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[Twerty]

So, tl;dr: Games never really delivered and still don't.

And we can fix this by... er ... boycotting mainstream stuff? Wait, wait, no, that'll never work, no one will care.

Well, we could always beat the crap out of Peter Molyneux.

[GaelicVigil]

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.

I'm sure that the process involved in programming branching story-arcs takes a lot of work.  So, yes, that in itself is a marvel.  I don't look down on the individual talent involved in doing that kind of stuff.

But the question to be asked is, are branching linear storylines really a revolution compared to a free-form open world with hundreds of NPCs that unlock clues and quests that many RPGs used a few generations ago?  Is it really a "revolution" when it takes a development team of hundreds of full-time artists, voice actors, and programmers to do something that is more linear, artificial and contrived than a game made by a 1 man team back in 1983 by Richard Garriot (Ultima: Exodus)?

As far as pure story-line goes, I couldn't say modern RPGs are really superior to the older ones at all.  They're pretty much the same really: gather a party, complete side-quests and defeat some bad guy, bent on conquering the world. 

So I guess the point is that these games had plenty of branching story-arcs not unlike Dragon Age, the difference is that they were not served to you on a silver platter in forced cut-scenes and artificial dialog trees.  They simply required the player to go out and find them himself, not only in-game, but within included maps and manuals, which introduced far more re-playability.  The experience was far more hands-on and less like a movie (which brings me back to the point in my OP).

(Oh and I apologize if I came off as insulting in my last post)

[GaelicVigil]

I was just thinking about FF6 which did, indeed, have a branching story-line.  I'll admit, at the time it was what many considered to be revolutionary.  I guess I start to wonder, though, if it was the "right" direction to take RPGs.  Sure it was cool at the time, and a lot of people started to copy the formula (JRPGs, and now even a lot of Western RPGs), but I don't think for one second that it was superior.

[nenjin]

Well....it sort of had a branching story line. More like dynamical presenting the order in which the chapters are viewed, would be more correct. I don't think it really was that revolutionary, not after the initial 40-hour orgasm of the first FF6 playthrough wore off. But it was still a nice touch.

[dragnar]

Well....it sort of had a branching story line. More like dynamical presenting the order in which the chapters are viewed, would be more correct. I don't think it really was that revolutionary, not after the initial 40-hour orgasm of the first every FF6 playthrough wore off. But it was still a nice touch.

Greatest game of all time.

[qwertyuiopas]

Would it be *that* difficult to create a "memory" system for NPCs where memories fade over time, accelerated by the number of other memories, based on a score determined by the uniqueness of each component compared to the rest of their memories? Then add a "routine" system where they have overall goals that they attempt to accomplish daily/weekly/monthly, and coupled with the memeory, they would think very little about their daily routines, as those tend to be rather repetitive, but a new person(the player) would be fairly well noticed and remembered, an their habits would just fade into the daily routine ("Oh, I saw him cheating the shop, just like he always does." vs "I just saw (person) steal from (other)!") and become less of a unique occurance. Even keeping 100 of such memories for a handful of more important NPCs would probably give a massive feeling of depth, and huge immesion potential.

[Hugehead]

And if those NPCs got together, imagine the emergent gameplay potential.

[qwertyuiopas]

Exactly!

But, rather than devote 10* MB of RAM and <1%* of the processing power to such a potential innovation, they opt for something more mainstream like increasing the fancy graphics effects by some unnoticable ammount, or boosting their already ineffective piracy prevention systems.

*Statistics chosen at random, without research. Although, 20 NPCs with 500 memories each in 10 MB is 1 KB/memory, a rather large ammount of space, and such a system would rarely need to be used and even then would probably take less than the processing required for two dwarves to path across a rather large fortress...

[Sowelu]

Eh, my bad for being snarky, too, Gaelic.  Sorry.  :D

But...Hm.  I dunno.  I guess I just don't understand the big roleplay potential for having totally simulated worlds.  Those are really good at simulating the ordinary, but not the extraordinary...and the extraordinary is what RPGs are all about, isn't it?  I mean, each really unique thing would need enough hardcoding that you almost might as well go all the way.

Plus, real life is boring.  And it would be a little worrying if you tried to simulate everyone in the world, not just because it would be a computational challenge.  Think about it this way.  Just how many bandit camps *ARE* there in the world?  Not all that many.  And how much respect do you think an adventurer would get if he really went around killing criminals?  Not all that much (He was just a pickpocket!  You didn't have to stab him to death then cut his head off then loot his body!).  The economy in a lot of places would be totally uninteresting.  And don't get me started on the timescales involved, either.

If you wanted to do a serious RPG with major world events and mass slaughter and good action sequences, all within a reasonable in-game timeline, you kind of have to set it in some HUGE SCARY thing like, oh, Lord of the Rings.  (I recommend War in Middle Earth, btw!  Good game!)  That gives you chance to do some really heroic stuff and make a real difference in the world.  But...townsfolk kind of don't matter anymore, and it would start to become a short game, plus your own personal role can only be so large...

