Feargus Urquhart interview on Gamasutra

[NiRv4n4]

considering the free market principle, that if there is a demand there should be a supply, unless ...

... the market is misinterpreted. Which never happens, right?

Not to mention when the market's structure is simply ill-fitting, as is the case with the console market.

Regardless of your interpretation of the market's supposed misinterpretation, games like Call of Duty and movies like Avatar are high selling amongst youth (biggest consumer of games) because they are "cool", with lots of action. Sure, there are plenty of peeps who like game engines like Fallout 1 and 2, but much more people buy action games as opposed to isometric and strategy games.

okay, seriously, what is going on. iz, peeps, what else is there?

 

[Brother None]

Regardless of your interpretation of the market's supposed misinterpretation,

Mine? Or Feargus' quote right a few posts above?

but much more people buy action games as opposed to isometric and strategy games.

Oh cool, your statement is certainly irrefutable. And Diablo III will flop for being isometric as well, right?

"much more" is a useless statement anyway. No film made as much as Titanic, but were all films after Titanic basically Titanic-clones? No, because different genres appeal to different target groups.
You don't just make games of one type because it sells best, you make games in all groups that sell well. The question is not "would an isometric TB-game outsell an FPS/RPG", the question is "would it sell enough to warrant a mid-level investment".

 

[ManWithNoName]

You guys sound like hardcore KotOR fans. I feel like theres a competition about who can hate Beth and Fallout 3 the most, and I'm losing. Of course he's not going to say he hated it, which could get Beth angry at Obsidian. But that dosen't mean he didn't like it and it wasen't a fun game. And I do realise that fallout 3 was pretty much Fallout 1 and 2's story put together, which which was stupied and a bad choice.

 

[NiRv4n4]

Sorry if I wasn't clear, but I don't really consider RTS or Turn Based ones, like Civ, to be isometric. Technically, they are, but I am thinking of like Neverwinter Nights or Fallout. And Diablo 3 will likely be acclaimed, but may not be what a lot of players nowadays are looking for. The ever growing casual gaming crowd isn't as interested in turn based rpgs as fast paced action games. Fact of life. Deny it, but that is a fact.

 

[alec]

Sorry if I wasn't clear, but I don't really consider RTS or Turn Based ones, like Civ, to be isometric. Technically, they are, but I am thinking of like Neverwinter Nights or Fallout.

Are you for real? The first Civ is true isometric. Neverwinter Nights is top down 3D perspective. Fallout is trimetric projection.

And Diablo 3 will likely be acclaimed, but may not be what a lot of players nowadays are looking for. The ever growing casual gaming crowd isn't as interested in turn based rpgs as fast paced action games. Fact of life. Deny it, but that is a fact.

Diablo 3 is not turnbased, but rather a fast-paced action game.

Also: a turnbased game needn't be isometric, nor does an isometric game need to be turnbased.

You should leave the discussion while you still can.

 

[iridium_ionizer]

That only started when they got more realistic and when the camera movement started to follow your character's movement more accurately, like when you run and the whole dang screen goes up and down.

This is just another reason that game developers should allow players to turn off or dial down as many "features" as possible. Fallout 1 and 2 had plenty of options, Burnout 3 let you turn off the automatic slow-motion crash views, but it seems that more and more game developers insist that they have distilled the experience down to perfection for everyone, and they do not provide a simple way (outside of modding) to change, what in most instances are, simple game variables.

besides may be its just me but 'not all of them' is not generalizing or is in par with the comment i replayed to which basically did the same thing you claim i did, but hey i got my opinion you as community admin and if i remember the usual forum rules i'll better pledge the fifth.

What? Seriously, I don't understand what you're saying.

I think he is saying that under these circumstances he has decided to plead the 5th (U.S. amendment), aka the right to remain silent (so that what he says will not be used against him).

 

[Crni Vuk]

I remember a time when many thought a "RPG" could not be anything else but a "top down/ISO" gameplay experience. That was when Diablo 1 and 2 have been released. And we seen many of those clones come and disapear.

one good thing I always liked about the PC games was the diversity. If you had no choice with RPGs you could play some nice shooter, strategy or simulation (sim city etc.). Now. It seems like almost all the games feel kinda "similar". Similar in the story, the context and gameplay even. Its not so much about inovation but about different experience.

