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[Ioric Kittencuddler]

I too dreamed of something like procedurally generated quests, where your NPCs have their memories, feelings, ambitions which drives their actions and creating stories of love, hate, intrigues, revenge... in which you can participate.
I would like to now if something like that is even possible, for starting maybe like test with 10 NPCs which interactions are based on thing i described.

Well it wasn't procedurally generated but the game "The Party" which was being made by the guys who made Facade but seems to have been unable to find funding promised all that other stuff.  Man, it would have been cool to play that game.  Basically you had a bunch of people driven crazy by their own success stuck together at a party and you as the host were supposed to interact with them in large variety of ways.

[Virtz]

I too dreamed of something like procedurally generated quests, where your NPCs have their memories, feelings, ambitions which drives their actions and creating stories of love, hate, intrigues, revenge... in which you can participate.
I would like to now if something like that is even possible, for starting maybe like test with 10 NPCs which interactions are based on thing i described.

We have a game that promises that every what? Two years?

Which game promised it? Closest to it is DF with its legends, nothing comes to that even close.

Oblivion. They promised their AI would be super-awesome and act on its own. They even had this horribly scripted presentation at some E3 as "proof". It turned out worse than the AI in Ultima 7. Nothing on the procedurally generated quests, but still.

Also, you could probably find a similar kind of promise among Peter Molyneux's many promises concerning the Fable games. I personally never listened to him as I came to the conclusion that he's gone senile and it's better to avoid his hype. And I was sort of right, Fable 1 was a pretty enjoyable Hack n' Slasher at the time I came up to with no expectations and thus could enjoy it. A lot of other people were dissapointed because they expected much more due to hype.

[kulik]

I too dreamed of something like procedurally generated quests, where your NPCs have their memories, feelings, ambitions which drives their actions and creating stories of love, hate, intrigues, revenge... in which you can participate.
I would like to now if something like that is even possible, for starting maybe like test with 10 NPCs which interactions are based on thing i described.

We have a game that promises that every what? Two years?

Which game promised it? Closest to it is DF with its legends, nothing comes to that even close.

Oblivion. They promised their AI would be super-awesome and act on its own. They even had this horribly scripted presentation at some E3 as "proof". It turned out worse than the AI in Ultima 7. Nothing on the procedurally generated quests, but still.

Also, you could probably find a similar kind of promise among Peter Molyneux's many promises concerning the Fable games. I personally never listened to him as I came to the conclusion that he's gone senile and it's better to avoid his hype. And I was sort of right, Fable 1 was a pretty enjoyable Hack n' Slasher at the time I came up to with no expectations and thus could enjoy it. A lot of other people were dissapointed because they expected much more due to hype.

I wouldn't believe for a second that a commercial game would have such features. My bets are that sooner or later some indy developer brings something like that. And even that it would be probably just about changing status of NPCs like if let's say NPC1 that a NPC2 is in love with starts to love NPC3, NPC2 will automatically start to hate NPC3. Quite doable, but now to make NPC2 starts to plan his actions...i don't know, that would be pretty complex stuff.

[qwertyuiopas]

In the OP:
The choice of screenshot was terrible. It shows the game, but it doesn't show where the game exceeds most others: That little box that appears on the screen warning you that the character you just killed was important to the main quest in areas you have not finished yet, and that the main quest is now unwinnable, and you should load a previous save unless you don't mind that the main quest is no longer possible. None of that silly plot armour that other games use, if it has stats, the game *will* let you kill it(Maybe one or two exceptions, but not without a good reason), and will *not* force you to restart.

[Charmander]

I'm guessing you're talking about Morrowind, Qwerty, in which case only Yagurm Bagarn and Divath Fyr (and by extension, anyone in Divath's twisty mushroom tower thing) are truly essential if you want to actually survive five minutes past the end of the game, and even then I guess you could just get around the mortal wound thing with CE Restore Health.

[Captain Alchatron]

I'm of the opinion things haven't changed much from their original course.  Sure, there are some games that sacrifice plot and the like for uppity graphics and repetitive gameplay (CoD comes to mind); but there always have been games with poor plots like that. 

The only reason there are more of these about, as far as I can see, is that the target audience has shifted.  Nowadays game-playing is a lot more widespread and games like CoD are aimed at impressionable young people, who couldn't care less if the plot is bullshit: they're only playing for five minutes of distilled glory.  Please don't shoot me down for raging at the yoofs; I am one myself after all.

I do disagree with their choices... but I still think there are games filling our niche too; you just have to look harder, as in the case of DF and other indie games.

I think asking so much of games like WoW is pushing it a bit.  WoW has an admirably well-made plot for its size, even if they do seem to sully it by mixing in idiotic manga storylines or making stuff up purely so they can release expansions on time. 

They aren't aiming solely to please RPG players: more players who'll grind or PvP lots for a tenner a month so they can get the happy feelings they crave.  I don't look down on people like that; I'm just suggesting why gameplay may be a more major focus for mainstream games these days.  Gaming's much more mainstream these days: you might do better comparing today's World of Warcraft to yesteryear's Dig Dug.

Nevertheless you can actually roleplay in MMOs (I do), which is more than you can say for Baldur's Gate (sure you can play a role, but that's not actual roleplay in the DnD sense: it takes two to tango etc.).

