Fenixp

Yes. You can obfuscate your loading screens. I never claimed it's impossible. But even Witcher 3 is still loading a lot of assets in the background, and it's not entirely without loading screens either, and the way games are achieving this now is entirely different from how games achieved it over 20 years ago. Edit: I guess I should clarify here a bit - yes, seamless worlds are the best and yes, loading screens are irritating. However, they're also such a minor annoyance that area transitions as loading screens are a lot cheaper way of achieving that goal than working on asset streaming. That was a feature easy enough to implement back when assets were often reused, just modulated programatically - that's not the case anymore tho, and if I'm have to pick where a development team should invest their money, removal of loading screens is very low on that priority list, especially if those games take place in instanced areas anyway. They're what? While their features overlap, Elder Scrolls games offer considerably different experience to Ultima games - because their features are very different on quite substantial level. Claiming that Elder Scrolls titles and Ultima titles have exactly the same set of features is quite simply false, and that's even if we somehow consider Ultima Underworld and Ultima 7 to be one game, which they're quite clearly not. I think the only comparison that sort of works is with Ultima 7 for its open world and loads of exploration, but I quite simply prefer the hands-on approach Elder Scrolls titles offer and I'm not a fan of dungeon crawling, so Ultima Underworld is out of the question. Even combining mechanics in ways in which they were not combined before is innovative if those mechanics work together well enough you know. Oh come on. Animated sprites are an abstraction when compared to a fully animated 3D model doing the same activity. Ultima 7 still used an obfuscated grid system as far as I know, so even collision detection was not that much of an issue. Do I really have to go into details on how is fully featured skeletal animation combined with proper collisions a tad more difficult to achieve than moving sprites? Of course except for Dishonored actually having three paths. And it reacting and changing around parts of the game to reflect your actions, down to details like your face never being shown on wanted posters if you manage a ghost run. I've played Fallout many times and vast majority of that game's reactivity lies in dialogue, chosen dialogue options and what you picked during character creation. Dishonored reacts and dynamically changes parts of itself not based on dialogue choices (altho that too), it changes based on how you play. Oh sure, there are instances in Fallout and Arcanum where massacring somebody gave you different reactions of other NPCs, but they were neither as common nor as substatial, the most important changes then only came during ending cutscenes. I have finished both of those games several times as opposed to Betrayal at Krondor, I do know them quite a bit. As for Thief having the best stealth system out there - I liked stealth mechanics in Dishonored a good deal better. It has surfaces, it has light levels, sure it doesn't have water and moss arrows to influence these, but it exchanges that for supernatural abilities that I like even more and the AI is a good deal better (even if still quite dumb at times) But that wasn't my point at all - yes, older RPGs tried to imitate stealth, to a good extent even. But none had a stealth system as advanced as Skyrim, and given technical limitations of their times, they really could not contain it, that was my point. Did Thief, which entirely focused on stealth and was constructed around it, contain a better stealth system? That's cool, but also entirely irrelevant. If you focus on dissecting every single feature of a game and saying "Oh yeah, but that game did it better!", you're missing the point entirely - games don't work as a set of isolated mechanics which don't interact with each other in any way. I am actually equaling technical accomplishments of the past with the present. Thing is, that's not what you are doing - you are taking a set of features from Ultima and say newer games suck because they don't implement them better, which is looking at modern games with blinders on. You know why media stick to saying that gaming is more advanced and better than ever? Because gameplay styles and features which were either not possible or not available enough to be commonly used are widely accessible now. We have massive choice of gaming for people of all walks of life, of all generations and preferences. We have consoles which use motion tracking as a control method, we have games focused on middle aged people who never played videogames before, we have big MMO games for people without money, and then for people who don't want to dedicate too much time to gaming, we have massive AAA blockbusters, but we also have this massive indie scene. We have games using mechanics never seen before, games exploring worlds and stories which were quite simply never made before. Gaming is more healthy, varied and welcoming than it's ever been - but yes, there's nothing like Ultima so modern games are clearly worse. If you focus your rant down purely on the genre of RPG games, sure, it could work to an extent, but I still enjoy every Elder Scrolls game up from Morrowind a lot more than I enjoyed Ultima series and I can give you a list of reasons for that. If your argument is that RPG games didn't advance much past their peak in popularity in 90s, I will absolutely agree with you. But talking about gaming in general is a lot more tricky. And besides, and I've made that argument several times already, Ultima games were a peak of RPG genre even back then. They were not the norm - they were the role model every other RPG developer looked up to. So yes, naturally, they will stand on their own even now, 20 years later, just like we still enjoy TV shows and movies made over 50 years ago. But that doesn't automatically mean gaming as a whole didn't move anywhere. Edit: I mean, if I think about it - yes, what you're saying makes a good deal of sense if we talk about RPG games. I mean they did evolve as modern RPG is something entirely different than what was considered an RPG 20 years ago, and by that I mean they're actually third person shooters/sword...sers or something along those lines with a strong focus on narrative. And the more I think about your points the more I realize that RPGs I have enjoyed the most during the last few years were indeed heavily influenced in oldschool RPGs *Hugs Nonek* Thank you. I was so underwhelmed when playing Baldur's Gate back in the days, dear lord.

