Jade Empire - Special Edition Preview @ Hooked Gamers

[Dhruin]

Hooked Gamers has kicked up a preview (http://www.hookedgamers.com/forwarder.html?http://www.hookedgamers.com/previews/2006/12/jade_empire/) of BioWare's upcoming Jade Empire PC release:
As one would expect after a two-year hiatus the graphics have been given a tinkering, to take advantage of the platform swap. Over 300 textures have been remodelled, and the resolution has been increased to 1600x1200. Though the characters have not been remodelled themselves, the attention paid to the graphics engine is set to assure players of constant frame rates and smooth game play, especially during moments citing dozens of on-screen enemies or more - a procedure more suited to the PC.
More information. (http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/newsbit?newsbit=3095)

[Acleacius]

Jade Empire didn't seem to score as high on average as KotOR though I will propably give this a try if it at least tries to be an RPG. :)

[Corwin]

Not my type of game!! PASS!!!!

[Acleacius]

I really don't know anything about it, what turns you away from it?
I better read a review or two then if it's not good.

[Jaz]

For me, JE was one of the - if not THE - most entertaining game(s) of [insert year of publication here]. If you liked movies like 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon', 'Assassin', 'Hero' and 'House of Flying Daggers', you'll probably like JE.
As all more recent games (with the exception of the bugfests I put on hold until they go to the bargain bin) it's shortish and linear, but it's atmospheric, you can be of different alignment and have different endings. Character creation was not what they had promised it would be, but well, I'm not above picking a preset character out of a bunch... I've done it before. You could create your own, but you had to settle for the avatar of one of the prerolled chars.
The game had its cheesy moments, romantic moments, goofy moments, funny moments, sad moments... the whole palette. And as if I hadn't said it over and over again... I liked the romance options. A lot.
I'm not the 'ooh shiny' type, so I don't put my heart's blood into graphics, but if you can get a more polished edition, why not? I certainly would if I had the time to play.

[Acleacius]

Thanks for that info, very useful. :)

[Jaz]

Some more info: you'll garner a following and thus have a party at some point, but you'll be able to adventure and fight with only one of your fellows. You can swap companions at any time at the party's meeting place, though. Another point which might be a turnoff for some is the fact that once you gain a certain skill/spell, you're virtually invincible... but you have that in a plethora of other games as well (and you won't get this spell/skill at the start, anyway).
Choosing your personal ending is, as with so many other games, resolved towards the end (a minus for replayability), but the romance options, on the other hand, need more careful planning, so I found my self replaying the game several times not for the different endings or different alignments but for the different romance options (three for male characters, two for females - ones again we've been neglected, boohoo... but I still won't complain ;)).

[Acleacius]

Ahh nice, well it certianly sounds worth trying. :)
I scanned a review but was unclear if its only martial arts h2h or are there weapons too?
Are the Romances similar to the KotOR?

OT
Btw saw your listing of LoLs in the best of RPGs, since everyone was making a list and without one I didn't want to post in that thread, but wanted to say I had lots of fun with those, especially GoD. ;)

[Dhruin]

Those movies aren't really my thing and I'm pretty dubious about JE...but I'll get it to see where BioWare is going these days. It's interesting that this title went from 9.9 at IGN to a sense of "Meh" on the 'net in a short period.

[PatrickWeekes]

Acleacius: There are weapons (several different types) and there are definitely romances. The weapons aren't like an inventory system, though -- finding a weapon gives you a style, and you can improve with that style.

Dhruin: Speaking as somebody who didn't work on the game, I loved the writing, I loved the art, I loved the story, I loved the movies, and it didn't feel like quite enough of a roleplaying game. I feel like I can say that because everyone in the company is saying that -- that's what the designers were asked to make (a game light enough on hardcore RP elements to let action gamers pick it up). They did that, and while it's sold fairly well, it wasn't a massive hit at least in part because it wasn't action-y enough for action people or RP-ish enough for RP people. There wasn't enough crunchy customization, and there weren't enough side quests. There are a lot of good reasons for it, which mostly boil down to:

1) Art is expensive, and art for side quests is the first thing to get cut when budget stuff happens.
2) VO-dialogue and more complex NPC reactions (changing emotions, gestures, etc) make conversations more labor-intensive, which in turn make conversation-based side-quests more expensive.

That is in NO WAY an attempt to dissuade anyone from buying it. Like I said, I loved the writing and the story. There's some awesome art. There are some beautiful moments. Just buy it expecting a solid 25-30-hour game with a strong main story and some good choices and great moments instead of a 100-hour side-quest marathon.

[Corwin]

Thanks for the insider view Patrick. Between you and Jaz, I think our readers have a pretty good feel for the game!!

[Cormac]

What I found most disappointing in JE is the very limited scope of the game and its linearity; perhaps I shouldnt have felt that way, since JE came after KotOR but Bio really put the emphasis on how they were creating a complete (un)original world, even going so far as building an entire langage, etc., and that's what attracted me to the game -- besides the different setting. But you experience next to nothing of that; and the point of the flying machine is really to keep you on track towards your goal, which is the Imperial City, so that you're participating in an interactive movie more than playing a game. (BG2 had a somewhat similar slant, however by forcing you to amass a large sum of money to continue the main quest, the devs gave you a free hand to explore and do lots of quests.) In the first Act you meet a character that bluntly states that travelling to the Imperial City by any other means than the flying machine would take weeks, so that's out and you hop aboard that metal and wood insect. And when you do get to the Imperial City, if you go out of the gate, you get to see the entire map of China -- I mean the Jade Empire --, and there's a grand total of two locations on that vast landscape, the Imperial City, where you are, and the place you came from. Can you tell I expected more from this game ?;)
So, Patrick, if you dont mind my adressing you directly, you'll understand if I'm a bit skeptical about Mass Effect's similar claims of a huge universe we'll be able to explore freely.

