ELEX - Pro & Contra

Like I said, Open world, has become a broader term than rpg, of what it envelops( considering gameplay).
In terms of authenticity, PB worlds do not have a fraction of detail as worlds in Assassin's Creed( Yep, that is true…Ubisoft has phenomenal world designers and artists, their problems come from other sources), L.A Noire/all Rockstar games, Witcher I/III, Mafia series, etc.
In terms of richness of lore( tied to exploration) and variety of locales, even less compared to something like TES series.
In terms of world activities, same is compared to Rockstar ( or Saints Row) games( which are almost unknown entity here).
The same is true with world interaction/physics next to Zelda, emergent gameplay next to Far Cry's, traversal next to Just Cause/Mad Max…and there are more and more and more examples.

I've played all the games you mention, and with the exception of TES and The Witcher series, none of those game worlds were close to being as immersive as PB's titles to me.
 
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They don't have top notch everything, we can all agree on that, but no one does. PB combines a lot of elements and create a unique style though. The elements shouldn't be looked at as individual parts but as a sum of the parts IMO. You're just not going to find an open-world RPG like this that combines all of these elements in the way PB does, and that is why we all still play their games. They also have a rather remarkable cult following for their old series which you don't see often.

I'm glad they continue to do their own thing.

The same is true, and even more for some of these games, and that is precisely my point.
Take GTA series: it has entire following of games that try to copy it's "style" with last one being best selling game in history ( excluding likes of Tetris/etc)… but is practically unheard of here.
Again, Rpgwatch is (or can be) a very poor measure of actual public perception of different games, rpgs or not.
 
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Then we'll simply disagree on this…while PB definitely have their own "style" in open world genre( and it is a genre, that surpasses "rpg" label), there are various areas they could massively improve in.

I think you guys haven't played too many of this type of games( I had similar opinion first time after finishing Gothic(s), a lot has changed since then.

I'm fine that people have different opinions about things. Actually I was a Morrowind fanboy in the beginning and refused to play Gothic due to the poor word of mouth it was getting about wonky combat and dated graphics. It wasn't until I heard that they somewhat fixed the combat in Gothic 2 that I got aboard. And now, I have no problem shouting to the world "I was wrong about Gothic"

As far as my gaming cred, you presuppose way too much. If you find me on Steam, you can look at my inventory and see I basically play two gaming genres, Open world RPGS and Hidden object Games. And when ever a good open world RPG comes up I can easily put in 80 hours. I mean I put in 800 hours into Fallout 4. I have 90 hours in Human Revolution and 21 hours into Mankind Divided and based on what I have been told have probably only played about 1/10 of the game.

It's all good that you have a different opinion about the game, but you voice your opinion as if it is some kind of fact.
It's not a fact that I (we) haven't played too many of this type of game
It's not a fact that PB games do not have a fraction of the detail of . . .

Still, how about a more concrete example of what you speak? No generic statement like "richness of lore, world interaction, etc. I gave a couple examples of how I felt Gothic did its open world thing. I'd be interested in hearing about your personal gaming experience in an open world game and how you felt it was more immersive than a PB game. And too prove I'm not trolling, I'll go again.

In the first town (Gothic 2) , after you leave, the guards warn you not to lead any beast to the front gate. The guards will typically take care of any baddies you lead to them but they wont like it. There is a deep forest area next to the town and a in a deep cave is a ferocious shadowbeast(?). He can not be beat in the early game. So I lead this beast to the town. He wiped out the guards at the front gate, a bunch of townies and one of my venders until the town en masse finally subdued the beast. This was my second play through and I know for a fact those people who died, lived through the whole game in Game 1, and yet in Game 2, chap 1, I had just killed a bunch of folks I "thought" were invulnerable. None of this was part of the plot, the gaming world was just so open it allowed you to do this completely unscripted action.

Man o Man, I love that game. If you can describe a similar immersive experience, and I have yet to play the game . . . yeah, I'll probably give it a go .

edit: there are a ton of Saints Row gamers here. I ended up buying the bulk of the Saints Row series due to some recommendation here at the Watch.
 
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I've played all the games you mention, and with the exception of TES and The Witcher series, none of those game worlds were close to being as immersive as PB's titles to me.

That's fine as "immersion" is more a subjective term means different things covering world design, city simulation, npc AI, weather, wildlife etc, etc.
 
