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The Oblivion of Western RPGs
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Mar 30, 2006 02:25 PM
from the taking-on-the-big-ones dept.
from the taking-on-the-big-ones dept.
1up has a piece looking at how Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion may just be what the western RPG genre needs to spring back from the brink of nonexistence. From the article: "Western RPGs focus on the characters, and the world around them is a tool to let the player-as-character do and see more. Eastern RPGs focus on the events unfolding around the characters, and how the characters affect the world around them. Western RPGs are based on the experience of tabletop role-playing games, limited only by the imaginations of the players and the game master, where Eastern RPGs are more re-creations of traditional storytelling. Oblivion has taken huge strides toward meeting fans of MMOs halfway by building A.I. that really lives alongside the player and ensuring that the actual missions are easily pursued."
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Frustration With Oblivion Mod Costs on Xbox Live 360 comments
Vizionary wrote to mention the player backlash swelling out of a recent addition to Xbox Live. Major Nelson's blog made the announcement that they'd finally added the (previously announced) barding for the player mount in Oblivion. The catch is that the simple modification costs 200 points, removing a lot of the appeal of the small mods the Elder Scrolls series has thrived on. From commenter 'SW 1540' on that site: "Unquestionably, some downloadable content should cost money/points. Having said that, the cost of that content should be directly proportional to the enhancement it provides to the original game. For example, I would expect to pay $20.00 for the soon to come Perfect Dark Zero maps or new cars for Project Gotham. On the other hand, I would expect any additional costumes for PDZ to be free. I imagine there is good arguments on both sides, but one can see that the potential is there to exploit an eager fan. "
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Living In Oblivion 296 comments
The Elder Scrolls series is well known among PC gamers as the high water mark for an open-ended RPG experience. The series, set in the world of Tamriel, has a staggering breadth and depth thanks to the exacting standards of the team at Bethesda Softworks. The newest title in the line brings Tamriel to life in a manner that is renewing the faith of even the most jaded CRPG player. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion may not be the perfect game for everyone. For those willing to give it a shot, Oblivion treats gamers with a level of respect that is unique, uplifting, and (hopefully) inspirational for game developers in all genres. Read on for my impressions of a truly unique game.
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nice link (Score:5, Informative)
try this [1up.com].
"spring back from the brink of nonexistence?" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"spring back from the brink of nonexistence?" (Score:2)
Re:"spring back from the brink of nonexistence?" (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you played Oblivion? If not, then how can you say what it has or doesn't ha
Re:"spring back from the brink of nonexistence?" (Score:3, Informative)
Re:"spring back from the brink of nonexistence?" (Score:3, Informative)
Ive also played oblivion, maybve for 5 or 6 hours at most right now, and it has given ALOT of the improvements morrowind needed. The combat is much more interesting and intense, and nowhere near as simple and easy and boring as it was in morrowind.
Re:"spring back from the brink of nonexistence?" (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe you should've looked for one in the first place...
Granted, stories in TES aren't handed to you (more like forced down your throat, really) as it is in Eastern style "RPGs". The point is that you make the story. A main quest is given to you (well not in morrowind, you had to look for it. It is in Oblivion though) and from there onwards you're the one who decides what the story is, which incl
Re:"spring back from the brink of nonexistence?" (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me think about that for a second...
No?
For heck's sake, thousands of games don't even have a story in the first place (story in Tetris? or in Every Extend? or in Train Simulator? or in Railroad Tycoon? or in a Multiplayer TA game? Hell, even TA's single player story was weak anyway). Making a story or reading a story is just a different take on gaming. You like reading stories, other people prefer creating them. You like seeing events unfold b
Warning: Here be spoilers (Score:3, Informative)
Long ago on the island of Vvardenfell: The Dwemer (TES' equivalent to dwarves) gained access to tools of incredible might, which their lead scientist Kagrenac used to do evil, as lead scientists are wont to do. This resulted in a war between the Dwemer and the Chimer, at the end of which the Dwemer vanished without a trace. Yes, the tools were involved into that, as well. Dagoth Ur was sent to destroy the tools, but his friend
Re:"spring back from the brink of nonexistence?" (Score:2)
Single Player PC RPGs Have Been Dying For Years (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay list them. :) Asking this question doesn't automatically make the argument invalid.