[Eugenitor]

By the way, THIS is what the Dragon Warrior art looked like when it was originally released in Japan (as Dragon Quest).

[Virtz]

Manuals are a good way of conveying instructions for complex games, because they always serve as quick reference at any time. Personally I'd rather have a manual and look at it whenever I encounter something beyond my knowledge rather than trudge through a tutorial that has to explain everything to me including shit I already knew since Command & Conquer. If I'm curious how I, say, assign research points, then I don't want to first learn how to move the freaking camera, I just want that one specific thing and to get on with it.

And Dragon Age really isn't as complex as you make it out to be. Really. Character development complexity is not even comparable to Diablo 2. Bioware used to make DnD RPGs, a rule-set with a lot of rules for every character class. Going from this to a rule-set where you have like 3-4 classes for everything in the world and less abilities and spells than in the average free mumorpeger is sort of dumbing down.

I wouldn't know about console RPGs, though. I don't play them. Maybe Dragon Age is a revolution for console RPG standards. But I doubt even that.

[Neonivek]

I think Dragon Age was an attempt to get the Dungeons and Dragons feeling while still having a system that conforms better to that of a console game.

[dragnar]

I would argue that the gameplay of most games has improved over the years. Think back to the first few FF games, or the first elder scrolls games.(one example from each sort of RPG, just to make sure no one says "That's not an RPG!!!") They were amazing at the time, but if you strip them down to their basic gameplay elements they are downright boring. The problem is, gameplay only goes so far. Gameplay can make a game good(and most games today are good. Not great, but not terrible.), but it takes more to make it great. The quality of the average game has improved, but the atmosphere, the story, the worlds, are all no better than they ever were. Great games haven't become more common because the elements that make games truly great are not so easily created no matter how much funding a game has.

[Leonon]

I too dreamed of something like procedurally generated quests, where your NPCs have their memories, feelings, ambitions which drives their actions and creating stories of love, hate, intrigues, revenge... in which you can participate.
I would like to now if something like that is even possible, for starting maybe like test with 10 NPCs which interactions are based on thing i described.

The people who can create that type of AI aren't going to be working on videogames.

[GaelicVigil]

And Dragon Age really isn't as complex as you make it out to be. Really. Character development complexity is not even comparable to Diablo 2. Bioware used to make DnD RPGs, a rule-set with a lot of rules for every character class. Going from this to a rule-set where you have like 3-4 classes for everything in the world and less abilities and spells than in the average free mumorpeger is sort of dumbing down.

I wouldn't know about console RPGs, though. I don't play them. Maybe Dragon Age is a revolution for console RPG standards. But I doubt even that.

That says it pretty well about Dragon Age.  What I always do when I see a new RPG come out is I try to visualize what would be left if you removed the modern graphics, sound and accessibility (interface, tutorials, cut scenes, etc) and replace it with something 20 years old or so.  That said, when all of the fluff has been removed and we are just left with game-play, Dragon Age is about as deep as Dragon Warrior 2 or Ultima 5 or even less.

So no, it's not innovative for a PC game and neither is it for a console game either and just because a dozen media sites rate it great, doesn't make it so.  And you can throw in Mass Effect, KOTOR and Jade Empire as well.  They hide the lack of gameplay with lots of polish, graphical horse-power, and (semi) decent voice acting and, as evidenced on this thread, you get a lot of people who are fooled by it.

When you've gotten past the fluffy presentation, is Torchlight really that much better than Diablo 1 or 2?  It's not a terrible game, but it certainly has not done much of anything for the genre, other than generate a lot of hype and fandom.

Now reverse the test and visualize these modern enhancements on games like The Magic Candle, Wizardry 7, Ultima 6 or Wasteland.  It would easily blow just about any modern so-called RPG out of the water.  But I would argue that most would more soon dismiss this notion based on presumption than go and see it for themselves.

[ductape]

game boxes and manuals are WASTEFUL! Did you now that in the state of California, recycled paper is the #1 export, even over food and we grow about %40 of the food for Americans.

That paper goes to China, where %60 of it is land-filled and %40 is made back into paper products for sale there or abroad.

Get a Steam account, save the world!

[Sowelu]

rambling and insults against people who hold different opinions

If you reduced these games to 20-year-old UI standards, but kept the storylines and branching stuff, they would be utterly revolutionary 20 years ago.

[Muz]

Personally, I've really disliked a lot of recent RPGs. I expect well, a role playing experience. Fallout and Baldur's Gate is my ideal. They give me a role in the world. Bethesda games give you a world to explore, but your actions hardly affect the world. Fable is not bad in terms of gameplay, but seems a little.. fake. It doesn't really create a world that's believable to me.

RPIs are great for roleplaying, but people just push it too far. I'm not going to dedicate 4 hours of my day to a game, no matter how good it is. They attract way too many people who are fine with sitting at home all day and push the game towards being time sinks. RPIs are like drugs, people who sacrifice real life to create a fantasy world.

MMOs are pretty shitty for roleplaying. They give you combat mechanics, but attract people who aim solely to win. True roleplaying needs to simulate a scene realistically, but get a balance between whether everyone gets what they want. MMOs push the balance too far towards hard work and less on simulating a scene.