Article: What I want in a CRPG

What I'd Like to See in an "Old School" CRPG is an interesting article I found while doing my daily, after work, jaunt around the interwebz. It's written by the guy who wrote the book:Dungeons and Desktops: The History of Computer Role-playing Games and in the article he makes some fairly astute points on the current state of CRPGs. I'm personally a fan of this quote, "I want to be the story, not have it told to me!"

I found it to be a pretty good read and it gives some insight into what old farts like me are looking for in a RPG.

I think that CRPG is a senseless term. I don't know of any RPG that isn't on the PC, nor do I consider most CRPGs to be RPGs, but this is all semantics.

Establishing a party-driven system (i.e. controlling other beings besides yourself) defeats the whole purpose of role-playing. I don't wish for complexity in combat, leave that for strategy games.

Agreed with the narrative part. Having a good narrative isn't fundamental to a good RPG. Immersion is.

interesting read, but most of the "wants" aren't that important to me considering role-playing. or, more precisely, they're are nice to have and that's that.

come to think of it, I don't really "want" anything from a CRPGs; I just enjoy something more than others when I see them in a game.

what I enjoy the most is meaningful choice-consequence role-playing, correlating to aligment, cIass, and attributes.

While he did miss some ponts that I want to see more off, those are good points, especially this

Give us a chance to savor that before upping the ante again. I want to be in leather and rags killing rats and spiders with blunt objects for at least 12 hours before I've moved up to orcs. And for God's sake, if you have my level 1 heroes killing a dragon, I'm going to wipe my butt with your cloth map. Well, maybe my friend's cloth map.

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The intro mission in Guild Wars 2 is downright offensive in that you a green character manages to face off a huge elemental, gigantic worm, a huge statue, a giant golem and actually live to tell the tale. Sure you had some help, but in the beginning of the game I was strong enough to fend off against waves of centaurs and eventually fight a big elemental and do some significant damage on him.

Agree with most everything in the article. The gold box games I am especially fond of, and Pool of Radiance is one of the first RPG's I ever played. I've always enjoyed RPG's that didn't hold your hand and gave more freedom to player to make their own story. Exploration, rich character/party development, great turn based combat...this is the stuff that provides the greatest game experience.

I find newer stuff like Dragon Age, The Witcher, and other RPG's to be utterly boring. To me they are nothing more than being led by the hand from one set piece to the other...and once there you get your 3-4 'choices' and watch the story unfold like one of those 'choose your own adventure' books.

Suppose this generation of gamer likes to be told stories (in cinematic fashion) rather than create their own.

Oh, and yeah, I totally agree on his point regarding the spikey-hair-wide-eyed style being awful. I gave up on the Final Fantasy series due to how goofy it looks and how corny it's characters have become.

Well.. no, i would want a decent main story with a ton of well written side quests if it's a open-world environment bubbling with cities and detail. Though i should start playing Might & Magic 6 (that seems to be one of the games his view is based on) now that i'm finished with Arcanum. Heard it's pretty damn good, and there are a decent deal of mods to improve it technically.

I'm mildly excited about the future, given Kickstarter and Obsidian. I think there's going to be a new golden age of RPGs, it would be nice for the genre to finally stop devolving so dramatically. It's ben diluted to oblivion so much so that we got people asking what RPGs are in gaming forums, for God's sake.

I feel increasingly ashamed of ever associating myself with the "RPG" genre these days. Hell, even the final fantasy 7 or diablow fandom back in mid-90s weren't as disgusting and humiliating to be associated with as the herp me plays a roles games derp/I don't feel IMMERSED enough populace of today.

Well.. no, i would want a decent main story with a ton of well written side quests if it's a open-world environment bubbling with cities and detail. Though i should start playing Might & Magic 6 (that seems to be one of the games his view is based on) now that i'm finished with Arcanum. Heard it's pretty damn good, and there are a decent deal of mods to improve it technically.

I'm mildly excited about the future, given Kickstarter and Obsidian. I think there's going to be a new golden age of RPGs, it would be nice for the genre to finally stop devolving so dramatically. It's ben diluted to oblivion so much so that we got people asking what RPGs are in gaming forums, for God's sake.

Lucianu

While a good story is nice, the issue I have with stories is that 99% of them are absolute garbage.

Seriously, I think most games would be better off without a story or a minimalistic story and spend the time and resources on other stuff instead, such as the gamepaly. Instead of every game trying to tack on a story and narrative to their game, they should ask themselves "does this game really need a story?".

That said, some games do highly benefit from having a story such as planescape torment and several adventure games such as Gabriel Knight. But these are in the minority.