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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.
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...
As Morrowind is an XBox Platinum Hit game, I'll take it this was an attempt at trolling?
.::: 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?
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.