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BioWare Has Neverwinter Publisher
Urthpaw writes: "BioWare (maker of the Baldur's Gate series of games, among others)'s D&D-based 3D, multiplayer uber-RPG, Neverwinter Nights, who's future has been recently cast into doubt by some legal trouble will be released, after all. It is currently scheduled for "Early 2002" release, on Linux, MacOS, and Windows. The press release is here."
I also remember the glory days of RPG with games like "Bard's Tale" (which I *NEVER* managed to beat, yanked it out for a couple of days recently). Mapping and wandering the world seemed to be a big part of the experience, which they've streamlined away to make it easier to play through the game.
Part of me likes it though, I'm somewhat ashamed to admit. It used to really *SUCK* getting stuck at a certain stage in a game and not being able to progress because I had to be in a certain tile when the moon was full, and I needed to piece together clues from 5 towns people in 3 different towns to have figured out that was what I needed to do.
Its nice to know now that its shouldn't be TOO hard to keep going and I can enjoy the nice art, better battles, watching my characters improve and a storyline which, as you say, isn't much more complicated then a movie.
Just my two copper pieces...
It's just you. The Baldur's Gate series is old school. There are several gating points, but you're more or less free to play it any way you like. Good, bad, indifferent, press on or seek out the sub-quests, chat to the NPC's, whatever. There's a lot in there, and the content is as important as the presentation.
Maybe you should give them a try. You should be able to get Baldurs Gate 1 and 2 on budget or in a multipack by now. If you're in any doubt about the depth or care put into them, ponder the pantaloons (spoiler).
Yes, Ultima was wonderful, but so is Baldur's Gate. And Ultima never made me actually shout out loud: "What the...? Is one of my own party stabbing me in the back? He is! Stop it! Stop stabbing me in the back! Bad dwarf! Bad! Aaaaagh!".
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
It seems that, as technology increase, RPG's are becoming more and more linear. They look like a beautifully rendered movie where I get to play through a few fight scenes and maybe choose from 1 of 3 possible endings.
That's because they're mostly made by Japanese companies. Japanese gamers like linear stories. One of my coworkers (I live in Japan) said he didn't like the Ultimas because he "didn't know what he was supposed to do."
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
How old are you? Classic RPGs seem to me to be more fun because I was a kid when they were around.
I remember that Might and Magic I seemed really amazing. It seemed big, in terms of land area. It seemed real. I remember getting out of the first town in MMI and thinking - god damn, there's a world in here.
Well, clouds of Xeen (MM V?), even though it was a lot bigger, seemed smaller. With the newer Ultimas, they seem smaller because the outside world is on the same scale as the cities. This is a problem for me because it interferes with my suspension of disbelief. It makes the world less abstract, but also less real, because the whole Continent is only the size of Monte Carlo.
As far as non linear plots go, Wizardry 8 is pretty good. The plot could be more convuluted, but there are a fair number of sidequests and adequate NPCs - there aren't 200 NPCs, but each NPC responds realistically to unimportant questions they ought to know the answers to, which is important for suspension of disbelief. Might and Magic never had NPCs or a plot, and has continued in that vein pretty faithfully.
If you're talking about Final Fantasy - yeah, FF II had more / more interesting side quests than these latest four. FF X, while gorgeous, is a movie.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.