That's the thing though, New Vegas proves you can do an open world rpg. And imo it is open world, regardless of whether you can go North or not at the start, and you can if you are prepared to think about it. I appreciate that an rpg should have a good story, it's just that I prefer a bunch of smaller stories to be tackled at will, as opposed to one overarching one that all the others are tributaries of. Each to his or her own, of course.

'Open world' doesn't mean high quality any more than 'platformer' or 'isometric' does, so I agree with you there, but I can RP perfectly well in an open world without needing any quests or narratives. I agree that they need to be more creative and come up with alternatives to looting and killing; there are tremendous gameplay opportunities that are just completely ignored (for commercial reasons) that would go a long way toward establishing open world RPGs as a distinct and interesting genre.

The problem with open world RPGs thus far is that they've been relying on linear narratives (quests) to do what needs to be done by AI. The reason why there's 'nothing to do' ('fake longevity') is because the world isn't responsive enough to the player's actions. If the AI was much better, and NPCs actually reacted in reasonable ways to what your character did, it would be much easier to create interesting narratives around your character. Open world RPGs should try to eliminate as much of the linear narrative as possible and focus on the sandbox elements of gameplay to make them more engaging.

I've put hundreds of hours in Skyrim but I find FO:NV to be a bit of a chore. Preferences =/= quality.

I'm not that worried where the genre is heading. We have a good variety of quality titles on all platforms. I prefer Bethesda's open world, but I also enjoy the story driven BioWare games a lot. BioWare themselves said they would draw inspiration from Skyrim's openess for the next Dragon Age. Which is great in my opinion. My 'dream' rpg combines what is already working great in all the big titles, the world simulation in Bethesda, the story and dialogue in Obsidian or BioWare. I wish Bethesda put more effort into creating compelling quests and stories to fill their big worlds.

As regarding Todd's philosophy, I'm not that worried yet. I'm not satisfied myself with the removal of some classic rpg aspects in this series. I want more stats, more attributes, faction reputation. I want fleshed companions with strong background stories and more dialogue options. More depth to the guilds as believable organizations, deeper and longer questlines. But nobody can say for sure that from now on the stats have been removed for good. They can't go further this path in my opinion, as they reached the bottom (and the sales peak, consequently). Skills, attributes and some features may come back in the next TES.

When promoting Skyrim, Todd has made some not-so-laudative remarks about Oblivion, his own baby, just to point out how much better Skyrim would be. I wouldn't be shocked if 3 years from now he'll start belittling the features of Skyrim: we found out Oblivion's character models generator was the "ugly" button. Back in the day nobody dared say something like that. We may find out in the future that Skyrim's character customization tools were the "I win anyways" button. We already found out they made Oblivion such a vibrant fairytale walk in the park because they were heavily inspired by LOTR. Next time we'll find out they made Skyrim so simple because they were inspired by Apple.

It's hard to really judge how well open world works for RPG's, because they haven't really focused on role-playing since before open world games ever became common. I don't consider Skyrim a failed attempt at an open world RPG, because I wouldn't really consider it an attempt at being an RPG at all. Of course, the issue is already muddy because "RPG" wasn't well-defined even before every game with more than one stat starting claiming to be part-RPG.

In a setting where AI, choices/consequences, character-building and gameplay options, and so on were actually emphasized, though, I think open-world would be conducive to it. The more options available to you, the more the game world at large needs to be able to hold it. As the world gets narrower my options on conveying "who" I'm playing as get increasingly filed down into heavily scripted dialogue options and combat abilities that give an illusion of depth at the moment, but ultimately change nothing. They just need to make an open-world RPG that's actually trying to be an RPG and actually takes advantage of its own setting, instead of the standard game that has "RPG elements" and an open world just because it's visually impressive.

I'd go somewhere between Daggerfall and Skyrim. Daggerfall has this enormous world which is mostly generic but actually does simulate real life a bit. Most towns are generic, and so thousands of towns in an enormous world that's mostly randomly generated would be fine. Skyrim has a lot of technological and gameplay improvements.

