I have the same kind of feelings and also miss the days when games were still games instead of digital portraits. Nowadays it's all about graphics and nothing else. Crytek is a good example of a company which only cares about graphics and not the gameplay. Well, the first Far Cry was good, but the following Crysis games are a disaster gameplay wise. When the first Crysis came out it was unplayable. They had it about stunning graphics and all, but you can only look at it. I call that a digital portrait. Instead of handpainted it is now made by a computerprogram. If i want to look at portraits i go to a museum.
Also, nowadays pc games are being consolified. Consoles comes first and from that direction they port it to the pc then. Bethesda also took this route. What you get is fast paced dumbed down action like RPG's and simple stealth like games. All because consoleplayers don't have much patience generally and developers think complex games don't sell. Rubbish. Classics like Planescape: Torment, Morrowind, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Baldur's Gate, Gothic, Diablo, Warcraft, Age of Empires and the like were selling good and were often played. Still actually nowadays. There are luckily some exceptions with the current games. The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games for example. Shadow of Chernobyl came out in 2007. Tactical shooter with some rpg elements. No rushing here, but carefully look for the best tactic. The Witcher , Risen, Overlord, both Drakensang games, King's Bounty games (the legend and armored princess and expansion crossworlds) and Titan Quest are also games which came out in the past few years and aren't console like games. Some consoleports are good, like Sacred 2 Fallen Angel. I like that game. Two Worlds II is also good and i liked Venetica. Most of the time i play the classic ones and the ones which are like that. VtM: B, KB:AP, SoC, TQ, Dreamfall, GTA: SA, PS:T, NWN 2 and TES III MW. Why? Because that are games which are still games and where it is about gameplay.

I'm with you (and Dagoth Matt). Skyrim just isn't the same. The dragons are annoying to fight (and yeah, killing a dragon at level 2, not a good idea), the quests tend to be not very interesting, the fast travel makes it feel cheap, I despise the dummed-down class and leveling system, and so on.

In Morrowind, I was working on Thieves Guild quests, and I got myself completely lost finding my way to Pelagiad. Along the way, I found a Dunmer woman who wanted help trying to find the Fields of Kummu. We're currently wandering around, trying to find our way across some mountains. No fast travel, no immortal follower, no random dragon to ruin everything, it's just me and her trying to find our ways out in the wilderness. Skyrim doesn't have that feeling at all. There's no sense of adventure or character.

My thought too. Modern games are more like interactive movies than games with real depth that makes you think.

If by interactive movie you mean "immersive and cinematic", then I approve of it, otherwise no. I don't like games that have these heavily scripted events or should I say, wannabe-cutscenes.

I won'r criticize Skyrim because I like it. It reminds me of Morrowind in a good way, yet Morrowind has this...something which makes it the best game ever. I think it's the storyline. It makes it one of the best books out there too.

I don't think they dumb us down on purpose, but it's neither accidentaly. It's just happens, as if it were natural. Because they made it be. It's a trend, that's it.

Morrowind has a lot less enemy scaling than in Oblivion, and the low levels can be fearsomely difficult, as a result. Fortunately, there are multiple ways of dealing with this: becoming a traveling merchant (alchemist), killing things, adding mods that add companions, and summoning help. But it all takes time, and as you point out, modern action/quasi-RPG games play to the impatience in their not infrequently more youthful audience by giving them all the game mechanics at the start, plus a character that's a match for whatever he/she may run across.

Mind, each of the last 3 ES games is excellent in its own way. It's just that Morowind's way is the way I prefer--old school, as you point out.

Me neither. Doom 3 is a textbook example in scripted events. Every fight with a monster is scripted and you can′t sneak by any of them

It′s not a gaming trend, it happens everywhere. Not least in schools, but I think we′re getting into a topic not meant for this particular thread

Precisely. Societies elite rely on the masses to be subservient, docile sheep. And they use the appropriate tools for each demographic sector ie soap operas for middle aged women. Sports, beer and cars for men. American idol for young girls, and mindless action COD style games for young men.

