Rules Lawyer
Literate
- Joined
- Jul 19, 2019
- Messages
- 37
I always did some due diligence by finding every review I could for potential purchases as a kid. I always knew the box art was meaningless.
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Crispy™ Controversial opinions about RPGs that you know deep down are true.
- Thread starter hivemind
- Start date
I always did some due diligence by finding every review I could for potential purchases as a kid. I always knew the box art was meaningless.
- Joined
- Oct 3, 2015
- Messages
- 11,872
The Clyde Caldwell artwork used for the box cover of Treasures of the Savage Frontier was originally the cover art for a non-D&D/AD&D fantasy novel published by TSR, The Jewels of Elvish:As long as we're talking about shit/excellent/excellently shit old box art, I always liked this one, because it's clearly just a drawing of Stevie Nicks:
All the Gold Box games recycled existing TSR cover art, much of it by Clyde Caldwell but also including Keith Parkinson and Larry Elmore artworks. Similarly, the Silver Box and Eye of the Beholder games recycled artworks by those three artists plus Jeff Easley.
And if you get good at Arena, you'll be irresistible to this person at the front with her twisted warped spine and hideously broken legs:
Or maybe the guy cosplaying as Genghis Khan at the back there if anyone's into that.
As long as we're talking about shit/excellent/excellently shit old box art, I always liked this one, because it's clearly just a drawing of Stevie Nicks:
The soy is strong in this one.
You should apply to work at kotaku.
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Lemming42
Arcane
I don't believe you'd have taken one look at the twisted-spine broken-legs warrior on the Arena box and rushed to buy the game. She looks like what happens if you leave a Stretch Armstrong out in the sun too long. My cock actually shrunk up into my body upon laying eyes on it. It must have been drawn by a hermit who's never made contact with humans before.
It's sad because you can actually physically feel the box trying so hard to appeal to you - "we aren't confident the game can sell itself, so here's some unrelated artwork we think might distract you long enough to end up buying it!"
Compare with Daggerfall's box:
Now there's a box that looks good on the shelf. There's a box with some sick artwork - and it's 100% related to the game. There's a box I can slam down on the store counter and say "THIS ONE, PLEASE" to the cashier, maintaining full eye contact. The Daggerfall box is even more sexually appealing.
It's sad because you can actually physically feel the box trying so hard to appeal to you - "we aren't confident the game can sell itself, so here's some unrelated artwork we think might distract you long enough to end up buying it!"
Compare with Daggerfall's box:
rusty_shackleford
Arcane
- Joined
- Jan 14, 2018
- Messages
- 50,754
'open world' RPGs are almost always terrible, RPGs could learn from pretty much every other genre by making their games smaller but more detailed. Nearly every open world RPG falls flat on its face the moment you leave the biggest town in the game.
Cryomancer
Arcane
The unique game who did sandbox right is M&B.
Lemming42
Arcane
Gothic, Fallout, Elder Scrolls (pick whichever you like if any), Darklands, Wasteland, etc.
Not counting Todd Howard's masterpieces, which are the bad open world RPGs? I guess I never liked The Witcher.
Gothic is a tiny open world—it’s smaller and more detailed, which is the point. Fallout 1 & 2 are “open world” in that you can go anywhere on the map, but they aren’t open world games. Is traversal done via a separate map screen? Then that’s obviously not what’s being discussed.
There are maybe a couple dozen maps in Fallout 2. They’re hub based games with a separate overworld navigation system. The modders who are trying to remake the original Fallouts in the Bethesda engine are having serious problems because there’s so much empty space between settlements, so they decided to make up new content to fill it out.
Wandering aimlessly through filler content is not fun, but it’s almost universal in open world games. If you abstract that stuff away—Fallout, Wasteland, Darklands (which doesn’t even let you walk around towns for fuck’s sake)—then there’s no problem.
