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[Blood-Pigggy]

HA HA HA! Coming from someone who has an ULTIMA game's cover as his avatar!

Seriously, the first three Ultimas practically had no story. The early Wizardry games practically had no story. In fact, I can go ahead and say that the entire Wizardry series had really generic stories. The original Baldur's Gate had a shallow story at best, Fallout's plot line was only redeemed by the Master's unique motivations, and for god's sake people, since when did anyone consider the Might & Magic series to have good stories?

Face it, the majority of the most influential, venerable, respected and well known RPGs ever made are transparent when it comes to the storyline.

It is one of the least important elements in an RPG. A singeplayer FPS needs a story to move forward the chain of events, a la Half-Life and its cinematic twist. An adventure game needs a story because that's all an adventure game is. A freaking professional strategy game needs at least a trace of a story to make the conflict make sense.

An RPG? All you need to know is that there's a fantasy/steampunk/modern/whatever setting, and there's a bunch of dangerous things in them and if you kill them you get stronger. Hell, along the way there will be some people you can exploit!

Dialog is incredibly important to the majority of RPGs. Story? Story is a throwaway.

I don't understand the infatuation with it.

Let me make this clear.

I WILL NEVER PLAY A GAME THAT ATTEMPTS TO REPLACE GAMEPLAY, READ "GAME-PLAY" THE PRIMARY WORD BEING GAME - WITH A STORY, NO MATTER HOW GOOD. I WANT TO PLAY A GAME, NOT A BOOK.

[Geezer]

Originally Posted by Blood-Pigggy

HA HA HA! Coming from someone who has an ULTIMA game's cover as his avatar!

Seriously, the first three Ultimas practically had no story. The early Wizardry games practically had no story. In fact, I can go ahead and say that the entire Wizardry series had really generic stories. The original Baldur's Gate had a shallow story at best, Fallout's plot line was only redeemed by the Master's unique motivations, and for god's sake people, since when did anyone consider the Might & Magic series to have good stories?

Wow where did that come from. Where was I saying anything about Wizardry Or M&M. You are dead wrong about Ultima, however. Maybe the first three weren't as rich as the next three but 4,5 and 6 were some of the best stories ever written for RPG.

Originally Posted by Blood-Pigggy

It is one of the least important elements in an RPG. A singeplayer FPS needs a story to move forward the chain of events, a la Half-Life and its cinematic twist. An adventure game needs a story because that's all an adventure game is. A freaking professional strategy game needs at least a trace of a story to make the conflict make sense.

An RPG? All you need to know is that there's a fantasy/steampunk/modern/whatever setting, and there's a bunch of dangerous things in them and if you kill them you get stronger. Hell, along the way there will be some people you can exploit!

Dialog is incredibly important to the majority of RPGs. Story? Story is a throwaway.

I don't understand the infatuation with it.

Without a good story an RPG will bore me to tears after no more than a few hours. When I get done playing an RPG with a good story I feel sad that it is over. When I finish playing an RPG without a good story I usually feel relieved that it is over. I would venture to say that your opinions are not held by the majority of gamers that have had enough experience in the genre to know better.

Originally Posted by Blood-Pigggy

Let me make this clear.

I WILL NEVER PLAY A GAME THAT ATTEMPTS TO REPLACE GAMEPLAY, READ "GAME-PLAY" THE PRIMARY WORD BEING GAME - WITH A STORY, NO MATTER HOW GOOD. I WANT TO PLAY A GAME, NOT A BOOK.

To each their own. I will always forgive a mechanical flaw if the story compels me to go forward.

[Blood-Pigggy]

I too can forgive simple bugs or quirks. That's why I love Temple of Elemental Evil.

And you aren't getting the difference between dialog and story. A game can have an excellent story and still have atrocious writing, look at the game Pathologic. Planescape on the other hand, has an excellent story and writing, but terrible gameplay.

The point I was trying to make is that the first few Ultimas defined the RPG genre.

People don't remember IV's story unless they've played it. Everyone to this day experiences the effects of IV's gameplay, namely the virtue system and the fact that today so many RPGs have a karma system.

Here's the thing, a great game can have a terrible story and be forgiven. A terrible game cannot have a great story and be forgiven.

It's not how gaming works, it's like being handed a book and being told it's the best book ever, only to open it up and see that it's in a foreign language. It defeats the purpose, good gameplay is supposed to drive forward the story, the story doesn't govern the gameplay, but that's what so many people assume.

When it comes down to the barebone facts, You wouldn't be having fun AT ALL if the gameplay weren't good, lame stories may bore you, but there are legions more people who will rather want to play Icewind Dale over again than sit through the majority of Metal Gear Solid's cutscenes.

