Editorial Gold Box Retrospective at Joystiq

[Crooked Bee]

Tags: Curse of the Azure Bonds; Death Knights of Krynn; Gold Box; Pool of Radiance; Strategic Simulations, Inc.; Treasures of the Savage Frontier

Joystiq's Rowan Kaiser has written up a retrospective on SSI's "Gold Box" games. Here's a snip:

With all that in mind, it's difficult to differentiate between the various Gold Box games. The original, Pool of Radiance, is primitive, missing several interface improvements from its sequels – most notably a "Fix" command which makes healing between combat much less of an annoyance. The Buck Rogers games are obviously different thanks to their setting. Similarly, I've always found the Krynn games, with their Dragonlance setting, to have more personality than their more generic Forgotten Realms counterparts.

Also, play balance generally improved throughout the Gold Box games' run, meaning the later games are generally better than their prequels (and the latest games have better graphics). However, the AD&D rules also seem to play better through the early and middle portions of characters' careers (levels 5-14 or so), so the middle games in the each series, like Curse of the Azure Bonds and Death Knights of Krynn, are usually the best.

The Savage Frontier series was the latest series released, so it benefits from being the best of both worlds. They not only play smoother, but they also start including some measure of player character interaction. Your characters are not merely combat-focused, but will occasionally say things on their own, making them appear to be part of the story, helping lay the groundwork for Baldur's Gate and other BioWare games. The second game, Treasures of the Savage Frontier, even includes possible romance between one of your characters and a recruitable non-player character – one of the first games to include this now-common aspect of RPGs.

The Gold Box games didn't have the reputation of an Ultima or Wizardry in that era. They were considered too combat-heavy, too similar to one another, and they seemed to show that SSI was too content to rest on its laurels. There is merit to these criticisms: they can certainly be quite repetitive, and eleven similar games in five years is the definition of over-saturating the market. However, they also represented and influenced several of the future paths of the industry as a whole, in addition to PC RPGs more generally.

SSI was far ahead of its time in a business sense. The idea of making games using an official license is now extremely common. The sports game genre is built around licenses, in addition to games based on movies, comics, or even bands. License-based games existed before the Gold Box games, and SSI made other AD&D games using the license like Heroes of the Lance (1988) and Hillsfar (1989). But the Gold Box games demonstrated a level of quality in adapting the license to video games which is now seen as common. SSI's use of a single game engine has also become more and more common. (The Savage Frontier games weren't even developed by SSI.)

The Gold Box series also helped pioneer the subgenre of tactical role-playing games. They still fall under the more general category of RPG than a tactics game, since they lack the long-term strategic considerations of the genre which would become more common with games like X-COM (1993) or Final Fantasy Tactics (1997). However, their focus on space, movement, and tactical choice, with combat as the primary point of the game, make them very close relatives.​

Click here to read the retrospective in full.

 

[Infinitron]

Commenter "sciencestick" == MMXI?

First off SSI made some great games.

Second could Mr Kaiser please stop referring to the imaginary "RPG crash of 1995"?

Forget that there were actually a couple RPG's released that year, as well as popular expansions and compilations. There were enough VERY big ones released the year before (TES:Arena, tactical RPG Jagged Alliance, Realms of Arkana; that most RPG fans were still playing some of the biggest franchises that had just come out or catching up with re-released or expanded games...

The problem is that Mr Kaiser is clearly (based on past articles) using this "95 crash" canard to set up a fictional narrative wherein Bioware's slick but mediocre Fedex heavy RPG's swooped in and saved the RPG genre from this imaginary "crash". Despite being called out and corrected on it in past articles by people who actually were playing RPG's in the 90's and disccusing them on the usenet on a regular basis, he keeps pretending it happened. The only thing that happened in 95 was some increased discussion about "the death of RPG's" that was quickly forgotten when Daggerfall, Diablo and Ultima Online all came out in 96-97 well before Baldur's Gate in 1998.

Definitely smells like a Codexer.

I like how you're inventing my motivations here. Wait, no, I dislike that. That's a poor method of argument.

First, hey, I was playing, reading about, and discussing RPGs back then. The idea that RPGs had crashed lasted for years, well after many of the games you call classics. It seemed to be a regular theme in CGW's RPG columns, if you want to back and look it up.

Second, the games you're listing to call me wrong are, uh, wrong? Well, Arena and Jagged Alliance came out in 1994. And Realms of Arkania was, what's the word, terrible. Yes. Terrible. (I suppose they appealed to a certain very specific fan of the genre, but citing them as an example of continued mainstream appeal just doesn't work.)

