metadigital

Resolution must be different. Consoles use television resolution. Any game that supports more than 800x600 is far superior than a console. Morrowind was quite demanding (DirectX 8.1).

Polite suggestion: play Morrowind. It is mentioned frequently for a reason. It is totally open ended gaming: you can do anything at any time with anyone. You can even kill characters that are crucial to the main plot. (The game tells you so afterwards, giving you the option to quit and restart.)

I agree (to some extent) but if this is so "common sense" knowledge why did it take so damned long to be applied to western RPGS? ... If JRPGS hadn't inspired the push for western RPG party interaction at all you would have detailed party interaction,yes, but you would expect it to be without any of the above JRPG elements. It seems too convenient and coincidental for me to believe that you could stumble upon those specific ideas without it being inspired by the eastern world. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> It takes a long time for anything "different" to be utilized in a successful business model (i.e. building a RPG that sells to a market segment giving a set ROI); risk is an extravagence not regularly indulged in any business, much less creative ones like games. In other words, the publishers asked the developers to produce "the same thing that worked last time". Where did you get this inference from? Risk. Poor management. Obviously there are a lot of creative types running development houses: good for creative games, bad for the bottom line. Happens in all markets to all types of businesses, even well established ones. Look at Marconi, founded by the discoverer of radio, in business for a century, then insolvent in a couple of months, due to poor management. Lancer, I would like to introduce EA to you ... EA are nothing if not good managers; their products can be anything from dreadful to exceptional, but they complete projects to their deadlines.

What a surprise. I also disagree with--- wait.. You don't have an analysis and conclusion. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Ah, trolling, I see. My conclusions are quite clear: the game industry is not categorised as you (arbitrarily) indicate; it is a much more homogenous organism; in short: you are jumping to false ones. If that is all you are saying, then I agree it is a good idea. (But I would argue that you are guilty of apopheniac tendencies.) Ok.. I am still waiting for your better one. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> No, you are either purposefully ignoring it, or too dim to see it. If the former, then I have already explained above (vide ut supra), if the latter, then I can't help you. Therefore it will never happen? Is that your conclusion? Well, you may draw that conclusion, but I don't. That sort of logic would have us conclude that there will never be another OS, for the PC, other than Windows ... oh, what's that? Linux! :D And this is evidence for what exactly? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Are you saying that there are no emulators for consoles? Exactly. Even if we accept your intial proposition, Lancer (that occidental cRPGs have been inspired by oriental console JRPGs), why does that foreshadow the doom of the PC platform for RPGs? Translation: the computer RPG is far from a dead genre; not only is it thriving, it is interbreeding with every other genre. You may rest easy, there is no cause for alarm. Rumours of its demise have been greatly exaggerated. (Apologies to the estate of Mark Twain.)

9 August 2005

You are indeed ineluctably trapped in geekdom. Do not fret, though, there are worse fates. Like not being a geek. (Apologies to the estate of G. B. Shaw.)

...

That would certainly give some interesting treaties ... maybe moreso if it were a version of the blind variant, too: where players don't know all the other players' countries, nor all their moves each turn (just the countries adjacent ...)

I'm not so sure you should be thanking him, just yet ... to my mind there were a lot of negative scores there ..!

:'( I don't like you guys anymore ...

I've always called them d

... and the lights on, apparently ...

meta for Teh WIN!

Not getting out of the clink for a few months, then? Might?

Seriously? I was on there and I didn't see it. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> linkie (fourth one down) Ha! Considering the big deal for Doom 3 was its rendering of shadows!

R00fles!

Alan Wake looks pretty interesting (not sure when it hits the streets), FEAR (maybe), Quake IV, Civ IV, Oblivion (maybe, check the reviews before I commit), NwN 2, DragonAge (maybe), any Half-Life 2 modules (like Aftermath).

So you never faced the Kobiashi Maru scenario ?

