by ChristianC » Mon Oct 11, 2010 3:52 pm
BW, I agree wholeheartedly.
I have never, EVER liked any of the games in the Daggerfall setting, simply because it's too big, it's too easy to get lost, it's too generic and the NPCs are too shallow to be interesting at all. Fallout 1 & 2 survived because the "Free World Exploration" was still limited to a few key locations, which made the red plot-thread visible and easily interacted with, in opposition to Oblivion where I just plain forgot what I was doing after half an hour of randomly threatening, flirting with, joking at and bragging for random shopkeeps for no particular reason.
Fallout III had exactly the same problem. A super-weak main plot (they even went and retconned the SHITTY ENDING. All I'm saying is, "No friend, I may be completely immune to radiation and what have yous, but this is your quest so get in there and die) and too much of NOTHING.
Mass Effect, and Dragon Age, manage to give you just the amount of autonomy you need, while still keeping you on a well-designed rail-road. I believe it is, more than anything, a good ability to compromise. You can't communicate with nearly 90% of every human being you meet in the game. But you don't need to, since frankly they aren't important. Likewise, they also focus much more on the main-plot, creating a solid one before even considering all the side-quests you can do. This is a big failing in the Daggerfall series and Fallout III, in my opinion.
Then, games like Minecraft, or Dwarf Fortress, give you limitless do-whatever-you-want, at the sacrifice of a complex story.
BUT
They never try to pretend they're anything like that anyway. Fable, especially, grinds my angry bones because it's OVER-HYPED, it's OVER-RATED (just look at Gamespot and wiki for the average review score from the 'professionals') and exploiting the DLC to it's fullest with expensive bits of useless clothing clogging your Gold account.
"That's not interactive, there's no back-and-forth with the other player and how much fun is it to watch someone incredibly good at moving their eyes? And then whichever Seeker gets lucky swoops in and grabs the Snitch and makes everyone else's work moot. It's like someone took a real game and grafted on this pointless extra position just so that you could be the Most Important Player without needing to really get involved or learn the rest of it. Who was the first Seeker, the King's idiot son who wanted to play Quidditch but couldn't understand the rules?" Actually, now that Harry thought about it, that seemed like a surprisingly good hypothesis. Put him on a broomstick and tell him to catch the shiny thing...