Editorial Gold Box Retrospective at Joystiq

[Infinitron]

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.

Funny that you mention C&C. I suspect it wouldn't have been as popular without the eye-candy FMV briefings. Same for Wing Commander 3+. People are that shallow.

 

[Morkar Left]

I haven't read the article because what was quoted here from it made me already question if he even had played the goldbox games or Ultima or Wizardry. In the quote alone he already put things wrong.
Goldbox more combat than Wizardry? Licensed games rare in the past? Is Savage Frontier really the best of the goldbox games? X-Com is rpg?
RoA terrible? Ok, he's probably American and everything that is a bit more on the realistic side is disliked by them...

 

[mondblut]

Problem is, most indie RPGs were shit.

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

True. Problem is, for the most part the "non-shit" from 1994-1996 was barely on par with "shit" from 1989-1993.

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.

Well, Ultima always was an odd egg in the basket, and so was its fanbase of closet adventure gamers who wouldn't know their THAC0 or dualclass if it hit them with a vorpal sword. As for shitty DM clones - even they are widely considered to be gone downhill with EOB3, DM2, Menzoberranzan and other post-1993 releases.

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:
...
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"?

Exactly. Realmz is actually from a later date, being originally a Mac game and a late arrival on PC (and taking into account it used a lot of graphic assets from Exile 3 - that's roughly 1997). Unfortunately, when I think of "mid-90s indie RPGs", I think more often of the mire of Infernal Tomes and the Ultima clones on Compuserve, not of the rare gem which is Aethra. Not so with the earlier days - they had their share of shovelware, but the number of good to great games is staggering. And even the top of the crop, like Exile or Yendorian Tales, doesn't hold a candle to the games they tried to imitate, be it Dark Sun or World of Xeen for instance.

 

[MMXI]

As for shitty DM clones - even they are widely considered to be gone downhill with EOB3, DM2, Menzoberranzan and other post-1993 releases.

For me, Dungeon Master clones were heading downhill after Chaos Strikes Back.

Exactly. Realmz is actually from a later date, being originally a Mac game and a late arrival on PC (and taking into account it used a lot of graphic assets from Exile 3 - that's roughly 1997).

This is wrong. Yes, it was released for the Mac first (not that I care as we're talking about cRPGs here), but its first release was in 1994 with just a single scenario. In fact, this explains why first Exile game from 1995 credits Realmz. So I don't know who ripped off who when it came to the graphics. Either Exile ripped off Realmz or Realmz later replaced its graphics with Exile graphics. Still, 1994, not 1997.

Unfortunately, when I think of "mid-90s indie RPGs", I think more often of the mire of Infernal Tomes and the Ultima clones on Compuserve, not of the rare gem which is Aethra.

This sounds like more of an issue with you. Thinking about the best games from 1990-1993 yet thinking of the worst from 1994-1996.

Not so with the earlier days - they had their share of shovelware, but the number of good to great games is staggering. And even the top of the crop, like Exile or Yendorian Tales, doesn't hold a candle to the games they tried to imitate, be it Dark Sun or World of Xeen for instance.

That's unfair comparing the indies we're talking about with the "top of the crop" from earlier eras. If anything those decent indie games may be comparable to the second tier from the start of the 90s, with only the stand out ones (Realmz, Aethra) comparable to the top. But if you bring in the second and third Realms of Arkania games that sandwich 1995 (even though the third was decline it was still enjoyable), include Daggerfall that some liked (comparable to something like Ultima Underworld anyway), and throw in some more second tier stuff like Thunderscape (decent combat, but very repetitive) and the fan made Sword of Xeen (good, but definitely inferior to World of Xeen), you've got enough there to show that there wasn't an actual collapse.

Like I said, there was a decline in the mid-90s, and a very noticeable one in terms of the "big budget" releases by major publishers; but there wasn't a "collapse" or "crash".

In the later half of the 90s, the prevalence of CD-ROM drives and the increase in standard resolutions and colour depth meant developers were putting more shit into their games such as CD audio, voice acting, videos and detailed 3D geometry with plenty of textures. Even standard 2D games had far more detailed and less repetitive tile graphics and better sprite animation. Just compare World of Xeen with Mandate of Heaven, or something like Dark Sun: Shattered Lands with Fallout and Baldur's Gate. A lot of these games had far more lengthy development time than the games from previous eras, and if anything this is what explains the mid-90s hiccup more than anything else.