The Elder Scrolls games have always had this issue. If Skyrim and Oblivion are a mile wide and an inch deep, Daggerfall is a continent wide and maybe two inches deep. I don’t like Morrowind, but it has a smaller open world—no wonder people think it’s the best game in a garbage series.
tl;dr “you say big open world games suck because they’re too full of meaningless bullshit, but what about small open world games, or these other games that could technically be described as open world despite sharing few characteristics with the open world genre” is not the great argument you seem to think it is.
Neanderthal
Arcane
I don't believe you'd have taken one look at the twisted-spine broken-legs warrior on the Arena box and rushed to buy the game. She looks like what happens if you leave a Stretch Armstrong out in the sun too long. My cock actually shrunk up into my body upon laying eyes on it. It must have been drawn by a hermit who's never made contact with humans before.
It's sad because you can actually physically feel the box trying so hard to appeal to you - "we aren't confident the game can sell itself, so here's some unrelated artwork we think might distract you long enough to end up buying it!"
Compare with Daggerfall's box:
Now there's a box that looks good on the shelf. There's a box with some sick artwork - and it's 100% related to the game. There's a box I can slam down on the store counter and say "THIS ONE, PLEASE" to the cashier, maintaining full eye contact. The Daggerfall box is even more sexually appealing.
Leave the tits a-fucking-lone you bastard!
Lemming42
Arcane
That's a crazy definition of open world, because it's so specific as to refer to nothing. Daggerfall doesn't have you wandering around an overworld, you use fast travel because there's no reason at all to walk around the overworld. We can't have Mount & Blade either because travel is abstracted by the campaign map. This definition limits "open world" to "literally Oblivion, Skyrim and the new Fallout games".
If you're trying to say "Bethesda games suck" then I'm not sure that's an unpopular opinion. I honestly can't think of any other games that fit the category, though I never played Witcher 3 which I understand is meant to share some of the same features.
I think it says a lot that I wrote "not counting Todd Howard's masterpieces" and your first and only example of a bad open world game was Todd Howard's masterpiece series.
Are those even tits on the Arena box? Look closer, they look like hard fleshy bumps just sort of suspended off her chest. Big cysts or something.
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I don't know what world you're living in if you think only Bethesda and CDPR are doing this. Rockstar, Ubisoft, even fucking Nintendo do this stuff now. Open worlds are everywhere. Anyway, from the context of what Rusty was saying, it's very clear this is the thing he was talking about. I can't tell if you're being purposefully obtuse or just obtuse.
Lemming42
Arcane
We're talking about RPGs. I agree open world games in general suck shit, I can't stand the new Asscreed games or new Far Cry or any GTA game, but I was responding to a post criticising "open world rpgs" in a thread entitled "controversial opinions about rpgs".
Open Path
Learned
Wut? Mine was a rethoric question to reply your inaccurate statement. Because freedom is about ALL posibilities not only combat and even if non combat mechanics are present since the start of crpgs -and p&p- those mechanics have been minoritary in a genre of combat-centric history -by heoric fantasy influx mostly-, so that is the core of the debate, if those -far more- diverse non combat mechanics could replace combat mechanics in a rpg, my opinion is that obviously they could perfectly.
Arcanum is a very mediocre game. Not only is it complete shit in many crucial areas including combat it also falls apart at the things it's supposed to be the best thing ever at according to Codex hivemind after Tarant which isn't even halfway in the game.
When Codexers discuss this game it's clear they're really are more in love with the idea of what it could be than the actual thing that got released. It once again featuring in the top 5 of best Codex games is the best indication of how this place can be as much a caricature as any random game forum.
When Codexers discuss this game it's clear they're really are more in love with the idea of what it could be than the actual thing that got released. It once again featuring in the top 5 of best Codex games is the best indication of how this place can be as much a caricature as any random game forum.
What is that 'thing' that 'falls apart' after Tarant?
Sykar
Arcane
BMC mines is for many players a low point.
You can cheese it by turning on combat mode and using the spot trap scroll. It really is overrated in its difficulty by many on here.
