rfrants
Novice
- Joined
- Mar 9, 2006
- Messages
- 1
Hi all,
I've been reading around your website and i've noticed that your statistically unimportant niche you have going here has a large amount of disdane for anything new and overrated praise for anything made before 1985.
This was quite puzzling, since I find no logic in trying to support a cause that no developer, publisher or corporation would give any sort of care to. It would be suicide trying to cater to your demands and it's not like your demands are popular at all.
Trying to see it from your view point, I went out and purchased some games that people around here were praising in various threads (such as the Greatest Games You've Never Played thread) and spent about 30 minutes with them, to get a rough idea of your tastes. I played Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance 2 (I heard ALOT of praise for BG2), Fallout: Tactics (I couldn't find the originals and from all the praise the lacklustre Jagged Alliance 2 got, I figured this would be even more popular among you) and got the demo for Ultima 9: Armageddon.
To contrast your viewpoints against mine, I got one of my friends 'in the know' to get me in on an Oblivion preview stint. After playing it for 4 hours, I can safely say that Oblivion will be the greatest RPG, if not one of the greatest games, ever made and totally blows your favorites right out of the water.
Let's run down the facts and cram cold and hard truth down your gullets:
Graphics -
Without a doubt, graphics are the most important element of games today. Sure, you can have all sorts of fun little minigames and dice rolls, but they wont even exsist if nothing is there to represent them on the screen. The better the graphics, the stronger their presence in the game.
In my four hours of playing Oblivion, I was witness to some of the greatest graphics to grace a viewing device of any kind. I was instantly sucked in to the world of Oblivion and stats were as strong as the colors of the bloomed tavern I was standing in. The immersion level was so high, I almost forgot I was playing a videogame!
Now, as we know, stats are a core pillar of RPGs. Without stats, you're not an RPG (or else D&D would've never exsisted, the great grand-daddy of RPGs). Now, Oblivion's engine brings forth its stats stronger than any game i've ever played, due largely in part to the ability of the engine.
I compare this to my time with Fallout: Tactics, a supposedly stat-heavy "great" RPG. Fallout: Tactics might as well been an Amiga game for how horrible it looked and just as I suspected, the stats had less of an impact. While my character in Oblivion had numbers written all over his sheet, I only saw about 10 stats in FO:T. Not surprisingly, the gameplay of FO:T suffered from this and it was a mindless click-fest.
It was one of the least immersive gaming experiences i've ever had (and let me tell you, i've had some stinkers - I'm looking at you, Europa Univeralis 3: Hearts of Iron), the ackward and disjointed 3rd person viewpoint and grimy and dirty looking graphics consisting of only browns and blacks, ugh. It was unbearable.
So right there, bam, facts. Oblivion will be on a level of immersion and gameplay that no game in the Fallout series could reach. Much stronger stat, much stronger immersion, much stronger gameplay resulting from both.
Also, I think it could go without saying that Graphics influence sales so strongly. No wonder you guys are so hostile against graphics: They make games sell more than your dinky little 100,000 sale games, and sales are a great measure of how good a game is. Nobody buys a bad game!
With Oblivion's graphical quality influencing gameplay and sales so heavily, it is a surefire 7,000,000+ seller and will more than likely make the Xbox360 rise over the competition.
You guys can stick with your Atari graphics and horrible gameplay, i'll be out playing Oblivion and having the experience of a life-time, an experience a true RPG player would kill for.
Next up: Voice Acting -
Voice Acting is another core component of RPGs and video-games in general. How can you enjoy a game if all you hear is a bunch of faceless nobodies hacking out forgettable lines? Isn't the point of games to be enjoyable? Exactly. Exceptional Voice Acting improves the game considerably.
Oblivion has got Wonder Woman and Captain Picard and if you don't know who they are, you bunch are more anti-social and sad than I previously thought.
Let's see what Fallout and Troika's "masterpiece" game Bloodlines had: Forgettable Acting School kids. Sheesh, thats even worse than Jagged Bore-lliance 2's Canadian Acting School kids! No wonder Sir-Tech and Troika went out of business... they thought they could record any regular ol Tom and Pete and think the game won't suffer because of that. Turns out it didn't only make the game suffer, but their business too! LOL.
There's a reason Bethesda has stayed in buisness for so long and i'd like to give a tip of the hat to Mrs. Wonder Woman for being there to make Morrowind a success and then coming back for more in Oblivion. Without her, Bethesda might even exsist today! With the aquisition of Patrick Stewart, I put a safe wager that Bethesda is going to be around even longer.
Sorry guys, but it's the truth.
Oblivion - 2, You Guys - 0
Horseback Mounts -
I read often a time about Mount and Blade's 'superiority' over Oblivion in this department. I thought to myself: How in the world is having mounted combat a considerably better thing?
Face it: It isn't. Mounted Combat doesn't change a thing and just adds more needless complexity to an already complex game that Oblivion is. The weight of having to try to ride AND attack has been lifted off my shoulders and it feels great, I've already got plenty enough to worry about in Oblivion.
I played Mount and Blade for all of 30 minutes before I almost did a digital barf over the lack of voice acting and the incredibly sub-sub-par graphics. Not to mention that the mounted combat was incredibly confusing and way too complex. Yeah, if I wanted to be in school I would've been a teacher.
Not to mention that Mount and Blade is ONLY mount combat. It's basically a doorknob and Oblivion is a marvellous and majestic door, and Oblivion not having that cumbersome doorknob present makes it even more fluid and accessable.
Thanks, but no thanks, guys, you can keep your ugly doorknobs and ugly doorstops of games with you in your parents basements. I'm ready to play a real RPG and real progression of video games over-all.
