The RPG Scrollbars: Richard Cobbett's weekly RPG column

[vonAchdorf]

Some good points, even though many are of course .

But what's this:

No Auto-Level Up Option
Generally fine in something without set classes, or with a single hero. When you’ve got a full party though, having to assign points is both a pain and offers a big risk of screwing up. Thankfully rare these days, but does crop up occasionally in games like Pillars of Eternity.

 

[tuluse]

This seems really lazy. Lists of annoying tropes, really? What's next ironic 12 things I learned from video games?

 

[Somberlain]

Cobbett strikes again

The Elder Scrolls Needs To Rename Its “Thursday”
“Turdas”, honestly. Find any excuse to change it before the next one.

Okay, so that’s a bit more specific than most of these. But seriously.

 

[GrainWetski]

I had to check if it was written in 2010. Sadly, it was today.

RPGs are starting to step out of line for Mr. Decline, I guess.

 

[Tigranes]

That was a shitpost if I ever saw one.

Bunch of shit that everybody already knows + bunch of highly personal I DUN LIKE THIS whines + bunch of decline whine.

Actually, I suppose it'd have passed the PC Gamer editorial board.

 

[Infinitron]

Here's something better - an interview with the Coles: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/05/18/hero-u-interview/

The RPG Scrollbars: A Quest For Heroes
Richard Cobbett on May 18th, 2015 at 5:00 pm.

Heroism is at the core of most fantasy stories, but there’s a difference between being a hero and simply a weapon to be pointed at the world’s biggest threat. When heroes happily loot peasants’ houses and murder their way through problems, do they really deserve their title?

If there’s any developer duo that should know a thing about heroes, it’s Lori and Corey Cole, creators of one of my favourite adventure series of all time – Quest for Glory. (The fourth especially is high on my list of best adventures ever, not least for its villain). In addition to those, they ran a dedicated School for Heroes for a while, and are currently working on the spiritual successor to the original games, Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption – currently in a second Kickstarter after the scope moved from a relatively simple Roguelike on a basic engine into a full-on new adventure. I spoke to them about the complex characters in their games, offering real heroism, and returning to crowdfunding.

RPS: So, heroism. It’s core to the genre, but so often it’s rarely on display. The main reason I wanted to speak to you guys specifically is because Quest For Glory is one of my main touchstones for games where you’re ACTUALLY a hero – and of course, began as “Hero’s Quest” rather than anything to do with gold and glory.

Corey: Yeah, the name change was completely wrong and inappropriate, but we didn’t have a choice. We had to change it to something! But Hero’s Quest is the actual game.

RPS: So was heroism rather than simply adventure part of the DNA from the start?

Lori: When we started out, it was wanting to get into games after playing things like Ultima that touched on this concept, of how to be a Paladin, an Avatar, and so on. It had so much potential, but when we actually played it… where was that?

Corey: I think in particular she’s thinking of Ultima IV, where of course you start with the gypsy fortune teller and moral questions that determine your stats and class. We said yeah, that’s great storytelling… but then the rest of the name is just “Name? Job? Bye?” There’s some story…

Lori: …but it was so disappointing, because that beginning gave us this idea we could have this grand adventure. We got into games to give that grand adventure we thought games needed to have.

RPS: Yeah, I was going to bring up Ultima, simply because it amuses me that if you look at the series’ story, the Avatar is the worst thing to happen to Britannia. His quest creates the Guardian, destroys the Gargoyles’ realm, and while he’s meant to be a figure to look up and emulate, all that actually happens is that everyone waits for him to sort their problems. And that’s before we get to the killing and stealing and so on. It always felt an interesting counterpoint to QFG, which tends to adopt more of a focus on saving the world through compassion, one act of kindness at a time. I’ve not really seen that in other RPGs.

Corey: Well, beside getting a swollen head, I think I have to talk about context. We get a lot of people talking about lore in our games and inconsistencies. Richard Garriott, when he wrote Alkalabeth, he was only about 15. We all played a lot of D&D, but when we broke into the industry at Sierra, we were in our early 30s. We had a lot more life experience to draw from… and we probably played a lot more D&D! If there’s a bit more mature feeling to them, it’s probably because we were a bit more mature while making them. Everything we brought to QFG was things we’d encountered in our lives. My favourite example, which I’ve told a hundred times, is the seed-spitting Spirea in the first game, based on a kinetic fountain that we saw in Phoenix, Arizona. A lot of the other stuff came from mythology and other readings, and having a child… it all gave us a different perspective on this.

RPS: So how would you go about defining heroism?

Corey: To me, heroism is… I think of what I call quiet heroes. A hero is anyone who goes out of his or her way to do something good, usually helping people, in a way that costs them something. If they get a reward afterwards, that’s fine, but they don’t do it for that. A hero is someone who says… here is something that needs to be done, and I’m the one to do it.

Lori: In effect, Hero’s Quest was an exploration of what it means to be a hero and to sacrifice. Throughout the series you go from a wannabe thinking he’s going to save the kingdom and find this lost child, and each time you think you know what you’re supposed to be doing and the reality turns out to be very different.

Corey: The world is not that simple. It’s also good storytelling to put in plot twists, but the reality is that the world is a messy place. You think you’re going to rescue the princess and-

RPS: …you discover she’s the brigand leader.

Corey: Spoilers! But yeah. You find that she’s your foe. You still rescue her, but it’s not like she’s this helpless damsel. You just have to bring her back to her senses.

RPS: Heh. I thought you just threw a Dispel potion in her face?

Lori: Well, that was a simple way of doing it!

Corey: It’s a shortcut for having a really drawn out philosophical conversation…

RPS: The series had a fairly solid base for ongoing games, with the move between seasons and compass points between games. Was the growth of the hero’s perception of what heroism is part of the plan from early on?

Lori: We had the plot in place, from being a wannabe to being a true ruler, yes. And I wanted that character to be your avatar – no name but the one you give them, no dialogue but what you hear in your head.

RPS: I’ve always been surprised by how much scope the series has – there is and isn’t a defining character. It’s all second-person, it’s ‘you’, but there’s still a sense of growth – that by QFG IV you’re finally grown up as a hero. It’s that ability to walk into a town where nobody knows you, and knowing you can make it better. That always struck me as fascinating – QFG2 raising the stages, QFG3 almost being the Kobayashi Maru with its war plot.

Corey: The answer is yes. It was both planned and a lucky coincidence-

Lori: Well, I don’t know about that.

Corey: Brilliant storytelling!

Lori: Well, yes. We started every game with the question of what message we wanted, and each had a core concept it fed off to. In III for instance, set in African Fricana, you’re the stranger in a strange land – the only white guy who has to learn and understand cultures and become part of them. Then in IV we give you a paranoid society and you have to teach people there’s still hope.

Corey: In a sense, our Paladin is our ultimate hero character. You have to work up to it, but we wanted to get away from… well, for starters, the historical paladins have nothing to do with D&D our ours. But we started with the idea of the embodiment of both law and good. We said, forget that bit. We wanted our paladin to be the ultimate good, who will break the law if that needs to be done. We have that played out for instance with a thief in QFGIII. He’s an absolute outcast, it’s forbidden to even talk to him, but your character can decide it’s more important to help him than to obey customs.