Go to a site like gamefaqs and attempt discussion and you'll soon see how much of a devestating effect these pure grunt action games have had on the average gamers attention span. COD is an illuminati funded mind programming propaganda tool through and through.

And it′s becoming more and more blatant. But heck with it! I like to come up with creative Alchemy recipes and spells, and I′ll be damned if I′d let someone stop me!

Perhaps but I too made a similar post just today. I am sick of the dumbing down-ease up.

That, IS the fun. Tough it up. Makes the player stress out, use their brains, improvise and immerse in the game. Setting priorities, feeling the struggle, etc etc etc.
"You have to survive. Can you?"

To be honest, I've only played Doom 3 for like 30 minutes. Can't say whether I liked it. I was thinking of CoD in particular when I said that. You know, Soap McTavish (was that his name?) falls on all four, Cpt Price keeps shouting, someone grabs your hand, gives you the weapon, then that half-arsed General suddenly kills you. Not an accurate description, but I'm just...sayin'. Those kind of scenes feel so forced. I used to be a CoD player, but I left the clan once I understood what a bunch of angry-german-kids the players were. CoD was not the game for me.

I agree. Trends are everywhere and sometimes I wonder if people ever ask themselfes "why". Not only "why trends?" but "why [insert something here]"". Most of them don't, it would be naive to think they do. People are so easy to manipulate because society beings to shape them from the very moment they are born. Once a grown up, it's hard to percieve things in ways other than you were taught to, or you were used to. Didn't mean to go off-topic...

I don't think a game is no longer a RPG just because it's not the traditional RPG. For me, a RPG is a game I ca make choices in. If the game doesn't have that stats sheet, that's fine. If anything, that gives me more freedom. I still have faith in the games to come. Elder Scrolls, Assassin's Creed, Valve's games, Mass Effect, these games (and others) raised the bar. I'm not particularly fond of AC Brotherhood, but that's another story. Wait, it isn't. Brotherhood was a rush. Not rushed, but a rush. I didn't like the pace. Everything happened way too fast. Felt like I was playing CoD. People lack patience these days, no good.

I think you just hit the sweet spot, my friend

The big thing for me in Morrowind, was that you had to wait a bit and level up before you could do some dungeons. I remember going into one and totally getting my ass kicked. Building yourself up and then attempting certain area's.
Oblivion completely screwed it up by having NPC level with you.

Thanks. It's why I don't get all the complaints about Skyrim not being a RPG.


The first time I played Morrowind, I went inside this mine or cave right near Seyda Neen. I got my ass handed to me. I came back one month later and gave those guys hell.

Like you I don′t believe there′s just one kind of RPG where just one set of rules is applicable.

People want to apply the rules of old tabletops to video games. I think Bethesda did the right thing when they got rid of the minor and major skills.

Just as with RPGs, there's more than one type of player. To me, getting rid of the Major and Minor skills, Attributes, and a host of other things, and more importantly, the character focus and persona that those stats represented, just made the game "pointless" for me to play. There's no reason that Perks can't do most of what Attributes used to, but they're not being used that way, so what we got in return for Attributes is "nothing". Sorry, but "less" is not "more". To me, Chess is a "better" game than "Checkers". I LIKE the diversity and differentiation between pieces; other people don't, and to them, "Checkers" might be the "better" game.

Since they haven't had dice rolls for two games now, removing attributes was probably a good move. Strength, endurance, and intelligence were pretty much the only useful ones in Oblivion. I feel like they should have kept the major and minor skill system in some way though. Having the different races start with different levels of HP, MP, and stamina rather than everybody except the Altmer having all 100s also would have been a good idea.


There's nothing inherently wrong with applying tabletop rules to video games. Most of my favorite games, both console and PC, have rules inspired by tabletop mechanics. As Kovacius points out, however, it's pretty much entirely a matter of personal preference.

Yes, there's nothing wrong with appliyng those rules, but a video games can do just as well without them.