-R McFrants
I've been reading around your website and i've noticed that your statistically unimportant niche you have going here has a large amount of disdane for anything new and overrated praise for anything made before 1985.
This was quite puzzling, since I find no logic in trying to support a cause that no developer, publisher or corporation would give any sort of care to. It would be suicide trying to cater to your demands and it's not like your demands are popular at all.
Trying to see it from your view point, I went out and purchased some games that people around here were praising in various threads (such as the Greatest Games You've Never Played thread) and spent about 30 minutes with them, to get a rough idea of your tastes. I played Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance 2 (I heard ALOT of praise for BG2), Fallout: Tactics (I couldn't find the originals and from all the praise the lacklustre Jagged Alliance 2 got, I figured this would be even more popular among you) and got the demo for Ultima 9: Armageddon.
To contrast your viewpoints against mine, I got one of my friends 'in the know' to get me in on an Oblivion preview stint. After playing it for 4 hours, I can safely say that Oblivion will be the greatest RPG, if not one of the greatest games, ever made and totally blows your favorites right out of the water.
Let's run down the facts and cram cold and hard truth down your gullets:
Graphics -
Without a doubt, graphics are the most important element of games today. Sure, you can have all sorts of fun little minigames and dice rolls, but they wont even exsist if nothing is there to represent them on the screen. The better the graphics, the stronger their presence in the game.
In my four hours of playing Oblivion, I was witness to some of the greatest graphics to grace a viewing device of any kind. I was instantly sucked in to the world of Oblivion and stats were as strong as the colors of the bloomed tavern I was standing in. The immersion level was so high, I almost forgot I was playing a videogame!
Now, as we know, stats are a core pillar of RPGs. Without stats, you're not an RPG (or else D&D would've never exsisted, the great grand-daddy of RPGs). Now, Oblivion's engine brings forth its stats stronger than any game i've ever played, due largely in part to the ability of the engine.
I compare this to my time with Fallout: Tactics, a supposedly stat-heavy "great" RPG. Fallout: Tactics might as well been an Amiga game for how horrible it looked and just as I suspected, the stats had less of an impact. While my character in Oblivion had numbers written all over his sheet, I only saw about 10 stats in FO:T. Not surprisingly, the gameplay of FO:T suffered from this and it was a mindless click-fest.
It was one of the least immersive gaming experiences i've ever had (and let me tell you, i've had some stinkers - I'm looking at you, Europa Univeralis 3: Hearts of Iron), the ackward and disjointed 3rd person viewpoint and grimy and dirty looking graphics consisting of only browns and blacks, ugh. It was unbearable.
So right there, bam, facts. Oblivion will be on a level of immersion and gameplay that no game in the Fallout series could reach. Much stronger stat, much stronger immersion, much stronger gameplay resulting from both.
Also, I think it could go without saying that Graphics influence sales so strongly. No wonder you guys are so hostile against graphics: They make games sell more than your dinky little 100,000 sale games, and sales are a great measure of how good a game is. Nobody buys a bad game!
With Oblivion's graphical quality influencing gameplay and sales so heavily, it is a surefire 7,000,000+ seller and will more than likely make the Xbox360 rise over the competition.
You guys can stick with your Atari graphics and horrible gameplay, i'll be out playing Oblivion and having the experience of a life-time, an experience a true RPG player would kill for.
Next up: Voice Acting -
Voice Acting is another core component of RPGs and video-games in general. How can you enjoy a game if all you hear is a bunch of faceless nobodies hacking out forgettable lines? Isn't the point of games to be enjoyable? Exactly. Exceptional Voice Acting improves the game considerably.
Oblivion has got Wonder Woman and Captain Picard and if you don't know who they are, you bunch are more anti-social and sad than I previously thought.
Let's see what Fallout and Troika's "masterpiece" game Bloodlines had: Forgettable Acting School kids. Sheesh, thats even worse than Jagged Bore-lliance 2's Canadian Acting School kids! No wonder Sir-Tech and Troika went out of business... they thought they could record any regular ol Tom and Pete and think the game won't suffer because of that. Turns out it didn't only make the game suffer, but their business too! LOL.
There's a reason Bethesda has stayed in buisness for so long and i'd like to give a tip of the hat to Mrs. Wonder Woman for being there to make Morrowind a success and then coming back for more in Oblivion. Without her, Bethesda might even exsist today! With the aquisition of Patrick Stewart, I put a safe wager that Bethesda is going to be around even longer.
Sorry guys, but it's the truth.
Oblivion - 2, You Guys - 0
Horseback Mounts -
I read often a time about Mount and Blade's 'superiority' over Oblivion in this department. I thought to myself: How in the world is having mounted combat a considerably better thing?
Face it: It isn't. Mounted Combat doesn't change a thing and just adds more needless complexity to an already complex game that Oblivion is. The weight of having to try to ride AND attack has been lifted off my shoulders and it feels great, I've already got plenty enough to worry about in Oblivion.
I played Mount and Blade for all of 30 minutes before I almost did a digital barf over the lack of voice acting and the incredibly sub-sub-par graphics. Not to mention that the mounted combat was incredibly confusing and way too complex. Yeah, if I wanted to be in school I would've been a teacher.
Not to mention that Mount and Blade is ONLY mount combat. It's basically a doorknob and Oblivion is a marvellous and majestic door, and Oblivion not having that cumbersome doorknob present makes it even more fluid and accessable.
Thanks, but no thanks, guys, you can keep your ugly doorknobs and ugly doorstops of games with you in your parents basements. I'm ready to play a real RPG and real progression of video games over-all.
-R McFrants