What will be Bioshock's impact on the cRPG?

There's little doubt that after all this (well-deserved) web-wide love for the game, we're bound to see the influence of Bioshock in every FPS made in the near future. I'm just wondering about the end result of all this success for games in other genres.

We've all seen how Oblivion changed the whole framework of what is expected from a cRPG, also how it's success has caused it to be a major influence in many new games across the board, all now trying to provide the "open-world" feel and eye candy. It and games like KotoR and WoW have become the benchmarks in game development.

Obviously, Bioshock and Oblivion are two very different games and I'm not comparing them in an apples to apples way. But the present level of interest in Bioshock is bound to influence future game development, and I think it also will do so across all genres, especially as genres themselves become less and less defined.

I'm wondering if this will finally break the fantasy stereotype of the tradional cRPG, if we'll see shooter elements begin to be used (as to some extent they already are if you accept the action rpg into the fold), if every new game is going to be set in an imitation/variation of Bioshock's distinctive world. When you consider that Fallout 3 is coming along right behind it, I think the impact will be pretty profound.

Of course, the real question is, is this a good or bad thing?

I think it could very well be the nudge that cRPG's have been needing to reinvent themselves.

Thoughts?

I think we're still waiting for the Twin Peaks of video gaming.

woges said:

I think we're still waiting for the Twin Peaks of video gaming.

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I want to play myself in that one ... or rather, my doppleganger who was the midget from the infamous dream sequence, one of my absolute favorite moments in all of visual art.

[Nerd mode on]It's "Doppelgänger" in German language[/Nerd mode off]

Alrik Fassbauer said:

[Nerd mode on]It's "Doppelgänger" in German language[/Nerd mode off]

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Of course I 'speak' American English which means that we have taken original English and every other language we could find and tossed them through a meat grinder and dealt with whatever came out ... even if it meant losing a few scraps along the way

If Bioshock ushers in a return to strong narrative forms while adopting somewhat open areas and compelling visual styles ... I'd love to see that influence in *every* genre I play.

I haven't finished Bioshock yet (taking my sweet ass time exploring every square inch of the levels and have only made it to the Farmer's Market level so far) but from all that I have seen, I wouldn't really know what impact Bioshock could possibly have. Don't get me wrong. I think it is an awesome game and tons of fun but it definitely is not innovative or revolutionary in any way. It's basically just a very well done mix of Half-Life 2, Prey and F.E.A.R. The only thing that's kinda original (naturally) is the setting though I wouldn't really call the picking of a more or less random time period (1940s/50s) and the picking of a more or less random environment (underwater) the pinnacle of originality. It's very simple. Here, let me show you: Imagine a game set in ancient Rome but on a space station on Saturn. Wow. I just made up a totally unique new setting. Yay me! Creative overkill alert! .

I also don't really see the strong narrative (yet?... maybe it's still to come...). The recorded diaries that are lying around for you to pick up are a pretty pathetic way to tell or transport the story. - F.E.A.R used a similar system but there it felt more natural since the "diaries" in F.E.A.R were messages left on mailboxes, answering machines etc. left on devices that you could interact with (i.e. office PCs, phones etc.). The diaries in Bioshock are like items and they just feel a bit out of place in my opinion. It feels to me like they threw them in last minute when they realized "oops, shit, we don't have much of a story yet".

On the other hand, the game is definitely achieving to make you curious enough to go on and to find out about the nutter who built this place and also to learn more about your mentor (Atlas). But so did all the other games that I mentioned before (well, OK, Prey was pretty weak in the story department but HL2 and F.E.A.R had a pretty good and motivating story as well).

So in summary I can't think of any particular feature in Bioshock that I would recommend to a CRPG developer to copy. Or to put it more precisely: I see nothing that is unique to Bioshock that a CRPG developer should all of a sudden copy just because it is in Bioshock, too. It's all been done before. Deus Ex and System Shock 2 had the manipulative environments, Half-Life 2 introduced the physics as an element of gameplay years ago, the weapons and plasmids are all pretty much standard FPS/RPG fare, and quite a lot of games including F.E.A.R used the flashback/vision element for creating a bit of mystery/horror (though Bioshock is definitely horror "light" compared to F.E.A.R).
If anything should be copied then it's the high production value, the lack of bugs in the 1.0 version, the stability and the awesome art direction but those aren't gameplay elements obviously.

