Formulaic and Unimaginative Gameworlds

[Neanderthal]

Are modern CRPGs too unambitious?

• In Labyrinth of Worlds I explored many different realms under rule of the Guardian, I flew, swam, jumped, levitated, water walked, teleported within them and could crash the Flying Fortress of Killorn Keep into the world below killing everyone in it, plumb the depths of the Ethereal Void, discover a city entombed under a great glacier, or brave the perils of the Scintillus Magic Academies final exam.
• In Ultimas I could jump in starships, travel to other worlds, time travel, teleport, ride horses, drive wagons, sail ships, venture through Moongates, ride magic carpets etc.
• In Betrayal at Krondor I travelled to an alien world, destroyed by the Valheru, where magic hid in crystal formation, gods lingered in great pillars of stone and the legacy of apocalyptic warfare lay all around.
• In Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain I turned into a swarm of bats and flew over the land, turned to mists and flitted through cracks, transformed into a werewolf and leaped great distances, or hid my vampiric nature behind a spellmask of aristocracy.
• Today in a Lone Wolf gamebook I made a daring escape from a Darlord by flying off on a giant eagle, I fought undead mounted on evil pteradactyls in the sky and was rescued by a friendly wizards flying galleon, crewed by rifle armed Dwarves.
• Even in a cheap an cheerful ARPG like Sacred I could jump on a horse and charge through enemies , jump or teleport across rivers or obstacles.
• Arcanum I rode steamtrains, booked passage on ships, flew aboard a zeppelin that was shot down by Ogre piloted bi-planes, used the Tarant Underground, teleported across the continent and was ultimately banished to the alien world of Kerghan's Void.

What do we get now as an RPG?

• Clear painted backgrounds of the fog of war by running around (or walking if the dev can be bothered to implement it) grinding trash mobs an recycling identikit crap.
  
• With an ocassional conversation, that usually has absolutely no affect on anything.
  
• No alternate means of transport.
  
• No spells that create new and alter existing gameplay, shit you're lucky if you can cast spells outside combat.
  
• If theres an interesting painted background you'll be lucky if you can interact with it in any way whatsoever.
  
• NPCs are just there to dispense exposition or provide flavour an have no life beyond most basic script. Its just fucking depressing.

 

[Lhynn]

Are modern CRPGs too unambitious?

Yes.

What do we get now as an RPG?

Crap.

Edit: Lone wolf saga is what every rpg developer should read before ever thinking of making an rpg. The world is so rich and full of that magical feeling of adventure that makes fantasy worth exploring.

 

[Lacrymas]

What Lhynn said.

Also, I don't think unambitious is the right word, not creative is a better one. And not understanding the fundamental requirement of any work - that it's logical and every part fits in the whole. That's why you have exposition-dumpy NPCs, trivial conversations, playing therapist with companions which are in turn random modern-sounding people, disconnected combat encounters, the "story" being nonsense and irrelevant etc. etc. Another point is that the worlds are created for you and everything is there for you, like a children's playground. And they do feel like a playground. It's too obvious and cringe-y, think Bioware-type "romances". They aren't self-contained universes that you explore, they are just a string of exhibits that are set-up to be seen by the player. It creates this unreal and uncanny plastic-like surface that is just weird.

 

[Brancaleone]

What Lhynn said.

Another point is that the worlds are created for you and everything is there for you, like a children's playground. And they do feel like a playground. It's too obvious and cringe-y, think Bioware-type "romances". They aren't self-contained universes that you explore, they are just a string of exhibits that are set-up to be seen by the player. It creates this unreal and uncanny plastic-like surface that is just weird.

The paradigm has shifted from creating a world for the player to interact with, to slapping together a 'vertical slice' of a world, and then leaving it at that.

 

[StrongBelwas]

Obviously, but what can be done about it?
Budgets rose, stuff got cut, and people just bought even more copies. The companies that tried to be bold all died out eventually, while the ones that play it safe will be here to stay for a long time.