[Dhruin]

Thanks for the comments, Patrick. I'll be honest and say I carry a bias of sorts because martial arts and Asian themes just don't do it for me...no particular reason; I just never "got" it.

BioWare aside, the issues of intersecting genres (will a particular title appeal to fans of Genre 1 + Genre 2...or neither?) and the cost of asset generation are constant bugbears for the cRPG community. There isn't a solution, other than to understand it is increasingly difficult for AAA developers to address our particular wants.

Anyway, it may well turn out that I'll enjoy the game once I actually play it. Who knows?

[Acleacius]

PatrickWeekes, thanks. :)
I have enjoyed Asian Martial Arts movies for about 20 years, though I am no expert.
After seeing a very young (19?) Jackie Chan in Cannon Ball run I was hooked.
Certianly not his best performance, his humor (secretly watching p0rn while his mentor was sleeping) and sheer flexablity left me jawdropped, certinaly a shock after mostly being exposed to Good Guys wear Black in the US. :p

"That is in NO WAY an attempt to dissuade anyone from buying it"
Don't worry I love learning about games and understood it as educational. ;)

Cormac
I think you have some great points, though I find I can put aside freedom for a good story, sounds like how many people felt about Redemption.
Many people were disapointed it was linear and limited in the scope of clan choices.
Its easy for us fans to want more, but I guess thats part what Patrick meant.

I tried to like Redemption for what it did give me, at the time I found what it did was done very well.
I loved the acting, story and massive amouts of choice on develping Disiplines and Attriubtes, not only that it was the only Vampire game and by extension the best. ;)

I mentioned Redemption in this context as I have come to think much of the inspiration Bioware used in KotOR, could have possible been from the interactive ingame dialogues.
I know many of you have a more broad knowledge of games and formats, so my question is can anyone think of a game that did Ingame cutscenes with interactive dialogues before Redemption?

Thanks. :)

[PatrickWeekes]

So, Patrick, if you dont mind my adressing you directly, you'll understand if I'm a bit skeptical about Mass Effect's similar claims of a huge universe we'll be able to explore freely.

Definitely understandable. My only answer -- the best one that I can realistically give (since the PR guys have already said stuff like "Your galaxy map shows thousands of planets, and you can visit them all!" and then the programmers wiped the Mountain Dew off their keyboards) is to say that nobody at the company liked opening up a worldmap and seeing two locations. The decisions that needed to be made for that not to happen again have been made. M.E. may not have as many worlds as you want (freely? gah. no. really, no. there are worlds. they get unlocked. you can go to them. plots happen. but it's not Oblivion.), but it's gonna be a lot bigger than KotOR.

And none of that is bad, really. Every game is a step forward, and every game is a stab in the dark -- how much better can we make the character expressions, and what will it cost us? How many levels can we make if they look decent? How about if they look great? How about if they look photorealistic? Because we've leaped from engine to engine (and iterated so heavily within engines, comparing JE to NWN), it's never been possible to concretely say, "Okay, making a level THIS big takes THAT long." And that almost always means that we overreach and have to cut stuff later.

The up side of that is that every game has a deeper experience than its predecessor, though, and not just in terms of art. Jade was our first foray into arcade-RPG, and it had some of the most complex dialogue out there -- there are options at the end based on who's romanced and who's evil and who's been killed that we'd never have bothered to do in earlier games.

What's cool now is looking at how we're getting better at estimating the number of levels we can make in a reasonable time. Nobody liked losing the side plots in Jade, and going forward, you're not gonna see that again.

Like I said elsewhere, the BioWare goal, inasmuch as one peon understands it, is not "Mandatory 100 Hour Game", and it's also not "30 hours and you've seen everything". It's "20-30 hours to play the critpath, and a LOT of side stuff so that explorers are happy."

[Corwin]

OK, question!! If I just take the crit path, my char should not develop as far in say 30 hours as a char who attempts all the side quests for say 80 hours. Now, here's the question- what will be the difference in experience for me and/or my char by the end game? Will the final 'boss' battle be too easy because I'm now a much higher level, or would it have been too hard at the lower level? I'm hoping it won't be similar to another unmentioned game, where you could complete everything at level 1 if you so chose!! What's the trade off the company is considering? Thanks!!

[PatrickWeekes]

OK, question!! If I just take the crit path, my char should not develop as far in say 30 hours as a char who attempts all the side quests for say 80 hours. Now, here's the question- what will be the difference in experience for me and/or my char by the end game? Will the final 'boss' battle be too easy because I'm now a much higher level, or would it have been too hard at the lower level? I'm hoping it won't be similar to another unmentioned game, where you could complete everything at level 1 if you so chose!! What's the trade off the company is considering? Thanks!!

As I understand it, it varies from game to game. Some games have a "It's as hard as it is" philosophy (I believe Hordes was like this), where if you do all the side content, the end bosses are a fair bit easier than if you get there as fast as you can.

Other games have total scaling, so yeah, like in Oblivion, the arena is just as hard at level 20 as at level 5.

