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Crispy™ Controversial opinions about RPGs that you know deep down are true.

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Codex Year of the Donut
FNV's issue wasn't technical, the game was just ugly. The biggest offenders were easily the characters, which had the same issue as oblivion/FO3.
Gamebryo is just one ugly motherfucker of the engine. In case of FNV, it's like a pair of concrete shoes dragging the game down.
I thought FO4 looked pretty good, but other than that I'll agree.
 

Van-d-all

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FNV is overrated turd, popularized by consoletards that never played F1/2 before, simply because it didn't suck as much as F3 did.

Witcher 2 is by far better game than Witcher 3, because it releys a lot more condensed and well directed plot without the bullshit POI filler. Also, has Foltest.
 
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Thac0

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PST, Torment:Tides of Numenera and Disco Elysium have some of the best writing in the industry, and the reason people dislike them or call the writing pretentious is that they dont read many books, and as such the wall of texts and their slow reading speed makes them break at them.
Its the equivalent of starting Dark Souls or Pathfinder Kingmaker, getting annihilated by the first boss and then whining about game design or difficulty.
 
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Ol' Willy

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the reason people dislike them or call the writing pretentious is that they dont read many books, and as such the wall of texts and their slow reading speed makes them break at them.
Exactly the opposite. I read a lot and I'm yet to see a game that comes close to a good book storytelling wise. Show me the game that has worldbuilding and faction play on the level of Clans of the Alphane Moon.
 
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Thac0

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the reason people dislike them or call the writing pretentious is that they dont read many books, and as such the wall of texts and their slow reading speed makes them break at them.
Exactly the opposite. I read a lot and I'm yet to see a game that comes close to a good book storytelling wise. Show me the game that has worldbuilding and faction play on the level of Clans of the Alphane Moon.

Numenera was for me punching at that level. Its strengths arent in worldbuilding or faction play but rather in the mystery of the main quest and the way it is built for you to unravel it. Felt like Gardens of the Moon where you are thrown into a very complex story with vital information missing that enables you to make sense of what is happening, so you slowly piece it together for the big payoff when you understand the critical details.
 

Ranarama

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Numenera was for me punching at that level. Its strengths arent in worldbuilding or faction play but rather in the mystery of the main quest and the way it is built for you to unravel it. Felt like Gardens of the Moon where you are thrown into a very complex story with vital information missing that enables you to make sense of what is happening, so you slowly piece it together for the big payoff when you understand the critical details.

I can't for the life of me remember much about the story of Numenera. Too many little short irrelevant blobs of story that never went anywhere to have a main story that was memorable. I remember some combat encounters, some of the environments and that it had CYOA sections. That's it. Can't even remember the characters apart from the you're a body abandoned by an immortal body-switcher. That's it.
 
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Thac0

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I can't for the life of me remember much about the story of Numenera. Too many little short irrelevant blobs of story that never went anywhere to have a main story that was memorable. I remember some combat encounters, some of the environments and that it had CYOA sections. That's it. Can't even remember the characters apart from the you're a body abandoned by an immortal body-switcher. That's it.

Characterwise Numanuma has the flaw of introducing you to its two weakest characters first. Aligern and Callistege are boring and their personal stories are banal and pointless.
Matkina and Tybir are both a lot better, reaching the quality level of your usual isometric rpg character. Nothing outstanding about them but Matkina has some decent lore.
The jackpot are the two stretch goal characters. Erritis written by the, sadly confirmed heterosexual, human stretchgoal Avellone and Rhin written by Rothfuss of all people.
Rhin is pretty much just Auri from Kingkiller, but the Slow Regard of Silent Things was an excellent read and so is Rhins story.

The main story is as you remember, with the little pizaz that
the changing god was once human and is just operating an ancient power source he doesnt truly understand himself, which has sent a sentient watchdog after him to erase him from existance. He uses his castoffs like decoy flares and sacrifices them, which has led to a holy war declared on him by the first castoff. The war is though under the operation of time manipulation on both sides and has degraded into a quantum deadlock, where every war deciding loss is negated through time travelling agents. This means the war is fought on thousands of hypothetical battlefields in uncountable worlds, but all which do not end in a draw are erased. A fascinating concept.
 

Cryomancer

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For every RPG with guns you will get 3-4 RPGs with swords and magic. Disbalance is evident.