 

[Beastro]

Sadly it isn't just formulaic anymore, very little thought it put into making worlds.

Someone in my EQ guild touched on that the other day comparing EQ and all the little things to explore in it, to WoW and it's heap of easter eggs and lack of real world building: EQ was built first as a world and then players were put in it, WoW was built straight away with players in mind and designed to maximize the potential of a mass market game.

Wherever you opinion of MMOs in general, EQ was a MMO in the old style of RPGs, WoW was of the new style that set a trend that has intruded into multiplayer and single player games now.

 

[Goblino]

I think that's the nail on the head there, Beastro. You can see with DA:I that EA decided to turn the game even further from the old Bioware KOTOR formula and outright turned the game into a colorful grindstone. Most things AAA or AA release with the primary label of RPG now means they're trying to ape the old Blizzard numbers pinata. Worldbuilding isn't exactly high on the priority list when the devs are just focused on literal mathematical formulas and techniques to keep players working for loot. Thing is, AAA is going to learn soon enough that prewhordering and potentially infinite play times won't keep them afloat forever, then it's onto the next over-inflated scam.

 

[DeepOcean]

There is a focus on content nowdays, not on systems or rules, millions of people play WoW and replay the same simple content over and over and over again, you played an MMO quest and you played all of them. Developers are bragging about square miles and lines of text not how mechanically rich a game is or how great the moment to moment gameplay is, just sheer content quantity is what matters. Unfortunately, niche RPGs aren't free of that, after playing PoE, I arrived at the city of Defiance Bay hoping to explore a great fantasy city with alot of different quests that explored the lore of the game, what I got was just a different background to kill shit in it with barely no interaction beyond that.

Unfortunately, for most RPG players, RPGs are just games where you grind alot playing the same repetitive simple content, get level ups and grind even more or over produced romance games. It is very rare to find RPG players that care or even can discuss gameplay mechanics. Why implement a really tough to script spell like levitation and having to take that under consideration on level design if I could just add a few more explosions and invent another shitty context for another shitty fetch quest to pad the game out?

Ambition is a rare beast nowdays, hope DoS:2 and Torment bring the magic back because the first batch of kickstarter RPGs were very by the number efforts.

 

[SausageInYourFace]

Today in a Lone Wolf gamebook I made a daring escape from a Darlord by flying off on a giant eagle, I fought undead mounted on evil pteradactyls in the sky and was rescued by a friendly wizards flying galleon, crewed by rifle armed Dwarves.

Which one was that?

 

[Saxon1974]

Yes not much creativity. I love high fantasy but we keep getting GENERIC high fantasy. Same goblins, orcs etc....none of the worlds seem to have anything unique to the feel of them

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

Gaming is now easily the largest revenue generating entertainment industry. There are fifty times more people who are willing to spend on a series of distractions and sensory input than there are those who care about depth of systems or mechanics.

In a world of 30 second attention span and 140 characters to impress, the slow burn doesn't pay.

The answer is to play or replay games that attempt to deliver what we want and to support anyone trying to do that in today's reality.

 

[felipepepe]

Even when there's something remotely interesting, it's left as background & lore, while the game itself is generic as fuck.

I.e., just check the lore behind the world and the darkspawn in Dragon Age: Origins:

It is said that long ago, the Maker created the Fade as His first world. His first children were the spirits of the Fade, made in His own image. However, the Maker turned away from His first children, because while the spirits could alter their world at will, they lacked a soul and could only imitate what they saw, being unable to create or imagine anything new for themselves. Dissatisfied with the result, the Maker left the Fade behind, creating the world of Thedas instead and its inhabitants. He separated it from the first world by putting the Veil in between them, not realizing that His first children would be able to observe His new children and grow envious of them.