In Jade, frankly, there isn't enough side content to change things much one way or the other. You're gonna be somewhere in the 20s when you finish the game, unless you do something crazy like go to the ghost-spawning points with your most-XP-for-ghosts amulet on and whack ghosts for 100 hours. You're welcome to do that, and you'll be, uh, much higher. In Jade, it wasn't even that much of a deal, because by level 20, you'd already max'd out the martial style you wanted, the support style you wanted, and either the magic or transformation style you wanted, based on points spent. So any points beyond that point were just to broaden your horizons... and the extra health or chi is pretty minor in the last fight, all things considered.

The in-between point I like is graduated scaling, where, to use D&D as an example, if you do the end boss at level 10, he's level 15, but if you do him at level 15, he's only level 18. He scales up, but you still get a reward for doing the side stuff.

(And let's be honest here. Your reward for doing the side stuff isn't really "being able to finish the game". If that's the reward, then it's not really side stuff. It's critpath stuff of which you have to do a certain amount. The reward for doing side quests is exploring the world, getting a few more hours' worth of entertainment, and maybe running into some challenges that weren't appropriate for the critpath (too hard, too niche as far as puzzles go, too touchy a subject for a critpath roleplaying plot). So our side quests are never gonna give rewards as good as in the critpath -- and I think that's a good thing. If they did, they'd be effectively critpath, and then in short order they WOULD be critpath, so that nobody would miss them and not be able to finish the game.)

[Acleacius]

Hearing about all the evolutions in process, dialoged and story complexities plus engine improvements is very exciting.
Even considering if we PC gamers still have to wait a year or two as with KotOR, JE and if it's 2008-9 before we see ME, each release's evolution still exceeds most current if not all RPGs by the time we get them.
So in this case being relegated to second tier is still very encouraging. ;)

Could you mention something about the control scheme for PC version of JE?
KotOR was the first time I ever played a port and the only serious problem I had with it was even after 3 patches we still couldn't set our own keys as desired.
I hope that at least some of you guys are PC gamers or at least were and possibly understand how being forced to use someone else’s control scheme can be annoying. ;)
This iis in refernece to setting the mouse controls, since I might not have been clear.


Thanks for your time. :)

[Corwin]

Thanks Patrick. Does Bioware support your preferred mechanism? :biggrin:

[PatrickWeekes]

Could you mention something about the control scheme for PC version of JE?

I profoundly couldn't. :)

All I've got is the word from the GUI guys saying that they like it better than they liked the XBox version. I don't know what that means, and I probably won't know before you do yourself (assuming you get the game).

And for the record, I didn't have an Xbox until Jade Empire came out. I didn't have a PS2 until my wife discovered Guitar Hero. Despite my current proliferation of consoles, I think of myself as primarily a PC gamer.

Since my name will be in the credits for Mass Effect, I'm gonna have to get myself a 360, though. Not being able to play a game you've got stuff in is... well, my ego couldn't take it. :)

Corwin: Here's hoping.

[Cormac]

Definitely understandable. My only answer -- the best one that I can realistically give (since the PR guys have already said stuff like "Your galaxy map shows thousands of planets, and you can visit them all!" and then the programmers wiped the Mountain Dew off their keyboards) is to say that nobody at the company liked opening up a worldmap and seeing two locations. The decisions that needed to be made for that not to happen again have been made. M.E. may not have as many worlds as you want (freely? gah. no. really, no. there are worlds. they get unlocked. you can go to them. plots happen. but it's not Oblivion.), but it's gonna be a lot bigger than KotOR.

Patrick, your replies are a refreshing change from the usual hype we get, but, huh, I should perhaps warn you that if you continue posting I may never buy another Bio game again !
Allright, joking aside, the latest ME video pretty much made it clear how things are going to be when it comes to exploration of the universe. So let's blame the graphics and the VO.

[PatrickWeekes]

Allright, joking aside, the latest ME video pretty much made it clear how things are going to be when it comes to exploration of the universe. So let's blame the graphics and the VO.

I dunno. The video is accurate as far as what it says. More worlds than KotOR. Hell, several TIMES as many worlds as KotOR. Some worlds are as big as KotOR worlds, and others are smaller, like dungeons in a fantasy game.

Again, not Oblivion. But if you want a big game, it's gonna be a big game.

And again again, the industry is changing. Going from "interactive novel" to "interactive movie" hit the industry hard. As we stabilize and adapt, expect things to keep shifting. In some ways, the games we all loved playing are gone forever. In other ways, they're going to come back better than ever.

I didn't get this job because I wanted to strip the games down to 20 areas and 10 hours of gameplay. I got it because I could complain intelligently about being framed for killing those paladins in BG2, discuss the coolness of the revelation montage cutscene in KotOR, and talk about solo-ing through Hordes with a Bard/Cleric/Shadowdancer. I got it because I like playing these games.

And I can tell you that yeah, it COULD end up sucking -- that could happen. But if it goes as planned, you're gonna have a lot of worlds to go kill stuff in, and a pretty epic story that should give you a good time.

[Acleacius]

PatrickWeekes speaking of the interactive movie shift do you guys now have your own movie/cutscene department?

Iir in KotOR you guys had LA do much of the movies and voice work, to help with the development time frame and since I am intrested in JE and ME with these being your properties or is this the transition your refering too?

While I really thought you guys did a great job with the engine you had on KotOR, I was also very impressed with what Troikia was able to achieve with the Source engine in the dialogue interactions and obviously the facial expressions with Bloodlines.
Would that be a something you guys are intrested in more realistic facial expressions?

Thanks. :)

[PatrickWeekes]

PatrickWeekes speaking of the interactive movie shift do you guys now have your own movie/cutscene department?

