That is actually a good way to put it - as a separate genre, it's becoming more and more irrelevant. You can't have a game be JUST an RPG, as that demands immense amounts of time, virtually impossible amounts for modern gaming. Bethesda say there's about 60000 lines of dialogue in Skyrim. That's actually pretty pathetic compared to what is in Fallout 2 or Planescape: Torment.

If RPGs never had developed at all, we'd still be stuck with dungeon crawl. So be glad that genres are not set in adamantium.

I think there is some truth to that, at leas that RPGs are changing.Though if you think about all genres are changing for th most part.

There is a difference between 'evolving' and 'no longer being relevant'. Because if you look at the latest games BioWare has produced, what that BioWare guy posted is simply an excuse, a justification for them to explain why they're making dumbed down games.

Well in my case RPG is far less important than sand-box game, you see i came to the series through Oblivion which i see as an open world game, and i am not a fan of scripted stories, so i guess if Oblivion appealed to me, it didn't appeal to any part of me that likes RPG's, at least not scripted ones, i'm not too sure what that may mean if anything, whether i am a rare type of oblivion player, or a common one.

He's just upset because Dragon Age 2 was irrelevant

No, this evolution contains in itself the loss of relevance as an absolute and completely definite genre with its own conventions, NO ENTRY OF OTHERS ALLOWED.
Bioware is just doing what every other big developer does. You just can't make an absurdly RP and consequence heavy AND high profile and production value game these days. He's just stating what is apparent - there is no room in the big games industry for it. That's not an excuse, that's a simple result of everyone trying to play it big.

I don't consider all games becoming that same done-to-death melting pot of genre elements a positive evolution.


I beg to differ. BioWare themselves proved it way back with Baldur's Gate, trailblazing the path for an entrie generation of 'heavy' RPGs in a time when the market supposedly didn't allow it either.


A company like BioWare has the clout and the talent to play it big and still produce RPG-heavy games. Their decision to dumb down ME2 and DA2 was not made out of necessity, but out of greed.

The vast majority of people do not like RPGs (this includes people who think that they do, but don't. They like games with RPG elements that have been incorrectly branded as RPGs).

The most fundamental definition of an RPG is this:
The player makes choices for the character, and the character's skills, abilities, feats, traits, and attributes determine the outcome.

Most gamers today would hate a pure RPG because the would feel as though their own skills are irrelevant (which they SHOULD BE in an actual RPG). RPGs have become irrelevant because gaming has become mainstream and most people prefer action to spreadsheets.

Yeah, there's some truth to the fact that set-in-stone game genres are blending more these days.





Yeah, what the princess said... :tongue:

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Of course, I'll admit to also liking a "traditional" style game once in awhile as well.... if everything goes the exact same way, things get boring, and there's still good things to find in the Old School games.

I think that's a load of nonsense, and Bethesda/Todd's comments on similar subjects have been vastly more intelligent (if occasionally taken out of context). But having spent several frustrated years modding one BioWare RPG (and so gained unfavourable insight into its development), and having been vaguely disgusted by their most recent one, I'm not exactly BioWare's biggest fan.

It'd be more accurate to say that BioWare are less relevant to RPGs.

That's really what it all boils down to. I'm certainly not going to be one to miss them when they "leave" the genre all together.

You might as well as who the average type of person was who watched the Star Trek reboot.

Sure, there are the hardcoe fans who know the Klingon language and dress up for conventions, but the vast majority of people who went to the Star Trek film are people who enjoy going to the cinema in general, and that film was made not specifically to appeal to a small number of very passionate Star Trek fans (who also would feel that they've put a lot of time and money into Star Trek and shouldn't be "betrayed by a dumbed down movie"), but to a wider and broader audience of people who casually enjoyed the ST series and films and aren't so concerned about the details. I'd say there are a lot of parallels here, and I for one very much enjoyed the Star Trek film.

This forum holds a very, very tiny number of Oblivion fans - we're talking somewhere between 1% and 5% of all the people who bought the game (depending on how many forum members actually bought Oblivion). If I talk to the people I know who bought Oblivion who aren't on this forum, they're the same people who bought Halo and Half-Life 2 and Call of Duty. They go into GAME every week and buy a game. They don't say "this is a great RPG", just "this is a great game", and rate it on whether it was interesting enough to continue to the next level.