The children that populated this new realm had the spark of the divine within them, which pleased the Maker; according to the Chantry, the dwarves were not among His creations.[4] While their world was more solid than that of the spirits, these creatures were able to imagine, and dream new things because of it. But then the Original Sin was committed: jealous spirits who would be the Old Gods whispered to the men of the new world from across the Veil, and turned them to the worship of themselves. After imprisoning the Old Gods underground, the Maker turned away from mankind, and departed from the Golden City. He despaired, for His first children had no urge to create and His second children created sin.[5][6]

But the Old Gods still whispered to men, and taught them blood magic. The magisters of the Tevinter Imperiumused the knowledge of the Old Gods to enter the Golden City, committing the Second Sin. But they instead blackened the Golden City and were cast back to earth by the Maker, transforming them into ravenous monsters that corrupted all they touched: the first darkspawn. Much later on, Andraste managed to convince the Maker to forgive his creations, but Andraste was betrayed by her mortal husband Maferath, and burned at the stake. The Maker turned away from mankind once more.

That is fucking cool. Imagine this in a Planescape / Mask of the Betrayer kind of RPG - it would be awesome to see the corrupted Black City, being confronted by the Maker, finding out where the dwarves came from, meeting a betrayed Andraste, being corrupted by the old gods, etc... how many lies, plot twists and paths could such story have?

But what we get instead? "Darkspawn = Orcs. Pls Kill them."

On the other hand, you have Wasteland 2, which is/was set in a wacky world of killer nuns and traveling through the brain of robots, and now it's "default post-apocalypse: raiders, mutants and robots", all trying very hard to have backstories and make you care... But what I hoped for was to get crazy shit like a spore-plant party member, fly around in a UFO, defeat a martian invasion (like the false questline in the W1 manual), find an immortal vampire company and help a poor guy to climb the corporate ladder, etc... THERE WERE SO MANY POSSIBILITIES!

Feels like we're stuck in a generic middle ground, where everything must be instantly palatable. Games can't be epic interdimensional adventures against Gods nor wacky crazy stuff for that would "alienate the target audience". So every game feels like an episode of Scooby-Doo, where you go through the motions and defeat the villain of the week, without anything that breaks the status quo happening.

EDIT: Oh, and they must set the sequel as well! Vide DA:I: all you did was generic as fuck - "here's a super darkspawn, kill him" - but at the post-credit scenes it's revealed that one of your party members is actually the Elven God of Betrayal! OH!

Shame that doesn't mean ANYTHING to the game you just played - it doesn't explain anything nor changes the plot in any way, just throws more lore at you, sets a sequel and makes writers pat themselves in the back for being oh, so clever.

Of course they couldn't add that in the game itself, they got to milk this shit until it goes dry - also see Blizzard re-using Orcs,Demons and Illidan AGAIN, instead of finally taking us to the stars to battle the Titans.

 

[Neanderthal]

Today in a Lone Wolf gamebook I made a daring escape from a Darlord by flying off on a giant eagle, I fought undead mounted on evil pteradactyls in the sky and was rescued by a friendly wizards flying galleon, crewed by rifle armed Dwarves.

Which one was that?

Shadow on the Sand. Escapimg from Zakhan's palace in Vasagonia and finding Banedon's Skyship. Using Seventh Sense.

 

[Roqua]

Are modern CRPGs too unambitious?

• In Labyrinth of Worlds I explored many different realms under rule of the Guardian, I flew, swam, jumped, levitated, water walked, teleported within them and could crash the Flying Fortress of Killorn Keep into the world below killing everyone in it, plumb the depths of the Ethereal Void, discover a city entombed under a great glacier, or brave the perils of the Scintillus Magic Academies final exam.
• In Ultimas I could jump in starships, travel to other worlds, time travel, teleport, ride horses, drive wagons, sail ships, venture through Moongates, ride magic carpets etc.
• In Betrayal at Krondor I travelled to an alien world, destroyed by the Valheru, where magic hid in crystal formation, gods lingered in great pillars of stone and the legacy of apocalyptic warfare lay all around.
• In Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain I turned into a swarm of bats and flew over the land, turned to mists and flitted through cracks, transformed into a werewolf and leaped great distances, or hid my vampiric nature behind a spellmask of aristocracy.
• Today in a Lone Wolf gamebook I made a daring escape from a Darlord by flying off on a giant eagle, I fought undead mounted on evil pteradactyls in the sky and was rescued by a friendly wizards flying galleon, crewed by rifle armed Dwarves.
• Even in a cheap an cheerful ARPG like Sacred I could jump on a horse and charge through enemies , jump or teleport across rivers or obstacles.
• Arcanum I rode steamtrains, booked passage on ships, flew aboard a zeppelin that was shot down by Ogre piloted bi-planes, used the Tarant Underground, teleported across the continent and was ultimately banished to the alien world of Kerghan's Void.

