The biggest issue is that the Citizen Kane of gaming would require a huge budget to afford the voice acting, animations, scope and graphics required to evoke those emotions.

But at the same time it would require gameplay that isn't action orientated. These two things are in conflict.

Gaming is still a virtual toy. The few devs who try to make it into something more might have the critical acclaim but not the sales to elevate it to a higher level. Bioware was a strong contender, their games became more complex and they were close to creating a emotional experience driven by the story and with action as an optional element. But EA happened and they switched gears, their focus is now on the action and although they might still produve a great story it will never be the Citizen Kane of gaming.

Some thing is true to Bethesda (albeit less so), Skyrim is focused on action gameplay. There are other elements but they've been dumbed down. Now only one skill governs the dialogue and trading elements, and the issue isnt just that it is only one skill but that the things this skill does are also less compared to previous installments. This makes Skyrim interesting to a larger group and it will also generate critical acclaim. A lot of sources will speak of it as a revolution for its scope and focus on details but most of them never played the previous installments.

Games will first have to grow as a popular form of simple entertainment. The Wii and Kinect will help with this. It won't be until it 'everyone' is a gamer that the real masterpiece will be made, just like 'everyone' already watched movies before Citizen Kane was made. Only then when there is such a large audience will there be a studio that is able to garner the talent and budget to create a game that offers gameplay that is not just about action, but is also interested to a large enough audience to be profitable. It won't be Bethesda or Bioware, but they will have contributed in their own way.

The Fallout Dinosaurs have a saying that goes 'Fallout 3 was a good game, just not a Fallout game'. And they're right; Fallout 3 didn't revamp the series, but took a few elements of the original series (in regards to story telling and art style as well as a watered down version of the original stats) and made a new series. They didn't revamp Fallout, they bloody well nearly killed it. Luckily, Obsidian showed how Fallout can be done properly on the new engine with a TES style sandbox (even if that game had its own flaws).

Fallout 3 still was a success, and it still showed Bethesda innovating quite a bit and (IMO) adding a lot more depth and flavor to the game world. It was a positive indicator for the next TES game. It did the Fallout series no favors, however.

Hey Old Grog,

...another thing occurred to me when reading back through this thread: You mentioned being stunned when the Berlin wall fell; this put me in mind of when I found out about the coup which ended the U.S.S.R. I was living in a tent in the mountains of Colorado and went into town for supplies (probably booze and such like), and my eye happened to fall on a newspaper from 3 days previous, with the coup as the headline. That was a very surreal moment.

Enjoy

Fallout was dead before Fallout 3. It revived the franchise and paved the way for Fallout: New Vegas. The second would not exist without the first, and you yourself just praised FO:NV. So in a way it did do Fallout a favor, even if you believe it isn't a true Fallout game itself.

And even if you disagree that with that, then Fallout 3 still didn't hurt the franchise, seeing how it was dead anyway. Saying'it did it no favor' sounds as if FO3's existence was hurtful to Fallout, but you can't hurt that which is already dead. So Fallout purists can choose to ignore Fallout 3 and FO:NV as well if they dislike that too. For them nothing changed, Fallout died with FO2, FO: Tactics or FO: Brotherhood of Steel (whatever they think was the first imposter).

It revived it from the dead. That's kind of a big favour.

And I have to laugh at the Fallout "dinosaurs", most of whom were about 10 when Fallout was originally released, and who seem to hold the same idiotic thought processes as a large number of the complainers here, in that "if it isn't the way I like it, it's poo".

God gamers are a miserable lot.

This is a pretty good point. Even if you were to create a game that was roughly the length of an average movie, in order to have any player interaction at all (apart from just letting them jump in during the action scenes) you are going to need branching dialog, which multiplies the amount of voice acting and writing several times over. On top of that, the technical barrier for things like books and even film is considerably lower than it is for games. Sure, there's the Avatars, and for books the Michael Crichton or Neal Stephenson technofests, but at the heart of it they can be boiled down to pen and paper (add a guy with a camera and a few actors for film, but its still a much more organic process than coding an engine, creating animations, coming up with gameplay systems, etc.) Games are a powerful, but much more cumbersome medium for expression. Things will improve though as the base technology becomes more polished and accessible.