Lori: So when making the player make moral decisions based on things like following rules and consequences, those questions of what makes a hero are always being asked.

RPS: Part of what always impressed me is the compassion the series always had towards not only the usual victims, but its villains. Aside from a handful of literal demons, there aren’t really that many villains at all in the series.

Corey: Yes. At the end of QFG2 there’s Ad Avis, who is definitely a villain, but at the same time is kind of a tragic figure. We worked out his backstory and he’s-

Lori: He’s not truly a tragic figure…

Corey: No, not truly, but he went out and wanted power, and he’s very much a misogynist who signs up with the Dark Master only to discover that she’s a woman, who completely dominates him.

Lori: So he comes by his misogyny… rightly, I guess?

RPS: But there’s an obvious contrast there with the Dark Master herself, Katrina, who is presented as being dark and evil… and she can be a bit of a sociopath at times… but then you find that really she’s just lonely and would probably have been fine if she’d just been able to join a book group. Even by the end, she knows what she’s DOING, but is still somewhat oblivious to its effect – thinking she can control the forces of darkness. Lots of villains have pulled the ‘we could have been friends’ thing, but with her… yeah. I love the sheer sense of betrayal she has after the hero is manipulated into trying to kill her – that jump from being basically harmless to “You want a villain? FINE! Here’s your damn villain!”

Corey: Yeah, Katrina does have a tragic story.

Lori: Every character, no matter how minor, has a story they’re telling. Whether or not the game reveals it, I write these characters knowing where they’re coming from.

Corey: I actually wanted to get into something with that. You think about fantasy, and the heroes are the fighters and mages and so on. But starting with our definition, that the hero is someone who goes out of his way, one of the big heroes you meet in the first game is the Centaur Farmer. When you get his backstory, you find that he’s the only one who stood up against the brigands invading the town, and he took his rake and his hoe and he fought them off and got seriously injured. The brigand leader then stopped that and took him to the local healer, so that showed a sympathetic side to her, but also important was the fact that this ordinary guy was a hero.

This ties into something that happened during our current Hero-U Kickstarter. One of our biggest backers is a huge fan, to the extent that he bought a piece of land and has been terraforming it to be Erana’s Peace – he wants to make it that magical garden. He was livid when he found that we’d added a garden to Hero-U as a stretch goal – he said it was essential. We thought it was a minor little thing, but we started to think about it, and thought that we were likely one of the few heroic fantasies where there are these quiet places. The idea that you go there and you’re safe… in Quest for Glory, we have this character Erana who was a powerful mage, but instead of using her power to rain down fire on her enemies, she used it to make these places of peace and safety. It’s again that idea of quiet heroism – to create something rather than simply destroy enemies.

RPS: When it comes to the classes though, the Thief does rather stand out as a problem…

Lori: That’s what makes the Thief/Rogue an interesting character. He’s walking the tightrope, and the basic premise of our new game is the choice of how far to cross the line into being a villain rather than a hero. Which side does he want to be on?

Corey: We had an interesting situation when starting the series. Our original project leader just resigned. He was a very religious person and he said he would not work on a game where you could be a thief.

Lori: The question we’re always asking though is what is a hero, and you have to allow the player to explore the possibilities to let them answer that.

Corey: In QFG2, any class can become a Paladin. That includes the Thief. But the Thief has by far the hardest road, with the temptations put in your way… In Hero-U, you’re more of a street-rat. You’re not a thief yet, but you’re trying to become one. Growing up on the streets, he decides he needs a way to take care of his mom, and the Thieves’ Guild offers to take him in.

During the game though, your instructor at Hero-U is also explaining that a Rogue isn’t a thief, but an honourable figure using thief skills. Lock picking because the bad guys lock their doors. Sneaking around in the shadows because they have traps and guards…

RPS: Outside of the games, and long before Hero-U, you ran a website called “The School For Heroes”. What was the idea behind that project?

Lori: We wanted to create a website that kind of mimiced the correspondence course that the hero was using in the first game online. We gave the player a quiz to see what character class their personality fit, like a Myers-Briggs test, to split them between warrior and paladin and rogue and so on. Then they’d get class assignments to do in real life, along the lines of their character class.

Corey: Lori roleplayed all the professors and put up the assignments so people could go in and fill in their real life acts that fit their assignments.

Lori: The warrior for instance needed to come up with a regular regimen, like exercise and healthy eating. The paladin was all about community service and helping people. The wizard was about creativity and art…

RPS: And the Thief?

Corey: Get away with something!

Lori: And we have wonderful stories of real life incidents.

Corey: One of our Thieves pretended to be another character, a Paladin, claimed his e-mail address had changed, and I completely fell for it. He took advantage to impersonate that character for a week before admitting what he’d done, and yep – he got away with it!

RPS: I think one of my favourite lines in QFG 5 is when you finally meet the Famous Adventurer who kicked everything off, and his response to being told all the things you’ve done as a result of his bullshit ‘school’ is “I didn’t think anyone read the crap I write!” Were there any particularly big surprises in players being inspired to do cool stuff?

Corey: I mentioned the guy who made the Ultimate Garden, who also wants to build a castle after being inspired by Quest for Glory and others. One of the greatest things though is that every once in a while we do get a letter from a fan, like one guy who said “I was studying business at school, but realised there were better things I could be doing with my life.” He changed his major, got a medical degree, went to Guatemala and was working as a volunteer there. Another guy went to Haiti to do stuff there. These people said they made medicine and helping people their career because our games inspired them, and we were just… wow? You did that?

Lori: The whole message of heroism really resonates with people. On some level, we all want to be a hero. The game’s whole purpose was to reinforce that – wish fulfilment to be that character, but also the message that doing right is a decision you can always make.

Corey: And a lot of time it just takes a little trigger, an article, a game, a mentor, for people to completely turn around. Most people want to be good people. They just don’t know how.

Lori: One of my favourite fan stories was from the School for Heroes. I was corresponding with this guy who lived in the Ukraine – the Soviet Union when we were writing these games. There was this great demarcation, this line between the communist East and our games had to be pirated to be played there. But people played them over there.

Corey: We’ve had several people from across the Iron Curtain write us to say that things were so horrible, so repressed, so poor, but a pirate copy of Quest for Glory gave them a sense of hope that there could be heroes – that they could stand up and resist authority.

RPS: Hopefully not with a return address of Gulag 12, Siberia… No, I can see it. One of many things I like is that the hero isn’t given anything. He’s not a Chosen One, he’s not given any trust… he just gets involved and has to earn his stripes before things work out. I can see how people would find it inspirational versus many other fantasies.

Lori: We had prophecies, but we never really answered whether you were the only one who could have done it. Someone else could have come along.

Corey: It’s an opportunity, not an inevitability. You’ve got to do it yourself.

RPS: The first one isn’t so much a prophecy as a list of problems. “Comes a hero from the East, free the man from in the beast”… I always felt that if they’d been able to think of a rhyme, they’d have tacked on a few extra opportunistic verses like “A bold hero with keyboard and mouse, also finds time to clean my house.”

