While I would generally agree that some can be overly dogmatic about what is a true RPG video game, particularly when talking about things like perspective and combat, I think this article does an awful job of trying to make that point. What might be an interesting way of stating "great RPGs run wide and varried gamut of perspectives, combat schemes, world-geographies, etc." turns into a bit of a mess.
If I were in there place I probably would have tried to talk about how attempts to emulate the table-top RPG experience can be both enhanced and stymied by how a designer attempts to simulate that experience in a game system. For example perhaps talking about how faithful recreations of turn-based gameplay can effectively capture much of the tactical challenge of those PnP games but is also prone to creating similar repetitive slogs if executed poorly or overused considering you can't take smoke breaks or talk about random stupid stuff while waiting on your turn.
I would have talked about how different games have attempted - and succeeded or failed to varying degrees - at giving the player a feeling of ownership over the character they create and how some of these design decisions have played roles in those successes or failures and why that might be.
The article itself...
Its listed once on the main-page in the broad sub-description. It is mentioned in none of the texts of the updates and used infrequently in a few videos and blog posts. Heralded regularly? Oook
In a tweet. Overanalyzing semantics in a 144 character medium not exactly known for its users (professional or otherwise) being particular careful and deliberate in their choice of words seems a bit thin. The word doesn't even appear on the product description page that GoG uses so I wouldn't exactly suggest its use was particularly central to their marketing.
Wouldn't First-person grid-based, first-person semi-continuous, third person fixed-perspective and third-person moveable-perspective be a more even way of categorizing things?
There's some incosistent things like listing Arcanum and Might and Magic VI as straight up "real time" combat, while calling Wizardry 8 just turn based despite all of these games having the options of some form of continuous combat and turn based combat. The author also calls Fallout 3 and New Vegas action hybrids (due to the ability to use pause and queue up attacks) but not the Mass Effect games despite the ability to pause and order attacks for each squad mate. On higher difficulty levels of Mass Effect I often spent more time in the command window than I did in VATS in the Fallout games so the distinction here seems arbitrary at best.
There's a few problems with this section to and the actual choice of categorizations to use. Separating turn based into tactical and menu seems more about the wider adoption of GUIs and the computer mouse than design intent.
I would say there are really two categories here being mushed into one. The first is combat time-progression (real-time, turn based, real-time with pause and hybrid). The first two should seem obvious - don't think turn-based and timed turned based deserve seperate categories as that's just chess with or without a clock. The distinction between real-time with pause and hybrid would be that the first are games where the combat itself always plays out in the real-time simulation while the player is able to pause to use items, queue up or order attacks, etc; a hybrid would be defined as a game which allows the player to chose from and switch between two or more options such as "real-time", "continuous turn-based", "round-by-round" etc.
The second would be mode of combat (tactical, action or hybrid.) Action games are games requiring the player to direct and target each specific attack of a controlled character to be effective (so success being determined largely by some combination of timing, reflexes, aim, etc. on the part of the player. Games with an obvious tactical focus would be those such as the early Ultimas or Fallouts - where positioning of character(s) and ability selection are done more or less by orders from the player and the correctness of those choices is the key factor in determining success. There are fewer hybrids here I think. The mass effect games tried at this but only on very high difficulty levels would I say that both player skill and tactical decisions (ordering squadmates for example) would decide success; still at other difficulty levels one could supplement a deficiency in one for the other to achieve similar results. I suppose a fool playing MM VI entirely in real time even in hard fights with limited kiting potential could be said to be playing a bit of a hybrid in this case too.
Alright so they appear to be conflating openness of exploration/quest acquisition with whether a world is continuous or dual map. They're also confusing what they do come up with considering they also categorized Fallout:New Vegas as "hub based." World geography might be able to be better categorized as linear, hub-based, semi-continuous, or dual-map. Fallout New Vegas was just as semi-continous as Fallout 3 and the initial need to use more interior cells in Fallout New Vegas does mean more loading screens but doesn't really change the semi-continous geography of the world.
Exploration/quest aquisition can also be categorized by similar descriptions - but this is a matter more of how those progressions look on a flow chart than inherently determined by the geometry. I would divide these up into open, linear, and hub (maybe call it branch-node to distinguish.) Exploration in Fallout 3, Skyrim, Fallout 2 and many games with different world geographies can have relatively open progression of exploration and quest aquisition.
I won't argue with that much.