Okay, yeah.  I think I've isolated my main beefs with realistic RPGs.  1) Why is there an endless onslaught of bad guys to kill, and why is killing them somehow okay?  2) If townsfolk are meaningful enough in the plot that you would ever want to talk to them, then what makes you so important in the grand scheme of things?  Why don't you just, like, raise an army and make them do the fighting, and relax into a life of diplomacy?  In short, if you need to worry so much about the common man, what makes you a hero?


...It sounds like a lot of the things you guys are suggesting are gimmicks.  Having awesome AI is not gameplay, and it doesn't even necessarily make the game more interesting...it just makes it more complicated.  Your tabletop Dungeon Master knows that each person has something like a daily routine, but he also knows that the players shouldn't need to fuss with that routine except for flavor and for plot-importance.  If you make a big deal about it, the players will too, and there's only so much time around the table, right?  In a tabletop RPG, the high priest may not be around the temple when the players drag the bleeding near-corpse of their friend in, but surely someone can run and get him.  If you don't abstract out the daily routines of people in a computer RPG, then you end up with some NPC standing dumbly at the door saying "The high priest is not in, he will return in the morning", or maybe if you click through a series of dialogue options and long drop-down menus, he could say "Currently he is at home and brushing his teeth.  Let me mark his house on your map."  What a great experience.  Sure you could hardcode some understanding of urgency for these important NPCs...but then you're getting into hardcoding things again.  Where do you draw the line?

"It's still early morning, the tavern is closed."  "Okay, I guess we come back in an hour then."  If you're not going to throw something interesting at the players in the meantime, if it's not relevant to the plot and doesn't add anything to the storytelling experience...then why waste time with it?  A tabletop GM can at least get the hang of when it's okay to fudge things for the sake of speeding up the game and getting back to the action.  Abstraction is IMPORTANT in games, especially when you are just a computer and can't tell when the players are getting bored!

[qwertyuiopas]

Imagine a game with decent AI where the entire goal is to steal something from somewhere well guarded, but *not* do the usual thing of creating intentional weaknesses in the protection that can be exploited by watching the patrols for all of 15 seconds and then simply following the guards. Imagine if, instead, you were given a more sandboxy environment and an AI that reacts fairly well to whatever you throw at it. Toss stones to make noise and get the attention of the guards, night after night? MAyb e they will start to dismiss similar clatters, enabling you to sneak in without small noises getting their attention. Or, maybe after a month, set it up so that someone is framed after a month, distracting the guards and drawing most of them away because the only known security threat is finally defeatable and they should stop it. Alternatively, become a guard yourself, but do not let your schemings be visible, as such behaviour would stand out and make them suspicious enough to watch you. All of these require time, so a button that lets time pass while your character behaves like a normal NPC would be nessecary, but they do describe thengs that do not work in current RPGs unless explicitly scripted in as an optional method clearly available to the player.

The point is that if such an AI is actually rather easy, and, as some ofthe earlier comments have declared, the only single player RPGs you see are "role" playing games with inferior depth to the commentor's opinion of true role playing, then why hasn't someone done so?

[Chutney]

creating super-omg-realistic ai for multiple npcs is not easy and requires a hell of a processor. Your thief game idea would be pretty infeasible for the next few years.

Actually, it could probably be done with a pretty simple AI. It wouldn't be OMG AWESOME AMAZING THIS IS LIKE REAL PEOPLE but it would work with a pretty basic state AI mixed with like a neural network I think. I...I gotta research this...
qwertyuiopas you might've given me my next project :O

[Hugehead]

Well if anyone is going to do it, it's going to be the indies.

[Twerty]

[...] then why hasn't someone done so?

'Cause it's still in development, bro. :3

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

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.

What does RPI stand for?  I'm never seen that term before.

[GlyphGryph]

Hm... you know, I think you pretty much destroyed any argument you had, OP, by bringing up Dragon Warrior of all games. I mean, sure, it was fun and light hearted and enjoyable enough to play, but it was not by any means a great rpg! Borderlands is, essentially, at its core, the same as the dragon warrior games - with the added bonus of having more interesting supporting characters and a lot more side quests (and an item collection fetish, but that's neither here nor there).

I'm not saying Borderlands is a great rpg, because that type of rpg (big plot grindfests) is not my favorite, but it really kind of blows Dragon Warrior away.

There are, of course, great, amazing, classic games better than anything that's coming out now for the most part... but that's the reason they are still around and talked about!

Also, as to dark and gritty versus cartoony?
I thought games were mostly getting TOO dark and gritty nowadays, too SRS BUSINESS all the time.

I mean, look at chrono trigger  -that was a game that could have epic stuff that pulled your heart strings, but it never made the mistake of taking itself to seriously.

tl;dr
I have no idea what you're talking about because it doesn't make any sense. I think you are just crazy. ^_^