Corey: With Hero-U we’re going a step further there. We’ve got disasters that need sorting, like a student going missing and it’s your job to go rescue them… but you’re a rogue, what if you don’t want to? Well, you don’t have to. Two/three days later, they’ll die or someone else will sort it. And then you’re not the great hero any more, but that’s your choice.

RPS: Speaking of choice, it must be good to see so many people coming to and back to the new Kickstarter.

Corey: I feel bad for our fans who supported us because they wanted to do something nice for Lori and me, only to think… oh god, all we did was put them in debt! But really, the reason we’re in debt from this is that we’ve not had paying jobs for the last two years, and the fact is that if we hadn’t done this, we probably wouldn’t have had them anyway. I can tell you that having 10 bestselling games out there and five bucks will buy you a latte at Starbucks. I tried for five years and couldn’t get work. So, yeah. We’re deeply in the hole, but we’d still be deeply in the hole if not for this Kickstarter. But that’s okay. We’re working our tails off, and I think that’s good. We don’t mind working really hard.

We’re not asking anyone to bail us out, for charity, we went into this knowingly. We could have gotten venture capital, could maybe have found a publisher, but we thought the best route was going back to Kickstarter. Because of the flak we got, I started getting e-mails from people who’ve made adventures with Kickstarter… and they’ve all run out of money. Almost all, anyway.

Really, we just want people to check out the website, the Kickstarter, watch the video, play the demo, and if you like what you see, just click the Share button. I just want to get more eyeballs on it, because my experience is that people who see it like it a lot, and a lot of them will pledge.

RPS: Thank you for your time.

 

[Infinitron]

The RPG Scrollbars: The Declining Magic Of MMOs
Richard Cobbett on June 1st, 2015 at 1:00 pm.

There’s a basic rule of the universe – everything is better when it’s a dream. A new car. A new toy. A revolutionary new way of playing games. As a dream, they’re magical. They’re promise. They’re an opportunity yet to be bled dry or squandered. When we get them… they’re a thing. It’s hard to see the impossible in something right in front of you, which is why we shrug off such marvels as access to the whole of human knowledge and electronic telepathy on a yearly basis, because suddenly this year’s modern miracle has a shitty screen and won’t connect to a magic watch.

So it is with MMOs. Why did we never see a World of Warcraft killer?

Simple. Because in a very real sense, a World of Warcraft killer was impossible.

When we look at the genre, a few things usually come to mind. If you’ve never played an MMO – though I’m assuming that by this point you probably have, and have certainly had the chance – it’s probably talk of players and worlds and grind. If you have, it’s more likely to be thoughts of dungeons and raids and personal quests, and if you’re more used to the F2P flavour, boobs by the cartload.

But this is a generational thing, and that’s often overlooked. What really sold MMOs back in the day, and by that we’re talking the Everquest generation rather than the likes of Meridian 59 or the AOL games – the time they first started hitting it really big and emerge into mainstream consciousness with things like ‘Evercrack’ – is that they were, in a word, magic. At this point, online gaming was in its infancy. That doesn’t mean it didn’t exist, obviously. Quake was huge, Doom had been massive, Tribes was a personal favourite of mine… there were many other successes for those of us who played games, even if many of us were still suffering along on 56k modems at the time. Still, it was mostly primitive stuff – basic shooters, deathmatch, a little strategy, and thumbing through copies of Snow Crash and dreaming of a Metaverse future that has still yet to happen.

Ultima Online, Everquest, and a few lucky others offered a glimpse at the future, albeit a future decked out like a Ren Faire with usually very dodgy graphics. More, they offered a glimpse at the impossible. A virtual world with millions upon millions of players? It’s hard to imagine now how impossible that seemed – how stories of the Lord British assassination in Ultima Online or the tales of heroism in Everquest sounded at a time when simply downloading a shareware game could take hours. Do you remember your first footsteps into an MMO back then? The realisation that everyone you could see moving was a real person on a quest?

World of Warcraft was a hit for many reasons. Its chunky graphics that still hold up. Its focus on a personal quest. Its generally welcoming attitude and approachability. But what made it the game that it was was being the first to bring the magic of MMOs to the wider world. Only the hardcore even knew what a raid group was at the time, and fewer cared about dungeons. Everyone though could admire the wonder of that world and that experience – the taste of the impossible, the realisation that things had changed. There’s a reason that a few years ago people were seriously talking of Azeroth as the new country club – it was a revelation for so many, separate from any mechanics.

But the trouble with magic is that the same trick rarely works more than once. As much as games that followed might have introduced people to other worlds, culturally, the genie was out of the bottle. Suddenly, worlds full of people became just a thing that computers can do, no more inherently exciting or surprising than a lens flare effect or the ability to create real-world locations.

Remember when that was a huge deal?

And so, inevitably, MMOs declined. Not necessarily in terms of raw playerbase, but in cultural importance. At the same time, technology marched ahead. The subscription fees that seemed so important in the late 90s, because obviously all those servers cost money, started to feel distinctly quaint in a world where every tech company was throwing servers and bandwidth around like they and it were free. Each new world was simply the next in line, catering for an increasingly nomadic audience that thought it was on the lookout for the net big thing, but was secretly looking for that magic hit. It’s not as if the raw mechanics of these games have ever been particularly compelling without it, or without the psychological treadmill effects of techniques like variable ratio reinforcement – the key to raids, which keeps you playing by never promising you a reward for success and thus making the precious dopamine squirt of success all the sweeter and more exciting.

For those who stayed though, the original magic faded. What was underneath it? Not nothing, of course. Solid games, beautiful worlds. World of Warcraft remains a thing of beauty and design excellence, with Warlords of Draenor some of Blizzard’s best work to date. But still, games.

As for the new generation – well, they’d not grown up in the same technological world. A few may have heard tales of the dark days, possibly with parents humming The Modem Noise until ordered to stop on pain of having shrimp sewn into the curtains, but ‘always on’ and an internet full of people was no longer a novelty. From small BBSs and primitive chat services like ICQ to the likes of Reddit and Digg and Facebook, the idea of meeting and interacting with people in virtual worlds was expected rather than a novelty. Those virtual worlds just tended to be more metaphorical, resembling networks and Apple stores rather than Ren Faires. Though still with many gratuitous boobs of course.

In this time, some hard truths were also learned about networking, that while once the prospect of a million new friends was tempting, in reality having a handful that actually meant something was always going to win. Cue a generational shift from games offering millions to those that pinned their hopes on just four, or five, or at least private worlds in World of Warcraft’s often overlooked true successor – Minecraft. Really, it serves the same purpose and audience, only with the advantage of allowing everyone to make their own world rather than simply splashing around in someone else’s fantasy.

That player base also became more of a liability than a strength. Being ignored by thousands of people is hardly an improvement, and nor usually is having the experience diluted by trolls and idiots. The world simply became filled with paper-dolls rather than people, with their direct impact having to be cut to next to nothing to prevent a handful from ruining the world for everyone else. The natural descent into entropy has worked well for a few games, notably Rust and DayZ, both as a mirror for the good people to be reflected in and to add a sense of danger. It’s not the experience that holds millions upon millions in its clutches in the long-term though, or PvP servers would be the norm in the genre rather than PvE. As for attempts to boost player importance with the carrot of control and power? It was tempting once, but no longer, not now that everyone knows only the biggest guilds are in with a chance of acquiring a measure of it. Who cares if some other geek is Emperor?

