Besides DRM, Bioware`s games do not interest me these days because they are leaping into perspectives and gameplay they ought not.
I became hooked on Icewind Dale (DESPITE the lame/archaic D&D systems at play...) and Knights Of The Old Republic #1 because of both the depth of story and the superb action in the isometric perspective. The real-time action combined with the start-stop command of my Diablo-style party of characters, Icewind Dale particularly, was most engaging.
When I look at the stuff Bioware is cooking up now I honestly can`t be less thrilled. Its a betrayal of the perspectives Bioware made a name for itself with. They seem to be jumping into this third-person console realm and abandoning the isometric scope of their classic forefathers. Third-person can be fun, but it can also be more work; I can`t just click somewhere and send a party there, I have to ASDW my way but without the benefit of a *First*-person point of view. 3D Yes, "advance" away from isometric view No. Certainly not for every action-adventure experience. One can wish for EA-Bioware to return to its roots but thats simply not going to happen measured against all media on their upcoming projects.
I would hope that somebody else might not forget about the classic iso adventure... . Besides the lame underlying mechanical rule system (D&D!), the only thing that ever hampered the Icewind Dale/Baldur`s/Knights series was the limited range of camera zoom, which of course restricted the opportunity for ranged combat/combat at range. Of course with a Supreme Commander engine, this could be mitigated completely.
have you heard of Dragon Age?
*suffers a pavlonian episode and starts to drool*
Yeah, you should check out Dragon Age - it's basically Baldur's gate for the year 2009 (or whenever it comes out). It should be running off the newest ruleset, I believe (i don't really follow dnd... is it 3.5?).
Also, if you're looking for a game like that to play right now, have you tried Neverwinter Nights 2 + xpacs? It's got a huge campaign, tons and tons of classes - including epic classes - and just so much to do. In terms of dialogue, I still think Bioware does it better, but it's still very good. In case you didn't catch it from the previous sentence, the game's not by bioware. This is the game I'm currently playing during my free time. It's quite enjoyable
I dunno, but after the dreck that was Neverwinter Nights I never really got into D&D from Bioware (and Obsidian?) again.
So I can't really get excited about Dragon Age. It looks like much fluff to me, but not like an engaging party based role playing game...
But as for isometric perspective, I'm absolutely giddy for the new Diablo III which will remain the perspective (and thus the gameplay) of its predecessors and I hope its success will bring back more isometric games.
Dragon Age is not DnD game. Bioware/EA does not have rights to do DnD games so they make their own rules. But honestly I am not expecting much from DA, i have my NWN2+expanions and I love it.
Bleh, NWN2 suffers from endlessly broken features that the numerous patches have yet to fix. Plus it is a big resource hog for how little performance you get. I can see why some are drawn into the official campaign and the private servers. There's some appeal there. I'm debating installing it again myself and seeing if I can finally get interested enough to complete the game.
Yeah, Dragon Age is not running on the DnD ruleset, but no one who plays DnD games is going to be shocked by the combat mechanics of it either I'd wager. The promise of being able to use spells together such as the example to cast grease on the floor and then light it on fire sounds excellent. Baldur's Gate 2 is just too much to live up to. I don't think we'll see a game that massive any time soon with today's development cycles. Don't get me wrong, I love BioWare and I'm sure Dragon Age will rock, but it just can't be as long or rife with quests and places to go as BG2 and the expansions. I'll certainly be hoping otherwise though, heh.
I am still waiting to see if someone is going to repeat the masterpiece that was Planescape: Torment. Best story in a game I have ever seen.
So for me, its not that important whether a game is in isometric or 3D - as long as they go all the way with either, Neverwinter Nights 2 was a good example of what happens when you try to sit on two chairs at once. Look at the recent Fallout 3 - I loved the first two games, which were isometric, and I love the third one for its immersion factor which I think you can only achieve with a 1st/3rd person perspective.
As for story length, it seems the game companies are still in the "oooh shiny pwetty" stage where surface glitter is preferred to inner substance. In other words, they spend millions on new rendering development, animation and other visual/audio stuff and only a small portion of that goes to quality storytelling. Couple that with the unwilingness of risking such massive investments on radical gameplay experiments and you get the today's cookie-cutter game industry, where only a few are bold enough to step outside of the envelope.
I still dreaming for a remake/sequel/clone of Darklands, the only Microprose RPG.
It was a masterpiece.
About the camera style and graphic engine, let's see something like Dawn of War Winter Assault, but wich Badur's Gate/Darklands/Fallout gameplay (they are not the same, I list them like different options).
Ah, thanks for the correction, I was mistaken. But yeah, I really enjoy NWN2+xpacs - especially after thay fixed a lot of the game breaking bugs... uncompletable story quests suck
Having a fixed camera is not what made Baldur's Gate great. Tactical party based combat that worked, combined with tons of great content (storywriting, interesting quests, varied area) is.
I was fine with isometric viewpoint in its time, but I played Hinterland recently and I have to say that I really felt the fixed camera and rubbish resolution really brought it down. It's an arbitrary restriction (you can't see what your characters see, for example) that was implemented only because technology was not up to scratch. Let it rest in peace.
Also, Knights of the Old Republic was not isometric. It defaulted to an over the shoulder camera that you can move.
I know KotOR wasn`t isometric in perspective, just citing it (sloppily!) as one of the last Bioware games I enjoyed. Everything I`ve seen of Dragon Age says third-person to me. Perhaps I haven`t seen the right videos, but it looks third/arcade, not iso/rpg/action.