You're mixing up two assumptions there.
1. You call it "dumbed down", I call it "streamlining". You say they cut out all the bits you thought were important; I say they cut out all the bits that were distracting, tedious and unnecessary. You call it less challenging; I call it less frustrating. You call it "dumbed down", I call it "more fun".
2. What's the development cost of an average A-list title these days? $100 million? Can't be far off. How many hardcoe RPG fans are there in the world? Probably not a hundred-million-dollar's-worth. If all the hardcoe RPG fans in the world got together and pooled their gaming budgets, it's unlikely that they'd be able to come up between them with enough to fund (and market/distribute) a game like Dragon Age, and that's assuming that every single one of those hardcoe RPG fans went out and bought Dragon Age. The only way those games get made at all is by giving them a broad enough appeal to draw in the sort of players who go into GAME every week and buy a game. People who buy 360 Gamer or the like, read a review and think, "Hey, that looks interesting" and decide to take a risk. I did that with Dragon Age, and played it through - though it was too much of a traditional RPG to get more than a 7/10 from me, even if I did think it was well made. I didn't buy the sequel, so can't comment, but if you tried to sell it to me as "it's like Dragon Age but with all the tedious bits cut out", I'd have been quite tempted to give it a go. Is it "greedy" of Bioware to want to me to like their game too?

No, but they're acting like BioWare is the ultimate RPG developer of all time.

And you're acting like Bethesda is the best RPG developer of all time. Either way it doesn't matter, this isn't a discussion about that.

Nope, Bethesda is just the first that comes to mind for me. How does stating that translate to "B3th3sd4 1s t3h b32t 27ud10 3V4H!!!!"?

It doesn't, but it doesn't matter, this topic isn't devoted to what developer first comes to mind when you think "RPG", it's about Bioware and the direction they seem to be heading.

And they do seem to be heading towards a much more "mainstram" audience. Look no further then the Mass Effect series to see that. Each installation seems to be getting simpler and simpler, not that that's such a bad thing for some people, but I tend to like more complexity.

I've begun to grow weary of the formula: Cut Scene - Fight - Corridor - Cut Scene - Corridor - Fight - Cut Scene

I find Skyrim's relative lack of cut scenes refreshing and ambitious.

Stats are fine, in fact I quite enjoy more diverse and complex stat systems. However I think the "RPG" genre will be classed more by playstyle than its mechanics, as those mechanics are becoming common in a variety of other genres.

I hate when that formula just drags on, that's really the main reason why I'm avoiding Mass Effect 3 altogether.

Oblivion didn't have Cutscenes, nor did Morrowind before it. Fallout 3 didn't either, nor does New Vegas after the opening cinematic.

I think he was referring to games in general, not Bethesda products.

Even so, it's not like it's new or something that Bethesda's never done before. And it's not like Bethesda are the only ones either, VALVe seems to hate them just as much.

The dialogue zoom-in cut scenes, while not preplanned in a pattern like most other games, had a similar effect by pausing the action.

I'm interested to see whether Skyrim's lack of cut scenes will result in a more immersive feeling. At the very least, it will be a change of pace.

It doesn't matter what you or I call it, does it? Fact is, they cut out the bits that made those games true RPGs, this is especially glaring in the case of DA2. It was not "more fun". It was stupid. You can only enjoy hitting the 'R' key during fights for so long. Sure, it's nice and mindless, and doesn't require a lot of mental effort, which is what the mainstream audience likes, but it had nothing to do with improvement or taking out frustrating aspects and everything to do with simplifying and dumbing down, to reach the biggest audience possible.




But why is the cost of an average A-list title so high? Because of all the man hours invested in telling a story? Writing dialogue? You think that's what takes so much money? No, what takes so much money is flashy graphics and nifty trailers and hiring big shot voice actors. THAT's what costs so much money: appealing to the Need for Speed crowd, who gripe that the dragons don't look cool enough and name their character aragron158 or dracomalfoi666. Those people want simple but shiny games. An engaging, challenging game is cheap to make, but a shiny one isn't. Games cost so much to make because the companies want to appeal to a broader audience and rake in more money - and sure enough, they'll probably make more money off a hideously expensive title. But the argument that it's not financially viable to make a 'true' RPG is completely wrong.



Hate to break it to you, but modern companies don't want you to like their game, they want you to buy their game. You liking it is only a requirement for them to be able to make you buy their next one. Sure, they'll paint a pretty picture to the outside world and bang on about how they care for their fanbase, but it's sales talk. Games are no longer a passion, they're a business - nothing more.

I'd hardly call what happens when you talk to people a "cutscene", although that's not to so that I'm not happy that the world won't magically freeze when initiating conversation. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TalkingIsAFreeAction no more?

Now to see who I can svcker in with that link. :ninja: