Interview Feargus Urquhart talks Dungeon Siege, Fallout and new IP

[thesisko]

Tbh the developers are going for call of duty or any action shooter with romances. The general population doesnt want RPGs. They want romances, bromances, gay romances and action. So the developers are going for mainstream. I think the RPGs are a missed opportunity for quake and crisis developers. They just haven't thought that their audience want's a shooter or a fantasy shooter with story and romances.
For me it's simple. If you fight it's an action game ( with of without stats it doesnt matter), if your character's stats fight it's an RPG.

The general public didn't want RPG's in 2000 either, so why wasn't every developer trying to make "The Sims" or "Diablo"?

 

[l3loodAngel]

if your character's stats fight it's an RPG.

The dice! Don't forget the dice! Otherwise strategy games are RPG too.

Dice or another formula like AoD combat demo. Anyway its perfectly easy to understand what I said...

 

[Zarniwoop]

Tbh the developers are going for call of duty or any action shooter with romances. The general population doesnt want RPGs. They want romances, bromances, gay romances and action. So the developers are going for mainstream. I think the RPGs are a missed opportunity for quake and crisis developers. They just haven't thought that their audience want's a shooter or a fantasy shooter with story and romances.
For me it's simple. If you fight it's an action game ( with of without stats it doesnt matter), if your character's stats fight it's an RPG.

Well that's the point. The general population doesn't want RPGs, and as many Codexians have pointed out, they never did. It was always a niche market. The problem is just that the publishers/devs are trying to tell people that they want RPGs, by redefining what an RPG is. Fucking marketing nonsense. If they'd just stop throwing the term "RPG-elements" around at everything with an inventory system, the situation might be better.

They could still make their cover shooters/alien boobie simulators/interactive movies, but just give them a different name. Then maybe, maybe someone would be able to tell a publisher: "look, there's a gap for an RPG, there aren't any around. We know it wont sell anywhere near as much as CoD, but we'd need far less money to make it." and maybe they could get something good out. Maybe that's just wishful thinking, but it seems to me like that's how it worked it in the old days. Fallout never sold as much as Quake etc either. It still got made, and was still awesome.

If the genre was "dead" or "overlooked", someone would see an opportunity and make proper RPGs, just like what happened with adventure games. Sure, there aren't many of them but they do still make proper adventure games and once in a while a classic still pops out. Instead, the industry is perverting the meaning of "role-playing mechanics" into something else, making it seem that the genre is alive and well catered for, and leaving no gap for someone who actually wants to try hard and make a proper RPG.

Such is the true nature of the decline...

 

[thesisko]

Instead, the industry is perverting the meaning of "role-playing mechanics" into something else, making it seem that the genre is alive and well catered for, and leaving no gap for someone who actually wants to try hard and make a proper RPG.

Such is the true nature of the decline...

Well put. The saddest part is gamers who buy into that shit. The ones who "reluctantly" buy these so-called RPG's because "Developers have to cater to the mass market and this is the best we can get".

Meanwhile, niche games that they might like are overlooked because they got poor reviews by IGN/Gamespot.

The only hope I see is that there seems to be a growing awareness that mainstream reviews are worthless and online word-of-mouth and DD will reduce the advantage of big marketing budgets.

 

[sser]

I made a thread a while ago about NBA20K11.

<snip>

Very good point. Remember, too, that NBA 2k11 is considered one of the best sports games ever.

The RPG zeitgeist is just stuck total shit right now. I think it is probably due to Mass Effect the same way FPS's are all alike because of Modern Warfare.

 

[MetalCraze]

The general public didn't want RPG's in 2000 either, so why wasn't every developer trying to make "The Sims" or "Diablo"?

I guess you forgot all the shitty and not as shitty Diablo clones?

A company I used to work for was Black Isle Studios and a PC game I worked on was Icewind Dale, which required you to roll six whole second-edition D&D characters before you could even start playing the game. No one would get through character creation nowadays.

That's strange. Most people today won't even get through to buying Obsidian's shit.

 

[Shannow]

The general public didn't want RPG's in 2000 either, so why wasn't every developer trying to make "The Sims" or "Diablo"?

I guess you forgot all the shitty and not as shitty Diablo clones?

