Vapourware RPGs that can legitimately be called masterpieces

[rusty_shackleford]

Flawed Masterpieces[...]

Life Is Strange

I wouldn't call it a 'masterpiece' by any stretch, but it was surprisingly pretty good. I installed the first episode when it was free on a whim and ended up buying it when I hit the end of the first episode.
Shame they took the series in the complete opposite direction of what the first game purposely subverted because they wanted to pander to the their tumblr fans, but don't judge the first game based on that.

 

[BING XI LAO]

Torment: Tides of Numenera...

Spoiler

said no one ever.

Actually Fluent said that earlier in this thread. Of course.

 

[Surf Solar]

Flawed Masterpieces[...]

Life Is Strange

I wouldn't call it a 'masterpiece' by any stretch, but it was surprisingly pretty good. I installed the first episode when it was free on a whim and ended up buying it when I hit the end of the first episode.
Shame they took the series in the complete opposite direction of what the first game purposely subverted because they wanted to pander to the their tumblr fans, but don't judge the first game based on that.

I found the characters absolutely insufferable and the gameplay AT BEST could be described as adventure - lite, even that would be a stretch. Not sure what people are seeing there.

For me personally, Icewind Dale fits the bill. Yes, it is rather limited in quest complexity or reactivity, but it does exactly what it wants to be, has masterfully executed graphics, sound/music and atmosphere and offers huge replayability. I know of no other game that does dungeon romping as well as this one.

Diablo.

Diablo is a masterpiece.

Icewind Dale is a Baldur's Gate mod. Thus, it can never be a masterpiece.

Not really sure if I can follow that logic. Isn't Diablo technically just a mod in on itself, given its birth as a turnbased roguelike?

 

[Falksi]

Flawed Masterpieces[...]

Life Is Strange

I wouldn't call it a 'masterpiece' by any stretch, but it was surprisingly pretty good. I installed the first episode when it was free on a whim and ended up buying it when I hit the end of the first episode.
Shame they took the series in the complete opposite direction of what the first game purposely subverted because they wanted to pander to the their tumblr fans, but don't judge the first game based on that.

I found the characters absolutely insufferable and the gameplay AT BEST could be described as adventure - lite, even that would be a stretch. Not sure what people are seeing there.

"Gameplay" was fairly shit, but the experience & emotional ride was one which reached new heights IMO.

Not sure how you can hate the characters so much when the main ones, Chloe especially, changes character throughout depending on timeline & events.

Plus the whole point in the game is it's prompting you to react to those characters. Don't like someone? Fine, be a cunt to them.

 

[buffalo bill]

The RPG is not even complete.

Also, thoughts on King of Dragon Pass? It's not a standard RPG, but worth considering, and very polished.

I love KoDP, but definitely wouldn't call it a masterpiece (if being a masterpiece requires that the game be near-flawless, as the OP seems to think). For one thing, as far as I can tell, there is really only one viable way to play the game and win: be crazy generous all the time, don't pillage too often, and don't ever piss off the non-human enemies (e.g. trolls). There are other issues, like many of the seemingly-innocuous early-game decisions making the game completely impossible later on (e.g. your initial choice of an ancestral enemy), and it being kinda random whether you succeed at hero quests. Still, despite this stuff, it's a great game.

WRONG!

There is a way to play rich guy, like worship the god of artisan, concentrate on the artisan portion of population, open up trade route etc... In my run it's viable to win second, not Kingship, because the chief was too old. It's a strange and very different way from other plays.

There is also a way expand a clan as big as possible. And the way it ism to raid EVERYONE touching our border. I did it. It's hard because we got retalitation raids every time. It's good because you can use Earthblood ritual thus get rich crop every year. This is also quite different.

Of course, there's also the normal win way everybody can play.

Interesting! I tried several attempts playing a raid-heavy clan and didn't get very far, but it looks like I need to try again. Do you think I am also wrong about having to choose the right ancestral enemy and not pissing off non-humans? Seems like pissing off trolls too much leads to unavoidable game over (unless you undo it with a hero quest or something like that).

 

[Transfiguring Roar]

No particular order:
- Darklands (PC)
- Hired Guns (Amiga)
- Warband (PC)
- Fallout (PC)
- Wasteland (C=64)
- Deus Ex (PC)
- Captive (Amiga)
- Jagged Alliance 2 (PC)
- Dungeon Master (Atari ST)
- Diablo (PC)

Actually Fluent said that earlier in this thread. Of course.