What other MMOs have had anything like World of Warcraft’s sense of magic? Really, I’d say you’re looking at two – Eve Online (which predates WoW of course, though its legend started to grow at roughly the same time outside its core community), for its fascinating but impenetrable galaxy of player choice. Also, more recently, Planetside 2 springs to mind. Its scale of warfare was jaw-dropping, even though it itself seemed to drop from conversation almost as soon as it was released. Still, it stands as a good demonstration of the current state of play – that actually intimate experiences trump theoretical epics any day. Even GTA Online, popular as it is, has had nothing of its single-player source game’s cultural impact, though it has of course done rather better than APB. Admittedly, dead and rotting crustaceans have more fans than APB did on release.

(What of Second Life? Well, it had a shot, but its complexity and cost and clunkiness worked against it from the start. Only in theory could someone jump in and start building – to create anything took commitment and was the mark of an advanced user willing to invest in their work. In Minecraft, building a cool house on your first evening was the gateway drug. All else followed, with satisfaction and control at every stage – something it will be interesting to see Everquest Next handle)

Of course, MMOs can still be and are successful, as Blizzard will attest, and many F2P games will either enthusiastically or reluctantly agree. I’d say that Final Fantasy XIV is a good example of how it can work, as there’ll be many, many players of those games who have never touched an MMO before and it does such a great job of introducing the mechanics and advantages of group play that I suspect a whole new audience has been shown the magic that hit the rest of us back between 1999 and 2005. Deservedly too; it’s surprisingly great.

Still, there’s a reason why it seems that everyone’s making MOBAs now instead. Again, it’s not that Dota especially is new, but that for most of us outside the Starcraft/Warcraft community, it’s a whole new thing, and a whole new kind of magic. For now, at least, it’s no wonder games like Guild Wars 2 are borrowing a few of their tricks instead of vice versa. Who knows how long they’ll stay on top? MMOs were unshakable money machines too, once. Still, it doesn’t matter. Whatever rises and falls, there’ll always be magic left somewhere, and games that know how to surprise as much as they entertain.

 

[Infinitron]

Not RPS, but here's Richard Cobbett on the history of Fallout: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-05-29-a-brief-history-of-fallout

A brief history of Fallout
War. War changes quite a lot.

After years of waiting and false hopes, Bethesda has finally announced Fallout 4. It's as good an excuse as any to take a trip through time to where it all began, in a very different kind, but now much more familiar kind of Wasteland. This was back in 1988, on technology so primitive that most of the original's game text had to be printed in a manual, with the game simply giving a number to look up every time anything happened. Nevertheless, it found almost instant critical and commercial success... and immense difficulty getting a sequel off the ground. At least, an official one.

Wasteland offers a very different flavour of apocalypse to the Fallout games. It's more focused on science-fiction concepts, such as robots and problematic AI, and has its tongue planted much more firmly in its cheek. The first town, Highpool, offers such delights as packs of wandering juveniles and a river that's easy to slip in while exploring. Getting in a fight and killing kids will summon a cowboy called Red Ryder to try and take you out. Leaving town and heading for the nearby Ag Center meanwhile and you're no safer, just more likely to be killed by killer rabbits straight out of Monty Python. The whole game wasn't so silly, but it definitely had its moments. Unlike Fallout, a solo game with optional companions to tag along and often shoot you in the back with an Uzi, it was also a party based game. As was the style, you had a team of four Desert Rangers setting out to try and bring law and order to both the oppressed and the unrighteous - a role that came with expectations and a sense of duty rather than simply the lust for cash and upgrades. It was also extremely ambitious for the time, with encounters that could be solved in different ways with different skills, and a world that didn't just casually reset itself once the Rangers left town. If things went wrong, they stayed wrong.

Wasteland. When are we going to get a sequel to that, eh? Huh? Oh. Sorry. Force of habit!

A sequel seemed inevitable, and there was one, after a fashion. It was called Fountain of Dreams (1990), and nobody involved with the first game worked on it. Really, only EA has ever tried to really push it as the follow-up, and even it gave up quite early on. It takes place in post-apocalyptic Florida, meaning a greener apocalypse. It also cranked up Wasteland's insanity to whole new levels, even using the slogan "The world is crazy. Too bad you're sane." For starters, there's an entire faction of clowns. Yes, clowns. Killer clowns who actually control much of the known world. "The Clowns have perverted the slapstick humour of their forefathers, taking its feigned violence literally, and expanding it into the martial art Slap-Fu." There's a voodoo faction, with characters like Lupe Garoo happy to set werewolves on your party. Walk into a fountain, and chances are good you'll be told "It's full of savage piranha." This was just the start of the silliness.

Fountain of Dreams was quickly forgotten, and eventually even EA finally admitted it was no more a Wasteland sequel than Postal 3 was the long-awaited follow-up to Beyond Good And Evil. It does arguably deserve one accolade though, for being one of the smallest RPGs ever made. The map is about the size of a tutorial zone, with the game stretched out by its brutality rather than content. Your quest is to find a magical fountain with the ability to cure mutations (its one good idea is that your characters build them up and have to juggle the benefits of their powers versus getting them treated). That fountain turns out to be about 20 steps away from your starting position. Nothing else could so neatly sum up the pointlessness of the journey.

The Wasteland engine did get another outing in the strange (and deeply misogynistic) Escape from Hell, a game memorable for moments like recruiting Stalin to help you fight Hitler in an 8-bit Dachau. The original creators at Interplay however moved on to another project, Meantime. This was going to be a time-travel RPG along the lines of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, only with more XP points and less air guitar. It was cancelled in development though, and an early 90s revival cut-short by the arrival of Ultima VII - still one of the best RPGs ever made, and a stunning showpiece of both graphics and systems at the time.

Which brings us to 1997's Fallout. Interplay didn't have the rights to Wasteland, so it had to be a spiritual successor with its own distinct flavour - a cocktail of 1950s hopes and paranoia immediately established with the Ink Spots crooning "Maybe" and that now echoing phrase "War. War never changes." Fallout spent most of its development flying the flag for Steve Jackson's GURPS system, though by the time it actually landed, arguments over the violence planned for Fallout had forced a change to the homebrew SPECIAL system instead - an acronym standing for Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Agility, Intelligence and Luck. These basic stats both controlled in-game stat checks (most memorably, the series' alternate dialogue for characters barely capable of conscious thought) and the effect of other character traits and perks.

Hail, ugly person! Have you seen a water chip anywhere?

Interplay didn't think too much of Fallout during most of its development, while it was simply called "V13" - Vault 13 of course being the main character's home, safe from the mutations outside. This slowly changed as development finished, with talent like Ron Perlman being brought on board for voiceover duties, a complex combat system that let you directly target and shoot enemies in the ol' blood sausage, and a name change - first to Armageddon, then to the second choice, Fallout, when that name seemed impossible.

