I hate the story progression/structure of WRPG's

[jamie]

Me and my cousin would always talk about this but I never really put it out there in the ether before.

Formal Complaint:
Of the Western rpg games I've played I'm looking mainly at the Elder scrolls & Fallout line of entries. The best way I can put it is that there isn't any real driving force to the story.
It just never feels like anything is going on in terms of a cohesive overarching line of events. Just a big'ol side mission festival


Now to be fair:
They are obviously designed to be that way and alot of it could be an issue with my expectations more so then execution of WRPG's. If you have an active imagination and spin your own personal tale within the sand box they give you then you can get a lot of mileage out of them(which is how I play them).

Conclusion:
WRPG's feel like they give you a world in a particular state, while other games feel like they give you a world in a particular state ...that's also under some process. I don't want the world to feel like it's waiting in stasis for me to poke around in it. If you have no imagination and don't care for stealing a pair of rusty scissors from a random NPC then I can see those games being mad boring.
....


We all agree that not all WRPG's(Role Playing Games made by western developers) play like Bethesda titles. It just so happens that those are some of the most egregious offenders and showcases for that design style. As a matter a fact I stated "Elder scrolls & Fallout line of entries" explicitly because as soon as I typed it I thought of Bulders gate, Ice windale, diablo, etc so I wanted to be specific. Though I still maintain my position because I don't won't to explicitly limit myself to Bethesda games, because it's an issue in games outside of those Bethesda titles.
Side note: Diablo 1 was so It's just amazing how they got to Diablo 3.


I feel like both Bethesda and Bioware started with the basic pen and paper AD&D then went two ways.
1. Bioware focused on combat rule sets and being a digital DM"Dungeon master" making campaigns(stories) for players to slog through.
2. Bethesda focused on the more abstract idea of choices/openness trying to digitize that aspect by throwing a bunch of options at the proverbial wall. So that players have the range of choices inherent to playing by pen & paper ....but now on the computer.

So maybe their(Bethesda) case *and developers like them* ......is of being a shotty "DM"

[jamie]

I hate the story progression/structure of WRPG's (Part 2: The Dungeon Crawl)

GOOD:
Choose your own path
Knights of the old republic, mass effect, Deus ex, etc.

BAD:
Story Integration (already covered)
Elder scrolls, Fallout, and similar titles

Dungeon crawling (Lets go in!)
(Diablo, dungeon siege, eairly bioware D&D titles, Champions of Norrath, Baldur's Gate, etc)



This topic has made me think of another aspect of WRPG that hit me....







Formal Complaint:
Of the Western rpg dungeon crawlers I've played. The story isn't really integrated into the game it's basically a bookend, they feel like action games rather then rpg games
It feels like a glorified version of gauntlet, you enter a dungeon and some ass hat at the back opens the "monster spigot" and you fight every drop of monster that comes out .........



Now to be fair:
Some of these games are admittedly more concerned about the long term co-op, "loot" balance, & PvP aspects then a story people may pay attention to once, with subsequent play through's mainly for better "loot". Also I can think of plenty of non western rpgs that are dungeon crawls and the most obvious cousin is the old random battle system. I've played many a game where dem hoes come every 4 steps ...no literally, you can watch the sprite and count the animation frames. At least WRPG's dungeon crawls do a decent job of presenting an arc of the world; making it feel like the world is under some kind of process that's causing the hoards of monsters.


Conclusion:
WRPG dungeon crawls feel like Dynasty Warriors with town hubs, and a dialog tree. But at least they don't pretend Dynasty Warriors is an rpg cause the story integration in WRPG dungeon crawls are only a little better then DW. When playing other games with dungeon crawl elements at least you can expect them to weave story related situations into it. Be it a character getting lost, the party being broken up by some event and they have to find their way back, a chase/escape sequence, etc. Even with random battles they can sometimes add story sequences/events within the actual random battle itself. Be it dialog during battle, enemy targeting one character because of something in the story arc, a character getting robbed(which causes you to find the thief later), etc. The story in WRPG dungeon crawls suffer because their focus is geared toward "Feat +2 performance festivals" to see what kind of epic color swap sword +10 "loot" drop I get