Old school western-style RPGs with great stories

J

jaes

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I haven't played many old school RPGs (in this case, circa pre-1995), but usually when I read about those older games, I get the impression that the gameplay often is good or even great, but that very few of those games tell great stories. But I could of course be wrong, that's just the impression I have from reading about the games.

That leads me to; which older western-style RPGs would people in here recommend, that offer both great gameplay AND great stories? :)

To be clear, while I like many types of stories, in this particular case I'm looking for stories with good plot and/or narrative.

BTW, I don't own any older consoles besides the SNES, so I'm mostly thinking of PC games.

Any help is appreciated!
 
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Many people believe that Betrayal at Krondor has the best story in any RPG with the possible exception of Planescape: Torment.

Ultima VII is also good.
 
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The Might and Magic games were also quite good and don't forget Fallout.
 
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nice try... come back again when you have something at all that doesn't suck donkey balls... ;)
 
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Yes, Betrayal at Krondor would be a candidate. It even had a solid interface which should still be tolerable. Unfortunately the same can't be said about the graphics. Early 3D didn't age well. ;)

We had a thread about BaK a couple of months ago.
 
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Depends on the graphics and gameplay - how far back are you willing to go? I'd say Planescape and Baldur's Gate should be fairly safe bets regardless, but beyond that, it depends on personal preference.
 
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Thanks for the suggestions.

Maylander said:
Depends on the graphics and gameplay - how far back are you willing to go? I'd say Planescape and Baldur's Gate should be fairly safe bets regardless, but beyond that, it depends on personal preference.
Click to expand...

As mentioned, I'm mostly looking for games from before circa 1995. To elaborate - even games from the 70s and 80s are fine by me :)
 
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In that era I don't recall many RPG's with advanced stories. It was dawn of storytelling in games as in the interactive media.

Interactive fiction though offered awesome pieces - I'd recommend Trinity or Mind forever voyaging.

My favorite rpg's from that era were Dungeon Master, Dungeon Master: Chaos strikes back, Wizardry 7 and C64 game called Elvira 2 (some hybrid between adventure and rpg). Elvira is also in PC version still being sold but it's incredibly bugged.

just my 2 cents.
 
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Betrayal at Krondor is hard to beat old or new.

I might be the only one on earth but I liked the story premise of the original gold box Pool of Radiance. The history out of the manual that comes with it really tied me to the story. That was the game that got me interested in RPGs. I never could get into any of it's sequels though.
 
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There were a lot of good story telling RPGs, the difference was that they relied on you filling in the gaps with your imagination. Take Ultima V for instance. It still had fairly simply dialogue trees, but they gave you just enough that you expanded it yourself. I used to constantly swear at Dupre because I'd made him out to be a buffoon from the little hints.

To the OP, it does kind of depend on how strict your definition of RPG is. Ultima VII has one of the best stories ever done (IMO). Prior to Baldur's Gate II coming out, I, and many others, thought it was the best RPG ever made.

Ultima IV through VI all have great stories, but they do require some imagination on your own.

Star Control II had a great story and really felt like an RPG to me, though some people don't consider it such.

You can get emulators for consol games from that era that will run on any PC. Legend of Zelda: A link to the past is fantastic (more adventure than RPG, but still a mix).

The Quest for Glory series was pretty good. A bit light hearted and again heavy on the adventure genre side, but still good.
 
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Ultima series had lot of (background) story, but you just had to read it from the manual, which I loved to do in bed before sleep. :D For most of the games it helped a lot because the clues. Lot of NPCs also had many interesting stories to tell.
 
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That was one thing I loved about the Origin games (remember the blue prints in the Wing Commander games?). It was just awesome that everything you got in the box was basically something that you might find useful if you were really in that world.

Don't see that anymore.
 
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One of these days I'll finally get around to playing Ultima VII, it's one of the few high profile crpgs I haven't played. I did mess around with it a bit using Exult. The story did indeed seem interesting, but the combat left me scratching my head.
 
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Thanks all for the further input.

blatantninja said:
There were a lot of good story telling RPGs, the difference was that they relied on you filling in the gaps with your imagination. Take Ultima V for instance. It still had fairly simply dialogue trees, but they gave you just enough that you expanded it yourself. I used to constantly swear at Dupre because I'd made him out to be a buffoon from the little hints.
Click to expand...

I love subtle storytelling, as long as it feels like it's "by design", and not due to lack of resources, etc.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, that I'm probably going to start out by getting BoK or Ultima VII.
 
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JDR13 said:
One of these days I'll finally get around to playing Ultima VII, it's one of the few high profile crpgs I haven't played. I did mess around with it a bit using Exult. The story did indeed seem interesting, but the combat left me scratching my head.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's basically just a big melee. One thing I didn't like about U7 was that only the Avatar can cast spells. So basically, you end up letting the party go attack and the Avatar hangs back launching spells.

Of course, combat isn't a big interest to me in these games, so it didn't bother me too much.
 
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The old Elderscrolls games are supposed to be pretty good, especially Daggerfall from what I hear. Morrowind is post-1995, so that doesn't count.

Lands of Lore, Realms of Arkania (you can buy this series on gog.com) and so on are also good options.
 
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Most old games had their stories in the manual because there wasn't enough space on the disks for that stuff. Some games had you refer to pages in the manual while you were playing for dialog, descriptions and such. Adventure games usually had pretty good stories but I can't recall any great stories from older RPGs.
 
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