Firearms in RPGs. The best and worst depictions.

[Cryomancer]

UNDERRAIL

One game which I really loved how they dealed with firearms is the underrail. You have so many depth in that game, for example, a .44 magnum revolver can "hold" multiple rounds of JHP, W2C or Explosive rounds and you can load ammo by ammo in any weapon, you can load you revolver with 4 JHP rounds, two W2C and two explosive rounds if you wanna.

Deflector shields act like they would act if that technology existed. It has a range of projectile speed which it is more effective and drains a lot of energy. So, if you have a energy shield to absorb high speed projectiles, it would be amazing vs a sniper rifle but awful vs a sledgehammer. Weapons also can be modified with long/short barrel and I really enjoyed this game. I really loved to play UR as a cryomancer with a .44 magnum revolver as backup weapon.

FALLOUT : NEW VEGAS

Here is a firearms curator reacting to FNV firearms.



Fallout New Vegas is GORGEOUS in the firearms selection. Weapons can jam(which would be common in a post apocalyptic future where most ammo would be low quality ammo). Repeating weapons on FNV are amazing. Is the unique fallout game where you have a huge selection of lever action guns to chose from. From a .357 carbine to a .45-70 "brush gun".

You have a HUGE selection of ammo for FNV. A 12 gauge shotgun can use coinshot, buckshot, dragon breath, slugs, flechette(...) and the game has in depth armor mechanics. You can use .50 BMG anti materiel rifles with explosive, incendiary and armor piercing ammo. The animations, way that each weapon cycles and modular damage makes FNV gunplay one of the best.

On hardcore mode, ammo weights, so you can't carry tons of ammos on your backpack. Large caliber ammo, mainly .45-70 and .50 BMG weights a lot.

THE BAD DEPICTION

If FNV has one of the best firearms depictions, Bugthesda's games, like FAILout 3/4/76 has one of the worst. First, they dropped the DT from FL1/2, which means that damage X rate of fire is the unique thing which matters. Which means that vs a heavily armored enemy, a 9mm SMG will outDPS a .308 rifle with armor piercing rounds. Ops, there is no more AP rounds, nor rollow point ammo. You can't chose which ammo to use on your weapon. All shotguns can only use 12 gauge buckshot. No more 20 gauge rounds for 20 gauge shotguns, nor more exotic ammo like dragon breath.

Shotguns are very versitile weapons IRL, you can use to bird hunt with birdshot ammo, can put things into fire with dragon's breath, kill people at hundreds of meters with slugs, bugthesda's games has virtually zero repeating firearms which in a world where most ammo would be of poor quality should be far more common.

And don't get me starting on the super mutants which uses improvised .32 pipe rifles on FL3 and are unable to get better weapons nor able to realize that they just using throwable improvised spears would be far more effective considering his superhuman strength. Nor on failout 4, where you get power armor and use a minigun to kill a deathclaw on the beginning of the game. Bugthesda's games are extremely nonsensical.

OUTER WORLDS, ASS EFFECT AND OTHER "FUTURISTIC" GAMES

Weapons on 99,999% of this futuristic games are trash. Looks like toys, are fleshy with no reason. Humanity spend DECADES trying to reduce muzzle flash, develop better suppressors. The idea that in the future, weapons would have neon and fires giantic flashes of light is so nonsensical. If we even start to develop laser weapons, we would probably use then on "invisible light". With railguns, they would probably be silent as possible.

On Ass Effect, weapons are so imprecise, overheat, flashy, unable to pierce any type of cover, why anyone would use it over a "modern" weapon? I don't like most futuristic weapons in video games, cuz they always seems extremely less effective than IRL weapons. Why anyone would use a weapon with slow projectile, inaccuracy and a lot of flashy effects over a "old" weapon? A mosin nagant from russian empire seems way more effective than every weapon of the outer worlds and ass effect combined.

I will gonna die and not see a single "futuristic" game trying to speculate on how weapons would be in future in a consistent way. Always looks more like they are making toys for children, not weapons with futuristic technology. Bootleg guns on post apocalyptic games tends to be way better.