In case you haven't noticed, the "single slayer, PC RPG" genre has been all but dead for years. They morphed into something that is found mostly in its current MMOG form (think World of Warcraft) or something more "hybrid" (for instance RTS games with RPG elements).
So here is an excirse: go to the store to pick up a brand new copy of Oblivion but also look a
Undead Genres (Score:2, Interesting)
It's a shift in the market. As the adventure fans come to recognise that they are no longer considered a hot property, they also become more willing to accept ANY adventure game that comes along, and thus it becomes easier for extremely small studios on a low-budget to make an adventure game and get it published for retail. These ad
Re:"spring back from the brink of nonexistence?" (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't get me wrong: I've spend a significant portion of the past four years playing Morrowind, I had a lot of fun with Diablo (the original more so than the second one) and I've enjoyed all the Final Fantasy Games for the SNES (and Chrono Trigger... wonderful Chrono Trigger...), but I long for another Baldur's Gate or BaK.
The more recent Bioware fare really isn't in the same genre; Neverwinter Nights felt like Diablo, only without any of the atmosphere. Bethesda makes some of the greatest games in the rpg genre, but they've always leaned a bit towards being action games (remember how you had to make hacking gestures with the mouse to hack with your sword in Arena?) and I fully expect them to move more into that direction as console gamers make up a greater part of their audience. Not that I blame them, mind. It's just that noone seems to be making games in a subgenre that I love so dearly anymore.
Parent
Personally, I like Black as a Western RPG (Score:3, Funny)
Western RPGs ARE RPGs! (Score:5, Insightful)
Western RPGs is where YOU make the story, and how you want to do it.
Re:Western RPGs ARE RPGs! (Score:5, Interesting)
Eastern RPGs - and for that matter, a good chunk of western ones, too - give you a role to play. At best (i.e. the western RPGs like KOTOR and Jade Empire that are much closer to the console RPG style), you get to decide wether to be a nice guy or a jerk along the way.
Western RPGs - the breed of them that's truely dying, even in a world where KOTOR got game of the year - you're given a stage to play on. Everything else is up to you. I'm several hours into Oblivion right now. I'm not even sure if I'm on the main quest or not, but I love it anyway. The Ultima series are the only games I played much of that I can really compare to Elderscrolls in terms of sheer freedom.
I love that I can just blow off the main quest givers and go do whatever. Become an assassin, a thug, a knight in obligatory shining armor, (Or if I invest enough time raising my skills, all of the above), or just blow that stuff off and spend an hour picking flowers in a field.
Or even doing something completely pointlss and weird. In Morrowind once, I had a weekend off and nothing else to do, so I set about stealing every last spoon in the game (I think - I may have missed a few, but I had a good couple hundred of them), and then writing "I AM THE KING OF SPOONS" with them on the roof of the Underskar... Just because I could.
Parent
Re:Western RPGs ARE RPGs! (Score:5, Funny)
> stealing every last spoon in the game (I think - I may have missed a few, but I
> had a good couple hundred of them), and then writing "I AM THE KING OF SPOONS"
> with them on the roof of the Underskar... Just because I could.
Wow. You are the coolest person I've ever met.
Parent
They are called adventures (Score:5, Insightful)
Hands up if you ever seen a game claimed to have "rpg" elements when the only thing the game has is that units can gain "level up"?
For some reason some people have come to believe that levelling up == RPG. It of course does not. Many games level up. Being allowed to fly bigger aircraft in an aircraft sim is a form of levelling up. Getting a bigger gun in Doom is.
Take away the levelling up from games like FF and you will see that they play very much like the adventure games of old. In fact the old "Indiana Jones: Fate of Atlantis" also had fights in it.