I hate McOpen world games, and they are all exactly the same. Assassins Creed, Farcry, GTA, Witcher, Ubi Mordor, Elder Scrolls, Gothic, Fallout 3+, Two Worlds, that new Obshitian game, etc. They are all single character dumbness, exploring virtual areas, talking to virtual people to get their virtual fedex quest or kill 10 wolves, then you run around pressing 1 button to hacky slashy them to death, squirt them with fire, or shoot them. They all follow the exact same formula, only difference is guns/spells/swordz, and minor variance in story/setting. An open world game COULD be really good, but they all copy each other's tried and tested formula.
I also don't know anyone who ever played a game with area transitions that complained about having individual areas. Sure if the load times are shit then it is no fun, but spending 3 seconds to load into a whole new area that is hand crafted and full of actual content, is a lot better than seamlessly meandering through generic crap.
I also don't know anyone who ever played a game with area transitions that complained about having individual areas. Sure if the load times are shit then it is no fun, but spending 3 seconds to load into a whole new area that is hand crafted and full of actual content, is a lot better than seamlessly meandering through generic crap.
The whole world feeling alive and vibrant and believable to be a part of thing. It's not just the dungeons being generally uninspiring, the dirty secret that gets Codexians in denial because muh Tarrant is that most late game urban locations are generally equally uninspired as well (and like everthying Troika feel unfinished). For what is basically a settingfag game that's deadly.
Sykar
Arcane
Most codexers acknowledge that later parts of Arcanum feel and most likely are unfinished but you can easily see what Troika were going for. A shame they did not have a year or two to fully polish it up to snuff but they did a decent job simulating city life with stuff like opening times for shops, people being in different places, new newspaper around every once in a while, etc.
- Joined
- Oct 3, 2015
- Messages
- 11,872
The first Open World RPG was The Faery Tale Adventure, developed by David Joiner in 1986 for the Commodore Amiga. FTA allowed the player to traverse the world directly, through a smoothly-scrolling screen, and with a sizeable world. It soon had an imitator with Times of Lore, developed by Origin and released in 1988 for the Commodore 64, but there was little else until Bethesda began producing massive procedurally-generated worlds that were, however, so large, due to their being the same size as what they represented in the game, that in practice they could not be traveled through directly but instead relied on fast travel via a map screen. For the Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Bethesda scaled down the game world in similar fashion to Faery Tale Adventure and found commercial success, expanding with successive games using the same underlying engine, and eventually reviving the Open World style.
And how the fuck out of "about ALL posibilities" follows "let's REPLACE combat"? Not "add to", not "make some other stuff also", but "take it AWAY"?
Show us on the doll where did combat touch you.
Open Path
Learned
Because don't exist subordination or causality between the "ALL the possibilities" part and the idea of "replace" the combat. "Freedom" as something definitory is your first idea, not mine. I don't define crpgs -nor p&p- by "freedom" and even less implying that if there isn't some very specific option to some problem -combat- in every campaign or game then there is no freedom at all, which is absurd because as point you, then you need to include EVERY other possibility or "there is no freedom".
But obviously you don't need to have the possibility to perform with your character every possible action in every context to consider and rpg complete. Wizardrys are "complete". A historic rpg in which you play with non primarily combat characters could be equally complete. Crpgs are limited simulations.
If you want real freedom and the possibility to combat in every situation, you have real life. Go to beat those annoying neighbour's children, hit your boss, kill those fucking local cops... Go combatfag, go.
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Lilura
RPG Codex Dragon Lady
- Joined
- Feb 13, 2013
- Messages
- 5,274
Raises hand.
I've criticized that on my blog and probably here, too. Loading an area, or not having seamless transitions, is faggotry.
You should be able to walk through, or shoot through a house.
I share your other views, though, so brofisted overall.
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I didn't mean its ok to load a house, that is bethesda level incompetence. I mean it is perfectly ok to load whole new areas of the world. Like if they could make TOEE seamlessly load all areas of the world at once so you can run from the Moathouse to the Temple without loading, that would be great. But open world games never work like that. Making it seamless always loses some quality. But I think mostly it is because making a massive open world game requires massive budgets, and nobody spends massive budgets on something that isn't generic and simple because that's how you get your money back. Sadly.
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