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PC RPGs - Time To Man The Lifeboats?
Thanks to GameBanshee for their editorial, written by former Black Isle designer Damien Foletto, discussing how PC RPGs can survive the console role-playing game's popularity surge. He explains that console-originated RPG successes such as Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic are a boon: "There is no denying that SW:KOTOR's open-endedness, character creation, and story are heavily influenced by PC RPG development." This, he suggests, helps everyone out in the long run: "When these gamers are exposed to the deeper intricacies of RPG game play, and if they enjoy it, then they are more likely to pursue similar gaming experiences. This may eventually lead them to PC RPGs, or it might just make them more demanding for deeper console RPGs." Elsewhere, the rise of the console RPG is backed up by a new 'GameSpotting' editorial naming their favorite RPGs of 2003, all of which originated on consoles.
Really, the game is essentially Neverwinter Nights in Star Wars. A good thing, and I think it goes a long way towards popularizing PC RPG's -- man the lifeboats, indeed.
It's missing two key features from Neverwinter Nights, though: the emphasis on content creation, and the hair that acts like a hair-painted bowl attached to the scalp by a spring.
Then again the very western game Planescape Torment had a small number of party members wich you interacted with strongly and strong story with relativly few subquests. It is widely thought by pc users to be the best rpg ever. Perhaps a happy hybrid could emerge.
So I think for this at least pc and console can exist happily together as long as developers take care to tune the game to the different platforms. So USE the keyboard. USE the HD for easy saving. USE the bloody mouse, yes I am talking to you Final Fantasy. Kotor did it pretty well although the interface graphics were a bit large for a pc monitor. No need for inch tall text thank you very much.
I have no idea what is needed to make a game work on a console as I am a pc snob.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
NWN is pretty innovative though. There has been nothing like it before. (At least not on the level of NWN anyway.)
This whole talk about a genre being at deaths door is nothing new. Every few months, some website or magazine says "(Insert genre here) is dead, consoles have killed it." Then every year we get "PC gaming is dead. Consoles killed it."
It's all bollocks. The fact is, to most people I know, the console RPG's are NOT really RPG's at all. They're no more RPG's than say Tomb Raider or Crash Bandicoot. At best you get to rename yourself. All of sudden there's one title on the XBox that's barely above average (KOTOR, and yes, I've played it. It's tedious) and suddenly the PC RPG genre is dying...
What a crock...
I know this argument might be redundant, but, the game mechanics and concepts that made KOTOR fun were all discovered and developed on the PC. I don't see any reason why this will change.
Morrowind on the PC, for example, was fun and engaging, on the Xbox it was almost kind of boring. Some things just don't translate.
Don't we debate the death of PC gaming every couple of years or so when the consoles libraries hit their stride? It's kind of like those people in the 80s who told guitarists that synthesizers were going to replace them in the 21st century.
If PC games weren't as heavily pirated, publishers might be more interested in the PC.
May we never see th
One of the greatest elements of PC roleplaying that I am yet to see grace a console is a vast, open-ended explorable world.
I know it was mentioned earlier that consoles favour the eastern style linear plotline and story elements, and yes, PC's don't, but this is because the PC is a very powerful instrument.
With vast amounts of memory and storage space, larger and more intricate virtual worlds can be created.
Take Morrowind for example. The world design was so intricate that you could walk into just about any city, pick the third house on the left of the main avenue, break into it, find the living room and count the spoons in the top drawer of the cabinet. Then steal and sell them. Because you're a nasty spoonseller.
Furthermore, it feels like a breathing living world, because as your reputation grows (in any direction, based on your actions and infamy), NPC's react differently to you.
What's more, the world of Morrowind is vast, exploring the continent took me weeks until I felt I'd been just about everywhere.
Then, after finishing all the quests, you are almost elevated to a God status! I can't think of many console gamers who'd even be interested in such a grand endeavour. PC gamers, yes, of course. Console gamers are not interested in investing so much time into a game, perhaps this is why open-endedness is not popular with consoles. Let them eat cake.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
.::: Did the writer only play Shadow Madness or something just as dire on consoles?
True, Baldur's Gate - Dark Alliance was just plain dumb in comparison with it's PC-counterparts (though still highly enjoyable and a good game in it's own right). But console players do not need to be exposed to the "deeper intricacies of RPG game play". As if the Final Fantasy's, Xenogears, Suikoden's, Dark Chronicle (Dark Cloud 2 US), and even Mario & Luigi - Superstar Saga didn't provide proper RPG gameplay.