Lastly, happy 4th July to USA members.

 

[luj1]

Fallout Tactics, Jagged Alliance

 

[deuxhero]

New Vegas doesn't get enough credit for its weapon progression. Josh Sawyer's decisions to make sure each gun had a reason to be used over its successor (Such as the 9mm pistol's greater capacity and faster reload than the 357 revolver, the varmint rifle's scopes/suppressor over the service rifle, or late game examples like the Marksman Carbine using very common ammo compared to most late game weapons) and to skip some gun types each tier to make the existence of tiers less obvious do wonders for making progression sensible.

Worst: If we bring in PnP RPGs: Pathfinder. The rules manage to be over complicated, poorly balanced, mix several different technologies and make little sense. They should have just been simple weapons with high power and long reload time that lower their reload time with better proficiency in addition to Rapid Reload.

Also: "Curator" doesn't belong in quotes in the OP. The guy in question legitimately holds the title at a respected museum.

 

[Cryomancer]

Also: "Curator" doesn't belong in quotes in the OP. The guy in question legitimately holds the title at a respected museum.

Sorry about that. I din't knew if curator was the right therm for his profession since english is not my native language. Edited in respect to his work.

 

[jebsmoker]

7.62 high caliber with mods basically adds a bugfuck insane amount of guns. it's basically gun autism heaven but it's stupidly excessive - there's like five million AK or AR variants that you'll never touch

 

[Pink Eye]

I like how Pillars of Eternity's guns sounded like. Nothing beats the feeling of selecting your ranged units. Positioning them into a line. Then have them all shoot in cohesion. Shit is like music. *BOOM* *BOOM*

 

[SoupNazi]

JA2 has the best guns inventory ever and I doubt they can ever be beaten - and at the same time, any game that has firearms should be striving for the same standard. And a failure to at least come close is a failure.

 

[Stavrophore]

Mass Effect series had nice gun variety and they all felt like something that could have been made in real world. Big guns had oompf, and lots of power, smaller ones were comparatively weaker unless it was some novel technology even for that ingame universe.

 

[spectre]

Given that a lot of rpgs these days are just fps games with some stats, dialog and alien titties, it's a bit disappointing that so few devs take their time to make the guns plausible, or even fun.

Since it's apparently fair game to bring up "rpgs" like JA2, Fallout Tictacs and 7.62, might as well add Silent Storm (which means it's time pay due jizzya all over that physics engine one more time).
While it had its share of weird choices (staying invisible while pew pewing away with the welrod), one thing that physics model did impressively (seriously, years go by and nothing ever comes close to it) was to model the trajectory, penetration and impact of each individual bullet.
Too few games let you just rip through several layers of wood with MG42 bursts as a logical solution for a bunch of guys hunched on the second floor.
Also the ragdolls on bodies felt really good, when you would snipe a guy on a bridge and see him slump over it, though it went a bit silly when sniping with the PRTS.

Taking a long hard look at RPGs that actually deserve a mention, I remember having lots of fun with the guns and upgrading system in the original Desu Ex.

 

[Poseidon00]

Wild Arms 3 is in the running for the worst depiction. No new mechanics or interesting uses just hit at "attack" buton and fire a bullet. Shotguns, pistols, and snipers all the same.

 

[SharkClub]

New Vegas definitely has some of the best guns and gameplay mechanics surrounding guns of any RPG. It's pretty fucking mad how Bethesda's guns in Fallout 4 are just a straight downgrade. We go from 5.56mm carbines, service rifles and anti-materiel rifles to... water-cooled mutant-ww1-looking retardo """""assault rifles""""" and other such dogshit that take up 60% of your screen in first person. Whoever was the artist for the weapons in Fallout 4 should probably have played literally any other Fallout game other than F3 with its retarded combat shotgun before designing anything to do with guns.

 

[Gargaune]

STALKER shooty-shoot, best shooty-shoot. No, I don't care it's "not an RPG."

