May the fourth ... and all that

Apologies if I go off on a rant again :-) Need better ideas so I can talk about good stuff and not stuff that'll make me rant.

Gis ideas ! If there's anything my regulars would like me to say what I think about - lemme know :-) There's an email address in my profile. And I'm kinda running out of inspiration for these walls of text ... Enough of that - on with the post.

Been looking at Tomshardware again (I know, they make me rant) and they've got an article on about the history of computer role playing games. It's a spectacularly crappy one as, over 16 slides, it shows 14 games from last century and only 2 from this one. There's lots that came out over the gap ... Instead of pure "they're rubbish" rant though, what computer role playing games (CRPGs from here) do I think show how they've evolved ?

In the early days there was text. Pure text. Nothing but text. The early days of true CRPGs and true massively multiplayer games was founded by MUDs (Multi User Dungeons). These were games based on Unix mainframes where the only access was via the terminal emulator. I know. Archaic right ? But very playable. Such that later games with shinier clothing harked back to the easy gameplay of the MUD.

MUDs probably took at least a few % points off my degree score as I tried to level my character up in labtime.

Text based dominated a lot of early pooter gaming. It's all the machines could really handle. The game would put text up on screen and your imagination would paint the scene in your head. But you can't really call those early text games or point&clicks RPGs because they didn't tend to have statistics associated with them.

I missed a lot of the early proper RPGs, mainly because I couldn't afford them or the hardware to run them on. Or I wasn't interested in that genre. I did run through Alone In The Dark a few times though and became the one people in the house turned to when they wanted to swordfight past the pirate.

But it's partly because - a lot of the games in the TH article, I wouldn't have considered worth playing as they are too crude. Until Baldur's Gate came along, CRPGs were rather Meh with very frustrating interfaces.

Baldur's Gate - it's an isometic adventure game centred around the Protagonist (you) and the companions you gather. I ♥ Imoen (yes - even crazy Imoen from BG2). This seriously broke the mould by translating what before had been crude text, into pictures on the screen.

Very shiny. So shiny that the same basic game engine got turned into a heap of other classics including Icewind Dale, Planescape Torment to name just two.

The next big step came with turning that 2d isometric into full 3d with Neverwinter Nights. I didn't actually finish BG or BG2 but played NWN to death. And then I downloaded player created adventures and played those.

NWN was so flexible that people turned it into 3d graphics versions of those MUDs. Nice idea but a little limited in scope due to the Dungeons and Dragons level limits.

By the time NWN was getting old, Massively Multiplayer Online games were starting to come in. Games like Everquest that laid the ground for World of Warcraft. The amount of time I sunk into WoW is silly. It's probably the apex of fantasy CRPG. At least until GuildWars 2 comes along. (Yes, I'll preorder that and hopefully get more value out of it than SWTOR).

Roughly at the same time, you've also got the Fallout series. I like the setting of Fallout but sadly never really got into the games. Dunno why. And that counts for the different genre that Fallout 3 went for too. Perhaps it's because I liked to sit back and watch things happen on the screen rather than have my skill determine success. RPGs are supposed to be about how the character, not the player.

RPG with character attributes - success should depend on the character build
Fallout & Elder Scrolls - success depends on the player fighting the interface

Skyrim is the first Elder Scrolls game where I've not felt like I'm fighting the interface. I've actually had more fun from that one, compared to the frustration of trying their earlier games. WoW goes the other way, success is totally statistics based with the only player skill being able to mash the button fast enough.

And there's a heap of other classics or "could have been's" that I'd love to talk about (but I'm hitting Wall Of Text limit already) :

Awesome - KOTOR, Mass Effect series (although ME is more FPS than RPG)
Could have been - Vampire Bloodlines
So so or tedious - Dungeon Siege, Divine Divinity

Talking of Knights of The Old Republic, it's the anniversary today of one of my favourite films and something I grew up to :

May the Fourth Be With You. And while you watch this video (Youtube link), ask yourself like I am : why didn't I know that one of those was coming out ? I Want.

PS The Youtube link is to the Yogscast, who are a couple of videoing gamers who don't take themselves or games seriously. When they get going, it's hilarious. If only they didn't spend so much time on another CRPG - Minecraft.