What do we get now as an RPG?

• Clear painted backgrounds of the fog of war by running around (or walking if the dev can be bothered to implement it) grinding trash mobs an recycling identikit crap.
  
• With an ocassional conversation, that usually has absolutely no affect on anything.
  
• No alternate means of transport.
  
• No spells that create new and alter existing gameplay, shit you're lucky if you can cast spells outside combat.
  
• If theres an interesting painted background you'll be lucky if you can interact with it in any way whatsoever.
  
• NPCs are just there to dispense exposition or provide flavour an have no life beyond most basic script. Its just fucking depressing.

I have to disagree. You list some gimmicks and leave out some modern examples. And Lone Wolf has a recent game type thing on steam. And Omen isn't an rpg at all. If you look at the classics they are taken from some sort of source material. This material is usually created by people talented and creative enough to write books and be successful at it, if not fleshed out and brought infused to life by these types of people.

Betrayal at Krondor is based off of and creative with the help and direction of the creator and writer of many books in the Krondor world/series.
All the D&D games are basically the same. Based off books in different realms such as Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, etc.
Some modern games do a wonderful job at creating a new world, such as Wasteland 2, AoD, and Underrail. Hell, Serpents in the Stagland is pretty fleshed out and unique.
The Larian group, despite being slaves to the console shit rpg dream while slumming with us mere crpg fans currently, created a pretty weird and creative world chock full'o crazy shit.
Arcanum is by Tim Cain and he is a creative genius and the greatest crpg developer that will ever be, and he is working on on his own new crpg from what I understand (I think, its not clear. One of these busybodies here will know for certain I am sure).
ToEE and Bloodlines, both instant classics, are based on source material.
FO was Tim Cain again who is a genius.
RoA source material

In 20 years people will be going on about all the shit games today that are hipster fodder like Undertail, Stardew Valley, Micecraft, Binding of Issac, all the playformers besides Dex, etc. Just gimmicky hipster shit. As soon as tablets and phones can handle fancy smancy graphics all the development for them will be done by the new Bethesdas and Biowares spending 95% of the budget on superficial shit and playing it safe with dumbed down gameplay the largest mass of monkey markets will find playable, and this new phase of indie will be gone because most of the people who claim to like rpgs only like AAA console games with lite rpg elements.

As long as game developers think they are like Hollywood and their audience buys the tripe they make we will get slightly interactive movies of mostly superficial vapid systems and no complexity optimized for savage controllers and the monkeys who use consoles or play pc games like savages with controllers.

If people of normal intelligence start realizing our purchases matter and what we support with our wallets matter we can solidify the market for crpgs and make the production of them viable and profitable. That means not buying console shit, and supporting the fuck out of crpgs like WL2, D:OS, AoD, etc.

If people only open their wallet for shit only shit will get made. If people open their wallet for the actual good games that place an emphasis on traditional crpg values and systems, we will get good crpgs. If people support games with unique settings, it doesn't help anyone if it is console shit. We need to support the fuck out of crpgs and solidy a viable and sustainable long term market before we can try and manipulate settings.

I know I will take a boring, old setting, no originality game with real rpg systems and complexity than a unique console piece of shit, or some hipster monkey trash for retards.