And saying that, it was these reasons that ultimately did lead to the proper collapse of the genre around the time of the Xbox. Everything went full 3D at that time, and full voice acting became almost mandatory. The emphasis on actual gameplay took a back seat to presentation and this ultimately doomed us to Mass Effect and Fallout 3.

 

[LeStryfe79]

A lot of decent JRPG's came out in 95.

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

And saying that, it was these reasons that ultimately did lead to the proper collapse of the genre around the time of the Xbox. Everything went full 3D at that time, and full voice acting became almost mandatory. The emphasis on actual gameplay took a back seat to presentation and this ultimately doomed us to Mass Effect and Fallout 3.

I think this is true, (see e.g., Fallout 3 being looted for Brotherhood of Steel) but I think there was a lot more going on than just increased demand for pretty graphics. The reason the XBox crowd was chased was that the market for PC games was kind of exploding by pulling in a type of gamer that previously had been console-only. My amazingly thorough research tells me that very few of the all-time best selling PC games came before 1993, and Diablo is the earliest RPG to make it on to the list (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PC_video_games). This was around the same time that an entire generation of kids raised on the NES and genesis finally got jobs, so not only could they spend more on console games, but they each had their own computer. Or if they were in college they had their own computer, but no console (at least it seemed like that as few people I knew in college brought a playstation).

So all of a sudden, between 93-94 and 2000 the market for PC games changed pretty radically. There was more money to be made, but only if you drew in formerly console-only gamers. So while the market for CRPGs stayed the same in absolute terms, in terms of its relative share of the overall PC game market, it decreased. Wide LAN access made multiplayer much more accessible, which, in turn, helped drive FPS to become the money-printing genre for PCs.

Diablo/Diablo 2 was the first RPG franchise to hit the sweet spot by drawing in both PC gamers and console type gamers. Warcraft 2/Starcraft probably pulled in some as well, if only because it had similar narrative backgrounds in sci-fi and fantasy. The majority of RPGs since the late 90's (when the shift I'm talking about hit full steam) that have been considered major successes (made alot money) have either been a derivative of Fallout with RTS elements (everything by Bioware) or Diablo 2 (WoW, also every MMORPG), both (Bioware again) or Fallout plus FPS (Fallout 3). Once you could make massive profits from particular types of games, its no surprise that the biggest publishers wanted to make money by selling those games. Since pure CRPGs had a comparatively small market, it made less sense to put the same effort into meeting it if you could pull in a decent chunk with ARPGs and MMORPGs without sacrificing the more action-oriented consumers.

 

[thesoup]

A lot of decent JRPG's came out in 95.

Surely you must mean 97.

 

[Infinitron]

Harg Harfardarssen I think it's a bit of a stretch to describe Infinity Engine games as containing "RTS elements".

The RTS boom of the late 90's has always struck me as rather odd, btw. Sometimes I think it was all just a fluke.

Was the genre ever really popular, or were gamers just temporarily wowed by the relatively high production quality of titles like Warcraft and C&C?

Possibly the genre had a "multiplayer/grinding" aspect that many gamers found addictive. It seems to have been entirely replaced in this capacity by MMOs.

 

[mondblut]

For me, Dungeon Master clones were heading downhill after Chaos Strikes Back.

Well, for me they were heading downhill since Dungeon Master was prototyped, but I speak of those who actually liked them.

This is wrong. Yes, it was released for the Mac first (not that I care as we're talking about cRPGs here), but its first release was in 1994 with just a single scenario. In fact, this explains why first Exile game from 1995 credits Realmz. So I don't know who ripped off who when it came to the graphics. Either Exile ripped off Realmz or Realmz later replaced its graphics with Exile graphics. Still, 1994, not 1997.

I am focusing on our platform of choice. Since Macs had fairly low exposure in 90s, and we are IBM PC gamers, one Mac exclusive we didn't knew about until 1997 does little to change the weather.

I am pretty sure it was Realmz to use Exile graphics, Exile 3 is very consistent graphics-wise, while Realmz features a very diverse batch.

This sounds like more of an issue with you. Thinking about the best games from 1990-1993 yet thinking of the worst from 1994-1996.

And I think, that sounds like 1994-1996 had an awful lot of problems with having best games. In earlier time, the bad stuff got literally buried under the heaps of good stuff. In the dark age, not so much.

That's unfair comparing the indies we're talking about with the "top of the crop" from earlier eras.

Well, with the utter absence of any "top of the crop" in the era we speak about, we have to pick something, no?

Like I said, there was a decline in the mid-90s, and a very noticeable one in terms of the "big budget" releases by major publishers; but there wasn't a "collapse" or "crash".

It certainly looked like a collapse to me. I just picked it up with a genre, and suddenly, every more or less exposed new game being released in it was crap hardly worthy of washing the feet of the games I played a year before. Good thing I had an immense back catalogue to play through back in 1995, or I would have created RPGCodex myself as early as that

 

[MMXI]

I am focusing on our platform of choice. Since Macs had fairly low exposure in 90s, and we are IBM PC gamers, one Mac exclusive we didn't knew about until 1997 does little to change the weather.

Nope. This looks like you're using criteria to suit your argument. We're talking about computer role-playing games here and whether there was a mid-90s collapse. We aren't talking about whether there was a collapse on IBM-PCs only. I mean, you can't justify a late 80s cRPG collapse by pointing out the decline of games for 8-bit home computers, even if you only had a C64 well into the 90s.

And I think, that sounds like 1994-1996 had an awful lot of problems with having best games. In earlier time, the bad stuff got literally buried under the heaps of good stuff. In the dark age, not so much.

Can you provide a list of your favourite 25 CRPGs from 1991 to 1993 (the three year period preceding 1994 to 1996)? I'd imagine you'd name all the six Gold Box games, Wizardry VII and perhaps the three Might and Magic games. Additional ones I'd personally include would be Darklands, Disciples of Steel*, Blade of Destiny, Shattered Lands. What else? The last two Magic Candle games were all right. Betrayal at Krondor too if you don't mind the storyfaggotry and forced party.

The late 90s (1997 to 1999) kind of sucked if we're going by the number of good games. The Fallouts were good fun but were a massive decline on previous party based games. Planescape: Torment was all story and no game. Might and Magic VI and VII were reasonably good, but their superior character systems were cancelled out by just about everything else. That leaves Baldur's Gate, and that wasn't even turn-based.

And going back to the early 90s again, surely the Gold Box games prop the era up in terms of numbers. That's six games there, where even the worst ones were better than most other cRPGs by virtue of not having shit combat.

Perhaps 1988 to 1990 was the best three year period after all.

* Turns out the DOS version of this came out in 1994.

EDIT: Edited because I failed to realise 1990 to 1993 was a four year period and not a three year period.

 

[mondblut]

We aren't talking about whether there was a collapse on IBM-PCs only. I mean, you can't justify a late 80s cRPG collapse by pointing out the decline of games for 8-bit home computers, even if you only had a C64 well into the 90s.

Touche. Still, Realmz is but one game. Also, we could likewise contest the modern decline with a growing number of proper handheld RPGs (Legacy, The Quest, Undercroft, not to mention that NDS japfaggotry from Atlus everyone praises).

Can you provide a list of your favourite 25 CRPGs from 1990 to 1993? I'd imagine you'd name all the 90s Gold Box games, the two Wizardry games and perhaps the three Might and Magic games. Additional ones I'd personally include would be Darklands, Disciples of Steel, Blade of Destiny, Shattered Lands. What else? The last two Magic Candle games were all right. Betrayal at Krondor too if you don't mind the storyfaggotry and forced party.

Also Fate, Amberstar and Ambermoon, Order of the Griffon and Warriors of Eternal Sun - heck, even DM-types of time were good for what they are (such as Ishar), and even Ultima had some redeeming qualities.

I can't be bothered to recall all of them right now, but yeah, that's a good list.

The late 90s kind of sucked if we're going by the number of good games.

