Dragon Age: Inquisition Pre-Release Thread

[DalekFlay]

They just compared numbers from best selling shooters and then went for "the FP makes people "immersed" into teh game world!!!" logic, forgetting that what really immerses someone is a well built game world, well made game - not the PoV itself.

Oh come now, you can't discount the added "IMERSHUN!" effect of walking through the game world in first-person. There are plenty of reasons to prefer isometric and plenty of reasons to dislike first-person, but to act like first-person has no benefits of any kinds makes your argument seem manufactured and edgy. And I really fucking doubt Might and Magic was first-person for massive mainstream acceptance reasons.

You can make a great first-person RPG and you can make a shitty isometric one, and vice-versa, all along the scale. Different games, different styles, apples and fucking oranges. I feel bad for you guys that you dismiss an entire perspective and missed classics like Deus Ex, Thief and Morrowind. Maybe you feel bad for me missing combo-hack-n-slash Devil May Cry style games, which I can't stand. No one has to play everything, I get that.

Still, stop with the pretentious "all first-person is decline" bullshit.

 

[Infinitron]

Might & Magic was first person because it was a Wizardry clone. The real question is why Wizardry, way back in 1981, decided to go first person. Send Andrew Greenberg an email and ask him!

 

[Rake]

Oh come now, you can't discount the added "IMERSHUN!" effect of walking through the game world in first-person.

I want to answer to that only, because i don't realy disagree with the rest of your post. But for me FPP is the easiest way to kill my immersion. In isometric games, my imagination paints over the game and fills the blanks. So i can be easily immersed, similar with a book.
In FPP (besides that you are forced as a dev to have no abstruction whatsoever because a city with 20 pesrons(cough..TES..cough..) looks ridiculous) the artificiality of the environment and characters are more "in your face", and at least for me thows you straight in the uncanny valley. And strangely, the better graphics become, the problem remains the same or even gets worse.

 

[Sceptic]

Might & Magic was first person because it was a Wizardry clone. The real question is why Wizardry, way back in 1981, decided to go first person.

CRPG Addict did a pretty interesting blog post about this. It's pretty clear that Wizardry was "inspired" (well, outright plagiarized in parts) the old mainframe dnd. That had a first person wireframe view.

I don't know if Garriott had played dnd or any of its variants as well, but he went for first person view in the dungeons in Akalabeth, and that was before Wizardry as well.

 

[Infinitron]

It's pretty clear that Wizardry was "inspired" (well, outright plagiarized in parts) the old mainframe dnd. That had a first person wireframe view..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dnd_(video_game)

The game presents players with an overhead view of the dungeon and plays much like nethack

Perhaps you're referring to some other mainframe game.

 

[Infinitron]

It's pretty clear that Wizardry was "inspired" (well, outright plagiarized in parts) the old mainframe dnd. That had a first person wireframe view..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dnd_(video_game)

The game presents players with an overhead view of the dungeon and plays much like nethack

Perhaps you're referring to some other mainframe game.

And what a coincidence, the CRPGAddict wrote a blog post about that game just a week ago: crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2013/10/game-12-oubliette-1977.html

There's even a comment by Corey Cole.

 

[DalekFlay]

In isometric games, my imagination paints over the game and fills the blanks. So i can be easily immersed, similar with a book.
In FPP (besides that you are forced as a dev to have no abstruction whatsoever because a city with 20 pesrons(cough..TES..cough..) looks ridiculous) the artificiality of the environment and characters are more "in your face", and at least for me thows you straight in the uncanny valley. And strangely, the better graphics become, the problem remains the same or even gets worse.

I can understand that. My imagination works for this purpose in first-person, but I could see it being a tough hurdle for others.

 

[hiver]

They just compared numbers from best selling shooters and then went for "the FP makes people "immersed" into teh game world!!!" logic, forgetting that what really immerses someone is a well built game world, well made game - not the PoV itself.

Still, stop with the pretentious "all first-person is decline" bullshit.

You misunderstood my post, then, apparently willfully, disregarded mine and Rakes exchange after it.

Yes, youre one of those FP faggots .. err.. people. It wasnt difficult to deduce it from your question to Rake above. But thats so because youre earliest great experiences in gaming were games that used FP. Am i not correct? Which was the first game that really "hit you"?

Oh come now, you can't discount the added "IMERSHUN!" effect of walking through the game world in first-person.