I love when developers are normal and do not treat assets as sunk costs. Reuse the fuck out of them. I would have loved to have had a new ToEE type game every year for the last decade. Or a new Bloodlines every year, with the same or very few new assets. I don't see how a reasonable person can justify the expenses of creating all new assets for a new game in a series. For instance, DRagon Age 1 to 3. Are people so superficial that if the same assets were reused it would have been a huge deal (with needed new assets of course)? I would like to think no, but the answer is of course. As long as the market for console games with lite rpg elements has majority market of monkey idiots, the crpg will always be at risk. The only genre that doesn't seem to be controlled by complete superficial vapid retards is the pure strategy game market. Even I think a lot of those games look like shit.

 

[octavius]

Games is huge business and most of the consumers are casuals with the attention span of 4 year olds who need constant instant gratification to keep their interest up and thus keeping up the monetization.

But fortunately there's a life time of classic games and their user made content in my backlog, so personally I don't get too worked up by the current state of affairs. One could even say it's been positive for me, 'cause the absolute abysmal state of affairs around 2010 (it's somewhat better now, I think) led me to seriously work on my backlog, and I've enjoyed lots of classic games I would otherwise have missed. Currently playing (Open)X-Com, for example.

 

[Black Angel]

To me, in an ideal world, a good series would evolve its themes and genres.

Take Fallout, for example. It's Post-Nuclear Apocalypse, first and foremost. By the time of Fallout 2, however, the feels and the 'magic' of what made it Post-Nuclear Apocalypse in the first place started to fade, as civilizations truly starts to rise from the ashes of the Old World and shifted it tones. It became more apparent in New Vegas (and maybe Van Buren if it made it), which is more of a Post-Post-Post Apocalypse. However, with Fallout, I personally imagined that the original developers would've taken the series in an evolutionary direction, turning the formerly Post-Nuclear Apocalypse game into a full-fledged Sci-fi Futuristic (and possibly Space) game. This kind of direction was somewhat apparent in New Vegas, if you choose to support Mr. House and his "20 years - re-igniting hi-tech development sectors, 50 years - having people in the orbit, and 100 years - colony ships faring the stars".

Alas, we have to let go and begin again.

 

[Beastro]

There is a focus on content nowdays, not on systems or rules, millions of people play WoW and replay the same simple content over and over and over again, you played an MMO quest and you played all of them.

Not all.

Old EQ quests relied on the player figuring out key words to say to NPCs and to figure out a lot of vague hints, if any were given. That plus finding odd items amongst thousands and people finding ways of working them into quests.

McQuaid bragging that there were hundreds of quests that were never solved by the community. It was bullshit, but the fact that that rumour hung in the air for most of the last decade shows that it was possible something like that might have existed, whereas in WoW-esque quests there's no ambiguity, if someone has a ! over their head, there's a quest.

The apex of MMO quest design was the Class Epic quests, which sadly laid the groundwork for more involved quests that no one stepped up to raise the bar over.

Epics involved a massive quest chain or collecting items from various raid targets, while specialist classes like Enchanters and Rogues had to do little tricks of their class, like charm NPCs to talk to them or pick pocket mobs. All of that was left in the air for the players to figure out too and during a time where item DB websites and such were far from efficient and completely relied on the community for input. The Epics were solves quickly, but it took the whole community working together to figure things out.

I'll like just the Wizard Epic here: http://wiki.project1999.com/Wizard_Epic_Quest

Now take a look at the Long Walkthrough and imagine going into it at release without an idea of where to even start the bloody thing. Things like:

You say, 'What about Sylen Tyrn?'

Arantir Karondor says 'Sylen was a high elf wizard, and like many high elves, he believed himself to be better than others. Because of his birth, he thought he was more noble and more intelligent than anyone else. I heard how met his demise - while flying over a vast area of water, his powers were stripped from him in midflight. He fell and was captured by a rival wizard who specialized in magics of the water. Search for that wizard and you could find a trace of Sylen.'

Are easy to figure out. Wizard in water = Phinny who is the top boss of Kedge Keep. Things like this, however:

You say, 'What are you searching for?'