Adventures however are not RPG's most notably because you do not choose a role to play but rather follow the lead character through a pre-determined story. Adventures are as much about roleplaying as a FPS. Sure, you can roleplay in Doom. Just as long as you roleplay a guntoting silent marine who shoots everything on sight.
FF does not give you a role to play.
So where does this leave oblivion? Well in limbo. The thing that is missing from the elder scrolls is choices. You can join any guild you want even if they seem mutually exclusive. Only a hand full of quests even have a choice in them as to how you complete them. Usually either giving an item to the cops or the criminals. You can very easily however complete both quests for the dark brotherhood (evil assasins) as for some noble band of knights.
The old taking a side in a quest is not part of the Elder Scrolls and I miss it.
Oblivion ain't a bad game, just that it is RPG light compared to the real stuff like baldur gate, KOTOR, planescape torment etc.
Oblivion is free as those games but the individual quests are pretty much on rails. I would have loved to have been able to choose a side in the whole dark brotherhood deal. Not in this game.
To some this makes Obilion a union of the worst elements of eastern and western RPG's. The "feeling lost" of western RPG's and the "on rails" of eastern adventure+levellingup games.
It almost reminds me of Doom3. Nice engine. Now can a real game company make a proper game with it? For me Oblivion is only acceptable because there the lovers of western RPG are not exactly swamped with choice. When is the next company going to revive the genre like Baldur's gate did?
Parent
heh. Oh, please... (Score:5, Informative)
Let me remind you what table-top role-playing used to mean, at least with a good group and GM. It used to mean just that: playing a role, as in a theatre play. The whole point was taking part in an interactive fiction exercise, sorta like being co-autor in a theatre play. The stats were _not_ the whole point of the game, and in fact they were just props in that interactive fiction. What made one a fun guy to play with was _not_ accumulating the most loot or levels ("woot! my char is level 60 and PvP rank 14 before yours!"), but coming up with interesting lines for your character and/or interesting ways to solve a situation. Even if that character was level 1.
So making a game that's all about the props (stats, levels, whatever) is _not_ an RPG. And that pretty much sums up most of the Western games that some marketroid called "RPG" in the last years: some action game (be it arcade-like, action/adventure, or FPS) with some stats strapped on. You'd be surprised what got called an RPG. Let's just say even Daikatana claimed to have "RPG elements.
And turning it all into a fast-paced action game where all you ever have time for is mashing the attack button, and occasionally blocking, is _not_ what makes an RPG. _The_ thing that made table-top RP fun was having the time to come up with some smart and innovative solution. Having just enough time to reload and aim for a headshot before the enemy finishes charging you in real time is not exactly making that possible, even if the game actually gave you the possibilities. Most don't.
So basically there never was much RP in either Eastern or Western games. All they could offer was a good story, with some (different) ways of pretending that you're a part of it. Actually, in the Western most games didn't even offer that, as they focused mainly on having an action game with some stats thrown in. (You can feel free to point at Bethesda and Bioware games, but they're not the majority by any kind of counting.) So basically if you want to define RPG as "If you don't play a role in the story, it's not a role-playing game", then most western games didn't even _have_ much of a story to play a role in.
And even those exercises in storytelling, on both the eastern and the western sides of the map, are on a path to extinction, as more and more companies turn their games into MMOs (even Bioware announced one) and the afore-mentioned action-games-with stats. Presumably to catter to the large mass of CS kids who don't actually have the attention span for a story ("Auugh! It says 'press START to continue'! If I wanted to read that much text, I'd get a book!") or the interest for anything that doesn't involve willy-waving ("I managed to head-shot you, so you suck and are gay too! Oh, and your mom is a fat whore!") Though the western ones seem to have a head-start there.
"If anything, Eastern "RPGs" are going out of favor. Japan may love FFXII, but other than that recent fan-boy "defence of FFXII" article on Slashdot, I've yet to hear ANYONE in the US who's at all interested in that game. Oblivion, on the other hand, had/has people saving up money to purchase. Can't wait until I can afford a new computer..."
