Mass Effect 2 teaser

[frogbeastegg]

Weren't PC RPGs in heavy decline before the console crossovers began? That's certainly how I remember it. BGII was a high point in more than one way. Mid-tier brands like Fallout went dormant, independent titles all but vanished, new titles from the established RPG houses became fewer, big names in the genre went out of business or changed focus, and everyone was screaming about internet multiplayer and 3D everything being the future. It was the most depressing time of my PC gaming life.

I don't buy that unvoiced text went the way of the dodo because of the console market. Morrowind had an xbox version also and it was one of the xbox's best selling titles overall. Many of the mid to late PS2 era JRPGs had reams and reams of text and very little voice acting, and the older ones had no voice acting. The PS1 era JRPGs were often a badly translated book on a disc.

I blame it on the drive to be cinematic and grab the attention of the non-hardcore crowd, same as the relentless rush for more, bigger, better faster graphics, FMV and CGI cutscenes, and other gloss. "Over 1,000,000 lines of text!" doesn't have that same marketing ring as "Over 10,000 fully voiced lines, including [famous name here] as the narrator!"

ME has one of the worst combat system of any recent RPG, and that is directly related to this gamepad problem.

I liked ME's combat and found it by preferable to many recent RPGs, including (especially) all of Bethesda's offerings

I also loved KOTOR and many of the other games which must sit in your console doldrums, just as I like many of the old PC exclusives. Compared to the likes of Neverwinter Nights 1 they were far better singleplayer experiences

I suppose I'm a true RPG omnivore. I'll play and appreciate all types provided they offer a strong singleplayer.

I meant the companions. I liked them, but feel like they lacked the depth of some of the Dragon Age companions. I played ME when it came out, so my memory of it might be a little fuzzy, but I recall not having as many dialogue options with the companions as were available in Dragon Age. Additionally, I liked it when my companions talked to each other a little when they were in my party, like in Dragon Age. I don't remember that happening in ME.

You are correct. The party members only chatted with each other during the elevator sequences.

The ME bunch were more sketches than in-depth portraits I felt. Well presented, well voiced, given personality, granted a tightly designed personal story arc, and then not given much beyond that. There's nothing like the whimsical conversations about pigeons or socks that you can find in DA:O and other, older games. I've long suspected that the party members in KOTOR had more dialogue than those of ME. Those of DA:O must have 2-3 times as much.

[TinCow]

Weren't PC RPGs in heavy decline before the console crossovers began? That's certainly how I remember it. BGII was a high point in more than one way. Mid-tier brands like Fallout went dormant, independent titles all but vanished, new titles from the established RPG houses became fewer, big names in the genre went out of business or changed focus, and everyone was screaming about internet multiplayer and 3D everything being the future. It was the most depressing time of my PC gaming life.

I don't remember any decline until after the consoles came out, though that does coincide somewhat with BG2. RPG gaming was strong throughout the 1990s. The early years had some of the best RPGs ever made, including Ultima VII, Betrayal at Krondor, and the best of the SSI gold box games (i.e. Pool of Radiance, the Krynn series). The Might and Magic series was going strong then too, peaking with Might and Magic VI in 1998. System Shock showed up in 1994. Personally, I consider the late 1990s to be the best years for all RPGs. 1996 was Daggerfall. 1997 was Fallout. 1998 was Baldur's Gate and Fallout 2 (and MM6). 1999 was PST and System Shock 2. 2000 was BG2.

The real console crossover began in 2000/2001, when the sixth generation (XBox, PS2, Dreamcast, Gamecube) came on the market. When those sales figures started coming in, a lot of game devs instantly started migrating in that direction. Morrowind's port to the XBox was in 2002, only 2 years after BG2. 2002 was also the year of NWN, which was the LAST Bioware title that wasn't available on the console. So, unless you want to consider the short period (about a year, 2001) between BG2 and Morrowind to be a slump, I don't see one.