Camin says 'Ah! A smart one, I see! If you really wish to know about such a thing, you will have to help me finance my studies. The knowledge I have acquired and researched did not come cheaply.'
You will need to give Camin 1000pp at this point.

Camin says 'Good, good, you show a willingness to learn of this with your offer. What I can tell you is that Solusek Ro had four followers who had shown exceptional aptitude in the arts of wizardry. Solusek Ro himself tutored them. He considered them to be like his own children. I know of one who still exists. He goes by the name of Arantir Karondor. He used to specialize in the storing of magic into physical objects. Arantir has been hiding for many, many years and will most assuredly be going by another name, so keep your eyes open. Anyway, be off, I need to continue my research. Return to me if you ever find Arantir Karondor.'
Now you must head to Halas. Once there, head toward the shaman guild and find a vendor named Dargon (location 350, 357) that sells a potion called Ro's Breath (identifies as "Powerful magic radiates from this object."). Buy this potion for around 1000pp and make your way back to Erudin.

Hand Ro's Breath over to Camin and get this response:

Camin says 'Very interesting... I've seen this work before. Yes, yes! It's the work of Arantir Karondor! Give this back to the person you got it from. Maybe he will have a clue to Arantir's location.'
Camin gives you back the potion (now identifies as "I know who you are."). The only difference is that it no longer has a charge of Shield of Lava. You must now take this potion back to Dargon in Halas. Once it's handed in, she will turn into Arantir Karondor and reply with:

Dargon says 'So, I've been discovered! You must know Camin - he is one of the only people who could have recognized my work. I have worked very hard to mask my presence here.'

Involved Wizards scouring all over the game world testing every NPC around with words or anything else they could figure out. As it turned out the NPC was in Halas, which is amusing since it's in the ass end of the world where Dark Elves are killed on sight, the race a great majority of Wizard players chose to play as who'd have never gone there if not for someone figuring out that step of quest.

Now, however EQ has long since converted over to the base WoW type "kill x rats" and other shit ones for daily quests and such while they removed the need to type keywords and just highlight the keywords in text for you to click on to progress through discussions.

 

[Melan]

OP's description is accurate, but the points about modern games apply perfectly to Baldur's Gate. Baldur's Gate became a massive success based on sticking to this formula, and shaped the imaginative landscape of CRPGs in the way Ultima and Wizardry did in the 80s. Fallout was reasonably successful (helped by a mid-90s slump in the RPG market), but it was BG that sold more than two million copies worldwide (not counting the sequel and spinoffs). The majority of people designing games today grew up on BG, and you can see its influence everywhere.

 

[Beastro]

That is fucking cool. Imagine this in a Planescape / Mask of the Betrayer kind of RPG - it would be awesome to see the corrupted Black City, being confronted by the Maker, finding out where the dwarves came from, meeting a betrayed Andraste, being corrupted by the old gods, etc... how many lies, plot twists and paths could such story have?

Sad part about said lore in DA is that it's all a lie due to the series having a axe to grind with their ersatz Catholic Church sockpuppet (which is becoming something of a Bioware stereotype now, look up the Crusades they created for TOR lore and the human-centric not-Catholic Church which led them against the poor Hutts and their slave owning empire).

All of that story is fiction created by the Chantry and the mystery around the Black City is that it was that way when the Tivinitar mages came to supposedly taint it. No one knows what caused the Darkspawn now, and sadly, I fully expect it to be no where near as interesting when the series finally gets around to reveling it.

In 20 years people will be going on about all the shit games today that are hipster fodder like Undertail, Stardew Valley, Micecraft, Binding of Issac, all the playformers besides Dex, etc. Just gimmicky hipster shit. As soon as tablets and phones can handle fancy smancy graphics all the development for them will be done by the new Bethesdas and Biowares spending 95% of the budget on superficial shit and playing it safe with dumbed down gameplay the largest mass of monkey markets will find playable, and this new phase of indie will be gone because most of the people who claim to like rpgs only like AAA console games with lite rpg elements.

