I want an interesting story and an immersive world, preferably written by Chris Avellone, Dave Maldonado, and the rest of Team Torment who were involved with the writing. They are the only folks to my knowledge who have ever pulled off a good story in a cRPG. So yes, Obsidian should be doing Fallout 3.
Obsidian, who have what, two lacklustre sequels to Bioware games that should have been Slam Dunks! given the licenses and (undeserved) reputation of their predecessors? I'll freely admit there's a lot of talent over there, but something just isn't going quite right. It's not even as though they are aiming too high and falling short a la Troika or Pirahna Bytes, they're just not putting anything special on the market.
There is absolutely no chance of Bethesda creating a worthy succesor to the Fallout series.
On that we agree. But...
After that, I would vote for a movable camera like in Black and White if at all possible.
How is the camera in Black and White any different to any other "top down" 3D game, aside from the gimmickry they used to replace a more workable system? It's an unfortunate choice of example.
If that is not possible then I would vote for either a first person or a near first person (closeup and very forward angled camera) perspective. A distant 3rd person perspective as in all the infinity engine games was too lacking in immersiveness. I just didn't feel 'there' or pulled in enough.
I wouldn't be so hasty to attribute the "lack of immersiveness" of the Infinity Engine series. As you say yourself, Planescape: Torment is one of about four games you consider to be immersive. Given that all other IE games have more in common with an RTS than an RPG, I'd be looking at other reasons why the games didn't pull you in. And just as a quick poser - do you really have to be 'there'?
As far as TB vs. RT/RTwP. I'd definitely side with RTwP as long as it has the auto-pause per turn feature that PS:T had (did BG and IWD2 have it too?). Auto-pause per turn is basically the same play style of TB except with the option to turn it off for easy, non-strategic fighting where it just slows down what might otherwise be an enjoyable fighting sequence.
/me hulks out.
Fuck that. There are a myriad of differences between a true turn-based system and auto-pausing RT systems. Since your major gripe is that simple fights can be tiresome with turn-based gameplay, then listen the fuck up, because I have a more generic solution than the fucked up kludgefest that is RTwP. Get rid of easy, non-tactical fights. It's fucking simple. And there are a multitude of ways you can achieve it. Fuck, even just a more elegant hack would do me. Simultaneous enemy movement. An "automate turn" button. Give it to me. Anything but the mindless non-challenge that fucking Bioware have been spewing forth from their hive-ridden cancerous cocks into the waiting mouths of non-discerning gamers for years.
The near-infinite joy of machine gunning a whole schoolyard full of children for instance is greatly lessened in a turn-based only game. Although, to its credit, the Fallout series were the only games I can recall playing that have let me gratuitously gun down children to my heart's content.
Use burst mode or fucking grenades. Fairy.
And once you're done with the kids, let me at 'em while they're still warm. And when I'm done, believe me it won't take long because christ I'm hard just thinking about it, I'll ask you to explain how a machinegun works in your typical RTwP game.
Ahem.
Anyway.
Actually that is not at all what it means. For instance, neither Oblivion nor any other Bethesda game has ever been immersive in any way whatsoever except graphically. Graphics are only a limited part of what immersion is supposed to be about. Not to say that VR and superbly designed and finely textured and bump mapped graphics cannot immerse you to a degree. But graphics are just the beginning.
We're back to agreeing. Almost. I'd argue that the technical quality of graphics has sweet fuck all to do with immersion. A fireball in doom is something like a 16x16 pixel bitmap in 8-bit colour, and you better believe I still physically duck and dodge in my chair as they fly past me. The graphical component of immersion is not about
impressing the player with plastic, bump mapped Mattel horsehit, it's simply about avoiding anything the player's mind will subconsciously
reject.
The term 'immersion' in a video game actually refers to a (admittedly subjective) sense of actually existing in a world. If you haven't played the right games you may only know what I am referring to from certain books or even films that have drawn you in so well into their world that you felt a part of it. Like you were really in that fictional world for a time. It really is hard to explain if you haven't experienced it, but you probably have. That is what people are talking about when they talk about immersion in a video game.
I realize that it has become a buzzword of sorts that all the devs want to use, but it really does have a meaning, and a useful one at that.
Well, sort of. Anything that has been hijacked as a buzzword basically becomes useless in legitimate conversation. I get the original intent behind the word, but I'm not naive enough to think it means anything other than "I like this game" or even "I'm led to believe I like this game."
It really cannot be a bad thing, any more than good graphics can be.
What constitutes "good" graphics though? To the uninitiated, it would be reasonable to assume that a fuckload of bloom, exagerration of all features, and lots of shiny colourful stuff increase the quality of graphics. Is a noun preceded by a dozen adjectives a "better" noun than a much more simple counterpart?
The difference is I have never seen a developer sacrifice what otherwise might have been a fine game on the alter of 'immersion'.
I've seen hundreds, maybe thousands, sacrificed on the altar of what a developer
thinks (or wants us to think) immersion is, and I've seen a promising industry ground into the fucking dirt by stupefying budgets that nobody wants to take a risk on. Ever wonder why games today are about 10-20 times more expensive than they were 10 years ago?
The fact is, making a game immersive is even more expensive in terms of talented man-hours than creating life-like models and scenery. It is also far more difficult.
Bullshit. You could throw an unlimited budget toward making a game "immersive" and still come up with a piece of shit. Like you awkwardly suggested, it's about talent. But talent doesn't bear a high premium that somehow eclipses the massive resources required to make a game full of "life-like models and scenery".
Unfortunately, the graphics of the Underworld games are so dated now, that anyone who did not play the game at a time when those graphics were cutting edge is not likely to feel that same level of immersiveness.
I don't think the graphics are likely to affect the immersion by any means other than the player's willingness to be immersed. Anyone willing to "give it a chance" would be hooked within an hour, provided they can tolerate the interface.