What crpg has the best exploration aspect?

[upwardlymobile]

Morrowind is beyond all or most competition.

You seriously underestimate the combined power of autism and excessive free time.

 

[Kem0sabe]

I find that i enjoy exploration more in first person rpg's, like Skyrim, New Vegas and Morrowind, than on isometric ones. The environments in first person look more immersive and you just want to go to interesting places you see on the horizon, while in isometric rpg's the field of view is very small and you will never see much more than a few meters around your party.

 

[adddeed]

Gothic 1 and 2 were great and all, but too much walking back and forth through the same routes.

 

[DraQ]

I find that i enjoy exploration more in first person rpg's, like Skyrim, New Vegas and Morrowind, than on isometric ones. The environments in first person look more immersive and you just want to go to interesting places you see on the horizon, while in isometric rpg's the field of view is very small and you will never see much more than a few meters around your party.

Well, like you said, you can see stuff from quite far away in first person, so exploration is more involved - you see something and try to decide if it's interesting and reachable and if so how.

You can also hide objects in first person without making them outright invisible - try to have something hidden under the bed or stuck to the ceiling, or hidden among similar but worthless objects in iso game, without it quickly becoming "wave your cursor to find hotspots" minigame.

Finally, in first person you can fuck around with player's sense of direction simply by removing compass and minimap - the simplest variant would be spin tiles and teleporters in old crawlers - (if magic or weird physics is involved you can even be a real asshole about it and fuck around with actual space), sometimes even without that if you use z-axis a lot. Meanwhile, in iso player's view *is* the map, so you can't play this sort of games.

 

[valcik]

Eschalon series belongs here IMO.

 

[Turok]

I find that i enjoy exploration more in first person rpg's, like Skyrim, New Vegas and Morrowind, than on isometric ones. The environments in first person look more immersive and you just want to go to interesting places you see on the horizon, while in isometric rpg's the field of view is very small and you will never see much more than a few meters around your party.

I found exactly the contrary, with those games i feel playing a shooter with fake rpg elements, i don't like it.

 

[DraQ]

I found exactly the contrary, with those games i feel playing a shooter with fake rpg elements, i don't like it.

May I direct you to BSN?

Because here no one cares about your feelings.

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

Fallout 1, 2, 3 and New vegas. And all The elder scrolls main games.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand i will say that Skyrim is my favourite in that aspect. Probably it is the smaller of all these games i mentioned, but it is which likes me more in some aspects.

Don't kill me pls.

But the OP is asking about cRPG, so i will say Fallout 1 and 2 .

 

[Commissar Draco]

Nethergate and Geneforge series games had nice exploration element in them too.

 

[DalekFlay]

Fallout 1, 2, 3 and New vegas. And all The elder scrolls main games.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand i will say that Skyrim is my favourite in that aspect. Probably it is the smaller of all these games i mentioned, but it is which likes me more in some aspects.

Don't kill me pls.

I'm willing to not kill you if you explain what makes Skyrim better than Morrowind on pure exploration terms.

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

Fallout 1, 2, 3 and New vegas. And all The elder scrolls main games.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand i will say that Skyrim is my favourite in that aspect. Probably it is the smaller of all these games i mentioned, but it is which likes me more in some aspects.

Don't kill me pls.

I'm willing to not kill you if you explain what makes Skyrim better than Morrowind on pure exploration terms.

I never said that

Just i prefer the world of Skyrim which looks more hand-crafted than other Bethesda worlds for me. Empty alien world with giant mushrooms and Pterodactylus it's not my devotion.

 

[DalekFlay]

I never said that

In a thread about exploration you said "Skyrim is my favorite in that aspect." Not sure how else you expected people to take that.

Just i prefer the world of Skyrim which looks more hand-crafted than other Bethesda worlds for me. Empty alien world with giant mushrooms and Pterodactylus it's not my devotion.

Skyrim is more hand-crafted than Morrowind? Morrowind is empty? WTF?

 

[dryan]

I never said that

In a thread about exploration you said "Skyrim is my favorite in that aspect." Not sure how else you expected people to take that.

Just i prefer the world of Skyrim which looks more hand-crafted than other Bethesda worlds for me. Empty alien world with giant mushrooms and Pterodactylus it's not my devotion.

Skyrim is more hand-crafted than Morrowind? Morrowind is empty? WTF?

WTF indeed.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Summoner (world map demands careful exploration if you want to get/finish some quests (and main storyline too))
Gothic is pretty good (didn't play the second game, but as far as I've heard it's way better)
Wizardry (the first one)
Akalabeth (yeah, I know)

Spoiler

And... these might not really be the proper candidates, but still good to mention.

Mordor: Depths of Dejenol
Demise: Rise of the Ku'tan
Daggerfall

Oh, almost forgot...

Spoiler

Megami Ibunroku Persona

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

I never said that

In a thread about exploration you said "Skyrim is my favorite in that aspect." Not sure how else you expected people to take that.

