Open World RPGs

[VaporX]

In my experience good RPGs come in two flavors, the interactive fiction style (story on rails) and the RPG style (open world).

 

Now the reason I say the open world is an RPG style is you have the ability to have, as close as a PC game can come, a real role play experience. You set the tone and pace, not the game developer. There is nothing wrong with the interactive fiction approach if the story is good but you are limited to what the devs wanted you to do in the order they wanted you to do it.

 

I am personally not sure how well Witcher will do with the open world. You are limited to the specific character and style so it will still have a lot of interactive fiction in it's system.

 

The Elder Scrolls, and Skyrim in particular is almost it's own RPG Genre. It has been a long time since ANY RPG has been so wide open for the player to pick any path they truly want. Add in an active and GOOD mod community and you have a gave that just will not go quietly into the night. In fact I think Bethesda could produce expansions for the game, maybe add one of the other provinces or something and doing that once a year keep this game alive for quite some time.

 

Interactive Fiction RPGs have their place and can be fun, but for me nothing gives the experience that I have found in Skyrim.

[InCrYsIs]

I agree with a lot of what you guys have said but I am just stuck.  I understand Dragon Age 2 was just aweful but if Bioware went back to the DAO formula, I think it would work.  This is story that I don't want to get overshadowed by a bunch of traveling and side quests.  We are all pretty sure a HOLY WAR is incoming.  This is one RPG that just doesn't need it.  I don't recall hearing specs on the size of the world.  I know The Witcher is supposedly going to be bigger than Skyrim which will be too big IMO.

[KillaCam]

Going to chime in with my two cents here.  Final Fantasy 7... Open world RPG that did a great job of keeping you on track with the epic story line and had plenty of side things to do.  That is the key to making a great open world RPG in my opinion.  Many of these open world games added so much side content that it actually distracted from the main story line of the game.  I'm always willing to give open world games a try, but not at the expense of getting lost in side content and having no idea what the point of the game is (cough Skyrim....)

[InCrYsIs]

Along the points of too big.  Tried to get back to Skyrim over the weekend and I forgot what the hell is going on.  This is why these big open worlds frustrate me. 

[VaporX]

I agree with a lot of what you guys have said but I am just stuck.  I understand Dragon Age 2 was just aweful but if Bioware went back to the DAO formula, I think it would work.  This is story that I don't want to get overshadowed by a bunch of traveling and side quests.  We are all pretty sure a HOLY WAR is incoming.  This is one RPG that just doesn't need it.  I don't recall hearing specs on the size of the world.  I know The Witcher is supposedly going to be bigger than Skyrim which will be too big IMO.

On this I do agree. The original Dragon Age was amazing and they botched 2 in more ways than I have time to go into. What they are doing with 3 however is what every game companies does any more and it is sad. Instead of creating your own nitch, you see a successful game and them emulate it. Originality in gaming is vanishing. Every MMO wants to be another WoW, every RPG another Skyrim. I do not want another WoW or Skyrim, I want something new.