Therefore, I believe that the impact on CRPGs will be zero. But it will probably have an impact on FPS in that we might see more developers picking up on the manipulative environments, the setting up of traps etc. - In general though, I think that the big buzzword for future FPS is "emergent gameplay" and the "next big thing" is the open ended levels like in Far Cry. Upcoming games like MoH: Airborne (coming out just next week), Crysis and naturally Far Cry 2 among others are all heavily emphasizing that they are not linear shooters on rails but that they offer the player a high degree of freedom in how to play through the levels.

So you don't see anything that might be picked out by developers to work into a cRPG? I was thinking we might see more sci-fi oriented cRPGs, which people have been asking for for years, or that some of the feel for having a coherent, well-realized smalller world with a character on a(more or less) defined mission might mitigate the current "huge, open" sandboxy template with a character that can do and be everything.

I defer to your judgement, Mo on how innovative the game may actually be since it's not my genre. I don't know that the point is that it did something totally new or different so much as whatever it did do made people play it and talk about it in record numbers. So if you're planning on making a game, perhaps you want to find that elusive formula.

Moriendor said:

Quote.

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Well written Moriendor. Though in my opinion a underwater city in the scale, architecture and time period of BioShock is fairly fascinating and original.
I haven't finished yet also, but the narrative and the general FPS interface/gameplay isn't anything ground breaking at all. These voiced diaries lying about was also done in Doom 3 and it feels just as dull in BioShock as in Doom 3. The realism of the existence of these diaries is another thing worth questioning. The whole world and gameplay of BioShock feels just so unexplained.
But well, this thread isn't about criticizing BioShock so I'll find another thread to do that.

Asbjoern said:

Though in my opinion a underwater city in the scale, architecture and time period of BioShock is fairly fascinating and original.

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True. The implementation and the art direction (including the sound/music from that period etc.) is completely awesome. I just meant that the idea per se is not too original. Anyone can very quickly think up a historical time period and an out-of-the-ordinary setting/world that has no context to the time period. It's very simple and easy. Of course, the challenge to get it right and to implement it well remains and this is where Irrational/2K most definitely succeeded on the highest level. No doubt .

magerette said:

So you don't see anything that might be picked out by developers to work into a cRPG? I was thinking we might see more sci-fi oriented cRPGs, which people have been asking for for years...

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I don't know... there's Mass Effect, Fallout 3, Hellgate London, the Alien RPG from Obsidian coming up and there have always been SciFi RPGs (not necessarily good ones but that's a different story ) coming out, too. I just don't see the lack of such games.

...or that some of the feel for having a coherent, well-realized smalller world with a character on a(more or less) defined mission might mitigate the current "huge, open" sandboxy template with a character that can do and be everything.

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Again, I don't really see a lack of such games. The two styles of games you mentioned seem to happily coexist. Oblivion, Two Worlds, Gothic 3 vs NWN 2 or most action RPGs (Titan Quest, Loki, Dark Messiah et al). I don't see one side getting a lot more support or attention than the other.

...whatever it did do made people play it and talk about it in record numbers.

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It's just the hype phenomenon. Oblivion Reloaded .

It does have the possiblility of ushering a new wave of more adult themes and gritty worlds. That has always been apart of gaming though, its just seen a downturn due to the mass success of computer games. I doubt publishers will be flocking to fund such games though just off of Bioshock's back.

txa1265 said:

I want to play myself in that one ... or rather, my doppleganger who was the midget from the infamous dream sequence, one of my absolute favorite moments in all of visual art.

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You are the arm sir.

The first System Shock had these voice/video clip diary entries, too, and they were at least partly responsible for the game's high suspense factor. There was your growing desire to discover somebody who was still alive by following their trail of diary entries, just to be disappointed time and time again...

Exactly Jaz. Bioshock has from day one been promoted as "the spiritual successor to System Shock 2". You can NOT make a successor to SS2 without audio logs or ghost sequences, hence both are present in Bioshock.