Fuck you for comparing Underrail to those. It's a good solid game that delivered, especially with regard to those thread, a interesting different world in a way that had you collect and piece together things as you went along instead of having a massive lore dump at the opening. About the only problem with it's world is the fact that the protagonist knows nothing about the South Rail despite living in such a world, it cries out that you are a PC that has been injected in a world you know nothing about with no excuse for being so clueless.

 

[Severian Silk]

Larian's stuff is pretty unimaginative. I don't understand all the hype.

 

[Athelas]

On the other hand, you have Wasteland 2, which is/was set in a wacky world of killer nuns and traveling through the brain of robots, and now it's "default post-apocalypse: raiders, mutants and robots", all trying very hard to have backstories and make you care... But what I hoped for was to get crazy shit like a spore-plant party member, fly around in a UFO, defeat a martian invasion (like the false questline in the W1 manual), find an immortal vampire company and help a poor guy to climb the corporate ladder, etc... THERE WERE SO MANY POSSIBILITIES!

Be careful what you wish for. Fallout 3 has all the things you listed in some form or another (well, Harold is not a party member, but close enough).

 

[Morgoth]

Like with everything in life, if you want to enjoy your stuff, you have to be selective. Plenty of good games being made today, just ignore the industry and the media whores as a whole.

 

[Black Angel]

In 20 years people will be going on about all the shit games today that are hipster fodder like Undertail, Stardew Valley, Micecraft, Binding of Issac, all the playformers besides Dex, etc. Just gimmicky hipster shit. As soon as tablets and phones can handle fancy smancy graphics all the development for them will be done by the new Bethesdas and Biowares spending 95% of the budget on superficial shit and playing it safe with dumbed down gameplay the largest mass of monkey markets will find playable, and this new phase of indie will be gone because most of the people who claim to like rpgs only like AAA console games with lite rpg elements.

Fuck you for comparing Underrail to those. It's a good solid game that delivered, especially with regard to those thread, a interesting different world in a way that had you collect and piece together things as you went along instead of having a massive lore dump at the opening. About the only problem with it's world is the fact that the protagonist knows nothing about the South Rail despite living in such a world, it cries out that you are a PC that has been injected in a world you know nothing about with no excuse for being so clueless.

I think he meant Undertale.

 

[Stainless Veteran]

Are modern CRPGs too unambitious?

• In Labyrinth of Worlds I explored many different realms under rule of the Guardian, I flew, swam, jumped, levitated, water walked, teleported within them and could crash the Flying Fortress of Killorn Keep into the world below killing everyone in it, plumb the depths of the Ethereal Void, discover a city entombed under a great glacier, or brave the perils of the Scintillus Magic Academies final exam.
• In Ultimas I could jump in starships, travel to other worlds, time travel, teleport, ride horses, drive wagons, sail ships, venture through Moongates, ride magic carpets etc.
• In Betrayal at Krondor I travelled to an alien world, destroyed by the Valheru, where magic hid in crystal formation, gods lingered in great pillars of stone and the legacy of apocalyptic warfare lay all around.
• In Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain I turned into a swarm of bats and flew over the land, turned to mists and flitted through cracks, transformed into a werewolf and leaped great distances, or hid my vampiric nature behind a spellmask of aristocracy.
• Today in a Lone Wolf gamebook I made a daring escape from a Darlord by flying off on a giant eagle, I fought undead mounted on evil pteradactyls in the sky and was rescued by a friendly wizards flying galleon, crewed by rifle armed Dwarves.
• Even in a cheap an cheerful ARPG like Sacred I could jump on a horse and charge through enemies , jump or teleport across rivers or obstacles.
• Arcanum I rode steamtrains, booked passage on ships, flew aboard a zeppelin that was shot down by Ogre piloted bi-planes, used the Tarant Underground, teleported across the continent and was ultimately banished to the alien world of Kerghan's Void.

What do we get now as an RPG?

