PS: and as you tend to write of criticasters of Spiderweb as "they probably haven't played it" a lot (sorry D), I did play GF4, even bought it, but I got bored with it a few hours after the end of the demo.
That's crap - I've never done that.
Oh, OK - I do.
In my defence, I'm tired of seeing posters (mostly at RPG Codex, which for some reason makes it more irritating) who say something like "I've never tried Spiderweb's games but I heard they are all the same. Are they worth trying?". If you've never played even one, what difference does it make if they are all the same? Play one, enjoy it, move on. Or they argue with me they are all the same and they can't stand the lack of walking animations. *sigh* Maybe
try a recent demo instead of
assuming they're all the same? But I digress - it's just a personal bugbear.
It's about whether or not Spiderweb is offering us something new with each title. You can argue that's a peripheral thing, but I find it completely impossible to play Spiderweb games back-to-back, and usually need a half-year break between 'em. That's not just about graphics, that's because the game design, the story structure and the game's feel are always exactly the same, which makes a series just a parody of one big, long game.
Can I live with them never updating graphics? Sure. Can I live with constantly tired repetition of the same themes in endless sequels without creating new properties...that's tougher. Jeff's own motives in doing so are secondary, maybe he has to do it this way, maybe this kind of serial storytelling suits him best, but at the end of the day, it's a major flaw in mind-numbingly repetitive gameplay...
I could be pedantic and point out the releases are always at least 6 months apart.
But seriously, who would play them all back to back? The last three releases have been Avernum 4 (more linear and "actionised" than most of Jeff's work, party-based), Geneforge 4 (simply an excellent RPG, less linear, choices, factions, single char plus summons) and Nethergate: Resurrection (remake, different setting), spaced over almost exactly 18 months. To me, these games play very differently, despite the residual engine similarities. Frankly, I would expect AV4 to be too linear for a lot of RPG fans and NG is a remake, so that leaves GF4 in a two year period as particularly worth checking out...that doesn't sound all that repetitive to me. I find each one has a different flavour and I enjoy the stories, questing and basic gameplay.
Again, I appreciate they aren't too everyone's taste, which is fair enough. Getting back to my original point, however, we both know most of the people reading this site (and RPG Codex and GameBanshee) haven't played every one of Spiderweb's games - and probably haven't played
any - so similarity between the games is overstated for most people - and GF4 has considerably more content and more
complex content than Eschalon.
In summary: I really liked Eschalon but I still don't think it clearly eclipses GF4, which is what I originally responded to.