Yeah I get it, that kind of stuff is just not what you want to do in a game - it's annoying, it's not fun and very anticlimactic way to end your journey. It's still funny tho :-P Oh, so you bought it. Good, don't have to shill for it then :-P Seriously tho, I've read that the challenge tombs were entirely created by the same team which worked on multiplayer for the last game and it shows (that they had a dedicated team behind them I mean). They're huge, they often have mechanics not seen anywhere else in the game, the puzzles in them are a lot of fun - they're no longer just a small room with a simple puzzle. And then there are actual tombs to raid strewn around the landscape, there are the big, open locations like the soviet base which offers a lot of opportunities for exploration which is incredibly satisfying, stuff like that. Weirdest thing is that I'm enjoying doing the challenge tombs and side missions a lot more than progressing trough the main story, but that's not a bad thing per se - it's just a shame that when someone's not a completionist he's risking not really seeing the most fun parts of the game. I also love that stealth is a lot more viable this time around, and generally, if you explore a lot, you'll be doing a lot less shooting and a lot more tomb raiding, which is awesome. Generally speaking I'd say the game has improved in just about every aspect upon the 2013, except for the main storyline buut I'm a sucker for mysterious islands. Oh and then there are challenges. God, it's that kind of thing which gets decided during a board meeting by a bunch of managers who then walk up to the development team and say "Guys, add some challenges. Like cut 7 soviet flags. People like challenges, right?" "But... It doesn't work with the theme at all." "CHALLENGES, MAN! THINK POSITIVE! ONLY LOSERS THINK NEGATIVE! CHALLENGES!" "I... *sigh* Whatever."

I'm sorry, I'd love to sympathize with you, but after today's ****ty day, the sentence going along the lines of "I sold my only engine and now I'm stuck, damn you game!" made me laugh :-P Anyway, just restart. It's not a big deal in sunless sea, world will regenerate, a ton of events change, it's all good. Feel free to disable Iron Man mode and save a lot in order to prevent such things from happening in the future. You know, in case you sell your boat and feel like you have nothing to sail with and stuff :-P

