So we have a new open world kind of game, SoulKeeper.

[leddis3]

Our conditions for immersion are wastly different (read about roleplaying below).

It is more then being called by name - the world reacts to your appeariance (commenting white hair, two swords, age etc), proffession (being called witcher, mutant, freak but also refering to witcher codex), gender and finally voice acting and expression fiting the character. non of this is possible if you start as blank page.

The world isn't reacting to "your" appearance. They're reacting to Geralt's. How is that immersive? Or an RPG?

The world reacts to Isaac Clark's, Kratos and Sonic the Hedgehog's appearances too.

 

If that's your condition for immersion then your condition has nothing to do with roleplaying but rather being fed a character and a narrative for that character.

 

 

 

Who prepares the role is not important. In perfect RPG it would be the player that imagines the role and the world would wrap a story around him. Obviously it is not possible. Hence what you play and how you play needs to be limited.

 

Limits made necessary by the medium. Lack of character creation is not a necessary limit.

 

 

 

They will tie you to chair, put gun to your head and force you to play?

No, it is the playerbase that decides what is popular and err brings in profit and what is not. If you lose and your game genre dies out what you are gonna do about it? Nothing , just like in real life if you lose voiting you just have to deal with it.

I can be mad all day that consoles dumbs down games and killed isometric cRPGs but there is nothing i can do about it (well kickstarter did show us some light)

 

I was responding to someone who claimed developers had no ideology.

As for your appeal to popularity, I again point to people who play TW3 in spite of Geralt, not because of him.

[leddis3]

 

I loved Skyrim and Dragon Age but you can definitly agree that having a mute character was off-putting. Having a voiced character reinforce immersion, that's a fact, and you can say whatever you want about TW3 but the one thing they done right in this game is immersion.

 

That's an entirely relative claim. There are those of us who consider Dragon Age Origins, Baldur's Gate or Pillars of Eternity far more immersive than, say, Dragon Age Inquisition.

 

I'm not even going to get into TW3 on this subject. It's immersive because a set character has a voice? On the same level as an RPG?

So are you really, truly saying that, say, Metal Gear Solid is more immersive than Dragon Age Origins? Come on.

 

 

 

Saying CDPR is shoving down our throats a forced NPC is beyond bad faith, the choice to play the game is yours and they never promised any customisation. The game from the first installment of the serie was focused on Geralt, that's a fact and not something that was gonna change at any point, flushing the game down the drain because of that is childish at best. Saying this is not a RPG because you can't choose who you play with is wrong too as far as what games are called RPG these days.

 

The definition of RPG brings with it certain expectations. Chargen is one of them. CDPR continually misrepresent their games, badmouth Skyrim and present TW3 as a competitor, when TW3 is about as much a competitor to Skyrim as God of War, and BETHESDA KNOW THAT.

 

 

 

Of course TW3 is not a pen and paper RPG, yes Skyrim feels somewhat more "open" but this often sacrifices the immersion. This is often because of hardware, time and budget limitations but as a dev I can totally understand the take on "let's deliver a great story even if we need to sacrifice some liberty".

 

Again, the *only* reason Skyrim has a bad story is because Bethesda has shit writers.

 

 

 

At the end this comes down to a simple fact : you have to take games as what they are, Skyrim is a great sandbox RPG while TW3 is a great driven story RPG. Could they have done it better? Certainly. Could they have turned it into a game as open as Skyrim ? Certainly not without sacrifying what makes it great : immersion.

 

This is a completely false dichotomy. You do not need to sacrifice freedom at all to deliver a decent narrative. See Fallout New Vegas.

And please don't claim that game doesn't have immersion because you have no set voice and are called Courier or I just won't take you seriously.

 

 

 

Did I liked to play a teenage boy in FF10? Not a bit but I do consider it to be an excellent JRPG nontheless. Hell I don't even have anything special about Geralt but the quality of writing and the immersion kept me going and it felt good to see that my decisions did matter.

 

JRPGs are their own genre that are somewhat of a misnomer.

Also, at least Tidus is a likable character and not the vicarious power fantasy of a hack author.

 

 

 

Believe me, sandbox open RPG like Skyrim are here to stay, and I am grateful for that but I do hope that we will see more games with the writing quality of TW3 even is they "shove down my throat" a character that I don't like.

 

Again, you're accepting limitations based on a false dichotomy. There is no reason why a custom character can't have a quality, immersive story written around them. It's been done before. Bethesda simply have never been good at characterisation.

Name one memorable character from Skyrim. Aside from maybe Parthunaax, you can't (and even that is due to Charles Martinet's excellent voice work and not the writing). This has *nothing* to do with set characters and freedom, this has to do with Bethesda not bothering to hire writers worth a damn. Hell I don't think they even have dedicated writers, they have the scenario designers do the writing.

[Chaos63]

I think I know what's going on here. Everyone who've played TW3 becomes an authority on role-playing games and think they can redefine the genre based on what they saw in that game. Ridiculous.

 

And apparently, those who haven't even played the game know much more about it than us who have and are all too eager to correct our misconceptions about it.

And here we thought we were having fun, how fortuitous you came along and showed us how mistaken we were.

 

 

edit: forget it, this thread is a piece of shit that's way overdue for locking

[leddis3]

 

I think I know what's going on here. Everyone who've played TW3 becomes an authority on role-playing games and think they can redefine the genre based on what they saw in that game. Ridiculous.

 

And apparently, those who haven't even played the game know much more about it than us who have and are all too eager to correct our misconceptions about it.

And here we thought we were having fun, how fortuitous you came along and showed us how mistaken we were.

 

 

edit: forget it, this thread is a piece of shit that's way overdue for locking

 

Lock a thread with viewpoints you don't like? How... typical.