I am very tempted to quote Kaftan's sig at this point. Thank you Ender for bringing up another good point which I neglected to mention earlier about Torment being inspired by JRPGs. In addition to my earlier claim that Fallout is an example where you can have more advanced party interaction without the more "emotional" JRPG-style interaction elements... Look at the complexity of Fallout's story compared to Torment's... Now compare Torment's story complexity to that of any good JRPG. Now tell me which game is closer to the more story-driven style of JRPGS? Now there are more western RPGs that have been trending towards being more story-driven ever since.. Look at the Baldur's Gates, Arcanum, KOTOR, Deus Ex, System Shock, Vampire..etc.. JRPG's have always been story-driven whereas western RPGS (with the Ultimas as notable exceptions) had always been less story-driven in the past placing the emphasis more on the gameworld and on customizability. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Again, I ithink you are misinterpreting perfectly innocent evolution and placing a sinister connotation to it; your initial post was a doomsay of the occidental cRPG, and you have been using your interpretation of the influence of oriental CRPGs onto the Western cRPGs as a prescriptive cause. I disagree with your analysis and your conclusion. Firstly, your analysis totally ignores the true nature of any market: any advances in audio equipment will be utilised in the car industry, for example. Secondly, your conclusion is specious. Even, as I pointed out earlier, in the unlikely event that all occidental cRPG developers and publishers either became insolvent or pursued the oriental console JRPG market, this would not preclude the ever-sprouting and ingenious talents of the users of computers. For the final piece of evidence, notice that all consoles are propreitary (and fixed hardware specifications) systems, and all of the games from redundant consoles is now available, through emulation, for the PC.

Maybe the actual in-party interaction wasn't as developed as it was later on, but there was certainly interaction with all characters, and you had to meet your fellow party members before they joined. I guess now I might sound like I'm being technical, but in line with Yst's comments (which I have quoted directly above in my previous post), I think it was a natural progression from the occidental RPGs of yesteryear as much as it was a cross-polination from their oriental cousins. Anyway, the point is: what's the point? Lancer was (initially) using this as some sort of prophesy of doom for the occidental cRPG. Which is what I was rebutting as patent nonsense.

By the nature of the beast, the party interaction style of a cRPG has to be different from the party interaction style of a console RPG. A typical cRPG is all about choices and in theory more non-linear play than a JRPG... As KOTOR was designed to appeal to both console and computer RPGers it needlessly had to have elements of both. However, the obvious similarities are ... Whereas PC games before (with the notable exception of Ultima VII part II: Serpent Isle) for all practical purposes almost completely ignored any substantial party interaction, this has been a mainstay in JRPGS since well the 8 bit days. And I never said that "party interaction" was a bad thing. Quite the contrary, I think this is something that PC RPGS should have been doing all along.. Especially since many PnP campaigns have always featured such party interaction well before cRPGS finally caught on. It is about time, IMHO, since cRPGS supposedly have always been designed with an eye towards recreating the tabletop game on to the computer. EDIT: Who knows? Maybe there would be more JRPG players that would also play cRPGS had the party interaction concept been established in cRPGs from the get-go. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Firstly, the proceed from a false premise. I concur with Yst: It is pointless and even misguided to pursue this distinction. Way back when cRPGs involved multiple player characters, there was party interaction. I can remember Ultima III had that, and that was the eighties, and eight bit computing (Apple ][, Commodore 64, etc). I think you are missing the big picture, by trying to be too clever about your categorisations. Computer games, as an organic beast, is the result of cross-breeding from all influences, whether it is Hollywood blockbuster cinema or Japanese anime; likewise, the RPG has given and received concepts and techniques from the FPS, Flight Sim, Strategy, Simulation and even Platform genres, but

Let's put it this way.. If the cRPG market "dies" it would make no business sense for a developer to continue pursuing a dead market. Certainly that doesn't stop someone from trying although they wouldn't stay in business long. Unless you want to make them. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Well, no, let's put it this way: as long as there are PCs, there will be people who will use them to play games, and some (a lot) of those will be RPGs, whether they exist or have to be created. Stating that the PC games market is dying or dead is a little premature, methinks. The PC games market will continue as long as the PC does. Also, games are constantly mutating; RPG elemets, for example, are being transplanted into other genres, just as any other componentry is being bolted onto any new game (like better graphics).

Masterspray! (Who's name was that?)

Ah, quick edit your post and disguise your email address before a spamspiderbot collects it!