Can't get over how good POE is & why Bioware abandoned this style of gameplay.

[Hassat Hunter]

 

 

 senior RPG players

 

Clarification?

 

[abaris]

 

DA:I didn't even come to mind till muuuuch later (around page 3 of this thread infact). That's how "good" BioWare became :/

 

EDIT; And as always:

 

 

Actually, I was looking for reviews for DA:I to see if Bioware was showing some signs of intelligent life, when I stumbled over Divinity Original Sin in the process and instantly got hooked. And after numerous playthroughs, I looked for something along the same lines and stumbled over POE. Same story.

 

The so called AAA+ titles can get stuffed as far as I am concerned.

Edited May 12, 2015 by abaris

[majestic]

I don't know guys. I mean Poe helped creating entire genres of fiction, isn't it a little unfair to compare that to the guys writing at B... oh, wait.

 

/thread

 

Btw since nobody mentioned it yet and with all this talk about DA:I I think it is worth mentioning - EA essentially forces all their divisions to use the Frostbite engine for all their new products. The basic idea is that if everyone uses the same engine it is easier to transfer talent between games. Sound decision from a business and efficiency perspective. *shrug*

[Luj1]

I don't know guys. I mean Poe helped creating entire genres of fiction,

 

lol? what genre of fiction did poe create?

[majestic]

 

I don't know guys. I mean Poe helped creating entire genres of fiction,

 

lol? what genre of fiction did poe create?

 

 

With The Murders in the Rue Morgue he essentially created (modern) detective fiction and its associated tropes.

[Luj1]

right. my bad for mistaking it to Pillars acronym

[majestic]

right. my bad for mistaking it to Pillars acronym

 

The joke worked better in my head than it did on paper. Erm. Post.

[Wompoo]

I've been saying it for years but: fancy graphics and 3D does not make up for lackluster gameplay. I won't even get started on how EA is ruining gaming. Ok, I'll get started a little. ****ing cash shops.

Think it is more then just EA who is guilty (and BW's present state has more to do with the 2 Doctors who sold it in the first place). Cash shop excess unfortunately is a disease in gaming (especially in Korean MMOs).

 

As for the OP, I like both games for different reasons, both "have issues", but one has a chance to improve, PoE. The other has devolved into a generic fantasy action title, built around fixed base camp hubs, with the usual pointless lets return to camp companion interactions (BG2 it isn't)  and a lack lustre focus on the player hero.

[Jimmysdabestcop]

Lets throw this back to NES days. AAA publishers all want Zelda sales instead of Dragon Warrior sales. Even though Dragon Warrior had like 3-4 gaems in top 25 NES sales of all time.

 

You can kind of relate Zelda to DA:I. You wouldn't classify Zelda as a cRPG or aRPG but more adventure with some rpg elements. Its the same thing with DA:I.

 

Where as all of the IE games and even all of the Bioware games up to DAO would be cRPG with some action/adventure elements thrown in. Mostly real time combat as opposed to jRPG tactical or turn based combat. Jade Empire was probably the most action adventure title Bioware head until it went to EA and Jade still has more cRPG elements in it.

 

Sure DAI has companions and quests and plot storylines and decisions. But so did adventure games like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Or any of the other LucasArts adventure games. Its just DAI presents itself in a medieval fantasy setting.

 

And as others have stated a lot of this has to do with consoles. And even Japan being less of a market for non jRPG's especially with Xbox not really ever penetrating that market.

 

And the AAA publishers are almost forced to abandon real cRPG's because they have to sell to mass market of console gamers. And games like Wasteland 2, PoE, Divintity Orginal Sin wont sell.

[waltc]

The "3D Revolution" happened all over the entire gaming industry at the time, so it's kind of understandable.