Oh, but did I ever say they didn't?

That's where you're wrong. You presume I believe in some kind of "great RPG renaissance" brought by Black Isle, like that Rowan Kaiser dude. Well, I don't. I stated explicitly, "the bad times they never recovered from". As far as I am concerned, things were always going downhill from the moment I had my first World of Xeen experience. The "Black Isle age" is not even a flat in the downward curve, it's just a different kind of ruin and despoil than was before or arrived after.

Perhaps the late 80s was the best period after all.

Well, I do include 1989 in my roll of ages. Before that, everything was just too minimalistic and unwieldy, not to mention rat-ass ugly.

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

Harg Harfardarssen I think it's a bit of a stretch to describe Infinity Engine games as containing "RTS elements".

Maybe its just me, but I've always found there to be a fine line between large party (6+) RPG combat on a map and squad-based tactics game combat. The games themselves are generally fairly different in what happens outside of combat (exploration/story vs. nothing), but once inside combat the mechanics seem similar. The major difference in combat seems to be the depth of the micromanaging - in an RPG you generally draw on a wider variety of abilities than in a strategy/tactics game. Which is a pretty major difference in an RPG that relies on fairly deep thinking about what you do.

In a real-time game, my choices tend to be more frantic and the thinking on each action a bit more shallow than they would be in a turn-based game; to be good at RTS you have to be able to take more actions in a given time period rather than make single well-thought out decisions. So I end up focusing on a few killer abilities and scanning the battlefield for someone I need to micromanage. In other words, I end up playing Infinity engine combat in a way that I find to be closer to an RTS than turn-based game.

The RTS boom of the late 90's has always struck me as rather odd, btw. Sometimes I think it was all just a fluke.

Was the genre ever really popular, or were gamers just temporarily wowed by the relatively high production quality of titles like Warcraft and C&C?

Possibly the genre had a "multiplayer/grinding" aspect that many gamers found addictive. It seems to have been entirely replaced in this capacity by MMOs.

Yeah, its kind of funny how RTS was king, and then not so much (Except in South Korea). I think you might be right that the multiplayer grind itch is being scratched by other games now. Plus while Blizzard is pretty annoying, they did put a lot of effort into continuously patching their games to maintain balance; I think the lack of other blockbuster RTS games may be partly due to a failure by others effectively compete with Blizzard on this front. I think part of it also is that there is only so much you can do with the genre. Because your choices are generally so shallow and based more on micromanagement skills than anything else, its pretty hard to introduce new elements. Everything I've seen has just been tweaking the resource gathering elements or adding RPG elements.

 

[MMXI]

Also Fate, Amberstar and Ambermoon, Order of the Griffon and Warriors of Eternal Sun - heck, even DM-types of time were good for what they are (such as Ishar), and even Ultima had some redeeming qualities.

I can't be bothered to recall all of them right now, but yeah, that's a good list.

First off, I don't know if you saw but I edited my previous post before you fired this post off to exclude 1990. I realised that it just isn't fair to compare a three year period (1994, 1995, 1996) to a four year period (1990, 1991, 1992, 1993). That includes a whole extra year of games. If you can pick and choose how long each period lasts then you could just say 1995 was a decline because 1985 to 1994 had way more good cRPGs in. So really, if we're looking at 1995 (as mentioned in the article) and the surrounding two years, that's a three year period. The three year period before that was 1991 to 1993.

Secondly, Fate: Gates of Dawn, Amberstar and Ambermoon were terrible overrated by Amiga fanboys in the early 90s. In many ways I don't blame them because they started getting the short end of the stick at around that time. I wouldn't say either of these three games were better than what the mid-90s had to offer. I'd even take something like Exile over them. Ishar was about as good as other real-time blobbers and about on par (and forgettable) with mid-90s efforts such as Strahd's Possession. The Ultima series were always terrible RPGs as they had like three or four statistics that barely even matter. Furthermore, the post-V Ultima games had diabolical combat.

Warriors of the Eternal Sun and Order of the Griffon were both console games. I thought we were talking about cRPGs, not WRPGs. Furthermore, you just complained about Realmz staying on the Mac until the late 90s. Well these two games never even made it to any personal computer, let alone IBM-PCs.