[Geezer]

I understand your points. I think where we differ is in the experience that we want to get from playing an RPG. I'll admit I am more of an adventure game enthusiast which is why I value the story aspect very highly. I am not typically playing an RPG for the thrill of battle and victory although that is part of it. What I like about RPGs over adventure games is there is often more interaction with NPCs than a lot of adventure games have. To me dialog and story should be (but are not always) interrelated.

What I don't like in an RPG is where the dialogue is simply a tool to set up a bunch of meaningless and non-related quests. A good story will start out with what may appear to be unrelated quests and then bring them together or have them be part of the same whole to begin with. To have an RPG force me to trapse all over the game world simply to force me to take on new species of foes and to lengthen the game is the biggest cop out that a designer can make. In fact it really pisses me off when RPGs are artificially lengthened by senseless battles and meaningless quests that are there to do nothing more than to increase your stats.

On the other hand if I know that I am furthering an interesting plot I will be willing to take on whatever foe gets in my way or spend an hour traveling through repetitive dungeons.

Bottom line. I understand and respect what you are saying about game play. We just have a slightly different emphasis on what experience we enjoy more.

[Blood-Pigggy]

My point on story wasn't that it shouldn't have an important role. It should, my point was that story is independent from gameplay.

I know what you mean about interconnected quests and the like.
Ever play Fallout? Each quest had great character to it, you could interact with tons of people. I don't mind NPCs with things to say, I hate the majority of RPGs that advertise themselves as having deep NPC interactions but falter in comparison to some more advanced games.

I liked Arcanum despite its heavy flaws for its character, story, and the dialog and NPCs. But Arcanum also had deep character creation, there was a lot of customization.

I think I phrase it best when I say, I don't care about the story the game gives you, at the most it's a just a superflous bonus. What I do care about is the story that the game gives you the liberty of forming, so you define your character through what you do and how people react.
Fallout did that, the later Ultimas did that, Arcanum did that, lots of RPGs did that.

Planescape did not do that, everything was immediate and separated. It had a great story, but that got in the way of nearly everything else. They pounded on dialog in order to make their game unique while forgetting that gameplay is the foundation on which the player's personal story is built on.

[ianfreddie07]

So you mean... for you, a good RPG is sort of like... Your way of playing constitutes the story? Correct me if I got it wrong.

[Jake Grey]

Personally, I enjoy a game more if it contains characters and objectives that I find myself caring about; this is one of the reasons why Max Payne is one of my favourites.

[Geezer]

Originally Posted by Blood-Pigggy

I think I phrase it best when I say, I don't care about the story the game gives you, at the most it's a just a superflous bonus. What I do care about is the story that the game gives you the liberty of forming, so you define your character through what you do and how people react.
Fallout did that, the later Ultimas did that, Arcanum did that, lots of RPGs did that.

Planescape did not do that, everything was immediate and separated. It had a great story, but that got in the way of nearly everything else. They pounded on dialog in order to make their game unique while forgetting that gameplay is the foundation on which the player's personal story is built on.

So, what you are saying is that Planescape had a great story but the level of participation in the story lacked. I can buy that. All the other reviews I have read on Planescape rave about it. What I read people saying about it is that it has a great story, a very interesting game world and not bad voice acting.

This gamespot review pretty much sums up why I am really looking forward to playing it. Is the following statement your chief criticism?

"It's fortunate that Torment's dialogue reads well, because there's a lot of it to read; although the game's graphics are evocative and often beautiful, the game's most vivid events are actually written out rather than portrayed onscreen. You might wish the game had a more frequent tendency to show-not-tell; however, its combination of great graphics and writing is generally very effective."

[Blood-Pigggy]

No, Fallout had the same thing where my most memorable moments were speaking to Lou or The Master.

What I meant is that Planescape is pure story. There is no tangible gameplay, it's just filler so that it can be called a "game".
The people that rave about it let the story get in the way and completely ignore the point of a review, which is to both technically and personally inform people of the game. That means if you loved a game you still have to point out its flaws.

I loved some games that other people hated, I loved Black & White, but the thing is, as a game, Black & White is massively flawed, I would never score it higher than a 7.0.

While I'll rave about Planescape's story, the instant someone asks for a recommendation I'll give a firm "no". I'm assuming people are asking for a recommendation of a good game, not a good story.

It's not just the participation, it's that everything is built up for you. There's no ability to influence the story or uncover different things depending on how you play. It's an RPG with the story of an Adventure game. It doesn't work and it feels jarring. So while the story is great, they implemented it poorly as well.
I mean, the story of that game is that it ALREADY HAPPENED, this stuff is past tense, the story that you advance through yourself is meager and has little to no opportunity for you influence it, aside from making some superfluous decisions.

There's too much wrong with Torment to point out in one statement, all I can say is that it's a flawed mess and reviewers should have pulled their pretentious heads out of their asses and done their job which is review a game, not get their little brains all excited just because someone managed to write a good story.