Well said. And games with "magic"/supernatural abilities and guns are even rarer. VtMB is the best example, and contrary to giving a minigun to the player on the beginning, like FL4 did, you start with a .38 special revolver which is decent against unarmored humans but borderline useless against the weakest supernatural. When you get flamethrower(vampires are weak to fire and take aggravated damage) and the .338 LM scopped rifle, you become insanely deadly with firearms.

that all fine and dandy, but me point was that shooter are just as common as melee focused games. Citing a few examples and then claiming that you are right really doesnt prove anything, specially when it fails to address me point.

Firearms on RPG's aren't common. If you look only to the AAA games, we have Cyberpunk 2077 and few BUGThesda games so dumbed down that are more like looter shooters than actual RPG's with firearms. This on Western Market where shooters are far more popular. On Japan, even their "space" games focus on swords like xenoblade chronicles and rogue galaxy. Fatal bullet is theoretically focused on guns but they did everything to make the PC uses the energy sword.

PS : For me Outer Worlds is a AA game, not a AAA game. And Borderlands is not a RPG imo. Is a good game but not a RPG.

Horseshit. What kind of pre-2011 games have you played? FNV's graphics were trash in 2010, especially for what was supposed to be an AAA game.

Only the faces are ugly. Lets be real, compare then to Oblivion. The buildings aren't ugly, firearms aren't ugly, robots aren't ugly(...)

Keep in mind that consoles limited the initial vision of Obsidian
Obsidian Says Fallout: New Vegas Was Held Back By Consoles

https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/obsidian-says-fallout-new-vegas-was-held-back-by-consoles/
 

Cryomancer

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Only the faces are ugly. Lets be real, compare then to Oblivion.
So what you're saying is the only games you played from the PS360 era are Bethesda games.

No, but Xbox 360/P$3 and P$4/Xbox one era was the peak of decline. Few games like Demon Souls and New Vegas was the exception, not the rule.

Also, you can mod new vegas and have gorgeous graphics.


 

Anonona

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Firearms on RPG's aren't common

Yeah, I don't necessarily disagree with this, but what I meant is that we were talking about shooters in general, you brought up the steams tags, and when I said they were poor indicators of games in each genre, you moved the goal-post to RPG with guns. Is just that what you stated doesn't really disprove anything I said, even if you may very well be right.

Fatal bullet is theoretically focused on guns but they did everything to make the PC uses the energy sword.

I mean, is SAO, you can't expect much more from them. If you want JRPG with focus on firearms you could try Valkyrie Chronicles, Parasite Eve and the Wild Arms series. There are not many though, thats true. If you prefer WRPGs, then Underrail or Wasteland may be more of your liking. Now, if we are talking about RPG that play like shooters, then it may be harder, specially jrpgs.

And Borderlands is not a RPG imo. Is a good game but not a RPG.

Disagree here. I find Borderlands to be quite shit as a game, both as a FPS and a RPG. And I'm surprised you actually like it. Literally all characters have one skill with cooldown, Diablo 2 style randomized loot, juvenile humor and bad writing, bullet sponge enemies, retarded guns design, all games had been the receiver of multitude of balance patch that killed fun powerful builds and ridiculous number bloat among other things. I would have though it to be just the kind of game you would hate.
 

Quillon

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Only the faces are ugly. Lets be real, compare then to Oblivion. The buildings aren't ugly, firearms aren't ugly, robots aren't ugly(...)

Keep in mind that consoles limited the initial vision of Obsidian
Obsidian Says Fallout: New Vegas Was Held Back By Consoles

https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/obsidian-says-fallout-new-vegas-was-held-back-by-consoles/

It was generally uglier than its contemporaries, just as FO4 was. And "initial vision of Obsidian" wasn't about a more beautiful game, it was about adding more stuff and not having to split bigger areas in pieces like the Strip.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
PST, Torment:Tides of Numenera and Disco Elysium have some of the best writing in the industry, and the reason people dislike them or call the writing pretentious is that they dont read many books, and as such the wall of texts and their slow reading speed makes them break at them.
Its the equivalent of starting Dark Souls or Pathfinder Kingmaker, getting annihilated by the first boss and then whining about game design or difficulty.

