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If you define Open world in going places as you wish, then FOT is not Open World at all.
You can only go in mission-related areas when you unlock them than doing the previous mission.
Once you did a mission in an area, there is no point in going back.
Which only leave you your HQ and the occasionnal special encounters.
It is more a non-open-world with a travel system.
If you use another definition of open-world, could you explain it ?
please stop with this bullshit. gothic 1 had only better combat system and daily activities for npcs. Everything else was inferior to Morrowind. From lore and factions through graphix and mods to controls and UI.
And NPCs that actually had problems with you stealing stuff and being on their property without their aproval
And world designed instead of painted with brush then ploped like potato field. At the same time it created proper traveling scheme where main roads were fairly safe and the more you would stroll from main road the harder stuff waited for you.
And setting was actually better considering it contained 3 vastly different cities in world which was prison colony filled with only males under magic dome. Magic was exclusive thing instead of being inclusive bullshit like in TES games
And non scaled enemies to your level
And economy that worked (mostly you were cash strapped)
and you couldn't see ruler without actually becoming person of some status.
and... i could go on.
Gothic was better game on many levels than morrowind. Morrowind had only like few things that were more fun compared to gothic 1.
And later it was fallowed by massive incline called Gothic 2
If you define Open world in going places as you wish, then FOT is not Open World at all.
You can only go in mission-related areas when you unlock them than doing the previous mission.
Once you did a mission in an area, there is no point in going back.
Which only leave you your HQ and the occasionnal special encounters.
It is more a non-open-world with a travel system.
If you use another definition of open-world, could you explain it ?
That is why i said it is weird mix. It is open world game but at the same time it is linear game. You could stroll wasteland and find secret places and other smaller things but overall most of your time you needed to fallow linear missions.
Though i don't remember if there were random encounters when you moved beyond your supposed mission..
Perkel
Please do not name Gothic II in this thread. It would be a shame to even compare one of the best games ever to this shit, that is Oblivion or Skyrim.
Edit:
Fuck. I've got to play tomorrow evening Gothic II.
Gothic 2 along with its terrific expansion is probably the most undervalued RPG ever.
It is such a fucking shame that people who made it made recently Risen 3. It is probably curse at this point considering Gothic 3 was shitty and Risen 2 and 3 are also shit.
Gothic 1 was more focused and had little to no filler content, like Morrowind's endless pointless caverns with nothing in them. As a result, Gothic's open world felt more interesting to explore on a consistent basis, whereas Morrowind had long stretches of boredom in-between something entrancing.
I happen to like Skyrim, but saying that somehow that makes Beth incline is really pushing it...they are more incline that Bioware, but that is a pretty low bar.
BG2 isn't really any different. Difference is that you need to first find out about place instead of randomly going to edge of map which is imho superior as it allows for very distinct maps instead of continuous samey maps like in BG1.
BG1 had some different maps as well though obviously it didn't go overboard with this - mainly you had light forest mixed with few heavy forest and barren maps. Plus the Gnoll stronghold and Durlag's Tower which tried to be mountainous and the farm north of BG that was clearly plains. Or they just forgot to paint trees on it, who knows.
Anyway, BG2 is not open world by any stretch of my imagination. Because #1 you cannot explore the map, you need to learn that a location exists first and #2 maps are designed in a way to corral you through X amount of encounters from start to finish.
Good comparison would be Cloakwood versus Druid Grove. In the latter, you enter in SE corner and can take 2 paths - one will lead you to the troll mound, the other to the grove itself and along it you encounter the Tower and Cottage. There is no exploration, no wandering whatsoever. In the first Cloakwood map (the Lodge) there are no paths and if the player avoids the center of the map, it's possible to miss out the lodge completely. In the second Cloakwood map, you can turn north almost as soon as you have entered the map and that path will skip the are and take you to the next one. Or you can take one of the two west paths that will lead you to the spider nest. Or you can take the south path that leads you on a merry chase with spiders and ettercaps that leads to a dead-end. Or you can take the south-western path that is more of the same unless you later turn north in which case you end up at the spider nest. Point is that there's lots of "empty" space that gives the feeling of exploring an actual place, multiple paths to take (that mostly aren't even clearly paths to begin with". In the third map, you can avoid the druids completely and proceed and again there are no paths once you've crossed the bridge. The fourth map is wide open, only restricted by the two bridges. In BG2, only Windspear Hills is like that. Well, I guess the fishmen city is somewhat akin, in that there's multiple pathways.
