I think one thing being left out is that most of the pro-Obsidian camp, myself included if I can be in that camp, are very heavily couching their praise in relative terms. As in 'better than the other crap coming out at the moment'. That isn't exactly brimming with anticipation - its a sad reflection of the state of the media, and picking which out of a very poor crop one is likely to take up in the next year. Because frankly, as much as I might prefer my old collection of Arcanum, PS:T, Deus Ex, SS2, FO and Bloodlines, there's only so many fucking times we can replay the same games. After a while it's either 'buy a new game', or give up gaming. I don't doubt that many old rpg fans HAVE given up gaming in despair, and for good reason. But if we were to give up gaming, we wouldn't be at this site.
Which gets me to my question - I absolutely accept all the criticisms people are making of AP. It still seems like it might be fun enough, but yes, I accept that the minigames are retarded, Obsidian doesn't have a good record at combat romps, it seems combat-oriented (as everything is these days, outside of Civ-type games) and Obsidian lacks experience in the genre. The setting though is something I quite like, but each to their own on that. Anyway, the question: what ARE the good games coming out in the next couple of years. Seriously, I'd love to hear that, especially from Skyway. Skyway mentioned in another thread that Jason Anderson could do so much better than going to InXile - really? Which companies would those be? I'd love to know, because frankly I'd be among the first to ditch AP for some good late-90s-esque intelligent gaming. So which games coming out this/next year, and which existing companies should I be looking at?
In other genres, maybe I can see some hope. I've been a fan of both rts and turn-based civ-gaming for a while, and I fall into the pro-Blizzard camp on that, even re WC3 (won't get into the debate here, but my reasoning was basically that it brought good guerilla-tactics into the staple for rts, with undead not being able to win a standing fight against equal-tech opponents, yet being very strong via their ability to harass and avoid direct combat through hit-and-run and flanking tactics. That and the use of timing - from even mid-ranked b-net games you'd go in thinking 'I want the main battle to be at the 3min mark' or similar). But even we accept Blizz as a 'good games developer', they're not exactly a company that satisfies the old rpg market. They make good games for their audience, but it would seem silly to go 'AP is crap because Diablo/SC2 will be much better'.
The same applies for any other maker I can think of. To my knowledge there isn't a new civ out next year, but even so, it isn't really going to satisfy my RPG craving. I'm looking forward to the indies, but frankly they're an unknown quantity, and I don't believe that the market is such that you will get a massive level of indies filling the gaming whole. Maybe a good game every few years from VD and a couple of others, but not enough to constitute a hobby by itself.
So, in a relative sense, what are these great games that I should be buying isntead of AP? I'm not saying this to diss anyone - I'm actually serious. Am I missing something about the gaming market?