If we were able to change the major/minor skills over the course of the game..or if the game did that as various skills incresed, that would have been perfect.
The attributes are still in, lore-wise. The mage is bright, the warrior has greater strength etc. That's why I don't mourn their loss. They were quite ..thrown in there -as stats- anyway, since you would end up having 100 points to all of them regardless of your playing style.

Dark Souls is difficult...
Dont Kill me...

Gaming has become mainstream
Look back and you will find amazing games

Sad but true.

Sadder and truer is that the old market for such games hasn't gone away, it's just being ignored for now by the developers, in favor of the previously untapped "mass" market. Once that "saturates", and those "masses" demonstrate what a lack of long-term dedication can do to a company's "bottom line" when they don't buy, some companies will return to the dependable "niche" markets of hardcoe fans. Meanwhile, except for a few extreme fringe products like the "Hearts of Iron" (historical strategy) and "X" sci-fi (combination space shooter/empire builder) series games (which have a "learning wall", not a "curve"), we're stuck with "Games For Dummies".

Yup. The way I see it now, it's

"all the dollars, talent in graphics department, and ideology of making everything Bigger, Better and More Movie-Like"

vs.

"we're just trying something new to earn our living because we cannot produce as massively epic games for dummies as those more mainstream companies" companies at the moment. Soon there'll be more well-known companies satisfying some marginal groups' demands. Like, for example, us more hardcoe RPG fans. ^^ Bethesda have made their TES lore so deep and interesting in the past, though, it's a crying shame seeing this product of all products commercializing.

However, I still think there's going to be change in the styles of mainstream games, for better or worse. Actually everything is constantly changing, but the change might be so slow we don't often notice it, e.g. language change (which is slowed down by such things as formal prescriptive grammars and ideas about "pure" or "right" use of language, for example; I'm sure there are forces like this in gaming industry as well, affecting the shape of mainstream games one way or another). Although I think gaming must change from this today's ideal about being "epic". I mean, how much more epic can they get? Composing and producing of gaming scores, for example, cannot possibly become More Massive And Unbelievable in Their Sheer Pompousness for very long anymore. These ideals we're now having are reaching their limits sooner or later. Then there will either be downhills for gaming companies who still think they should try to make an even more "epic" product, or they can invent something new that makes so good an impression to players that it will become a new ideology. Epic isn't the only style of literature or other forms of art; some other style might soon arrive to gaming, replace it and become the most popular.

This sort of paradigm shift happens all the time in everything all around us. There's a new thing. It grows. People like it. People then begin to get bored to it. Then that thing will slowly fade out. At this point, though, a new idea (hopefully) is invading, say, gaming market, for example. Basically

1. the popularization of a new invention X
2. X's steady state on the top
3. general need for something different for a change; X begins to lose popularity
4. X gets forgotten, or rather, it just downgrades and never completely fades out. It or its variation might rise again at some other time. Anyway, at this time, the fresher and/or just fitter idea called Y has replaced it as the most popular idea.
5. Eventually Y suffers X's fate in the hands of Z, and the cycle endlessly keeps repeating itself.

That's life, even. Fashions come and go. Ideologies, religions... every philosophy or more concrete invention. Everything. I'd say that as minor thing as gaming industry - and popular culture more commonly - is coming to end of its current "for Dummies" form more or less. People don't buy another new big-titted, glitter-using woman's albums, no matter how many stations play her for money, because they're tired of those "hits" that are all the same. Currently, in this broad sense of the term "popular culture", in my eyes at least, X is about to give way to Y. I don't yet know what this Y is, though. It will still have something to do with youthfulness and beauty, for sure, but I guess more brains are included this time as well.

It's the education system. We're not told to work at stuff anymore, not forced to learn, and thus if it's not immediately gratifying we chuck it aside for some other new shiney thing. I see it a lot -- kids don't have the patience to work out a solution on their own.

Of course it involves mainstream gaming companies, thus the games. And the movies, and the news, and the music, and basically everything we are bombarded with every single day. This is what poker players call "going all in"