 

[Cryomancer]

You do realise that only autists actually care about whether a gun in a video game is realistic or not.

Depends on the game. On OverWatch or on Paladins, I don't care. But in a more "serious" game, guns should make sense. Post apocalyptic guns >>>> fituristic """guns"""". Among the futuristic games, Deus Ex probably has the best guns.

Wild Arms 3 is in the running for the worst depiction. No new mechanics or interesting uses just hit at "attack" buton and fire a bullet. Shotguns, pistols, and snipers all the same.

The unique JRPG which I liked a bit the gunplay is dirge of cerberus. Honestly, tri barrel revolver is a bit dumb but Vincent was so cool.

 

[Desiderius]

Deadfire also features Firecrackers that can be used to achieve certain objectives.

 

[Desiderius]

It’s all been downhill since Heavy Barrel.



Big gun at 7:35

 

[deuxhero]

Wild Arms 3 is in the running for the worst depiction. No new mechanics or interesting uses just hit at "attack" buton and fire a bullet. Shotguns, pistols, and snipers all the same.

Not entirely true, but the differences there are are more a factor of each character's individual stats.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

they're all terrible, some less so

Something I really hate in sci-fi games is this idea that ballistic weaponry will somehow be obsolete in the future.

 

[Tweed]

Darklands handled them realistically. You'll get off one shot and probably miss.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

This right here is the Ares Predator but to street scum and overly nosy Lone Star it's known as God.

Fifteen bullets in a clip, medium damage with high firepower, easy to mod, works with all combat cyberware and wrapped up in a nice affordable bowtie with only a few hundred nuyen to its price tag.

So go ahead. Make my day, you no good Renraku cocksucker.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, its not as detailed as to have individual rounds of different ammo in the same magazine, but the sheer variety you get otherwise more than makes up for it. Ammo types vary from gun to gun, so in one you get JHP and FMJ, in others you get fancy military rounds. With special calibers like 22 or 12 gauge, you get all sorts of different ammos, including beanbags or otherwise useless ones in a zombie apocalypse. And you have the option of taking used casings/shells and reloading them, with minor penalties to match. You can even use things like black powder (which increases the amount of cleanings you need to do) or use precious metals as impromptu shot. The amount of mods are less than the amount of guns, but you have quite a number of sights, stocks and even usually ignored options like straps, so you can sling the weapon on your back if you need your hands for something else.

 

[Rean]

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, its not as detailed as to have individual rounds of different ammo in the same magazine, but the sheer variety you get otherwise more than makes up for it. Ammo types vary from gun to gun, so in one you get JHP and FMJ, in others you get fancy military rounds. With special calibers like 22 or 12 gauge, you get all sorts of different ammos, including beanbags or otherwise useless ones in a zombie apocalypse. And you have the option of taking used casings/shells and reloading them, with minor penalties to match. You can even use things like black powder (which increases the amount of cleanings you need to do) or use precious metals as impromptu shot. The amount of mods are less than the amount of guns, but you have quite a number of sights, stocks and even usually ignored options like straps, so you can sling the weapon on your back if you need your hands for something else.

Mentioning CDDA is like using a cheat code. It's the best sandbox game when it comes to most things.

 

[Ladonna]

JA2 and the Silent Storm games.

 

[Cryomancer]

Something I really hate in sci-fi games is this idea that ballistic weaponry will somehow be obsolete in the future.

Projectile weapons are the "meta" of IRL since the paleolithic era. Javalins and Bows was always effective. Firearms are very effective cuz it uses gunpowder, not human force to propel the projectile. My guess is that in the future, we will gonna use projectile based weapons with even better "energy sources". My guess is that railguns will become each time more portable and the main weapon in long future. Just like cannons was first clunky, heavy and expensive and gradually, we evolved the technology. There is already railguns in testing.

IRL railgun

 

[Wunderbar]

Ahh, it's not a Victor Sorcerer's thread without FNV's anti-materiel rifle.

 

[Sykar]

It’s all been downhill since Heavy Barrel.



Big gun at 7:35

Pah!