Wasteland 2 - Gameplay Video

You sure? You do know it's made by north Americans.

Yes I'm sure just as I'm sure that I adore north americans' games, to name a couple of recent ones: DX:HR and FarCry3.

Don't get me wrong, I still despise all those north americans that keep World War 3 arsenal at home. Every single one of them. If you're one of them, I despise you. Yes I do.

Then again, I don't really care if psychopats are north americans or southern australians or perhaps they live in central atlantis - a mass murderer is a mass murderer, regardless of his location. By erradicating them and destroying their weaponry the world would lose nothing and would gain everything.
 
Joined
Apr 12, 2009
Messages
23,459
As someone who hasn't been gaming on the PC for very long, the video looked alright to me. I can understand the appeal I guess.

The combat reminded me of Xcom. I'm not too crazy about guns and science in my RPGs to be honest. I'm more of a sword and sorcery type. So the setting just doesn't excite me all that much. That said though, I did enjoy Fallout 3 and New Vegas quite a bit, so if it's done well I will probably like it.

I wasn't crazy about how the dialog was presented. I will have to see more of this to decide if I buy it or not. Seems like it could be cool but yeah, just gotta see more.
 
Games for which the aim is to build a narrative are not new role playing games. They are not role playing games. They are narrative games.

Have you tried telling that to a "Narrativist role player"? Maybe on some foruns they will accept that their concept changed so much the basis of RPG that there is only a slight connection between the two. But usually they want to maintain the connection to RPG. I'm talking about pen & paper, of course, the niche is already too small, so I suppose the narrativist game designers want to "sell" their product as the natural evolution of role playing. In computer gaming I don't think the reason is the same.
 
Joined
Jul 14, 2012
Messages
368
Location
Midian
Yes, it was told to narrativist gamers. Actually, anytime I GM a game, I tell that the session is how role playing, not looking for builds, not looking for the elaboration of a narrative etc

How people call things do not change what things are, when they are things like RPG.

Narrative game players can call their games RPGs. That wont make them RPGs.

They could call football RPG.
 
Joined
Mar 29, 2011
Messages
6,265
Yes, it was told to narrativist gamers. Actually, anytime I GM a game, I tell that the session is how role playing, not looking for builds, not looking for the elaboration of a narrative etc

How people call things do not change what things are, when they are things like RPG.

Narrative game players can call their games RPGs. That wont make them RPGs.

They could call football RPG.

Well, of course everything is a question of definition, or the question about what most prople consider it to be.
Like "the sun is not shining today" implies that at some days the sun does something different. When in fact it's shining the same way and just the sunbeams are covered by clouds. So how do you define a "shining sun"?

And with RP(G) it's the same thing.
The core "concept" is playing a role. And nothing more. So basically when 2000 years ago the greeks did theatres this already was roleplaying. Nowadays when you are invited to talk about your application as salesman - you might need to roleplay a situation. But this doesn't mean you have a rule system in your back.

Then you have got RPGs as in pen and paper. This is just a "mutation" of the Roleplaying mentioned above. Actually they put together wargaming with roleplaying and out came what's now most of our pen and paper rulesets. Most of them including tactical combats and character progression. That is also why pen and paper roleplayers are parodied like in The Gamers.

And now there are Computer Role Playing games. And depending on when and with whom you learnt to know them you might consider the "standard crpg" something different than somebody else. I guess most of us consider the "classical CRPG" something like what they did with Wasteland 2. But of course this is not the only form of Roleplaying Game. But this is the one which was considered a Computer RPG first. They mainly copied Pen and Paper values and not true RP values. They were about tactics, stats and of course also story. But you hardly did real "Roleplaying" like when you run around and get take 100g from an old woman's table you will take it, if the game does not give you any penalty. Or did you seriously "roleplayed" your character and didn't take it if it had no effect?
So maybe if the marketd developed differently we would call Shooters roleplaying games today. But when shooters came up, they didn't really tell a story and the term CRPG was already taken. And while Shooters took over storytelling today and are overlapping with RPGs, this wasn't the case in the beginning.

Now let's go a step further into MMORPGs and this is where I actually see the "collision" the most. MMORPGs are, by definition, Roleplaying Games. However they are RPGs in terms of "Classical RPGs" and not in terms of what is called RolePlay as in Playing a Role. This is why there are dedicated RolePlaying Servers.
Lots of people playing on a Roleplaying Server don't even now what the "RP-Server" is about. They only know roleplaying in terms of CRPGs, not in terms of Playing a Role. So you have players playing an MMORPG as a CRPG and players who play an MMORPG as in Playing a Role. The second group is much smaller though and I guess this is where you see most, how much definition of RPG changed over all these iterations.
 
Joined
Jun 2, 2012
Messages
4,691
One thing I'd point out here is that the discussion shouldn't be centered around the term "role playing" so much as around the term "role playing game." That extra word "game" completely changes everything. It's not just about acting like a character. It's about using game mechanics (largely mutated from wargaming) to provide substance and structure to the act of role playing. Sure, role playing is still the goal, but game mechanics represent the means to attain said goal. When you divorce role-playing from the game itself, you venture out of RPG and into.. role playing.
 
Joined
Sep 16, 2011
Messages
445
Since the reference to the Greeks is made, some of them determined that a crazy man running down the street shouting that the Sun was shining was not enough of a reason to declare that the Sun is shining. There was something else at work.

The Sun shines does not need to be defined to be. And things do not need to be named to be.

Greeks were not roleplaying when doing theatrics.

I know that is can be shocking, but people who came up with the idea of role playing knew theatrics existed. If they meant something similar to theatrics, they were not dumb, they could have named it threatrics or acting.

The core concept of roleplaying games is not playing a role, the core concept is role playing, which means acting out of a role, elaborating decisions according to a role.

When invited to roleplay a situation as a salesman, you have a rulesbook. The one the firm sets. They are the ones who tell what the role is about and means.

The interviewer and the firm he interviews for set out the expectations they have concerning the role and they want the candidate to elaborate their decisions and their course of actions relatively to the role. If the candidate's actions do not reflect what the role is supposed to be, well, it comes up with consequences.

Etc...
 
Joined
Mar 29, 2011
Messages
6,265
Since the reference to the Greeks is made, some of them determined that....
...
Etc…

This doesn't really contradict my point though. Just puts a different label on it and uses different examples instead. Which is why I don't really get your point.
 
Joined
Jun 2, 2012
Messages
4,691
Really?

So what was written is not a frontal contradiction to that:
Well, of course everything is a question of definition, or the question about what most prople consider it to be.

That role playing games are not about playing a role but role playing?

Etc

If those are not contradictions, well... Ah, well, after all, it is all about definitions so I guess it includes the definition of contradiction itself.
 
Joined
Mar 29, 2011
Messages
6,265
Thanks for the links. The game looks exactly what I expected it be, a quality modern take on old school gaming. I could only notice two negative aspects, one was the mentioned keyword-centered dialog system which I can't imagine providing the options for C&C that Fallout did and the other was that the speed that the characters moved looked out of sync with the animations, given that they are aware of that it shouldn't be hard to tweak.
 
Joined
Aug 17, 2008
Messages
1,718
Location
Dear Green Place
Back
Top Bottom