I dont want a game like Morrowind or Dagerfall to play like Fallout or Diablo. And I dont want a game like Fallout to play like Diablo.

Tourn based RPGs could sell. Very well even. If they get the right marketing. But they dont. Cause they are very difficult to make. Compare just Oblivion with Fallout 1, Arcanum or anything similar and tell me Oblivion has "more content" regarding role playing. Or its gameplay would be rich it is easier to make a FPS gameplay. Oblivion just like Fallout 3 might be a fun game. But they are not the epidome of RPG evolution. Particularly Fallout 3 was to Fallout 1 not a evolution but a shift to the side. It just changed a setting from one gameplay to the other. Thats not inovative. Its just a change. For the better or the worse. Thats a different question ~ read my signature to understand.

 

[tekhedd]

considering the free market principle, that if there is a demand there should be a supply, unless ...

... the market is misinterpreted. Which never happens, right?

Not to mention when the market's structure is simply ill-fitting, as is the case with the console market.

Aha, someone said the "C" word. And it's important. I love my console, but it does lend itself to certain types of gameplay better than others. The isometric (OK, trimetric) point of view worked great with mouse-based gameplay. And my console does not have a mouse. Console-friendliness is very important if you're looking at a mass market game at about the time F3 came out.

So, yeah, the FPS point of view was an obvious way to go and I don't think anybody faults them for that decision as such. However, while it is true that a top-down viewpoint lends itself to strategic gameplay, and an FPS viewpoint a more reactionary (twitch-based) style, it doesn't mean the game has to be made of vanilla pudding. Metaphorically speaking.

EDIT: I love KOTOR. How exactly is being a fan of that a negative?

 

[Brother None]

Aha, someone said the "C" word. And it's important. I love my console, but it does lend itself to certain types of gameplay better than others.

That's not really the problem. They released Gold Box titles on Genesis/SNES too. The problem is publishers got chased away from PC, and the profit margins of console games means you're always aiming for big sellers, which means big investments. The mid-budget title market has been strangled, and that's exactly where I'd first look for non-action RPGs to thrive.

EDIT: I love KOTOR. How exactly is being a fan of that a negative?

He said hardcore KotOR fans. Maybe they're ubercritical? I dunno, we don't really discuss other communities here.

I liked KotOR well enough. One of BioWare's better efforts. Don't really like BioWare's style much, never did.

 

[alec]

I remember a time when many thought a "RPG" could not be anything else but a "top down/ISO" gameplay experience.

We can trace this back to ancient China where a form of isometrics was used in maps. The Chinese used scrolls for this so that large areas could be covered in each tome. Perspective was not an option here, the scrolls were just too long (several metres). So they devised a form of isometrics (commonly referred to as Chinese perspective) which did not have vanishing points. They'd read the scroll by unwinding a part and then when a page like size was achieved they'd start winding it back up on the other end, creating a continuous panorama of big vast areas of land.

You sometimes get crazy curvatures in 3D top down games which try to simulate such a feat. I don't like that.

 

[ManWithNoName]

EDIT: I love KOTOR. How exactly is being a fan of that a negative?

I didn't say it was negative. I say it sounds like theres a bunch of Hardcore KotOr fans here because they hated the KotOr 2 (which obsidion made) and they hate that instead of doing what they liked they're making a KotOR MMO. Also I'm a fan of KotOR and liked KotOR 2 but I'm not planning on getting the MMO I'd rather have the same gameplay they had in the first and second one. I said that because it kind of relates to the original fallout fans. They (you) liked the first ones but when they changed studios and style they (you) hated it.

I promise not to comment on the communitys hatred again. I feel like you guys are slowly changing me though, like cancer. Not that you guys are cancer or anything.

 

[Crni Vuk]

...

Maybe youre some Descendand of Konfuzius. I have read there are still some families alive which claim to have their roots from him.

*but interesting story nontheless

 

[UncannyGarlic]

The VATS system really melded everything together for me -- I get to be in the world looking out my own eyes, and I don't have to fight every fight in an actual physical skill-based way. I can use my stats and ammo and all that kind of stuff and see people's heads getting blasted off in Technicolor, which was awesome. [laughs]

That reads pretty much exactly like one of Beth's PR statements about VATS and it's painful to read everytime. Just this morning I was thinking of a number of different things they could have done to make VATS actually good, some of which would not have been hard to do...