As for a fixed camera, I *did* mention Supreme Commander technology; simply being able to zoom out considerably would go far in rejuvenating that approach. Nonetheless there is an ease of use with an isometric perspective - to go from A to B is easy with drag selection and a click. Abandoning that for the more user-input-heavy third-person isn`t always what I`m looking for in a game. Sometimes when you blur an rpg with a light fps (or third`er) you get a dilution of both.
Sounds like you haven't seen the right videos It looks sorta NWN-ish to me, as far as the camera style.. you can play in the isometric view, or zoom in and play from the third person. They're really pushing it as the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate, so I fully expect that it'll be isometric
By everything they've said and shown in their Dragon Age gameplay videos it'll be horribly dumbed down. Spell variety, combat dynamics, everything is incredibly shallow so they can indulge in their fantasy of "spell interaction", which comes down to fire+oil is defeated by ice spell.
Not to mention melee combat will be utterly pointless because it'll depend on 15+ second long grappling animations. There's no room for tactics when your melee fighter is comitted for ages.
That just looked like it was with the boss fight.. I don't think that holds true for every fight, or it'd be pretty.. well, bad.
I think there are a lot of misconceptions about Dragon Age.
http://pc.ign.com/dor/objects/682217/dragon-age/images/dragon-age-origins-20080820104142047.html
isometric views are definitely possible
Yeah, that's one of my favorite screenshots As a side gripe, I hate it when they always turn the UI off and zoom in ridiculously to take shots. Who plays that way? Getting a screenshot of the UI pre-release is like wishing for a miracle sometimes!
Yeah, it seems like they do that with every game now. GTA IV was bad like that. Every screen shot was up looking at Niko's face, or in the camera view. Who plays in Camera view all the time?!
p.s. I've got questions for you in my "Ideas" thread! ahahh
I don't know what KotOR you played, but the one I played was not isometric in any way, shape or form. It was over-the-shoulder, much like Mass Effect and Jade Empire.
Also, calling BioWare's RPGs "action-RPGs" is an insult to true real-time action RPGs. BioWare's games are turn-based with dice rolling; they just hide it better than most.
All the while destroying the flexibility and tactics that turn based combat makes possible by trying to appear more and more real-time. See the gimping of the parry mechanic by trying to tie it to the animation system in the NWN series, or the grappling-multi-character-animations of Dragon Age.
Bioware should use RPG Maker VX (just to mention the latest) for their next game. Less graphics and more story.
I'm somehow joking.
Still hoping to see Drakensang in english (altough i have head that they story isn't so good) and maybe one day Age of Decadence. Not sure if there is hope for The Broken Hourglass. Loooooong time withough updates... And let's see if that Afterfall game is so good as it's makers want to make it. Would be awesome. Eschalon (i have only played Book I) is good but no party.
"I know KotOR wasn`t isometric in perspective, just citing it (sloppily!) as one of the last Bioware games I enjoyed." [quoting myself]
It sounds like Bioware needs to bring out a demo for Dragon Age... will investigate...
Well to be honest the combat doesn't work very well in KoToR or Neverwinter or Planescape Torment. Tactics just don't seem to be of us in any of those compared to spamming Force Speed / Isaac's Pleb Storm / That Spell Wot Makes You Shoot Blue Bolts. But I don't think that's anything to do with the camera perspective.
Meanwhile Mass Effect actually is an action RPG and it works very well with a few exceptions (fighting in the Mako is too easy, attack of the floating tripods is dumb).
I would like to see tactical combat that works well in a Bioware RPG again, but whatever happens I will greedily lap up the next installment of story goodness. Assuming they don't revisit the time travelling lizards fiasco.
Well Planescape:Torment was obviously geared towards mages. Some of those top-level spells were the most awesome ones I've ever seen in a game.
Tactical combat wasn't exactly present in Baldur's Gate either. Unless you call lobbing fireballs at the edge of your vision tactics, or making your fighter pick up all the aggro and then run around in circles while the others shoot the monster full of arrows like a porcupine. Oh, or how about making your party invisible and setting up a gazillion traps around a neutral dragon, then poking it in the arse with a sword? First time I ever saw a dragon essentially killed by a beartrap.
And there is always killing Drizzt via the "summon so many kobolds he can't move and then proceed to porcupineize his dark elf arse" stratagem. Used up two rods of summoning on that. But the swords were nice.
Well, the fact that you even had to think of stuff like trapping an area before pissing off the dragon, or use fireballs at the edge of the screen as a first strike is a clear sign that it wasn't your average modern "everyone of the party can die in any fight, as long as one person lives" RPGs with a 10 second wait to get full spells and health again.
Pre-expansion BG2 had some of the most challenging fights of the Bioware RPG history (bar Baldurs Gate 1 - "I'm a lvl 1 mage who rolled badly, I have 1 hp") - back when Liches were badasses, because they were flinging spells around that your party could only dream of. And let's not forget Kangaxx. I can promise you there will never be a Kangaxx in a Bioware RPG again, and that's a damn shame.
Hell, they're even touting friendly fire AoE spells as a "revolution" in Dragon Age. Let's just ignore that's been in pretty much all of the old DnD games, including Bioware's own.
I agree, but that's a blight on pretty much every game genre these days - they simply don't make them as challenging as they used to. Hell, I remember the original Warcraft and the damned alarm when I would spy the other side hauling a catapult towards my army - now that was a game which was truly challenging to win.
Its the money - the game industry is toobigshot these days - back when games were made by a handful of guys coding on computers in someone's garage, they had little to lose and could pursue their vision with tenacity and without a board of directors looming over their heads and expecting them millions of dollars to be paid back. So nowadays, only a few dare to risk "upsetting the gamers", most do not realize that you can't upset a gamer by making a challenging game. But then again, gamers have to do with games as much as roleplayers have to do with MMORPG's...
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