A game I forgot to mention in my earlier post was LA Noire, though I haven't actually played it. I could picture a game built around that concept, but with LA Confidential's acting and writing talent, becoming something that your average advlt would be interested in.

I disagree, partly. 2010 and 2011 were [censored] years IMO, because Guild Wars 2 didn't come out.

No offence, but I think Rockstar is more likely to take on this role...not Beth.

I think both Rockstar and Bethesda will just contribute to the creation of this game. As in someone right now who is enjoying Rockstar and Bethesda games will one day be lead developer on gaming's masterpiece.

The problem with Rockstar is that they just have cinematic clips mixed in with (great) gameplay. It is amazing to watch but it doesn't do anything that a movie couldn't do. It isn't interactive and doesn't make great use of the unique features for storytelling and experiencing visuals that gaming offers. Citizen Kane was a movie that changed the way people experience movies. Before it many movies were just recorded theatre shows, after it people realized movies could do so much more.

This is not to say that Rockstar isn't doing anything of importance. Their cinematics are of the highest level and has helped the acceptance if dialogue in videogames. Just like Bioware helped promote interacte storytelling and Bethesda helped promote the concept of a believable detailed openworld. All these things I think are important towards creating that interactive experience that is unique to gaming and will one day be considered an art form.

thats completely wrong, The franchise was up for bid, they even had the Trokia games bidding for it (That had a large group of the original dev's in it. gamesas was only the highest bidder in quite a few companies. So a Fallout 3 would have been created regardless of gamesas. So really you should learn a bit before making statements like that,

So? It was still dead before Bethesda revived it and made it hugely popular. Considering they tried to make a Fallout 3 before and failed to complete it there is no certainty that anyone else would have been able to bring back the franchise and make it profitable again. It was FO3 that let to Obsidian making FO:NV, so IMO FO3 certaintly did do the Fallout a favor. I still stand by what I said.

do you even know who "they" as you said are and the whole thing behind it? More then likely if gamesas didn't buy it Obsidian itself would have made fallout 3.

Grrr! Not everyone loves the Beatles you know! Some people, like myself, think that they are the most over rated band in music history.

You could look at it that way as well, I agree. But if New Vegas hadn't happened, I'd say there is little chance that Bethesda would have been able to move Fallout in the right direction (and to be honest, I'm still doubtful that they will). Although I consider it unlikely that Obsidian would have picked up the franchise instead. As I understand, Bioware was a leading contenders (shivers).

Don't get me wrong either, I don't identify with the Dinosaurs nor do I necessarily agree with everything they want for Fallout 4 and I've only ever played a small amount of the original games. A lot of the concepts of the originals do appeal to me quite strongly though, which is why I want to see them more prominent in future Fallout games, taking the direction NV started in.

And since people are mentioning it, the Beatles. I care nothing for their music, but I do care that they influenced a lot of other great musicians whose music I do care about, so I respect them quite a bit. It's hard to believe that Pop music was actually revolutionary.

I think ronnet has a lot to learn about gaming seems like he is still a milk drinker (at least if we take a closer look to some things he tried to point out and just to be straight: Milk drinker wasn't meant as an insultation I was getting at the likely age of ronnet)!
I mean stuff like: Rockstars cinematics helped acceptance of dialogues in games -> Dude: http://www.getlamp.com/!
Openworld (Beth): Ever played Might and Magic 6,Ultima 9, Realms of Arkadia...You should especially look at Ultima 9 from LORD BRITISH!
Interactive Storytelling (Bio): http://www.getlamp.com/, I have no mouth I must scream!,Myst,Riven, Monkey Island, Dragons Lair, Space Quest...

