There is Age of Decadence!
http://www.irontowerstudio.com/

...whenever it's finished...

Thanks for that link, I'm downloading the demo to give it a try.

YUS... whenever it's finished indeed.

They've been "polishing" it for about two years.

Dumbing Down is not (usually) happening and when it is, it is a general failure not just a failure caused by consolization. Don't believe me? Dragon Age 2. The combat menus for the consoles were easier in DA2, but that didn't make combat any less bad. It didn't make hard mode anything more than a health boost and a damage drop. Dumbing Down is rhetoric that only slows down these discussions, because it assumes a negative where one is rarely established.

RPGs have nothing to do with looting, selling or gear. RPG means Role Playing Game. Now, I like gear and most of you like gear but it doesn't have any effect on your ability to assume a role. On the basis of choice, NPC, characters, execution of twists and various other elements specific to role-playing and the story DA2 was almost on par with ME or ME2. The only place it started to fall apart was in Act 3. Everything in Act 3 felt so... scripted. It was more happening to you than allowing your input. If it wasn't for the Third Act, Dragon Age 2 may have had the best role playing and story of any bioware game... To say nothing of really bad mechanics.

As to inventories, the inventory in ME1 was awful. 80 billion versions of everything; it was spreadsheety, very very spreadsheety. DAO was a slight improvement, but still there was a lot of useless, pointless and ever accumulating inventory crap. ME2's inventory was... awful. It was an attempt to innovate, well meant, all of that; it tried to trim too much. Customization went way down and it was disappointing. But was its combat dumbed down? Quite the opposite. Combat was far more tactical, innovative and fun (with the exception of thermal clips. Thermal clips wtf). Did it have less role playing opportunities? Again no. Story, NPCs and Character were all very well handled. DA2's inventory... Improved ME2's. You have slightly more power in customizing your party members gear, both with the improvements and with the secondary gear and weapons. It was one of the few things in the game that made me think Bioware is learning. The only problem is that gear in DA2 flips you off. By restricting absolutely everything to Hawke, all the gear you get that your class doesn't use just pisses you off and takes up inventory slots.

So what is my opinion; are RPGs dying or evolving. RPGs are evolving, but as anyone who knows how evolution works will understand there will be offspring with different mutations. Those mutations that withstand the test and prove good will continue on, but some systems will have to try, fail and die. Also of note is that in any game you command a party they all recognize the need to change the inventory. As for Skyrim, I look forward to seeing how this no class system works, as it seems to be a great complement to Bethesda's Skill system.

Demo is supposed to come out "in the near months", let's hope this year :sadvaultboy:

I think what we're seeing is role-playing (video) games are coming into line with video games as a medium. . .

Originally, pen and paper role-playing games started out as a way to play out roles in a fantasy world with some set of rules to simulate reality (and also to simulate fantasy aspects). Someone eventually thought, "Hey, computers would be good for this with all that number crunching capability". So earlier computer role-playing games are an attempt to port over those rules into a digital medium directly. I would say, it kind of works, because there are many fun RPG's in video game form, but when you think about it, you're playing a simulation of a simulation.

It looks like developers are starting to try and remove one of the layers of abstraction (since two layers is too many), by removing some of the originally conceived solutions in porting over pen and paper RPGs, since the way you interact with video games is inherently different than how you interact with a pen and paper game.

What really needs to happen, is someone needs to take a step back on a more basic level, and look at what pen and papers were trying to accomplish, and try to accomplish the same thing with a video game. Instead of trying to accomplish a pen and paper (or variation) with a video game.

The RPG genre has a fatal disease that is slowly progressing. I pre-ordered DA2 and ME2. I was so excited for both the games, after all the first two were great! And they'd made KOTOR, one of my first games, and definetely my first RPG. It was incredible by the way. But they dumbed it down to a level that a mentally challenged 5 year old could grasp and enjoy. ( I feel bad for saying it, but it's true :sadvaultboy: )

It would be like if Tom Clancy started writing like Doctor Suess. :banghead:

To be fair, DA2 had a great story, but the RPG elements had been completely removed. :thumbsdown:

Bethesda, this entire genre is resting on your shoulders. No pressure, or anything! :biggrin:

You forgot Witcher 2

I guess it all depends on what you consider the "RPG elements" (for the record, I've played ME2, but not DA2).


I recall people complaining that ME2 wasn't an RPG because it didn't have a huge inventory system...... and all I could think was, "What?"

