What ever happened to "Amazing" RPGs?

Western RPGs sell better because they're designed for a dumbed down, ADD, audience of 15 yr old xbox players (which unfortunately has become a large majority of US gamers). They tell you exactly where to go and how to do it, and won't let you move on until you're strong enough to where the game thinks even an idiot could make it past the next level.

I have a feeling Skyrim will dissapoint. It's supposedly beatable in 2 hour 15 minutes. So it's going to be like Fallout, where you CAN spend 100's of hours doing pointless side quests for the sake of doing them, but if they don't impact the main story...then why?

 

I wasn't commenting on your opinon of jRPG games, since I don't play them. I think western RPGs have tanked and the only decent one so far is Witcher 2. DA:O and ME2 were interactive movies. Not much RPG to me and I've played all the DLCs for both games. I did not play ME1 and do not plan to nor do I plan on playing ME3. Very disappointed by ME2. Yay, lets go gather more people for my group for a theatrical ending... Whoopee doo.

 

Bro, if you want to play linear JRPGs...just play them. No need to denigrate the rest of us.

 

Again, what was not RPG about DA:O?

 

Most Western RPGs are still linear though. Just because you happened to stop along the way and save the village from the evil mutants doesn't change anything. You can do every single side quest and kill every single everything in Fallout 3 and at the end you still only have 2 choices. Just because you can go from A to B to X to Y to C instead of A to B to C doesn't really make it any less linear. The outcome is still the same.

 

The difference is that I'm not bored to tears while playing them.

 

Woah woah woah there buddy. You're totally off base with western RPGs, what they're meant to be, and what they came from.

Japanese RPGs are basically interactive anime. They've been that way since FFIV (FFII in the US...yes, I owned it when it was new). Because they're evolved from film, STORY is the most important aspect. You have well-developed characters (but characters where you have no control over their personality) going through sweeping-epic-saga plots and having soap-opera-ish romances with each other along the way.

Western RPGs are derived from pen-and-paper RPGs. You know, Dungeons and Dragons, Vampire The Masquerade, etc. The single most important factor there is CHOICE. Being exactly who you want to be, having complete control over your character, what they are, what they do, etc. Branching choices in Dragon Age or The Witcher where you can be good or evil or something in between? Shoot, that goes all the way back to the nine character alignments that any character could choose from in D&D (lawful, neutral, and chaotic tied with good, neutral, and evil). Plots aren't as cinematic and detailed as in JRPGs because it's hard to write a plot when the main character's not pinned down (there's only one Cloud in FFVII, with one look, one skill set, and an entire life history already written, but The Grey Warden in Dragon Age: Origins was a combination of three potential races, two potential genders, three potential classes, six potential back-stories, and all-but-unlimited choice going forward).

Neither is a "dumbed down" version of the other. They're just two totally different ideals for video games based upon two very different sources. They have different strengths and different weaknesses because they're different sorts of games.

 

Regarding Mass Effect

The Empire Strikes Back would also have sucked if you never saw A New Hope or Return of the Jedi. Same with The Two Towers without reading Fellowship of the Ring or Return of the King.

Mass Effect is ONE single plot, written as a trilogy. It's NOT three stand-alone games. Of course it sucks if you only play the middle chapter. Any trilogy sucks if you only read/watch/play the middle chapter.

Regarding Dragon Age

Interactive movie? Really? Never seen a game with so much choice over what happens, who lives and who dies and why and how, etc. Yeah, The Witcher has even more, but second best is something. I can't believe you're talking about the same game.

 

I completely agree with DAO. I think that was a very good game, and if all/most of WRPGs followed that same trend of story/choices/character development then that would be awesome, but the fact is most don't.

There also shouldn't be an option to beat an RPG in a couple of hours. Bethseda is renowned for this. FO3/FONV could be beaten in I believe just under 2 hours, same with oblivion. Skyrim is stated to be beatable in 2hour 15min. So that means you have 200 hours of "choices" that don't impact the main story. Just because you do meaningless things for 200 hours doesn't make it not linear. I could go grind in a JRPG for 200 hours because that was my "choice". Did I just make the game non-linear? No I didn't.

If these games are truly based on D&D and based around "choices" shouldn't there be more than 2 possible endings? FO3 had 2 endings, ME2 had 2 endings, DA2 had 1 ending, I believe the Witcher had only 1 possible ending. I guess it would just make a lot more sense to me if after those extra 100+ hours doing random additional things added something to the endgame or changed the plot. That's generally how choices work, 1 good or bad deed leads to something else down the road.

 

There's no way you could beat the entire main quest of Oblivion in 2 hours.

 

That's because all the recent wester RPG games are made to be trilogies. You can't have tons of different endings with one decision leading to other decisions. You need to be able to make the games linear enough so you can start off again in the next game. Or with games like DA2 you just make it so the endings didn't matter. I mean really, who cares if you let Morrigan have her demon baby, or if you let the annoying Princess rule, or let the whiny prince rule or coerce the two to marry etc. The endings of DA:O had no impact on DA2 and it will be the same for DA3 I'm sure.