Both PCs and consoles have brilliant RPGs in their own right. Planescape: Torment and Final Fantasy VI both stick out for me. The different approaches both use are wonderful. Why would you ever want to get rid of one side of it? Unfortunately I'm not a Star Wars-fan, but what I've picked up about KOTOR seems to imply it's one of those RPGs which uses a blend of PC- and console-RPG styles.
Isn't that to be celebrated instead of critisized?
And you know the next thing that'll be dead is FreeBSD...umm wait.
(shakes head)
Nevermind
not entirely anyhow. Eastern-styled RPGs have been largely console-centric since the days of the Famicom. So this is more directly about the growth in popularity of western-styled RPGs on the consoles.
I think the main cause of the popularity explosion is developers are finally finding the western-styled rpg market in the console arena. They're learning that you can sell console players Morrowind and Knights of the Old Republic.
The only reason that these rpgs weren't on consoles in the past has been storage. Consoles prior to this generation didn't have enough storage to handle the content without having to switch a multitude of discs, something the average player does not want to do. Nor did they have appropriate storage for the massive save-game sizes western RPGs are known to generate.
Now however, that roadblock is gone (at least for the xbox this generation, and probably all systems in the next). It is only natural that RPG developers, the guys who always cared about story over all else, are gravitating toward the platform that lets them concentrate even more on story, and not worry about minimum system requirements, or compatibility.
RPGs on the PC will survive this turn in popularity like all other PC-gaming genres, sports, shooters, et al. They'll shrink in market share, but remain. I don't think PC gaming will ever die, just as mac gaming has never died. But it certainly will lose the edge it has held in the past.
with PCs losing their last vestiges of hardware advantage over consoles (namely harddrives and network adapters), there is less and less justification for publishers to ignore the console market under some illusion of console-gamer predisposition to action.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
The inherent goodness about PC-based RPG's is that the developers continue to lay the ultimate fate of the game's longevity in the hands of its players, with reference to the mod community. After all, consoles aren't going to start handing out SDK's or development tools for modding anytime soon, and probably never will; thus all attempts at extensibility will have to be created by the developer, which -as we've seen with MechAssault- will likely carry with it an extra charge. However, as far as the PC community goes, the ability to mod a particular game is a selling point for both the player and would-be modder. Case in point: Neverwinter Nights had two strategy guides out at the time of its release. One, we'll call it the Player's Handbook, in that it was just basically a walkthrough for the as-packaged game. The other one could be referred to as the Dungeon Master's Guide, essentially spelling out how someone could develop a scenario, if not an entire module. While Morrowind certainly has an active mod community, I don't believe I've seen any other games ship with such an obvious (and well-publicized) push for community involvement as happened with Neverwinter Nights. Of course, then again, I also think they were hoping to create an enormous network of persistent linked servers, run by players, in hopes of creating some variety as a free alternative to the monthly-fee of Massively Mundane -er, Multiplayer- RPG's. Unfortunately, that lofty goal never quite panned out. I, for one, cranked through Knights of the Old Republic on the Xbox within three days of getting the game and I appear to be the only person on earth who was left wanting. In about thirty hours of game-time (yes, I know what that breaks down to), I finished the majority of the side-quests, spent another few hours to see the other ending, and it's a nice and compelling game all around, but after it was done, there was nothing left to do, and -given that Bioware created Neverwinter Nights- how I wanted some extra content.
Okay, there were supposed to be line breaks in that, but I hit Submit instead of Preview, then realized that it was HTML formatted instead of plaintext, so please excuse the utter lack of readability in what would've been an otherwise coherent post.
I have a saying for articles like this: "Know where you are on the bell curve." The corollary is, of course, "Know where everyone else is, too."
If PCRPG fanatics comprised just one percent of the US population, that would still be more than 2 million people. I suspect it's probably less than that, but not by much.
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
With regard to Knights of the Old Republic breaking new ground (I don't count Morrowind as it doesn't have anywhere as much buzz KotOR seems to have from what I can tell), I think it is a bit early to decide that Western RPGs are seeing a rise in interest. Is it the quality of KotOR that is drawing the console crowd or is it the "Star Wars" branding? We'll find out when Bioware releases their X-Box exclusive game, Jade Empire.
I don't think RPG developers are moving to consoles because there's a burgeoning RPG market. They are testing the waters because a console game sales failure is equivalent to a PC game awesome sales success. It's just another market and has nothing to do with hardware or storage or whatever because it is all about the story and related content.