(speaking of Daggerfall's huge randomly generated world, I might even consider a gameplay mode with an option to randomly generate a new world every new game - as an option only. Modern computers are more than capable of it, and replayability goes through the roof)

I'd also develop for PC and then worry about porting to consoles, and not vice versa.

Last but not least, I'd allow for multiplayer and world-building via a construction kit, like Neverwinter Nights did. NWN multiplayer was the best multiplayer roleplaying experience ever on the PC, and some of the custom built worlds were amazing considering the limited capabilities of the NWN engine. Can you imagine the kinds of worlds Elder Scrolls modders could build?

I'd make an interactive simulator, a la Thief and Dishonored (but better), with the gritty, pragmatic world flavour of Gothic 2 (but better), with many actually branching and interconnected storylines, and the ability to complete the game without having to resort to violence. I'd also make sure that characters and relationships are realistic and well-written.

The literary equivalent would be... Game of Thrones meets Perdido Street Station meets The Wheel of Time meets Ghormenghast.



OR

I'd make a mundane modern simulator, where you act out the life of one of a number of predetermined people in their relationships, job and aspirations. It would be a mix of... The Sims meets the relationship simulator of Persona meets Hard Rain. And yes, you would have lots of stats, but they would almost never be used for combat/violence.



GIVE ME MONEY AND APPOINT ME AS THE LEAD OF THESE DREAM PROJECTS, ANYBODY!

- First person perspective
- "Space-Western" setting
- Sandbox
- Jaw-dropping graphics
- John Williams soundtrack
- Aliens, Zombies and uncharted planets
- Flawless attribute and loot system
- Epic storytelling with with good writing and voice-acting.

I think open world vs not open world is beside the point. The biggest problem is that 'role-play' is reduced by the lack of cohesion in the world. No sidequests seem to connect to the wider world. The character's personalities don't fit what they're requesting (you want me to save your business from thugs, maybe you should act like it matters?) affect your relations with any factions (kill a prisoner of the Imperials as a member of the Imperial Army and not only does it not seem to matter that you're killing your comrades, that you're actively subverting Imperial interests, or releasing a Stormclock traitor). They don't care. actually come to mention it, doing the same as a Stormclock doesn't raise your status within the Stormclocks either before you join or after. The same could be said of the way the world sees my character's race. Windhelm hates anybody who isn't a Nord. It barely tolerates Dunmer, and Argonians basicly live as pariahs outside the gates and live in a warehouse. Khajiit aren't allowed in any cities. Except for the player, who never has to deal with the obvious racism of the world in any way, which once again takes you straight out of the universe. For the universe to be fun, I want it to matter who I am and what I've done, and give me reasons to do what I want to do. I loved helping with some of the sidequests in Oblivion -- the characters actually had both personality and a reason for the quest, and for that matter, the rest of the world seems to care that I'm either nice or mean.

None of that requires closing the world, just a little attention to detail. Rather than making the quests "kewl", make them matter. Rather than making the caves giant one way loops, make them actual caves. Rather than making Dwemer ruins or Nord ruins linear tunnels with nothing beyond what was needed for whatever quest, maybe make them like actual ruins. Having caves and ruins being more like set-pieces remind me that I'm playing a game, not exploring a world.

All I want in RPGs are:
Ability to make your own character and be more than just human.
Do whatever you want.
Quests, specially quests and I mean like infinity amount of them as well.
Huge world to explore and dungeons to check out.
Fantasy/Medieval theme...

I basicly just described Daggerfall and Skyrim.

In the trash so I don't waste my life on every RPG that flies my way

Obsidian, Pre-EA Bioware, BGS, Cd Projekt RED, From Software.

I want my interactions with characters and choices in quests to alter the game world.

Consequences.

Really just get this one right and I'll give you another.

