New-Gen RPGS:Why all the hate?
ShapiroKeatsDarkMage
Member Posts: 2,428
in Off-Topic
Can someone explain to me why so many oldschool RPG fans hate most modern RPG videogames, especially the Fallout games made by Bethesda?(Looking at you No Mutants Allowed)
If it wasn't for Bethesda, Fallout would have probably ended up like Baldur's Gate, a semi-obscure PC-only game overshadowed by JRPGs instead of getting the prays it deserves. Don't get me wrong though, the BG series is still one of my favourite videogames, and i would pay to have Chris Avellone writing more mainstream games, but i find the attitude of these oldschool fans to be pretty obnoxious.
If it wasn't for Bethesda, Fallout would have probably ended up like Baldur's Gate, a semi-obscure PC-only game overshadowed by JRPGs instead of getting the prays it deserves. Don't get me wrong though, the BG series is still one of my favourite videogames, and i would pay to have Chris Avellone writing more mainstream games, but i find the attitude of these oldschool fans to be pretty obnoxious.
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Alot of older RPGs were incredibly difficult affairs that not only didn't hold your hand when crossing the street, they didn't even tell you where the street was. Games like the original Wizardry and Might and Magic are painfully difficult. Eventually things progressed to a happy medium in the Fallout/Baldur's Gate era. Anyone can play those games with enough patience.
Alot of people who hate modern RPGs don't like how linear they are, things like quest markers, and the idea of everything being on a rail and the game shuttling you from place to place. They may not like that Bethesda and Bioware made the games more like first-person action and cinematic adventures than the all-encompassing games of their youth, that required you to literally map your movements on graph paper.
Personally, I find the whole history of the genre fascinating. Even bad games can be interesting. I find the original Ultima and Skyrim equally enthralling. But, in general, it seems to just be another variation of "back in my day we walked uphill to school both ways" that applies to so many other things. And their is some validity to that opinion. But there is worthwhile games from every era.
The kids today are just as critical as the old people are, but the old people's games aren't discussed as much.
Basically, I think most players don't hate modern RPG's if they are well made and challenging.
The long string of SSI games were essentially a bridge difficulty-wise to the BG/Fallout era, and from there things only got easier. I'm sure everyone here could beat Skyrim or New Vegas given the hours needed to do so. I doubt a 1/10th as many could ever manage to dig deep enough into Wizardry 4 or Secret of the Inner Sanctum to come out on top.
"(Can someone explain to me why so many oldschool RPG fans hate most modern RPG videogames, especially the Fallout games made by Bethesda?)"
"If it wasn't for Bethesda, Fallout would have probably ended up like Baldur's Gate, a semi-obscure PC-only game overshadowed by JRPGs instead of getting the prays it deserves."
Those two sentences have it all. Let me explain this into you. I don't hate the new Fallout games because of nostalgia or other insignificant factor like that. I don't hate them because of being more simple (not always simple is bad). I hate newer Fallouts it because gameplay-wise nothing reminds me of Fallout, because isometric rpg was made FPS sandbox and because Bethesda's writers are apes (after skull trepanation) who are unable to write interesting story or characters.
But yeah, ignore all this and just get on a hype train. Just like Bethesda's PR wants you to.
If the developer puts the dialogue options in a circle indicating which is good, or evil - is downright offensive to me in a cRPG. Just call it a hack'n'slash, or a shooter, but if it's meant to be a cRPG, then I won't bother with it. There are plenty older games that I haven't played yet and may be in fact a hidden gem that was overshadowed by bigger productions. Anvil of Dawn is an example for me, I only played it 13 years after its release and it has become one of my favourite games.
Also, it's a mistake to get all new RPGs into one place. For example, PoE is a wonderful game while this cannot be said about SCL.
If I had to choose one thing of new rpgs that I "hate", it would be a "consolification". I enjoyed Dragon Age 3: Inquisition because of its story, characters and many-many things but the unfriendly controls for a PC did lessen my evaluation of that game a lot.
I enjoy alot of new games for what they are. The one thing I dislike more than anything else is the constant need so many people have to always compare completely different games, saying one is better than the other. I liked Skyrim and FO:NV alot. I love BG and FO alot. Liking one of these does not necessarely nullify the other. I liked DA:O as well, but the consolification of DA2 was too much so I refrained from playing it. I tried, choose to not play it then actively chose not to whine about it online.
It's the lack of patience (or at least it's the percived idea of gaming developers that their audiance lack patience!) that make games so easy today. In some cases removing complexity make games better, like in CoD games where you never have to stop to pick up a rather silly box of hearts to replenish your HP pool, you just run from fire fight to fire fight, thus keeping momentum and the adrenalin level at max all the time. This simplification is a good thing for certain games, yet in other games it takes away more than it adds like in D3, with its less focus on health regen/leach and more on keeping momentum through picking up blood drops from the floor. It depends on the game and on how well integrated the games simplicity/complexity is in the whole concept.