The box asked "Remember Wasteland?", but it wasn't long before the original was pushed firmly back into the vaults by its spiritual successor - a much deeper world, a far better skill system and, most notably, a level of maturity that allowed for a villain who could be talked out of their plan, and one of gaming's most notable downer endings. Having saved both their home Vault and the whole Wasteland, our hero returns home only to be told that they're too corrupted to be allowed back in and are cast back out into the wilds.

Fallout was a huge critical hit, though as is often the case, didn't sell particularly well. Still, Interplay wasted no time carving off its developers into Black Isle Studios and commissioning a sequel. Fallout 2 only got about a year and a half development, landing in 1998. It was bigger, it was mostly better, and it went out of its way to satiate fan demands. No time-limit on the main quest. The ability to shove characters out of the way. Far more involved locations, most notably New Reno, where characters could get involved in mob politics or become a porn-star that would have every other person they met screaming "Look! It's Arnold Swollenmember!" This was 80 years after the original game, and a more civilised wasteland... for good and bad. Quests happily played with sex and drugs and violent crime, as well as an absolute overdose of pop-culture references mocking everything from Scientology to Star Trek to having players find Monty Python's Bridge of Death.

Fallout 2's New Reno is still one of the best RPG locations ever. Even with decade-better technology, New Vegas didn't come close.

While fun at the time, it's now largely agreed that this was over the top and detracted considerably from the mood. Their inclusion does however speak to a big problem with development - everyone was doing their little corners of the game without any real idea of what everyone else was up to. Key team members like original designer Tim Cain jumped ship to form Troika Games (makers of Arcanum, which took the Fallout style into a world where fantasy met technology, and the beloved Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines), and the chaotic development led to a release that wasn't so much buggy as held together by squished bug guts.

Again, the game was embraced by fans, but not as big a success as its reputation hints at. And then, things start to get complicated. The next Fallout game wouldn't be until 2001, a turn-based strategy offering called Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel. It wasn't a bad game, but it wasn't an RPG and so didn't really scratch the itch. It still did better than Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel in 2004 - a terrible action RPG for Xbox and Playstation 2. We gave it 3/10 back in the Age of Scores, calling it "a disaster of nuclear meltdown proportions".

The 'real' Fallout 3, codenamed Van Buren, was kept secret for many years, until a tech demo leaked onto the net in 2007. It was a 3D based game rather than using the old engine, in which the player began as a prisoner caught between assorted power groups like the militaristic Caesar's Legion and Fallout 2's New California Republic around landmarks like the Hoover Dam. If that sounds familiar, it's because much of Black Isle's staff ended up at Obsidian Entertainment. Fallout: New Vegas didn't follow the Van Buren plot (a quest to stop an rogue scientist nuking the world again), but it did borrow and build on a number of the ideas intended for it. Caesar's Legion for instance became a dominate power, rather than a smaller group with a direct rival in the shape of the Daughters of Hecate - a mirroring matriarchal group of slavers and tribals.

By 2004 though, Interplay was out of money. Van Buren had already been cancelled and the team laid off, but now it had no choice but to try and sell its licenses. Enter Bethesda, which paid just under $6 million for Fallout and created an unusual situation where they were making Fallout 3 while Interplay tried in vain to create a Fallout Online MMO. Bad blood quickly began splashing over Interplay selling the previous games on digital distribution and Bethesda claiming that Interplay wasn't doing the 'full scale' development of Fallout Online that their agreements promised. This led to a strange case where Bethesda was suing Interplay for using Fallout elements like names and locations in their Fallout Online game, while Interplay pointed out that it's hard to make a multiplayer game in a series that you're not allowed to reference. Eventually a cheque for a couple of million dollars simplified it all when Interplay just sold the Online rights to Bethesda in 2012.

(At this point, the remnants Interplay made one final push to get a Fallout type game off the ground with "Project V13" and an attempt to crowdfund a Black Isle revival, though one minus all the actual people that might have made that compelling. At a time when others were able to promise "We'll make Wasteland 2!" and "Have another Divinity game!", even hardcore fans weren't particularly enthused about giving the company money just to make a tech demo to try and attract interest. Paying $20 for access to a developer forum didn't exactly sweeten the pot. The attempt now looks to be dead, though Interplay itself still hangs on)

All this brought Fallout into the Age of Bethesda - a 3D Fallout based on the same technology as The Elder Scrolls, but with a few tweaks to keep to the original games' strengths. Most notably, while combat could be done in real time, it was geared around a system called VATS that would let characters pause to call shots and target weak spots. It did however change most of the world's vibe. The 50s atmosphere was present in the music and occasional encounters, but Bethesda's wasteland was a far less restored world than Fallout 2, despite being set centuries after the war. Corpses everywhere, broken mirrors, trash piled high; everyone just seemed to be stumbling around in denial, with few attempts to build anything more than a scavenger civilisation in the generations since. Love or hate it though, its style (and console release) made it the first huge success for the series. It outsold the prior games almost immediately, shipping 5 million copies in 2008.

It'd be great to see Obsidian have a crack at a Fallout without a grumblingly old engine. Unlikely at this point, but…

Two years later, the spirit of Black Isle's Fallout returned when Bethesda had Obsidian create a spin-off - New Vegas. As well as the elements borrowed from Van Buren, it had people like J.E Sawyer and Chris Avellone who had worked on (amongst others) the past games. It also had no problem shipping five million copies early on, and most agree that its writing and world design was a solid step up from the original - though at the cost of extreme bugginess and a few obvious cases where development was hobbled by console limitations (the titular New Vegas being a big example, with its huge gates segmenting the Strip.) Unfortunately Obsidian didn't get to benefit much from this, having signed a contract based on Metacritic averages that only saw them get royalties if they got an 85+ average on Metacritic. Fallout: New Vegas got an average of 84.

Which brings us - pausing to nod respectfully at Wasteland 2, which arrived last year care of Brian Fargo's inXile - to now. Curiously, inXile - via a company called Roxy Friday - was seen trademarking a couple of the names you've seen here back at the end of 2014: Van Buren and Meantime. So far, Fargo's only comments have been "The (RPG Codex) investigative unit strikes again" and "Those sure sounds like interesting concepts to me." If plans are in motion though, we're not likely to hear about them for a while. For now, inXile has its hands full with Torment: Tides of Numenara and the upcoming Kickstarter for The Bard's Tale 4. Later this year though, who knows? Meantime's concept especially is still fresh, and the idea of a time-travelling RPG with modern narrative and graphics technologies is one well worth salivating over until your keyboard makes splashing sounds.

As for Fallout 4 though, we finally have confirmation that it's coming, and that it appears to be set in Boston, Massachusetts. Beyond that, though, there are countless questions and our first, in-depth look comes at Bethesda's E3 conference on June 14th, when we're sure to find out plenty more.

 

[GrainWetski]

Ah, yes. So very, very unfortunate and such a strange coincidence that New Vegas only managed an 84 when they desperately needed 85+ for their far superior game, Mr. Gamejourno.

Please tell us more about it.