I just did. And ill repeat: immersion can only be achieved by creating a great game. Great setting, great characters, great dialogue, great mechanics, great quests, great combat encounter design and all the rest. If not exactly great in every department then good.
Thats what achieves the ultimate gestalt effect that actually immerses people into the game.

but to act like first-person has no benefits of any kinds makes your argument seem manufactured and edgy

I clearly numbered some examples where FP does make sense. Action games, shooters, etc. Forcing FP into true (tm) RPG games is as much useful as forcing Isometric into shooters would be.
Albeit, it is useful for the publishers looking to... make their games more... ah... accessible.

You can make a great first-person RPG and you can make a shitty isometric one, and vice-versa, all along the scale.

Great first person RPG?

hmm... hmm... :scratches head.... :scratches ass: .... Nope. I dont see any. In fact - i dont see a single one.

I feel bad for you guys that you dismiss an entire perspective and missed classics like Deus Ex, Thief and Morrowind.

- DeusX is a hybrid shooter- actionRPG game, not an RPG.
- Thief? RPG? first time i hear that one.
- Morrowind is an actionRPG that i played from third person.


In the end, nobody can deny that FP view forces the game design to spend way too much resources of graphikz - while it works against using any sort of deeper art style to sidestep that, as Isometric games can do.
FP demand for "realism" in the graphical-visual department is simply too large.

And that doesnt work well with RPG games.
-edit- Case in point: History of humankind.

Might & Magic was first person because it was a Wizardry clone. The real question is why Wizardry, way back in 1981, decided to go first person.

CRPG Addict did a pretty interesting blog post about this. It's pretty clear that Wizardry was "inspired" (well, outright plagiarized in parts) the old mainframe dnd. That had a first person wireframe view.

I don't know if Garriott had played dnd or any of its variants as well, but he went for first person view in the dungeons in Akalabeth, and that was before Wizardry as well.

Great Age of Experimentation.

 

[DalekFlay]

Yes, youre one of those FP faggots .. err.. people. It wasnt difficult to deduce it from your question to Rake above. But thats so because youre earliest great experiences in gaming were games that used FP. Am i not correct? Which was the first game that really "hit you"?

My earliest gaming experiences were either NES platformers or PC adventure games like Space Quest 3, so no first-person there. I did start playing FPS games when Dark Forces and Doom 2 came out, but I also played RPGs as early as Betrayal at Krondor. My first big "wow RPGs are amazing!" experience was Fallout, which was isometric.

Simple point of fact is I like various styles and genres, a talent that seems to elude a lot of the Codex.

Great first person RPG?

hmm... hmm... :scratches head.... :scratches ass: .... Nope. I dont see any. In fact - i dont see a single one.

- DeusX is a hybrid shooter- actionRPG game, not an RPG.
- Thief? RPG? first time i hear that one.
- Morrowind is an actionRPG that i played from third person.

Thief and Deus Ex were mentioned because the other person in this thread said he disliked all FPP games, not just RPGs. If you're saying only RPGs don't work in FPP, and only count "true" RPGs as RPGs in this context, then this becomes one of those masturbatory arguments about WHAT IS AN RPG? that I have zero interest in participating in.

Wizardry, Might and Magic, Lands of Lore, Morrowind and on down the line are good non-hybrid first-person RPGs.

In the end, nobody can deny that FP view forces the game design to spend way too much resources of graphikz - while it works against using any sort of deeper art style to sidestep that, as Isometric games can do.
FP demand for "realism" in the graphical-visual department is simply too large.

And that doesnt work well with RPG games.

This just reeks of you preferring one art or presentation style over the other and pretending your taste is some kind of larger objective point about what works for the genre. Fallout's graphics took a ton of time and art design effort I assure you, and in the end presentation matters pretty similarly for both styles.

 

[tuluse]

Simple point of fact is I like various styles and genres, a talent that seems to elude a lot of the Codex.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=8869

Top 10 14 RPGs contain 4 games which are played primarily in first person. So you should stop generalizing.

 

[DalekFlay]

Top 10 14 RPGs contain 4 games which are played primarily in first person. So you should stop generalizing.

I didn't mean "a lot of" to imply "majority of."

 

[hiver]

Let me educate you a bit there. A TRUE tm RPG is a game where character skills override player skills.
Therefore, for example, Fallout is a TRUE tm RPG while Morrowind is not.

