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Why Twitch Gamers Suck at Neverwinter Nights 2 News

Discussion in 'Game/SP News & Comments' started by chevalier, Sep 7, 2005.

  1. chevalier

    chevalier Knight of Everfull Chalice ★ SPS Account Holder Veteran

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    There's been a new article posted at NWN2News, going retrospective on the development of the cRPG genre back in the nineties. The author is obviously critical of changes attributed to the bad influence of the RTS (real time strategy) and the Action genre. Here's a bit of what he says:

    I also want to put equal blame on the CRPG developers of the time. Rather then try to innovate and wrap their hands around the new technologies they either kept the old mind sets and formulas and thus went under (Sir Tech), abandoned the market (SSI) or caved in to the pressure for more action and the “Action-RPG” hybrid was born. (Most recent example is Dungeon Siege). This dilutes the RPG aspect to the level of little more then basic stats and number of uber l00t items.
    By the late 90’s the market was dominated by FPSers and RTS games. I do not recall one AAA CRPG until Bioware took the CRPG market off life support and gave a new chance with Baldur’s Gate and it’s follow up titles.

    But by this time the massive appeal and influence of the FPS/RTS crowd could not be denied. Some development houses were able to merge the two genres successfully. Deus Ex and Thief come to mind. But they were sadly the exception rather then the rule.

    Personally, I believe that a long roll of stats is not what makes a roleplaying game. Roleplaying is not about numbers. There is often far more decent roleplaying in freeforms than in strict rule-based games. Of course, it's nice to have a large variety of character advancement options but into the more detail we go, the more in fact we put the character in a certain closed space. The detailed stats become all-inclusive and exclusive at the same time, leaving not much room for imagination, let alone flexibility. Of course, too much hack and slash isn't good for an RPG (unless you're into such a type of campaign, which I sometimes find enjoyable, as well), neither are endless turns and rolls and columns of stats.

    Read the whole thing at NWN2News and feel invited to voice your own opinion.
     
    chevalier, Sep 7, 2005
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