While FO is a not a robust cRPG in the sene that it requires from the player proper understanding of the systems in order to survive in combat, it still is a hardcore storyfag game, in the sense that it rewards the player for making different builds and combinations-I’m sure that many people here had fond memories of putting bombs in people's pockets, unlocking hidden quests with a specialized build, etc. So even if your argument is that you don’t like character building much, but adventures, you are still missing most of the adventures when you decide to play blind. FO and FO2 would not be nearly half as fun if character building were dropped out of the picture to please players that dislike cRPGs, because it would allow the freedom to make every choice without any real investment from the player, or challenge. That’s the type of “freedom” you have in popamole games. The freedom that is not hindered from stat and skill restrictions is a poor substitute of the real article, since it means nothing.
Well i think you're exaggerating on the simplicity Tim Cain proposes. But first of all, in Fallout it seems whatever build you did, you'd miss on something and get something else, so your play couldn't be extremly controlled, mathematically, thus giving impression of reality ofc. The real point for me about Fallout is that beyond choices that required combat, and beyond choices that required skills (and you could fiddle with them mathematically and it's the play style you mention), there was, from time to time, a choice that required nothing but your ability to find it. It was just a puzzle. That's non linearity and i don't think extreme maths is necessary to achieve that. I could be wrong, but since Deus Ex had that, and its system was pretty simple, that's more important than the degree of math complexity you mention.
Imagine if a venerable adventure game’s developer was teaching other people that we should make adventure games more robust and with more stats to please cRPG players that enjoy more tactical nuance. What would you say to that? First, that he is promoting bad developement practices of adventure games, thus contributing to making the genre worse. Secondly, that this design choice is probably a dishonest attempt to capture a wider market in order to please players that do not like adventure games. Thirdly, that this dishonest practice is making the boundaries between genres arbitrary, resulting in the lack of any meaningful standard to evaluate a game in a given genre.
Tl;dr: go fuck yourself for ruining the genre we love with your stupid lack of criteria.
heh well this is like an invitation to dinner for me. Two things: They're not saying that about adventures right now. they've done that already (telltale and their shit games). They've done everything they could to insult my favorite games (Sierra's, criticizing the dead ends as the result not only of too punishing game design, but as haughtiness and stupidity off Ken and Rob). But they're saying it for maths right now, so since i don't care for maths, i think it's ok. You can't equipollate things that for me have different importance.
Second and more important thing: they already destroyed my favorite genre off the scenario. But not as you said, eliminating its purity, but eliminating its hybridhood. Back in the 90's most games had adventure puzzles! They aryanized genres, now, making them dull, a genetical clean up, and confined my genre in a stupid type of game, strictly construed. But "adventure" is a generic term, it should be everywhere and everything, in a beautiful hybrid melange mess that now ironically you disapprove.
so how can you call the impossibility of evaluating purity of genre a flaw, since the golden age was about freedom of mixage? How breaking boundaries, breaking "WALLS" of isolation, a flaw? How can i not want that hybridhood, since Sierra games WERE that.
So to me, Cain's purpose might be the hint that he finally understood the secret of old school games. He didn't declare that he wants to make a new Quest for Glory, he just mentioned the case of Tandi. If i'm correct, though, Tandi's quest might be the soul of those times, and he extracted this element, hopefully intact. The key to resurrecting them. i must study that quest.