Personally, I find the entire Aurora engine to be a slump for Bioware. KOTOR was good despite being on that engine, not because of it. The Aurora engine was inherently limiting and made games incredibly linear. Look at the list of games I made above, and you'll see that practically all of them had huge areas you could explore and gave a lot of freedom to go where you wanted and do what you wanted. That freedom is what made the games so interesting. The Ultima and (some of the) SSI gold box games are the perfect examples. They had very linear storylines, but you didn't have to spend all your times following those storylines, you could just go out and explore and that was a lot of the fun of it. In a way, GTA 3/4/etc. are far better RPGs than NWN/KOTOR/etc just because of their freedom.

Perhaps it was a divine confluence of bad decision making (see Ultima IX and every M&M after VI), a few buggy game releases (see Vampire: Bloodlines, TOEE), new flashy game engines that limited freedom (see Aurora), along with the push to consoles... but the RPG market took a nosedive after the sixth generation consoles were released in 2000/2001 and it's still struggling to recover almost 10 years later.

I don't buy that unvoiced text went the way of the dodo because of the console market. Morrowind had an xbox version also and it was one of the xbox's best selling titles overall. Many of the mid to late PS2 era JRPGs had reams and reams of text and very little voice acting, and the older ones had no voice acting. The PS1 era JRPGs were often a badly translated book on a disc.

I blame it on the drive to be cinematic and grab the attention of the non-hardcore crowd, same as the relentless rush for more, bigger, better faster graphics, FMV and CGI cutscenes, and other gloss. "Over 1,000,000 lines of text!" doesn't have that same marketing ring as "Over 10,000 fully voiced lines, including [famous name here] as the narrator!"

I'm sure that's part of it, but my friends at Bethsoft told me that they specifically switched from text to voice dialog to appeal better to the console market. Morrowind on the Xbox doesn't really count, because it wasn't designed to be a console game when it was created, so the peculiarities of the console market had no impact on it. Oblivion was the start of Bethsoft designing games specifically for consoles, with the PC version as an afterthought. Voice acting was like an arms race in the gaming industry after the sixth gen consoles came out. Once a few companies had done it, everyone had to do it or they looked really old and obsolete and it impacted their sales. So, they all adopted it even though the technical and financial limitations of doing it greatly impacted the quality of the games.

I also loved KOTOR and many of the other games which must sit in your console doldrums, just as I like many of the old PC exclusives. Compared to the likes of Neverwinter Nights 1 they were far better singleplayer experiences

Actually, I loved KOTOR. It's one of the few RPGs I played during that time that I really liked. It had all the flaws of the others, but Bioware did such a stupendously good job with the storyline that it was fun to play despite the flaws.

[frogbeastegg]

[cut out for length]

I remember a decline before the console shift because that's why I ended up picking up an xbox and KOTOR. I was that starved for RPGs I couldn't resist a cheap supermarket deal, and the PC release of the game was set months away. Back then I was cursing the xbox for stealing PC games in general, and particularly for stealing my RPG. When it comes to looking back across the RPGs I've played, there's a massive empty gap between Throne of Baal and KOTOR. Other than Morrowind the only game I can really think of which occupies it is the PC port of a (pretty good) PS2 launch era RPG named Summoner, made by Volition. The awful SP reports and a bad demo put me off NWN until the final expansion appeared. The gap between Baal and KOTOR's European release is nearly 3 years. After KOTOR games like Vampire: Bloodlines start appearing in my memory.

We're agreeing in a roundabout way about the adoption of full voice acting; someone had done it and then everyone else had to in order to keep up with the latest gloss. It was another of those irksome candy decisions which periodically inflict themselves on the industry. My point is that the changeover didn't come about because the console players didn't want to read; they had been reading similar amounts of text to PC gamers for years, and they'd been rating those games highly and buying them in high numbers. I believe things would have taken the same course without RPGs moving to consoles; once the bulk of dialogue is voiced any unvoiced dialogue is criticised, and voicework is expense so the number of lines must go down.