Bioware definitely internalized the silly criticism about big "empty" areas because every map in BG2 feels crowded and too small. I don't get the same impression of actually exploring or wandering the wilderness in BG2 that I get in BG1. I have the same issue with IWD by the way. BG1 is a hiking simulator, BG2 and IWD are carefully controlled theme parks. You can see this same "philosophy" throughout later Bioware games - you can't take two steps without bumping into an encounter in KotOR or DA:O or ME or JE.
BG2, in my opinion, would have been much better if they had doubled the number of wilderness maps for Chapter 2 and spread out stuff around more.
It's great to read that Gothic 2 is that good, I haven't played it yet and I hope it'll deliver. Is it lengthy? Does it have different guilds/factions for you to join like the TES games?
Gothic 1 takes about 35-40 hours to finish if you do most things. Gothic 2 + Night of the Raven Expansion take about 75 hours to finish. You should play both starting with Gothic 1 to get the whole story/lore and because they are both really good. And yes, both Gothic games have factions to join, in fact probably one of the best done faction systems as far as the player joining goes.
BG2 isn't really any different. Difference is that you need to first find out about place instead of randomly going to edge of map which is imho superior as it allows for very distinct maps instead of continuous samey maps like in BG1.
Nah, man, BG2 was nothing like open world. It only seems that way because the map structure seems similar to BG1, but BG2 was very much a story driven almost linear game. Its structure was something like this, go to quest hub (Athkatla mostly), pick up some quest, the quest sends you to some other place, then another one in that line and so on. Finish it, come back to quest hub, start on next quest line. This did not feel open world at all, especially compared to BG1.
Now, I realize I may be in the minority here, but I loved BG1 structure, with continuous adjacent zones that really seemed like a real world region and that you had a lot of freedom in terms of how to tackle. I also loved the fact that they had a lot of emptiness in them, making it that much more special to find things of interest, and again making it seem more realistic, because the real world also has a lot of empty areas. I prefer that type of design to the one that BG2 used, which is to have less smaller areas but filled to the brim with epic stuff.
I do think BG1 is superior to BG2 in a lot of ways, but I for one can't stand the repetitive wilderness maps. The content to fog busting ratio was really bad and I can only see the same 2-3 trees copy pasted so many times before I lose interest.
At least in BG2 most of the maps were memorable and there was some effort put into the encounter design. Amn was far more interesting than Baldur's Gate and the outer maps like Windspear Hills/Firkraag's Lair or Umar Hills/Temple of Amaunator were worth a hundred of the barren AR1035 wilderness maps with a 1-2 encounters that last all of 5 seconds before you go back to clearing fog and staring at the same tree time after time.
Bethesda are incline purely because they make games the type of which nobody else is making. They actually set out to do everything they aim for, too - they obviously want to make dungeon-filled sandboxes with huge amounts of freedom, and they objectively succeed at that (the quality is another matter, though).
Compared to Bioware, though, they're the messiahs of RPGs.
Also I've always said that, even though I wouldn't call myself a fan of Fallout 3 or Skyrim, when you're playing them you can tell that Bethesda actually put a lot of effort into the games. They don't feel like something that was shat out in 5 seconds to make some quick money, which is a nice change from most AAA games.
I agree with this.
Also mods can improve on quality, to a certain extent (not everything is fixable obviously, quests remain derpy for instance).
Do keep in mind that not all games are as moddable as Bethesda's (I'm sure there are issues even there, but the amount of mods have to mean something after all)
It's great to read that Gothic 2 is that good, I haven't played it yet and I hope it'll deliver. Is it lengthy? Does it have different guilds/factions for you to join like the TES games?
