Interview Feargus and friends discuss the future of RPGs @ 1UP

[DarkUnderlord]

Tags: Feargus Urquhart; Obsidian Entertainment

<a href="http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3176786">1UP have a round table</a> with Bill Roper (Cryptic Studios), Alan Miranda (Ossian Studios), Marcin Iwinski (CD Projekt) and Feargus Urquhart (Obsidian Entertainment) about the future of RPGs:
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<blockquote>Dragon Age: Origins is the biggest singleplayer role-playing game release of the season. It's also the only big-budget singleplayer RPG coming out this season. The RPG is one of the oldest genres in gaming, but big releases are becoming rarer each year.</blockquote>
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They only just noticed that now?
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<blockquote>AM: I think the indie-RPG scene can fill in the "old school" RPG niche, where you won't be expected to have full VO, and hence have as much dialogue as you want; where you can have that 100-plus hours of gameplay; or where you don't need to pay for a bleeding-edge graphical engine to ensure maximum cinematic effect. You can still have fun without those things. For example, I tried out the Eschalon: Book 1 demo a while back and had fun with it. It had good exploration and world interactivity.
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[...]
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<b>1UP: Do developers need to make RPGs in settings other than fantasy or sci-fi?</b> BR: Oh, yes! I think that the success of BioShock and Fallout 3 show that, unless you're putting postapocalyptic into the sci-fi category. And games like the Silent Hill series show the blockbuster potential of horror.</blockquote>
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There's lots more mentioned.
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Thanks <b>mediocrepoet</b>!

 

[circ]

Yes Bill.. Post-apoc is sci-fi. Surprise!

 

[Darth Roxor]

The gameplay mechanics and controls have become more sophisticated

 

[Ch1ef]

Marcin Iwinski
Cofounder, CD Projekt
Facet: European RPGs

Oh. Really?

 

[Lumpy]

Yes Bill.. Post-apoc is sci-fi. Surprise!

Post apoc is sci fi? Wat?

 

[Xor]

Why is bioshock considered an RPG? No, seriously. Why?

 

[Secretninja]

You play the role of a child saver or child murderer. You have choices and consequences of having child blood or not. This embodies role playing.

 

[SerratedBiz]

where you won't be expected to have full VO, and hence have as much dialogue as you want;

Who was the fucktard that even suggested this in the first place? It started with KOTOR, didn't it? Whoever came up with the idea that putting in voice for everything just so people have to click twice as much once they finish reading and want to select a response? I mean, it's costly, uses up tons of disk space, wastes shitloads of development time, who the fuck would want full VO in their game?

where you can have that 100-plus hours of gameplay; You can still have fun without those things.

100 hours of gameplay my ass, I've never had a CRPG use up a 100 hours of gameplay except for Wizardry 8, and that sure as shit didn't have full VO and didn't need it.

or where you don't need to pay for a bleeding-edge graphical engine to ensure maximum cinematic effect.

Again, who the hell asked for this in the first place? Did anyone, at any point in time, actually say, "you know, this RPG is the worse game I've ever played, but the graphics were good so I actually enjoyed it and found it was a good game overall"? O WAIT.

Will someone just tell them it was really funny but the joke's already over so can we please go back to making decent games?

 

[Joe Krow]

Why is bioshock considered an RPG? No, seriously. Why?

The box say.

 

[Emotional Vampire]

Did... did he just say that Silent Hill is an RPG?

 

[Grunker]

Did... did he just say that Silent Hill is an RPG?

There's plenty in that article to make fun of legitimately. We don't have to invent our own.

Too easy, man. He was talking about which criteria can make a succesful games. Can a horror-setting be succesful? Yes, look at Silent Hill. If they're succesful for other games, why not RPG?

 

[Emotional Vampire]

Brilliant reasoning right there. Why not make cars fly? It was successful for planes.

 

[Grunker]

Brilliant reasoning right there. Why not make cars fly? It was successful for planes.

Damn, Emo, you're telling me you can't compare apples and oranges and then do it yourself? Fuck man, you're intelligent. If you're gonna kick me, kick me hard. Not this sissy-shit.

RPGs can, of course handle, any setting. So if people dig horror, there's no reason a horror-RPG couldn't work.

 

[Shannow]

Well, AoD is PA and it is fantasy, but usually PA is sci-fi.

Yes Bill.. Post-apoc is sci-fi. Surprise!

Post apoc is sci fi? Wat?

Yes.

 

[Rohit_N]

You should have had Brian Mitsoda or the Age of Decadence guy because this is a genre going straight to the Indie studios

 

[Jim Cojones]

In the late '90s we were all -- or at least I was -- playing the great PC RPGs, not thinking much about any other platforms. Baldur's Gate, Fallout, Planescape: Torment -- if you look at them right now, they do look retro; the interface seems quite cumbersome

What's so cumbersome about their interface? It is simple point-and-click, probably the most intuitive kind of interface (if you don't believe, try to teach someone not familiar with gaming to play a point-and-click game and any other kind of game) and it is handled in such manner that you can get to any option with a one - two clicks, in opposite to the modern games where interface element visible on screen must be minimalistic in order to deliver "immersion" so you spend your time wandering which of the small circles in the corner of the screen will get you to the character screen in The Witcher. Or when you're forced to remember keyboard shortcuts in order to be able to play - you'd think that clicking "I" will take you to the inventory screen in Fallout 3? No, it's "Tab" which shows you the PIP-Boy screen and then you are able to find the proper icon. Or, IIRC, "U" for character screen in ME, which BTW has much more cumbersome inventory screen than Baldur's Gate.

