Isometric CRPGs feel like someone tried to jerry-rig a campaign out of a strategy game's devkit.

[Robotigan]

This is probably because I grew up playing Age of Empires and Zoo Tycoon instead of Fallout and Baldur's Gate, but still. If I'm supposed to be playing as the characters, why am I staring down on them from the throne of Zeus? I command thee to build a lumber mill, damnit.

 

[Butter]

It evolved from PnP RPGs, which were an evolution of tabletop wargaming. Obviously you can't look through the eyes of your character at the table, but it also makes positioning with many units much easier. Games like Wizardry and Might & Magic handle positioning very abstractly, but in Pool of Radiance you can actually see where your characters are relative to the enemy, which creates tactical situations around line of sight, targeting AoE spells, and of course blocking doorways.

Only the first two groups of enemies are in melee range here.

Only the enemies with check marks are in melee range here.

There's no abstraction here. You can instantly and intuitively understand who is or isn't in range.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Albion did a bit of a compromise. It has first person view exploration and top-down isometric, depending on the area. Combat is also quasi-first person like a blobber, but has a separate tactical display of character and enemy positioning. Betrayal at Krondor is one of the other rare games that mixes 1st and 3rd person perspectives.

While 1st person is immersive, 3rd person is important for the player because senses are not adequately translated with a screen. Now that devices like the Occulus Rift exist, maybe that will change. The idea of playing Baldur's Gate or PF:KM in 1st person with a headset, even in combat, sounds pretty cool.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

There's still a very good reason it's used that has nothing to do with copying other games.
It lets the dev skimp on graphics as long as the objects vaguely look like what they're supposed to look like. They wouldn't be given that kind of leeway if the game was designed around the camera being close to those objects.

 

[luj1]

This is probably because I grew up playing Age of Empires and Zoo Tycoon instead of Fallout and Baldur's Gate, but still.

If I'm supposed to be playing as the characters, why am I staring down on them from the throne of Zeus?

This is what an actual RPG looks like

But half of the Codex hasn't played a wargame in their life

 

[Robotigan]

This is what an actual RPG looks like

But half of the Codex hasn't played a wargame in their life

Because each one of those miniatures costs as much as an entire video game.

 

[just]

and you need friends

 

[Dadd]

In strategy games, you roleplay as a general or a businessman, etc. Strategy games are RPGs. Did RPGs jerry-rig themselves?

 

[Martyr]

it is pretty damn obvious for anyone willing to see that the beginning of computer RPGs - Baldur's Gate and its clones, like Fallout - started out as a simple modification to StarCraft, with some half-assed stats thrown on top.

 

[Dadd]

it is pretty damn obvious for anyone willing to see that the beginning of computer RPGs - Baldur's Gate and its clones, like Fallout - started out as a simple modification to StarCraft, with some half-assed stats thrown on top.

StarCraft was released in 1998. Ultima VII was released in 1992.

 

[Erisㅤ]

There's nothing wrong with isometric perspective. I even find them more immersive in a weird way, because I can fill the gaps with my imagination while a super detailed third person game binds me to its exact representation of characters and places, which I might or might not like.