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In the first town (Gothic 2) , after you leave, the guards warn you not to lead any beast to the front gate. The guards will typically take care of any baddies you lead to them but they wont like it. There is a deep forest area next to the town and a in a deep cave is a ferocious shadowbeast(?). He can not be beat in the early game. So I lead this beast to the town. He wiped out the guards at the front gate, a bunch of townies and one of my venders until the town en masse finally subdued the beast. This was my second play through and I know for a fact those people who died, lived through the whole game in Game 1, and yet in Game 2, chap 1, I had just killed a bunch of folks I "thought" were invulnerable. None of this was part of the plot, the gaming world was just so open it allowed you to do this completely unscripted action.

Yeah man, definitely this. This is just the tip of the iceberg. You and I could probably write a book of things like this from the Gothic games. They have an incredible attention to detail. I just finished Gothic 2 awhile ago and was constantly finding little details you could easily miss in the game.

I'm only half-joking when I say PB creates miracles with their game design.
 
It's not a fact that PB games do not have a fraction of the detail of . . .

Yes, definitely…for example: Notre Dame in AC: Unity was handmade recreated to incredible detail, by one person working on it exclusively for more than two years.

Man o Man, I love that game. If you can describe a similar immersive experience, and I have yet to play the game . . . yeah, I'll probably give it a go .

Here's an example of a completely unscripted, much more complex ( than simply leash enemy to friendly npc) emergent gameplay scenario that resulted from method of traversal, level design, AI, world interaction I've had in Far Cry II.

There was a mission where I had the task to assassinate a target( current) president holed up very high on a hill in fortified location. Two regular road entries to it…leading to back and front gate, both heavily patrolled with small army of guards. Head on was suicide, so instead I used a paraglider to land on top of main wall and then used a sniper rifle to shoot an oil barrel far in distance that started wildfire and drew out nearby wildlife, running berserk straight to guards at the gate. Whole fight/chaos errupted between the two, so I used this to stealth my way through and reached front courtyard. Then I jumped in nearby Jeep and created improvised cover to block them from swarming and take out a small number of guards, easy. Two however "noticed this" and jumped in, my plan went to shit as they started driving in circles around me, one blasting me with bolted mini gun.
Thought I was done for, but I managed to shoot the driver, which caused him to crash into oil barrels, car exploded and killing the rest nearby. Then it was easy to simply walk in and take out the target…by the time I was done, the guards (and fire) were done with animals in front and were rushing in to my location, so I quickly ran back to same paraglider and sailed away.
Mission done. :)
 
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Yes, definitely…for example: Notre Dame in AC: Unity was handmade recreated to incredible detail, by one person working on it exclusively for more than two years.

And games like Monkey Island don't get this amount of detail ? Says a lot about the industry's bias over whole game genres.,
 
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The same is true, and even more for some of these games, and that is precisely my point.
Take GTA series: it has entire following of games that try to copy it's "style" with last one being best selling game in history ( excluding likes of Tetris/etc)… but is practically unheard of here.
Again, Rpgwatch is (or can be) a very poor measure of actual public perception of different games, rpgs or not.

This site is called RPGWatch for a reason. Why would people be coming here to talk about GTA?

Here's an example of a completely unscripted, much more complex ( than simply leash enemy to friendly npc) emergent gameplay scenario that resulted from method of traversal, level design, AI, world interaction I've had in Far Cry II.

There was a mission where I had the task to assassinate a target( current) president holed up very high on a hill in fortified location. Two regular road entries to it…leading to back and front gate, both heavily patrolled with small army of guards. Head on was suicide, so instead I used a paraglider to land on top of main wall and then used a sniper rifle to shoot an oil barrel far in distance that started wildfire and drew out nearby wildlife, running berserk straight to guards at the gate. Whole fight/chaos errupted between the two, so I used this to stealth my way through and reached front courtyard. Then I jumped in nearby Jeep and created improvised cover to block them from swarming and take out a small number of guards, easy. Two however "noticed this" and jumped in, my plan went to shit as they started driving in circles around me, one blasting me with bolted mini gun.
Thought I was done for, but I managed to shoot the driver, which caused him to crash into oil barrels, car exploded and killing the rest nearby. Then it was easy to simply walk in and take out the target…by the time I was done, the guards (and fire) were done with animals in front and were rushing in to my location, so I quickly ran back to same paraglider and sailed away.
Mission done. :)

Cool, but Far Cry II is still a terrible open-world game. Wanna talk about how enemies and buildings respawn within minutes after you've killed/destroyed them? Or the ridiculous manner of purchasing weapons by feeding diamonds into a computer?

