Was 2007 a good year for RPGs?

Was 2007 a good year for RPGs?

  • 2007 was a great year!

    Votes: 39 49.4%
  • It was OK

    Votes: 27 34.2%
  • Not very good

    Votes: 10 12.7%
  • A terrible year

    Votes: 3 3.8%

  • Total voters
    79

Dhruin

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A quick interim poll before we move on to other things. So, was 2007 a good year for RPGs? Lots of people say it was the best in years, while others are less enthusiastic.

Personally, I had a pretty good year and struggled to keep up. I played every major indie - throw in The Witcher and Mask of the Betrayer and my play time was full. What do you think?
 
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The Witcher, MOTB, Eschalon, Stalker, Two worlds, Bioshock, UFO: Afterlight (technically not RPG but still a good game), Depths of Peril, Avencast and Nethergate Res.

This is a relatively short list but the quality of most of these games makes up for that fact. I voted for great year mostly due to the fact that CD Projekt Red gives me high hopes for the future of our little niche genre. Not to mention the indie market is looking up and this was the year I started to truly play some indie games that were quite enjoyable. If the AAA market goes down the drain at least there will always be a market for us somewhere.
 
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I said "OK" because (outside of Puzzle Quest) there weren't really any titles this year that I simply had to purchase the day they hit the market. I didn't end up playing that many games this year, but I think the releases did pretty well on quality (UFO:ET, Bioshock, PQ, Eschalon, and X2), so there's certainly some credit due.
 
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What about Witcher or MOTB?
 
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Haven't played Witcher and waiting for a NWN2+MotB combo box. I didn't have the hardware to run NWN2 on release day, but I probably wouldn't have bought it then anyway even though I got a lot of mileage out of NWN1. As for the Witcher, in spite of glowing reviews from people I trust, I have little enthusiasm for the game at the moment, mostly because I have zero interest in action-RPGs these days.
 
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In many ways, Witcher is NOT your 'traditional' action rpg!! Try the demo.
 
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I think it was a great year - much of it carried on the back of indies, but the mainstream guys managed to put out both reasonable quantity and quality for post-mid-90's. At least on the PC. Someone may have to fill me in on the console RPG scene. I just played FF XII, and that shipped in late 2006.
 
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It was pretty good, it's sad to say that it was,,,, since there were only 2 good RPG's released but better than the last few years anyway. Eschalon and The Witcher were both really great games!
 
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A great year, no question about it IMO. We got a really good "classic" cRPG (MotB), a game that moved the whole genre forward (TW), arguably the first "serious" console cRPG (Mass Effect), and a number of really good indie titles. We also saw some of the best things about cRPG's be incorporated into games of other genres (S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Bioshock).

After what feels like several years of stagnation, the cRPG genre suddenly seems a lot fresher and more promising. My theory is that the gamer population is growing up -- making "just another great shooter" is no longer the huge bit of news that it used to be. Crysis, as good as it is, didn't get anywhere near the attention of Half-Life 2 or even DOOM 3, for example.
 
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It was a year of hope.

MoTB showed us that storytelling D&D still works. The Witcher showed us that the P&P-virtues of choice & consequences once brought to the computer by Fallout are not completely incompatible with modern technologies and presentations. And Eschalon showed us, how professional and tailor-made for the target audience an indie-title can be.

Still all three games are short compared to how much playing time the ADD-crowd gets. On top of that, one is an indie-title, another just an addon/mod and the third one is the debut of an unknown polish company featuring a world from a series of novels unknown outside Poland. Not the most solid foundation to build your hopes on.

Still, maybe, just maybe those with the money that once decided that "RPG" is a trademark that can be sticked on any computer game to sell it better, see that there is an underused market that can be exploited. A market that is much more interested in the achievement of a talented writer than in the achievements of a graphics artists using up to date technologies.

It may not be a large market, but it's a modest market and a famished one to boot: Recycle a 5 years old engine and they would still buy the game as long as the story is good. While there is much more money to be gained by an Oblivion-Style "RPG" the profit margin (i.e. money outcome to money income) of a "real" RPG is destined to be much larger.
 
It was a great year. the witcher came out. And I have been playing it for a few days now. got it from my mom for Christmas :d
 
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In many ways, Witcher is NOT your 'traditional' action rpg!! Try the demo.
I know, but neither was Gothic, and I've had that game languishing on the shelf for how many years now. I just can't get up the enthusiasm for a game that requires me to click at the right times and strafe, strafe, strafe. Lazy, I is.
 
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A great year, no question about it IMO. We got a really good "classic" cRPG (MotB), a game that moved the whole genre forward (TW), arguably the first...

That's supposed to be The Witcher, right? Because it could just as easily (if you don't look at context), if not easier be Two Worlds...

Übereil
 
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MotB is the only one of the major RPG's I'm willing to play from last year. Its why I said it wasn't a very good year. I dislike the direction that companies are going with gearing their RPG's to more "Mature" audiences and I'm not going to spend my money on them.

PQ and Eschalon are great but they are not "major" games per se. Nevertheless with any luck maybe we'll be seeing more of these types of games as developers look to cutting costs.
 
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For me it wasn't a very good year when it came to new games, I did however manage to complete a lot of my older games.

Neither the Witcher nor MotB appealed to me because of their darker nature and so I passed on those I have to admit. I'm sure they are okay games, just not my taste.
I tried STALKER but couldn't get into it very much, I prefer my swords and elves and magic over guns and mutants I'm afraid :D

However, I did finish Titan Quest, Neverwinter's Nights 2, Oblivion (the main quests and lots of the side quests), Guild Wars Prophesies and NWN Shadows of the Undrentide (not the first time I finished that last one) so when it comes to enjoying RPGs it hasn't been a bad year at all.
 
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MotB is the only one of the major RPG's I'm willing to play from last year. Its why I said it wasn't a very good year. I dislike the direction that companies are going with gearing their RPG's to more "Mature" audiences and I'm not going to spend my money on them.

PQ and Eschalon are great but they are not "major" games per se. Nevertheless with any luck maybe we'll be seeing more of these types of games as developers look to cutting costs.

I thought MotB was at least as dark as TW, only in a different way. Hell, it featured cannibalism, soul-eating, betrayal... to get the most powerful magic item in the game, you had to betray and consume the souls of every one of your party members!

I still find it odd that you find this sort of thing less objectionable than the sex in The Witcher (which is milder than what you get in prime-time TV).
 
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It was a great year for me even though I only played 4 RPGs. Jade Empire to start the year, ________________________ after that, and finished it with The Witcher, Eschalon, and MOTB. We, RPGamers, still don't have our groove back like in the 90s but we had quality games this year. Like they always say, quality over quanitity (in most cases at least).
 
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After what feels like several years of stagnation, the cRPG genre suddenly seems a lot fresher and more promising. My theory is that the gamer population is growing up -- making "just another great shooter" is no longer the huge bit of news that it used to be. Crysis, as good as it is, didn't get anywhere near the attention of Half-Life 2 or even DOOM 3, for example.

I hope that RPGs will do well out of the maturing of the games market in general. If you want to make a shooter that really stands out you have to have a major innovation in AI or graphics, both hugely expensive and becoming ever harder as people have already seen it all. If you want an rpg that stands out you only have to get someone to come up with a good plot and interesting setting, which must be cheaper and easier to do.
 
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