This just reeks of you preferring one art or presentation style over the other and pretending your taste is some kind of larger objective point about what works for the genre. Fallout's graphics took a ton of time and art design effort I assure you, and in the end presentation matters pretty similarly for both styles.

It doesnt reek. It smells. Its an exquisite aroma of fresh young pussy dew on flowers of incline in the field of awesome stuff.

I explained my point and supported it with some actual arguments.
Either return the favor or dont speak at all - especially not with cheap ad hominems as only thing you can come up with.

Fallout's graphics took a ton of time and art design effort I assure you, and in the end presentation matters pretty similarly for both styles.

Fallout graphics took 100+ million dollars and team of 200+ devs to make?
And i thought it took

• Leonard Boyarsky - art director, lead artist, original game design
• Jason Anderson - lead technical artist, original game design
• Gary Platner - lead artist
• Michael Dean - artist
• Sharon Shellman - artist
• Eddie Rainwater - artist
• Scott Rodenhizer - artist, clay modeller

And Tim Cain and many others working on the game in their free time (for zero dollars) for months because Interplay didnt think that game was a good idea.

My first big "wow RPGs are amazing!" experience was Fallout, which was isometric.

Traitor.

 

[Rake]

Top 10 14 RPGs contain 4 games which are played primarily in first person. So you should stop generalizing.

I didn't mean "a lot of" to imply "majority of."

Still too much. Except myself and maybe surf solar i don't know anyone else that finds non-isometric games distasteful. Hiver came to me as a surprise. Propably there are some others as well, but i don't think they are more than those who are "isometric view is boring" (on the Codex, outside i know for sure that the "FPP or i cannot immerse myself" crowd is huge)

 

[Delterius]

"FPP or i cannot immerse myself"

Personally, this isn't the issue.

"i cannot immerse myself"

This is.

Immersion is a complete non-argument. Its a veiled way of saying that something isn't up to your taste while pretending that its an objective flaw. Not that I'm accusing you or anything, since you already admitted that you merely prefer the top down view, but by God does this word bring me back flashbacks. Back in the BSN just about anything is unimmersive. You'd think that people expect BioWare to ship games with a bucket of water while Gaider personally drowns every single buyer with it.

It is very important that the devs build atmosphere, but until we get the holodeck Immersion will be a two-sided deal.

That said, I think first person really shines when there's a point to be made about the player's inability to see everything. Such as horror games.

 

[Crooked Bee]

The real question is why Wizardry, way back in 1981, decided to go first person.

Robert Woodhead kinda answered that in our interview, when I asked him about the PLATO games that he and Greenberg had played:

Prior to your work on Wizardry, you and Andrew were both active on the PLATO network. What motivated you to transform PLATO's multiplayer party-based dungeon crawlers such as Oubliette into a unique single player game?

We were very interested in the question of how much of those games -- which ran on a CDC 6600 supercomputer -- could be crammed into a tiny little Apple II.​

 

[Infinitron]

Yeah, direct the question at the developer of Oubliette instead.

 

[Athelas]

There's plenty of middle ground between 'I can't play anything other than isometric' and 'Zomg, first person so immershuv!'. I don't really like the first person perspective myself, but it doesn't really harm my enjoyment when I'm playing something like Thief that is good in every other respect. And really, no mention of the 3rd person view? Some games have a 3rd person camera that can scale to an isometric view, which is always great.

 

[Rake]

There's plenty of middle ground between 'I can't play anything other than isometric' and 'Zomg, first person so immershuv!'. I don't really like the first person perspective myself, but it doesn't really harm my enjoyment when I'm playing something like Thief that is good in every other respect. And really, no mention of the 3rd person view? Some games have a 3rd person camera that can scale to an isometric view, which is always great.

My problem with FPP/3POTS view is that i don't like the gameplay, not an immersion one.(i can play a game just fine without being "immersed" in it. And yes, if 3P can scale far enough i have no problem. As i said managed to finish the shit that was DA2, while i didn't manage better games like F:NV and Witcher2.

 

[hiver]

FP works very well for Thief.
A thief is supposed to have a limited view of his surroundings, after all.
And it works well for other types of games but it does not for RPGs.

Do i need to repeat myself several more times?

Third person PoV was mentioned.