You should play or watch (even only for the band 'In Extremo') gothic 1 first, before you play gothic 2. Gothic 2 has aged in termes of the graphic, but it is still one of the best open world games. You can join one guild out of 3. Play it first and then think again about Skyrim, Oblivion or Morrowind.
You should play or watch (even only for the band 'In Extremo') gothic 1 first, before you play gothic 2. Gothic 2 has aged in termes of the graphic, but it is still one of the best open world games. You can join one guild out of 3. Play it first and then think again about Skyrim, Oblivion or Morrowind.
You're right, the irrelevance of popular opinion polls in general, and Codexian opinion polls in particular, does not consistent any sort of valid argument or even a factoid worthy of anyone's attention. A couple dozen brain-dead lemmings voted crap with their bellyfeels. Hence, there's nothing to talk about. Not sure why you even brought this up.
Skyrim is a massive incline compared to Bethesda's other offerings from the last decade.
At the very least, they managed to make a game world that isn't ugly as fuck, they managed to squeeze in some actually interesting and at times rather cool level design, and they managed to make the game as a whole not utterly banal shit boring.
I'm too scared to praise anything else, as I suspect everything I like about skyrim was actually added by mods and didn't come with the vanilla game.
Bethesda really needs to work on their absolutely atrocious AI though. Case in point, I can crouch right in front of an NPC in the darkness, pepper it with arrows, and it'll fail to detect me.
Codexer: Why can't I tell Skyrim my real feelings! Is it that I'm afraid that he...no, I mustn't, mustn't...
(Skyrim turns the corner in full dragonslaying armor.)
Codexer: !!!
Skyrim: Oh hello, Codexer-san. You look very monoclean today.
Codexer: I-idiot! Shut up!!
Skyrim: Ah, see you later I guess. (begins walking past)
Codexer: W-wait! Stop!
Skyrim: Eh?
Codexer: Ah...I...that's...if you...
Skyrim: You're speaking very softly. (moves closer)
Codexer: (blushing) ...I w-want to be a dragon...born...
Skyrim: Ah, you want to dragonshout, codexer-san? That's great! I didn't know you liked Elder Scro-
Codexer: IT'S NOT LIKE I LIKE YOU OR ANYTHING!! I...I just want to r-ride around in the snow and kill things! Stupid Skyrim! You think you're AAA but you're not at all! You should be happy I even asked you!
Skyrim: Haha that's fine codexer-san, I understand. Should I pick you up after school?
Codexer: ...yes. Don't you dare be late! Dumbass!
Skyrim: Alright, see you!
(Skyrim leaves)
Codexer: ...oh my god, I haven't even decided on the character I'm going to make! He's going to think th-NO! Idiot! It's his fault for showing himself! But...these feelings...after we talked...I feel warm...
You're right, the irrelevance of popular opinion polls in general, and Codexian opinion polls in particular, does not consistent any sort of valid argument or even a factoid worthy of anyone's attention. A couple dozen brain-dead lemmings voted crap with their bellyfeels. Hence, there's nothing to talk about. Not sure why you even brought this up.
At the very least, they managed to make ... rather cool level design ... I suspect everything I like about skyrim was actually added by mods and didn't come with the vanilla game.
Bethesda are incline-potential, essentially, they have the ability to do things that would be incline-worthy. (Jesus this makes me sound like the biggest neckbeard.)
Anyways, Bethesda have a tendency to just go in and without writing a Design Document, start trying to implement things.
Sure, for some features it works. However, with Skyrim and Oblivion, they tried to implement a fully reactive AI into those games with no Design Document and then realized what I imagine was a year away from release, that the feature was too complex for them to do without breaking everything.
So, how can I confidently speculate this?
I attempted to mod an AI that was smart into Skyrim, it started off with disabling the event in which if you steal a cabbage from a Farm all of a sudden you end up with armed thugs chasing after you.
Well, I decided to write it into a Design Document before I even TRIED to work on it. Holy shit, it was like opening a black hole. Just to get a single new event to work, (In my mod it was that if the player stole enough cabbage over and over again, eventually the farm would close down, something Todd Howard talked about early-2011.) you would have to essentially write the AI to have Jobs that involved taking on huge tasks and you would have to calculate how much money each person has. And well, just keep thinking about how what that requires to work and then realize the horror of actually bringing that system to completion.