Oh, but did I ever say they didn't?

That's where you're wrong. You presume I believe in some kind of "great RPG renaissance" brought by Black Isle, like that Rowan Kaiser dude. Well, I don't. I stated explicitly, "the bad times they never recovered from". As far as I am concerned, things were always going downhill from the moment I had my first World of Xeen experience. The "Black Isle age" is not even a flat in the downward curve, it's just a different kind of ruin and despoil than was before or arrived after.

Don't get me wrong, I never thought you did. But if anything this supports my point that the mid-90s wasn't a crash, because the genre effectively tailed off from around 1994 all the way to the release of the Xbox where it crashed spectacularly. In fact, the notable games from the later 90s were a result of work done over the mid-90s by the studios that existed since the 80s. New World Computing obviously spent the mid-90s working on the first two Heroes of Might and Magic games before resuming development of Might and Magic VI in 1996. Fallout was in the works after Interplay spat out Stonekeep in 1995. Baldur's Gate was in development for a while as a result of Interplay gaining the D&D licence in the mid-90s. The mid-90s wasn't this aberration people paint it as. It is what it is, the start of a decline, and the start of development for the widely praised late 90s games. Rowan Kaiser thinks the genre crashed in 1995, only to be completely reinvented and improved in the late 90s. Obviously that's a load of bollocks, because not only did it not reinvent itself in the late 90s, there was also no crash to require reinvention from.

Well, I do include 1989 in my roll of ages. Before that, everything was just too minimalistic and unwieldy, not to mention rat-ass ugly.

I usually go with 1988 or 1985, depending on my mood. I prefer starting at 1988 to 1989 because it had Pool of Radiance, Might and Magic II, Ultima V, Wasteland and Demon's Winter. I also think 1985 is rather stand-out if you want to go up a level of primitiveness as it marks the start of the pre-Gold Box SSI RPGs (Phantasie, Wizard's Crown), the main Ultima games (starting at Ultima IV) and The Bard's Tale series (yeah, nostalgia), as well as capturing the first Might and Magic game in 1986.

Of course, if you meant you want to include 1989 with 1990, 1991, 1992 and 1993 for comparison with just the three years of 1994, 1995 and 1996 then that's just unfair and wrong. That's almost double the time frame.

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

Infinitron - I was inspired to visit the Infinity engine's wikipedia page and discovered that I might not be crazy, which was a pleasant surprise. Apparently it "was originally developed by BioWare for a prototype RTS game codenamed Battleground Infinity"

 

[MMXI]

Maybe its just me, but I've always found there to be a fine line between large party (6+) RPG combat on a map and squad-based tactics game combat. The games themselves are generally fairly different in what happens outside of combat (exploration/story vs. nothing), but once inside combat the mechanics seem similar. The major difference in combat seems to be the depth of the micromanaging - in an RPG you generally draw on a wider variety of abilities than in a strategy/tactics game. Which is a pretty major difference in an RPG that relies on fairly deep thinking about what you do.

In a real-time game, my choices tend to be more frantic and the thinking on each action a bit more shallow than they would be in a turn-based game; to be good at RTS you have to be able to take more actions in a given time period rather than make single well-thought out decisions. So I end up focusing on a few killer abilities and scanning the battlefield for someone I need to micromanage. In other words, I end up playing Infinity engine combat in a way that I find to be closer to an RTS than turn-based game.

I think you mean real-time tactics and not real-time strategy. And what does that have to do with anything anyway? That's like saying Pool of Radiance has turn-based tactics elements. So what?

 

[Fowyr]

I know, semantic is important thing, but call it crash, call it stagnation, but CRPGs felt themselves not well in the mid-90s, I think we all can agree to it.

 

[octavius]

1989 was a good year with games like The Magic Candle, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Chaos Strikes Back, Dragon Wars and Dark Heart of Uukrul, but 1990 was a rather bad year with the only outstanding game being Wizardry: Bane of the Cosmic Forge and the only other noteworthy games being Champions of Krynn and Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday. There were lots of turn based games with boring combat, and inferior Dungeon Master clones that year.