 

[darthaegis]

There's a Fallout series retrospective on PC Gamer, with FO1 and 2 parts written by Richard Cobbett: http://www.pcgamer.com/fallout-series-retrospective/#page-1

Welcome to our retrospective on the Fallout RPGs (sorry, Fallout Tactics!) released on PC (so long, Brotherhood of Steel). Here you'll find articles on each of the Fallout games, from the original through to Fallout: New Vegas.

“Maaaaaaaybe. You’ll think of me. When you are all alone…”

To me, that opening music has always been more fitting for the Fallout series than its better known growl of “War. War never changes.” It speaks so much more to what the games are, and their underlying horror—of being just a regular person suddenly ripped from at least a relatively comfortable home and thrown out into a brutal wasteland of murderers, rapists, drug-addicts and radioactive mutant horrors both friendly and hostile. There may be companions to meet along the way, but fundamentally you’re always the outsider—alone, a wanderer, trapped right on the razor’s edge between the old world’s mistakes and the new one’s salvation.

That’s something that always drew me to the series, that as bleak as it is—and it can get very bleak—there’s always a chance. It’s one of only a couple of games I can think of where you can defeat the evil mastermind by persuading him that his plan just isn’t going to work, at which point he agrees to drop it. It’s also possible to make the world a better place through careful choices and acts of compassion, such as helping to form the New California Republic and turn the technology hoarding Brotherhood of Steel into something more than just armour-plated douchebags. At the same time though, Fallout isn’t afraid of saying that sometimes, shit just happens, with the most famous example being its ending. Having mastered the wasteland, retrieved the Water Chip that your safe and secure Vault needs to continue hiding from the world, and stopped an army of supermutants… your reward is to be disowned by your former life and cast back out into the sun. As the song pointedly goes, “Maybe the one who is waiting for you. Will prove untrue. Then what will you do?”
...

 

[Crooked Bee]

Cobbett on RPGs that won't be announced at E3 but should be: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/06/15/not-being-announced-at-e3/

Anachronox Returns

It’s been a long time since the amazing first game ended on a cliffhanger. Sorry about that. And to be honest, we’re not going to pick up on that as much as you’d think, because it probably wasn’t going to lead anywhere that cool. It’ll be a subquest though, totes. Instead, Anachronox II is Tom Hall and friends focusing on what they do best – a world-spanning RPG where every planet is a crazy new surprise and concept, where every NPC is the stuff of going on Twitter to go “Dude, my new team-mate is the Andromeda galaxy. Its HP is through the roof, though its attacks do take seven million years to hit. When they get here through… whoooo! Shit is going down!”

As before, our heroes act as the stabilising force in the crazy, free-wheeling story. Grumpy detective Sly Boots returns, as does his partner Stiletto, no longer mistaking going undercover as a stripper for a reason to remain dressed as a stripper for the entire adventure. This time though, we’ve made Tom play enough Final Fantasy games to realise why they can be fun while the combat system last time was godawful. Still not sure how it’s going to work, but… yeah. Not like that. Again, sorry.

System Shock 3

That cake-promising pretender has had things her own way for too long. It’s time for the PC’s original killer AI to fight through the legal problems and return to full glory. A DOTA 2 voice packdoes not count! (Though I know I’ll end up buying it, and I don’t even bloody play Dota 2…)

This sequel eschews the standard design of scripted horror games for a mix of emergent systems and Alien Isolation type tension as you play cat and mouse against the ultimate cat. The whole world is her weapon. Luckily, you know how to hack it and turn it against her as you explore her latest futuristic domain before it’s too late.

All New Worlds of Ultima

Way back in the day, Origin released two Worlds of Ultima games – the Doc Savage style Savage Empire and the Victorian sci-fi Martian Dreams. Both of them suffered from one big problem: the Ultima VI engine. Now though, EA returns to the concept by giving a brand new top-down 3D engine to five different teams and having each of them create a whole new setting with a whole new vibe. Get ready for dark horror in a world that combines the vibe of underused campaign settings like Ravenloft. Return to the world of Martian Dreams as you and the Victorian era’s greatest minds team up against the unknown. Travel back through time. Experience epic pirate adventure on the high seas. Quest alongside King Arthur and his knights for the holy grail. Future settings planned for the series include the Wild West, a Xanthian style world of comedy minus some of the more embarrassing bits, superheroics, and of course, the World of Chocolate.

This series stands for what Ultima always did, without having to touch the actual world and its continuity. Also, nobody involved with the making of Ultima Forever is allowed to take part without first scourging themselves of that sin by climbing to the summit of a mighty mountain and yelling “SORRY!” until someone shouts back “IT’S OKAY, JUST DON’T DO IT AGAIN.”

Vampire: The Masquerade: Alpha Protocol

Two great tastes that go great together! Return to the dark streets of your nightmares, now in a world where every dialogue option, every decision, every accidental glance down when chatting to a sexy vampire can count. The single city scope allows for both sides to come into their own and create a glorious melting pot of choice and consequence, while still offering the scope to be a badass creature of the night. This time though, the game is actually finished… pinky swear… and designed with one principle in mind – whoever designs the next Ocean House gets cake, whoever designs the next sewer level gets flayed alive with a whip soaked in salt. You’ll also be able to get through the whole thing without firing a single shot and dealing with your enemies through stealth and careful machinations to have others do your dirty work without you so much as breaking a single perfectly manicured nail. Every copy comes with a personalised apology from CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson for raising everyone’s hopes with World of Darkness, only to smash them into rocks.

Dink Smallwood Lives

On second thoughts, who cares?

Honourable Mentions: The Magic Candle, because it’s feeling left out of all the remakes, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, redesigned to accept the world that a game with the subtitle ‘Of Steamworks And Magick Obscura’ may as well announce ‘Free smallpox inside!’, Darklands, because even semi-realistic RPGs are a rarity, Escape From Hell because it could have been great but wasn’t, and Planescape Torment because of course, even though there is a new game trying to fly its flag on the way. Any others you’d add to the list that aren’t already being revived?

 

[Infinitron]

Cobbett on EEs and expansion packs: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/06/29/the-rpg-scrollbars-exciting-upcoming-updates/

Blackthorne gets an unexpected shoutout there

 

[Infinitron]

Cobbett touches on a topic I've mentioned before, though I'm not sure I'll agree with his arguments:

The RPG Scrollbars: RPG Vs. Adventure
Richard Cobbett on July 6th, 2015 at 1:00 pm.

Last week, I casually mentioned how glad I was that the current RPG revival has been going so well – so many old franchises getting a new Kickstart, so many classic styles getting a fresh airing. I also muttered something though, about how sad I felt that adventure games hadn’t been so fortunate. Since then, I’ve been pondering that. Why? Why has one genre done so well, creating games like Divinity: Original Sin and a whole line-up of new games to look forward to, while the other has resulted in largely forgettable stuff like Broken Age instead of new modern classics?