Sounds like a decent combo to me, I wish game companies would pull their heads out of their bums and actually work together more often.

I really want to see some RPG's set in historical times eg ancient Egypt, medieval China, Edo period Japan etc. All with insane levels of historically accurate detail. Maybe not quite to the degree of having to understand Japanese or having a firm grasp of grammer in middle egyptian hieroglyphics but you get my drift. It would be amazing to wander around the very best historical simulator that is possible and still have a deep and entertaining game with a variety of possible playing styles.

I think they should go back to where they started. Baldur's gate for example. it had a great story and interesting people.

@Xalxitz you might want to take a look at this game. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_messiah_of_might_and_magic

I wonder if the limitations of today's RPGs are more hardware based, or just a case of the developers not spending time implementing these features?

Serious question, btw.

Exactly like Skyrim.

No consequences, no recognition, a pale ghost of a journal?
I am not trying to be rude, but has your account been taken over, by aliens or a younger family member? What happened to the vets seeing through the lies, and it's all dumbed down?

I would make the Pokemon we all secretly want: a 3rd person action / rpg where you actually control the Pokemon yourself on the screen. The game would play pretty much as normally as any other Pokemon ('cept of course the fact you are in full movement control of 'lil Pikachu). As for a control scheme, I guess i would shamelessly steal the button setup from an old cult-classic game for the original Xbox, titles "Phantom Dust".

Trainer battles would be pretty straightforward enough - probably to have it set up like the team battles you see in most fighter games with the exception you can switch out characters (with of course, some degree of balance - I can easily foresee unfun spam techniques with rapid switching, gorilla tactics)

As for wild Pokemon, same as above applies, only with the exception that under certain conditions, like say if there was something like the FFXIII stagger gauge, you can press something to call your trainer out to throw some form of a Pokeball at the target.

As for the system type, I would much more prefer to put on a console rather than a portable. I would much rather have that creative space on a disc than a little cartridge, like on the 3DS.

Graphic wise, I would choose cell-shade for multiple reasons. As we know, the Pokemon series is an anime-centered style. In this regard, I feel that the approach of the cell shade art style would be much more appropriate to this decision rather than say the graphics of the Xenosaga games.

Another reason is that since the cell shade style uses up considerably less memory, it would allow me to place in what we all love: more content for the game!

I personally think it would sell quite well for Nintendo and greatly assist the Wii-U capture the attention of a much bigger audience than what is expected after the announcement of it's 1st year of games. Though that's just my opinion.

Back to the pre PS2 era.

The way that The Witcher is going.

Gameplay-wise, I'm not too bothered, as long as it works and is fun. The isometric D&D rpg's were fun to play, as were Morrowind, Deus Ex (hybrid, ok), Might and Magic, etc. What's most important to me is the story - I'd love to combine the fantastic stories of Baldur's Gate or Planescape: Torment with the vibrant lore and world of Morrowind, for example.

That would be a dream come true. I said in another thread that if there's one other IP I wish Beth would give a shot, it's the Planescape universe. Seeing those alignment worlds fully realized in their signature open world design would be nothing short of stunning, assuming they could do it. Problem is, I feel Bethesda's creativity has been lacking with these last two TES games, so I'd be just as worried as I would be excited.

I can imagine your fear. I haven't played Skyrim, and am not overly excited to do so. Oblivion was fun, but not as memorable as Daggerfall and Morrowind were. The exotic world of Morrowind especially is something that really gripped me back then.

Also, I obviously don't mean that PS:T has no or bad lore, but the way the ES lore came alive in Morrowind is something I'd like to see in a game which has PS:T's kind of story.

Right. Like i keep saying i consider it an open world dungeon crawler. Because, really, what else is there do than kill-loot-sell, kill-loot-sell? Not even a reputation system, so you can kill-loot-sell whole towns too

On topic, i liked where New Vegas was going with the "open-world RPG" setting, i certainly hope Bethesda allows Obsidian to do another Fallout spin-off after 4.