The next-gen games will prolly become even more simplified though and a couple of years from now we, the old-timers, will talk about how much we dislike the "appification" of games, heh.. :P
With this said, I'm thoroughly looking forward to FO4. I love FO just as much as I love BG, so any new game in that setting is a boon to be enjoyed.
Simplified mechanics can add to the gameplay, but it is worth to notice that the examples you used can be very subjective. For once, one can argue that CoD auto-regenerating health makes gameplay more dynamic, but other can state that it actually slows the game down (as you wait in your covers for your health to regenerate) and makes game more linear, as exploration is not important anymore. On the other hand, once could say that some builds element like life leech in Diablo were dumbed down, but the other also can say they you can't spam potions in D3 and you have to be more active in combat (in D2 with good LL you could just kept one mouse button pressed and not being worried dying in most cases).
Point: it is subjective whether simplifying is good or bad. It can be looked two-ways.
As for Fallout, I didn't particularly like the BG style first and second instalments either: the setting simply doesn't appeal to me.
There are many great new rpgs that have had tonnes more praise than hate thrown their way even by the old school crowd. Dark Souls, Witcher series, Dragon age, PoE and hell even Skyrim" Although on that one I still maintain that it is a terrible game if played in it's vanilla state and a amazing game if played with about 50 gigs of mods installed."
BG2 was my favorite game for 15 yrs because I felt nothing in that time could come close to it. "Witcher 3 now holds that title, mostly because of it's great story and solid gameplay, also a little bit because I am a huge Witcher nerd." Is BG2 or planescape or Icewind the best game of all time? probably not.
When looking at Bethesda titles Fallout in particular, I can fully understand why people would be upset over their beloved Isometric CRPG turning into a sandbox shooter, but sometimes things like this happen and it's not like their isn't a huge fairly new isometric CRPG set in a post-apocalyptic dystopian world that you can play right now, I'm talking of course about Wasteland 2. @O_Bruce I have to agree with you that Bethesda's doesn't exactly hire the best writers, they are really almost as bad as Blizzard's writers, but I'm not gonna be playing Fallout 4 for a deep and meaningful story, If I wanted a deep and meaningful story I would play dragon age, mass effect, witcher 3 or banner saga. I'm going to be playing fallout 4 to hit a super mutant in the head with a spiked baseball bat, I'm going to be playing fallout 4 to put hand grenades in the pockets of NPCs I don't like and I'm going to be playing fallout 4 to see whats the stupidest way dogmeat can get himself killed. Fallout 3 and new vegas were pretty damn good games, in my opinion, that's largely to do with the amazing sound track and the mind blowingly awesome modding community. In fact I would go so far as to say I like the sandbox of Fallout 3 over the original two, mostly because Fallout1 and 2's gameplay annoyed me. I kinda of just hate guns in isometric CRPGs.
On the whole I'm really excited to see which direction RPGs take in the next few years, looking at the last few years with all of it's dragon ages, mass effects, dark souls, and witchers, I have to say I'm feeling pretty damn optimistic about it all.
Some examples:
I think most games using 3D is partly responsible for the small party sizes which we have now. Larger parties allow for more tactical combat and more varied and still essential roles.
Full voice acting is responsible for dialogue often being shorter than it used to be; the cost for voice acting is still a limitation. This one is getting better, at least hard drive space is no longer much of an issue.
There are also some conventions from MMORPG like WOW leaking into modern rpgs. You can see this in a focus on general class balancing, high "dps" rogues, tanking,... you can even this on these focus.
Another relatively thing I see is a morality view that is a bit naive. People want a good and an evil path throught the game, but most RPGs do not take place in the Star Wars university so there should be more gray. Again, this is something I see on these forums with many people wanting to have everyone in their party to have the same alignment (well on the good-evil axis). Makes you miss the Korgan-Mazzy banter (as an example).
Morally Black and White vs morally grey RPGs have always been with us, there is nothing inherently new or old about either approach.
My point when compairing D3 vs Cod was that in one of them I enjoyed the simplification of the game mechanincs, but in the other one I didn't.
Games that go too far towards consolization and simplification bore me. I've gotten to where if I read a seeming consensus online that a new crpg is meant for consoles first and computers second, I don't buy it, because I can be almost certain it won't interest me enough to play it for enough hours to justify the cost.