First of all, I'm sorry for the wall of text. I really am, I'm generally terrible at expressing myself briefly and when I try, what comes out is an incomprehensible mess. Were those standards, really? When? I mean I got hugely into RPGs in the late 90s with the release of Fallout and never could get into Ultima games (which might have been a mistake and I might give them another shot one of these days) and the only game implementing most of what you mention that I know of was Gothic, most other RPGs I have played back then either didn't really have any of that or only contained these features in extremely rudimentary forms - definitely not in the precise combination you have mentioned. And... Well, I wouldn't consider lack of loading screens a feature. Sure, you can make a game without loading screens still, but why? All you'd get are assets gimped in order to load fast enough. The whole reason for loading screens to exist is to lift memory limitations. As for modern titles, well Elder Scrolls series come to mind as ones implementing vast majority (especially with disabled quest markers) in a big budget RPG. I wouldn't say all quest markers are a shame generally, but the overuse of them sure is. And yes, they include gameplay which doesn't need to center on combat if you don't want it to, albeit they still contain a ton of overcoming of adversity in some form. Well, LA Noir probably combines even more, but I'm not sure that's exactly what you had in mind :-P You're sort of making up conspiracy theories when the answer is very simple: Standards have changed and abstraction is not as prevalent. What you had to do to pass for NPC life cycle "back when" was to make a switch which would shuffle their positions at the night. What you need to do now is to painstakingly animate and script the entire process so that player can follow every single NPC home. That applies to a lot of features - they were half-arsed or tucked away from player entirely, whereas that's not quite possible in modern games. Ambitions changed too - you can quite clearly see stark contrast of 90s optimism against today's realism. 20 years ago, a feature was brought to the table and developers went "Sure! We'll implement that, that's awesome!" and then it was in the game as a non-functioning mess, but looking nice and futuristic on feature list with some lucky exceptions. Today, you'll see a question "Yeah, but what will that bring to our players, really?" pop up a lot more. Right, so while there aren't many games which implement all of these (and I would argue there never really were all that many), aren't you forgetting that in these years, we've had features evolve or being added? I mean, in older RPGs, fully featured stealth system was not really a thing since you brought up Thief. Complex crafting, graphically well represented construction of a village - neither are standards, but exist and work while they either didn't really or only on extremely abstracted levels. There's no way we'd ever get Skyrim's gameplay back then. Perhaps there's a way but I've not seen a game with the levels of reactivity of Dishonored (Deus Ex comes close, but is not quite there.) We've got big, open world first person shooters marrying several layers of gameplay which were quite simply not possible back then. We've got many singular experiences which might have been possible but never existed back then - LA Noir, Sunless Sea, Darkest Dungeon, Crypt of the Necrodancer, Valkyria Chronicles just to name a few that I played recently. Gaming didn't devolve - gaming changed. Sure, if you pick a feature and start following it, you might find that it disappeared, but that's also not how evolution of media works and is an entirely incorrect way of looking at it, even if perhaps desirable for you (and now I'm not saying you're incorrect to like these features - now that would be stupid.) Features get routinely added, changed and removed, experimented on. This is a good thing, it paves the road to innovation. It's easy to point at a title and say: "Show me a carbon copy of these features!" but the only thing that constant copying and updating of the exact same set of features would lead to is extremely stale environment, don't you think? Now, I get it - you like older games better. I'd be an idiot to say you're wrong to like them. What I would suggest, however, is trying to get out of the shackles you have imposed upon yourself and try to look for different experiences you have most certainly not seen back in the old days. It's a shame the free weekend for Sunless Sea ended, otherwise I'd plug it here again for you to try :-P

Yes! Do it! Sunless Sea is brilliant.

Nooo, please don't

Is my memory just fooling me? I remember the game being open, but I also remember the story massively lacking in reactivity. All right, you've done it, I've got to replay Betrayal at Krondor now. I do hope you're happy. Edit: Installed and launched it for a bit. My god that game is so good. The free exploration, the awesome and to my knowledge never replicated puzzle chests, the writing, the grid-based combat... So good. Thank you for prompting me to try it again, even if not purposefully. Well of course you don't, mostly because I'm not entirely sure which features are you talking about. Vast majority of features which were stripped away I personally don't particularly miss and those that I always enjoyed are still around. I mean, are we talking about ability to use everything with everything? Dialogues which allowed you to freely type what you want to say, that sort of thing? If you're just talking about games with good narrative, now there's as few of them as there's ever been - turns out they're kind of difficult to produce. But they're still around. It should work quite fine with DosBox. Have you tried GOG version?

Did you like the original? I mean, the original reboot. Gah.

Well these technically are pictures of a game that I own: Darkest Dungeon is kinda brilliant and I couldn't convey it better via straight screenshots even if I tried. More of these over here at the bottom of the page.