IMO 1992 was the peak of CRPGs, with games like Black Crypt, Ultima Underworld, Treasures of the Savage Frontier, Dark Queen of Krynn, Darklands, Might and Magic IV and Wizardry: Crusaders of the Dark Savant, in addition to Ultima 7 and Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny (I haven't played the last two).

So I'd say 1991-1993 was probably the best three year period of old school CRPGs.

After the end of the Gold Box games proper tactical combat was mostly the domain of games like X-Com and Jagged Alliance, and real time blobbers were made mostly obsolete by games like Ultima Underworld, System Shock, and pure FPSes like Doom and Quake.

One thing that contributed to the decline of CRPGs is that in the mid 90s other genres either improved greatly (tactical games with X-Com and Jagged Alliance, Strategy games with Master of Magic and Heroes of Might and Magic) or a new genre was born with the advent of Wolfenstein and Doom. IIRC Adventure games also improved and got more popular in this era.

Suddenly CRPGs were not necessarily the most interesting games anymore. Instead of playing uninspired CRPGs, storyfags would rather play Adventure games, combatfags would rather play X-Com, Jagged Alliance or Heroes of Might and Magic and blobberfags would rather play Doom or System Shock.

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

I think you mean real-time tactics and not real-time strategy. And what does that have to do with anything anyway? That's like saying Pool of Radiance has turn-based tactics elements. So what?

So my original point was that in the mid to late 90s the market for PC games changed pretty radically due to a variety of factors which didn't just involve graphics and FMV (although they may have been as well) and this drove the decline in the pure CRPG of yesteryear. Graphics played a part, but they were only a piece of the puzzle.

These factors were:
1. Broader PC access, which brought formerly console only gamers into the PC market game; and
2. Broader access to high speed internet/LAN (which significantly increased access to multiplayer).

These two factors then:
1. Increased the potential profitability of top-selling games; and
2. Increased the number of action game customers while leaving the absolute number of RPG fans static.
3. Turned multiplayer into a standard feature

This shifted the center of gravity for the PC market towards action oriented titles, which:
1. Appealed to console gamers; and
2. Were far more suitable to multiplayer.

This shift in the market gave rise to the dominance of FPSs, RTSs and ARPGs, all of which relied on multiplayer components and had their breakthrough titles in that period, with 95-96 being particularly important (Quake in '96, WarCraft 2 in '95, Diablo in '96). Since then, the majority of top-selling CRPGs which aren't pure ARPGs have combined elements of those genres with the conversation/sidequest elements of Fallout to varying degrees.

 

[MMXI]

I think you mean real-time tactics and not real-time strategy. And what does that have to do with anything anyway? That's like saying Pool of Radiance has turn-based tactics elements. So what?

So my original point was that in the mid to late 90s the market for PC games changed pretty radically due to a variety of factors which didn't just involve graphics and FMV (although they may have been as well) and this drove the decline in the pure CRPG of yesteryear. Graphics played a part, but they were only a piece of the puzzle.

No. Your point was that Baldur's Gate mixed RTS with RPG, forgetting that Darklands, an RPG with real-time-with-pause combat, came out slightly before Dune 2. I don't even know how you arrived at your conclusion. How else are you meant to control characters on a battlefield in real-time without pointing and clicking on units? Even if RTS games had never been invented, it's not like a real-time-with-pause tactical (top-down) RPG could play any other way.

 

[Telengard]

Well, there were a few early strategy games where you flipped through units using the keyboard, then when you selected one, you used the keyboard to arrange movement for it, then you pressed Return (Enter) when you were happy with it. Something like that technically could be used in RTSs too, even if nobody would ever use it now. Though console RTSs maybe are using it with their gamepads, depending on how you look at it.

And then, the whole confusion between RTS and RTT isn't helped by the media, most of them still today describing Baldur's Gate as using Real Time Strategy elements (including all the usual suspects), or combing the best of RPG and RTS.

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

No. Your point was that Baldur's Gate mixed RTS with RPG

Dude, read post #31 in which I replied to you.

forgetting that Darklands, an RPG with real-time-with-pause combat, came out slightly before Dune 2. I don't even know how you arrived at your conclusion.

