SkeleTony said:
What does that have to do with pop-up battles? How come a shareware RPG like Moraff's Dungeons of the Unforgiven could pull this off(see monsters coming and thus prepare for the coming battle as they approached or try to evade them) but Wiz. 7 could not?
Battles are either integrated into adventuring, or use separate combat mode. In first case, you can't expect any kind of sophisticated tactics beyond hitting "shoot" or "wait" while enemies take their turns approaching. In second, the adventure stops as soon as the combat is triggered. All attempts to semi-integrate phased/TB combat in first person into realtime exploration engines were failures, as far as I am concerned, be it Wiz8, Wizards&Warriors, Thunderscape, M&M6-8, you name it.
I haven't seen any of the Moraff games, but I suspect he would have to sacrifice a lot of combat complexity to make monsters seen as they are coming. HOW would you integrate a specific Wizardry combat (with order/execution phases, individual skill checks for hiding and running, specialized areas of effect for spells, and so on) outside of a single terrain grid?
They obviously had the capability to jsut have a normal automap without having to force the player to go find some hidden treasure guarded by shit that will force several re-loads to beat. The end result is going to be the same anyway except that the player has to go through these cumbersome motions to get the automap.
Again, just dumb.
I see nothing wrong in attempts to integrate some of the interface features into gaming world to make the experience more immersive. If anything, this should be applauded. Does it annoy you to have to seek specific runes in order to cast spells in Ultima Underworld, too? Finding a clock and a compass in Amberstar? Having to spend some skillpoints in literacy to have a journal in Prelude to Darkness?
The "consciousness on behalf of NPCs" thing I perso0nally do not miss. Whatever benefit that Wiz 7 had in this department(and it is debatable IMO) is more than made up for by the clunkiness of having to type in words and having (what should be) quest rewards robbed from you and replaced by "Go pay some NPCs for the map" shopping BS.
Yeah, right, everything in the gaming world should sit patiently on its behind waiting for the player to bless it with his presence. Choices and consequences my ass.
As for full text parser, for all its limitation it still gives much more freedom in interaction than dialogue trees, let alone dumb keyword selection.
So is Wolfenstein 3D. Does that make Wiz 7 just "Wolfenstein with number crunching"?
First person 3d engine with realtime movement AND integrated turn-based combat in first person with limited movement of the whole party. Wiz8 and M&M6+ are identical in combat/adventuring engine integration, and since it takes up about 99.9999% of gameplay time...
You are just arbitrarily pulling out comparative points and ignoring all the differences which I can do with Wizardry 7 and ANY FP, part-based RPG as well(including, ironically enough, Might and Magic 6-9).
You are welcome. So which are those fundamental differences?
LOL. So your entirely subjective and quite laughable artistic sensibilities are the knock against Wizardry 8 here?
Not really, I don't care much about graphics. But technically, 2d or 3d models is a major difference. As for both being ugly, that is native feature of being in 3d.
AT least Wizardry 8 did not have entire ARMIES of giant monsters poppy up from behind the bushes at every turn.
Right, they were popping out out of sight and then taking hours to advance to party once noticed.
For the record: aside of appaling linearity and outrageously cliched plot, what makes Wizards & Warriors worse or different from Wiz8, by the way?
Bad interface, massive bugs, badly written, equally cliche...etc.
Wizardry 8 is not all that linear. It is at the beginning in the sense that(unless you are importing a party from W7) you are stuck doing that monastery dungeon first but after that you can go do any number of things if you are good.
Linearity and cliches was a stab at W&W, not Wiz8. But I haven't encountered any significant bugs in W&W, and have no reason to complain about interface either.