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Adventure occationally makes a comeback in RPGs. Elder Scrolls: Morrowind is a great example. There's plenty of plot and tons of exploration. The trouble is that the sequels to such games miss the point and fairly universally evolve towards a combat mechanics focus in an effort to gain universal appeal.

Not sure if you knew this, but The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is itself a sequel, and from all I can tell, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion looks to be even better in every way, story and game world included. http://www.elderscrolls.com/home/home.htm

I disagree.
The most content-ful RPG in recent memory has been GTA:SA. Hundreds of hours of branching storyline. The linear central story doesnt even encompass 1/4 of the game. Progress can be made in a dozen different directions (including the much-debated girlfriends).
Looking back, Morrowind was also an amazing single player RPG. Oblivion is going to blow the mediocre CRPG competition away; I've already set aside a thousand hours of free time (about what I spent on Morrowind) to waste on it.

You'll be then happy to know that Oblivion, the "under construction" sequel to Morrowind, is based on Havoc, which is Half-Life 2 engine IIRC.
Go to http://www.elderscrolls.com/ have a look, it seems REALLY promising !

Actually, that's been one of the biggest complaints against it, that there is no real hand-holding through the main quest line, that it's easy to wind up with 50 simultaneous quests and losing track of which one you're doing. *shrug* Although, to me, that's the "Final Fantasy vs. Elder Scrolls" debate. You can also see the downside of such a massive world in that every Elder Scrolls game yet has been plagued with many nagging bugs. It's one of those games you have to play with console open to keep it on track. On the other hand, the sheer extensibility was simply amazing.

If Morrowind were not done years ago and were done today through the Doom 3 *or* Unreal 2 Engine (either of which would imply far fewer bugs than Bethesda's own "engine"), it would eclipse all other games in popularity for 2 years. I say that because Morrowind appears to be almost the single player's equivalent of Starcraft in popularity and longevity.

Check out TES4: Oblivion. No, Bethesda hasn't been sitting on their thumbs all this time. They just take a long time between games. I already know what my Christmas present to myself will be...

Anything that can run Unreal Engine 3.0 games and more has my respect at least.
I'm pretty sure it'll rally a lot of gamers and fulfill its purpose.

Two more recent games I've played that really present interesting, large, explorable "worlds" are Morrowind -- a very open-ended RPG in the Elder Scrolls series (often panned for its overpopulation of extremely generic NPCs, but interesting for its explorability and unparalleled mod possibilities) -- and Freelancer -- a space combat game with a solid plot but a large amount of gameplay outside the main story, relatively solid multiplayer (if that's your thing) and graphics that are nothing to sneeze at. You might want to have a look at one or both of these -- who knows, you might enjoy 'em.

Check out Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. It's supposed to have everything your looking for including ungodly graphics. Elderscrolls.com

I'll take that bet:

'Quintessential RPG of the Next Generation' Under Development for PC and Future Generation Consoles' (October 22, 2004)
http://www.elderscrolls.com/games/oblivion_overvie w.htm

I'd like the check made out to Anonymous Coward please.

Indeed. Shameless plug time, but I was under the impression that The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (http://www.elderscrolls.com/) was going to be one of the launch titles for this thing. I'm most disappointed there appears to have been no mention of it, it looks much better than the stuff they did come up with...

This seems to be common usage in the games industry, take a look at this article on Oblivion's stealth:

For me, the most fascinating thing about designing stealth gameplay in TES IV: Oblivion is trolling the Elder Scrolls forums and reading suggestions from the fans.

http://www.elderscrolls.com/games/oblivion_overvie w.htm. Looks interesting.

I've been reading some of the posts over at the Elder Scrolls:Oblivion forums, and I gotta say, this game looks impressive. Larger than Morrowind in land mass along with updated graphics, but mostly it's the NPCs I'm interested in. There were only two drawbacks that I could name in Morrowind...the journal, the NPC interaction. The journal they clearly fixed. The NPCs are supposed to have much better AI this time, along with voice acting for every spoken word, facial expressions and an AI approaching a personality.

I'm stoked for this game to come out.

--trb

Our first look at what Microsoft's next-next generation console can do

Um. No.

Of the games that I have enjoyed most lately, the following top the list:

Neverwinter Nights
Morrowind
Chromatron
Tales of Symphonia
E.V. Nova
Advance Wars 2

Of these, Neverwinter Nights is probably the most graphically advanced. None of them hold a candle to Doom 3, or Far Cry, or any of the other engines you mentioned.