Iir in KotOR you guys had LA do much of the movies and voice work, to help with the development time frame and since I am intrested in JE and ME with these being your properties or is this the transition your refering too?

We've got Cinematics guys for the cutscenes and Cinematic Designers for anything involving expressions and movement during conversation. It's a lot more involved than that, but honestly, not to me. :) I just write the words.

And to be fair, I wasn't around for KotOR. (If a product has shipped, I wasn't around for it. I'm nobody.) I don't know what we had for them, and how much help we had from Lucas on the VO and the movies. My impression was that we did that ourselves (and lucked out by getting a VO Director who was a huge Star Wars fan and was thus WAAAAAAAY into our story), but I could be misunderstanding other people's use of "we".

Would that be a something you guys are intrested in more realistic facial expressions?

As I understand it, we developed some stuff in house. I don't know if there wasn't anything on the market that did what we needed (expression changes in mid-line, for example), or if we just wanted to have our own proprietary tool to kick. :)

But yeah -- getting facial effects to be fast and cheap greatly reduces the cost per line, which in turn reduces the cost per plot, and eventually lets you make a bigger game.

[Acleacius]

PatrickWeekes
" I just write the words."
Very impressive, words are very (if not the most) important in games.
Even with great gameplay, games are nothing but deathmatch and CTF <shivers> ;) , without the words to draw us into the story.

What moved you to write, any great books, movies, games?
Of course I would have asked if it was the groupies, the reason so many guys get in the music biz, since you mentioned you were married figured I be stick to the classics. :)

You mention you haven't shipped does this mean ME is your first title?
You guys must be really psyched with enough energy and adrenaline to light up a city block. :cool:

"My impression was that we did that ourselves"
I probably got confused.

[aries100]

I don't really get the whole shift from 'interactive novel' to 'interactive movie.' If I want to go see a movie, then I will go the to cinema to watch a movie. To me, games should be liked books or novels, telling great stories. This is, of course, only MY personal opinion.

My point is also this, that games are not movies, they are games, and should be treated like ther own (entertainment) product, imo.

[PatrickWeekes]

My point is also this, that games are not movies, they are games, and should be treated like ther own (entertainment) product, imo.

They are indeed. But you've got to have some frame of reference. From a writing perspective (and that's the only perspective in which I meant it), it's a good analogy. In Baldur's Gate and NWN, you could have a big ol' mess of text up there on the screen. As soon as full-VO hit the gaming world, that no longer worked. When facial animations improved to the point where you could tell whether an NPC was angry, lines like:

"How can you say that? Never have I been so angry!"

had to change to become:

"How can you say that?"

That's because the real reason that "Never have I been so angry!" was in there was to explain to the player that the NPC was angry -- not sad, not hurt, not curious. With VO and good face FX, the line is superfluous. The player is gonna get that the NPC is angry. We can show. We don't need to tell.

When I write fiction, I need to put in markers to say that somebody is angry. I can do it in the text like that, or I can do it by adding "...he exclaimed angrily." In a movie, you don't need a playful imp lurking next to the actor to tell the audience "Hey, this dude's angry," unless the dude is a brooding guy who hides his emotions, in which case you do that by having Steve Buscemi co-star and say, "Whoah, hang on, hang on, no need to get like that," at the appropriate times.

So Jade Empire has less of that type of talk than KotOR, and Mass Effect will have even less. In the long run, this is good -- it saves the words for where they'll do the most good and enable actual roleplaying and suchlike. :)

[Acleacius]

Jaz
"And I have a new DVD drive as well!"
Dang that was fast. ;)
"And thanks for the tips"
Np maybe we should start a GoD thread, of course at the expense of everyone making fun of us for liking this game. ;)

PatrickWeekes
Ok, so in regards to writing in general, the most frustrating thing to me is, we are given a choice of how to respond based on how we are RPing.
Why don't we see a set format of replies in games, meaning something like;
1 LG
2 NG
3 CG
4 TN
Often times I will be given a line I think is just a snarky or joking response, yet it will throw the conversation of in an evil direction.
Another example is if normally good response line are in #1 and evil are #4, they switch them, moving the good response.
This makes it seem like the writers are trying to trick us instead of letting us play along type.

Is this legitimate concern, if not why does this happen or seem to happen?

Thanks. :)

[PatrickWeekes]

Ok, so in regards to writing in general, the most frustrating thing to me is, we are given a choice of how to respond based on how we are RPing.
Why don't we see a set format of replies in games...

Easy answer? Because people would go ballistic if they didn't feel like they were getting to choose exactly what they were going to say. That's why MASS EFFECT has the paraphrases. That way you get to see mostly what you're going to say, but it can still sound good and be surprising when it comes out of your character's mouth.

Often times I will be given a line I think is just a snarky or joking response, yet it will throw the conversation of in an evil direction.

I hate that. Other people here hate that. I want to be sarcastic without getting dark side points.

Best answer I have is that it's an imperfect system. You are occasionally going to misread a line that the writers put in there, thinking it's sarcastic when we meant for it to b e evil. This is why I prefer to be defined by my actions and not my words. To me, choosing whether to be sarcastic with the dryad when you come back to deliver the magic acorn isn't roleplaying. Choosing whether to help the dryad or the evil necromancer is roleplaying.

[Acleacius]

PatrickWeekes
"That's why MASS EFFECT has the paraphrases. ........."
Execellent news. :)

You know by contrast I would have to say my favorite dialogue moments have been when I have been able to convey a feeling to a NPC with dialogue choices.
An example of this which really sticks out for me would be in Bloodlines speaking to Jeanette.
Her looks aside it was a very good feeling to be able to make an NPC laugh and really feel like you acomplished a joke or flirt.
Of course it's been done before but never with that type of impact, range of emotional expression and visually timed so well, of course it could have been me playing a Malk. ;)

Its like the game Jaz and I were refering to not a really popular title, for the standard reasons not enough RPG for the RPG fans and not enough Action for the Action fans, that aside in 1997 when the intro moive started it was the most breath taking view of a castle and moat flyby, better looking than anything before it at the time.
Well it impressed me anyway. ;)

I am certianly thrilled you guys take story and depth of character interaction so seriously, not to mention how much research and advancement of a genre, its what has always drawn me to games.

So, thanks. :)

[Jaz]

Jaz
"And I have a new DVD drive as well!"
Dang that was fast. ;)
"And thanks for the tips"
Np maybe we should start a GoD thread, of course at the expense of everyone making fun of us for liking this game. ;)
Well, hubby sells these things. I just had to go down to storage and pick one. As for the thread - go ahead :)!

Back on topic - if alignment was dependent on the number of sarcastic answers given, I'd be NE for sure. But how to measure intention? In the light of this I agree that alignment should be defined by actions and not always by words alone. Although words can indeed hurt.

[Acleacius]

I liked the way Bloodlines with Humanity and iir KotOR (its been awhile) Light/Dark worked , you were safe from an evil hit as long as you didn't threaten someones health, life or require/demand a reward before you would save/help someone.

The basic premise to me seems that the PC should always be a N, unless the story calls for LG Pally or LE Necro, so joking, scarcasm, snarky, and smartass (JSSS) should all be evil free.
Now of course if your using an influence system and trying to gain with a NPC if you use JSSS those should be considered N, so no points negitive or positive.

Well guess that's my 2 cents. :)

[aries100]

They are indeed. But you've got to have some frame of reference. From a writing perspective (and that's the only perspective in which I meant it), it's a good analogy. In Baldur's Gate and NWN, you could have a big ol' mess of text up there on the screen. As soon as full-VO hit the gaming world, that no longer worked. When facial animations improved to the point where you could tell whether an NPC was angry, lines like:

"How can you say that? Never have I been so angry!"

had to change to become:

"How can you say that?"

That's because the real reason that "Never have I been so angry!" was in there was to explain to the player that the NPC was angry -- not sad, not hurt, not curious. With VO and good face FX, the line is superfluous. The player is gonna get that the NPC is angry. We can show. We don't need to tell.

When I write fiction, I need to put in markers to say that somebody is angry. I can do it in the text like that, or I can do it by adding "...he exclaimed angrily." In a movie, you don't need a playful imp lurking next to the actor to tell the audience "Hey, this dude's angry," unless the dude is a brooding guy who hides his emotions, in which case you do that by having Steve Buscemi co-star and say, "Whoah, hang on, hang on, no need to get like that," at the appropriate times.

So Jade Empire has less of that type of talk than KotOR, and Mass Effect will have even less. In the long run, this is good -- it saves the words for where they'll do the most good and enable actual roleplaying and suchlike. :)

HI :)

Good to hear from your Patrick :)

Let me make myself a bit clearer then...

I don't understand why game devs. think they need to improve the game's graphics nor do I understand why game devs. need to use every new
technology that is developed for games.

To me, it seems, like game devs. are anxious to make games just like (interactive) movies. This is, imo, a very big mistake. Games are, and should be, their own cultural as well as entertainment product. If there are no differences between seeing a movie and playing a game, why should you then play computer (role playing) games at all??

To me, at least, it seems like there is no reflection about the use of the latest and recent tech progress in games. (i hope there are at least some reflections on this??) If a technology is new, then it is also automatic good and has to be used in games. It seems to me that having new technology in games is becoming the goal, rather than a means to achieve a goal: telling a great story.

To clarify even more, I do understand your examples. However, in movies, you could have the actor say "how can you say that ? Never have been so angry" in very many different ways - at the same time as the audience will see that he or she is very angry. I also get that when you write a book, you can add 'he exclaimed angrily' or 'she said angrily in a soft voice' and such dialoque.

When I look at the the new trailer for Mass Effect (ME) where the captain gets angry with one of his teammates, I get that he is angry, and I also get that his teammate is a bit concerned: However, to me, at least, these examples represent very crude examples of what emotions like anger, rage, or furious is like. Or maybe it is just the technologi which isn't good enough yet - to portray all these things....??

To me, at least, these little things 'like never have been so angry' serves one
purpose; they give me details about how & why the characters behave the way they do, as well as serve as background immersion for when I play game(s).

[PatrickWeekes]

I don't understand why game devs. think they need to improve the game's graphics nor do I understand why game devs. need to use every new
technology that is developed for games.

Easy. The unfortunate answer is that you and I and people like us are an incredibly tiny minority. I'd be happy writing 2-D games like Baldur's Gate, but the average gamer -- even the average CRPG player -- wants more.

Gamers like you and me are a niche audience. And a company that employs 300+ people can't afford to make niche games.

[quote]To me, it seems, like game devs. are anxious to make games just like (interactive) movies.[quote]

I can't really address this, since I don't agree with it. Aside from the fact that the narrator said that playing Mass Effect would give you a feeling like being in an epic action movie (or whatever he said -- don't remember the exact words), I haven't heard anything from BioWare that says, "We're making interactive movies."