 

Now we're in the "Retrospective Revolution", where we look back and see where we went wrong

 

There's nothing wrong with 3d...it's a wonderful graphics tool...in the right hands.  But that's the problem, isn't it?...."The right hands"...seem to be all too rare these days...  Companies like id software, imo, did more to hurt the promise of gaming than anything else because they couldn't tell a story if their company depended on it--except the already-cliche'd "Satan worshipers-Demon-gonna' getcha'--even on Mars" kind of "stories" that came straight out of dime novellas.  Then there's EA--a company that seems to know almost nothing about personal computers...  It's crazy.  I love great graphics--I love a great story even more--but finding a developer who can do *both* is challenging.  You wouldn't think that would be the case after all of these years, would you?

[abaris]

 

 I love great graphics--I love a great story even more--but finding a developer who can do *both* is challenging.  You wouldn't think that would be the case after all of these years, would you?

 

 

Change "can do both" to wants do both. Often time, shiny on the outside is the selling point to draw in the crowd. And some times it's really can't do both because of budget limitations.

[Sven_]

Dismissing games or anything because of their inherent A class blockbuster budget, distribution and marketing is kind of stupid, though. Dunno about you guys, but I'm very excited about going to Mad Max tomorrow. And damn, from all the reviews it seems Miller's actually nailed it (even without Gibson)!

Edited May 13, 2015 by Sven_

[abaris]

Dismissing games or anything because of their inherent A class blockbuster budget, distribution and marketing is kind of stupid, though.

 

No, I'm dismissing games based on previews, reviews and videos that show their gameplay elements. If that's not to my liking, I'm not opening my wallet. The reason for mostly AAA titles falling under that category is simple. They usually cater to the lowest common denominator to seel to as many audiences as possible. So they're basically cloning each other and most are produced with console as the primary platform in mind. That has an obvious disadvantage, since the controllers offer less options than keyboard and mouse. The second problem is the often abysmal port to make it accessible for PC players. And the third problem is, as above mentioned, the lowest common denominator, which provides for oversimplification and basically an abundance of action games.

 

The clearest sign for this decay are quest markers, so that every beer gobbling couch potato doesn't have to reflect on where to find the next shiny and these shinies disguise themselves as quests whereas they're simply a FedEx simulator with fetch and carry.

[Sven_]

I'm not particularly fond of so many games getting more "streamlined" either -- in particular as argued before it has led to outright lazy design that is then being forced onto everyone rather than offering an optional "helping hand" for those who want it (there's nothing wrong with that). As posted, all these huge worlds being advertised, and then reverse-engineered to the degree that you cannot possibly get lost in those (or explore and discover at your own pace). Rather than doing it the opposite way and not creating those huge worlds in the first place, and then even on "AAA" budget ever so often desperately trying to fill them with the most inane of fetch quests and busy work. In a similar sense, based on older gameplay videos that are much slower in pace, I wonder what Bioshock initially had looked like before Levine had chickened out and realized he had to sell real copies of this. A game such as Doom³ was never advertised as anything profoundly else but being loud and dumb -- and whilst the plasmids in Bioshock provided a fun diversion for a while given the somewhat limited possibilities of the environment, the core fast-paced gunplay that was far less prominent in its forebear System Shock (2) was far less responsive and pleasing than in id's intentional piece of Sci-Fi schlock. And compared to Doom³, which isn't exactly a game of diversity, the super small cast of enemies is hugely repetitive in retrospective.

I'm not arguing Doom³ to have been a particular great game or anything, but it had delivered what it had aimed to deliver, being a loud and dumb shooter of kinds that doesn't shy away from calling it's main antagonist Betruger for cripe's sake, whilst for me Bioshock was one of the more underwhelming experiences considering its inherent make-up, DNA and cosmetics hinting at something far more engaging initially but then sizzling out to be quite a simple game of shoot-the-baddy (and being a worse one at that than Doom³ in terms of mechanics anyways). Never played any of the subsequent sequels, but from comments Infinite actually doubles that and then some, even reviving the classic static straight shooting galleries almost unheard of in any major production except maybe the Painkiller series. In a sense, it's probably the game of the classic Looking Glass lineage being made for people who don't actually like games of the Looking Glass kind, similar to how open world games are being created for people who can't actually cope with worlds being wide open -- or how Bioware are making some of their RPG series such as Mass Effect appeal to people who don't actually like RPGs -- before anyone jumps on me, the "classic" ones anyways -- but shooters instead. It's frustrating for anyone who buys into this expecting something else, only to find it doesn't quite deliver that for whatever reason. Of course that's the more cynical way to look at this. The more upbeat one is that of Obsidian's Tim Cain, who said in an interview a while ago:

 

 

 

As for casual RPG's, if I were to make one, I would lean towards making it simpler, both in character systems and in the UI, so that players who are not interested in stat juggling and character design could enjoy the game too. I'd like to think that someone who played and liked a casual RPG would use it as a stepping stone to richer and more complex RPG's, but for many people, you have to make that leap as easy as possible.​

 

Some of the games we started out with likely were pretty light-hearted too, heck, even some of the classics such as Wasteland at their core have a super simple combat system that almost plays itself -- and I've the feeling that folks who initially started out with the Infinity Engine series of games may initially have picked one up thinking it to be similar to Diablo by looking at the pack shots or because they could get into them comparably easier because of their engine's roots being real-time strategy, some the most popular and accessible kind of game you could get on PCs during the mid to late 90s. For all the rules and spells, it was all left-click to select and left-click to move/attack/talk, which for RPGs was almost unheard of. It's just questioning the often blanket statements that "AAA games suck" -- or questioning the very connotation of that very term that appears to include such a wide range of games from Dishonored to Alien:Isolation to Call Of Duty. It's like a catch-phrase being picked up from somewhere and then used as a generalization for like everything one deems to be wrong with the video gaming market. By nature there's many more small productions that underwhelm as there are far more than that, there's Kickstarters that are never finished, get cut short during production or never actually make it through the funding stage, and the majority of indie games aren't worth writing a damn about. And closing off with another Tim Cain quote, it's probably neither the "AAA" nor the "garage" to rave and rant about, it is the middle ground that appears at stake, and this includes some of the projects Obsidian Entertainment are doing, hugely likely. Certainly something such as PoE, which is neither/nor.

 

 

 

It seems that we are increasingly seeing two types of games, ones made by small independent developers and ones made by huge, publisher-owned teams. The mid-tier developer, which have teams of 30-60 people, are shrinking, and small teams of less than 10 people and large teams of over 100 people are becoming the norm. I am worried what this means for the types of games that will be available over the next few years. Will they be either small casual games that you play for a few hours and then move on, or gigantic behemoths that you devote months of gaming time to, possibly investing in DLC to stretch the gap between sequels?

 

That's all, folks.

 

 

(Source of Cain quotes: http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=8416)

Edited May 13, 2015 by Sven_

[Lord_Mord]

Lord_Mord, on 11 May 2015 - 08:51 AM, said:

Interview with a vampire made $105,264,608

 

Twilight made $192,769,854

 

I didn't calculate inflation, the difference isn't that much and I don't like Interview with a vampire that much, but I think, you get the point.

With inflation Interview has made $167,712,375.01.  It was released in 1994, and you have to take into account lower ticket prices, less overall money earned by people (even with inflation they earned less than people nowadays do, so less expendable cash), the film being old when Blu Ray came out, meaning only the more hardcore fans bought it as opposed to Twilight which came out when blu ray was already established, etc.  With those considerations $25 million does not seem that big a difference.

 

 

OK, I try again: Let the right one in made  $2,122,065

 

Obviously, Twilight is the better movie.

[Galaen]

Talking about Twilight is the new version of Godwin's Law. Nothing more to see here.

[Lord_Mord]

That was not intended. I usually don't post anything anywhere, except for a certain BG forum. I just needed an example of a bad thing that made a lot of money.

