Oh, I completely agree. Do you think then, that Bioware's games don't have that great of writing/story?

Nope, I believe one reason Bethesda successfully makes these games is they are far branched out on their own compared to others.

Many developers see making a consecutive game in a 3+ year process as suicide or waste of money, they want to spit out games under 2 years or less.
Bethesda has the advantage of working with a concrete long lore, where as others have to start from scratch almost.
If you think about it games like Bethesda are actually being made already.. MMOs. Open world (some),Quest, Combat, Magic, Roleplaying.... Bethesda seems to turn it upside down and make it all about 1 person instead of thousands.

I only see two dominant, successful, kings of open world single player

The GTA series and the Elder Scrolls.

Though I believe within these next years, seeing as how massively popular and successful the series has become, other companies may see worth wile in making similar games.

Two Worlds 1 made sure that it's sequel was never going to see a decent fan-base; Two Worlds 1 was very poorly done and was always extremely unpolished. It is in no way worth Bethedsa's attention, let alone to be considered actual competition.

That said, Two Worlds did have a lot of great ideas in the game that were poorly implemented. That is the only thing Two Worlds had/has going for it because the gameplay was bad, voice-acting sounded like they just handed the script to random people and told them to read this in the worst examples of an imitation of an accent, and the story was very poorly presented to the point where I had to struggle to get through two hours. The world looked great and there were several poorly-implemented, but great ideas and that is it.

This only true now that Troikia is defunct. Arx Fatalis was pretty much exactly like Morrowind, and was a direct competitor with it. They were planning a sequel, but they went bankrupt or something.

Pleasantly surprised to see Gothic 3 come up so much. I absolutely loved/hated that game. Hated only because the bugs ruined what could've been a great, maybe even favorite game. Ironically, my first thought when I started playing Skyrim was "This! This is what Gothic 3 was going for. This is what it could have, should have been. I also played Two Worlds ( 1 and 2) I did enjoy them ( other than the dialog/ voice acting) ,but IMHO they are no match for any TES game. Risen starts out great, but lost more and more steam the longer I played.

They have decent enjoyable writing. Their characterization of characters is applaudable (best in romance haha) but for story itself it's, decent. Certainly not to AAA status as everyone proclaims.

Personally I find the story of Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos and its expansion The Frozen Throne more compelling than any of BioWare's recent titles. This includes KotOR, I would say Baldur's Gate but I haven't had the time or will to play it.

You is with me, I felt way more connected to CJ history than I felt to Niko history. I also really liked the country music radio.

"All my exes live in Texas and we shall see in Tenesee!" (Or something like that)

Not really. No other game really competes with a Beth game.

The thing is, :tes: is an IP similar to 40k, they create a universe for you to role play in. Some events are a definite happening, but its more like a theme for a sandbox, sort of.

No. Sadly there is no direct competition for Bethesda for games like TES. There is barely even any indirect competition. This is something that irks me incredibly when people say "hur go play something else hur hur, i poopied my pants hur."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5BoaLR51OA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAjJ6TSv9sc&feature=related



Open world RPG. Won't be as good as skyrim, but I still hope its good.

I think any game that has the following would qualify:

1. HUGE open world that you can fully explore from the beginning of the game or within the first few levels.
2. You can "interact" with almost anything within the world. This means you can grab anything (loot), talk to anybody, attack anybody, etc.
3. It has to be an RPG or something close to the definition of RPG. Basically it has a combination of some of these things: skills/attributes/perks, inventory/loot, spells/abilities, quests, etc.

Some games like RDR are somehow close to the definition but not 100%. RDR has a big open world that you can explore from the start. It also has quests, loot, etc. However, the game is somehow limited with regards to "interaction". Loot is limited and you can only talk to certain key characters. It is also pretty limited with regards to character development. Also, although RDR's is a big game, it is not in the same level as a bethesda game (at least that's my opinion).

I'll have to say Risen as well, it was an excellent game.
I had copious amounts of fun with the combat, playing with a one-handed axe and a shield. It was difficult but rewarding, if you messed up it was your fault and not the game's and it made this abundantly clear to you.

Timing shield blocks and attacks in order to maximize damage and minimize the major dump the enemies could throw at you.
Juggling enemy targets, parrying blows from multiple directions, reading enemy movements in order to be able to get a hit on one of those bloody wankers before they slice your [censored] off and offer them as collectibles to nearest gnome. Damn, those things were adorable too.

Can't forget to mention that it was gorgeous. Harbor Town at sunset/dawn. Beauty in exorbitant quantities.

Open world rpg. Again There aren't many comming, only ones off the top of my head are Amalur and Risen2.

TES pretty solidly dominates that genre.

Fable













jk jk jk jk jk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvgSGxNTADI&feature=g-hist Yes, they went bankrupted after some of their games were huge failures, partly due to the fact they were unable to sign any new deals with publishers willing to release a new game for them despite them having a somewhat nice 3D engine right there.

The Open-World Open-Ended Medieval Fantasy Sandbox Western RPG genre is somewhat small.

or just Openworld RPG

and yes they are rare.

bioware, mass effect is the futuristic TES, dragon age is meh but lots of people like it, not totally the same but its sorta similar. Also CD project with The witcher its sorta similar as well.

No, none of those games are open-world :brokencomputer:

All of that is true and it's still the best game I've ever played. In no other game could you do this:

http://www.timdenee.com/bronzemurder.html

or this:

http://www.timdenee.com/oilfurnace/

You forgot ones with [censored] fantastic lore.

If you were to ask what is the difference between mass effect and dragon age, there is of course the shooting, but the story of mass effect beats the [censored] snot out of dragon age.
Mass Effect I would put closer to a direct competitor to Skyrim in that it's story and universe is the only other game that comes close to being as compelling as the elder scrolls.

If skyrim were not a TES game and had some lame story and universe, I'm not even sure that I would have bought it. I'm certainly not buying that kingdom of amalur, because I don't care about its races, I don't care about its history, and from how the producer introduces the game it apparently isn't very interesting as he points out "but you can skip the story!". I know thats not being fair, but after watching 20 minutes of that game I still know nothing about it's lore or history. Also it looks like wow.

Would say bioware and blizzard/activison, but both are going more and more co-op so not really anymore eventually beth will go that way too cause it will be a profit thing.

I think the Two Worlds developer has potential if they keep at it. Two Worlds II is a decent game but it's not any real competition. I kinda got kicked in the gourd with TW II as I played about 100 hours and then later did a reinstall of windows and forgot to back up my saves... ouch. I'd have to start over. :/ Also haven't tried the expansion. Maybe they'll grow and improve things.... I actually look forward to anything else they may come up with.

I thought Risen was bleaghish. Once I got to that outlaw camp and talked to them, I only liked the one guy and the rest were a bunch of n'wahs. I just wanted to kill them all. I enjoyed kicking the crap out of that big jerky guy but after that I started to lose interest. Game has some nice stuff in it but there's enough that annoys me that I got turned off. meh.

The controls and UI in Gothic made me want to not play it. Then Mud appeared and that was about the end of that for me. I didn't try the 2nd and avoided the 3rd one. Not much in the series interests me.

Never.

Create the massive lists of sacrifices requires to implement a half-assed co-op experience.

Look at list, look at gain, delete co-op.

How can you play that game for 100 hours? It's a confusing, boring, mess. It's not even worth $4 that Hollywood Video was charging to BUY it.