Damnit! I read through the whole thread and still missed it... And, of course, it just had to be Fluent!

 

[I'm Big Into Anal]

i skipped most of the autist replies (so the whole thread basically)

has thief been mentioned before

or stalker

 

[Curious_Tongue]

Curious_Tongue

He's no threat.

Yet.

 

[Lord_Potato]

i skipped most of the autist replies (so the whole thread basically)

has thief been mentioned before

or stalker

What about 'RPGs' did you not understand?

 

[I'm Big Into Anal]

you mean like deus ex????

 

[Gibson]

Diablo.

Diablo is a masterpiece.

METH - NOT EVEN ONCE

 

[RatTower]

There doesn't seem to be something like a perfect RPG.
Reason being, that RPG-systems and their state of perfection is highly dependent on the setting and system.
In other words, the basic rule system for Vampire may be great for a vampire game, but rather awkward for a classic dungeon crawler.
So the frame of reference for proper comparison is already skewed, because RPGs are such a vast genre with regards to their feature sets.

RPGs have this problem more than lets say Flight Simulators (or simulators in general) where there is a very fixed feature set that can be looked at objectively.
And even then, there are gray zones. As an example: For quite a while now there has been discussion between the fans of Microsoft's Flight Simulator X and the fans of X-Plane 10/11 about which game is more realistic (and therefore, the better simulation). As far as I remember, the discussion concerns flow simulation and while X-Plane correctly uses live fourier transformations to calculate the necessary parameters, MSFS uses statistical models. One would think, the better/"pure" approach is the one of X-Plane, because it actively calculates results according to the laws of physics - but lots of actual pilots argue that MSFS' statistical model just feels more realistic.

So which one is the (more) perfect game?

Either way, that's pretty high level nitpicking. RPGs don't have the same fixed feature set. Unless you concretely look at them as simulators or tile-based dungeon crawlers or Vampire games etc.
And then - looking for the perfect game - you would probably end up with the fourth or fifth iteration of a very classic, very limited but perfected formula, concerning the smallest common denominator that can be regarded an RPG.

So you'd probably have to go with something like an early Wizardry game (1-5) or one of its derivates.
I guess those games have a very clear formula and pushed it to a certain level of perfection that can't really be argued with.

Stuff like Daggerfall also comes to mind, but that has barely been explored. And even then the "perfect" re-iteration of Daggerfall would be a full-blown fantasy tabletop simulator.
I saw something like that happening in MMORPGs for a while - playing Ultima Online on a well populated RP shard, with political systems, DMing and everything - but I just don't see it in singleplayer RPGs anytime soon.
Adaptive AI is not at a point where it can truly be creative - which is also due to the fact, that we don't really know well enough what makes entertaining/creative writing tick. It's gotten better over the years. Certain movies go beat by beat down the same road and are apparently well liked - so there is your "on-paper" prototype for such an adaptive AI. But you can already see the problem: Those movies are more than often not the ones that a niche-audience like RPG enthusiasts would like to see. Their stories are put together set piece by set piece to satisfy the biggest possible audience. From the AI programmer's perspective that makes perfect sense though - it's the result with the highest recall rate. That's no good for a niche audience though. It's not even good enough for new concepts being presented in a story, because these would be outliers (despite being more creative than others) and wouldn't produce the necessary response - in other words: Even if we try to procedurally recreate the creative process, the results will inherently be uncreative.

You could do with a chaotic element. Some sort of evolutionary process like the one Dwarf Fortress applies in its world building - which actually comes up with a lot of great ideas, but also with a lot of rubbish.

In short:
It's tricky.

 

[smaug]

If you’re calling JA2 an RPG, then I vote:

Age of Wonders 2 SM, and Heroes of Might and Magic 3.

AoW 2 - maybe, if you stretch really *really* hard, and without SoM.
And HoMM 3 is a hard no. Maybe HoMM 4, but even that one is a very *very* hard stretch.

Like... this is how it feels debating with Lilura (the following images are SFW, but they are large):

Spoiler

And this is how it feels like debating with you:

Spoiler

Stop quoting me. Also what are you talking about? Did I miss something?

