Promethean

Troika games were unpolished, but they were also ambitious. And no one is being that ambitious in RPGs today. And I can deal with some lack of polish for something different.

you must be from the internets. I'm trying to understand if he actually played Arcanum with the content patches and why he think story and combat was the point of the game. Not to mention what the **** was going with this top 5 characters thing.

C&C wise, I like to think that BI's Fallout series is thus far the most extensive kind I've ever known. So at this point, I'm inclined to agree with Promethean's points. He is right though about Arcanum. Its might even have more C&C and character uniqueness than Fallout, its just, like all Troika games, extremely unpolished. Fallout 1&2 and Arcanum are really the only two rpgs of their kind I can think of. Planescape, KotOR II, MotB and Bloodlines all fall into a different subgenre. Anchornox is basically a JRPG with really good writing and humor.

There first two DLC were ****ty action shooting segments. Anyone who bought them was ripped off. You were essentially paying for a couple cool new weapons.

good for it's time? name 10 games since those two which have lived up to that kind of role-playing experience in terms of character-building, choices/consequence, innovative and original dialogue & story, and overall atmosphere without be completely linear-driven. i'll give you two: Planescape and Arcanum. now you only have to come up with 8. Unfair. Planescape doesnt live up to some of those (its a linear game) and it kicks Fallout's ass in dialogue and story. Hell Bloodlines, KotOR II, MotB and Anachornox all do as well. Fallout had extremely dry dialogue. Overall atmosphere is completely subjective. Fallout has nonlinearity, C&C and character building as its forte.

Yeah but you could call Deus Ex an idea dumping ground, the gameworld is still unified and hell most of the mechanics are too. It seems no effort was made to sort things like that in Fallout 3.

I think comparing Fallout 2 to Fallout 3 is incorrect. Fallout 2 was purposely zany. A comedy RPG if there ever was one. However Fallout 3 tried to emulate Fallout's black humor and general sense of realism. Thats why I find FO3 worse in regards to immersion, to making sense. They clearly didnt think **** through, as opposed to FO2, where that was the whole point. The world wasnt suppose to make sense. If FO3 was as crazy as 2, I wouldnt be complaining. Then again maybe it is in a way thats totally not funny, like how they transplanted all the major factions from the first 2 games over to the East Coast, cause apparently they could think of their own ****.

I'd be forced to kill everyone involved in such a project

Guess he is out of the handheld loop. Etrian Odyssey and Dark Spire are very successful dungeon crawlers and 7th Dragon is incoming from Japan I think

How is that a weakness? In Fallout you play a man ~or woman, in a hurry; Doodling around in abandoned ruins is the waste of time (and is likely out of character). Fallout 3 [bethesda] brought this upon itself, with the decision to depict the world in that level of detail; Previous Fallouts were a bit more abstracted and the mind of the player seamlessly filled in the gaps... but F3 puts it all in 'yer face and its plain to see that things are not right in the wastes; So yeah... It gets hammered for more useless and flawed detail. IIRC, NASA has some computer systems in (of for use in) orbit, that are positively ancient (like 486's ~perhaps pentium pro's? ~I'm not sure of the platform... might not be x86 even); They are kept in service because they almost never ~ever crash, and because they are easier to hardened against radiation effects. Needless to say, I doubt they are running Windows I can see the VAC-tube systems remaining in use in the Fallout world, and some still being functional all these years since. True but the power infrastructure and generators would have long since deteriorated, and all the loose particles and neglect would reek havoc on the terminals.

Ultima

You know except for the horrible combat, utter repetition of events leading up to the assassination, the ****ing ridiculous beggars, and the 5 minute long speech you receive from the victim as he is dying. And we threw in some retarded sci fi too. Have fun.

Let's just call it Science!... Seriously, if one applies real-life science, the entire Fallout universe is WTF. There's this thing called suspension of disbelief. Fallout adheres to it. Fallout 3 breaks it over the head with a rolling pin.

Where?

Key thing is that there was a lot less of it. Hell there were only like 2-3 working terminals in the originals. In FO3, they are everywhere. Just like the food. And since they have no farms, apparently there must have been airlocked bunker stocked with commercial food products people go to in order to keep living.

Oh? So what makes a CRPG?

But does twenty help it at all? There is suspension of disbelief, and then there is suspending it with a noose around the neck until you kill it.

I'm not knocking them for what they are. No one is that I can tell. They add a little something to the game. ALthough I would point out once I've seen many many skeletons laying in various poses on beds, bathtubs, etc surrounded by various items, they stop being interesting. Beth overkilled it pretty bad. But the concept that somehow putting these things around in any way, even a teeny tiny amount, offsets the need for characters and narrative, and action and reaction and consequences etc and so forth. No. Just no. I'm not saying you are saying this, btw. Just responding to your question. Not to mention why are the skeletons still there after so long. Its just like how every building and house hasnt been raided in 200 years, none of the food has gone bad, tons of terminals work despite the lack of plausible electrical sources, there are no farms and the wooden frames of house are still there. The whole game is confused about when the bombs really dropped it seem. Not to mention I believe it was J.E. who posted how 98% of radiation could be removed from water by sifting it through earth. Which kinda makes the main plot look really dumb.

Nice going

ToEE is all about combat. Icewind Dale didnt have many memorable characters either.

DA will end up in that category cause its Bioware. All they know is cliches

http://www.mobygames.com/game/ps2/champion...norrath/credits Yup, he worked on story and dialogue. Never understood how CoN and BG:DA ended up so bad in those departments. Maybe lack of passion behind them?

[quote name='H

Very good points. Especially on water and the color of the sand

This really bugged me.