I like Torment and Disco Elysium and I found Numenera to be better than its reputation, but really, the writing in Numenera isn't even halfway on par with the other two games. It's often overwritten, excessively wordy when it doesn't have to be, and gives off vibes of the writers trying to out-perform each other in how awesome their writing skills are. The prose is flowery pretty much all the time but a lot of it is irrelevant noise that adds little to the overall experience. Notable exceptions are Avellone's and Rothfuss' characters because those dudes know how to write without trying too hard. Fargo also bragged about the game's wordcount so the tryhard overwrittenness was likely intentional.

A truly skilled writer knows when to be flowery and when to be concise. Numenera doesn't know when to be concise and chooses to be flowery all the time.
 

sser

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Ahem ehem.. ahem.

*leans into mic*

Arcanum


You know the rest.
 

Cryomancer

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Firearms on RPGs aren't common. If you look only to the AAA games, we have Cyberpunk 2077 and few BUGThesda games so dumbed down that are more like looter shooters than actual RPG's with firearms. This on Western Market where shooters are far more popular.
What about RPGish shooters with leveled loot and unlockable skills, like The Division, Borderlands, Destiny, or even Breakpoint, Anthem and Mass Effect? You seem to handwave them away as "looter shooters" but many oldschool RPGs have very few social elements and focus mainly on the relentless pursuit of leveling and powering up.

Most of this games are shooter first and RPG second and has a lot of ludonarrative dissonance.

Grenades on cooldown for eg makes zero sense for eg. Let me purchase a grenade, have a weight limit like new vegas and use as i please. Other problem is that this games has bullet sponge enemies and that firearms progress on arbitrary damage numbers only. Among this games, the FIRST borderlands and Mass Effect seems decent(not great) and honestly, Mass Effect is just decent. Kotor 1/2 is far better.

SWTOR in other hands is far worst. Is just a "generic wow clone - star wars edition"
 
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Thac0

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PST, Torment:Tides of Numenera and Disco Elysium have some of the best writing in the industry, and the reason people dislike them or call the writing pretentious is that they dont read many books, and as such the wall of texts and their slow reading speed makes them break at them.
Its the equivalent of starting Dark Souls or Pathfinder Kingmaker, getting annihilated by the first boss and then whining about game design or difficulty.

I like Torment and Disco Elysium and I found Numenera to be better than its reputation, but really, the writing in Numenera isn't even halfway on par with the other two games. It's often overwritten, excessively wordy when it doesn't have to be, and gives off vibes of the writers trying to out-perform each other in how awesome their writing skills are. The prose is flowery pretty much all the time but a lot of it is irrelevant noise that adds little to the overall experience. Notable exceptions are Avellone's and Rothfuss' characters because those dudes know how to write without trying too hard. Fargo also bragged about the game's wordcount so the tryhard overwrittenness was likely intentional.

A truly skilled writer knows when to be flowery and when to be concise. Numenera doesn't know when to be concise and chooses to be flowery all the time.

I agree that NumaNuma was generally too wordy for its own good - but thats a sin many great authors share.
I dropped A Song of Ice and Fire after the first book since it was too bloated in all the wrong places for what it offered. I got through all of Osten Ard, although the entire series could stand to be cut in half by wordcount and would only improve from it.
Tad Williams was probably the reason I am somewhat immune to overly drawn out writing now, and have a much higher opionion of Numeneras writing than others. Compared to his early books Numenera is brief.
 
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Thac0

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Thac0

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Nice reading comprehension buddy.
You say "great authors" and immediately proceeded to cite Martin. Of course I gonna think that you cite Martin as a great author who is too wordy.

Hmmh it is badly formulated yes. Didnt think of that connection since I ripped into GRRM in the shoutbox a few times. But why would I drop a great author?
Overly flowery prose and wordyness is a sickness that High Fantasy is entangled with. Granddaddy Tolkien is prolly the best representative.
 
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Thac0

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Overly flowery prose and wordyness is a sickness that High Fantasy is entangled with. Granddaddy Tolkien is prolly the best representative.
Can imagine, but can't argue, I'm a Sci-fi guy. It's often dry and to the point, but when you get to the beautiful genre of Hard Sci-fi...

Nice, Sci Fi is my secondary genre. It tends to have better pacing and shorter prose definitly. Although I prefer Dune style soft Sci-Fi since its closer to fantasy lol.
 

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