I dunno about you, but for me gameplay comes first. If I really want eye candy, I'll go look at 3D Renderings. Yes, the masses can indeed enjoy games with weak graphics, and it does open your game to a wider audience. If you need any convincing of that, I implore you to check out the sales figures for any of the Sims games.

If EV Nova had been 3D rendered with dynamic lighting and reflections and all the other goodies, it would not have played on my laptop very well, and I never would've purchased it.

Holy frickin art snobbery batman!

Really, there is a shitload of good art in videogames. In fact ANYTHING CAN BE ART.

Yeah. I just recently installed a freely available copy of THE ELDER SCROLLS: ARENA

And was blown away by the quality of the music composition. IMO it's superior to most of the music that's featured in todays films. Not only that, but it's entirely MIDI based. Kinda John Williams 'esque. Really great.

I really like video games. My wife really doesn't like them. It even took me awhile to convice her that they were fun to play and actually ENCOURAGED some social interaction, especially between other guys. That being said, we have played a couple of games together -- something I REALLY enjoy.

The first one we played together was Escape From Monkey Island. Not really a two player game, but that was great because it didn't require quick reflexes or button mashing. Plus, it provided quite a bit of good humor. We still use lines from the game to make each other laugh. Instead of watching a movie any random night, we'd huddle around the computer and enjoy the story of Monkey Island at our own pace.

After we finished that, I was bummed. I had an Xbox and found that Sega was releasing a new ToeJam and Earl game. I had fond memories of the original game on the Genesis and thought it would be a great game for us. With the true co-op play, it's a little more fast-paced than Monkey Island, but still she enjoys it occasionally.

Finally, I bought Morrowind. I bought this for me to play solo, but my wife really likes to hang around and watch what's going on. Plus, it is an extremely satisfying, open-ended, huge game that I'm still just getting into.

Hope those help!

Morrowind on steroids then?

--

As long as we are adding games to the list. Metal Gear Solid 2 Substance hit the streets on the 8th. Tribunal expansion pack for Morrowind is out also. Both are wonderful games.

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

The failing modem is an extremely common problem with the units (just read any TiVo board)

This is one of my biggest stupid internet user pet peeves. (You are the stupid internet user, by the way). Complaints in a forum are *NOT* evidence that a problem is extremely common. Practically everybody who has the modem problem posts it to the forums, and you see only a few hundred people complainging there. There are hundreds of thousands of TiVos out there. The people bitching about the broken modems are less then 1/100 of a percent of TiVo owners. That's not a very common problem.

PC games have the same stupid issue. Some company puts out a game and puts a forum on their web site. They sell a million copies of the game. 500-1000 people who did a shitty job building their own PC have trouble with the game and the forum becomes useless because a few people post tens of times a day about how bad the problem is and how they should sue the publisher. Morrowind's forums are my favorite example of this.

A few hundred unfortunate people whining in a forum doesn't make their problem widespread.

Might as well mention Morrowind, which went gold last week and is expected in stores late next week. According to the many previews out there, Morrowind looks to be more open-ended and immersive than any other RPG to date. It's only single player, but given the joys of many multiplayer RPGs, that's probably a good thing. In addition to the official site and forums, there's a good RPGPlanet site that collects most relevant information. Look for the water screenshots; they use pixel shading to get some truly impressive effects.

Might as well mention Morrowind, which went gold last week and is expected in stores late next week. According to the many previews out there, Morrowind looks to be more open-ended and immersive than any other RPG to date. It's only single player, but given the joys of many multiplayer RPGs, that's probably a good thing. In addition to the official site and forums, there's a good RPGPlanet site that collects most relevant information. Look for the water screenshots; they use pixel shading to get some truly impressive effects.

Might as well mention Morrowind, which went gold last week and is expected in stores late next week. According to the many previews out there, Morrowind looks to be more open-ended and immersive than any other RPG to date. It's only single player, but given the joys of many multiplayer RPGs, that's probably a good thing. In addition to the official site and forums, there's a good RPGPlanet site that collects most relevant information. Look for the water screenshots; they use pixel shading to get some truly impressive effects.

When will we see Underworld 3!

I hope Morrowind will recomfort us of this loss.