Guess you forgot all the IE games, Troika games, Wiz8, Gothics (yeah, no character creation, but actually challenging games in contrast to what Bethsidianware are pooping out) etc. Probably because they're not cool, like games from the 80s

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Aliens are truly disgusting.

 

[jiujitsu]

Feargus, you are DEAD TO ME.

 

[Kaanyrvhok]

Talk about out of touch. Character creation attracts casual gamers. Thats one of the reasons they have flocked to western RPGs.

 

[Kaanyrvhok]

I made a thread a while ago about NBA20K11.

The character creation process in NBA20K11 involves extremely complex, much more so than any cRPG I've ever played, chargen.

First you pick your height and weight and position on the court.

The taller you are, the less overall stats you start with for distribution. Tall and heavy is bad news, tall and skinny is equally bad news. Depending on position, shooting guard, center, etc, you get different stats at actual chargen.

Once in chargen you have to pick stats in several categories, two of which are offensive and defensive. There are also stats which effect dialogue skills in post-game press conferences, your overall team chemistry and the way your character plays out.

After this, you have to pick how your character looks.

The sheer amount of stats was impenetrable for me because I know very little about the technical aspects of basketball.

This brings me to the point of my post: If basketball fans, NFL fans, baseball fans, football (soccer) fans and in general sports fans, can push through chargen which involved delicate and sophisticated numerical decision making in order to create a player who is both good at his position and valuable to the overall team.

So why the fuck do studios think players are unable to handle chargen in RPGs? Seriously. For the love of motherfucking god. If you can have a fucking 15+ minute chargen session just to start playing a career sports season in the latest iteration of your favourite sports game, why the fuck would RPG devs think their traditional audience and even the new casuals who probably play sports games too, would not be able to handle numbers?

I like the guy and all and we have similar taste but Feargus doesn't know anything about console gamers and neither do most Europeans.

 

[Gragt]

Fuck, I love it when I spend 30 mins to an hour creating characters! I have fun and the game proper didn't even start yet!

 

[Daemongar]

No one would get through character creation nowadays.

i said a big FUCK YOU after this.

Character creation is one of the most fun aspects.

That's ironic because I bought their piece of shit NWN2 + MOTB and the only fun part is the character creation.

I bought and finished NW2, but never finished MOTB. Every time I start it, I create my new awesome 18th level build, play it for a half hour, than think of something better and start over.

He seems to not even recognize a big factor of RPG appeal: replayability. Those people rolled characters because they expected a different experience than a cookie-cutter char would provide. By removing this under the guise of accessability, they are also alienating not only RPG players, but value conscious consumers. People don't have $50 for a 20 hour game like they used to, well, lets say I don't have $50 for a 20 hour game like I used to.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

removing character creation allows our designers to better tailor gameplay complexity to specific characters much like consoles allow programmers to better optimise game performance for specific hardware

in the end everyone has the same high quality experience and that is what the future of gaming is all about, making sure everyone has fun and will enjoy your game and not get stuck and finish it and feel emotionally engaged and buy the next one

 

[Tel Prydain]

Wait... Is he wrong? I mean, I don't like it. And I don't recall him saying that he liked it. He just came right out and said that RPG games have benn dumbed down for consoles, and modern RPG players are too thick to manage a proper character creation process. I'm pretty sure thats what the Codex has been saying for years.

 

[thursdayschild]

There's nothing wrong with making an action game, especially a good one. Making a game with nothing but larping dressup dolly and romancing gay elves on the other hand, should be punishable by death (though not for the actual homosexual nature of the content).

 

[sgc_meltdown]

Wait... Is he wrong? I mean, I don't like it. And I don't recall him saying that he liked it. He just came right out and said that RPG games have benn dumbed down for consoles, and modern RPG players are too thick to manage a proper character creation process. I'm pretty sure thats what the Codex has been saying for years.

‘So what do role-playing gamers want now?’ The way that I see it is: I always look at accessibility. Accessibility does not necessarily mean ‘dumbing down’, it means that when the player starts the game it has to be accessible to them. It can’t depend on the fact that they know how to play the game

as has been iterated what kind of miracle must have happened then to get my gradeschool self into rpgs then without all that accessibility that we have now I must have been a genius among children to understand all these buttons on this keyboard thing in the first place and all their different combinations and how they do different things for different programs and didn't have tutorials and also I was using DOS

my god how did people read lord of the rings without knowing what hobbits or middle earth or orcs or elves are sweet baby christ the books are more than a thousand pages in total do you know the barrier to entry you're willfully crafting against potential readers here what the hell happened in the 1950s when people read all that did all the radiation from the nuclear testing do something to them was there a reading strategy guide to help you through the books

in short I don't see you fuckers providing a tutorial for your romances so if you're happy to assume that your players know how to play THAT kind of game in advance without popups guiding them into...oh wait you really don't.

