So I did a class on the art of the video game and MoMA (museum of modern art) has a number of them in their collection. There is even a Wikipedia article on it. Wikipedia Article
Eve Online and The Sims are excellent additions. But they are not RPGs.
I would personally include VTMB or Deus Ex, but from a broader perspective probably one of the Ultimas (6 or 7 are considered the best I believe) would be more appropriate.
Don’t play jRPGs, but from my understanding FF7 is considered the “best in genre” release.
Of course they are role-playing games, you completely assume the role of a character in another world, even with stat sheets. What kind of role-playing game is Deus Ex, where you play a pre-defined character in a pre-defined plot? The Masquarade is certainly a janky fan favourite, but hardly revolutionary. CRPGs made a shift, from being tabletop simulators and dungeon crawlers (with MOMA contenders like Rogue, Wizardry, or as you suggested Ultima) to games about narrative manifolds. Disco Elysium would be my pick.
With Deus Ex you definitely can play very different characters with a broad spectrum of personalities and narrative decisions. Although I do agree that an argument can be made it’s not an RPG.
Eve is a sandbox MMO and The Sims is lifeim, don’t really see how they are RPGs.
Very few RPGs execute the role playing component so well as VTMB IMO.
EVE is described by its publisher as an MMORPG and yeah, you have stats and individual ressources and interact with the world and other players. You play a character, a role, the very definition of a role-playing game. Same with The Sims, but offline for yourself and less geopolitical. RPGs are not only games where you directly control a single character or a group of characters and kill stuff, and sometimes pick a lock or something.
My current favorite is Tetris Plus, the versus mode with the little professor guy trying to get the treasure while a spiked ceiling keeps falling is fun. When one player fills 2 or more lines it adds random junk to the other player’s board.
They’re gone. No mascots. No background worlds. Just the “elemental” machine skins.
Tetris Worlds had eye monsters because THQ wanted a console-friendly mascot game.
Tetris Elements has industrial pipes because ValuSoft (THQ’s budget imprint) wanted a cheap, self-contained PC release that didn’t require any cross-project asset wrangling.
I do at some point. I’ll probably pick it up on sale at some point. I’ve heard mixed things about it but what i’m gathering it’s just a different vibe than the first one.
Yeah, the vibe is different, but both are excellent in their own way. Part 2 is a more complex piece of story telling. It does some things that I had not expected from a game and that make it more (emotionally) challenging but also unique in terms of the experience. I personally found it really impressive.
That’s definitely the vibe i’m getting from people’s descriptions. I was planning to pick the game up next sale, though with the different vibes i’m wondering if maybe putting some space between the games would be good
Most games require killing the end boss to finish the game, how exactly would you play around that? Or do you mean don’t kill anyone who doesn’t try to kill you?
Ideally, games where you kill nobody at all. Even avoiding killing creatures for a “true pacifist” run.
I’m just going to spoil a bunch of things, because why markdown?
There’s quite a few games where you have alternatives when it comes to main bosses - in the original Fallout ::: you can talk the Master into suicide by proving that the supermutants are infertile :::
in Planescape Torment there are multiple ways of ::: convincing your mortality to merge back with you :::,
New Vegas lets you talk down
:::Legate Lanius, at least on the NCR route:::
Jade Empire will give you a bad ending
:::where you surrender to the Glorious Strategist in exchanged for being fêted as a hero:::
even Fallout 3 will let you
:::talk Colonel Autumn into surrender for like no reason at all:::.
I’d really like that to expand into video games having killing “mooks”/generic enemies be more of an action with consequences. Undertale does a good job of that -
:::if you kill any monsters, even if you spare all bosses, the ending still mentions that there are some hard feelings towards you.:::
Spec Ops has no “pacifist option” but also makes you realize that
:::you were slaughtering American soldiers and innocent civilians because you were going insane:::.
The default problem solving strategy in most games seems to be violence, and that breaks my immersion. The last time I was in a physical confrontation with anyone was fighting my sister in high school - I’ve certainly never killed anyone.
All those games you listed are violence centric, so I imagine the non-violent route isn’t as satisfying. I tried to finish Dishonored (not really an RPG) without violence, but most of abilities involve violence and getting caught just meant waiting for them to kill me instead of fighting back. The gameplay just isn’t optimized for it like something like Thief is.
There are games designed for non-violence where violence simply isn’t an option, such as Disco Elysium or WanderHome. Searching specifically for games without violence is probably a better option than finding games where nonviolence is an option, unless you’re specifically looking to find clever ways to play games non-traditionally.
