Wizardry makers...

those are the real staples of PC gaming for RPGS... all the rest are newbies.

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Development cycles for RPGs are being expected to be so quick that they are rushed out and nearly unplayable half the time, as it is.
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the problem with writing RPGs is that they spend too much dev time on graphics and graphic sub-systems. for RPGs its about the engine + gameplay + story. graphics are quite irrelevant really. look at UO.. its still there. look at U7, U7.5. people actually wrote programs to run them in windows. their graphics suck badly but people still play them today.

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It seems that the only viable way to get funding for an "RPG" at all, is for it to be an MMORPG. And you can pretty much just take the RPG out of that anachronism. No story. No variety. Just an endless advancement treadmill.
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MMORPG (lol! funneh!) are desired because the long-term returns justify the long dev time. the problem is that there isnt really a successful PvP orientated MMOG because after 1-2 years they all move to itemization which favors power-gamers. that ruins the PvP as skill becomes meaningless under itemization. if it is not PvP oreintated... what the hell is the goal? once you top off "gear" wise what is there left to do?

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When DOOM hit, everything went to FPSs for a long time.
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thats because thats all that was "sexy" but very far from "everything" . U7 and 7.5 and M&M 6-8 were put out in this time and they all did quite well.

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I wonder if there is really any hope for quality RPGs for ages. Its not a completely different genre that has pushed them out.
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thats because companies dont want to spend the 1.5-2 year dev time without stunning graphics. and stunning graphics usually ruin a CRPG.

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What we really need are some indepentantly wealthy people to be able to fund a very small team of PAID programmers, artists and designers to do this, without needing the aid of a corporate sponsor or publisher.
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convince Bill Gates of this :)
 
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