Why should the game/story have to change to the point of being unrecognizable to try to attract people who normally wouldn't touch a rpg with a ten foot pole? You end up with a game that isn't quite what the "wider audience" wants, and isn't what the rpg audience wants.

If you do a good story, a good game, then the people who are willing to learn to play will learn to play, even if it isn't streamlined, mainstreamed, and opened up to the point of bland railroading. As an example, DA:O was built, originally, for pc only. It was a throwback to the traditional style of rpg. EA delayed it for 6 months to allow console ports to be done. That it was critically raved about, and popular with both pc and consoles was a surprise to EABioware, I think. Then the "streamlining" seemed to kick in; Awakening didn't get the word budget that Origns had, so you got the "click on a random item in the environment" conversation trigger and no "initiated by the player" conversations in your "hall/camp". Then came DA2; no more party management; no friendly fire; railroading storyline, voiced character, removed tactical camera, over the top hyper-frenzied kung fu movie combat, waves of enemies in every fight parachuting from the sky or appearing from thin air, and the dialogue wheel that took control of what your pc said out of your hands.

The changes to flashy and shiney might attract a wider audience, but will they stay? The shallower the game is, the faster you'll lose people's attention. There are people on EABioware's forums who absolutely love DA2, and some are already asking when more dlc will be released, because they're bored. On the other side; there are also people who finished DA2, and went back to play through DA:O again for the story and gameplay they missed in DA2. I did; DA2 was the first EABioware game for pc that I didn't buy. Given the direction of DA2, and ME2, I'm watching what is going on with ME3. I would like to see the end of the story arc, but if they take it too far to the DA2 direction, I won't get it.

I started gaming with Pong. Not a great story, not much character development, but it was kinda interesting. Nintendo was next, I think; then snes. Once I got a pc, it was fantastic. I still hate grues. I was willing to learn to play the games that needed more than pushing buttons quickly. If the story is good enough, you won't have to mainline/streamline it to death to get people to play it.

ME2 was still pretty good, but DA2 is atrocious as an RPG. You don't even pick your background. From the beggining you're told who you are. The good ol' text speech options were removed because we wouldn't want anybody straining the brains to make a game defining decision, right? There is no open world anymore, you went to the same four places for almost every quest. You couldn't make decisions to tell your companions to leave. There was less depth and lore in the world, you had very little interaction with NPC's other than your companions.

To sum it all up, the game lost alot of depth.

Edit: Definitely read the post above, by Talaran. He describes this pretty well.

I love RPGs. I always have and always will...but quality RPGs have always been few and far between. KotOR was amazing, as was Jade Empire. We all remember Morrowind and Oblivion, and despit ME2 taking a turn more towards a shooter both games have had amazing stories, characters and I look forward to any/all games Bethesda and Bioware will be releasing in the future...except maybe Dragon Age.

This.

*cough* *cough*
You obviously don't play RTS or TBS a lot, well as for TBS it seems to have gotten more complicated in the final fantasy series at least, combat system wise (rest of the games are pretty damn easy)
So RTS don't get dumbed down you say... have you been watching the Command & Conquer series get completely DEMOLISHED by EA Games? Supreme Commander was so epic and so complicated most people gave up playing it. Supreme Commander 2 was dumbed down "Immensely" but it was still awesome. Starcraft 2 oh don't get me started. i didn't want to play that game more than the 10 hours i spent on it.

But I do agree, RPG's are getting dumbed down pretty hard, this is true with oblivion. this is not true with Fallout 3 (so we can pretty much assume someone learned their lesson) Dragonage 2 i have not played, Mass Effect 3.. neither. Have you played the Witcher? it didn't feel dumbed down one bit to me! thats a pretty new game.

You don't have to worry. the reason this is happening is because back in the day, when graphics were not a concern, everything was just boxes anyways. all they HAD to work with was the gameplay and dialogue. now we've got graphics, physics, like 100x more complicated scripting, AI thats deeper than just running at you balls first, Bug Fixing! Every Little feature can cause bugs now, back in the day bugs couldn't happen, otherwise the game would've been unfinished. and you can NOT forget that even if its a hardcoe rpg it still needs to aim to being playable by any newbie out there when you go play in "easy"

What you are expecting from modern RPGs and are afraid to lose from the old ones... is just... you can't compare modern ones to the old ones because its not the same genre anymore, if you want to go play "walk forward, attack, dialogue" then go play something old.

RPGs are just evolving. don't worry.

Thanks for the reinforcement.

Are you saying SCII was bad because it's a base building game? I love it personally.