• Clear painted backgrounds of the fog of war by running around (or walking if the dev can be bothered to implement it) grinding trash mobs an recycling identikit crap.
  
• With an ocassional conversation, that usually has absolutely no affect on anything.
  
• No alternate means of transport.
  
• No spells that create new and alter existing gameplay, shit you're lucky if you can cast spells outside combat.
  
• If theres an interesting painted background you'll be lucky if you can interact with it in any way whatsoever.
  
• NPCs are just there to dispense exposition or provide flavour an have no life beyond most basic script. Its just fucking depressing.

I agree. But I think there's two different problems you're pointing out. One is the unimaginative settings, the second are bland storylines, and the third is the lack of cool gameplay mechanics and world interaction. They are interconnected, sure, but still are distinct problems.

For example, Forgotten Realms as a setting is a kitchen-sink of bland-as-fuck lore. Still, we got a few interesting games out of it, BG2 story isn't all that great, but amount of various content is not bad, also mechanics and world interaction are limited by IE engine. Then in Lionheart we get an interesting and underused setting - but both the story, the mechanics and the world interaction are shit. Or, if we talking about newer ones - D:OS has a ton of interesting world interaction and gameplay mechanics, but the setting and story were vile, puerile shit.

For me the setting and the story is more important than gameplay mechanics and world interaction to be honest. Sure, later two are nice things to have in game, expecially if you're an explorefag or a systemfag. But I'm a storyfag, so even the most interesting item puzzles, using environment in quest or simply cool things can't win my over if the setting and story are subpar.

As for roots of the problem - I think there are two - wider audience, and not even it in itself, it's the rough approximation, a model in heads of marketing department or indie devs. If someone tries to imagine the widest audience, they, sometimes unwittingly, but always unfailingly will imagine a bunch of retards. Who won't appreciate weird things, or tough mechanics. Who will feel like a fish out of the water if the setting is weird and they can't relate to story not being awesomest hero destined to conquer all and bang chicks or something in this effect.

The second problem is the design by committee. Many today's games lack s strong, unified vision of what the game should be, and instead flip-flop on what various factions amoung studio want, or what marketing department wants, or aforementioned retards want. They aren't making the game they themself would wanted to play.

Auxiliary third problem is the engine limitations. In 3D engine many of the things which were showed in older games in text, must be first modeled, textured, scripted and so on. Each unusual interaction is more work, time, and money. If we're talking about AAA studious, of course they wouldn't want that. And even if we're talking about indies, many lack the skill as a writer and/or a modeller to both describe it interestingly and make a good animation for interactions

 

[Brancaleone]

The second problem is the design by committee. Many today's games lack s strong, unified vision of what the game should be, and instead flip-flop on what various factions amoung stupio want, or what marketing department wants, or aforementioned retards want. They aren't making the game they themself would wanted to play.

Which also means that while 25 years ago at least sometimes all you needed was a single talented individual in order to create a great game, nowadays you need a large group of talented people to do the same. And with the growth of the videogame market and the ridiculous number of titles published yearly, it also means that talent is spread even thinner across the market.
Then you add the marketing derived approach to production, which I imagine in most cases is not very different from pop-songs (start from a hook, pad it out to a song, scribble some lyrics on top of it - insert South Park reference where necessary in case of boy-band: choose cast, transplant a scrap of some surrogate of a personality onto each member, etc. etc.), and there you go.

I personally consider the 'bunch of retards' image of the widest audience in the minds of marketing department, while true, a sorry excuse for the lack of competence and talent ("we are giving idiots what they want, it's not like we couldn't churn out great stuff if we wanted to": yeah, right). Because if you make great stuff, most idiots will like it anyway. But if you are only capable of creating mediocre stuff, well, weird things or tough mechanics poorly devised and implemented worse will have little to no success among the aforementioned retards, while mediocre popamole/streamlined/stereotypical stuff, if hyped and packaged in the right way, will be successful among the same group. So of course, if mediocre is your upper limit, you follow the latter road, and use the retarded audience as a justification.