It might also be worth noting, that the western RPG that you so seem to cherish also is a pretty recent invention. Having much of a story in a RPG didn't even exist in the West until the mid or late 90's. Before Bethesda's "TES: Arena" and Interplay's acquiring the rights to D&D, there was no such thing as a western RPG with enough of a story to play a part in, or any freedom in playing that part. E.g., SSI's D&D exercises swung between being some kind of squad-based tactics game with D&D rules in the beginning, and some kind of dumb square-based proto-FPS in later games like the "Eye Of The Behold
Parent
Re:heh. Oh, please... (Score:3, Informative)
Apparently, you have never played Ultima IV, which was released in 1985. The first CRPGS were created in the West. The afforementioned Ultima series was the inspiration to the Final Fantasy games.
Re:heh. Oh, please... (Score:3, Interesting)
There were as many styles of table-top RPG as there were people playing them. Some liked a theatrical style, others a storytelling approach that resembled an interactive novel, still others enjoyed hack-and-slash dungeon crawls, and some groups preferred games that mostly revolved around puzzle-solving. No one style can be considered more "correct" than any other, because RPG gaming was about getting together wi
Character Development (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, the fact that technology has increased so much is the only reason that the character development can take place. Eastern RPGs seem to be a continuation of the classics, which took place when they could only have so much and the best thing they could do was tell a story.
Re:Character Development (Score:2)
But for whatever reason, it wasn't released to world markets, just Japan. Maybe its because open ended plots are what en-vogue for western markets these days more than any other factor. The GTA influence on game dev can't be understated.
I haven't played enough of Elder scrolls to really get an accurate opinion, but I'd say it lacks almost to
Single Player glory! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Single Player glory! (Score:4, Interesting)
there is an abundance of non-save-game fun to be had by simply messing with the locals to see how the game's AI reacts.
I agree there. The AI is so buggy you need to do very little messing about to make it do hilariously stupid things. Like when I got in Jauffrey's way and he jumped up and down on a candlestick for a minute then fell through the wall. Brilliant!
Or when you beat up a quest-vital NPC (they're immortal, so much for freedom), then kill all the guards that come for you, then surrounded by corpses you go buy your groceries from the NPC who just woke up and has forgotten everything that happened.
Or when you assault some innocent and if you don't kill him in first blow and he sees you for a second before dying, a guard comes running from the other side of the town at mach 3 - so you jump over a wall into an alley and he starts running around the block, so you jump over again and he turns around and goes back around the block.
Or when you tapdance on a storekeep's desk throwing all the goods around the room, then take out your claymore and play golf with the remainders. Then you lift up an apple and set it down again and 200 city guards suddenly enter.
Also got a kick out of how a guard gave me permissing to investigate a murder scene, so I lifted up a parchment in the basement (not knowing about the red cursor yet) and "Boromir" yells Stop stealing from me! despite us being far away from his home in another person's house where I had permission to be.
And it started out nicely when I got accosted by the guards for horse theft in a far away town when I went up and talked to them after being given the horse at the priory early on.
At least the AI is nicely forgiving. Early in the game you can attempt to assassinate Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise and pick the pockets of his bodyguards, and if you get caught you only have to say you're sorry and they forget all about it.
And if you decide after a mad killing spree leaving the streets filled with slaughtered townsfolk that you regret this, you just have to hand over a few gold and all is forgiven and you're once again lauded as a hero.
I love this game.
Parent
Re:Single Player glory! (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway I'm happy there is a game once for a while in which I can be a thief and not be chopped to pieces by the guards when someone catches me pickpocketing.
hrm... (Score:5, Insightful)
WoW (Score:2)
Re:WoW (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyways, the thread is about traditional PC RPG's (single player games).
Re:WoW (Score:5, Insightful)
MMORPGs are a completely different genre and can't be placed in the same category as games like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Fallout, Neverwinter Nights, Morrorwind or Oblivion.
When people talk about CRPGs, they're generally not talking WoW or EQ or anything like those, they mean the singleplayer games that are closer to pen and paper RPGs.
