#^ the biggest problem I have with crpgs

[bladesmitten]

ok so i'm going to ask: is pwotr worth playing? i'm asking as a huge bg3/da fan - what's the character creation like (if any), how is the story and are the npcs good? is the battle system comparable at all?

hello ^_^ if you like CRPGs, it's likely you'll enjoy pwotr too! the game often goes on sale on steam so i'd advise you to wait or perhaps visit fitgirl if you wanna try it out first. i wrote a spoiler free Gamer Review™ here but i'll also answer your specific questions:

compared to da and bg3, the character creation in pwotr is massive. there's sooo many choices from the class selection alone! that might be overwhelming, but there's also indicators for which classes are beginner friendly and there are pre-generated builds/characters you can use so you don't have to think about all that.

pwotr is isometric in graphics, like hades and disco elysium, so your character's appearance is more simplified than bg3/da. you'll also choose one of the provided art portraits to represent your character or you can use your own.

the game is text heavy with minimal voice acting so there's definitely a lot of reading. the story itself is compelling to me. the main premise is: you gain mysterious powers and become in charge of an army to close an interplanar rift called the worldwound. you don't need to know much about pathfinder lore to understand what's happening, and there's also a feature where you can hover over certain terms in dialogue and it'll give context as to what it means.

there's 5 acts and a prologue. act 4 has a tonal shift which i personally like. act 5 kiiiinda falls off in terms of pacing, but it's still not as egregious as bg3's act 3 lol.

the companions and NPCs are great! i like most of the companions, they're all complex to me. i might not care for maybe one or two of them but there's also like 12 companions so that's still 10 out of 12. the companion quests are done well imo (except for nenio's, but that's a problem with puzzle design and not her story), and your choices and actions actually matter and have consequences throughout the game. decisions made in earlier acts can and will impact later acts as well as companions' endings :-)

as for the combat -- it's a mix of real-time with pause (dragon age) and turn-based (bg3). you can switch between the two modes with the press of a button, so if the battle is going too slow, just go real-time, and if a fight is too hard, go turn-based for better strategizing. pwotr is based on the pathfinder system, and it has some similarities with dnd so certain terms may already be familiar to you if you played bg3. it's still worth reading what the spells do because they can be different at times.

the enemy encounter/level/puzzle designs leave much to be desired though, and that might be my biggest criticism of the game. there's quite a lot of random encounters that don't really matter. some encounters are way too strong for the current party level so i got into the habit of saving before entering a room just in case my party gets fucked by some optional boss mob 😭 i played on normal difficulty and i fared well up until the end of act 3 where there's a difficulty spike and i turned it down to casual. it might also be helpful to look up guides on youtube so you don't end up like me lol.

this got long so uhh i'll wrap it up by saying i enjoyed pwotr and like i said, if you like CRPGs you'll probably like this one too! :-)

[dailyrandomwriter]

Day 423

So I had begun playing Balduer’s Gate 3 way back in August, and it’s interesting… It’s no surprise that I would buy this game. First off, it’s based off of Dungeons and Dragons, and two, I’m always down for supporting games that are very well made and generally up my alley.

Also, I had hopes of getting through the game so I could stop dodging spoilers on the Internet.

The problem is, I’ve actually never played a RPG that uses Western gaming ideology (CRPGs), having spent most of my formative years playing JRPGs which use Japanese gaming tropes and conventions. Furthermore, I’ve never played games from the Balduer’s Gate series, Divinity series or anything similar to that. And no matter how well a game is made, if the game mechanics or design is not your cup of tea, it’s just not your cup of tea.

I like Balduer’s Gate 3, I love talking to the people and I am fascinated in how the timed events work. I get to feel very clever when I notice something amiss and then try to head it off. Saving them from a Bugbear that was about to attack them from behind was a very cool moment. So was the moment where I decided to lie in order to gain a soul coin, because I knew due to the game’s mechanics I had a chance of success. It’s a very well built game.

But it’s also a game that has a lot of choices. Not just in the dialogue, but in the world itself. There is so much to see, to talk to, to do, that I end up experiencing choice fatigue. Like, when I left off my game in August, I had just entered the Emerald Grove, and I picked it up again, I ended up spending over an hour in the game exploring that grove, and I still haven’t found all of its secrets. However, by the end of my session, I was kind of tired because I made a lot of choices where I had to really think.

It’s different from the kind of choices I make in Harvestella, because most Harvestella choices are based on information I already have. Anytime I buy seeds, go dungeon diving or go anywhere is the result of a goal that I have. The biggest open-ended choices I really get in Harvestella are one, whether or not I want to continue with the main storyline right now, or later, and two, who my character will get to marry.

And this is because there's actually quite a bit of hand holding in games like Harvestella. Often, if the game gives you a goal, it gives you a direction to go to. You’re not really left wondering what your next step will be, because the game will direct you to that step. 

Whereas, in a game like Baldur’s Gate, even though I know the goal is to get the parasitic brain worm out of my head, I’m not necessarily told how to do it. I could find a healer, who may, or may not know how to get the worm out of my head. I could listen to Lae’zel and head to the nearest creche, because despite her bitchy attitude, the fact that she's willing to share this information with me instead of kill me makes her a good person in my books.

Of course that requires me to know where the creche is, which means I have to go look for that information. So there’s a lot of choices I have to make, in order to get to where I want to be. And that act is probably where I’m getting a bit mentally tired. It doesn’t make it a bad game, but it does mean I probably won’t play the game continuously every chance I get. Instead, it’s most likely I’ll play it in between other smaller games.

Or I’ll forget about it at some point once I start a larger game, but I hope to get through Baldur’s Gate more because I am interested in the story. I just need to be in a better head space for it.

[turtlemagnum]

i think one of my biggest problems with a lot of new vegas quest mods is that they kind of completely disregard the freedom that makes new vegas so great, y'know? in Actual new vegas, you can, at any time, just kill literally anybody, for any reason, and the game continues. sure, you might fail a quest. but you could also very well continue the quest with just a different route, y'know? too many damn essential NPCs, too many times where you're restrained in some way, too many restrictions on your goddamn freedom. that's like, the point of the damn game, y'know???

i think my other big problem with new vegas quest mods is how... grimdark, they tend to be. new vegas, and fallout as a whole, is post apocalyptic, yes. but the core fucking theme of it all is that people are still around, they're still surviving, trying their best. while things are definitely shitty, normal everyday people are still trying to make it better. things are bleak, but there's hope pervading through even the worst bits. like, i'd argue that's one of the Main Themes period. the last thing the main antagonist of the first fucking game says is "There is no hope. Leave now, leave while you still have hope..."

meanwhile, i definitely feel like most new vegas quest mods i've seen don't realize this. i guess it's what happens when people without media literacy become writers. which, to be fair, you can probably say that the writers of bethesda fallout also missed the point of the original fallouts in a lot of ways, and honestly i feel like the restrictive quest layout in a lot of new vegas mods would feel less egregious in the actual bethesda developed games, but those Suck. like, i've tried playing fallout 3 after i picked up new vegas as my first fallout game, right. and the entire time, all i could see was "this is just like fallout new vegas, but worse in a bunch of minor ways and also worse in a few major ways". the gameplay was worse, the world design was worse, the design of the guns was worse, and by GOD was the writing worse (the most important thing, imo). meanwhile, at least fallout 4 has genuinely improved gameplay and being natively 64 bit makes it a better host for more advanced mods. but my GOD, new vegas has honestly pretty fun gameplay for an RPG, some of the best writing in any game ever, some of the best character customization period. it's a goddamn CRPG in 3d, and i love it for that. also? has the best song ever to grace a fallout game (big iron), i will FIGHT YOU ON THIS

[disastergayofcrisis]

Guns and Magic

(This is a repost from cohost I made last year but posting it here because I want to.)

So I understand the criticism against firearms in fantasy settings where magic is prevalent but also have to point out a large criticism in magical universes is that magic isn't as easily accessible to most even in settings that have entire groups dedicated to magical development.

A prime example being Elder Scrolls. On it's surface groups like the Mages Guild preach open research and teaching of magic but in reality magic is something that is watered down by the guild into simplistic spell groups, this is a in-universe complaint about magic. When we look at groups like the Psijic or the Telvanni we see they never followed these simplistic groups thus they have greater access to more powerful magic and knowledge, this results into them going isolationist and secretive of their research.

The Mages Guild is also extremely bogged down in politics and used their position in the third empire to create a magical monopoly throughout Tamriel, this has lead to other magic groups or individuals from teaching and selling spells outside of said the imperial religion or the tribunal temple. This has lead to people being forced to join the guild just to make a livelihood.

The biggest problem though is that opposed to the player's experience lorewise not everyone is adapt at learning magic, the thing that people are adapt at learning? Guns. Add in magic is widely distrusted in many fantasy series so why wouldn't people find more ways to counter magic. This was a thing in a pretty popular old crpg by Troika called Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura. Magic was slowly being pushed to the side as nations began to focus on technological development, a large part of this was because magic was so inaccessible to others. It's also like, three classes in Final Fantasy 14 with Mechanist which is all about guns, robots and mechanical attacks, gunbreaker and technically Sage if you count gundam-as-hell beam canons.

I feel there is also a good idea of mixing magic and technology, bringing up the Mages Guild in Elder Scrolls a big part was of the Mages Guild was an actual altruistic ideal of spreading knowledge and research. There are so many ways a mage can use their powers or enchantments to make convinences and actual firearms, even if it could lead to their downfall which often is the cases for mages.

Guns should be more prominent in fantasy, fantasy needs to be more willing to show off magic as something that is important in technological development and research.

[klysanderelias]

So I've been playing through the beginning of the wrath of the righteous crpg that just released and it's... weird. Part of it is because I had the adventure path books like 6 years ago and read through all of it then, so I have a minor level of stuff to compare in my head, but also because I kind of dramatically grew as a person re: rpg stuff and DND in particular. Not gonna spoil anything, although I'm likely to keep posting about it so I'll put a note in the tags just in case, but...

Pathfinder moved somewhat away from the bullshit of old-school 3.0/3.5/4e dnd in a lot of ways but there's still a lot of the bizarre genetic essentialism and really uncomfortable parallels being made to real-world ethnic groups (shoutout to the guy who created the continent of mwangi for his only understanding of africa apparently being congo by michael crichton), and I know that 2nd ed pathfinder did a lot of work to address THAT, but WotR still has a LOT of really uncomfortable moments.

and at the end of the day, I think what really bothers me is that CRPGs as a whole aren't really comparable to ttrpgs because the level of freedom and interaction is always going to be limited by file size, creator imagination, authorial intent, and natch, money. And, most crpgs spend their biggest efforts on combat and gameplay and tend to tack dialogue and character interactions on almost as an afterthought - I think pillars of eternity 2 was the best I've seen the system implemented, and nothing else has really met that standard since. And that's okay! It'd be almost a fool's errand to try and implement that in a crpg to anything close to the level a basic ttrpg could do, but then it basically feels like half of your character creation is superfluous or unnecessary because like, the game is designed around the combat. You have one character with a persuasion or diplomacy equivalent skill, and everything else is either for exploration or combat and that's it.

I guess it's just frustrating to have been like, 5+ years without a real ttrpg game in my life so I'm using crpgs to substitute and it's not at all the same experience, and yet I KNOW that it could be because I own the fuckin' adventure path and have planned how to run it in the past. Or maybe what I mean to say is like, i know what this recipe tastes like homemade, and the storebought mass-produced version is something completely different even though it's supposed to be the same.

I dunno, I'm only a few hours in and honestly, it's pretty good! I can genuinely recommend it as a crpg, and I know from kingmaker that the studio a) creates quality work and puts in the time on writing and b) patches and bugfixes like crazy unlike a lot of other studios that make crpgs.

Oh, but one thing I will say - I remember the adventure path being a lot more progressive about this shit from like, fuckin' TWENTY-THIRTEEN. They had a trans lesbian in their game like it weren't no thing, and WotR in 2021 feels a little like a step back, again because of weird genetic essentialism undertones as well as the tendency to equate fantasy religions to christianity to the point that one character prays to her goddess to forgive her sins etc and another character talks about seeking forgiveness from his god re: his terrible decisions in the past and it's like... y'all know that not all religions are christianity, right? And i say that as a white dude raised super fuckin' christian! Maybe it's silly but it makes me feel skeezy when a character starts spouting the sort of shit I have heard almost verbatim in a southern baptist church but here it's okay because it's regarding literal actual demons?

At least Anevia is still a lesbian, here's hoping they didn't walk back her being trans.

[tankermottind]

Obsidian, Pillars of Eternity II, and the Impossible Kickstarter Dream

UPDATE: According to a $1000 investor who calculated using his dividends, the total costs came out to around $29 million, not $15 million. So the Fig campaign covered only 15% of what they actually spent. Good lord!

I got back into Pillars of Eternity II and checked the forums to discover that Obsidian Entertainment has been acquired by Microsoft. And Pillars of Eternity II sold only 150,000 copies and cost about three times the $4.4 million raised to “fund” it (which means Obsidian, after support, overhead, DLC development, etc. could be a good $20 million in the hole). It is likely Pillars of Eternity III, or any other serious CRPG project, will never happen, and Obsidian will forever be one bad chart performance away from ending up making tire textures for a Forza Motorsport game. Everyone is pointing fingers and arguing and blaming the media or the casuals or figures within Obsidian or the SJW hordes, but really? They brought it on themselves--excuse me, as a Pillars of Eternity II backer, we brought it on ourselves. This was our chance to have the game of our dreams made, and our outsized demands coupled to Obsidian’s outsized ambition blew the series’ future. Here is the post I made on Obsidian’s forums in case it proves too controversial and disappears:

Is anyone really surprised? The first thing I thought when it finally dawned on me how huge Pillars of Eternity II was, was "There is no way they could have possibly made money on this." The fans wanted bigger, the fans wanted better, and Obsidian gave the fans, including myself, exactly what we wanted. The biggest, baddest, most complicatedest Infinity-style RPG ever. A game nobody but us wanted.

PoE2 is huge, huge, huge. I'm 30 hours in and I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of it. I ignored all the backer updates I received after pledging because I didn't want to know anything going in, and the sheer enormity of it blew me away. This feels almost Skyrimian in its breadth and content-richness, and that costs a huge amount of money, while drawing the potential length well past 150 hours and exacerbating the reputation that large CRPGs have of being scary and overbearing, which is further exacerbated by the fact that Obsidian have to tolerate RPGCodex and their legions of trolls, Trump cultists, and white supremacists because they donate and nobody outside the CRPG community was ever going to give a shit about this game. This is a game that was made for us, and only us. Made according to the specifications of a crowdfunding campaign that sold us our every desire, with little backer content bits to reflect our own vanity back at us. It turns out Infinity Engine/PoE nerds are (a) not even close to numerous enough to fund the promised game, and (b) unwilling to compromise for the sake of "casuals". I mean, that was the whole point of this whole crowdfunding thing, right? To make games that the fans want and make a profit? Funny, it looks we forgot that whole "making a profit" bit somewhere.

And for a focused, linear, and above all modest game like the first Pillars of Eternity, the money from the fans was enough to cover the budget and keep the lights on. But now we've "made it", we showed those AAAs and we're going to make a game that will blow everyone away. But we instead we got a baroque game, a niche product with a big-boy budget. It doesn't matter whose fault it is or which games journalism conspiracy is true or salacious rumors that would fail a difficulty 2 Bluff check. Pillars of Eternity II is a game too expensive to fund on the backs of CRPG nerds but seldom considers the needs and wishes of people who aren't CRPG nerds, except when it does the job so poorly it actually makes the problem worse. Let's talk about the mechanics.

For all its attempts to be fair and balanced and not screw you over for bad build decisions, the sheer number of mechanics and status effects and stats and systems makes the Infinity Engine look sleek and streamlined, if not exactly elegant. Not to mention that a lot of the people who played Baldur's Gate also played Dungeons and Dragons (which was huge at the time), while the people going into PoE2 have no such luxury. The micro-balancing with all the soft counters and clever trickery makes it more difficult to play on a truly expert level than an Infinity Engine game, so Easy and Classic are mushy and dumbed-down and basically let you coast, while the harder difficulties require you to learn far more obscure rules, some of which are virtually undocumented, than someone throwing themselves upon the rocks of Baldur's Gate 1 for the first time. However, the system is also less exploitable than the Infinity Engine, so there is also less reward for putting in above the minimum effort. So PoE2's game system is exceedingly complex, strongly favors PoE1 veterans over everyone else, hides information from the player, has too many rules, is easy to coast on by with, hard to play well, and won't ever give you the satisfaction you get from the sort of gambits even a mediocre Infinity Engine player can pull off.

Backstab instakills out of the shadows? Can't do that. Pre-buffing? Too OP. Contingencies? We'll have an ordinary spell that namedrops Contingency and pretend it's the same thing. Summoning? Nope. Incredibly powerful sword wrested from a lich's cold dead fingers? It's sure as hell not going to be as good as Daystar was in BG2. Even the simplest crafting (aside from food) requires money, just to make it less attractive. Fortunately there is a lot less of it now, and a lot more of the talking and plotting and loredumping, which is generally good if playing it a bit safe. But Eora is also a much more "out there" world than Forgotten Realms, and the comfy old Arthurian, chivalric, etc. tropes and themes no longer apply. Nor, unlike the similarly complex world of The Elder Scrolls, is it based (however loosely and occasionally disrespectfully) on archetypes from other cultures and mythologies--in fact it seems to strive towards the total obliteration of everything ready-made. Bhaal and Elf Jesus the Nerevarine are immediately relatable to the casuals in a way that Eothas and friends are not.

Why did this happen? Because we wanted it. We wanted more. More. More. More. Pillars of Eternity was good, so Bigger Pillars of More Eternity will be more good. The incentive structures of the crowdfunding model (stretch goals, etc.) encourage and exacerbate this mentality. A pirate ship! Many pirate ships! Pirate ship battles! New Vegas style politics with intersecting schemes by several power players! A reputation system underneath that makes New Vegas' implementation look primitive! Webs of intrigue! Webs of treachery! Webs of adultery and relationship drama! Voice acting for almost everybody with lines! Half-hearted commentary on colonization that pulls all its punches to avoid making white people feel bad and angering the RPGCodex crowd who gave us a big chunk of our budget! It had everything except a workable business model.

Hardcore CRPGs are not competitive on a big budget, and they never will be. There's a reason this game put Obsidian's future in jeopardy and the guy behind the Avernum series has been able to crank game after game through thick and thin, for over 20 years. If the Infinity-style RPG has a future it will involve smaller, simpler games with less elaborate graphics, less voice acting, and a much lower budget. A game with production values more similar to PoE1, Wasteland 2, or even Siege of Dragonspear. But that's what we wanted. We wanted big. We got big.

And perhaps, in the long run, lost big. Nerds never have been good at business.

[aion-rsa]

Was Final Fantasy Really the First JRPG?

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1987’s Final Fantasy deserves all the credit it can get for helping popularize the JRPG genre (especially in the West), expanding the scope of NES titles, and kicking off an all-time great franchise, but was it really the first JRPG ever made? 

To help answer that question, we first have to define what a JRPG is and what separates that subgenre from tabletop RPGs, CRPGs, ARPGs, strategy RPGs, and every other type of role-playing game out there.

The problem is that defining a JRPG has always been an especially contentious topic. It seems easy to say that a JRPG is an RPG made in Japan, but even that definition doesn’t satisfy everyone. For instance, Dark Souls is an RPG made in Japan, but you rarely hear fans describe it as a JRPG. 

You could use common JRPG gameplay/design elements to help define the genre, but even that gets tricky. For instance, I could say that a JRPG has random encounters, turn-based combat, level grinding, and parties of customizable characters, but where does that leave games like Earthbound, Nier, and even later entries into the Dragon Quest and Persona franchises that don’t include all of those elements?  

The simpler solution in this instance may be to look at the original Final Fantasy and focus on the elements of the game that later became “tropes” of the JRPG genre and help define the image we form in our head when we think of JRPGs from that era.

What we’re basically looking for, then, is a role-playing game made in Japan that features turn-based combat, random enemy encounters, character leveling, and an overworld you explore between dungeons and quests. If we accept that there was a time when JRPGs were at least partially defined by such qualities (and that deviating from those qualities represented a deviation from subgenre norms) then was Final Fantasy the first JRPG?

Well, the pretty obvious answer to that question is “no.” At the very least, 1986’s Dragon Quest/Dragon Warrior certainly beat Final Fantasy to the JRPG punch. Final Fantasy director Hironobu Sakaguchi has stated many times in the past that his game probably would have never been made if it wasn’t for Dragon Quest‘s surprising success. There’s a complicated conversation we’re about to have regarding the “true” origins of the JRPG genre, but few will deny that Dragon Quest is an earlier example of a JRPG game.

But what if we broaden our definition a bit in an effort to find the first role-playing game released in Japan with natively written Japanese dialog/text that featured at least some of the notable JRPG mechanics that we outlined above? Well, we’d then have to highlight 1984’s The Black Onyx. That game is often credited with helping to popularize turn-based RPG games in Japan, and it was certainly one of the most successful Japanese-language RPGs released exclusively in that country until that point. It’s also hard to look at that game and not see how it clearly influenced Dragon Quest and future JRPGs.

However, because Black Onyx was made by a Western developer (Dutch video game designer Henk Rogers), it’s debatable whether or not it really fits the definition we outlined above. That being the case, let’s throw as much ambiguity out of the window as possible and just try to answer the question “What was the first RPG video game developed by a Japanese studio and released exclusively (or originally) for Japanese gamers?”

Believe it or not, that’s still a surprisingly complicated question. For instance, there were actually quite a few “ARPGs” developed and released in Japan before, or around the same time as, Black Onyx. Titles like Dragon Slayer, Hydlide, and The Tower of Druaga are all some kind of RPG even if they’re not typically what most people think of when they think of JRPGs. While each of those games is worthy of a separate conversation, they’re ultimately little more than a footnote in this particular discussion. After all, we know for a fact that there were RPGs developed/released in Japan before those titles started to help the genre gain mainstream momentum.

Even still, things get a lot trickier when you start to look at Japanese RPGs released before 1984, though. See, in 1981, a Japanese translation of Wizardry became a surprise hit in that country and inspired more Japanese developers to make RPGs and pseudo-RPGs of their own. While you’d think that finding the first JRPG is really just a matter of finding the studio who capitalized on that trend first, the fact of the matter is that a lot of the Japanese-developed RPGs released in the wake of Wizardry were…weird.

For instance, Pony Canyon’s 1982 title Spy Daisakusen (which was strangely based on the Mission Impossible franchise) visually resembles a dungeon crawler of that era, but it’s hard to call it an RPG given that it lacks so many of the key gameplay elements of that genre. There’s also Koei’s Underground Exploration, which was released a few months before Spy Daisakusen and actually features a lot of traditional dungeon crawling/RPG gameplay elements. However, because that game also lacks some of the features that often even vaguely define the RPG genre (such as stats and character-building), it’s hard to cleanly classify it as an RPG without making a pretty compelling outside-the-box argument.

This is the point where I’d also love to tell you more about Koei’s erotic adventure title Seduction of Condominium Wives, but to keep things moving along, let’s just say that it also doesn’t check most of the major RPG boxes. It’s actually closer to a text-based adventure game that so happens to see you battle Yakuza members and ancient spirits while trying to seduce local housewives and sell condoms. Suffice to say, it deserves a remake.

The thing you have to understand about these early “JRPGs” is that Japanese developers and gamers were also still trying to figure out what RPGs meant to them. That’s how we ended up with these wild and experimental blends of adventure games, dungeon crawlers, and the kind of JRPGs we associate with games like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. If you want to read a little more about this time period, I highly recommend these excellent articles from PC Gamer and Gamasutra.

More importantly, we actually don’t know a lot about many of the games that were released during that time. So many games of that era have been lost to history or only exist as references in magazines or adverts. That means that there’s a small chance someone actually made a more “traditional” JRPG in the early ’80s and we simply don’t know about it or don’t know enough about it to give it more of the credit it may deserve.

However, there is one more game we have to talk about when talking about the earliest JRPGs ever: Koei’s The Dragon and Princess.

Released in December 1982, The Dragon and Princess features a classic medieval setting, a party of characters, stats, experience points, and, perhaps most importantly, random encounters that force the player to enter a “battle screen” where they participate in tactical RPG combat. While its combat system is a far cry from what we eventually saw in Black Onyx and Dragon Quest (and much the game plays out like a text-based adventure), it’s pretty remarkable how many “core” JRPG elements this game features. It’s arguably become the most accepted answer to the question “What was the first JRPG ever made?” even if people still rightfully debate the nuances of that discussion.

Of course, all of this information just makes Final Fantasy’s obviously inaccurate reputation as the first JRPG that much more confusing. If there were so many Japanese RPGs released before Final Fantasy (including some of the games Final Fantasy was obviously inspired by), then how has Final Fantasy become so closely associated with the earliest days of the genre in the minds of many?

Well, there’s obviously a degree to which the game’s popularity has impacted its historical status. Simply put, Final Fantasy was significantly more popular than so many of the early JRPG experiments that came before. More importantly, Final Fantasy was the first JRPG many Western gamers ever played (though I and others certainly grew up with Dragon Warrior). If Final Fantasy was the first JRPG you played, you’re more likely to remember it as the first JRPG. The fact that the series has remained the most globally popular JRPG franchise has only enhanced its status as a globally recognized JRPG innovator.

That’s not to say that Final Fantasy doesn’t deserve that honor. The way that the game combined the innovations of its predecessors and introduced a few new ideas of its own (including elemental weaknesses, the “party-view” combat screen, and the way it handled classes and party compositions) means that it really does feel like the first “modern” JRPG in a lot of ways. At the very least, it’s the JRPG of that era that would have the biggest impact on the evolution of the genre moving forward.

See, the evolution of the JRPG is similar to the evolution of slasher films. Games like Dragon Slayer, Black Onyx, and The Dragon and Princess are like Psycho, Peeping Tom, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They all helped set the stage for the genre, but they were really only adopted into it after the fact as spiritual predecessors. In the case of The Dragon and Princess, you could argue that one of the biggest reasons it wasn’t immediately referred to as a JRPG is that the term really wasn’t a thing at the time of that game’s release.

Dragon Quest, meanwhile, is like Halloween. They’re the earliest and clearest examples of what we now think of when we think of their subgenres. Both were clearly inspired by previous works, and their subgenres would grow to incorporate more ideas soon after their releases, but they showed everybody a clear blueprint to follow and proved that blueprint could be commercially successful. They set the stage for so much of what would come next. 

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Sticking to this analogy, I’d say that Final Fantasy is closest to Friday the 13th. Both were obviously inspired by something that came before (and they are arguably derivative of their inspirations in some ways), but the way that they refined and altered elements of their genres made them massive hits, helped kick off a boom period for their respective genres, and helped start franchises that became incredibly successful and innovative in their own right. 

Of course, Final Fantasy continues to innovate to this day whereas Friday the 13th arguably peaked when Crispin Glover wildly danced to copyright-friendly music in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter.

The post Was Final Fantasy Really the First JRPG? appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[killapenguingaming-blog]

Exploring Encased, early access content patch 2

If the number at the bottom-left part of Encased's main menu is a version number, then the current version is 0.17.415.1748, in which case I can see why they chose to label the planned three content updates leading up to release as "content patch 1/2/3." Now, I'm on record as saying that Encased captures the spirit of the early Fallout games, and those similarities are even more pronounced now that low-intelligence dialogue has been implemented into the early game. This hasn't been fully implemented yet—there's noticeably less unique low-intelligence dialogue in Nashville, and it appears to disappear entirely by the time you reach the open-world part of the game (though I haven't played far into it yet)—but what's there actually made me laugh out loud at several points. Areas and lighting have also been reworked, the balance has been tweaked, weapon types now have unique abilities associated with them, and armor can fully block damage in certain situations. It was a big patch. Tweaks to a game balance and combat abilities are always difficult for me to appreciate; I've completed and reviewed 20 games since covering Encased's last content patch (and covered many more than that), and keeping up with those types of subtle changes requires a familiarity that starts to wear away as you get involved with other games. Most of the changes that I noticed were cosmetic or blindingly obvious. The final area in Nashville that you're in before things go crazy has much moodier lighting than before. Interacting with the artifact there no longer warps you to the middle of nowhere (instead, you wake up in a dilapidated version of the same area, which makes far more sense in terms of the story). The biggest and most interesting change is definitely the low-intelligence dialogue, though. Early patches streamlined Encased's opening hours, starting you in a small hub and quickly sending you to Nashville rather than giving you a large base full of sidequests to explore as the launch version did. That makes a certain amount of sense; by moving the big area filled with sidequests to the middle of the game, players will have at least one large and interesting area to explore later on when they're more comfortable with how everything works. The problem was always that the smaller area wasn't anywhere near as interesting as the large one, but playing as a low-intelligence character made up for that in a big way. Scaring NPCs and finding bizarre excuses to insert things into my character's mouth made me relish every interaction. I might play through the full release with a character like this. It's worth mentioning that this is still an early access game, and there are still bugs. The embedded video ends with the Encased softlocking while fighting some rats at the gas station. I kept playing, though, and didn't experience anything else like that. I did, however, travel straight into the mysterious Maelstrom thing once the world opened up, at which point I was able to choose dialogue options that acted like I was at the end of a long questline that I hadn't started. When I chose the option that didn't instantly kill my character, I was teleported to a lab that my character had never been to before. I chose to take that (and the sudden absence of low-IQ dialogue, which is fully intended since it's only being tested right now) as my cue to stop playing. Setting aside the early access teleportation and sidequest weirdness, though, I wound up playing for several hours, which is why I'm putting this up at 8 PM. All of the best cRPGs out there are difficult to pull yourself away from, and Encased is no different. Read the full article

[esprit-de-corps-magazine]

Junior Canadian Rangers leadership training shapes tomorrow’s leaders

By Second Lieutenant Natasha Tersigni, 4th Canadian Ranger Patrol Group Public Affairs

Salt Spring Island, British Columbia — Thirty-three of the best and brightest senior Junior Canadian Rangers (JCRs) from across Canada gathered in British Columbia for the JCR National Leaders Enhanced Training Session 2019 (NLETS 19) to learn skills that will last a lifetime.

This annual national-level training event, hosted this year by the 4th Canadian Ranger Patrol Group (4 CRPG) from August 7 to 20, 2019, was an opportunity for senior JCRs aged 16 to 18 years old to enhance their knowledge and  Ranger, traditional and life skills.

Upon completion of NLETS 19, the JCRs returned to their home patrols with a better understanding of the JCR program, and with the skills and knowledge needed to continue to be leaders at their home JCR patrol and in their communities.

The majority of the NLETS 19 training took place on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, The island is the largest of the Gulf Islands in the Strait of Georgia between mainland British Columbia and Vancouver Island.

On this 185 square kilometre island, the JCRs took part in a variety of activities including a three-day sea kayaking expedition as well as hiking, rock climbing, intertidal studies, organic farming and Indigenous studies. Along with the activities, all the JCRs had the opportunity to lead their section for a day and take on other leadership roles as assigned. 

“Through these adventure training activities, we are putting the JCRs in the position to overcome their fears; whether it be mental, physical or emotional. Maybe its fear of the ocean, or climbing up a rock face, by putting the JCRs in these challenging, uncomfortable conditions, they are learning to overcome obstacles and learning ways to cope,” explained Major Scott Macdonald, who is the Officer Commanding, Junior Canadian Ranger Company of 4th Canadian Ranger Patrol Group.

“One of the biggest benefits of NLETS 19 is the confidence that the JCRs gain in the role of being leaders. At the end of the enhanced training session, they return to their home patrols and communities with the confidence, skills and abilities to be leaders. It is these skills and abilities that we hope they continue to grow and build on as they become young adults.”

For JCR Robert Gienger of Grande Cache, Alberta, participating in the NLETS 19 was an opportunity to challenge himself. In July 2019, JCR Gienger was employed as a JCR mentor for the 4 CRPG Basic Enhanced Training Session 2019 (BETS 2019) that was hosted on Vancouver Island.

During BETS 2019, JCR Gienger was responsible for leading a section of younger JCRs, aged 12 to 14 years old, in outdoor activities such as canoeing, camping, hiking, and a high ropes course.

“I have learned so many skills through the JCR program and continue to do so. The biggest lesson for me is learning how to deal with the diversity of everyday modern challenges that come into my life. You must learn how to assess what happens, whose problems you can solve,” he said.

“When something unexpected happens, you need to quickly stop, think, and find a way to handle it. Since sometimes you could be wrong and there could be a backlash, you need to figure out all these facets and put them together to solve the puzzle,” said JCR Gienger, who added that NLETS 19 was another way the JCR program helped him to develop important life skills.

“NLETS 19 was an amazing opportunity. I made so many great friends and got to experience some great outdoor activities and travel to a place where I have never been to before. I found the whole experience challenging, but rewarding.” 

The Junior Canadian Rangers are community-led and Army-supported youth development program. Many JCRs come from Indigenous communities and are mentored by members of the Canadian Rangers, who are part-time Army Reserve members. The Rangers provide patrols and detachments for national security and public safety missions in sparsely settled northern, coastal and isolated areas of Canada that cannot conveniently or economically be covered by other parts of the Canadian Armed Forces.

[davidwiese3-blog]

Fallout 76 Reviews & Tips

What About Fallout 76? Retailers are known for leaking information in advance and such is true for the topic of Fallout 76 Switch. Regardless, the simple fact that Bethesda is banning people for actions associated with Fallout 76's developer room usually means that we're not likely to share how to go into the room or encourage everyone to seek out that information out unless they are well prepared to cope with the consequences. Amazing rewards have wonderful risk. Night City isn't only a very important setting in the game, the fictional city also has an extensive pop culture history in the actual world. When you're less happy in love or your heart was broken the world can look as a gloom and doom kind of place. It takes a while and demands some patience. It's true, you need a subscription to Xbox Live Gold if you wish to play the B.E.T.A.. Several of the bugs weren't quite game breaking. Word has it there is going to be a multiplayer component to Fallout 76,but we are going to have to await E3 to learn more details. The personal servers are yet to be set in tech-specs. Meanwhile, however, you can have a look at the patch notes below. It is possible to only access the beta when you have pre-ordered Fallout 76, and thus don't fall for any sites which say you can receive a code without a pre-order. But What About Fallout 76? The Fallout 76 standard edition is the most common and stocked by means of a vast majority of video game retailers. Fallout 76 is a prequel to the full franchise. Fallout 76 is much like Destiny in the feeling that you share an instanced version of the planet with random players. You are able to choose if you prefer PvP on or off. You will explore six unique areas of Fallout 76. No matter in which you stand with Fallout 76, you've got to admit that it appears like Bethesda is attempting to do the correct thing with the game. The 5-Minute Rule for Fallout 76 When joining a server it is possible to select from an array of regions to spawn into. There are not many solo-player Charisma cards, since the majority are intended for team play. It is possible to also block players that are undeterred by the bounty system and just need to keep shooting you. If you're likely to provide the basic Fallouts a go, just know they play very differently from the post-Fallout 3 entries. It is a rather dangerous place so be well prepared. It's unknown just what the game's post-launch calendar is likely to look like. There were still quite a few things that Bethesda had promised that it wasn't likely to deliver. Bethesda, nevertheless, is betting their brand is currently large enough to stand by itself. If it comes to Fallout 76, among the most fascinating changes from Bethesda's normal method of doing things is the announcement that the game will get a public beta. According to the reports received at an interview Bethesda had clarified almost all of the question concerning the fallout 76. It has said that it will make an announcement when it wants players to converge online to make the most of the short play periods. It is one of the biggest AAA studios in the world. What Everybody Dislikes About Fallout 76 and Why There's much that you can learn from a negative review. Our job is to give all of them the intriguing tools. Whilst the engine isn't hard to build with, the outdated textures and inadequate optimisation is actually beginning to bring the business down. The Foolproof Fallout 76 Strategy Bethesda revealed plans to handle issues with various Challenges and quests, various fixes to a range of Perks and weapons, and tackling lots of known exploits. It has no interactive human NPCs, though there are still robots and other creatures with personalities that can give out quests and engage in bartering. There is going to be a rare area where the players may discover the rare weapons, gare and some items which will be of help to the players to attack the enemies and additionally for the survival of the life. It isn't clear if similar bans are being issues for individuals who only decide to go into the room. If you save a number of each food group, odds are it will all go bad before getting the opportunity to eat it. Since you might imagine, that creates all sorts of problems. It may not be specifically what the majority of fans wanted (New Vegas 2 or a new CRPG-style game or only anything from Obsidian pls), but it appears to be a setting that is logical, a game which makes sense, and an experiment that is reasonable. LEGO Dimensions includes a number of other famous voice actors as well as those featured in the video. Contrary to other media, video games also have granted people the chance to explore apocalyptic scenarios for themselves. Thankfully things pick up when you get started playing with different humans. So you've got to keep that hope. A few days back, people started to whisper about its existence in Fallout 76 on Reddit, with a growing number of people looking for it. You just have to construct the remaining portion of the armor yourself. It is possible to even move your base to some other area if you discover a particularly scenic overlook. Early on I managed to drop a house base virtually anywhere so long as the build area did not infringe on any current solid structures. The 5-Minute Rule for Fallout 76 The video game sector is currently an enormous aspect in the American economy. A couple of bobby pins should not weigh a complete pound. In order to prevent griefing, you cannot be killed by another player until you get to level 5, giving you some opportunity to accustom yourself to the gameplay. Fallout 76 - the Conspiracy All 3 titles in the collection are below the Games'' tab as items that may be set up. Unlocking items to build is also quite slow. Even in case you've found all the nuke codes you require, you'll still have to get a Nuclear Keycard.

[pornosophical]

@ramabear replied to your post: I’m kinda scared to start playing ME again like....

that is my biggest problem with rpgs like that- i just have to inherently ignore most dialogue because its so disappointing

yeppppppp

that was one of the reasons I liked seeing the return of the... uh isometic crpgs from the 90s? the infinity engine? like the resurgence of those has been choice imo because the writing is all text and it just gets to so much more nuance

having said that, Dragon Age Inquisition wasn’t bad, and the previous ME games had some amazing dialogue moments

knowing how fucked the development cycle on this game was excuses some shit, for sure, but I’ll have to play more of the game to judge how well written the more critical scenes are

we know they prioritized some shit after all [side eyes mlm romance options]

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

One thing that always bothered me is that whenever we casually talk about video game history, what we usually end up with is something like this:

A timeline divided into console generations, showing the big console and game releases. Cool.

But where's the Apple II, C64. Amiga, Spectrum ZX and the IBM PCs? Where are world-changing technologies like CD-ROMs, smartphones, the mouse or the Internet? 

Sadly, video game history is often "abridged". This is just a  graph, of course, but even in the narrative of mainstream websites we rarely hear anything on the history of pre-Windows 95 computers.

And I don't blame malice or "those damn millennials". There are several complicated factors in play.

One is that consoles were indeed much more popular than 70's & 80's computers. Other is that home computers don't have platform owners promoting their history - Commodore, IBM, Atari, Sinclair, etc, all closed down or left the business, and Apple never showed to care about Apple II games. Bloody ingrates.

But the biggest problem is how complicated their history is. Consoles are divided into eight cute and self-contained generations, but learning about home computers requires understanding things like what's a goddamn IBM PC-Compatible or the difference between CGA, EGA and VGA. 

Yes, this information is available online - "just read Wikipedia". But it's a terrible approach to take a 16-year old that was born after Halo and send a 15,000+ words Wikipedia page just to know "what's an IBM PC". And even if he did, he lacks the historical context about the Apple II, C64, etc.

A 70's computer to someone from the 2017 is as shocking as a 2017 computer to someone from the 70's. Just watch a bunch of teenagers in awe of a Windows 95 PC if you need proof (and wanna feel old). 

[embedded content]

As such, while working on the CRPG Book I decided to create a timeline of ALL types of video games - one that would be visually pleasing, easily shareable and ease in readers of any background. 

Over 16 pages (or 8 pngs) I tried to give a notion of the importance of each event and machine, building a road map - self-contained enough to be understood without checking Wikipedia, but leaving hooks that point readers towards places that can later be explored in-depth on their own.

So, without further ado, here's the full timeline gallery: http://ift.tt/2ncSP83

And here I would like to invite you all to give it a read and share your opinions. I must warn beforehand that my background is in Marketing, not Computer Science, so I tend to focus on the Macro Environment a lot - and probably made a technical mistake or two along the way.

If you spot anything wrong of have any suggestions, please comment or e-mail me at crpgbook@gmail.com . Consider this article a request for "peer review" - or an Early Access. ;)

PS: I know that the timeline is currently confusing to read and I'm already working on a better way to show the years & months. Cheers!