 

[Athelas]

So would you call the Dragon Age games good RPG's? They have an isometric view, after all. There's a lot more to an RPG than a viewpoint. Unless you find certain perspectives literally unplayable - which is a valid issue to have.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

Imagine DAO with TPS view (or play the console versions). See how much shittier it feels.

 

[DalekFlay]

Let me educate you a bit there. A TRUE tm RPG is a game where character skills override player skills.
Therefore, for example, Fallout is a TRUE tm RPG while Morrowind is not.

Yes, yes, I know all about such a perspective on WHAT AN RPG IS!!!

Even if we take your strict view of what an RPG is there is no reason a FPP RPG cannot be just as good as TPP. Morrowind itself uses stats to dictate combat outcomes, stealth, blocking, speed and whatever else. Other than having the amazing dexterous ability to place the cursor in the general direction of the enemy, something you do in any isometric game, I don't see how it takes any more skill-over-stats than a RtWP game.

Unless we're now going to veer into TURN BASED OR GO HOME territory.

 

[Rake]

So would you call the Dragon Age games good RPG's?

As i said managed to finish the shit that was DA2, while i didn't manage better games like F:NV and Witcher2.

They have an isometric view, after all. There's a lot more to an RPG than a viewpoint.

Agreed.

while i didn't manage better games like F:NV and Witcher2.

Unless you find certain perspectives literally unplayable - which is a valid issue to have.

Pretty much. It just is completely unfun and tedious to play it. I managed to finish only KOTOR2 and VtM:B, but even if i liked them and i consider them among the best RPGs i have played, i immidiatly uninstalled them and i have never replayed them.
At some point, even if you can recognise something as a good game, if you are not having fun/a good time playing it, what's the point?

Imagine DAO with TPS view (or play the console versions). See how much shittier it feels.

No thanks. Try it for me and tell me. I'll believe you.


Also how did the DA discusion and a random quote from DalekFlay and me about FP and isometric turned to 2 pages of people jumping in defence of one viepoint or the other when it's clear that,preference aside, both have their uses depending on the kind of game you want to make? The only case i believe isometric is objectively better is if you want to have a tactical RPG where you have more than one characters. In that case like Hiver said FPP is too restrictive and doesn't offer much. And it IS excpensive.

Spoiler

Not that most of you aren't autists, but i still

 

[hiver]

So would you call the Dragon Age games good RPG's?

You want a fist in the face?

They have an isometric view, after all.

Who? What? Where?

You mean the firts game had a quasi "isometric" pov and was the better game then its sequel which did not, as far as i know and i never touched the turd.

There's a lot more to an RPG than a viewpoint.

Im going to kick your ass.

read my last few godamn posts instead of one sentence!!!

Let me educate you a bit there. A TRUE tm RPG is a game where character skills override player skills.
Therefore, for example, Fallout is a TRUE tm RPG while Morrowind is not.

Yes, yes, I know all about such a perspective on WHAT AN RPG IS!!!

I doubt it.

Even if we take your strict view of what an RPG is there is no reason a FPP RPG cannot be just as good as TPP.

Third person? We are talking about Cavalier Oblique PoV that so many call "isometric".
And we already concluded there is no single good RPG using FP.

Morrowind itself uses stats to dictate combat outcomes, stealth, blocking, speed and whatever else. Other than having the amazing dexterous ability to place the cursor in the general direction of the enemy, something you do in any isometric game, I don't see how it takes any more skill-over-stats than a RtWP game.

It uses stats but player skill can and does override them.
You dont understand the distinction.

For example, in a fight with some enemy - i, despite my lack of skill with a sword, can still win the combat using a sword (lets just imagine thats the only weapon i can find) through my own skill of dodging, kiting and hitting that motherfucker much more times then it would otherwise be possible.
I can use the bow and arrows, even with no or very low skill in it, jump on some rock and then just shoot at the motherfucker for as long as i have arrows.
Magic is the same. (though i cannot have higher level spells ofcourse)

All that being said, Morrowind - who is much more dependent on character skills then later TES games, is a better RPG game then its sequels. Nobody can deny that. Though it is an action RPG, not a True-tm RPG.
So, you see.

Unless we're now going to veer into TURN BASED OR GO HOME territory.

We may as well. Go home.

 

[Roguey]

Imagine DAO with TPS view (or play the console versions). See how much shittier it feels.

It plays just fine.