Now, if Bethesda had actually thought the idea through, documented everything that would be required to make it work and work well. They would of realized not only do they have a short time to make this game, (three years to be exact), but also they have other features that could have been made much better with the development time wasted on those Ai Systems. (See: Civil War cut content) Then a better, more realized and polished game could of come out of it.
In fact, here is a quote from one of the Oblivion developers on Radiant AI, this really highlights a huge problem in their development:
In some cases, we the developers have had to consciously tone down the types of behavior they carry out. Again, why? Because sometimes, the AI is so goddamned smart and determined it screws up our quests! Seriously, sometimes it's gotten so weird it's like dealing with a holodeck that's gone sentient. Imagine playing The Sims, and your Sims have a penchant for murder and theft. So a lot of the time this stuff is funny, and amazing, and emergent, and it's awesome when it happens. Other times, it's so unexpected, it breaks stuff. Designers need a certain amount of control over the scenarios they create, and things can go haywire when NPCs have a mind of their own.
Funny example: In one Dark Brotherhood quest, you can meet up with this shady merchant who sells skooma. During testing, the NPC would be dead when the player got to him. Why? NPCs from the local skooma den were trying to get their fix, didn't have any skooma, and were killing the merchant to get it!
So, what took me 30 minutes to think about and realize, took them development time and money that could of been spent doing other things during development.
According to another designer, the Radiant Story system that was...well.. I don't want to think about it. Apparently came together when Todd saw that in an early build of Skyrim one NPC's family went after and attacked a player who killed another one of their members, asked for more of that. Here is (this comes from this source by the way: http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/27/b...ficult-birth-of-skyrims-radiant-story-system/) the conversation that started Radiant Story:
Todd: “I like that responsive thing. (Jesus christ.) Give me some examples.” Bruce: “So when I kill a guy, his family will come after me.” Todd: “Give me some examples that aren’t about killing someone.” Bruce: “…uh…”
Yeah, sure, features that are created out of just viewing either an unintended consequence or something small happen. But those features don't usually end up being the base for an ENTIRE game.
To be totally honest, Morrowind was one my first games, so I do have a love for Bethesda. But, I know they're capable of more they just need to hold themselves back a bit and think things through before making them.
You know, Skyrim is a greater game than Morrowind, no doubt. I'm not talking about RPGs, obviously - all games in the TES series are horrendous as RPGs, bordering on the intolerable. Morrowind was the first one that I could play, albeit with some suffering. Oblivion was even worse... That is, until I installed multiple MODs and, in fact, it has become a much more enjoyable experience. Then came Skyrim, further enhancing the gender of hiking simulators.
And that's all they are: hiking simulators, nothing more. The RPG 'systems' are terrible, the combat sucks, the plot is a disgrace. Honestly, I cannot understand someone trying to defend any of the games in the TES series as an RPG, it is impossible. But as hiking games? And I'm not talking about exploring as in "seeking quests" or anything like that. It's all about walking really aimlessly. Trying to jump until you reach the top of a mountain, or just seeing what's at the end of some random path. Skyrim, with some mods that increase the variation of trees and better textures is a very pleasant experience. It's something similar to what I feel when I'm walking randomly in Minecraft: no goal in mind, just looking at the environment. It's like a track, but without the heat, without insects, without sweat, without having to follow a boring guide or having to talk to a retarded person who is in the same group.