Just i prefer the world of Skyrim which looks more hand-crafted than other Bethesda worlds for me. Empty alien world with giant mushrooms and Pterodactylus it's not my devotion.

Skyrim is more hand-crafted than Morrowind? Morrowind is empty? WTF?

When in a forum i said "Skyrim is my favourite in that aspect " i expect people taking it as "He said that Skyrim is his favourite in that aspect" not "Skyrim is better than Morrowind in terms of exploration". Not so difficult.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Ive had nightmares involving Gothics controls.

What is wrong with you all.

 

[TripJack]

4 pages and no Arcanum? who are you imposters and what have you done with my codexian brothers?

 

[DalekFlay]

When in a forum i said "Skyrim is my favourite in that aspect " i expect people taking it as "He said that Skyrim is his favourite in that aspect" not "Skyrim is better than Morrowind in terms of exploration". Not so difficult.

...

 

[nomask7]

Gothic 2, no competition for me.

This. Never to be equalled.

It's a shame that huge worlds are the fashionable thing. If developers used sizes close to Gothic 2, they might accomplish something interesting.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Gothic 2, no competition for me.

This. Never to be equalled.

It's a shame that huge worlds are the fashionable thing. If developers used sizes close to Gothic 2, they might accomplish something interesting.

Only if they could fill it with something interesting.

I'm actually having fun mucking around in two worlds 2 though.

 

[Visperas]

Now, another interesting question would be: How do you make interesting exploration in isometric or top down view?

 

[DraQ]

Now, another interesting question would be: How do you make interesting exploration in isometric or top down view?

If you make maps with explicit borders like in IE or any amount of terrain that is small enough to be combed exhaustively you lose.

If you don't you probably lose too, but at least you may try.

 

[Visperas]

Now, another interesting question would be: How do you make interesting exploration in isometric or top down view?

If you make maps with explicit borders like in IE or any amount of terrain that is small enough to be combed exhaustively you lose.

If you don't you probably lose too, but at least you may try.

I guess that if you closed maps, you need to make some of the treasures, locations, NPC and so on not completely explicit and force the player to use his own intelligence and the PC skills in a smart way to uncover them. The problem in that case is still how to initiate that discovery. Pixel hunting sucks so we're left with the highlighted interactive spots. Maybe a way to deal with that would to take a note from old adventure games were you need to figure out wich particular action and object works but with some kind of limit to avoid the try-every-single-combination-possible gameplay. What you think?

 

[Rpgsaurus Rex]

DraQ Exploring is about going places on the spur of the moment, not knowing what comes next and finding cool hidden things while you're at it. I don't see how it's down to perspective at all other than it being just, like, your opinion, man.

Demise: Rise of the Ku'tan

"What if M&M6 were structured like a Wizardry dungeon?" - the Game. Good times. Red-eyed, sleep-deprived times. If only it didn't turn to adventure-game-on-acid kind of suck with the post-game! (alternatively: pretend post-game doesn't exist, make up a 'final true ending' in your head, everyone's happy, good night).

 

[SwiftCrack]

One more thing regarding BG1 exploration:

This is a perfect example of when keeping it real goes too far.

Do (did) you have any sense of exploration and imagination at all?

There is a reason I listed it as first play-through.

You asked me about sense of exploration and imagination (and I have answered, but would like to underline something) - the bottom line is that imagination can't fully supplant content and/or mechanics.
That's LARPing. It's the point where you start playing a game in your head that's completely dissociated from whatever happens on the screen - you might as well be playing notepad.exe .
It's the point where, if you insist you're still playing the game in question, you should probably be put out of your misery because that's the most humane solution.

The problem with BG is that it's mechanics doesn't facilitate exploration in more meaningful sense than you could explore in Glorg.
If I insist that exploration in Glorg (as well as the whole Glorg - at least taken at face value, not that you'd want to play it even facetiously) just plain sucks is it because I lack imagination or is it because it actually does suck?

I don't really understand. The very first time I played BG1 (I was young, though), it gave me an amazing sense of exploration and freedom because I could go anywhere I wanted to (within the limits of the game, so I couldn't go to the city of Baldur's Gate yet and I got my ass handed by a basilisk for a very long time at one of the southern maps) and everywhere I crawled there was something waiting for me. Was it another adventuring party that started to badmouth me, an ogre wanting to be left alone lest he'd make his dinner or a stone statue at a carnival begging to be turned back to flesh. That was exploration for me, just walking around these maps and finding things to interact with.

Now I can see where you are coming from with the engine. Granted, that engine can indeed makes it feel robotic. I mean I definitely tried to augment the gameworld by roleplaying a little bit as far as my imagination allowed me, but I felt genuinely like I was playing a roleplaying/adventuring game with a good sense of exploration the very first time around simply because the world was well constructed, the maps were thought out, and there was something to do on every map.

Every playthrough after the first one (aka I know what will happen, let's skip this shit)? It was boring.