The Witcher is the best RPG I've played in a long while. I really do recommend everyone checks it out because it punches Bioware's efforts in the face by not judging you. And the gameplay's pretty sweet too.

RPG will be just fine I have faith in Bethesda and Bioware.

Please try to at least take the topic into consideration
The campass WAS simplifying, I agree. But it wasn't removing anything from the RPG genre. I was just simplifying the game itself, not the RPG side of it

As for my opinion on the topic... well, I think that Mass Effect was never an RPG to begin with (not even the first one). It's more of a shooter with a few RPG elements.
Dragon Age... only played the demo, but it's a fun game. not really much of an RPG I think though.

I think people need to wake up though. if they made Street Fighter into a turn-based, heavily stats-dependant game, I don't think anyone would call it a fighting game anymore. So why do RPG series have to keep the label when they move on to a very different style of gameplay? Because people like to find things to whine about "oh, they're dumbing down EVERY RPG ever made, even though I only listed two..."

And think about it, TES doesn't pride itself on being EXACTLY an RPG, it prides itself on being a very immersive, complete fantasy game. Stats and the like, are just a way to make your character evolve in a way that doesn't seem too linear.

I gotta say, I love RPGs in general, been playing a lot more of them lately than I ever did (though I can't say I played the classics... except a few FF games). BUT, if there's one thing I REALLY don't care about, it's how a game can be in a "genre". I play games to escape reality, not to be reminded of real people's opinions. That's the reason I want to excape in the first place. I want to be transported to a world when I can just be. why must we absolutely keep labels?

I don't play to be in a niche either. I do what I want to, not to belong to a group. You're not receiving any medal because you're more into a small niche of games. No one will stop respecting you because you like a game they don't. So please stop it about being a "hardcoe" because you play games that SEEM more complicated. Because at the end, you're still playing a game

Am I in my own right to like almost any kind of games? sure I am. am I crazy to think that a genre doesn't matter that much? could be, I don't care. I just want a good game. I don't care if it's good at being an RPG or not. IF I just wanted to imagine my character doing something, I'd play more pen-and-paper RPGs. In a videogame, if my character can talk for example, I think making it voiced is nowhere near dumbing it down. Of course, you can't imagine whatever voice you want for your character, but it's not THAT important.

Lol, Bioware doesn't do RPG's anymore. They do Action/Adventure marketed as RPG's.

For me, it's only one thing that defines a RPG. Just one thing: character. If I am responsible for defining my character, then it's a role-playing game; if I have nothing to do with defining my character (*cough* Tidus) then it's not a RPG. It's just that simple. For me.

Do I think the genre is changing in any way? Nope. It's solid. It's alive and well and will continue to be so. Only thing changing is that games are being mislabeled as RPGs because they don't fit into any other category.

:shrug:

But whatever.

I can see some of your other points, but this one that I've quoted doesn't bother me - I've played enough "RPGs" in the last three decades that gave you mostly-defined main characters that this doesn't seem like a drawback. It's just a different style. (I wouldn't expect that of a TES or Fallout game, but I would from most JRPGs and Bioware games, for example.)


And those differences are fine. It's why I play different games - to get different things from them. "Recent" (or is that "modern era"? hmmm) RPGs I've played include Oblivion, Fallout 3, FO:NV, Divinity 2, Dragon Age, Mass Effect 1 & 2, and Jade Empire. Plus the roguelikes Titanquest & Sacred 2. Enjoyed all of them for what they were. Each for different things.

I tend to think of Bioware as the Katy Perry of RPG makers, though that doesn't describe the devolution from where they started. Their product line has turned into a conveyor belt of easy pop-candy, which is unlikely to change soon, though I think their reputation will slowly catch up to their products. in a few years they might have to make some changes to their strategy, but it won't be for a while. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that a lot of their decisions are coming down from the top, with a near-revolt happening among the devs.

This year has the Witcher 2 and Skyrim, though, and there's always the chance that an Indie developer will pop-up with a great title.

You don't get to choose who you roleplay anymore, and it definitely decreases replay value. Less variety = Less replayibilty.

maybe bioware games are but not TES

I missed out on the "golden age of RPGs" so I cant compare to the best. First RPG was KOTOR (which is my favorite game ever). I like Bioware's RPGs because of the story and deep dialogue trees/choices...not neccesarily because of the RPG elements.

I've played other rpgs since like morrowind, arena, and deus ex...all great games too. I dont mind that they're changing. Personally I dont care very much about stats--I just like being able to choose what to do with my character. This core mechanic has been kept I think in all the games mentioned (except ME2...)