Maybe this is what people who like games as "Eurotruck Simulator" feels. In that way, yeah. Skyrim is the incline of hiking simulators. If I wanted to play an RPG, I have *many* other choices nowdays.
people confusing mods with vanilla game and taking mods into account when they talk about game and how game is "incline"
incline because everyone gone to shit
incline because there are no other games like that
incline because reasons
mechanically every new game from TES gets worse.
from quest design standpoint every TES gets worse with each new installment
world size it grows with absolutely nothing in value beside pretty landscapes full of potato caves
people confusing mods with vanilla game and taking mods into account when they talk about game and how game is "incline"
incline because everyone gone to shit
incline because there are no other games like that
incline because reasons
mechanically every new game from TES gets worse.
from quest design standpoint every TES gets worse with each new installment
world size it grows with absolutely nothing in value beside pretty landscapes full of potato caves
i also watched a video on youtube where someone was playing through hoover dam. they went into a control room where there were two hostile NCR heavy troopers. he was using the 20 ga. lever-action shotgun against them with buckshot. he died a couple of times and was scrolling through his inventory for other weapons. he skipped over an anti-materiel rifle and brush gun in favor of a hunting shotgun (also using buckshot) and then a non-upgraded service rifle firing standard 5.56mm (he had AP in his inventory). every time he fired he got a red shield on the enemy health bar. he died again, reloaded, and eventually made it through by consuming every piece of food, drink, stim, and other chem through his pip-boy over the course of an extremely long fight.
I am mostly ignorant of Codex terms so not sure what "incline" means in your terms.
Regards the OP I certainly agree that Bethesda are better GAME developers than Bioware - those retards are Electronic Arts devil development agency.
Whether Skyrim is a RPG or not, I am not sure - but going by the games on the Codex all time list - Skyrim isn't that different from Morrowind, F NV, SS2 and a bunch of ther first person creations.
I love Skyrim and that other great RPG, FM2013. Spent a lot of hours on those games.
I sometimes chuckle when I read criticsm of Skyrim on these forums, it seems people just single it out when those same criticisms can be applied to lots of other games.
Let's see, in Skyrim:
Lockpicking is retarded - worse than Wasteland 2 or Grimrock 2? Worse than Morrowind?
Travel is retarded - worse than Blackguards or LoX?
Character development is retarded - worse than Grimrock 2?
You can join X guild without blah - better than having no guilds or no guild missions/ storyline. You don't have to do them.
Guild Y should hate you because you are in Guild X - how would they know that? In Fallout NV people magically knew stuff even if there was no one else around when you killed people.
Broken, you could win the game in 5 mins or you could craft a potion to WIN - ALL GAMES CAN BE BROKEN SOMEWHERE OR THE OTHER. Many Fallout 1 builds include a Charisma of 1, in Fallout 2 you could get the best armour and equipment by heading East. In Morrowind, if my memory serves, I was able to get some boots, best longsword and resist magic armour very early on.
Blah blah. Yeah - I agree about your criticisms, but a lot of them can be applied to many games. Even those in the all time list.
I really enjoyed crafting in Skyrim - even making my house with the DLC. I liked crafting in Dungeons of Dredmor and now in Grim 2. At least it has crafting for people that enjoy that stuff. I enjoyed the crafting skill in LoX.
What I would really like to see is an objective analysis of the differences between Skyrim in Morrowind. One is 7th on the all time Codex list - which I assume the community here voted for - and the other is ridiculed. Having played both for 1,000 hours plus - the differences seem quite small - but maybe they are important.
I know Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind have lots of flaws. What I like most about them is that they are open ended and you are not told where to go or do. I tend to spend more time on these sorts of games than, let's say, Grimrock 1. Once I completed it it was done. Same goes for Risen 2. Done.
So, maybe not INCLINE, but agree Beth better than Bio.
You guys have lots of interesting stuff to say and I already changed my opionion on a few things after reading your comments - notably on Fallout 1 and New Vegas.
Hines makes me hate Bethesda even more than their games warrant, but when I calm down and think about it, the difference between modern Bethesda and modern Bioware is that Toddler seems like someone who - if he wasn't a professional game lead designer - wouldn't be all that different to the Codexers, with a clear obsession about one old-school game he still considers the greatest ever made (Ultima VII), and a clear vision of what is quite definitely a game (and I'd still argue, definitely an rpg, albeit a simplified action one). He just (1) likes money, lots of money, and (2) doesn't have the talent to achieve the former while maintaining any sort of monocle elements. Bioware, with a few notable exceptions, seems like they're embarassed that they're even in the game-making business, and would ditch it in a second if someone gave them all a contract to work on the next Uwe Boll film.