 

And who among us is telling you not to have fun with TW3? Who among us is saying anything that requires having played the thing?

Some of us are simply stating that neither it or this new Soulkeeper games are RPGs, because they lack a fundamentally important feature of RPGs.

 

It baffles me why some like you take these statements as some sort of unforgivable insult against TW3.

Nobody's saying it's a shit game. Nobody's shaming you for liking it. We're talking about genre definitions, that's it.

[trpd]

 

 

 

Care to not castrate my answer and reply to the whole thing if you do? post 95 Much appreciated.

Why, you deny me the freedom you've been enjoying while ignoring the important bits of people's messages, including mine? What do you want me to answer? PT is not a game I've played. Judging by what you wrote, PT apparently had character creation, but not appearance customization. It's not the same thing as not having character creation at all. As for Fallout 1 & 2, they both had character creation and customization at least to an extend, as you were able to choose your character's sex, stats, traits and both games take all of those into account in the game.

Also, I've already told you that character appearance customization was either not feasible or very expensive back in those days, as those games were running on 2D engines which used sprites instead of 3D models. That's the reason why people used character portraits in Infinity Engine games to give their characters a bit of "flavour".

 

 

I'm talking about the part when you throw crap at ppl, call me fanboy that got corrupted, bound and blinded by TW and now wants to redefine the genre. I've proved your argument to be BS, yet you won't back out from it. What did i expect... and now i'm even denying you freedom ? of what? speech ? oh ewul me. No further comments needed.

 

 

 

 

The world isn't reacting to "your" appearance. They're reacting to Geralt's. How is that immersive? Or an RPG?

The world reacts to Isaac Clark's, Kratos and Sonic the Hedgehog's appearances too.

 

If that's your condition for immersion then your condition has nothing to do with roleplaying but rather being fed a character and a narrative for that character.

 

 

 

Not sure about you, but when roleplaying i'm not playing myself. And playing Geralt role is as good as any other.

 

Also what i pointed out for Bjornk, in classic cRPGs character customization was hardly the thing (PT didn't have any) so you can't claim it is necessary for game to be cRPG.

(another one that just came to my mind is Ghotic).

 

 

Also on side note for claims that TW3 would lose nothing by having customizable charcter. That is  a fail. TW started as game by people that simply loved the book and wanted to continue Geralts story. It was made for local market - the gameplay was terrbile , so was english dub yet people liked it for the story. Enough so that the series continued. Further more the books just now get translated to english, like what the hell ? For fans of TW1&2 Witcher is Geralt, going sideways from that would just piss off all existing fans.

[leddis3]

 

 Not sure about you, but when roleplaying i'm not playing myself. And playing Geralt role is as good as any other.

I create many characters in RPGs that are not myself. But they are *mine*. That is what RPGs bring to the table.

Whether you like Geralt or not, he is someone else's character. You cannot roleplay as him anymore than you can roleplay as Solid Snake, or Lara Croft, or Gordon Freeman.

 

If Geralt happens to coincidentally fit all the requirements you'd have for a character you'd roleplay as, then that's all well and good for you, but that doesn't help the rest of us and again, I could make the same argument for any videogame character.

 

 

 

Also what i pointed out for Bjornk, in classic cRPGs character customization was hardly the thing (PT didn't have any) so you can't claim it is necessary for game to be cRPG.

 

Character creation has been part of cRPGs since their inception. *Visual* creation didn't come till later because of tech limitations. I believe this has already been pointed out to you.

 

 

 

(another one that just came to my mind is Ghotic).

 

Gothic is not an RPG either.

 

 

 

Also on side note for claims that TW3 would lose nothing by having customizable charcter. That is  a fail. TW started as game by people that simply loved the book and wanted to continue Geralts story. It was made for local market - the gameplay was terrbile , so was english dub yet people liked it for the story. Enough so that the series continued. Further more the books just now get translated to english, like what the hell ? For fans of TW1&2 Witcher is Geralt, going sideways from that would just piss off all existing fans.

 

That's all well and good. They just shouldn't call it an RPG.

Furthermore when they decided to go open world, that was the time to give us more options. They stubbornly decided to stay with Geralt?

So what about the book fans? They already had two damn games! Is that not enough?

What would be so terrible about a character who meets Geralt and fights with or against him, for example?

 

[bjornk]

I'm talking about the part when you throw crap at ppl, call me fanboy that got corrupted, bound and blinded by TW and now wants to redefine the genre. I've proved your argument to be BS, yet you won't back out from it. What did i expect... and now i'm even denying you freedom ? of what? speech ? oh ewul me. No further comments needed.

I've tried to keep it as civil as possible, however you don't even know the shit you're talking about. The argument here is about "character creation" vs. "premade character", but you confuse "character creation" with "appearance customization", which is only a part of character creation, you think "distributing points" is not "character creation", but that's exactly how we create strong/weak, intelligent/stupid, charismatic etc. characters and it is "character creation". All of the oldschool RPGs that you've chosen as an example had "character creation". So you've clearly proved your argument was wrong all by yourself. So shut the hell up.

 

PS. Take a look at the screenshot from "Planescape Torment", what does it say about that screen? Yeah, "Character Generation". So I rest my case.

 

 

 

---

 

As for TW and all other RPGs with pre-made characters:

 

A cRPG is basically made of two things:

 

1. Character creation (may or may not include the design of physical appearance)

2. Character development

They can still be considered as RPGs (or as a game with RPG elements) because they have #2, even though they lack #1. However, if you also remove #2, no amount of story, choice & consequence can turn them into RPGs as those are not the defining characteristics of the genre. And I fucking hate repeating myself...