Which older RPG surprised you with how well it has aged?

[Ash]

Ultima Underworld. Unfortunately, as others have mentioned, UI is an issue. But everything else? Amazing for 1992.

 

[Trashos]

For me, it is very hard (not impossible) to find well-aged games from the first decade of the century (roughly). When the switch to 3D happened, it seems that everyone was struggling with the new technology. Many games were supposed to be innovative back then, but look and play like shit now. Older games are fine, although I don't go back as much as some people here.

 

[RPK]

I love it when retarded shit like this pops up and the Codex circlejerks around it:

All those old games have aged very poorly, I'm afraid. They lack modern quality of life improvements like ubiquitous real-time combat, quest markers, automaps, elimination of confusing and tedious "decision making" and "exploration" in favor of straightforward linear gameplay that is all reward and no risk, elimination of the scary and unwanted possibility of losing the game or encountering something that you would be unable to deal with, streamlined dialogue system that offers exactly three flavor dialogue options every time, and so forth. The list could go on forever, really. It's sad, but the so-called "classics" just don't stack up.

you are familiar with the concept or sarcasm, yes?

 

[Sigourn]

I love it when retarded shit like this pops up and the Codex circlejerks around it:

All those old games have aged very poorly, I'm afraid. They lack modern quality of life improvements like ubiquitous real-time combat, quest markers, automaps, elimination of confusing and tedious "decision making" and "exploration" in favor of straightforward linear gameplay that is all reward and no risk, elimination of the scary and unwanted possibility of losing the game or encountering something that you would be unable to deal with, streamlined dialogue system that offers exactly three flavor dialogue options every time, and so forth. The list could go on forever, really. It's sad, but the so-called "classics" just don't stack up.

you are familiar with the concept or sarcasm, yes?

"The classics have aged like shit" is sarcasm. "The only innovations in these past decades have been features for morons" is not sarcasm, and it's plain retarded. Try to say how a classic could be made better with current knowledge and you will be directed to these retarded posts. Last time I checked, a properly designed interface does not "dumb down" a game, it only makes it more enjoyable.

A better interface being better is a tautology: you can't argue against it; only retards do so. It is one thing to say "a bad interface shouldn't get in the way of enjoying an otherwise great RPG", but lots of users say "NOTHING WRONG WITH A SHIT INTERFACE, I GUESS YOU NEED QUEST MARKERS AND LINEARITEEEEH".

 

[RPK]

maybe it's just me, but I certainly took " elimination of confusing and tedious "decision making" and "exploration" in favor of straightforward linear gameplay"

to be sarcasm.

 

[Ismaul]

Obvious sarcam, at that.

 

[Sigourn]

maybe it's just me, but I certainly took " elimination of confusing and tedious "decision making" and "exploration" in favor of straightforward linear gameplay"

to be sarcasm.

I know what sarcasm is. I also know how to read between the lines. His comment was not only saying "classic RPGs have aged just fine", he was also saying "over the past decades there have been no improvements at all". Now, I know he may have been sarcastic about that as well, but it is an opinion that many an user of the Codex shares. And given the context (a legitimate question), I doubt it was sarcasm.

 

[Neanderthal]

Better modern interfaces.

Like Skyrim.

 

[laclongquan]

Oblivion.

The topic is 2000 and earlier, man~

 

[Daemongar]

he was also saying "over the past decades there have been no improvements at all". Now, I know he may have been sarcastic about that as well, but it is an opinion that many an user of the Codex shares. And given the context (a legitimate question), I doubt it was sarcasm.

I'm racking my brain, but I have to ask: what would be an improvement to RPGs that was made in the last 10 years?

 

[Sigourn]

he was also saying "over the past decades there have been no improvements at all". Now, I know he may have been sarcastic about that as well, but it is an opinion that many an user of the Codex shares. And given the context (a legitimate question), I doubt it was sarcasm.

I'm racking my brain, but I have to ask: what would be an improvement to RPGs that was made in the last 10 years?

I never said "RPGs" explicitedly (or at least I think I didn't), I was talking of videogames as a whole. If there's one thing videogames have consistently improved upon, it is the ability to relay information to the player quickly and seamlessly, and also giving the player easy access to the information the player requires. And this is not "the last 10 years", because we are discussing games from before the year 2000 (for the purpose of my argument, I'd rather call it "1995 and before", since that's where videogames show their age when it comes to interface and clunky gameplay).

