My personal take:
No, older games were more creative in how they presented the game, because they didn't have the graphical capabilities that modern systems do.
I dont see how better graphical capabilities restrict creativity. I do, however generally also believe the good older games felt more creative. I think this is due to two reasons, the first is the smaller team, smaller teams seem to be able to put more heart into something instead of "comissioned" games. And also, because the ideas used were more original and fresh at the time.
Modern games seem to be glitz over story.
A game is not a book, it is not reliant on a story, and doesnt need one at all. This point seems purely subjective. Eg for me, I have no problem with glitzing over the story.
If the strength of your story, characters, and world outweigh the flaws, you have a good game.
This is also subjective. For me, I dont think any level of brilliant story or characters could outweigh any significan game flaws. It is the gameplay that the player spends 90% of the time dealing with. If this 90% is flawed...
As much as I agree with what you said here, my biggest problem is that Spore also failed to deliver on its most basic promise. I didn't really feel like I had shaped anything about my species beyond its appearance. Sure, I got to make it a meat eater, I got to make it aggressive, but these are the thinnest shell of what I had created. I gave my species wings it didn't use, I gave it poison spitters it didn't use. Why didn't I have the tribe of ultra-violent flying poison spitting bad-asses I had imagined?
This was the issue with spore for me too. I can deal with the cartoonish graphics, and the lack of adherence to evolution. But many changes felt like they did nothing, and had no effect whatsoever. As fun as messing around with the creature creator is, once it leaves the creature creator, it seems all sort of pointless.
One of the core parts of RPGs, IMO, is the separation of character and player.
Personally, I
Dont like this. I would rather have some feel that I
am my character, rather than some force pushing him around. I think RPG's should aim for the integration of the character and player, not the other way around.
and I, as the player, should have them highlighted for me.
I always particularly disliked this element. I dont want stuff to glow in my face, its completely immersion breaking for me.
So yes, he's got a completely valid point when he shows you how Fallout 1 had really deep and involved conversation trees that actually reacted to what sort of character you were.
In regards to "old games are better", I don't honostly see how this is a "completely" valid point. Personally valid,yes, but not completely. For example what if someone wasnt interested in those conversation trees? Or diddn't like the concept of a conversation "tree"? Or wasnt interested in a "conversation" with some random simulated person at all?
they focused everything on making the game for the XBox 360 player who will play Skyrim for a week.
I think its a bit unfair to make the claim that most XBox 360 players of Skyrim will only play it for a week. Everyone I know has been playing for much longer than that.
All text was the same, completely regardless of what kind of character you were trying to play, which runs completely counter to the core idea of Elder Scrolls, which is that you were a total blank slate into which you could pour your own idea of what sort of character you wanted to be.
This is something that I always disliked about the ES games. They seem mostly unresponsive to my character. Even a simple acknowledgemen of my race/class would have been nice. But I find this problem applied to Morrowind, as well as Oblivion and Skyrim. They only occasionally reference your character.
The real problem here isn't so much "new things suck" as it is "AAA games that are developed for appeal to the widest audience possible tend to lack all game depth".
Some might counter this and say that if so many people bought the game, and buy the expansions, and buy the DLC, and etc, then they must be enjoying it, and that the AAA games must have done something right. I understand the awesomeness of personal appeal but...
by selling no less than 10 million units in the first week of release alone, and are going to do that on promos alone, not good game play or developing a dedicated user base.
claiming that 10 million people bought (and enjoy) a game that lacks game play is a bit of a stretch, without invoking the "sheeple" argument to invalidate their clear enjoyment of the game.
(this applies not just to games) I have always found that smaller groups (and individuals, eg Toady) have the highest potential, because of their ability to accurately and precisely craft a work of art. But to be honost most of it is shit (its the stuff you never see). But some of it is brilliant. With large AAA groups, they tend to have a higher average but lower potential, as each person is creating something not so-much from their own imagination, but off a story bord/diagram/sheet-music/whatever.
But I dont see how it is possible to declare that old games are definetely better than new games. This always seems to fault on the "sheeple" argument. For personal opionion, of course. But as for trying to "prove" that old games are better, I dont understand.