RPGs are better in 2D. Discuss!

Fallout, Ultima, Arcanum, Baldur's Gate 2, etc.

I dunno. I think Bloodlines would have been a great 3D RPG, had they actually fixed the whole "3D" bit. Anachronox was great, if having shitty character models. KOTOR 1 & 2 were excellent.

Never did play Morrowind past the first 20 minutes, or Jade Empire.

Are you talking about technical implementation or the writing?

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance looks 300% better than Final Fantasy Tactics did.

yeah, it's going to be interesting to see when/if they ever get past the technical gimmickry of 3D to actually realize that you can get a perfectly fine game with 2D sprites.

I honestly think if you absolutely HAVE to do polygonal models then you might as well do prerendered sprites, for a vast amount of games where perspective tends to be static or only vary between maybe 4 positions. There's just so many cases where I can think of an environment which could have looked perfectly nice in 2D and gets rendered as this ugly, chunky, flat, sharp-edged landscape of crap.

Baldur's Gate 2 on the PS2 did look pretty nice, as a matter of fact.

I'm mostly talking about consoles. I don't know why people would want to play games on a computer unless it was the last resort.

Baldur's Gate 2 on the PS2 did look pretty nice, as a matter of fact.

weren't these the Dark Alliance games, which were more of an actiony spin-off of a license?

I don't know why people would want to play games on a computer unless it was the last resort.

Hold on, you don't see how anyone could prefer using a keyboard & a mouse when playing a FPS to a gamepad & two analog sticks?

at any rate, everybody has their reasons. mine are game selection, graphics, access, controls, expansion abilities, patching(mixed blessing, admittedly), mods, etc.

but this part is discussion better held for another thread.

2D RPGs are very much better: all the Nippon Ichi games use 2D sprites as does Atelier Iris. And I enjoyed those far more than Final Fantasy 8,9,10/Xenosaga/Legend of Dragoon/Star Ocean/etc.

Anyway though back on topic, there have been NO 3D rpgs as good as Chrono Trigger, for example. Explain yourselves, modern consoles.

Both of the KOTOR games rank up there among the best RPGs I've ever played, as well as Neverwinter Nights and World of Warcraft. I also am deeply, deeply fond of the BG/Icewind Dale series so it's not like I think 3D rules over all (actually it's a toss-up between BG2 and Planescape: Torment as to which I think is the greatest RPG of all time) but if you're really going to break things down, it's a matter of PC vs console, not 2D vs 3D.

a) As I think tombot said, prerendered 2d just looks *loads* nicer than 3d unless you're using 3d for a reason, Age of Mythology is the best example I can think of where this rule got ignored at needless disasterous peril.

b) Stuff like Morrowind says "hey hey wait I AM using 3d for a reason because look we have a fightin' engine checkitout checkitout", but this kinda messes up the POINT of RPGs which is numbers going up bcz now you can kill hard things just by being good (this was kinda a fatal problem with daggerfall)

For some reason the combat system in Chrono Trigger and Xenogears sits fine with me, presumably because they're both slightly better than just picking "fight" over and over.

Special bonus in the isometric rendered RPG category goes to Fallout Tactics for taking a wonderful franchise and stripping it of the essential attribute that made it great in favor of making you click through the turn-based combat system over and over until you wanted to die.

Chrono Chross, one of its official sequels(not counting teh Japan-only Radical Dreamers), is kinda a different game.

xpost: FO: Tactics does let you switch to real-time. Enh implementation, tho.

xpost: I've heard great things about Chrono Trigger but I also heard great things about Lunar and AO and those both sucked like sucking was back in style. Hello Working Designs, please eat one hot death.

I'd most definately take FFX over any of its predecessors. The key thing is probably that I never really played any of the 2D Final Fantasies until I was already a jaded teenager, so there's no fond memories to fall back on.