Look at Gothic's inventory for example: it's clunky as fuck, a huge pain in the ass, same with its retarded way to pick up items. Fallout 2 gave the player to instantly pick up all items from a container and the ability to tell followers to get the fuck out of your way, that's the kind of improvements I'm talking about. Arcanum, another game with serious inventory management issues which completely break the pace of a playthrough: I don't want to know how much time I've spent reorganizing shit in my inventory because the game wouldn't do it for me (ironically the people who defend this crap are also the people who complain about newer games' UIs).

Apologists prefer to divert attention to quest markers and shit like that which no one ever mentions.

 

[Beastro]

Not RPGs but the Thief games do. The surprising one was Thief 3, that despite its flaws it's still better than most shit today that shows how far things have fallen (while showing the early signs of today's design diseases).

 

[luj1]

All the truly good RPGs have aged well. Quality, in fact, does not age. That's the whole point. Games don't age. They are either good, or they aren't. Age/nostalgia is a BS argument imo.

 

[newtmonkey]

I've found that Ultima 1 and Might & Magic 1 have aged extremely well. A hipster could change the titles to like SWORDMANS and MAGIC & MONSTERS: I AM THE HERO?!?!?! and release them on steam today and get rave one-sentence joke reviews.

The early Final Fantasy (1 and 2) and Dragon Warrior games (2 and 3) are also pretty amazing, with a surprising amount of flexibility and even some non-linearity (and little to no need to grind experience/gold to make progress). I also had a lot of fun playing through Mother, which was balanced nearly perfectly, in contrast with its reputation as a brutal grind for exp/money from start to end. I found most of the 16 bit and 32 bit JRPGs to be very shallow in comparison.

 

[buffalo bill]

A better interface being better is a tautology: you can't argue against it; only retards do so.

Yeah, that's unquestionably a tautology. But "better interfaces are better" =/= ""modern interfaces are better" or even "more streamlined and used-friendly interfaces are better".

 

[Grauken]

Wizardry obviously, the original Rogue
Mordor, I recently wanted to play just a bit, now I'm fully addicted again and can't stop playing

 

[buffalo bill]

But anyway, yeah maybe Fallout 1's inventory and original trading UI are the worst designed parts of the game. Though it never bothered me while playing, really (except when trading for an expensive item and shuttling caps over and over).

 

[buffalo bill]

Arcanum, another game with serious inventory management issues which completely break the pace of a playthrough: I don't want to know how much time I've spent reorganizing shit in my inventory because the game wouldn't do it for me

There's a button that does it for you, btw. Maybe not in a way you like?

 

[AwesomeButton]

Arcanum.

 

[Lilura]

Hired Guns and Moonstone (Amiga versions).

 

[Tito Anic]

Might and Magic 6

 

[Florian Gheorghe]

Just recently finished Fallout 1 for the first time. I think every game that is sprite based.

 

[Zenith]

A better interface being better is a tautology: you can't argue against it; only retards do so. It is one thing to say "a bad interface shouldn't get in the way of enjoying an otherwise great RPG", but lots of users say "NOTHING WRONG WITH A SHIT INTERFACE, I GUESS YOU NEED QUEST MARKERS AND LINEARITEEEEH".

Once streamlining the interface becomes your design priority, it becomes very easy to convince yourself that everything else in a game falls under that as well.

We decided that some of the complexity associated with the UI in the first Deus Ex game actually didn't contribute to our core gameplay AT ALL. And we decided to eliminate what we considered to be unnecessary UI complexity. So, I suppose you could say that we chose the path of simplifying the controls for Invisible War. But it's critical that people understand -- though the UI decisions we made clearly benefited the console version, we made no decisions that we thought would compromise our core gameplay. And we would have made the same decisions even if the game had been PC-only.

We eliminated the unnecessarily complex spatial reasoning game associated with the DX inventory screen. Did the "inventory slot" approach make the game more "cerebral" or more "PC-ish?" I don't think so (though it certainly made the game more Diablo-like!). The whole idea behind the original DX inventory design was to force players to make decisions about what they would and would not carry. We didn't want you to be able to carry everything. When we did the PS2 version of the game, we realized that we could force the SAME decisions simply by limiting the number of inventory slots you had. The goal was to limit the number of items carried -- the shape of those objects was never the big issue. The end result of this was a simpler system for players on console AND on PC that accomplished exactly the same design goal we'd set for ourselves in the original PC title. Total win.