At heart, I think it’s down to an ironic change in fortunes over the years. Adventure games are an often misremembered genre, even to many who both make and play them. In particular, what’s forgotten is that at release, games like Monkey Island were the equivalent of Hollywood blockbusters, games like Gabriel Knight were trailblazers doing things we’d never seen before, and that until 3D came along and spoiled the party, adventures were the genre for trying out new technology and forging new ground. First 15 and 18 rated games? Adventures. When IBM needed a showpiece for its PCjr, it used King’s Quest. King’s Quest V was one of the earliest showcases for VGA. “Talkies” were one of the big selling points of CD in the early days. FMV… well, it didn’t work out so well in the end, but again, adventures were on the vanguard. On top of all that, adventures were routinely ahead of their time in terms of content, like offering female protagonists as more than just a token character choice long before it began annoying the kind of people who need to be annoyed more often.

You wouldn’t know this from most modern adventure games though because… and I’m not speaking about literally all adventures here… they’re now largely a cargo-cult genre. By that I mean that far too many simply ape the design of the past without understanding that to make something like Monkey Island isn’t a question of making something like Monkey Island. That game broke every mould that the genre had. To name just a few things – creating the Three Trials system that’s still the standard design style today, adding real-time puzzles like following the shopkeeper, coming up with dynamic mechanics like the insult-swordfighting system, having a total tonal shift from conventional adventuring to something more RPG like upon arrival on the titular island… I could go on, but you hopefully get my point. The vast majority of adventures that we get aren’t even trying for that level of innovation or novelty value, and sure as hell don’t have the relative budgets to pull it off. Instead, they’re content to be the next Touche, the next Bud Tucker, the next Innocent Until Caught – following along in the wake of Lucasarts and Sierra and a couple of other big names like pilotfish. If we follow them, we’ll get to where we need to be. Right? Never mind that nobody gave a shit about those games back in the 90s. Hold the line! Keep the faith! It’ll all work out eventually, right?

Wrong. And a big part of that is an unfortunate misunderstanding of why those games did what they did – that the adventure game mechanics of something like Monkey Island are a template to aspire to, rather than simply the best the designers could do at the time. The big draw of adventures at this time wasn’t and never was the puzzles, but their ability to draw us into another world that actually worked like one – be it a fantasy world, a living story, a futuristic dystopia or whatever else. The verbs were tools to facilitate our interactions, exciting because nothing else came close.

Let’s now jump genres for a moment to consider the RPGs of old. With a very few exceptions, notably but not exclusively from Origin, RPGs were at the other end of the scale from adventures – ugly, clunky, obtuse, hard to play games with very little real character outside of the manual, and reliant on scale to both impress and cover up the cracks. They and adventures had a certain amount in common, both wanting to be story-telling genres, but RPGs were masters at hiding away the good stuff. Hell, it’s still somewhat notable when a good looking or easy to recommend to everyone example shows up, both from historical factors and the challenge of doing so at such scale.

But in many ways, this proved the genre’s biggest advantage over time – that what stuck with players and designers was what it was trying to do. Its soul, if you will. It never felt like a solved problem in the way that adventure games fell into a rut, with every major series being its own quest to tap into that core dream from a very different angle. The world simulation of Ultima. The scope of Daggerfall. The intimacy of Planescape Torment. As time and technology moved on, many of the initial problems began solving themselves. They learned to make interfaces that don’t suck. We got the storage space to let conversations be more than “Name? Job? Bye.” They managed to become, more or less, the games that we saw in our heads while playing through them back in the day, when a few wiggly lines made the Battle of Helms Deep feel like a playground scuffle – epic adventures that stir the blood and loins, yet without adventures’ core problem of having basically One True Design.

And it’s no wonder that this has produced better games. If you’re a modern adventure developer working in the old-school style, you’re basically trying to recreate blockbusters with pocket-money budgets. Modern tools may be endlessly superior to the ones of the day, but expectations are also endlessly higher and the audience’s willingness to try new things depressingly lower. RPG developers sure as hell don’t have it easy, and I’m not trying to suggest otherwise, but they do at least have an audience willing to consider The Witcher 3, Bard’s Tale IV, Numerera, Wasteland 2, Skyrim, Mass Effect 3 and hell, even South Park as equally valid expressions of what the RPG can be and do. (Admittedly, Bioware’s not been too popular of late, but still.) The spectrum of what’s considered acceptable for a modern game is also far wider, especially in follow-up games. Wasteland 2 isn’t exactly the belle of the ball, but hey, it’s a hell of a lot prettier than the original, right?

Also useful is the understanding that times change, and aren’t always fair. As said, originally verbs in adventure games were empowering – a way of interacting with their worlds on a deeper level than anything else even came close to. As time went on though they became limiting factors. They still arguably work, especially with RPGs rarely letting you look at things or interact much with the world, but they don’t feel like they do. Why can’t I throw that brick through the window? Why can’t I punch that NPC? It’s like trying to navigate the world in a straitjacket which only gets tighter with every puzzle that could be solved with £5 and a quick trip to the nearest hardware store.

RPGs meanwhile generally get away with worlds as non-interactive as a museum exhibit because they’re not constantly dangling other options in front of our eyes only to snatch them away. Why can’t I smash down that door with my sword? Because you can’t attack scenery. Deal with it. The rare time we actually get to cut the Gordion knot and solve problems using more emergent methods becomes a selling point rather than a point of frustration in the games that don’t let us do it, as do moments like being able to headbutt an annoying NPC. Again, it’s all part of how modern RPGs turn weaknesses into strengths – the realisation that a few well chosen bits of freedom generally offer the same pleasant dopamine squirt, without risking opening up too many cans of worms. For a moment it looked like The Walking Dead had brought adventures to the same realisation, that limits can actually feel more empowering than freedom, but unfortunately Telltale then apparently realised that it was giving its designers scope to actually do their best work and had them all fitted for a whole new creative straitjacket. Sigh. Not that I’m not enjoying Tales From The Borderlands, but still.

(It’s also probably worth noting that the Kickstarted RPGs tend to be from creators who never left the industry and at least the general sphere of RPGs and their culture, whereas most celebrity adventure designers have either been out of the picture for the best part of a decade or working on completely different kinds of games. In interviews, I can also count on about one finger the number of adventure developers who can name a recent adventure they’ve enjoyed or even played, with the usual response being an awkward “Oh, well, uh, I’ve been very busy…”, in stark contrast to RPG designers who usually can’t stop waxing lyrical about their recent D&D game or are fifty hours into a competitor’s product. Now, that’s anecdotal evidence to be sure, but still… still…)

The result of all this is that while most Kickstarted RPGs are indeed rooted on nostalgia for the games of the 80s and 90s, their focus is on recreating the feel we had when playing those games rather than the specific experiences that don’t hold up. Adventure developers meanwhile go for recreating the games, desperately hoping that it’ll be enough. And it just isn’t, in the same way that it takes more than sitting in front of a TV with a bowl of cereal to recreate the salad days of watching Saturday morning cartoons anything but ironically. Except for Gargoyles of course, because Gargoyles remains goddamn brilliant. What RPGs can do by polishing up old designs but this time doing them better, adventures have to do by throwing out the rulebook and writing a whole new one – something much riskier, much harder, and above all else, much harder to sell as a dream worth breaking out a credit card to help realise. Especially after so many disappointing attempts so far.