Why does modern game industry automatically mean AAA games as those are the only ones your comment really applies to? Of course games for masses are going to be created to cater to the lowest common denominator, after all, they're created by companies which are trying to make money. Lowest common denominator of pen and paper nerds who had a tendency to design and play RPGs 25 years ago is entirely different to that of your average, modern consumer so it's quite understandable you'll see a shift in game design. But... There are still games being created by teams as small as in the past, for lower budgets as we have loads of dedicated game development tools now, for the same audience that games were made 25 years ago - and with 25 additional years of experience in developing games to boot. And using Betrayal at Krondor as an example of an old game which successfully merges gameplay and narrative seems a bit like nostalgia talking. Now I love the game. Never played it back then and absolutely adored it about 4 years ago, which is when I finished it so you're absolutely right about it still being able to offer a fun experience. But it tells its story via (almost exclusively) non-interactive walls of text that display at predetermined points in gameplay, sometimes trough some encounters or traps but that's quite rare. Yes, they kinda work like cutscenes.

It's nice that it's the laptop you find unusual about that picture:

Again, Lara takes ALL the punishment Again, we get sideboob loading screens Minecraft is new Tomb Raiding is new (in Tomb Raider) Victory is achieved And I'm absolutely loving it. Oh and... This happened: Didn't know Warp seeps into London, England

If that quote was from MCA I'd really want to see MCA's porn collection.

Is it just me or is Steam store broken? Edit: Yup, just me.

Right? I can't really add anything that George did not say, he does tend to be quite exhaustive with topics he picks, but I'd definitely be a lot likely to purchase Battlefront or even Rainbow Six: Siege if they just contained botmatches.

Somewhat related to a recent discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BKw4eNFGqc&ab_channel=SuperBunnyhop

All this means is that you prefer book storytelling to videogame storytelling. A good game doesn't have a linear story that's largely spelled out for you like in literature (because, sadly, literature doesn't really have much of a choice - the wonderfully confusing hot media and all that) and sure, if that's what you prefer, a linear story built from highest quality parts presented in front of you, then videogames can never beat books. Good thing then that videogames have entirely different tools to present a story with then! See, that's the thing - they have no reason to beat books. All videogames have to do is what film did before them - repeat what we've seen in literature countless times and try to wrap it around their own, unique qualities. I dare to say that writing of Sunless Sea is on par with some of the best literature I've ever read, yet its storytelling would never work with any other kind of media. Brothers: A Tale of Two sons is a simple story which has been repeated over and over, yet is made striking as it uses features only videogames can, all the way down to using your controller to tell crucial part of the storyline.

Sunless Sea has a free weekend over at Steam. No reason not to give it a shot.

So you're also subscribed to GOG newsletter :-P

Aaand GOG introduced their own Early Access called "Games in development" This could be really cool for archival of unfinished versions.

Well even on Iron Man runs it's a pretty good idea for the game to overwrite the last save it's made every now and again in case it crashed

Advanced strategies like that are usually not created by accident tho, Keyrock. They tend to be made by people who first conformed to the standardized way of playing the game, were dissatisfied with it and had sufficient knowledge to try and construct new strategies. What Ganrich started off talking about were people complaining that they do not enjoy the game because they feel like they suck at it regardless of what they do. Such people won't discover new, successful strategies as they lack even rudimentary understanding of the game - telling them "You're playing it wrong, you'll enjoy it a lot more if you play the game like this ..." is exactly the kind of advice you should give them, otherwise they'll abandon the game entirely. (and yes, I'd say that playing a game in such a way that you get zero enjoyment out of it is definitely "playing it wrong" :-P) When they understand what's considered successful at the game, that's where they can start experimenting and have fun doing that.

More importantly, some games can't even function without level scaling at all. Take Neverwinter Nights for example - at the beginning, the game offers you 3 big quests that you can complete in any order you'd like to. So either you'll freeze player at level 1 (!!) for a big chunk of the game, you actually don't give him any choice at all and kick him out of two of the three choices or you introduce level scaling so that he actually has a choice and all areas remain challenging. Level scaling is a design tool which can be used well and it can be used badly - it's been around for nearly as long as RPGs are, in one form or another.

That's what my battle nun looked like in my mind when we played Arkham Horror last night! Well she actually looks kinda like this: but I tots equipped her with a double-barreled shotgun, whip and some abominable item from outer space. She's badass, Edit: Yes, I'm on topic! I want eldrich abomination to be an armor in Pillars of Eternity 2. There.

Sure and that's fine, but don't complain about chess being too hard when you decide that the only way you'll play it is by only moving one piece until you lose it - that's more akin to what Ganrich is talking about.