Parent
And I thought... (Score:4, Funny)
Yee-haw, that would be fun
Re:And I thought... (Score:2)
Re:And I thought... (Score:2)
"A lobstrosity appears! Command?"
Uh-huh... (Score:2)
So what you mean is, "Western RPGs focus on the characters' relating to the word by 'doing and seing more,' and Eastern RPGs focus on the world around the characters and how it is seen and is interacted with by the character."
Wouldn't it be easier to say "Western RPGs ar
I prefer Polar RPGs (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, and igloos and caribou.
Plus penguins. You can never have enough penguins.
Character development (Score:5, Interesting)
Console (eastern is a stupid, overinclusive category) RPGs generally have a lot of the former- characters are vivid, plots are involved and very party-driven. Problems evolve with this because there's little self determination ("Whee! I get to chase sephiroth to YET ANOTHER RANDOM LOCATION!"), character development is often superficial due to the maturity of the audience ("I'm, like, totally not caring about this village I'm risking myself to save") and general lack of choices. There are some advantages! SO3 makes fantastic use of facial expressions and voice acting, for instance, because the game knows generally people's relationships, etc. SO2 lets you simply NOT TAKE annoying people along (Precis!!!).
PC RPGs (again, Western is a stupid descriptor) we get "sandboxes." The advantages are that the player has more control over his characters, more options in interaction, and more opportunity to change outcomes. The downfall is that these sorts of abstractions lead to anemic central plotlines and shallow characters.
However, these two styles are not incompatable! There is a fantastic middle ground that no one has discovered. In order to fuse the two, the game must have a large cast of characters, a strong central plot (but not be on rails), and a crapload of so-called "mini-quests," mostly character-based. When the player cannot control every aspect of his main character, at least give him the option of adding that "aspect" of that character by adding party members that conform. To facilitate this, a huge cast of optional party members allows the right level of customization. This large cast can still be used in general "main plot" development, however, by separating characters into groups (mage, scientist, cleric, etc), and write flexible (or modular) dialogue so that for purposes of the main plot, characters are interchangeable.
Next, character development/sandbox. By putting in very character-specific, optional subplots/subquests, you allow these characters to grow without hindering the main plot with too much generalization. This also streamlines the game by omitting character development for characters not used by the player, or if they just don't feel like developing that character in that direction.
All this allows you to separate characters from the central plot. Stories are generally about internal development of the cast (the modern novel concept), but often (Ulysses, for instance) the plot of the story is secondary to character development completely unrelated, on the surface, to the main action. In this way, you can have a strong but not entirely character-driven plot.
All these allow the player to go through with as much or little freedom and character development as they choose, while maintaining the "epic" story required to make the story itself fulfilling. It's a good system, and I wish people in the industry were trying to explore this area rather than simply throwing their lots in with either the entirely linear or entirely nonlinear camp.
Hmmm.. Western, eh? (Score:3, Funny)
Elder Scrolls (Score:3, Interesting)
Morrowind, of course, had entirely static quests and dungeons, and once you cleared them out, they stayed empty. While this made for more of a believable world, I found it detracted from the uniqueness of the encounters. We were all basically stuck in the same cookie cutter world, and while we might use different spells and equipment to accomplish it, we all basically ended up in the same place. Not to mention I found the main story line in Morrowind to be teh complete suck, and the 'ending' was even worse.
How does Oblivion stack up in terms of random quests?
Re:Elder Scrolls (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Truely Open Gameplay (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:My first TES game experiance (Score:2)
Re:My first TES game experiance (Score:2)
Re:My first TES game experiance (Score:4, Informative)
It's pretty much a diablo-like FPS set in a demon filled london. It has levels and equipment, but the controls are like FPSes. Also the levels, monster placement and items are randomly generated (like Diablo). The weapons include guns and melee weapons, which can then be upgraded with items. Also there are stats and skill trees.
Dunno about the plot or anything more tho it seems pretty interesting.
