Wilderness exploration in RPGs

Two examples of games that I thought did it really well.

Baldur's Gate 1
Being a low level character whose chance of surviving a wolf attack on meelee depend's on a hair's chance, there is a huge incentive to explore in BG1. Your party's ranger and thief become essential for scouting the map in stealth mode, and for checking for all the Black Talon bandits and spiders in the area. The ability to charm animals and use them to explore the environs or save yourself from a hostile attack becomes useful.

The openness of the forest environment allows great use of fog of war. If scouting ranger finds a Black Talon Elite, he can put him in the corner of the fog of war, fire a shot with his arrow, flee and get back into stealth mode, and fire at him again. The game really captures the feeling of hiding in the woods and slowly kiting an enemy from the shadows.

Best of all is that given the vast expanse of the empty wilderness, if you ever explore every nook and cranny, you find something of seemingly minor significance which turns out to be of great use elsewhere. In the middle of the woods, you'll find a necromancer with the black symbol of Cyric. Explore east of Beregost, and you stumble upon a temple that rewards you for killing that necromancer. A tiny thing in one corner of the middle of nowhere turns out to have great significance in another corner in the middle of nowhere. That's what makes exploration in this game so much fun.

Betrayal at Krondor
This time, instead of a top-down perspective, you have a first person perspective that makes your field of view more limited and makes exploration all the harder. Objects in the distance are barely visible, and the top-down map shows a limited radius. So you are forced to cast spells to divine the location of objects in the distance, and then make a reasonably accurate guess of the direction you must go to find it.

Later in the game, wilderness exploration gets much harder because Elvandar forest's trees don't let you see more than three feet in front of you, despite stretching for miles. The player really has to make a mental note of where he is and where he is moving, in order to not get lost.

You have to keep your eyes peeled for encounters hidden behind rocks and trees, and then click on them in order to sneak up on them.

Just like BG1, one random object found in one place would turn out to be of significance elsewhere. Take the long road and find a chest with a spynote about a planned ambush at a barn. Later, when someone tells you that you can stay at his barn for shelter, you can be ready for a fight - cast dragon's breath around the barn and ambush those about to ambush you.

Any others?

 

Strangely enough, king of the dragon pass gives a similar vibe, of events on different ends of the map useful elsewhere, if only on it's fixed map locations.

 

Stopped reading here.

 

Apparently Arcanum.

 

Ok, I should've known better than try to read any further.

tl;dr
Wyrmlord is malfunctioning again,
I recommend full wipe and restore from backup.

 

Oh, come on! It's one of the few times he talks sense.

 

Gothic 1 & 2 are pretty much the only ones that come to mind where wilderness exploration actually meant something in terms of risk, reward and fun. Finding a cave populated by skellingtons in Rape Overdrive Mode and then coming back later when you are powered up and then finding some interesting trinkets, like a decent sword. It doesn't sound special when it's written down, but it feels so good when you play the games and are used to being slapped left and right by everything in the beginning and even the most mundane looking cave is an actual threat.

 

BG1 is boring, especially in that aspect "exploration".

Well done is Fallout New Vegas. The wilderness may hold unknown threats, like moving groups of hostiles (raiders, legionaires, NCR troopers) or neutral (merchant caravans) and stationed spawns. You just never know if moving onto a bridge will lead to an encounter with raiders and merchants. And revisit the old place might as well pit you against a Deathclaw attack patrollers. And with respawned plants, you have reasons to revisit.

 

Here is what I am saying.

In a closed dungeon space, there is not much room for moving out of an enemy's sight.

In the outdoors world of BG1, there is more than enough room to move out of an enemy's sight. And then promptly enter stealth mode once you are out of enemy sight.

By doing so, a lot of the more challenging enemies, who seem far too difficult for low level parties to tackle, become far more manageable. A ranger can enter stealth mode, fire an arrow, run out of enemy sight, get back in stealth mode, and then repeat all over again. This is one of the safest ways of tackling Ankhegs in BG1. It's also nice for capturing the feeling of attacking your enemies from the shadows, from within the woods. Which, hence, is a part of the wilderness exploration theme.

So DraQ, if you don't mind indulging me, why is this point so asinine?

 

18 metre sight range = absolutely retarded.
Stealth = invisibility with a skill check without enemies having ability to make spot checks = absolute shit.

 

You of all people should know by now that @DraQ is our resident "everything that is not first person gameplay is inherently shit" guy.

I agree with the OP and especially the BG in there.

 

I guess that's why he loves exploring the wilderness in Oblivion.

 

Not to mention the AI which allows you to lure off single enemies one-by-one, as long as the main group remains 1 metre within the fog-of-war.

But wilderness exploration is rarely done well in the RPGs I've played. Can't think of a better example than Gothic 2/NotR

 

Morrowind, for the sheer inability of staying focused on one track or one quest, when everything else seems to call you and attract you. It was also a great thing that the game didn't make a big deal out of the points of interest that were laying around, and you could easily miss characters, quests or dungeons if you just happen to look the other way or divert from the to pick up some ingredients. Finding a Dwemer or a Daedric ruin usually meant trouble and you either steered clear, or rushed towards it, depending on the strength of your character, but nothing compared with finding, on a remote riverbank, on a deserted hillside or in the middle of the road, an entrance to some cave which you had no idea what to expect from.

This whole thing, paired with the visuals and the lack of any sort of invisible walls, made Morrowind's exploration it addictive as hell and I for one would really feel that need to "go out", after running between towns by silstrider/boat/magesguild for quests, and just go towards a random direction and see where it takes me. As a matter of fact, I'm doing it right now.

 

The original Exile-triology was fun to explore.

 

The Exile remake Avernum:Escape from the Pit is also pretty good about this. Early in the game, you find plenty of encounters that are beyond your ability at that point, so it's fun to come back later after gaining a few levels and take them out. The best equipment can't be found in stores, so you usually find something useful from these encounters; and since money is always useful, you don't feel like you wasted time even if you just sell what you found.

 

No mention of any Might & Magic? That series as a whole has some of the best wilderness exploration around, there's always some weird thing, quest, trinket or dungeon to find in off-the-wall areas. Even though mountaineering looks kinda weird in the old step-based games, it's still really fun.

 

The original Gothic and Gothic 2 had, for me, the best wilderness exploration in an rpg, it truly felt like you were exploring a dangerous fantasy realm...



Then you found one of these and died.

 

Someone needs to kickstart a spiritual successor to Exile.

 

Realms of Arkania: Star Trail

 

Wizardry 7 is perhaps the best example of a game that did wilderness badly. It had a huge wilderness area, yet there is hardly anything exciting to discover.

 

As far as blobbers go, the best one for me, exploration-wise, will always be Dragon Wars: so many good memories of exploring the Underworld or the cities and loved the mesopotamian theme. I remember Ultima IV also being quite a revelation for me: first CRPG with decent NPCs who, through dialogue and keywords, sent you to every nook and cranny of the map to find artifacts and various stuff.

 

The problem of scripted map like BG series and IWD is its brokenness.

Set a scout to stealthily check out the map. The spawn script normally check that party average level then spawn enemies at certain zones when the stealth scout approach. Before send the scout out, summon several level1 creatures to drive down your average level. The spawns will be lower level than expected.

Of course, for whatever reason you can also drive up your avr level of your party to harden up enemies.

Broken~!

 

Yeah, both Dragon Wars, and especially Ultima IV first time I played it as an inexperienced gamer, were fun to explore.

Any game can be broken if you try to break it.
In my experience the IE games don't scale much to your level anyway, so it's hardly a problem.