As far as the Aurora engine goes I can only sit here like this ->

GTA didn't have much freedom IMO. Yup, another statement which makes me want to use that creeping smiley to imply me sidling away epecting to have a boot thrown at me. GTA4 and series spin-off Bully gave you a choice between doing plot mission X to advance the pre-set story, or ignoring it to do a range of pre-set and pre-planned side missions. Eventually you needed to do some plot missions in order to unlock more side quests. Or you can ignore both types of missions and run around doing random things which don't have much impact.

Pen and paper RPGs are the only way you'd get anything I'd comfortably label freedom or actual roleplaying. In computer games it's always varying degrees of predefined choice.




Maybe the arena should get a 'state of RPGs' thread?

[a completely inoffensive name]

I will post a longer reply later, but I just want to say that if we are going to talk about the GTA series being better because of more freedom then we should replace GRA 3 and 4 with Vice City and (especially) San Andreas.

[frogbeastegg]

I have created an RPGs: The State of Play thread so the discussion can continue without totally derailing this topic.

I'm a bit pushed for time now so I can't add anything else for the moment. Perhaps someone else can get the new topic rolling?

[Krusader]

Gamer.no listed some voice actors in Mass Effect 2, unfortunately with no direct source, but seems to correlate nicely with the voices I've heard so far.

Martin Sheen - Cerberus leader
Yvonne Strahovski - Miranda Lawson, another Cerberus operative.
Seth Green - Joker
Keith David - Admiral David Anderson
Tricia Helfer - Normandy (the spaceship VI most likely)
Carrie-Ann Moss - Aria T'Loak, bandit leader.
Shohreh Aghdashloo - Admiral Shala'Raan vas Tonbay
Michael Hogan - Captain Bailey (silly site had spelled it Mikael at first)
Adam Baldwin - Kal'Reegar
Michael Dorn - Gatatog Uvenk.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Nice find!

Adam Baldwin - Kal'Reegar

[Scienter]

Mikael Hogan - Captain Bailey

Awesome!

Adam Baldwin - Kal'Reegar

I wonder what Kal Reegar is. W/ Jayne as his voice, is this a romance option for the female PC?

[Krusader]

Sentinel video in case someone missed it:

Sentinel Video. Direct Link

Might be a choice for second playthrough.

[Monk]

Sentinel video in case someone missed it:

Sentinel Video. Direct Link

Might be a choice for second playthrough.

It looks like they've combined a lot of talent choices across the board (for all classes). With luck, this means playing the hybrid classes will be less of a hassle in point distribution and much more fun.

[Mailman653]

I read or saw somewhere that the game has a sort of lockers now where you can swap equpiment while in a level. The downside is, say you start the mission with a sniper rifle, untill you find one of these lockers, your stuck with the sniper rifle.

As a vanguard I loved using my shotgun for most things but sometimes I had to swap out for my pistol when I needed some precise aiming. But with this locker system, seems like when I want to get the job done, I need to rely on someone else assuming they are still alive to take the shot.

[al Roumi]

RE: Sentinel

It looks like they've combined a lot of talent choices across the board (for all classes). With luck, this means playing the hybrid classes will be less of a hassle in point distribution and much more fun.

I hadn't had the chance to watch that video before. I'm actually quite impressed with the Sentinel -on the the strength of that video anyway.

I'm glad they've allowed the class some basic weapons training beyond pistol (as was in ME -even though it reportedly had the most dps when using Marksman). I'm also interested in the range of new powers -cryo freeze for one sounds useful!

[TinCow]

I remember a decline before the console shift because that's why I ended up picking up an xbox and KOTOR. I was that starved for RPGs I couldn't resist a cheap supermarket deal, and the PC release of the game was set months away. Back then I was cursing the xbox for stealing PC games in general, and particularly for stealing my RPG. When it comes to looking back across the RPGs I've played, there's a massive empty gap between Throne of Baal and KOTOR. Other than Morrowind the only game I can really think of which occupies it is the PC port of a (pretty good) PS2 launch era RPG named Summoner, made by Volition. The awful SP reports and a bad demo put me off NWN until the final expansion appeared. The gap between Baal and KOTOR's European release is nearly 3 years. After KOTOR games like Vampire: Bloodlines start appearing in my memory.