As for PCs; I'm playing the first Dungeon Siege these days, and it's one of the top 3 most painful, tedious games I've ever toiled to finish. As opposed to Diablo 2, which used to keep me happily occupied for hundreds of hours (oh god). The 3D element is probably part of why it frustrates me, I hate all the extra clicks and whistles and the crappy camera. But it was just a shitty game to begin with. I think this is one of those, whaddya call em, false dichotomies. Or some shit, I flunked out of high school lol.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460780/

they realized that "Dungeon Siege" was que lame as a title, so it's now "In the Name of the King."

Billy Zane is really going to watch the Titanic sink this time... or maybe he's on to something? According to the Hollywood Reporter Billy Zane has partnered with James Schramm to form Romar Entertainment, an independent distribution company that the actor said will offer an innovative business model for creators and performers- his first film, Uwe Boll's BloodRayne (review), which he plays a small role in. Romar is designed to give producers a wholesale media buy along with a studio-style wide theatrical release for a fraction of what a typical distribution deal costs, Zane said. When the theatrical run is complete, the producer retains all rights and ownership of the film. "As an actor, I've never received a net point from any film I've done," Zane said. "I look forward to paying net points out to others through this radical new model."

Poor Billy Zane.

hahaha. Take all your money, then just throw it into the toilet. there's your model!

SHUT UP I WAS HUNGOVER, OKAY???????????

mind you, i just got the new PC version of Fable, so...

what other 2D RPGs are there to look forward to on the DS?

xenosaga 1 + 2?

I might have to import mother 1 + 2 now then

in japanese though?

At any rate, yes, more 2D RPGs in the works.

I just started pottering around in it in the emulator and I'm really impressed

I also think that games should not allow saving and that "killing" a character in combat should be a bigger deal. Like in Bard's Tale!

Wrong. I played Ultima VIII, and Diablo, though not extensively.

Diablo is kiddy shit. No depth!

My point was not that Diablo is deep, but that you were wrong.

When I first played Earthbound (at age 9, I think), I named Ness after me, and Paula after my brother (just to insult him). It got awkward when I realized that they fell in love in the game.

-- C('ing on)urt1sss (curtis.stephens@gmail.com), February 2nd, 2005 5:12 PM. (Curtis Stephens)

site

i think it was linked from insertcredit

xxpostss

Which brings the question = is there a sense of vitality in heavily pixelated, limited-palette video games that fades away as the graphics and sound become more and more polished (expensive-looking)?

Also if someone would like to delete that post from last weekend when I was tanked out of my skull and somehow still typing, that would be heaven. Gah.

With simpler hardware & graphics, you have to focus more on the abstract. you have to put more emphasis on the gameplay & design-within-limitations since you can't as easily wow the crowds with a bloom-lit, fog-surrounded, realtime fully-rendered drow elf chick with big gazoombas. (etc)

Maybe that's what they're aiming for in the Revolution; Emphasis on gameplay & design over getting a slightly shinier sheen projected on a lump of shit on the floor of Doom 4.

We'll see.

It ties in maybe a little bit with whatever "rogueism" shapes up to be, in my mind - there's this identification with the character borne not just out of empathy built via "mistakes translate 100%"* but just because "this generic-looking avatar could be ME" (more interesting and complicated, when you consider Dan's & Laura's input about character naming and design)

(then you think about how Spinktor, cozen, et al. all really seem to dig Earthbound above and beyond all else - hmmmm)

Whether the Revo actually goes in this direction, we'll see. I tend to figure Nintendo has a better grasp of the whole masking effect concept better than a lot of other folks by and large, though on the face of it Master Chief is probably easier to imagine as an extension of self (faceless warrior) than Mario (mustachioed plumber)

*which I can tell is a big factor for our Jdubz

Who wants to bring "Hero with a Thousand Faces" into this?

Hmm.

I didn't know where else to put this. INTERESTING!!! Also SCOTT MCCLOUD REFERENCE = AWESOME THANK YOU

CONFLICTED EMOTIONS (anyone played it?)

fire emblem for gc is kind of a weird proposition for me, for some reason these games work much better in my head as portable things.