Grimrock

I think you need to appreciate Crash that your experiences with other games may not match other people's. To me EotB would have been unremarkable had it not been for the sense of exploration, when, for example, I discovered the dwarven area and following that the drow. That was over 20 years ago and I still remember it. In fact discovering the drow area got me interested enough to read FR fiction.

The narrative in EotB was pretty quiet too - a cutscene introduction and then off you went. At certain points you got a page of dialogue, perhaps a dozen times in total in the game. However it wasn't the dialogue that really did it for me. It was just the little touches they put in which gave things a bit more of a shine and flavour.

If you look at DM in contrast there was virtually no dialogue, however they did get the atmosphere right and even with just the names of things they let a back story be hinted at.

Throughout this thread though people are rattling on about story vs gameplay. Let me be absolutely clear, again, I don't like the way modern RPGs are, they have their merits, but for gameplay they don't... they're just fancy attack moves and cutscenes. I do not want a LoG like that, however if there was a bit more flavour in the game then I feel it would neither detract from the gameplay, nor would it confine things.

I would really rather have a great new style of game than one with a great story. It seems so many games these days, especially RPG's tend to be close to the the same, other than some story that unfolds. Really though story means nothing to me in a game, if I play a game i am looking for something fun i can sit down and play and have fun for a few hours. Most of the modern games in between listening to long dialog, or fancy cut scenes you spend time doing simple boring quests or fights.

Don't get me wrong I love a good story, I just have never seen one in a game that truly blew me away...that is why when I am not gaming in my free time, I am usually reading a book.

I do think though that Grimrock has a pretty good story that unfolds and I think at the end their should be something going on, but I really like how they focused more on puzzles and exploration (especially in old school mode) and not on some more in depth story.

P.S. I find it rather funny the spell check says I misspelled "Grimrock" :p

I'm repeating myself...

I'm not asking for a Bioware cutscene infested bland graphical adventure, nor was Neil.

What is it with people that if you ask for a little bit of flavour and/or story and the immediate response is that you're asking for it to be Dragon Age 2?

A lot of modern games are massively using the "abandonned notes" trick to tell their stories.

Amnesia : the Dark Descent, Bioshock, DeadSpace - events that occured before the present time are narrated in audio logs, books, journals, etc...
It helps create a mood.
Now, those games also throw in some cinematic sequences here and there, sometimes too much.
Fact is, it works, and its quite a cheap but very efficient method to enhance the whole "There were people here before and it all turns to crap" feeling.

And actually, LoG does use this trick to some extent too, with Toorum's notes.
And you can reconstruct the place story, as you advance into its bowels, which is plenty enough for me, for a Dungeon Crawling kind of game, as opposed to a true RPG.

Toorum's notes and the Dreaming sequence I might add if you missed it.

Yep, they add flavour. It'd be nice if there was more.. that's all.

I don't know that I'd advocate what you see in a Bioware game, I think the atmosphere they try to create is at best a cliche and at worst it's forced, boring and gets skipped through every time.

Less is more, but a sense of mystery, intrigue, etc are fantastic. Just little touches.

Indeed, but the dreaming sequences are not "flavour"

I think that what Neil and Halk are saying, is that having some elements that will tell you of things not related to your immediate situation would have been nice.
The closest to this are the Order's holy scriptures and Toorum's notes, while the Dream sequences are your direct, present story.

Think Daniel's journals in Amnesia, the audio logs of the survivors in DeadSpace ( which you seem to always be a step or two behind, never being able to reach them, but you recognize their name, you follow their story, etc ), same for Bioshock ( city is a mess, but it wasn't always like that - you will find audio logs of key personnel that lived the transformation and will speak about it, enabling the player to reconstruct the past events )...

Shrugn wrote: opposed to a true RPG.

What's your definition of a true RPG?

Sol_HSA wrote:

Shrugn wrote: opposed to a true RPG.

What's your definition of a true RPG?

I never liked the fact that "RPG" are often reduced to "gaining levels and getting stuff". I esspecialy loathe the fact that Final Fantasy games are branded rpg because they got "level gain mecanisms and turn based combats".

RPG are "Roleplaying games". Where you play a character and where you put some life into him, by defining how he/she will act.
As I see it, it's all about the possibilities and what you choose to do with them. It's about being given choices and choosing to go a specific path. I have no problem with the fact the beginning and the end can be set in stone, as long as I could do what I wanted to do ( while assuming the consequences ) along the way.

In that regard, Elder Scrolls games would be the most perfect example.
Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas, too. ( 3 was pretty Linear and lacked a lot of real choices ).
Baldur's Gate, less - choices are minimum.
The Witcher 1, I can't bring myself to call it a "rpg". I was under the impression I was forced into a specific course of action with a predefined, pre-existing character, and very basic choices which were not doing a lot for the story. Maybe the second game is better, but since I disliked the first...
Mass Effects are a good example of a different kind of RPG - you're quite forced to follow a specific path, but the various choices throughout the 3 games will bring, if not a different ending, a different Shepard for every player. You won't live, you won't FEEL, your Shepard the way I felt mine. It's a raw clay statue you decide to shape according to what is thrown at you.

LoG choices are inexistant and all fall back to game mecanisms. You choose between any combination of 4 races and 3 classes, and that's almost all. But then again, I think it's perfectly normal, as LoG is a Dungeon Crawler, and not a Rpg.

I thought the game's story was told pretty well, though I feel like they set up some things that they didn't really finish.