[cctobias]

The "3D Revolution" happened all over the entire gaming industry at the time, so it's kind of understandable.

 

Now we're in the "Retrospective Revolution", where we look back and see where we went wrong

 

I finished DAO, I didn't finish DA 2 or DA: Inquisition.  I even rather like playing a knight enchanter in DA:I it was fun gameplay but the MMORPG gameplay is so soulless I just didn't pick the game back up after a couple days break.  It feels pointless, I think I made it almost to 2/3rds through.  Maybe I will finish it one day.  On the other hand the story is so painfully, shallowly and tritely a paen to modern/popular sensibilities.  And the singing oh god the singing, make it stop.

 

IMO PoE is better than DAO.  The story is better, the presentation of the stoary is better.  DAO's mechanics were not really that great so I am not going to bother comparing them, both have flaws, both were somewhat enjoyable.  DAO was actually balanced worse, there were combos in DAO that were boringly overpowered. 

 

Note: I would say the same about BG games because they are in D&D 2nd ed which had many many flaws as well.  D&D 3rd ed was a much smoother and comprehensive experience and much more elegant and powerful way of doing things than 2nd.  It could even handle sticky things in a mostly decent manner like making drow player characters in a way that worked fairly well rather than just watering them down because "Loth revoked her favor" or whatever.

 

Anyway many games development houses are no longer making games.  They are just following some money making formula and then pat themselves on the back that they are making games or art or whatever.  There is a reason almost all of them are written so shallowly.  The two things go hand in hand.

[abaris]

 

IMO PoE is better than DAO.  The story is better, the presentation of the stoary is better.  DAO's mechanics were not really that great so I am not going to bother comparing them, both have flaws, both were somewhat enjoyable.  DAO was actually balanced worse, there were combos in DAO that were boringly overpowered. 

 

 

 

Let's say, not as linear as DO:A. When it first came out, I had sleepless nights playing DA:O. It was the last game where Bioware was allowed to be Bioware. With DA II I didn't even finish the demo. The monkey on speed feel of the fights was enough to put me off. I didn't have any hopes for DA:I, since I knew beforehand it would feature tagged on multiplayer to satisfy the shareholding gods of EA. The reports about the abysmal PC port and the usual FedEx quests were enough to make me refrain from buying.

 

As I said, the main problem of so called AAA titles is the catering to the lowest common denominator. Skyrim was the last game of that sort I gave a try. After some time I was bored rigid with the ever repeated fetch me this or that and kill this or that and an open world that didn't give a damn about my achievements.

[Jimmysdabestcop]

Note: I would say the same about BG games because they are in D&D 2nd ed which had many many flaws as well.  D&D 3rd ed was a much smoother and comprehensive experience and much more elegant and powerful way of doing things than 2nd.  It could even handle sticky things in a mostly decent manner like making drow player characters in a way that worked fairly well rather than just watering them down because "Loth revoked her favor" or whatever.

 

 

I will take 2nd Edition D&D. It had staying power something like 7 years. 3rd edition wasn't that good it was revised to 3.5 Edition withing 3 years of release. 3.5 did a lot better then 3 and lasted half a decade. 4th edition I honestly never played but it did last as long as 2nd edition until 5th edition came out last year. Haven't played 5th Edition yet but I follow some communities that post about weekly game sessions. Looks real interesting. I think Beamdog might make a 5th edition game. They are making a 2nd edition prequel/sequel/insert for inbetween BG1 and BG2.

 

2nd Edition had Forgotten Realms, Planescape, Revaneloft and Dark Suns all pretty damn popular in its time.

[Shevek]

Beamdog can't even fix weapon sets in the EE versions and the companions they have made are cringe worthy.

[Zwiebelchen]

Beamdog can't even fix weapon sets in the EE versions and the companions they have made are cringe worthy.

 

But it has a bear companion with the most epic epilogue of all time...

Edited May 15, 2015 by Zwiebelchen