We made it so you don't have to find a medbot and go to a separate screen to install a biomod or heal yourself. I suppose there are players out there who thought it was cool to walk around with a character upgrade but NOT be able to use it. I wasn't among them. Why delay a reward? The player has discovered something cool, either by exploring the gameworld or expending resources to solve a game problem. Why NOT let them install a biomod immediately, without having to find a medbot or go to a separate UI screen to do so? Happily, this decision allowed us to eliminate a UI screen.
We rolled the augmentations and skills systems of the first game into a single "biomods" system, eliminating the UI subscreen associated with skills (and all the classic-RPG number-crunching associated with that system). Yes, we did this to make the game more accessible. We didn't WANT players worrying about ways to increase their marksmanship by 10%... We wanted players playing the game, making choices about who they wanted to be and how they wanted to interact with the gameworld. And combining the two systems had the added benefit of eliminating some particularly silly decisions (like forcing players to decide whether they wanted to increase their aquatic capabilities by upgrading the aqualung augmentation or by spending skill points to upgrade their swimming skill -- I mean, why NOT roll a choice like that into a single, reasonable decision?). This wasn't a console-specific decision, per se, but a gameplay decision. The biggest benefit we derived on console (other than increasing immersion on both platforms by not forcing players to a static UI screen...) was the elimination of the UI elements associated with that static skills screen. Again, though, we would have made this design decision even if we'd been a PC only game.

Among the more controversial decisions we made, one some players see as making the game more consoley and less PC-ish, was to go with a single ammunition type (rather than unique ammunition for each weapon type). This eliminated the need to track "shots" and "clips" for each weapon, individually. It also had the added benefit of ensuring that players have to manage their ammo resource throughout the game, instead of blasting through all of their ammo for one weapon, secure in the knowledge that they have a max loadout for every OTHER weapon in the game to fall back on! Some people have assumed that this change 'simplifies' strategic gameplay. In my experience, it actually makes the game more difficult, maybe even more hardcore! Players who've objected to this decision (which we justified fictionally, for what it's worth) have said, "You've eliminated the choice of switching from one weapon to another in different tactical situations!" How so? Players still switch from one weapon to another when a combat situation invites this decision -- they still use a rocket launcher or a sniper rifle, for example, at the appropriate times. But now, they really have to think -- hard -- about that decision. I mean, that rocket is going to eat up ammo you might need later for a sniper rifle shot. Do you REALLY want to expend that resource? In Deus Ex, if you were low on ammo for your primary weapon, the game encouraged you to switch to something else (say, the shotgun), even if that was a mismatch for your style of play. In Invisible War, as long as you have ammo, you can use your weapon of choice. Now, your decisions are completely based on the functionality of the weapon (the shotgun is short-range with a spread... the railgun does EMP damage...). This is significant, because the designers were able to tune the unified ammo globally, ensuring that you have enough during the game. This frees you up to use the right weapon in every situation, as opposed to saying "Man, the railgun would be great here, but the designers haven't dropped any railgun ammo recently, so I'll have to use a crummy weapon." This decision was all about supporting player expression.

Another aspect of the Invisible War UI that's met with mixed response is the SHAPE of it! (Who'd have thought anyone would care? I'm truly amazed.) Personally, I love our circular HUD -- it's frighteningly close to the HUD I envisioned for the first game (which was conceived as a PC game from the get-go). Way back then, I wanted the player's HUD to look as if it were mapped on the player's eyeball. I thought that would be unbelievably cool, very "nanotech" and unlike anything else anyone had seen. (Obviously, I failed to communicate what I wanted to the DX team, because we ended up with a conventional, rectangle dominated HUD!) The fact that a circular HUD didn't match the shape of a monitor screen or that it would "eat up screen real estate" didn't occur to me and, in practice, in Invisible War, doesn't bother me, especially given that you can adjust the opacity down to nothing. I love our circular HUD. However, in response to comments from some PC players, we're looking into a patch that will move the UI elements all the way to the outer edges of the screen, to free up some space in the center of the screen, where most of the action is.

So that's some of what went into the UI and HUD. A bit of compromise for consoles and controllers but, mostly, design decisions made to enhance the elements of Deus Ex gameplay we thought were important.

So, by the time Ion Storm were over with the interface 'improvement', they had gutted a bunch of systems while ultimately making a burdensome monstrosity for PC players.
I could find some Todd Howard quotes too. "What if Apple made an RPG?" etc.

 

[imweasel]

The Interplay Fallouts and the Baldur's Gate trilogy. I still replay them every few years.

 

[Nyast]

Lands of Lore 1 still looks and feels pretty damn good, if grid-based "adventure" RPGs are your thing. I still repaly it every few years and am always amazed at how well it has aged.