‘So what do mature roleplayers want now?’ The way that I see it is: I always look at accessibility. Accessibility does not necessarily mean ‘an easy lay’, it means that when the player begins a romance she has to be accessible for them. It can’t depend on the fact that they know how to talk to a woman

 

[Kaanyrvhok]

Wait... Is he wrong? I mean, I don't like it. And I don't recall him saying that he liked it. He just came right out and said that RPG games have benn dumbed down for consoles, and modern RPG players are too thick to manage a proper character creation process. I'm pretty sure thats what the Codex has been saying for years.

Yes he is wrong. He isnt just wrong he isnt in the ballpark. It was that sort of idiocy that downed Interplay with games like Dark Alliance and Brotherhood of Steel. One of the main attractions to western RPGs over JRPGs is the ability to create characters. Thats one thing that consumers agree on. Ironyuri is right. This is that NBA 2k11 character creation he was talking about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzbO71S4tuE

 

[Zomg]

I get turned off by games that lead with a complex chargen now too. The '80-'90s were more intensely filled with AD&D and derivatives, which was a simple system I was familiar with, or with good Microprose-level manuals that were readable and taught important things. Then stuff like skill trees/prerequisite dependencies came in that meant you needed to understand the metagame to pick wisely, and you can't understand the metagame after you just started. That leads to a system where you make a shitty unoptimized build based on fancy and then slog halfway through the game before you understand how exactly it was wrong.

 

[Broseidon]

Could they not add a 'recommended' button to the character creation screen and a giant text pop-up that says, "Hey, if you're retarded, click the 'recommended' button and your character(s) will make it through the game easily.", or some shit to that effect?

 

[Excidium]

I get turned off by games that lead with a complex chargen now too. The '80-'90s were more intensely filled with AD&D and derivatives, which was a simple system I was familiar with, or with good Microprose-level manuals that were readable and taught important things. Then stuff like skill trees/prerequisite dependencies came in that meant you needed to understand the metagame to pick wisely, and you can't understand the metagame after you just started. That leads to a system where you make a shitty unoptimized build based on fancy and then slog halfway through the game before you understand how exactly it was wrong.

Yeah, if only game developers could write all the information regarding character creation and development in a document or something.

 

[Shannow]

Wait... Is he wrong? I mean, I don't like it. And I don't recall him saying that he liked it. He just came right out and said that RPG games have benn dumbed down for consoles, and modern RPG players are too thick to manage a proper character creation process. I'm pretty sure thats what the Codex has been saying for years.

I wish sgc_meltdown hadn't wasted time answering you. He's correct, but if you didn't understand/accept the truth by reading the previous comments you won't understand now.
You are obviously the demographic they are aiming for. The demographic they themselves created.

 

[Archibald]

What if in 10 years it`ll be decided that it`s too hard for players to buy games? Will part of our taxes go to some departament which will buy newest popamole for us?

 

[G.O.D]

Could they not add a 'recommended' button to the character creation screen and a giant text pop-up that says, "Hey, if you're retarded, click the 'recommended' button and your character(s) will make it through the game easily.", or some shit to that effect?

They did it with Fallout 1 + 2..
The retards were calculated in with the 3 pre-fab characters back then, so you are right.
Apparently something must have slipped in to western food or something that made people stupid.
Or..
You could go for the easy explanation, and call it "gold rush" or plain (Dev) laziness.
Whats it gonna be? :/

 

[l3loodAngel]

The general public didn't want RPG's in 2000 either, so why wasn't every developer trying to make "The Sims" or "Diablo"?

I guess you forgot all the shitty and not as shitty Diablo clones?

Guess you forgot all the IE games, Troika games, Wiz8, Gothics (yeah, no character creation, but actually challenging games in contrast to what Bethsidianware are pooping out) etc. Probably because they're not cool, like games from the 80s

I think you forgot how they fared sales wise compared to oblivion or other modern day master Pieces...