I’ve always had a soft spot for paper role playing games. In high school, my friends and I all traded books around for various Palladium games, and spent hours generating Rifts characters. We tried Dungeons & Dragons a few times, and experimented with the Star Wars RPG, and even read a few GURPS books.
But we never played. We heard some of our friends describe wildly creative (if crude) D&D games, and we tried to run our own. The problem was that we were a bunch of players with no Game Master. None of us really had the imagination and dedication to create a scenario, and using pre-built scenarios always felt like cheating (not to mention costing money).
The other challenge was that it was nearly impossible to round up the right people. It takes a particular blend of personalities to make a role-playing group work. You’ve got to have a highly creative and detail-oriented game master, and several players who want to actually role-play, not just play fight scenes. Somehow, we always found ourselves a few people short of this ideal group. We had two or three good players at any given time, but never a dedicated game master. And if one of us took over the GM role, we found we didn’t have enough players.
This is one reason why I was so thrilled towards the end of high school and the first years at college when decent role playing games finally started to get made for the computer. There had been RPGs on computer before, but they were like Zork or Wizardry, with little or no graphics, and an incredibly limited playing field. Endless stone corridors with no story to speak of didn’t exactly fire the imagination.
This all changed in the mid-90s, when games like Baldur’s Gate and Diablo started coming out, I realized that I could finally play RPGs, because the computer was going to take care of the difficult task of managing the rules and dice and storyline. I could finally play RPGs without having to depend on assembling that elusive group of like-minded gamers.
The problem with computer RPGs is that they have to craft a fine balance between the detail-oriented rules and keeping a streamlined user interface. Baldur’s Gate was the first of the D&D games to come even close to striking this balance, but there was still a lot of terminology and arcane information to master, and the entire fighting system was based on pausing the action, which retained the accuracy to the rules, but lost the flavor of the combat.
Diablo went to the opposite extreme. Any elements of the RPG that were left in were so brutally streamlined that it lost the flavor of the RPG entirely, and turned into a click-fest action game. It was fun, and the combat went nice and fast, but you felt little or no connection to your character, and the only real growth you experiences was getting better armor and weapons.
This balance is a tricky thing, and games that are coming out today are still struggling with it. Each new RPG incorporates the best elements of all its predecessors, while trying to add some new tricks to enhance the experience. You can still find games that opt for more streamlining and less accuracy in games like Fable, or the opposite end of the spectrum with great accuracy to the paper RPG world, but more cumbersome interfaces like Morrowind.
I’ve been playing a lot of these old-school RPGs lately, and when I compare them to what I feel is the ultimate balance in computer RPGs, Knights of the Old Republic, I think it’s incredible how far these games have come, and I get excited for the future. So, to continue my game review project, over the next few weeks I’ll be posting more reviews of computer RPG games.
First, I totally understand and sympathize with trying to build/find “the perfect group.” We game fairly regularly back home, but I haven’t even tried to find a group at any of the places I’ve been stationed while on active duty. I’m really looking forward to getting back to it.
Second, KoTOR is one of the best examples, but it’s not the only one. Morrowind was a nice, open-ended game that let you do what you like within a broad spectrum, and games like Fable show that they’re at least TRYING. A lot of people really dig Neverwinter Nights, which uses the D&D ruleset but is much more open-ended than BG; additionally, it comes with the tools to build your own modules, and as a result there are a large number of really well-done adventures available to download and play–plus you can play with your friends, either as a player or running the show.
Of course, I have an Athlon 700, so I know this only by what everyone else tells me, but it might be worth looking into.
Lastly, I was toying with the notion of building a review site (books, movies, games, magazines, restaurants–everything that I consume), either around the drupal engine I’ve been using, or perhaps with something else. If I were to actually get off my ass and do so, could I hit you up to write one occasionally? I don’t have any clear idea of parameters for how I would want things to go, but I think it would be fun to build something more collaborative than my current site, which is really all about me. =)
Sig
review site: Hell yeah, count me in. :)
neverwinter nights: Yeah, I love that game (currently replaying it), and it makes sense that you think of it when you think of KotoR, since it’s by the same guys (Bioware).
Have you actually been playing Diablo? I still have my copy of Diablo II if you’re curious about that – though if I remember correctly it is fairly similar to the first one.
Something tells me I should chime in on this. I’m not sure what I can add, though. I agree – computer RPGs are fun, but some are better than others.
I’m personally of the opinion that there’s not a perfect balance between Diablo & pen/paper RPGs that games are trying to reach. Not every game draws on _all_ of its predecessors – I doubt Blizzard would feel that adding a KotOR story to Diablo III would be an improvement, for example. Rather, every game is trying to define a cohesive experience that appeals to gamers who enjoy that type of game. Jade Empire has a vastly simplified combat system that appealed to some gamers and turned off others.
Ultimately, I feel the quality of an RPG is defined by how well it implements its goals, rather than by what type of RPG it is. Neverwinter Nights, for example, tried to combine the detailed rules of D&D with a more action-based interface and ended up being a weird hybrid that disappointed me on two levels. My personal favorite RPGs are Baldur’s Gate II, Diablo II, and World of Warcraft, because they’re perfect examples of their particular genres.
You’ll have to let me know what you think of Dungeon Siege II.
– J3stAr
Dungeon Siege II? Never heard of it. ;)
The problem that I have with Diablo (especially Vol. II) is that there is no character evolving part of a roleplaying game that you usually have in pen&paper games and which was implemented in Baldur’s Gate (SoA was the best) and of course in my beloved Planescape Torment. Diablo has no such things (collecting shiny items is not character development)
I quite liked playing Diablo II during multiplayer sessions, but it does not offer adventurous role-playing (they call it action “RPG”) which make singleplayer games fun for me.
The high hopes I held within Neverwinter Nights (offering a story, combat and adventure) were dissapointed. After all, Diablo had a better story, although I was not able to interact.
I got rid of NWN and played Morrowind for weeks. Although it was quite tedious at the beginning it was way better at developing a personalized character (leveling up was really good and offered a good alternative to the P&P approach presented in the D&D rules by NWN).
I wondered whether the expansion sets for NWN or the NWN-based KOTOR-series are any better regarding the character and adventure parts than the original NWN was.
I do not need any more Diablo-clones and I perceived NWN being very close to Diablo (I’d rather paly Diablo instead). Does Dungeon Siege 2 offer more than the first part? Well, whatever, maybe I’ll buy a new computer someday and play Oblivion or buy the complete Morrowing edition.
I never tried MMORPGS, but aren’t they a lot like Diablo on battle.net?