Admitting a point of contention, Michael Cromwell has been awoken by Gordon Walton's recent interview, in which he claimed that exposition has shoved imagination out of the window. Cromwell argues that, since exposition has replaced imagination, he - and possibly others - are less engaged with RPGs, their characters, and their stories, which is ultimately a detriment to the experience. Does it take crude graphics, and lengthy, descriptive text to suck us back in? Filed under 'unpopular opinions', this article seeks only to describe the authors own melancholy, than to claim product Y is better than product Z.
TouchArcade: Hello, everyone. I hope you enjoyed the magical and mysterious GDC week last week. Normally, the RPG Reload Pocast will go up on the first Monday of each month, but with GDC that didn't quite pan out. However, better late than never, and this time around, our main topic is Avernum: Escape From The Pit [$9.99 (HD)], which I covered in my RPG Reload column two weeks ago. It's a really interesting open-world RPG done in a classic style which is oddly coming back into vogue of late.
TouchArcade: This week, we're looking at Avernum: Escape From The Pit [$9.99 (HD)] from Spiderweb Software. It's a game with more history behind it than you might think at a glance. Released on Mac in late 2011, with Windows PC and iPad versions following a few months later, it's a remake of Avernum, released in 2000, which itself was a remake of the 1995 game, Exile: Escape From The Pit, Spiderweb Software's first release. Spiderweb Software has been consistently releasing indie RPGs for almost 20 years, a remarkable achievement all on its own. Ultima did not survive, Wizardry somehow transformed into a largely Japan-only niche series, Interplay and Black Isle are both essentially past-tense, and even Bioware seems to be less interested in the kind of games they used to make. Spiderweb Software, on the other hand, is still here, and the company doesn't look to be going anywhere.
Hardcore Droid - An RPG could be an enormous decade-spanning epic or it could have almost no plot at all. It could have a well-written main character or it could have a character that you created. It could be an open-world first person shooter or it could be a top-down, pixelated dungeon crawler—it’s the most experimental genre of games and the most diverse.
A very well-written article. Sparking the imagination does seem like a lost art. Directed narratives can be powerful the first time through, but it doesn't stick with you the same way "the classics" did.
Great article. Its why books are always better than movies and why writing something yourself is better than reading. Now, I do believe that there can easily be a fusion between modern technology and imagination. The problem isn't that it can't be done but that most times, its being done on purpose. There are great emotional movies but they are hard to do. You can have pre scripted emotional games also but they are very hard to do. The Walking Dead games did a great job. Anyway, the issue is that we r being spoonfed on purpose. While the average gamer may be 30 yrs old, companies pander to younger gamers. Long tutorials combined with easy almost on rails gameplay is the theme of this gen. And its become quite annoying. I was one of the few that thought mass effect, the original was thebest one. Could they have Iimproved it? Yes. But not by eliminating its rpg nature. Dark Souls is a great example of a well done emotionally engaging game that forces you to rely on your imagination and the gaming community to get through it. Bioshock Infinite was actually quite well done but its because of the imagination and thought provoking nature of its ending that hooked you. But most developers and publishers cannot understand why sales are slipping. Its because every game today is streamlined. Its absurd. I can't play any of them anymore and get any enjoyment out of them. I dunno what the future holds but I am pretty sure that with the exception of games like dark souls and other niche titles, we will simply see more streamlining. Its really sad actually.
Nostalgia is a powerful drug.
Bookmarked the page, will read later when I have time.
What an awesome article. The part where he talks about Squall and the lack of voice work makes me think of why the original Dead Space was so great. Man I wish Isaac Clark would STFU again.