If your qualification for "just like movies" is "graphics are better, most dialogue is VO'd", then yeah, we're moving toward movies. But that goes with what I said above -- most gamers want those features. The people who don't need them are a minority, and the people who don't even WANT them are a tiny minority of THAT minority.

I can understand that the demo film makes you think that BioWare is making a combat game with no RPG elements -- the goal was to show off the combat, just as the goal in the first demo was to show off the new conversation system. We haven't shown off the RPG elements yet (item upgrades and modifications, talent system, and so forth) because those elements are almost always hammered out right until the game goes gold, and also because "You can use detritus to make a gun upgrade!" isn't exactly going to wow the larger gaming audience.

[Acleacius]

It seems to have to do with movies being more mainstream and popular for so many years, since there arrival to the public, though games are over taking them.
It's very natural games are using the best of both to overtake movies, not to mention where most of the advancement in CGI used to (maybe still does) come from, it's a transition we all are just seeing.

So if a game Dev has 10 to 20 million for a title reaching more possible fans allows the Dev to make a second and third game.
They want some of those movie dollars and movie sales in theaters are constantly falling, certainly from home movie usage but games sales are skyrocketing into the billions and may turn out to the fastest growing industry ever recorded.

Now the key is if a Dev can hit that magic formula of a good story and a great looking game, then you are able to attract the fans with the newest effects they see in the movies but if they can get the story right, then you are there for days, weeks and in the case of an interesting MMO's months and years.

The sticking point in all this is going to be, how fast people will keep upgrading their hardware and why consoles are getting them first, imo. :)

[Lethal Weapon]

...Now the key is if a Dev can hit that magic formula of a good story and a great looking game, then you are able to attract the fans with the newest effects they see in the movies but if they can get the story right, then you are there for days, weeks and in the case of an interesting MMO's months and years.

The sticking point in all this is going to be, how fast people will keep upgrading their hardware and why consoles are getting them first, imo. :)

Replace 'MMO' with 'game with multiplayer' ; I will agree with the rest of your post. NWN is an example of a game which is not a MMO, has a bad OC, yet it did manage to attract the interest of players for years because of its multiplayer.

A bad single player RPG with a nice construction set can easily do the same. Who would honestly still play Oblivion if it were not for the mods? I know the only reason I haven't yet uninstalled is that although I could never bring myself to finish the game, I still like to experiment with the toolset - and I'm no artist.

An ideal game should do well in all respects, but the emphasis should be on GAMEPLAY, not on graphics or anything else.

As far as consoles go I consider the situation to be somewhat artificial - and as such with a limited life span. The point being that the devs do not choose to make console only games, they are forced to do so. Trully independent devs make PC only releases, or release simultaneously for all platforms.

It took BioWare quite a while to disengage from Atari + Wizards of the Coast, in the process Lucas Arts and Microsoft had to be used. I would be glad if Dragon Age will signify the birth of a new era for Bio in which games will be done for players, not publishers.

The company's past titles show enormous talent that has yet to reach its full potential; even when working under the umbrella of others, Bioware should become able to force its own terms.

[edit] After writing this post, I finally uninstalled Oblivion!

[Acleacius]

Lethal Weapon
Your right of course credit where credit is due NWN and NWN 2 hold the crown of Online Coop play and your right about Oblivion too it's has been sitting on my hard drvie since it came out, mostly I might play it again and only for the Mods.

It took SO much work to get it where I want it but now it's so out of date and it hasn't been patched and I will have to update many mods as well not to mention between the game and files like Mods it must be taking up 10gig of space. :(

That't true, m$ is the one forcing all this console only/first bs to make people want to by console hardware even if it has done terrible damage to the PC industry.

When I think of gamplay it's usually something in first or thrid person like Dark Messiah with real time movment and timing of swings.
TB like NWN or KotOR is more about balance of powers, skills and spells then taking turns hoping you end up the last one standing and as a matter of fact most times in TB games animation actually sucks.

Yes Bioware has lots of promise to bad not enough power to make simultaneous releases on all platforms yet.
They also seem to help smaller start up RPG comapines which is always good and
one can only hope they get big enough to be independent and I guess their online service could help.

[Moriendor]

I'd have to disagree completely with Acleacius. Games and movies are totally different media. I really don't see one of them replacing the other or people moving/transitioning from one to another.
People either like movies or games more. Or if they like both then they might make their choice of the medium depend on their mood (like when they're too lazy to play a game, then it's more likely they'll watch a movie). Or maybe they might even read a book instead if reading is one of their hobbies.
I don't believe that movie freaks (or book freaks... or anyone for that matter) can be converted into a gamer. No way. You either like gaming or you don't. It either is (or becomes) a hobby of yours or it isn't (doesn't).
A golf player doesn't suddenly become (or "transition" into being) a tennis player just because both sports include a ball and can be played on grass. You either like golf or tennis or both or none.

On a more general note, I'm not quite sure why this whole discussion has gotten so theoretical. It's extremely simple actually.
Games and movies are an audio/visual experience with games having just one more component which is user input.
I personally find it only natural that people try to innovate and improve the consumer experience in all of these areas.
This means that it's only logical and natural that graphics, screen sizes, resolutions, special effects etc etc are improving in the visual area as new technologies are invented.
Same goes for audio where new sound formats and technologies are being worked on all the time.
Finally -and this obviously only true for games- the interactive component gets improvements all of the time as well from keyboards to mice to wheels to flight controllers and joysticks and gamepads etc.
Why would you stop at color TV, stereo sound and the 'Pong' controller if there's so much more out there just waiting to be discovered?