So, for example, I played and enjoyed Dragon Age: Origins, although I've had little or no interest in replaying it after the first and only time I beat it. I never bought Dragon Age 2 or Dragon Age: Inquisition, and I probably never will, unless I see them for around $5 on Steam or Gog and feel like making a small impulse buy just to have them in my collection.
I loved Morrowind for awhile, and I played it for many, many hours over a few months one time, but have not wanted to play it again. I bought Oblivion and Skyrim, and both of them started boring me to tears only a few hours in.
On the other hand, I still can get nearly obsessed with runs of either Baldur's Gate or Might and Magic 6-8, even after 17 years of playing them. I don't think a single one of those 17 years has gone by that I haven't played at least one run of each of those four games. There is more to that than nostalgia, although pleasant feelings of nostalgia are probably part of it. There is something about the epic nature of those games, and the complexity of the character-building systems in those games, and the combat systems in those games, that compels me in a way that few if any games after ever have.
I'd say we definitely lost something valuable along the way in game development over the past 15 years.
Now this isn't necessarily a problem for me. I play JRPGS as well as CRPGS, and many other genres. I'm used to linearity in games, especially since JRPGS are the most linear "RPGs" you'll ever find (RPG is almost a misnomer when referring to a JRPG, to be honest), but I can see how these changes could turn some people off.
I also don't understand why you think JRPGs are somehow overshadowing Baldur's Gate. You know what else overshadows BG? Call of Duty. Fallout. Dragon Age. Yes, some Final Fantasy titles. Madden Football. Street Fighter. Bejeweled and Super Smash Bros. If we're going off of commercial success, dozens of games from dozens of other genres do better than the BG series. You don't have to keep picking on JRPGs like they're some master race meant to be overthrown.
As for an answer to your question, I don't hate newer RPG titles. I enjoy quite a few of them actually. I think I'm just not as attracted to buying them anymore because I simply don't have the time that I had when I was younger. I played Skyrim, a little bit of Dragon Age: Origins, about halfway into Tales of Graces F, and the most recent Fire Emblem and Pokemon titles. That's really it as far as newer games go. Not that I dislike or don't wish to continue some of these titles, but I just don't have the time for them anymore. Being an adult and all that.
And I have a backlog the size of a mountain comprised of older titles I have yet to play too.
Soooooo there's that. If I have the choice of going out and buying a new game to play versus playing an older title in my Steam library I haven't gotten around to yet, guess which one I'm gonna pick?
Some of what @typo_tilly said did resonate with me though. There is a much higher focus on smaller "One size fits all" groups or individual characters that can do anything and everything than in the old days. I like most particularly Wizards and the like to be unique and different enough from the other characters that playing them is actually a unique experience. This focus on every character can fill any role just feels watered down "To me".
There is also a much stronger focus on real time over turn based gameplay. I am not a spring chicken anymore and my reflexes aren't what they used to be. But I never was very good at games like Doom even when I was young. The twitch style of shooter games where survival (and success) was significantly more a factor of how fast your fingers are and not as much (although still some) on what strategy you used just leave me cold.
And the whole focus on 1st person/3rd person seems a bit unnecessary, but integral to how a lot of the games are made these days.
Finally, although I do enjoy social interaction, I don't like my games to require them. I've recently spend a LOT of time playing Dark Souls. While not a typical RPG per say, and pretty much the antithesis of what I've described thus far, I did enjoy (both) games. What I did NOT enjoy was the really heavy focus on online play and specifically PVP. Know what? There are a lot of people out there with a lot more time on their hands than I have. They have learned that ruining someone's gaming experience is fun and so they do that at every opportunity. Not what I sign up for. And no, the solution isn't 'Just play off line'. I LIKE Coop play and helping others. I don't like some ijjiot invading my game with twice the levels and a lot better equipment simply because they are bored and want to build their own self esteem.
But enough of my soap box.
in the end, I like the more recent RPG games like Fallout and Elder Scrolls and that whole genre. I do really REALLY like the party based (isometric or 3D) games like BG much more and wish there were more like that, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate the newer stuff.
That is just my opinion though and I know a lot of people have fond memories from them.
A lot of good replies in this thread though.
Here's some of them to see what i mean.
http://www.cosmicbooknews.com/content/cosmic-triune
http://www.cosmicbooknews.com/content/cosmic-triune-re-launching-marvel-cosmic-opinion-editorial-article
http://www.cosmicbooknews.com/content/op-ed-marvel-pseudo-cosmic-decline-marvel-cosmic-under-alonso-brevoort-quesada-whacker-bendi
http://www.cosmicbooknews.com/content/review-nova-1-loeb-mcguinness
http://www.cosmicbooknews.com/content/review-guardians-galaxy-16-bendis