Parent
So wait, you never played Deus Ex? (Score:4, Informative)
Not to sound snide, but what rock have you been hiding under since about 2000? That's when the rather brilliant original "Deus Ex" came out for PC (it has since been released for the Mac and for the PS2). It's generally considered an RPG, and has a tremendous emphasis on both character development and story (the story of which is branching in many ways; for example, if you know later that you're going to have to kill what is now a friendly character, you can often kill that character beforehand. Not that your allies won't freak out about this...)
Okay, so it isn't "oldskool RPG plot" in that I suppose traditionally RPG plot is set in a world of sword and sorcery, but hey, many of the best games are exceptions (Fallout, anyone?). I have met many people who have played Deus Ex, and introduced many more to it personally, and none of them failed to be tremendously enthusiastic about the game afterwards. And eventually the devs even released an SDK, and as UnrealEd is one of the easiest-but-powerful game editors out the IMHO, there's a lot of rather good third-party content out there (they even held an official contest, and you can be sure that the winners are worth checking out). Hell, last LAN party I was at we even took advantage of the later-released (about the time of the SDK) multiplayer part and just hacked up some of the single player levels to deathmatch in; it was a lot of fun, due in no small part to the fact that even to this day the level of detail and interactivity of the levels and the game in general have precious few competitors in the realm of FPS games.
The Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] has more info if you're curious. Really, if you're looking for a FPS with RPG style plot (and the ability to interact and converse with NPCs in Deus Ex beats out even most other RPGs), levelling and equipment, then honestly, try out Deus Ex! You won't be disappointed!
(A word of caution, though . . . please don't mistake this game for the sequel, "Deus Ex: Invisible War". Opinion on the quality of that one is a bit more . . . shall we say . . . divided?)
Parent
Re:So wait, you never played Deus Ex? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not many years after System Shock II!
Re:My first TES game experiance (Score:5, Insightful)
yes and no, the world is full of riches, and if you're an alchemist walking through the woods transforms into a game of "find the material" as you run from bush to bush trying to harvest some plan or a shroom while being coursed by a troll that found you before you found him.
There are also quite a lot of stuff hidden in any area (caves, houses, shrines, bandit outposts, ...), so there isn't much truly empty space. Much less than in Morrowind. Even if you don't use Fast Travel.
On the other hand, the last 2 items are part of an RPG experience, an RPG can't be action-packed without dialogs or exploration, that's not an RPG anymore.
What you're suggesting is a 3D Diablo.
Repeat after me: Diablo is NOT an RPG
Parent
Re:My first TES game experiance (Score:3, Funny)
*puts on tin-foil hat*
Re:My first TES game experiance (Score:3, Funny)
However, whenever I'm feeling blue, I just reach for a cool, crisp, refreshing Pepsi One(tm). That's Pepsi One(tm) -- the cola whose mere existance breaks the fourth wall of reality, and allows one to look upon the face of their creator.
Re:The Shills are Everywhere (Score:4, Insightful)
No, you're just being as elitest and oblivious as the next guy, and well, it looks like I'm the next guy, so I'm definitely not excluded from this catagory.
You do realize that one of the defining characteristics of sheep is that they think that everyone else is a sheep except them. The international coorperate machine has made millions off of making people feel like they're being individuals.
Me? I'm a total sheep, I realize that there's really no way of escaping it, and get on with my life. The more you try to fight back, the worse it gets, really. You just end up playing into the hands of a different coorperately manufactured demographic. I love my iPod because it makes me feel like I'm supporting a movement of aesthetics and innovation, I drive a Toyota because it makes me happy to give a big "fuck you" to the redneck american auto industry. I'm sophisticated and elitest, and I'm playing right into the hands of a lot of major companies. And ya know what? The best I can do, most of the time, is acknowledge that I'm doing it, and move on. And yes, I'm feeling quite "holier than thow" right now for having said this, but whatever.
So don't go around spouting about shills like you aren't one yourself. It's fairly obvious, from your list of examples, that you're trying to use your arguement to put down those things you don't like (namely console gamers), which is petty and shortsighted. Both sides are equally at fault for deluding themselves into following whatever the latest trend is. Unbelievable.
Parent
Re:It's a good game, however... (Score:3, Informative)