Surgey
Scholar
NWN2 is hardly the ideal specimen to compare other RPG's to... A good setting alone doesn't make a good game.
The Walkin' Dude said:By the way, PS:T had a huge "bikini armor" syndrome. Look at the character descripition in your journal and you will see that every woman has implanted tits and the clothing doesnt cover anything. And Annah...
Besides TNO is the most scantily clad character.
BG and Icewind Dale games don't have bikini Armor syndrom interestingly enough.
Planescape, despite being based on the Earth/Fire/Wind/Water
Ladonna said:Its sad that everything has to revolve around sales these days, I am trying to think when this argument actually entered the equation.
If it's just a new paint-job over the same ideas/mechanics, then it probably isn't. That's why you don't create a new setting in isolation from gameplay ideas/structure/mechanics - you do it in tandem with gameplay.hicksman said:Also, i'm not too sure that an original setting is worth all the effort required to develop, especially from a business standpoint. You can still make a great game without spending all that time developing Lore, culture and new races and animals.
Vault Dweller said:I've been taking to a friend the other day and the subject of Planescape: Torment awesomeness came up. My friend didn't play it. I gave him THE speech. He asked me if the game was easy to get into, which forced me to resurrect my first impressions of the game, which, in turn, is why you are reading this rant now. Enjoy.
Fantasy RPGs usually suck because the "fantasy" aspect isn't overly fantastic. In fact, it's generic and fucking bland. Let's say you bought a new fantasy RPG and installed it. What do you have there? A young guy/gal in a small place forced to get the fuck out and explore the very predictable world and save it. When you see a town, you know pretty much what to expect. It's not a place of wonder and strange customs, it's a place to get quests and buy/sell shit. You can easily replace a town with 3-4 NPCs standing in the middle of fucking nowhere offering quests and shopping. In fact that's probably would be more interesting than a generic and boring as fuck fantasy town #3471.
Now, compare it to Planescape: Torment. You wake up in a mortuary. Dead. Yes, DEAD. A gravity defying skull starts chatting with you.
WHAT! THE! FUCK!
That alone throws you off. Suddenly, you realize that you are definitely not in the motherfucking Kansas anymore. The rules are completely different and you have no idea what they are. Where are the familar elves and orcs? Why the ancient evil (TM) isn't stirring? Where is a kind lord of the realm to send you on a mission of great importance (to kill some poor fuckers)?
You open the door. OMG! Zombies are everywhere! Ok, I know where this is going. Where is my trusty weapon... WAITAMINUTE! The zombies are not attacking. You can kill them, of course, but you can also walk around studying them and even get some unusual items from them. You finally manage to leave the mortuary. You are in a city, and what a city it is. It's a city of doors, filled with portals that can take you anywhere, assuming you have a key. You see a bar, a familiar place in this strange land. The first thing you see is a floating, burning, yet still alive body - a lovely conversation piece of decor. Some ugly looking demons are having a drink; they greet you as an old friend. Great, that's just fucking great. Wait, it gets better though. The bartender casually informs you that he still has your eye - my WHAT? - and if you have the money, you can have it back. You buy the eye, mostly because it's so different from the usual selection of RPG goodies, wondering what the fuck you should do with it. An insane option to rip out your existing eyeball and shove in the, uh, new one, that was floating in a jar like a pickled egg a minute ago, presents itself. You do it and memories start pouring in. At this point you are absolutely lost. You, the player, are a stranger in a strange fucking land, and that's the fucking beauty of it.
Your quest? To find out who you are. *sigh* What, you guys ran out of demons to kill and worlds to save?
Let's compare it to the recently released NWN2:
A young guy/gal in search of adventure living a small village - check. The village is attacked by monsters killing everything in sight - check. The monsters are after you, because you are - you better sit down - the chosen one and special in every possible way - check. You leave your village and fight your way through to a large town filled with thieves who steal shit and guards who, well, guard shit - check. You accidentally run into your enemies in every major dungeon, spoiling their plans - check. Instead of throwing everything they've got at you, they continue to underestimate you, until you level all the way up to the MegaUberPrestigeFighter, the Destroyer of Worlds and Crusher of Hopes - check.
Don't know about you, but I can hardly handle all the excitement.
What I'm trying to say is predictable fantasy is the biggest flaw of the so-called fantasy games and books. Give us something different, put us in a strange place with strange rules. Discovering these rules, understanding laws, habits, and customs of these places and its denizens is an important aspect of gameplay that shouldn't be discarded.