Forgot the anti-MS slant... :P
It's also because Microsoft are throwing big cash at developers to help their X-Box cause.
PC games are heavily pirated. Consoles aren't as much. This is a valid point. This isn't a flame.
Think.
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
In a nutshell, PC RPGs are not even PC RPGs anymore. They've strayed so far from the roots that it's not even funny. All games are either Diablo like hack-and-slashers, or try some sort of hybrid real-time battle system which ends up being a mess. (It's a real shame that Bioware can't put together a half-decent battle system).
:)
If you want a classic style RPG, you're actually better off playing on a console. Like the old Gold-box games? Play Final Fantasy Tactics Advance or Disgaea. Like Wizardry? (Actually, that one is pretty much dead. You don't see any dungeon crawlers anymore). Ultima? The best Ultima style game is the conversion of Ultima 4 for the NES so just stick with that
PC RPGs have gone from one disappointment to the next, at least for me. On the otherhand, Console RPGs tend to always surprise me pleasently. Branching out, giving new feelings of a play experience. Changing the flow of a story, or how a game operates can make it feel extremly fresh.
I would think the PC RPG is in trouble more from the highly successful PC-MMORPG than from consoles. Further, I would imagine the console RPG's will decline when MMORPG's get more penetration into the console market - and this won't really happen until they get keyboards (thus further bluring the line between console and PC).
I speak from personal experience. Both my wife and I played PC RPG's (yes, even before we met) and once we tried MMORPG's there is really no going back. We have tried: we both own NWN and the first expansion. We played some of the content together and we have downloaded custom modules and played some of them and even made some efforts to create our own module. The pace of progress and the plot are awesome - but the long term attraction of the game is really negligable. The odds I will buy another RPG are slim. Will I buy the next expansion pack for my MMORPG? Almost certainly.
a war on terrorism? How can we end a war on a method?
The Escape Velocity series contains some of the best shareware games I've played, and they've made other good games outside of that. Unfortunately for the Mac, both Ambrosia and Spiderweb are porting games to the PC now (Spiderweb's been doing it for a long time, Ambrosia only recently).
Rob
Then, after finishing all the quests, you are almost elevated to a God status! I can't think of many console gamers who'd even be interested in such a grand endeavour. PC gamers, yes, of course. Console gamers are not interested in investing so much time into a game, perhaps this is why open-endedness is not popular with consoles.
What kind of console players have you been hanging around? Moreover, what kind of console games have you played? Do you realize that most console RPGs allow you to "become a god" if you work at it, and that many console RPG players do work at it?
I agree with the fact that Morrowind is much deeper than the average console RPG, but what you're saying here is way off-base.
Rob
No, it's obvious from how the controls work in the PC version that it's an console RPG that was ported to the PC.
ah wait. I bought it in 2002. Sorry about the confusion; I was playing it just yesterday... ;)
click-clack, front and back. I'm not moving this car otherwise.
No, the two games were developed in parallel, but seperately. That's why the PC version is slightly different and has things like Yavin Space Station. The developers have discussed it quite a bit.
I think the best thing that could happen from this, is PC RPGs learn a few tricks from Consoles.
Lets face it, PC-RPGs appeal to a really small market (slashdot readers mainly) While many console games are pretty movies with crappy games tacked on, a lot of PC RPGs are Complex rpg's with horrible user interfaces and crapy graphics tacked on. Its like they each apporach the idea of "a game" from two opposite directions.
There have been very few PC RPGs that I have Liked. The Fallout Series comes to mind, and I am quite fond of NWN (infinite replay value, and intuitive design features if you want to build mods) But games like Balder's gate, bore me to tears.
Pc RPGs are never going to have a big market or enjoy massive popularity because most people simply don't like them, and are not going to like them no matter how much you try and make them. KOTOR may get a few converts, but expecting this to happen in any sort of numbers is like expecting people to start likeing french cinema because there was a french guy in some movie they liked.
Lest we forget: Try the PC version of Ultima VII. Then try the SNES version of the same. Even if it were a state of the art port, the experience was never quite the same. =)
I don't think consoles will take over the PC RPGs. They're trying, but PCs still handle stuff more elegantly - especially the modding. Did the X-Box version of Morrowind ship with TES Construction Set? Guess not... and one of the reasons I have enjoyed Morrowind and Neverwinter Nights so much is the moddability.
And besides: Where's my bloody Nethack??? PS2Linux doesn't count...