 

[Lilura]

Not really sure if I can follow that logic. Isn't Diablo technically just a mod in on itself, given its birth as a turnbased roguelike?

No. But I did say in my unequaled Renaissance write-up that if Diablo was released as TB roguelike, it would have been untouchably monocled, as Jagged Alliance 2 inarguably is.

I know you recently played IWD, and I know you checked out my write-up for it (the greatest write-up for IWD ever written), but please attempt to be objective. Nothing Black Isle ever did showed mastery of the craft on par with Blizzard or Sir-Tech.

After Cain's crew left, Black Isle were mostly modders just like Obsidian mostly are (Fallout 2, IWD, IWD2, PS:T, KotOR 2, NWN2, Oblivion With Guns: New Vegas).

These guys are NOT coders. As a rule, they can't code engines. And since the engine is the foundation of the masterpiece, they don't get a look-in.

 

[Roguey]

Lil's using /v/-circa-early-2010 logic

 

[Falksi]

Lil's using /v/-circa-early-2010 logic

So.....much....incline.........must....douse my........inner hope..........

Future only holds........suffering & death..........no hope like......this........anymore........

(Don't hope, it's an illusion. Don't hope, it's an illusion...........)

 

[Delterius]

I'm replaying BG2 right now. Every 5 minutes when Aerie interrupts whatever I'm doing to bitch and complain, the game moves a little bit further from masterpiece status.

You can simply kill her.

what do you mean 'her', its an ogre

why would people recruit an ogre

 

[biggestboss]

It is TB, dude. And yeah, tastes are different, but I see no major flaws with Dragonfall. Some parts of it are near the best you can find in any RPG, eg. writing and music.

Agreed. I feel like too many people ITT are using their tastes and preferences to determine what is or is not a masterpiece which should not be the case.

For example, I will never be able to beat Pathfinder: Kingmaker due to my personal preferences and dislike of the min-maxing/munchkinism that comes with the DND 3.0/3.5 style systems, but I can tell easily from its production value, amount of content, and polish that it is certainly a masterpiece.

 

[Lilura]

Poncefinder: Cuckmaker was built on the Disunity engine. Thus, it can never be considered a masterpiece.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Poncefinder: Cuckmaker

And this is why you shouldn't take womyn's opinions seriously.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Lilura you’re all over the place in this thread. “Masterpieces need to be flawless, but they also have to inspire awe, but really it’s all about the engine...”

There are no flawless CRPGs, only CRPGs with flaws that you’re prepared to overlook (like my beloved Fallout’s half-baked skill system, a system that was implemented on the fly after Steve Jackson told them they couldn’t use GURPS). And flaws are a natural byproduct of ambition. That’s why Troika’s games are so transcendent—developers who were focused on craftsmanship could never reach the heights of something like Arcanum. Tim, Leonard and Jason were fucking insane to make a game like that.

You have to scale back your ambitions to approach flawlessness, and a game that lacks ambition can’t really be awe inspiring. You cite Diablo as an example of perfection, but you sidestep the far more important question: what exactly was Blizzard trying to make perfectly? If Diablo is perfect, it’s a perfect Skinner box. Some masterpiece.

Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Except it looks like dooodoo dogshit peepeepoopoo. If we are using the masterpiece definition that OP gave then visuals do matter in a primarily visual medium. Not talking about visual fidelity either, it could look like a game released 20 years ago, or you know just look like KotC 1, so long as the art direction was solid and consistent.

When the kisckstarter is successful (it's a kickstarter goal), he'll replace the tokens himself.
KotC2 and Realms Beyond are probably our best foreseen chances to get a "modern" masterpiece, besides indy games coming out from nowhere.

 

[Lord_Potato]

If these are our only two chances I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Realms Beyond.

 

[Alpan]

Calling Darklands a masterpiece is ridiculous when it is the definition of a cult classic -- a game that does a few things very well, a few things quite poorly and is otherwise a bug-ridden, near-broken mess. If Arcanum or Bloodlines can't make the list, there's no way Darklands should.

I also don't see the point in featuring Diablo I when Diablo II exceeds it in every single aspect except perhaps mood and lighting.

 

[Delterius]

There are no flawless CRPG

except bloodlines