Fun Stuff > CLIKC
favourite RPG
Dimmukane:
Having finally gotten around to playing Morrowind, I can say that they're both on an equal level. Both of them have pretty bad voice-acting (with the exception of Patrick Stewart and Zod), and a lot of the voice actors are the same in both games. I think that Oblivion's a lot more fun to just walk around in. Not do anything quest-related, just maybe perch on a rock and wait 5 minutes for a deer to shoot. Morrowind, on the other hand, feels a lot more...there. The dungeons don't feel nearly as repititious, and the game forces you to play more to your character (which has it's own pros and cons). And the existing world feels just a little more complete. But it has a few interface problems, and I really wish they would've doubled the walk/run speeds. Running feels like walking, and walking feels like shambling. Which in a game without quicktravel can be tedious. I've had to do the Balmora/Seyda Neen/Pelagiad circle five times, and it's kind of annoying.
I guess since we're not axing this thread, I might as well contribute.
NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer has probably the best writing I've seen in an RPG after the Bioware games.
Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 rocked, and their expansions (still haven't played Icewind Dale or Planescape)
The past two Elder Scrolls installments, obviously
FFXII was fun while I had it
imapiratearg:
See, I never walked to Balmora. There's this room right outside of the first office in the Census and Excise place. I would go in there, shut the doors, and literally steal everything. I would then sell it all to Arielle (or whatever his name was), and take the silt strider to Balmora.
But, I totally agree with you.
P.S. - There were a few different modes of fast-travel in Morrowind. There was the aforementioned silt strider, Mages Guild teleporters, Almsivi and Divine intervention spells/items, and Mark and Recall spells.
Dimmukane:
There are modes of fast-travel, yes, but some of the smaller cities and villages are not available without the spells (which being a thief, I can only hope to find scrolls for, and actually already have, but not knowing what the did, sold them). Pelagiad's closest neighbour is Seyda Neen, and that walk still takes about 3 minutes real-world time (running), with only two dungeons to stop by on the way (which I've already done and have no interest in revisiting). I think I just need to get really rich and buy a whole bunch of Levitation. Also, being a thief, I'm fairly certain a lot of people don't like me in the Mages guild, as I robbed them blind in two cities thus far. That, and some of the dungeons and stuff are just in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. It's not too bad, but something that could be improved upon. I wish they had an ini file I could edit to change the walk speed. Then my bitching about traveling would be stopped.
KvP:
--- Quote from: Anyways on 29 Feb 2008, 12:29 ---
--- Quote from: Gamespot ---The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is simply one of the best role-playing games ever made.
--- End quote ---
--- Quote from: IGN ---This is a deep, satisfying action-RPG.
--- End quote ---
--- Quote from: Kotaku ---As was done with Morrowind before it, Bethesda Softwork's award-winning free-roaming RPG The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is getting the Game of the Year treatment.
--- End quote ---
Just because it doesn't contain the bog-standard ingredients of Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale or Fallout doesn't mean it's not an RPG. Role Playing Game. You assume a role, and you play it and evolve it after your own personal style.
--- End quote ---
That sort of makes the term "Role Playing Game" meaningless, doesn't it? By that definition, any and every game that has a character is an RPG. I play Metal Gear Solid, assume the role of a ninja spy, and at my whim I can (poorly) run and gun through the game, I can take the time to incapacitate every enemy by hand or I can use stealth. Great RPG.
Has anybody ever really done that, playing these TES games? I only beat Oblivion once in a 9-hour period by focusing on the main quest. TES are poindexter games, even moreso than D&D. You don't have a character, you have a set of statistics, and beyond the rate at which certain statistics increased and what handful of once-a-day powers you started off with there aren't really that many things differentiating any one character from any other character. There were no real restrictions, which made it kind of homogenous. The reason I never beat Morrowind is that I get roleplayer's remorse and keep making new characters, but every time I do so it's only after a few hours of play that I realize that my new character is exactly the same as the one I abandoned.
