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The decline of dungeons?

Invictus

Arcane
The Real Fanboy
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Nov 3, 2013
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Divinity: Original Sin 2
It is kind of the OP point that we are all mentioning game like Ultima Underworld, Wizardry, System Shock, Thief, Arx Fatalis etc I would say the latest examples would be New Vegas and of course Grimoire but the concept of a good dungeon crawl has become kind of extint. As others have mentioned now that the technology has made it possible to generate gameworld the pure dungeon craw has taken a backseat to openworld gameplay and it is truly a shame
Guess only Bards Tale 4 and Underworld Ascending are our only hopes for a classic crawler
As much as I loathe Roguelikes I wouldn’t mind a kind of old school crawler like that
 

huskarls

Scholar
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Aug 7, 2016
Messages
108
Did not like Elminage: Gothic. The first dungeon was good but the game soon stumbled by actually being a replica of early wizardy rather than a homage. Completely impossible to finish without meta-knowledge, just like Wizardry IV. And don't sit there with a straight face and tell me you found that invisible door without outside knowledge. Wizardry VIII on the other hand had a colorful outdoor dungeon, the trinny tree dungeon, where there is hidden extras, enemy variety, and it is completely possible to finish by yourself because it strides the line between handholding and psuedo-hardcore.

I would say the turn of the century dungeons were much more colorful than the early 90's grindfest grey blobs that played like something Troika produced. ilitarist even gave a good example of Skyrim having this one underground dungeon you can get through from other dungeons with no indication. The problem is the base mechanics suck and the game tells you how to 'solve' everything. In other words: improved setting, shittier puzzles, no optional hard content.
 

Neanderthal

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Granbretan
Dungeons are supposed to be labyrinthine areas of danger, tension, atmosphere and high risk reward situations, instead they're boring trash combat and loot areas that you trawl through, clear, never get lost in and find a convenient shortcut back out at the end. Accessibility has emasculated them.
 

HoboForEternity

sunset tequila
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
As far as newer games go, jdungeon crawler have the best dungeons in recent years.

I playin etrian odyssey remake on my 3ds and enjoying it so far. I am only on 2nd strata, but it is pretty cool so far. The first levels are twisty maze, but mostly linear, but the latter ones are getting more complex, with added layers with some section of dungeons in earlier levels only accessible from stairs in lower levels.

It has okay in game tool to map the dungeon too.
 
Self-Ejected

Lilura

RPG Codex Dragon Lady
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riddle1.jpg
 

Siobhan

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Feb 25, 2013
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1X 1Y 2Z
I'm surprised that you didn't enjoy Wiz 8's level design.
I enjoyed it well enough, I just think Wiz8's dungeons are mediocre at best. Trynton, Mount Gigas and the Watercaves are very uninspired linear slogs. The Monastery, Martin's Bluff, and Rapax Castle are better, but still much too easy to navigate and no challenging puzzles or unexpected traps. They work well enough as a background for the combat encounters, but they're little more than that. It's a testament to the other qualities of the game that it's in my top 10 despite these weaknesses.

I haven't actually played Wiz 4, but from what I've heard it's levels have been designed by the devil to inflict maximum pain and agony.
The reputation is only half-warranted (similar to Castlevania 2, whose reputation as a cryptic, incomprehensible mess is vastly overblown). If Wizardry 4 were a pure puzzle game, or an action platformer, nobody would complain about the difficulty, but with RPGs people get miffed whenever the game expects them to actually put in some effort. There are some bullshit design decisions, but the dungeon levels themselves are exquisite.
 

Dorateen

Arcane
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The Crystal Mist Mountains
Grimoire dungeons are good?

Dorateen ? Can we get the lowdown, pls.

Pretty summarized them well in the post above. Grimoire excels at exploration, both the overland, and the dungeon locations. Besides the quality of narration that brings life to these varied tombs and pyramids, they contain classic design characteristics including dark zones, teleportation mazes and spatial puzzles.
 

Ash

Arcane
Joined
Oct 16, 2015
Messages
6,235
lol of course dungeons declined. That's because gameplay in general has declined. For most genres.
 

ghostdog

Arcane
Patron
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Messages
11,079
Underrail takes place in one huge dungeon filled with various types of sub-dungeons and it's one of the best rpgs I've played, so at least there's some incline too.
 
Last edited:

KateMicucci

Arcane
Joined
Sep 2, 2017
Messages
1,676
The appeal of dungeons, at least in modern RPGs, is that they're a break from all the dialog and "worldbuilding" choking all the other areas, giving the player a chance to actually play the fuggin game.
 

BlackGoat

Arbiter
Joined
Sep 15, 2014
Messages
505
Dungeons are supposed to be labyrinthine areas of danger, tension, atmosphere and high risk reward situations, instead they're boring trash combat and loot areas that you trawl through, clear, never get lost in and find a convenient shortcut back out at the end. Accessibility has emasculated them.

“Does Britannia, when she sleeps, dream? Is America her dream?-- in which all that cannot pass in the metropolitan Wakefulness is allow'd Expression away in the restless Slumber of these Provinces, and on West-ward, wherever 'tis not yet mapp'd, nor written down, nor ever, by the majority of Mankind, seen,-- serving as a very Rubbish-Tip for subjunctive Hopes, for all that may yet be true,-- Earthly Paradise, Fountain of Youth, Realms of Prester John, Christ's Kingdom, ever behind the sunset, safe til the next Territory to the West be seen and recorded, measur'd and tied in, back into the Net-Work of Points already known, that slowly triangulates its Way into the Continent, changing all from subjunctive to declarative, reducing Possibilities to Simplicities that serve the ends of Governments,-- winning away from the realm of the Sacred, its Borderlands one by one, and assuming them unto the bare mortal World that is our home, and our Despair.”
 

Jezal_k23

Guest
So I guess dungeons have cycled out of importance from RPGs in favor of open world. I find this a convincing, if depressing, theory.
 

ilitarist

Learned
Illiterate Village Idiot
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Oct 17, 2016
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857
Not just "open world" but "immersive open world". Everybody complains how every quest in games with dungeons involves looking for something/killing someone in a dungeon. So you have instead more "realistic" small dungeons and more to do in open world. It also means that most quests are shorter and don't feel like a grind.

One more thing: you can sell the size of the world. People love Witcher 3, among other things, for the size of the world. It is probably bigger than Bethesda worlds but it has only a few internal areas while dungeons are probably 2/3 of Skyrim/Fallout 3/4 space. Same for New Vegas: it has more points of interests but very few of them are something more than a small cave or 1 store small building, but you often see it advertised as a bigger game.
 

V_K

Arcane
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at a Nowhere near you
So I guess dungeons have cycled out of importance from RPGs in favor of open world. I find this a convincing, if depressing, theory.
Well, Wizardry 7, Daggerfall, Grimrock 2, M&M games and many others had both.
I think it has more to do with full 3D and increased graphical detail, which makes navigating a proper dungeon very disorienting. It's kinda like pixel hunting in adventure games - you never know which part of the extemely detailed scenery is important and which is just scenery. Older 2D or grid-based dungeons were easier to figure out on the minute-to-minute level, so they could afford having complex overall structures. With newer 3D dungeons it's the opposite.
 

Cael

Arcane
Joined
Nov 1, 2017
Messages
20,294
This x1,000! Still the best even after all these years!
Underworld 2 has a few good ones, too.

Just about anything is better than that bloody Firewine Bridge shit.
 

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