The single-player RPG market certainly hasn't diminished, even in the face of the massive popularity of MMORPGs. Games like BioShock, Fallout 3, and Fable 2 proved this on the consoles over the past year.

Proof of RPGs' popularity: a shooter, an RPG-shooter hybrid and an action adventure with stats.

However, I've never looked at piracy as you losing out on a sale. If they were going to pirate your game, they are going to do it -- just like with movies and music. You do need to make some effort to weed out the casual pirates, but no matter how hard you make it to pirate a game -- or any other kind of media like a game -- someone is going to get their hands on it without paying.

Wow, someone from the industry who's not extremely butthurt because of piracy and don't blame it as a main factor why he hasn't sold 5 times more copies? Something new.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Europe, or should I say Germany -- being the major European RPG market for PC -- is still home to fans of the hardcore role-playing experience. Looking at the games originating from Germany, you can clearly see that gamers are much more forgiving than in the U.K. or U.S. The interface does not have to be perfect, and the learning curve can be steep. As long as the core RPG elements are good, the game will sell.

This is definitely not the case in the U.S., where gamers are less hardcore and more demanding in terms of the interface, learning curve, and mechanics. The proof is really in the sales -- there are a number of great German RPGs performing very well in Germany and Eastern Europe but failing in the U.S.

Kwa is to be blamed?

 

[Phelot]

Who was the fucktard that even suggested this in the first place? It started with KOTOR, didn't it? Whoever came up with the idea that putting in voice for everything just so people have to click twice as much once they finish reading and want to select a response? I mean, it's costly, uses up tons of disk space, wastes shitloads of development time, who the fuck would want full VO in their game?

I agree with this fine paragraph.

Seriously though, VO for everything is a bad idea. First off, there's a good chance that whatever the character is talking about isn't interesting. Playing DA and having to listen to these morons talk about this and that and they talk so fucking slow and I just want to quickly skim through it, but of course there's no captions and no dialogue box to review stuff. It's just a bad idea to have in a game. You don't see movies with tediously long winded, hours upon hours of useless banter. Nor do people read books and need to voice out in their head every character's dialogue as if they're actually in the room talking.

I have an imagination. I can see a character and imagine what their voice might sound like and you know what? I often times come up with better voices then what would have been used by a voice actor. It's nice to have the main characters have a few lines spoken just to give you an idea about what they sound like, what kind of tone they use. I can fill in the rest.

 

[Grunker]

Who was the fucktard that even suggested this in the first place? It started with KOTOR, didn't it? Whoever came up with the idea that putting in voice for everything just so people have to click twice as much once they finish reading and want to select a response? I mean, it's costly, uses up tons of disk space, wastes shitloads of development time, who the fuck would want full VO in their game?

I agree with this fine paragraph.

Seriously though, VO for everything is a bad idea. First off, there's a good chance that whatever the character is talking about isn't interesting. Playing DA and having to listen to these morons talk about this and that and they talk so fucking slow and I just want to quickly skim through it, but of course there's no captions and no dialogue box to review stuff. It's just a bad idea to have in a game. You don't see movies with tediously long winded, hours upon hours of useless banter. Nor do people read books and need to voice out in their head every character's dialogue as if they're actually in the room talking.

I have an imagination. I can see a character and imagine what their voice might sound like and you know what? I often times come up with better voices then what would have been used by a voice actor. It's nice to have the main characters have a few lines spoken just to give you an idea about what they sound like, what kind of tone they use. I can fill in the rest.

Bloodlines had it, and it was pretty fucking awesome.

 

[Zeus]

Why is bioshock considered an RPG? No, seriously. Why?

Did he say that? I thought he was just mentioning BioShock -- along with Silent Hill -- to illustrate the success of settings other than Sci-Fi and Fantasy.

Nobody's arguing Silent Hill is an RPG.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I've never had a CRPG use up a 100 hours of gameplay except for Wizardry 8, and that sure as shit didn't have full VO

Actually, it did

 

[Gragt]

Bloodlines had it, and it was pretty fucking awesome.

Most dialogs in Bloodlines were good, interesting or at least full of flavour. The not-so-important stuff usualy got to the point very fast as well. I prefer full-text in my CRPG but VO done well can really add a lot. Else the solution of Mask of the Betrayer is also nice, with text for most dialogs and voice for the important characters and dialogs.

KotOR and Jade Empire sure had their lot of filler and uninteresting dialog with full VO. I used to sit through all of it but if I replay them I just skip most lines and read them instead. From what I read it seems they didn't really improve that in DA and that's too bad.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I think full VO in an RPG can add quite a bit if the voice acting is done well and you can actually listen to it. When you've got kids screaming and dogs fighting in the background - it's a lot nicer to have text that you can re-read or finish reading after having to get up in the middle of it instead of being stuck either hearing it or being SOL. The thing is, I don't like having both text and voice work together - where they're speaking the same lines that you're reading because I'll generally just ignore the voices altogether. Besides that, there's nothing worse than reading most things and then hearing the actor's voice for whichever part and finding that it totally doesn't mesh with what you'd been thinking for the entire game. I think each game should pick one way or the other.

Whatever else may be thought of it, Dragon Age did pick a nice middle ground with text being off by default though it can be turned on. You can bring up the dialog text after the fact through the menus even if you have text turned off so you can check afterwards if you did happen to miss something. This still doesn't help much if you have to make a decision about what someone just said since you can't access the menu from a dialog but it's not bad.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

The actual discussion was as boring as it gets, but some comments are priceless. Like this one :

FF7 was the last truly great RPG, it came at the climax of the genre and forever after RPGs have only gotten worse for the sake of 'innovation'

 

[Xor]

Fuck, FF7 isn't even good for a JRPG.