Finally, I disagree with the suggestion that graphics get more attention than gameplay in modern games. That can not be true, simply for the fact that graphics/art people usually don't get to have a say in gameplay or design questions at all and vice versa.
The graphics and art guys are usually just creating what the designers and story team order them to make.
I don't think that a project lead has ever had to face the question whether to make a simple game with great graphics or a complex game with shitty graphics.
I'm very certain that the type or depth of a game (simple or complex) gets decided upon totally independent of the graphical quality.
We're talking two pairs of shoes here. Just because graphical improvements (which are only natural and logical as stated above) have gone hand in hand with the "dumbing down" of games, it doesn't mean that both "phenomenons" are interrelated in any way, shape or form.

[Dhruin]

I was with you on the first half but not so much with the second. Graphics absolutely have a huge impact on gameplay design and I believe in many cases, it sets the direction from the outset. Did you see the Age of Decadence article recently where the game has text adventure panels? "You successfully climb up to the window and carefully bla bla...."?

You simply don't get climbing in any modern RPG I can think of (apologies for anything I've overlooked) because the first thing a develop is going to say is "well, we've got to animate all this extra stuff...". Achieving the (currently demanded) level of "AAA fidelity" means compromises in the number of art assets that can be developed and animated, and that means potential limits to the gameplay all over the place.

[Moriendor]

OK, to clarify, I was thinking about games in general (not just RPGs) when I wrote that 2nd half :) . If we look at strategy games for example then there are a few good examples of games that are rather complex and have great graphics at the same time like the Total War games or Anno 1701 or Civ 4 or Paraworld.
As far as RPGs are concerned, well, I don't want to open up another can of worms and start another "definition war" but obviously if I were to follow your argument then my definition of more depth or more complexity would have to include the feature of climbing as you obviously consider climbing as something that adds more depth to a game.
I don't really share that view though since the mere existence of e.g. chess or complex 2D strategy games proves that you don't necessarily need a lot of animations or art or even a 3rd dimension to create depth or complexity.
That's why I still believe that the design decisions regarding a game's depth are made totally independent of the decisions about the graphical quality. At the very least, I don't believe in any causal relationship between the graphical quality and the "dumbing down" of games. Those are parallel developments IMHO that have neither a causal relationship nor any points of intersection.

[Lethal Weapon]

@Moriendor

There is no point insisting that graphics and depth are mutually exclusive when the devs themselves say otherwise. Take this quote from this very thread for instance:


1) Art is expensive, and art for side quests is the first thing to get cut when budget stuff happens.
2) VO-dialogue and more complex NPC reactions (changing emotions, gestures, etc) make conversations more labor-intensive, which in turn make conversation-based side-quests more expensive.


Or compare the complexity of say Fallout with any modern RPG. Or how 'thin' Gothic 3's dialogues are compared to Gothic 2's. Note: the word 'thin' came out from the devs themselves. If I recall correctly they said how they sacrificed presentation and made the game 'thin' to achieve an expansive and good looking game world, obviously competing (when they didn't have to imo) Oblivion.

[Moriendor]

@Moriendor

There is no point insisting that graphics and depth are mutually exclusive when the devs themselves say otherwise. Take this quote from this very thread for instance: ...

Or compare the complexity of say Fallout with any modern RPG. Or how 'thin' Gothic 3's dialogues are compared to Gothic 2's. Note: the word 'thin' came out from the devs themselves. If I recall correctly they said how they sacrificed presentation and made the game 'thin' to achieve an expansive and good looking game world, obviously competing (when they didn't have to imo) Oblivion.

Well, again: I was talking about games in general. Not just RPGs. But even if we stick to RPGs then -going by what you said- we'd have to assume that *side quests* (what? the number of them? the number of branches? what?) somehow automagically make a game more deep or complex.
That is something that I just can not agree with. For Dhruin it's climbing. For you it's a lot of side quests. For me it's something else. See? Depth or complexity is not the same for everyone.
Regarding your Fallout example, I would immediately disagree that Fallout was complex. How? Why? OK. Great. It did have choices and consequences. So what? Does that alone make it complex? I don't think so. Compared to other games... like Diablo... yes... it's complex... but looking at Fallout "stand-alone"... nah, it's not really that complex at all.

Oh, and as far as Gothic III is concerned, you're quite wrong. Sascha Henrichs of PB wrote in this thread (http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum/showthread.php?t=154203) ... "No, we have not put less emphasis on the story in favor of graphical improvements. Roughly speaking, we have five different departments in our company: Programming, story, characters/animation, graphics/art, and music. Every one of those departments is free to create a vision of what they want to achieve by the time the game is done [* note how he is regarding every department as an independent entity which happens to concur with what I said above ;) ]. It might appear sometimes as if the story has not quite managed to keep up with the rest of the game but this is not really to blame on the story team but much more on us level designers. We simply made the world too large and to top it all off, our 3 (yes, THREE) story designers just ran out of time towards the end of development."

[Lethal Weapon]

@Moriendor

Well they've said it: made the world too large and story couldn't keep up. Anyway this is not the post I had in mind. It was Mike I think who said that one of the game's major problems is that it is too thin and that the important characters are not presented properly; it is posted in WoG.

I didn't say that lots of side quests is depth (although PB seems to like lots of side quests). I was merely making an example. By generalizing my example (or other people's) you just commit a logical error.

