While watching a new video on YouTube from the noclip channel on the History of Bethesda Todd Howard and the other members of the Studio speak openly on how Morrowind sold better on the original Xbox than it did on PC and how this waw one of their deciding factors for going for more “console friendly features” which included full speech, and how the space limitations forced them to drop a big chunk of the speech from Oblivion where a lot of good ideas where never even scripted because of the lack of space for the voicefiles they would use.
Now the connection between dumbed down dialogues because of actual speech (and its on disc based limitations) is never mentioned as an excuse but it did remind me of a favorite quote I have heard of games such as Planescape Torment, Bloodlines, System Shock 2 and New Vegas as games that were “ahead of its time” in both their narratives complexities and intricate storylines somehow beign restricted by the technological restrictions of their time...
That is all fine and dandy but the thing is that the wonderful future these games represented just never came to pass
Few can question that Planescape Torment is not only the best writen RPG of all time but it’s dialogues are the best too or that Bloodines has the best spoken dialogues ever, or that New Vegas has the most C&C in any game
But given that the youngest of those games is more than 8 years old...where are those kinds of games now that the supposed future they represented is here?
To be honest other than games like Age of Decadence or AAA stuff like Witcher 3 I cannot remember more modern games even attempting to go that route.
Even games like Wasteland 2 which has good C&C (albeit with binary gamey choices) so so dialogues, are decidedly old school in their approach
With all these accesible tools for making new games like Unreal, Unity and even Crytech the technological side of the games should be covered so where are the deep storylines, memorable NPCs, imaginative settings and systems?
Now that technology seems to have reached the point where we no longer have to have fantastic descriptions but actually show it why has narration taken such a backseat?
Is making a beautiful looking game more of a priority than a good story?
Memorable well writen characters like Jack from Bloodines, Fall from Grace from Planescape Torment, Shodan from System Shock 2 or Cesar from New Vegas were not memorable because of the size of their tits, or their visual appearance but rather by the way they were written and voice acted
Characters like the Bloody Baron from Witcher 3; which are deep, interesting and memorable with a distinct personality and that actually stayed with me long after the PC was turned off and I was at working thinking on them are so rare I would say they are almost extinct
I enjoy a mindless game of Battlefield as much as anybody else or the almost soothingly simple way Skyrim has for questing, hiking around or collecting things for crafting...but in a way after I play a game like New Vegas or start a replay of Planescape Torment I kind of feel cheated that the medium seems to have taken such a nosedive in the quality of their writing
I don’t expect every game to be a Torment but having more than 2 3 deep well writen game a decade would be more than welcome
Now the connection between dumbed down dialogues because of actual speech (and its on disc based limitations) is never mentioned as an excuse but it did remind me of a favorite quote I have heard of games such as Planescape Torment, Bloodlines, System Shock 2 and New Vegas as games that were “ahead of its time” in both their narratives complexities and intricate storylines somehow beign restricted by the technological restrictions of their time...
That is all fine and dandy but the thing is that the wonderful future these games represented just never came to pass
Few can question that Planescape Torment is not only the best writen RPG of all time but it’s dialogues are the best too or that Bloodines has the best spoken dialogues ever, or that New Vegas has the most C&C in any game
But given that the youngest of those games is more than 8 years old...where are those kinds of games now that the supposed future they represented is here?
To be honest other than games like Age of Decadence or AAA stuff like Witcher 3 I cannot remember more modern games even attempting to go that route.
Even games like Wasteland 2 which has good C&C (albeit with binary gamey choices) so so dialogues, are decidedly old school in their approach
With all these accesible tools for making new games like Unreal, Unity and even Crytech the technological side of the games should be covered so where are the deep storylines, memorable NPCs, imaginative settings and systems?
Now that technology seems to have reached the point where we no longer have to have fantastic descriptions but actually show it why has narration taken such a backseat?
Is making a beautiful looking game more of a priority than a good story?
Memorable well writen characters like Jack from Bloodines, Fall from Grace from Planescape Torment, Shodan from System Shock 2 or Cesar from New Vegas were not memorable because of the size of their tits, or their visual appearance but rather by the way they were written and voice acted
Characters like the Bloody Baron from Witcher 3; which are deep, interesting and memorable with a distinct personality and that actually stayed with me long after the PC was turned off and I was at working thinking on them are so rare I would say they are almost extinct
I enjoy a mindless game of Battlefield as much as anybody else or the almost soothingly simple way Skyrim has for questing, hiking around or collecting things for crafting...but in a way after I play a game like New Vegas or start a replay of Planescape Torment I kind of feel cheated that the medium seems to have taken such a nosedive in the quality of their writing
I don’t expect every game to be a Torment but having more than 2 3 deep well writen game a decade would be more than welcome