I think in order to have what you want, they need to make one epic game with 50 hours of content, not like DA:O with 10 hours of content and 40 hours of gathering gear and convincing morons to join your troup for a theatrical, pre-determined ending.

A stand alone game could do what you want cause then the developers wouldn't be forcing the player into a pre-determined ending so they can have a sequel to it.

The Witcher 2, while being the ONLY western RPG blockbuster of the last 5 years IMO, and not an interactive movie, still had a pre-determined ending as CD Projekt has already announced there will be a Witcher 3.

More than Skyrim or DA3 or ME3, the game I'm curious about is Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. But the title of the game hints that it will not be a stand alone and will have a sequel or be a trilogy. Why else have : Reckoning to the title? So I don't think that game will have what you are looking for either.

 

I really don't think I'm being that picky. I mean all I want is either a really good story, or complete (or most) control over what happens via "choices".

Instead it just seems like story has been completely done away with in place of "choices" that don't really affect anything.

It's like choosing an MMO. I might want to play a Sandbox MMO or a Theme Park MMO, but I don't want to play a game advertised as a sandbox mmo and then have it end up really being a theme park mmo with a few extra choices.

 

As said, the choices have no meaning because they just need the game to be convincing enough as you said, to convince the generation of ADD gamers to buy the next game in the series. And if you have choices that make huge impact, imagine how much work the sequel have to be? It will have to be a game that takes account of different endings.

DA:O, DA2, ME2, Witcher 2 all have only one ending. Because they all made with the expectation you will be buying the next game.

You'll have to wait for a developer who isn't thinking about the long term and creating a franchise with multiple installments in a series and make one awesome, epic, stand alone game.

 

Have you actually ever played pen-and-paper D&D? "The main quest" and "the ending" aren't the focus. In many games, with many dungeon masters, there's no such thing as "the ending" at all. It's the choices you make minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour, that define the role-playing experience. Saying there's only a couple of different ending cinematics available, and thus the game does not have choice, completely misses the point of D&D-style RPGs. It's WHO you are and WHAT you do during those 40 hours of gameplay, not the two-minute video you watch at the end of it, where the choice occurs.

 

GamingACU I think you are asking a lot. Here is a diagram of what you are asking for.



Since games are being made with intention of being a franchise, a trilogy, to milk the ADD crowd that think interactive movies are games for as much money as they can for as long as they can...

...And you have the multiple endings that actually matter... You're asking the sequel to be able to start off with essentially in different ways depending on the ending your chose. The sequel will then be various different games packaged into one. Some of the endings from each of the branches may combine for an ending. But still you'd have to find ways for each of those branching stories to merge for some endings and then new endings for each of the branches...

...Or you'd have to find some vey creative, elaborate way to merge all the different endings to merge into one to start off a singular cohesive sequel. This will be very tough if you want the player to still feel what they did in the previous game mattered.

In DA2 for example they did not care what you did before. Really had no impact. The main character is different, completely different story line, different conflict. DA2 really shouldn't have even been called DA2 IMO. It should have just been a side quest, DLC for DA:O. A sidequest in which your main character discovers he has lost estate on his mothers side and goes in search of reclaiming of it.

 

Dragon Age 2 was the perfect example of when you SHOULD have a "2" in the name. Same universe, but different characters, different game engine, different plot, etc. No way it could or should have been DLC for DA:O.

If anything, the game that shouldn't be using "2" is Mass Effect. I think it'd be better if it was called "Mass Effect: Part 1," "Mass Effect: Part 2," and "Mass Effect: Part 3." That would have silenced the people who complained that too much happened too late in ME1, that ME2 didn't have enough stand-alone plot, and (presumably) that ME3 just dumps you into the middle of madness without really creating the universe or characters. Put them together and they all work brilliantly. Put them apart and they don't.

 

Totally disagree with you. You probably want to look up what a sequel is... and what a trilogy is, since it's obvious to me, you don't know what they are.

 

That's a heapload of condescension coming from a guy who just argued that DA2 should have been DLC for DA:O even though the two games use different game engines.

 

No, I've never played pen and paper D&D, but I have watched it and know what it mainly consists of. I can understand the theory of "It's not where you end up, but how you get there" when it comes to playing with other people/ socializing and enjoying the ride, but I personally do not find this to be so when "interacting" with shallow npcs who leave you with a 1 line dialogue after you do 2 hours worth of questing for them. I actually find it kind of scary that people can compare interacting with other humans to the npc interaction of these types of games.

 

If they made it into a DLC they would have used the same engine. And frankly the characters and everything look better in DA:O, DA2 graphics were junk anyhow.

Get over it, I disagree with you. DA2 was garbage, and DA:O is so overrated.