oldmanpaco
Master of Siestas
OldSkoolKamikaze said:Cities are always the best part of RPGs. Fuck the filler. Just give me an RPG that takes place entirely within a large, fleshed out city.
The problem of course is that there is only so much variation you can have in a city. BG2 works because you have the large fleshed out city but you still head out to the dungeons then come back. DA:O biggest problem for me (out of many I know) was that the main city was so undeveloped compared to BG and Athkalta.
cboyardee said:There are two main problems with dungeons. The first is that they are unrelated to the rest of the world; when you step into a dungeon, you leave a rich, well-crafted world with interesting things constantly happening for a series of tunnels with nothing in them. Dungeons are microcosms that exist separately from the events of the rest of the game, and that's bad. Did the Black Mountain Clan suck because of those golems that were impossible to kill, or because Arcanum was a game about dialogue and exploration, two things that the BMC abandoned completely. Probably a mix of both of those reasons. Except for whatever item you're in a dungeon to retrieve, it bears no relation to the outside game world, regardless of what a dozen pages of lore will tell you.
I guess that depends on the situation. I remember the bee caves and spider caves in U6. They had nothing really to do with the game but they were fun diversions that you stumble upon. The hordes of monsters you tend to find in dungeons are generally not logical though. If you have an army of goblins, orcs, and ogres in a cave why the hell are they not out in the countryside raping and pillaging?