And I don’t say that with any satisfaction. Speaking as a long-time fan of adventures, I really hoped that Kickstarter would allow for the designers of old to strut their stuff once more, to progress from nostalgia to modern innovation, and to remind the wider world why we love those often bastard games. Perhaps it still will, though I’m not holding my breath. At least we’ve seen some successes worth holding up and praising, not least of them Sam Barlow’s Her Story the other week. Love it or hate it, and you won’t convince me it wasn’t successful, it’s at least trying to do something new.

As an equally-long-time fan of RPGs though, I’m relieved that so far, they’ve had better luck. Saddened that none have been smart enough to add a no-spider mode stretch goal of course… looking at you, Underworld… but still, relieved. There’s no genre more poorly served by just sitting on its laurels instead of continuing to try and tap its genre’s soul, and each new game is a reminder that however good something like The Witcher 3 may be today, it’s still just a shadow of the genre’s actual Holy Grail. Chances are we’ll never actually see it, but that doesn’t matter. It’s the quest to get there that counts – the push that gives us both better games, and some amazing paths to turn around and fondly remember walking. Whether or not they actually ended up going in the right direction.

 

[Crooked Bee]

I agree with some, but a lot of it shows him coming from p. much the mainstream mentality, especially when it comes to adventure games.

 

[Infinitron]

I agree with some, but a lot of it shows him coming from p. much the mainstream mentality, especially when it comes to adventure games.

lol https://twitter.com/richardcobbett/status/618041885882499072

I wonder if he read the AdventureDex interview.

 

[Crooked Bee]

I think Cobbett is misguided in his D:OS vs adventure games comparison on one very important point. D:OS is a game, emphasizing mechanics and mechanical innovation first and foremost, while also delivering the full-fledged "RPG experience". Dear Esther or Her Story are not (on both counts), and I for one am glad that the "conservative" adventure game fanbase sees that - and I'm saying that as the biggest Kentucky Route Zero fan on this forum, as well as someone who appreciates the blend of FMV and IF that Her Story was going for (even if it, imo, fails at being anything more than a quirky experiment).

Maybe if these new, experimental, and genre-pushing adventure games placed more emphasis on the game part like D:OS does, Cobbett would't have had to write this article. Because I am pretty sure that the conservative core fanbase would welcome the adventure game equivalent of D:OS with open arms.

 

[Infinitron]

Seriously though, tweet him a link to the AdventureDex interview. "We asked this question ourselves way back in 2013." It's never too late, and he owes us some attention after that namedropping.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Sure, just did.

 

[mindx2]

Wrong. And a big part of that is an unfortunate misunderstanding of why those games did what they did – that the adventure game mechanics of something like Monkey Island are a template to aspire to, rather than simply the best the designers could do at the time. The big draw of adventures at this time wasn’t and never was the puzzles, but their ability to draw us into another world that actually worked like one – be it a fantasy world, a living story, a futuristic dystopia or whatever else. The verbs were tools to facilitate our interactions, exciting because nothing else came close.

I just don't agree with him here. The most fun I have with any adventure game pre or post KS is always figuring out the puzzles even if it meant walking away from the keyboard for a few hours (usually in frustration!) and the having that "EUREKA!!" moment and finally figuring out what I needed to do.

 

[mondblut]

No Difference Between Day and Night
Have a day/night cycle, don’t have a day/night cycle. But if you do have a day/night cycle, have it affect things. Not every game can be up there with Ultima’s cutting-edge 1992 technology, with the characters wandering home at the end of the day and other ‘living world’ type stuff. But if there’s a map transition or other scope to clean the board, please do something about the bustling marketplace going on in the pitch blackness and the drunks outside the tavern at 9AM.

Convenience > immershun. I, for one, hate loitering in front of a store waiting for it to open for 6 hours because cutting-edge 1992 technology. Fuck these losers.

Bikini Armour
Yes, you knew it was going to be here. Here it is. However, I’m going to balance it with:

Bikini Armours are good. They are annoying the kind of people who need to be annoyed more often.

 

[Lurker King]

IMHO it's never about lenght, but about filler content. I can be 30 minutes or 50 hours in, the moment I notice the developers are just stalling it starts to really bother me.

In principle, I agree with this, but I think it's sometimes hard to know exactly the difference. I actually think that some of what we consider "trash" combat is actually necessary, or at least beneficial, in RPGs for the rhythm of the game to feel right. One do-or-die fight after another can wear down the player in a way that detracts from his experience. Stuff that seems like filler -- wandering from around in a town, whether in a cRPG or in Shining Force -- turns out to be much missed by players when you pull it out (see, e.g., AOD). Low-key, even mindless gameplay has its place to help the player recuperate and digest what just happened; it also serves to make the more important moments stand out. (For example, in Primordia I think we did not have enough filler: it was just puzzle after puzzle and at least some players reacted negatively to that.)

But where to draw the line is very difficult to say. For the most part I can't stand games because I don't have time/patience for the filler content now. Many games I quit within the first 30 minutes, even, because of some bullshit waste of my time -- a never-ending dialogue, slow tutorial screens that you can't skip, immediately needing to go load out with equipment, etc. And many games I quit even after substantial time investment because I reach some timesink like an endless dungeon crawl. But I'm pretty sure where I would draw the line would cut out too much content for most players. One man's filler is another man's flavor or respite.

I disagree with you. The more sophisticated, mature and critical players tend to avoid games saturated with filler content for the same reason they avoid action movies and boring horror movies. Is not because you are feeling that you are wasting your time, but also because this is the type of entertainment that could be fun for you when you were a kid and didn’t know better. It feel pointless when you play the same settings, with the same idiotic stories and killed the same trash mobs for twenty years, especially if in their meantime you happened to read interesting books, watch classics and have more experiences. Of course, some players (even old school) that are not that sophisticated or critical will just play the same thing forever without questioning anything. In fact, some even take pride in playing this thing for the millionth time, almost as if this defined their identity. They are the same that tend to dismiss any novelty as horrendous just because is different – look at the criticisms to AoD teleporting and non-combat playthroughs, they are so lazy and unimaginative. They are the same people who would complaint about any attempt to make a new Die Hard movie sound more interesting. The fact is that players shouldn’t be feel guilty to demand better design, better writing and less half-assed content in games. I’m saying this fully aware that some idiot will reply with the “you come to the wrong place” line, which it just a retarted way of justifying the sorry state of game development. What is filler for the players who know better is gold for the plebe.

Fuck cultural relativism!

 

[CryptRat]

I barely get his point. He thinks puzzles are not important, then explains that Adventure game mechanisms don't get renewed. That's weird.
Puzzles are important, and there are probably some ways to present them differently , but the way is definitely not to make similar games with less gameplay (in reference to its examples and some recent adventure games).

 

[felipepepe]

BTW, I've managed to contact him and he agreed to write for the CRPG Book.

 

[darthaegis]

BTW, I've managed to contact him and he agreed to write for the CRPG Book.

Can you tell us what he's writing?

 

[felipepepe]

Sure. He'll take Martian Dreams and Quest for Glory I-III.

Surprisingly, he also asked about Escape from Hell, but that's Bee-senpai's turf.