I fail to see how an FPS can really impact an RPG!! It's not like this stuff hasn't been done before, as with System Shock as others have already pointed out, and perhaps to a lesser extent with DX!!

Well, perhaps its foolish of me to think that developers will want to attract the success and media attention of this game by mimicking any aspect of it in their own games. Nobody copied game elements of Oblivion, Diablo or WoW so why should Bioshock be different.

Come on guys, let's be realistic. When a game has this kind of media extravaganza surrounding it, the only way it won't be copied is if it later turns out that the media has been wrong, as in Black & White, and the sales stop because the game actually sucks.

And if that's the case, then of course Bioshock will have no impact at all on anything. But if people are drawn to the game, play it, talk about it, and most of all buy it in large numbers, I guarantee it will have an impact.

Moriendor is correct when he says a lot of Bioshockian elements are already present in cRPGs, especially if you stretch the definition to include action rpgs.
But traditional, d&d style rpgs have stayed pretty close to their fantasy roots. (TES, NWN, Dragon Age) I think Bioshock is going to shake this up a lot more, as we see the fantasy flavor migrate more toward MMO's like WoW and Age of Conan, and action rpgs like Loki and Two Worlds.

I think it may make party-based crpgs less attractive to developers. What's the last party-based big-seller? NWN2, if you call that a party. And that got far less attention than this game's getting.

I think it may make guns more attractive than +4 vorpal swords, strange android mutants more prevalent than shuffling zombies, and stimpaks and plasmids the new potions.

I think Bioshock, FO3 and the Aliens rpg are the tip of the iceberg for what will happen in crpgs. And I don't think that's a bad thing. My purpose here really wasn't to be a doomsayer and wail that my kind of game is in danger--I welcome change to this genre. All these things are in many ways cosmetic anyway. I'm all for anything that works.

And just because Bioshock is a shooter, I don't think that precludes developers from capitolizing on it's strong points in another genre. My take is that we're headed for the same place as Asian cuisine: Fusion.

Genuine Rpg's (like Fallout & Baldur's Gate) have been (nearly) systematically destroyed by the corporate copy & paste FPS model, based on Morrowind, then Oblivion, Stalker, System Shock, Bioshock and many others.

It's the FPS-Action-MMORPG era.

And you can keep facilitating it, subsequently eradicating genuine Rpg's, by purchasing, promoting and discussing the FPS clickfests.

The rational alternative, is a boycott of the greed-based corporate copy & paste Pseudo-Rpg scam.

Arpyjee said:

The rational alternative, is a boycott of the greed-based corporate copy & paste Pseudo-Rpg scam.

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That... or to put the tinfoil hat in the recycling bin .

Corwin said:

I fail to see how an FPS can really impact an RPG!! It's not like this stuff hasn't been done before, as with System Shock as others have already pointed out, and perhaps to a lesser extent with DX!!

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Some here are awfully jaded about Bioshock, which is somewhat surprising ... or perhaps somewhat not. Since it isn't a RPG I don't expect it to get the same treatment, but it *is* a great game and it feels 'fresh' to guys who play 10 games a week for a living not because it meets some Oblivion-ish 'feature list' of new stuff that would look good on a Powerpoint slide but because of the way it actually does things.

As for how that could impact RPG I really don't know because that sort of tight unfolding narrative in a RPG would ... make it not a RPG.

Moriendor said:

That... or to put the tinfoil hat in the recycling bin .

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Haha ... I think he is on a general rant tear about this, as he has said almost the identical thing in multiple threads!

txa1265 said:

Haha ... I think he is on a general rant tear about this, as he has said almost the identical thing in multiple threads!

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Yep. Must be on a recruiting spree for his anti-everything commie party or something like that .

Moriendor said:

That... or to put the tinfoil hat in the recycling bin .

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There is no tinfoil hat here. But since you are blindfolded, delusional and oblivious to the virtual destruction of the Rpg by the Pseudo-Rpg fraud (via FPS-Action clickfests), you might be imagining a tinfoil hat - while you are blindfolded.

:-}