Again, already answered. Go to the link at #39. The Infinity Engine was originally developed to be used in an RTS BioWare proposed to Interplay which it then re-purposed for Baldur's Gate. Also, the fact that real-time with pause was used in Darklands before Dune 2 is irrelevant to whether Baldur's Gate used elements of a genre that exploded before just before it entered development Bioware was convinced to make Baldur's gate instead of an RTS.

Even if RTS games had never been invented, it's not like a real-time-with-pause tactical (top-down) RPG could play any other way.

This statement is a tautology. Of course a "real-time-with-pause tactical (top-down) RPG" would play like the Infinity engine, because it was designed to do "real-time-with-pause tactical (top-down)" combat.

The question is why did real-time with pause become so prominent in RPG combat systems shortly after the rise of the RTS? What other real-time combat systems could have taken root? Drakkhen had real time combat from a rear view, pseudo 3D perspective in 1989. I'm sure real-time combat was thought of fairly frequently before Baldur's Gate. So why did top-down real-time take over when it did? When talking about the movement of entire genres, the first appearance of individual elements is less important than when they become common or dominant.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Could someone finally explain me what's so great about the Pool of Radiance so that I would be tempted to dig out its box and manual and play it?

 

[MMXI]

Dude, read post #31 in which I replied to you.

I don't give a fuck about your post #31 as I was replying to your post #37.

Again, already answered. Go to the link at #39. The Infinity Engine was originally developed to be used in an RTS BioWare proposed to Interplay which it then re-purposed for Baldur's Gate. Also, the fact that real-time with pause was used in Darklands before Dune 2 is irrelevant to whether Baldur's Gate used elements of a genre that exploded before just before it entered development Bioware was convinced to make Baldur's gate instead of an RTS.

Who cares what it was originally designed for. In Baldur's Gate's combat you move your party members around the battlefield, targeting spells and issuing attacking orders. You do this in all tactical RPGs, all the way back to the early 80s with primitive games like Tunnels of Doom. Changing the time keeping system to real-time with a pause function, even though it's a major decline, doesn't mean it suddenly has RTS elements, because surely that would mean Darklands has RTS elements even though it pre-dates the genre.

Furthermore, real-time strategy games came after turn-based strategy games, and turn-based strategy games and cRPGs share the same roots in tabletop/board games. If anything it's some sort of converging evolution. RPGs started life as small scale war-games, RPGs came to computers, war-games came to computers, RPGs went real-time and strategy games went real-time.

The question is why did real-time with pause become so prominent in RPG combat systems shortly after the rise of the RTS? What other real-time combat systems could have taken root? Drakkhen had real time combat from a rear view, pseudo 3D perspective in 1989. I'm sure real-time combat was thought of fairly frequently before Baldur's Gate. So why did top-down real-time take over when it did? When talking about the movement of entire genres, the first appearance of individual elements is less important than when they become common or dominant.

I think you are missing the point here. It exploded in popularity with the release of Baldur's Gate. Baldur's Gate itself wasn't part of the explosion in popularity because there weren't any others going down the tactical real-time-with-pause route alongside it. Darklands did it in 1992, Baldur's Gate did it again six years later in 1998. Baldur's Gate's relative success and popularity led to its sequel, the Icewind Dale series, the Neverwinter Nights series, the Dragon Age series, the Knights of the Old Republic series etc. So really, if you're looking for an explanation then look to why Baldur's Gate was so popular and well received. You'll find your answers there.

 

[octavius]

Could someone finally explain me what's so great about the Pool of Radiance so that I would be tempted to dig out its box and manual and play it?

Combat. As turn based combat goes it's probably the total opposite of Fallout, so you'll probably not like it. No headshots.

Encounter design. Some don't like battles against the the huge hordes of orcs and kobolds, but personally I'd rather fight a few huge battles than fighting the same small groups of enemies every sixth step.

Non linear. You get missions and can read proclamations, and then decided for your self the order you do them.

 

[commie]

Saving up those fireball spells to clear out rooms of 50 Kobolds was the shit. Of course chasing down the one fleeing fucker for half an hour afterwards wasn't quite the shit.