And I'm doing this to make BioWare look good? seriously? Point me at where I say Baldur's Gate and BioWare saved RPGs or whatever it is you think I've said.. I'd thought it would be well-known by now that I'm a Fallout man through and through....

Kraut rage incoming.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

MMXI?

HEY SCIENCEDICK SHUT THE FUCK UP AND BOW DOWN TO KAISER

Fuck that loser.

 

[MMXI]

Commenter "sciencestick" == MMXI?

Nope. I wouldn't have used Diablo and Ultima Online as examples. I wouldn't be surprised if it was some poser who has read some of my posts here though. I tend to get lots of imitators these days.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

The original, Pool of Radiance, is primitive, missing several interface improvements from its sequels – most notably a "Fix" command which makes healing between combat much less of an annoyance.

Wait what? The original game misses the interface improvements later sequels made? Preposterous!

 

[MMXI]

And Realms of Arkania was, what's the word, terrible. Yes. Terrible.

:point:

...it's hard not to build some form of attachment since you roll them yourself, edit their looks, and can transfer them from one game to the next.

But that's exactly why I can't have any attachment to them.

:declining:

 

[Roguey]

I'm not going to click on a Rowan Kaiser article but sciencestick is kinda wrong, RPGs majorly declined by 1995. 1992 gave us Wiz and Ultima 7, Darklands, Ultima Underworld, and Clouds of Xeen. 93 had Serpent Isle, UU2, Darkside of Xeen, Betrayal at Krondor, and Shattered Lands. 1994 gave us... Star Trail and uh... Ultima 8? Arena (which is shit and only noteworthy for being the first ES)? Wake of the Ravager, the awful follow-up to Shattered Lands? Derivative fuck-all was released in 1995, that year was so empty that Jeff Vogel's Exile, as bad as it was, somehow managed to find a large enough audience to keep him in business. 1996 gave us Buggerfall (which nearly bankrupted Bethesda) and Diablo at the very end of the year. Big fucking deal, going from at least 5 noteworthy RPGs a year for two years to practically none for two is a death.

 

[Marsal]

Commenter "sciencestick" == MMXI?

Nope. I wouldn't have used Diablo and Ultima Online as examples. I wouldn't be surprised if it was some poser who has read some of my posts here though. I tend to get lots of imitators these days.

I bet it's that Wizardry faggot

 

[MMXI]

I'm not going to click on a Rowan Kaiser article but sciencestick is kinda wrong, RPGs majorly declined by 1995. 1992 gave us Wiz and Ultima 7, Darklands, Ultima Underworld, and Clouds of Xeen. 93 had Serpent Isle, UU2, Darkside of Xeen, Betrayal at Krondor, and Shattered Lands. 1994 gave us... Star Trail and uh... Ultima 8? Arena (which is shit and only noteworthy for being the first ES)? Wake of the Ravager, the awful follow-up to Shattered Lands? Derivative fuck-all was released in 1995, that year was so empty that Jeff Vogel's Exile, as bad as it was, somehow managed to find a large enough audience to keep him in business. 1996 gave us Buggerfall (which nearly bankrupted Bethesda) and Diablo at the very end of the year. Big fucking deal, going from at least 5 noteworthy RPGs a year for two years to practically none for two is a death.

Sort of. There was definitely a decline in quality among games released by larger publishers and developers. You could see this clearly in the output from SSI, specifically their final D&D games and their RPG output post D&D license. A lot of the other big players failed to release anything significant in this time, including Sir-Tech, New World Computing and Origin Systems (Pagan sucked). In many ways it was the end of a few eras, with the move of the D&D licence to Interplay, the (eventual) death of Dungeon Master style blobbers and the 3D shift of the traditional turn-based dungeon crawlers. These changes, along with the prevalence of CD-ROM drives (to fill up with fancy graphics and sound) to go with with the introduction of Windows 95, increased development time significantly and therefore drove up costs. In general, RPGs that started coming out in the later half of the 90s had significantly larger teams.

But there were quite a few "derivative" games (as you put it) that came out in the mid-90s, though mostly shareware titles from indies. Exile was merely one of them. But it's not exactly fair to call these games derivative when you'd probably count each Gold Box game after Pool of Radiance as an example of how good the early 90s was, or Serpent Isle when it was little more than a more linear and story focused Black Gate. And really, you might not like the Exile games, or Realmz, or Aethra Chronicles, but these games are still better RPGs than any of the Ultimas (as much as I like them).