What makes Fallout complex? The sheer amount of ways in which you can complete quests; how your choices affect the game world; multiple endings per location etc etc

But if you don't like this example take any old school RPG. You must be blind not to admit that modern RPGs have lost in complexity and instead gained in the arts department. In a similar manner strategy games lost in complexity when they became real time. The most complex strategy game of all -chess- is turn based.

[Acleacius]

Moriendor
"Games and movies are totally different media."
"Games and movies are an audio/visual experience with games having just one more component which is user input."
You seem to be contradicting yourself and agreeing with me, though. :)
Maybe I wasn't specific enough and certainly never suggested that Golfers would become tennis players, well unless they RPG one in a PC tennis game.

I was trying to mention the fusion of technology which was spawned from the movie industry to the game industry because games are the next evolution in Media due to the interactivity.
In 10 years certainly games and game technology will have take vast majority of movie revenues, especially in the entertainment and educational venues.

Of course better graphics do matter but aren't necessary, who wouldn't take the exact same game maybe 10 years old with much more modern graphics?
Why then are maybe Ultima games being remade and countless others when it's possible? :)

Hell if it wasn't for the bastards at EA System Shock 2 would be updated now with another newer engine. :p

[Moriendor]

@Moriendor

Well they've said it: made the world too large and story couldn't keep up.

Erm... back to basics for a minute... the point that we (or I at least) was arguing about was that I find it silly of people to say that developers intentionally prioritize shiny graphics over the complexity of their game. That's why the advancement in graphics and the "dumbing down" of games should be viewed as independent entities with no causal interrlation IMHO.
The above statement has absolutely nothing to do with that. Yes. They made the world too large and ran out of time to fill it with content. How does that have anything to do with the topic that we were discussing? Look at what Sascha Henrichs of PB said. He said that they did not prioritize graphics over story. Sorry that he's supporting my view but that's his fault, not mine :biggrin: .

Anyway this is not the post I had in mind. It was Mike I think who said that one of the game's major problems is that it is too thin and that the important characters are not presented properly; it is posted in WoG.

Yep. He said that. So what? How does it contradict anything that I said? How does it contradict the statement of Sascha Henrichs? It doesn't. It doesn't say anywhere that art/graphics or making the game shiny was the culprit that "stole" the resources or time away that was needed for the story. PB Mike gave other reasons in his posts (among them that a few of those design decisions regarding the NPCs and story were made 100&#37; intentional BTW).

But if you don't like this example take any old school RPG. You must be blind not to admit that modern RPGs have lost in complexity and instead gained in the arts department.

Hehe... once again I'm the wrong target here. Not only do I "admit" that modern RPGs have lost in complexity and gained in the arts department but I have effectively written a little essay about just that very topic above :) . All I'm saying is that these both things are not interrelated IMHO. Yes, both things happen but for totally different reasons and I find it silly of people to yell at developers for graphical advancements in games. It's a natural progression that graphics get better but to construe a relationship between better graphics and less complexity seems very questionable to me. That was my point.

[Dhruin]

Sorry, Mo. I still completely disagree. I only used climbing as a broad example - I don't really care if climbing is in a specific game at all.

When Sascha said they didn't prioritise graphics over story, I'm sure he is right in the context he means it. But, in a broader context (and I can pull quotes from people like BioWare's David Gaider pretty easily) a whole bunch of ideas never even make it close to implementation because the technical lead ruled them out as impractical in the first place. So, they didn't deliberately prioritise the graphics but they knew from the outset that they were aiming for a certain (high) level of graphics and that meant automatic limits on the production of art assets.

A simple example. If you have text-only dialogue, it's going to take "X" hours for the designers to create the dialogue trees. Add advanced facial emotions/animations and you immediately add more expense - someone has to implement it. That expense will always put limits on the dialogue trees.

[Moriendor]

OK, then we might have to agree to disagree :) . On a final note, I'd say though that there should be absolutely nothing preventing even a David Gaider and BioWare from making a deep and complex game with awesome graphics *if* those guys would stop aiming for producing boring epics and if they would instead focus on creating shorter, richer, deeper, more meaningful games with a more compact world filled with life.

Also, let us not forget that game development is constantly evolving. Middleware like SpeedTree for example removes the necessity to handcraft every bush and every tree so despite the general increase of work that must be put into the art, there are on the other hand definitely advancements in technology that help reduce the work load. Whether the in-house tools of a developer, the middleware or whatever other advancements manage to outweigh the increased demand for HQ art assets... I dunno. Lack of insight here, admittedly.

However, I'm 100&#37; sure that it wouldn't be too hard to create an awesome looking *and* deep and complex RPG with proper project management and if you're flexible in the goals that you want to achieve, i.e. maybe a company should not begin development with a firm commitment to creating a 100+ hour epic but instead focus on the core game and see how it goes from there.

Finally, I'm also very certain that the advancements in technology will eventually lead to (the possibility/the potential of) deeper and more complex games. Why? Well, I can't wait for physics to get properly implemented in games. That alone is going to add a whole new dimension to games with an awesome potential for a richer gameplay experience. Just think about the possibilities of physics coupled with features from the Portal game that is currently in development by/for Valve.
That potential just needs to be used. That's the only problem. No one is daring to use it because of the fear of failing in the "mass market" department.
Luckily there are still a few games that prove that deep/complex games do have a chance to be profitable (like Company of Heroes or NWN 2 if we consider the underlying ruleset as reason enough to call it complex). Publishers just need to take more chances but that's easy for me to say since it's not my millions of $$$ that are getting flushed down the toilet if betting on the wrong horse :) .