That wasn't really "their" or the games fault, but Interplays bulls*it managements (which eventually lead to Iply's downfall). There's no knowledge of how successful Van Buren would've/could've been had it been finished.

I'm not saying Rockstar and Bethesda invented the wheel, I'm saying they helped promote them towards a large audience.

With regards to Rockstar (since you mentioned it) they did help promote the acceptance of dialogue. Of course I am aware that there are tons of games that are purely texted based that are loved by hundred of thousand of people. However Rockstar brought the love for dialogue to tens of million. It doesn't matter if they did it better or worse, but they did it and on a larger scale. (edit: for example, my nephew used to only play FPS and Soccer games, Rockstar made him appreciate dialogue in games).

With the post you were refering to I was building up on another post I made earlier. In this post I was talking about how we won't be seeing a 'Citizen Kane of gaming' until gaming is done by 'everyone'. Of course this doesn't literally mean every person but in the same sense as how around 1940 everyone had watched a movie. Right now gaming still hasn't been adopted by everyone as a form of entertainment. It will take another generation or two before you can say 'everyone is a gamer' like you can say now 'everyone watches movies'.

When the pool of gamers is that large, then I think a studio will be able to gain a large enough budget and hire enough talent to create an emotion interactive experience that still garners enough buyers (of multiple generations) to be highly profitable without having to primarily offer action orientated gameplay.

There is a long list of developers that all contributed towards the development of gaming as a whole. I am aware of this, and my age has nothing to do with it. But if you must know I am 23 and I've been a gamer for 13 years. I grew up with Anno 1602, Civilization 2 and Age of Empires. Morrowind and Rome Total War are among my favorite games. Does that make me less qualified to talk about the direction of gaming, than you?

I might have jumped on board at a later date but I can stil have an idea on where the ship is heading, can't I?

Nothing to do with anything, just saying : Skyrim feels like Beggars' Banquet to Oblivion's Satanic Majesties. Can't see a mention of 'the other band' without mentioning the Stones.

Hi,

THIS...

The Sgt. Pepper moment has already arrived, but was overlooked... In the from of Witcher2, Metro 2033, Two Worlds, Stalker, Machinima. But it came from countries where computer games actually are treated as an art form.

Rgds, Haldir

In that case, I'll throw Nehrim on that pile.

OHHHHH MY GODDD I can't get my more detailed RPG experience. thats all I hear out the complaints over this game. Got news, a game such as this gets better as its presented to a broader audience. Go play another damn game if you feel this game isn't up to your stringent RPG expectations. But what do you all do instead? you PLAY Skyrim all day and whine that it doesn't cater itself to the small minority of the people who want a better RP experience.

Maybe I'm a weird fellow but I don't get the intense hate, really. I loved DA2 and yes, I played DA:O and it's expansions. I loved those too. DA2 presented questions which were interesting. In DA:O there was almost always a clear line between good and bad. In DA2 everything was grey and that made decisions actually worth thinking about.

I agree Op, they really are on to something special. I have taken some flack for enjoying games over the years but this media is still young, it was nice to know we were here at the start, missed the Beatles starting out but was here for the Gaming. The Beatles werent particularly understood by the parents etc of the kids who liked them and the same with games. Ill tell the grand kids about the Elder Scrolls, days of when you would que at a shop at midnight to get a new release. It has so many similarities.

Heh, I was disappointed by DA2 when it first came out (probably would have been disappointed by anything Bioware released after Origins) but after replaying it a few times I like it a lot more (and the DLC are great.) I'm just so used to the hate that I reflexively added that line in there to prevent people from crapping all over Bioware. The combat on nightmare difficulty in DA2 is quite a bit better than Origins, there's a lot of depth there once you're forced to use it. I really liked the writing and characters, and the magnitude of the overall story was pretty impressive, can't wait to see what they end up doing with the whole mage rebellion. But the recycling of environments was inexcusably bad (though they they avoided that very well in their DLC) and DXHR proved that you can still have nuanced player dialog options with a voiced main character, so they didn't need to dumb that part of it down quite so much.