But I think the point here is that he used the term "collapse". Would you describe the state of RPG development in the mid-90s as a collapse? I don't think I would. There was certainly a dip in quality, and thus a dip in quantity of good RPGs, but there was still plenty of games coming out and there wasn't exactly an abandonment of the genre by the old RPG studios (except perhaps SSI). In fact, many of them had started work on their next games. Mandate of Heaven was in the works by 1996 and Interplay were sorting out what they wanted to do with their newly acquired licence (Descent to Undermountain, unfortunately).

 

[Infinitron]

It's always been called a decline, not a collapse. But in the past you've disputed that as well.

 

[MMXI]

It's always been called a decline, not a collapse. But in the past you've disputed that as well.

And there was, in a way, like I stated. But I wouldn't call it "the collapse of RPGs in 1995" like Rowan Kaiser did.

 

[alx3apps]

it's difficult to differentiate between the various Gold Box games. [PoR bashing further]

Started reading on joystiq without glancing on summary until this line on page 3.

If you cannot clearly distinguish Pool of Radiance from say Curse or Secret - try to play them further than
"Oh, mouse doesn't work here, probably DOSBox issue, uninstall".

Can't say about other series, but Forgotten Realms goldboxes are really different from each other.

 

[commie]

There certainly was a dip between 1994-1996, brought on by the exponential growth of the Doom clones and the FPS in general(along with a smaller though equally marked growth in the new fangled RTS) genres that really tended to make RPG's somewhat 'archaic'. The survivors from the industry sorted themselves out for a time afterwards but they were always up against it, what with the genre being forever marginalized and Windows just making it ever easier for casuals to muscle in to the gaming sector. Finally the Xbox more than any other console really fucked things up for good. 1994-1996 was basically just a dip as studios scrambled to survive, reinvent themselves or work out an answer to the new climate, hardly a 'collapse'. A 'collapse' is what we've had for the last decade!

 

[Fowyr]

Pretty this. And then came Diablo and it was next BIG THING. Between click-click-click Diablo-clones and DM-clones I prefer latter.

 

[mondblut]

1994-1996 were bad years for RPGs. The bad years they ultimately never recovered from. All the good franchises lay frozen, tactics-heavy games and proper TB blobbers were gone, all we had was an occasional DM-wannabe additionally crippled by cumbersome move to gridless 3d.

 

[MMXI]

1994-1996 were bad years for RPGs.

If anything, mid-90s was a golden age of indie RPGs.

 

[mondblut]

1994-1996 were bad years for RPGs.

If anything, mid-90s was a golden age of indie RPGs.

The connection between the two must be obvious, no?

Problem is, most indie RPGs were shit. There were one or two which were (or had potential to be) actually great, and half a dozen or so of the "tolerable in a dry year, somewhat on par with the lower half of the mass of mediocre RPGs of yesteryear, the ones you'd never deign play back in the age when they were released" kind. Exile or Yendorian Tales, they were ok for 1995, yet in 1993 no one would touch them. This alone speaks volumes on how the mighty have fallen by 1995.

The opposite is also true: if indie games in a genre enjoy a surge of popularity, something must be very very wrong with the genre at the moment.

 

[alx3apps]

Kaiser says, that Curse was the best Forgotten Realms goldbox. And he's not alone, I saw such opinions here on codex.

But why? I really can't understand that.
Curse is a decent game, but PoR is so much better.
PoR has wilderness, Curse has five big dungeons and nothing besides them.
PoR has proper mobs placement, Curse has monkeys throwing stones in thieves hideout and solo drow lords with gryphons.
PoR has quests with choices (with spare consequences though), Curse has cutscenes about Nacacia that don't affect game.
So how Curse can be better than PoR?

 

[Fowyr]

Existence of story (and some read the book first) + fix command + better memorizing + not-the-first-level-party (some like it)
Personally, my most beloved Goldbox is PoR too.

 

[MMXI]

Problem is, most indie RPGs were shit.

Most of everything is shit. Most pre-1994 cRPGs were shit.

There were one or two which were (or had potential to be) actually great, and half a dozen or so of the "tolerable in a dry year, somewhat on par with the lower half of the mass of mediocre RPGs of yesteryear you'd never play back when they were released" kind. Exile or Yendorian Tales, they were ok for 1995, yet in 1993 no one would touch them. This alone speaks volumes on how the mighty have fallen by 1995.

See, this I don't agree with at all. You have to consider that in the early 90s people touched shitty Dungeon Master clones and the barely-RPG Ultima games. There were a lot of quality games in that period, especially D&D and Wizardry ones, but how many other ones would you consider to be top drawer? Even in the best years there weren't too many quality cRPGs. I think you're overstating how good the early 90s was.