MisterStone said:I'd like to see a game where magic is not something that gives characters "super powers", but is rather a kind of knowledge skill... think the "science" skill in Fallout. Being good at a magic skill would mean you know a lot about certain things, and perhaps could work miracles, but only in limited contexts (ie, doing a ceremony with some very specific items, in a special place, after having made extensive preparations, and/or on a certain special time of the year, etc.). Historically, this is what people thought magic was like. The whole "walking artillery piece" concept was created by DnD and the like. (There was a thread here about this a while back)
Wow, Same stupid argument. The only RPGs worth a damn are Fallout and Planescape. Ooooh, there's meaningfull dialogue choices. Here's the truth: they are not that great. At least your good for a laugh at your myopic tunnel vision of RPG games. It's more predicable and BORING than the fantasy RPGs you rant about. Get over yourself.
Nah, that was just a fly buzzing over shit and trying to fan some of the smell over to VDLadonna said:Wow, Same stupid argument. The only RPGs worth a damn are Fallout and Planescape. Ooooh, there's meaningfull dialogue choices. Here's the truth: they are not that great. At least your good for a laugh at your myopic tunnel vision of RPG games. It's more predicable and BORING than the fantasy RPGs you rant about. Get over yourself.
Translation: Lewl, you suck, and ur wrong! Those games suck, they just do. Others don't but i don't know wat ones. And dialogue sucks too.
Thank you for your contribution.
No more predictable and boring than your own vision of RPG games.jplestat said:Wow, Same stupid argument. The only RPGs worth a damn are Fallout and Planescape. Ooooh, there's meaningfull dialogue choices. Here's the truth: they are not that great. At least your good for a laugh at your myopic tunnel vision of RPG games. It's more predicable and BORING than the fantasy RPGs you rant about. Get over yourself.
Unfortunately, it is. The very first quest NWN2 game offers you is "Take this furs, sell them, buy a bow, and report to your father". I know it's a tutorial, but how stupid the intended audience is? I've already raised this question in the past:AZ said:At least somebody says that NWN2 is as boring as a soap opera.
Anyway, let's forget about the tutorial and see what kinda quest goodness Act 1 is loaded with. The town of West Harbor is under attack. Probably by the town of East Harbor. Something needs to be done! To arms!Finally had a chance to play Dungeon Siege 2. The game sucks for all the reasons Saint mentioned here and then some, but that's not the point.
So, I'm playing the demo and get the quest to destroy 4 towers that don't really look like towers worth making so much fuss about, but that's not the point either. I look in my trusty journal and see "Find the first Morden tower and burn it down" (or something like that). Ok. Then I see "Find the second Morden tower and burn it down just like first tower". Hmm, Ok. Then "Find the third Morden tower and burn it down just like first and the second towers" and finally "Find the fourth Morden tower and burn it down just like first, second, and the third tower".
At this point a valid question is "what is the target audience?" Clearly some poor ADD motherfuckers are a big part of it. It's like you play the game, burn down the first tower, see something shiny which the game doesn't have the shortage of, and then see some weird tower-like structure and have no clue why it's there. You check the journal and suddenly you start recalling burning down one of those suckers. A-ha! You know what to do now! So, you play some more, and see a weird tower-like structure. You get this feeling that you've already seen it before and somehow it's important to you, but you don't have a fucking clue. Thank God, you wrote something on your hand - find teh journal, don't trust teh skull! You click on the journal icon and read "...just like the first, second, and the third tower!" Tada! The unplayable game is playable once again! Another idiot can appreciate the beauty and creativity of Dungeon Siege 2: The Bourne Identity!
The reason I compared it to NWN2 is because NWN2 is the latest & greatest, hailed by many as "teh classic RPGs are back!".Surgey said:What I'm saying is that NWN2 isn't the only game to do that, and it's probably not the best game to compare it to.
Not necessarily. In many cases the lack of this knowledge is understandable. Let's assume that you are an American, and I'll send you on a quest to Iran. How knowledgeable about your surroundings would you expect to be? Or the Soviet Russia?Atrachasis said:If you drop the PC into an exotic world, you have to explain the gap between the knowledge that the character is supposed to have of his surroundings, and the lack thereof on the part of the player. This often tends to lead to either a "Stranger in a Strange Land" scenario (that is one thing that Morrowind actually pulled off decently), or the amnesia one, which is itself a tired old clichee.