If I were in there place I probably would have tried to talk about how attempts to emulate the table-top RPG experience can be both enhanced and stymied by how a designer attempts to simulate that experience in a game system. For example perhaps talking about how faithful recreations of turn-based gameplay can effectively capture much of the tactical challenge of those PnP games but is also prone to creating similar repetitive slogs if executed poorly or overused considering you can't take smoke breaks or talk about random stupid stuff while waiting on your turn.
I would have talked about how different games have attempted - and succeeded or failed to varying degrees - at giving the player a feeling of ownership over the character they create and how some of these design decisions have played roles in those successes or failures and why that might be.
The article itself...
Then Obsidian's Project Eternity Kickstarter heralded its isometric perspective regularly.
Its listed once on the main-page in the broad sub-description. It is mentioned in none of the texts of the updates and used infrequently in a few videos and blog posts. Heralded regularly? Oook
GOG.com advertised the new throwback RPG Inquisitor by saying it was "true to the isometric roots of classic PC gaming."
In a tweet. Overanalyzing semantics in a 144 character medium not exactly known for its users (professional or otherwise) being particular careful and deliberate in their choice of words seems a bit thin. The word doesn't even appear on the product description page that GoG uses so I wouldn't exactly suggest its use was particularly central to their marketing.
first-person (Skyrim), third-person (Knights Of The Old Republic), isometric (Fallout), overhead (Ultima VII), and tiled, which is a first person perspective where you move forward in squares,
Wouldn't First-person grid-based, first-person semi-continuous, third person fixed-perspective and third-person moveable-perspective be a more even way of categorizing things?
Only 15 of the games on the list were pure turn-based, while 21 were real-time.
There's some incosistent things like listing Arcanum and Might and Magic VI as straight up "real time" combat, while calling Wizardry 8 just turn based despite all of these games having the options of some form of continuous combat and turn based combat. The author also calls Fallout 3 and New Vegas action hybrids (due to the ability to use pause and queue up attacks) but not the Mass Effect games despite the ability to pause and order attacks for each squad mate. On higher difficulty levels of Mass Effect I often spent more time in the command window than I did in VATS in the Fallout games so the distinction here seems arbitrary at best.
There's a few problems with this section to and the actual choice of categorizations to use. Separating turn based into tactical and menu seems more about the wider adoption of GUIs and the computer mouse than design intent.
I would say there are really two categories here being mushed into one. The first is combat time-progression (real-time, turn based, real-time with pause and hybrid). The first two should seem obvious - don't think turn-based and timed turned based deserve seperate categories as that's just chess with or without a clock. The distinction between real-time with pause and hybrid would be that the first are games where the combat itself always plays out in the real-time simulation while the player is able to pause to use items, queue up or order attacks, etc; a hybrid would be defined as a game which allows the player to chose from and switch between two or more options such as "real-time", "continuous turn-based", "round-by-round" etc.
The second would be mode of combat (tactical, action or hybrid.) Action games are games requiring the player to direct and target each specific attack of a controlled character to be effective (so success being determined largely by some combination of timing, reflexes, aim, etc. on the part of the player. Games with an obvious tactical focus would be those such as the early Ultimas or Fallouts - where positioning of character(s) and ability selection are done more or less by orders from the player and the correctness of those choices is the key factor in determining success. There are fewer hybrids here I think. The mass effect games tried at this but only on very high difficulty levels would I say that both player skill and tactical decisions (ordering squadmates for example) would decide success; still at other difficulty levels one could supplement a deficiency in one for the other to achieve similar results. I suppose a fool playing MM VI entirely in real time even in hard fights with limited kiting potential could be said to be playing a bit of a hybrid in this case too.
Fallout may be turn-based and isometric, but it feels quite similar to other quest hub-using games like Knights Of The Old Republic.
Alright so they appear to be conflating openness of exploration/quest acquisition with whether a world is continuous or dual map. They're also confusing what they do come up with considering they also categorized Fallout:New Vegas as "hub based." World geography might be able to be better categorized as linear, hub-based, semi-continuous, or dual-map. Fallout New Vegas was just as semi-continous as Fallout 3 and the initial need to use more interior cells in Fallout New Vegas does mean more loading screens but doesn't really change the semi-continous geography of the world.
Exploration/quest aquisition can also be categorized by similar descriptions - but this is a matter more of how those progressions look on a flow chart than inherently determined by the geometry. I would divide these up into open, linear, and hub (maybe call it branch-node to distinguish.) Exploration in Fallout 3, Skyrim, Fallout 2 and many games with different world geographies can have relatively open progression of exploration and quest aquisition.
I've called the switch from party creation to single-character with recruitable companions one of the most important shifts in RPG history.
I won't argue with that much.
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