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Spore-Inspired Action RPG Darkspore Announced
Today Electronic Arts announced Darkspore, an action RPG in development from Maxis that is inspired by Spore's creature creator technology. The game is due to launch in February 2011, and a teaser is available on the official website. A more descriptive video is available from EA's live demo (start at 8:25). Quoting Joystiq:
"...Darkspore will let up to three players traverse 'several' planets cooperatively, and while there will be PvP in the finished product, Maxis isn't providing details just yet. The basics will be the same whether going in solo or as a team: You'll be able to choose from a number (again, no specifics yet) of pre-created melee, ranged and support creatures that can have their stats and abilities augmented by equipment. ... When choosing to beam down from your starship to a planet, you will see a lineup of enemy types that you'll encounter. This gives you and your friends enough information to decide which three characters from your collection you'll want to deploy. The trio can then be switched between on the fly, albeit with a brief cool-down period afterward. The idea is to use the characters' various abilities strategically against what the Left 4 Dead-inspired 'AI director' decides to toss your way."
While the PC-xbox-what have you market may have hijacked the term "role playing game" for its own profit, it doesn't represent any actual role playing, which is where you sit around a table with your friends and pretend to be a someone or something else to whatever depth you feel comfortable. And until you have near reality physics engines and near human AI, as well as full facial/vocal/auditory interaction, you won't get that (really really fun) experience either.
Um, wow. Welcome to 20 years ago.
Seriously guys, we're limited by the technology. There's a reason CRPGs and JRPGs are what they are -- it's just not feasible to make the kind of experiences you are asking for. Consider Mass Effect or Dragon Age, games that have hundreds of thousands of pages of text. Even they feel "railroady" at times. You can't join the villain, after all, because they didn't have an extra 5 years to write, script, draw, program, etc that scenario and the 500 sub-scenarios involved.
Ask again in 20 years when the idea of having a true AI (or 100) in a computer RPG will be possible, and we're seeing "The Elder Scrolls 8" with actual open ended, emergent gameplay. When you don't have to have a human writing each line of text, then the ability to "role play" becomes a lot more feasable.