Rampant Games - D&D and Computer RPGs

The Rampant Coyote has written a response to an article I posted about at Tom’s Guide's last week. In case you missed it here is the link.

The title is a bit of a misnomer – it’s more of a story about, “How the Bioware / Obsidian D&D-based RPGs came to be.” Which is just as interesting to a fan, but perhaps doesn’t have much broad appeal.

While not offering new truly new information, I was interested in their take on what caused the ‘death’ of the style of game represented by the Infinity & Aurora Engine games. According to Urquhart, it was the trend towards making cinematic, console-style games. This made the kind of breadth of choice offered in their CRPGs prohibitively expensive. Publishers were no longer interested, instead focused on more linear, lusciously realized game worlds. Or, in my view – the dominance of the third-person action game!

Then there’s the little hint of a promise at the end that these guys would be interested in taking on a D&D licensed product again, and plugs for Project Eternity and the South Park RPG.

As far as the D&D system is concerned – while I’m personally a fan of 3.5 (and an even bigger fan of its spiritual successor, Pathfinder), the last edition of Dungeons & Dragons left me pretty cold. I’ve never been a huge Forgotten Realms fan, either.