And doing a quick search, you do (or did?) think highly of a few mid-90s indie/shareware RPGs. You said this about Realmz once:

Realmz was excellent. Much better than Exile, for example.

And you said these things about Aethra Chronicles:

Excellent game. Quite eyecandy for a shareware title (hi-res in like 1993), uses Rolemaster ruleset. Excellent tactical combat the goldbox way, somewhat marred by the fact slain enemies don't drop equipment. A party of 3 (protaginist and 2 henchmen) + up to 3 NPCs which must be paid according to their level, which keeps you permanently penniless. 2 endings. Highly recommended.

Aethra was one of the best. Combat engine rivaling the goldbox series, nice implementation of rolemaster ruleset, and even 2 endings (a rarity in those days).

They may pale in comparison to the Gold Box games, but only a handful of earlier games had better combat systems than these two. So are these the ones you were referring to when you said "one or two"?

The opposite is also true: if indie games in a genre enjoy a surge of popularity, something must be very very wrong with the genre at the moment.

Of course. In fact, the rise of independent/shareware cRPGs coincided with the jump to CD releases among mainstream publishers. When the big studios expanded their teams, switched to 3D and filled CDs with cut-scenes and music, a niche opened up beneath them. This was the point when the big studios started doing things that small groups or individuals couldn't, thus leaving space for Ultima clones, Gold Box style tactical games and even Might and Magic style turn-based blobbers. Indie games just weren't distinguishable when even mainstream titles were worked on by a handful of people in a six month period.

 

[Infinitron]

There certainly was a dip between 1994-1996, brought on by the exponential growth of the Doom clones and the FPS in general(along with a smaller though equally marked growth in the new fangled RTS) genres that really tended to make RPG's somewhat 'archaic'. The survivors from the industry sorted themselves out for a time afterwards but they were always up against it, what with the genre being forever marginalized and Windows just making it ever easier for casuals to muscle in to the gaming sector. Finally the Xbox more than any other console really fucked things up for good. 1994-1996 was basically just a dip as studios scrambled to survive, reinvent themselves or work out an answer to the new climate, hardly a 'collapse'. A 'collapse' is what we've had for the last decade!

It wasn't just FPS. You're forgetting the dreaded age of "multimedia CD-ROMs" and FMV.

 

[commie]

There certainly was a dip between 1994-1996, brought on by the exponential growth of the Doom clones and the FPS in general(along with a smaller though equally marked growth in the new fangled RTS) genres that really tended to make RPG's somewhat 'archaic'. The survivors from the industry sorted themselves out for a time afterwards but they were always up against it, what with the genre being forever marginalized and Windows just making it ever easier for casuals to muscle in to the gaming sector. Finally the Xbox more than any other console really fucked things up for good. 1994-1996 was basically just a dip as studios scrambled to survive, reinvent themselves or work out an answer to the new climate, hardly a 'collapse'. A 'collapse' is what we've had for the last decade!

It wasn't just FPS. You're forgetting the dreaded age of "multimedia CD-ROMs" and FMV.

The FMV thing was pretty short lived though and most people that bought the multimedia CD-Roms were parents fooled into thinking a haphazard collection of tiny low res videos wrapped in some third rate faux windows interface and cheap encyclopedia entries were examples of future of education in the digital age. Their effect on actual gaming was pretty minimal, being churned out for the most part by short lived companies that dies almost as soon as they appeared. Only a few adventure stalwarts really made something out of the FMV thing and they didn't really encroach on RPG's turf. The Myst devs didn't exactly stop churning out RPG's in favor of their baby and its sequels. Though yeah, FMV certainly didn't help, though I'm glad that some really went with it and used it great like Access.

 

[Infinitron]

Only a few adventure stalwarts really made something out of the FMV thing and they didn't really encroach on RPG's turf.

Well...

 

[commie]

Only a few adventure stalwarts really made something out of the FMV thing and they didn't really encroach on RPG's turf.

Well...

Oh yeah there was Stonekeep and LOL 2 and 3 and a few others, but really...out of the 50 or so RPG's of all kinds released each year, how many were really FMV? I'd say that apart from Myst which was a phenomenon, the vast bulk of sales were of Doom and C&C and Warcraft franchises back in the day. Shit, Links sold a shit ton in that era as well. Diablo alone did more damage that all the FMV stuff put together.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

What was so great about the Goldbox Games?