crakkie

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/09/17/obsidian...led-aliens-rpg/ Sooo, it's a couple of months past February 2011 now. Was there any word about the Alien RPG's downfall that I missed?

I guess if Far Cry can live it down...

I tried it a while back with the "Time Gentlemen" $2.50 pack. It was damn funny, but I'm terrible at finishing adventure games. I very much appreciated the opening puzzle.

would be boss. Maybe with more gearhead+Bond gagetry in your vehicles and cheesy 70s technobable instead of cybernetics and lasers. The designers will have to nail the puke green color scheme of the interiors, and research proper cloth simulation of 70s shirt collars. I dunno. Shadowrun needs some kind of history erasing refresh to address how convoluted the setting has become. I really want a Rogue Trader RPG more than anything.

Wow, I've still got Gamma World (1mil rads to these reviewers you speak of). I gotta say, with Eberron, Dark Sun, and now Gamma World-- WotC is at least picking their most interesting settings. Now if only 4e wasn't so awful and they weren't trying to nickle and dime people with their thousand and one power cards, miniatures, battle maps, 3-part core rulebooks, etc.. ...but I'll probably still get this.

I've played plenty of RPGs that had a tacked on story that led me from point a to point b. It didn't stop them from playing and acting like an RPG in every other respect, just with a story and plot progression that could have been much better. And a precious few RPGs have had an open world. Story involvement and backtracking and open world and C&C are all nice aspects of any game really, especially RPGs. When folks talk about a game having 'RPG elements' they aren't referring to it having a protagonist who's the main character of the game's story or even whether you can do something to affect the story. They're talking about: having a selection of abilities, upgrades, and customizations that you can pick from and that alter what the PC can do and how well he can do it; the progression of your character's abilities throughout the game to a level more powerful than where he began. Recreating the PnP experience in a game is impossible, and that's never really been the point of CRPGs. And as for a literal interpretation, you play a character that has a role in the story in most games. So just rename CRPGs to character customization and progression games. That way you can define the character-building strengths separately from having a great story that involves the character, choices that affect the plot progression and outcome, great writing and characters, and exploration. All of these are nice to have in any game, but having one of them in any game will not prompt anyone to claim that your game has 'RPG elements'.

I would say that they are the only things necessary, especially given your examples. The ability to customize your character's abilities and having those abilities advance throughout the game is the only thing tying all of those titles together. There are no branching dialogs or meaningful choices in Diablo 2 or FF. There is very little exploration in DX and ME (to consider the Mako secitons to be exploration is a painful idea). Diablo 2 gives you several different builds of characters within each class, allowing you to attack baddies in a good variety of ways. RPG inventory is a method of character customization (getting a new weapon in an action game isn't really the same thing, since the weapon itself is usually all or nearly all of the gameplay). Stats are just a representation of how you have customized your character's abilities and skills. Party selection is character customization, since the party itself becomes your character. The story is important, but most of the time it just needs to keep you motivated enough to continue through the next level, on to some more advancement and customization opportunities. Choices and effects are nice, but they are a separate principle and don't imply customization or vice versa. If an FPS allows you to make a choice on level 6 that will affect whether you go to level 7a or 7b and gives the big baddie at the endgame a different exposition, is it suddenly an RPG? That's probably why ME2 is so effective. By downplaying its RPG fundamentals and concentrating on choices and shooting, it comes off as an action game with a level of C&C and character interaction never seen in an action game before.

Fallout 2's dev time was about 1.5 to 2 years I believe. In that they added the car, new companion controls, a gameworld twice the size of the original (both world map and visitable locations), dense and complex areas like Vault City and New Reno, new guns/armor/weapons/talking heads, and even had time to add far too many easter eggs, too much goofy floating text, and an awful tutorial level. They should have an ample amount of time to make FONV, if they use it well.

Deja vu from 2009

I actually had to check whether David Warner was really dead. He is not dead. Oh yeah, Trine and Morrowind are $5 today. I was hoping Empire: TW would be on a daily special before the sale is over.

I love how you not only stab him in the neck all the way up to the hilt with this thing, but you also grind it back and forth inside of his throat/chest cavity. Goblins are the most fun to kill though.

It should be blindingly obvious that it's because "Fallout" is in the title, a game that many people who hate MMOs care about. How obtuse.

It will take Atari and Hasbro longer to sue Interplay in the UK. In the meantime, this will allow Interplay to stay in business for another 3 months.

. The game of... centripetal force-based warfare? I was expecting a little indie-time waster, but it has a great story, interesting central-Asia-in-the-sky setting, brutal AI, huge selection of weapons with different strengths and weaknesses (and sockets), several game modes. You can really feel the impacts from a solid strike with a hammer or direct hit with the mortar. The programming seems a bit shoddy, with no widescreen and a bare minimum of audio options (very much want to turn off that stupid laugh), and some goofy UI issues. The demo for it is ancient, by the way, from over a year ago when it was called Hammerfall. Definitely glad I grabbed this over Torchlight, which I'll wait for a sale on.

Games are still sold through retailers without DLC or subscriptions and make money without being best sellers. NWN2 had 3 expansions.