Dialogue was nonexistent in both games. There weren't any NPCs, there were walking encyclopedias with names. They really didn't improve with Oblivion, they just made it less obvious. This is apparent to the walking reference books in the game, because they're in such an existential funk that they can be bribed into forgetting that you've murdered an entire building full of innocents. 30 gold will make you the best friend somebody has had or will ever have (it even unlocks restricted encyclopedia definitions!) if you don't have cash, you can roll a dice (Morrowind) or play a minigame (Oblivion) and if you succeed you will magically and mysteriously impress the NPC somehow, possibly with your luck of the dice and ability to play Simon Says.
People throw the term non-linear out like it means something, when in the context of the games it doesn't. All of the quests were more or less open-and-shut. The feeling of "freedom" you get is from the fact that there's sooo many linear paths to take, and not many people bothered to go through all of them. But you can. You can be the most cold-blooded and feared assassin in the land and also the beloved head of the state church dedicated to saving souls, the head of every guild, and you're always and without exception the great hero of the land, all at the same time. After a few years of playing Morrowind and after a few weeks of playing Oblivion you realize that there's very little replayability at all. Once you've gone through something, you've gone through it. The great thing about Morrowind was that you were forced to walk around and marvel at all the work that went into the game.
What TES games are, they are sprawling dungeon hacks that lack some of the distinguishing features of even something like Diablo 2 or Deus Ex. They're fun enough, but they're an entirely new and different kind of game than "RPG". If you think of them as RPGs they don't hold up exceptionally well. As medieval combat games they could stand to have a little better pacing but they're pretty fun when you get into the thick of it.
Dimmukane:
I'm calling them RPG's because, quite frankly, I don't know what else to call them. The thing is, all RPG's essentially revolve around stats anyways. DnD, the mother of RPGs, is a set of stats put to a story (in which the role-playing aspect is much better than Oblivion's, I'll admit). It's why we call JRPGs RPGs, because there is almost zero role-playing in any of them, but they still have the stats aspect of it.
Then again, there can be more than one definition of role-playing. I consider it to be using my avatar to do things in a virtual world which I cannot do in real life (kill cliff chasers and squibs) or already do in real life, but in a different setting (drink). Heck, my previous post states that I do just that. I hunt virtual deer from virtual rocks with a virtual bow because I suck at archery in real life. And killing deer doesn't exactly involve a story. Other people (and also me) insist that role-playing is using an avatar to progress through a branching and dynamic story. To me, this is an extension of real life, a life within a life even, except that the options for non-quest roleplaying are not nearly as available. DnD games are like this, so is Mass Effect. Playing through the story as you see fit is just as fun as dicking around on a fictional continent. Both are valid definitions. Since there is currently no game out there that does both, does that mean that there are no RPGs? No. There were MUDs, but reading text and ascii characters for hours on end is not fun, no matter who you are.
So basically, I guess what I'm saying is no one wins the RPG argument because it's an entirely subjective argument.
--- Quote from: Kid van Pervert on 29 Feb 2008, 17:50 ---This is apparent to the walking reference books in the game, because they're in such an existential funk that they can be bribed into forgetting that you've murdered an entire building full of innocents. 30 gold will make you the best friend somebody has had or will ever have (it even unlocks restricted encyclopedia definitions!) if you don't have cash, you can roll a dice (Morrowind) or play a minigame (Oblivion) and if you succeed you will magically and mysteriously impress the NPC somehow, possibly with your luck of the dice and ability to play Simon Says.
People throw the term non-linear out like it means something, when in the context of the games it doesn't.
--- End quote ---
THAT is the non-linearity of it all. Like I was saying about the definitions of role-playing, in other games, specifically story-driven RPGs, even the good ones, don't give you the option to murder a building full of innocents and then bribing any witnesses. It is linear in the context of the game as far as storyline and actual questing goes, but it's non-linearness is in the murder of an entire village, in joining a faction that fights against another faction, in standing on a rock hunting binary deer.
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