I mean, the whole point of the game is that you could have not killed anyone, you could have stopped playing, you choose to keep playing, you choose to kill all those NPCs, the game never forced you, turning off the game was always an option.
I liked what I saw from the first handful of articles, so I’ve added that site to my feed reader. It’s good to see you back again! I hope you’re doing better.
That’s really kind of you! Don’t expect to be inundated, it’ll be a weekly thing for whoever is in the fediverse scene, loves gaming, tech and so on, and wishes to contribute articles. I think it’s fun, so I’m glad you gave it a nod of approval!
I don’t even. Every individual part of RDR2 is pretty good. It looks good, sounds good, the writing really deserves recognition for managing to keep a 100 hour plot interesting and at no point was it ever clear to me why this needed to be an interactive medium because the gameplay and all the other bits don’t really interface. Inside missions you can’t leave the very narrow developer intended path at all, your choices boil down to “what gun do I shoot this guy with”. Outside of missions you’re free to do “whatever” except whatever is also just mostly shooting guys or animals - none of which you have to do or affect anything.
The exploration is and stumbling upon odd sidequests initially is like the only part where it makes sense to be a game, because you couldn’t recreate that in another medium and some even ask of you, the player, to use your noggin to solve shit. All the rest of it though, you could basically get the same experience by watching The Sopranos and after every episode you finish a level of Quake.
Which on it’s own would be fine, a piece of art can just be a good time for a (long) while and that’s good but RDR2 ranks among there as the most expensive videogame, especially if you exclude obvious scams like Star Citizen and live service games like WoW that have just been getting content forever and everybody involved in the production was reportedly forced into insane crunch times to make the horse balls react to temperature. And for what?
Certain parts of the game haven’t aged well, but there’s no denying that Vaas was a wonderfully done villain. He’s a great test case for the “a good villain can’t be absent and mysterious” argument. Most of the memorable villains in gaming have been nearly omnipresent; Vaas, GladOS, Andrew Ryan, Handsome Jack, etc…
All of them are good villains because they are consistently present. They have enough screen time to actually develop into full fledged characters. They’re not just some dark and mysterious overlord, patiently waiting in the bottom of a dungeon for you to come fight them. They’re persistently in your face, interacting with you. Even if they’re not actively hindering your progress, the fact that they have a continued presence means their eventual downfall is that much more satisfying.
I mean, if that’s all you want in a villain, I guess, yeah - Vaas was constantly pestering the player. His dialogue and mannerisms were just awful though. Philosophy 101 freshman tweets level awful. I feel like putting him on the same level as GLaDOS should be criminal.
Hell, if philosophy is the driving factor for a good villain, then GladOS wouldn’t even be on your list. A villain doesn’t need to be morally grey to be a good villain. Plenty of good villains are evil just for the sake of being evil. Even GladOS would fall into that box.
The point was simply that players need an end goal to keep them focused, and having a consistently present villain acts as a moving end goal. The player is driven to chase that goal until the conclusion, because the villain is always just out of reach. If you see a goal waiting on the horizon, the march there feels like a slog. But if the goal is consistently at your fingertips as you chase it, you’ll chase it all the way to the horizon without even realizing.
Hell, if philosophy is the driving factor for a good villain
…I didn’t say it was? That’s just Vaas’ whole schtick - poorly understood philosophical quips that everyone eats up for some reason. Again, if all you need is a bad guy constantly needling you, then I suppose I see why you like Vaas. I just don’t think that’s enough to make him “museum worthy”.
If we wanna get into what I think makes a top tier video game villain, I’d say the critical characteristics would be menace, intelligence, and capability. In short, they need to be an obvious threat that know what they’re doing and are a challenge to best, both mentally and physically. To be honest, I can’t think of all that many villains in video games that I would consider that good. GLaDOS fits for sure. I think the Kingslayer in The Witcher 2 is also quite good. Fumbled ending aside, Mass Effect had a good run of baddies as well - Saren, The Illusive Man/The Collectors, The Reapers. There might be more, but that’s all I can think of atm.
Sid Meiers Alpha Centuri, it’s the best 4x game of its era and is a perfect example of how well games from the 90s can play, in many ways it feels like a modern game made with severe technical limitations. Today the graphics are outright bad (they weren’t exactly jaw dropping at the time either), and the UI lacks a couple of modern sensibilities and QOL features but everything else is top notch.
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