An isometric Fallout simply would not sell good, it is simply a fact.

Diablo 3. It won't be true isometric, but the difference is minimal, top down view is still there. Damn... now why would they do that?

Something just released that's selling great and will continue to is StarCraft II. Dragon Age did pretty well, granted it has a flexible camera. TRPGs have a solid market share and the tend to be fixed camera and TB.

You could even consider that Fallout 1, made by the same team as back then, would have been first person from the start of the technical possibilities were given, back then they weren't.

Oh how well PR seems to take root as truth in people's minds. Oh look, a game made a year before Fallout that's a FPP RPG. Oh, another! And another. As for TB FPP there's this, this, this... and countless others. There there are all of the FPSes, including games like System Shock.

Aha, someone said the "C" word. And it's important. I love my console, but it does lend itself to certain types of gameplay better than others. The isometric (OK, trimetric) point of view worked great with mouse-based gameplay. And my console does not have a mouse. Console-friendliness is very important if you're looking at a mass market game at about the time F3 came out.

There have been TRPGs for consoles since at least the NES and continue to be so no, lack of a mouse is not a valid reason. Granted, it works better with TB games than RT games but the fact remains that it works fine. If you only have to control a single character than it works fine in RT too, take the numerous Japanese ARPGs for the SNES for example. Hell the Secret of Mana/Seiken Densetsu games were RT and had multiple characters and worked well.

I liked KotOR well enough. One of BioWare's better efforts. Don't really like BioWare's style much, never did.

I played it years after it's release but that they seemed to take Neverwinter Nights and adapt it to the game bothered me greatly as NWN didn't exactly have stellar mechanics.

 

[alec]

...

Maybe youre some Descendand of Konfuzius. I have read there are still some families alive which claim to have their roots from him.

*but interesting story nontheless

It's true. Maybe I should do an article on it some time. It's a pretty interesting subject.

 

[Kerr-Plomb]

Of course shooters date back then, but show me one shooter of these times with the same complexity as fallout 1 had, only a single one.

This genre needed till the last 10 years to even adopt an inventory system and something called dialogues.

Back then a Fallout shooter would never have worked.

Concerning the market thing. I'm not saying I think it's good that there are no isometric games out there. Yes, Diablo, but Diablo is not strong because of the perspective, it's a name which is worth tons of gold, just as warcraft and starcraft are, look at starcraft 2. No innovation, old graphics and gameplay, millions sold.

I just wanted to say with it that there's a reason why adventures, gameplay and so on become less presented on the market, because it IS a market.

It is not like someone used a switch and all RPGs where not topdown anymore. But the RPGs there days which are big hits are more on a close level.

Still I prefer fallout in fps and I can understand why some prefer the old topdown view, its simply taste and mine is different.

 

[Lexx]

Of course shooters date back then, but show me one shooter of these times with the same complexity as fallout 1 had, only a single one.

Show me one from nowdays.

 

[Brother None]

This genre needed till the last 10 years to even adopt an inventory system and something called dialogues.

Oh right. There were no RPGs with dialog, quest and inventory systems.

I just wanted to say with it that there's a reason why adventures, gameplay and so on become less presented on the market, because it IS a market.

Right. And everyone knows markets have magical full knowledge of themselves and are never wrong.

Still I prefer fallout in fps and I can understand why some prefer the old topdown view, its simply taste and mine is different.

Oh, we were discussing preference?! I didn't know that, that sounds like a very useful discussion to have.

 

[ManWithNoName]

I thought most people on this site were just assholes but now as I read the threads you guys are constently, don't like to say argueing but, argueing with Fallout 3 super fans who come in here just to start fight. (I'm not saying any names or pointing out someone specific or attacking fallout 3 fans in general)

 

[Sam Ecorners]

As I read this thread, I first smiled, then chuckled, then facepalmed and now my head hurts.


Edit: What I want to say is: isn't it time to let go?

 

[Brother None]

I thought most people on this site were just assholes

Well, we are!

Thing is we usually had these debates a hundred times before these new people join to make exactly the same points in the absolute conviction that they're being really clever. Pointing out Strife and Ultima Underworld over and over does get tiring.