I'm acually in kind of the same seat as you. Which is sad, since I'm only 20...
Since very young age (started playing with my brother's Commondor Amiga when I was about 5, got a SEGA Mega Drive when I was round 7, and we got our first PC when I was 10) computergames has been my major entertainment
. When I was 11 I got to borrow Fallout 2 from a friend who had got it for free with a computer magazine. Since I'd only started reading (if that's what you should call it when you're 10) English in school a year earlier, things like plot and characterinteraction was only things I was mildly aware of. With my limited languageskills I was only able to scrape enought knowledge to get myself forward (until I had my brother download a walktrhough for me at least
). My English developed great. If you want your children to learn English, have them play RPG's.
(Though you prolly allready knew this...)
For the next two years I worked hard finnishing F2 and enjoying every bit of it. My brother then borrowed Arcanum when I was around 13, and I got myself a new best friend. I probablly started around 100 different serious characters in that game. Only finnished it once... I allso got to borrow F1 somewhere around here, and though it wasn't as big as F2 I enjoyed that to. These three games has a lot in common. They all contain some brilliant moments when it comes to humor. Especially F2 when it makes fun of itself and other RPG's. They allso contain a lot (well, maybe not a lot, but they DID contain) of problemsolveing and peacefull quests. Like the Geckoquest in F2. You DIDN'T have to kill all the ghouls in order to make them stop polluteing Vault City, you COULD choose to fix the powerplant too. And in order to do that you had to go through a few steps. These quests really added variety to the game from quests like the toxic cave in Klamonth (which was filled with Geckos which killed you on sight). Most games today only have the toxic cave like quests
.
Then came the best of them all. When I was 15 I managed to find a used copy of Planescape : Torment. And it was the best thing since sliced bread
. It was like Fallout and Arcanum, only better. Of cause, it used the sucky D&D 2:nd ed rules, and to that you could only choose fighter, thief or mage, but you didn't care about that. The plot was great, all the important NPC's had deep and interesting stories, and an awful lot of the quests could be solved without combat, if you only used your head! Add to that a big portion of humor (most of Morte's conversations with Anna are just hillarious. Morte sais something to Anna. Anna sais "shut up ye ****** ***** of *****". Morte sais "boss, it's love right? Please, tell me it's love!") and it was the ultimate game for me. Unfortunantlly my urge for createing the ultimate character (first shown during my Arcanumdays) made me delete my save when I had gotten to 25 int and got an int bonus (oh noes, I've invested to much points into int!!! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!!!!!1111), and replaying the early part of the game were just repetetive, so I stopped playing. One of my goals in life is to one day finnish Planescape:Torment... (Acually, together with finnishing university, getting a good job and possiblly manage to find a girl who I like and who likes me back and marrying her it's my ONLY goal in life...)
Problem is, those were my first five years of RPG gameing. During the last five years I've played ONE game that I think comes up in a standard at least close to those games. That game was Vampire TM Bloodlines. The dialogue was up there with F2 and Ps:T, and the quests were nice and varied. Only problem was that they run out of time towards the end, so the final three quests are hack'n'slash and pretty much nothing else (apart from the fact that you get to choose who to side with). Those last quests were pretty much a waste of my time, they could have skipped them and rolled the final movie right away.
But that brings me to the point! (That's right folks, this post is soon over!
) I'm in kind of the same seat as SALZHERZ, since we seem to have similar taste, and "today's gamers" doesn't. The games I played in my early teens defined what gameing should be, and the games I play today all fail to live up to it. I played through KotOR 1 & 2, and they were allright, but not more. I tried a few other games, includeing Wizardry 8, Gothic, Morrowind and Lionheart without really them. In Lionheart I got halfway through (to the point where it turned from an RPG to a hackfest), but for some reason it never sucked me in, even though from what I remembered the elements for sucking me in seemed to be all there. I tried out Oblivion, but didn't get far before the unpersonality of the whole world hit me in the face, and I bought NWN2. I had really high hopes for NWN2, and the story seemed well made and the conversations with the (party) NPC's were well written. But it was 100% linear and exept for some minor quests (maybe) the quests were 100% combatoriented. Allmost no thinking was required to beat the game. I allso tried Jade Empire, but didn't really like it. Think I'll try that again sometime though...
I'm currentlly playing BG2. I tried it a year or two ago and I felt it was too heavy on combat, so I stopped. The only reason I can play it now is because my expentations are much lower. Sure, most of the quests I've played so far are combatoriented (in the forms of dungeoncrawls), but at least the combat floats better than NWN 2, and at least it's not as linear as NWN 2. And once in a while things that requires you to use your brain turns up (riddlesolveing for the most part, but allso other things). It's quite enjoyable, once you've accepted that it's not Ps:T. But I would want to experience what I experienced in my early teens again (it worked with Bloodlines, it could work again!). I'm just not sure when this will ever happen... You can allways hope for Dragon Age, but I haven't liked a single Biowaregame so far (exept Baldur's Gate 2, which was assisted by Black Isle according to wikipedia) so my hopes are kept low, despite the fact that it looks really really promising. But so did NWN2.
And on a sidenote: what's this Grimoire thingy? It seems interesting.
Übereil