My memory is foggy too. My short chronological list of games from that previous post was based on wikipedia info. I remembered all those games, but had no idea when they were released and had to look over what came out in the 1990s and early 2000s to even make my reply. One of the trends that is noticeable when looking at the 2000s list is that 2000 to 2002 also a massive increase in 'Action RPGs.' In 2000 we get both Diablo 2 and Icewind Dale, as well as System Shock 2 which still can't be properly categorized as either FPS or RPG. 2001 has the Diablo 2 expansion pack, Fallout Tactics, and the Icewind Dale expansion pack 2002 has Divine Divinity, Icewind Dale 2, and Dungeon Siege. That's a pretty big explosion in the Action RPG market, which shows some noticeable distraction from pure RPG development by some of the biggest names in RPG gaming: Black Isle and Interplay. It's certainly significant that Diablo 2 is considered by the world at large to be a RPG, when it's nothing of the sort.

Looking at that now, perhaps I was wrong to blame it all on consoles. Perhaps it was just a 'perfect storm' of a large number of factors hitting the RPG industry at exactly the same time, resulting in a major shift away from the classic gaming systems.

We're agreeing in a roundabout way about the adoption of full voice acting; someone had done it and then everyone else had to in order to keep up with the latest gloss. It was another of those irksome candy decisions which periodically inflict themselves on the industry. My point is that the changeover didn't come about because the console players didn't want to read; they had been reading similar amounts of text to PC gamers for years, and they'd been rating those games highly and buying them in high numbers. I believe things would have taken the same course without RPGs moving to consoles; once the bulk of dialogue is voiced any unvoiced dialogue is criticised, and voicework is expense so the number of lines must go down.

Possibly, though I do have a strong feeling that there was a shift in console gaming itself between the 5th and 6th generations. I have no facts or info of any kind to back up these statements, but I personally feel like the 5th generation of consoles was still part of PC gaming. When the N64 and PS1 were released, I think that most people who owned consoles also did a lot of PC gaming. Back then, I would have called the two industries as complimentary, not competitive. As the PS1 got older, its catalog of games started attracting a more adult audience than it had previously, and I feel like the PS1 in particular really broke open the console market to sections of the population who had never been gamers before. The flood gates then opened with the 6th generation, mainly with the PS2 and XBox, which started popping up in households all over the world that had never been interested in gaming before.

So, I feel like the console population itself shifted at that same time, towards a broader audience and away from the old core of gamers who were very similar to, if not the same group as, PC gamers. Again, I have nothing to back that up though, it's just my own ruminations on the matter.

GTA didn't have much freedom IMO. Yup, another statement which makes me want to use that creeping smiley to imply me sidling away epecting to have a boot thrown at me. GTA4 and series spin-off Bully gave you a choice between doing plot mission X to advance the pre-set story, or ignoring it to do a range of pre-set and pre-planned side missions. Eventually you needed to do some plot missions in order to unlock more side quests. Or you can ignore both types of missions and run around doing random things which don't have much impact.

To be clear, I don't consider the GTA series to be RPGs. I was simply making an observation on the 'exploration of the world' aspect of the series in comparison to classic RPG gaming. GTA is basically a third-person shooter with really large levels, some kind of middle step between the action RPG and the FPS. It's got a lot in common with games like STALKER and FarCry 2, actually. That's another discussion though...

Maybe the arena should get a 'state of RPGs' thread?

I've very much enjoyed this discussion, and I'd be willing to give it a go. I'm sure I can get Whacker to contribute a few rants on the matter as well. I actually feel like there's a lot of room for a directed discussions on several aspects of gaming: RPGs, FPS, Strategy, Consoles, etc. We should probably do one at a time, but it might be fun to do a planned series of threads which are part narrative, part debate, on general gaming trends and issues.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Whatever happens, I want to have Ashley, Garrus, and possibly Wrex back in my squads.