You can completely destroy a building in that game, drive just over the horizon and back, and then the building is miraculously rebuilt. Probably one of the least immersive open-world games I've ever played.
 
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Cool, but Far Cry II is still a terrible open-world game. Wanna talk about how enemies and buildings respawn within minutes after you've killed/destroyed them? Or the ridiculous manner of purchasing weapons by feeding diamonds into a computer?

You can completely destroy a building in that game, drive just over the horizon and back, and then the building is miraculously rebuilt. Probably one of the least immersive open-world games I've ever played.

I definitely agree on re-spawning issue( probably the worst in any game I've seen), but we were talking about emergent gameplay.
And let's be honest all open world, including PB games have their own "quirks" that way...can't loot (some) weapons or armor which you see clearly on enemies, all wildlife magically respawning after each chapter, atrocious and unrealistic HP sponges, wiping out army of orcs outside the walls which no one in castle seems to notice, army of undead twenty meters next to Lobart's farm, zero destruction models, people willing to beat you to death for trespassing, etc, etc.

Anyway, I'm turning into D'art here ( the devil!) and derailing the thread...my point was there are many open world games at this point outside of largely watch's preference and PB has their own "style", just like many others.

Peace people and try not to get high on Elex ( hopeless proposal for JDR and Fluent :p).
 
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Anyway, I'm turning into D'art here ( the devil!) and derailing the thread…my point was there are many open world games at this point outside of largely watch's preference and PB has their own "style", just like many others.

It's kind of an obvious point though isn't it? Again, this is a site for RPG enthusiasts. Why would you need to make the point that people here largely prefer RPGs over "other" open-world games?
 
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I don't need to get high on ELEX, I already know what to expect. A quality PB game.
 
I don't think there is anything wrong with talking about other game genres here. People do it all the time in the thread - "what have you been playing lately?" and other times too, in various longstanding threads. Just because people are really into rpgs doesn't mean they aren't interested in other game genres (obviously). Gaming is gaming. It doesn't matter what game genre it is, they all are influenced by games from their same genre and also other genres too. It's all blurring together these days anyhow, rpg elements are really popular, and even put into first person shooters.

Anyway, don't mind me, just had to chime in because I thought Bobo was making some decent points in this thread.
 
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Yes, definitely…for example: Notre Dame in AC: Unity was handmade recreated to incredible detail, by one person working on it exclusively for more than two years.



Here's an example of a completely unscripted, much more complex ( than simply leash enemy to friendly npc) emergent gameplay scenario that resulted from method of traversal, level design, AI, world interaction I've had in Far Cry II.

There was a mission where I had the task to assassinate a target( current) president holed up very high on a hill in fortified location. Two regular road entries to it…leading to back and front gate, both heavily patrolled with small army of guards. Head on was suicide, so instead I used a paraglider to land on top of main wall and then used a sniper rifle to shoot an oil barrel far in distance that started wildfire and drew out nearby wildlife, running berserk straight to guards at the gate. Whole fight/chaos errupted between the two, so I used this to stealth my way through and reached front courtyard. Then I jumped in nearby Jeep and created improvised cover to block them from swarming and take out a small number of guards, easy. Two however "noticed this" and jumped in, my plan went to shit as they started driving in circles around me, one blasting me with bolted mini gun.
Thought I was done for, but I managed to shoot the driver, which caused him to crash into oil barrels, car exploded and killing the rest nearby. Then it was easy to simply walk in and take out the target…by the time I was done, the guards (and fire) were done with animals in front and were rushing in to my location, so I quickly ran back to same paraglider and sailed away.
Mission done. :)

I guess I should add it was not easy leading that beast to town. But your mind seems rather set in regards to the Gothic experience.

Assassin Creed unity 2014
Gothic 2 2002

In any event loved your story, read like it was a lot of fun. I love those type of gaming experiences.

Far Cry is on my to play list (and in my steam library). But it is basically a shooter and requires good gaming twitch muscles which I frankly do not possess. When I'm good I am so mediocre. If I were a character in a war movie, I would get killed during basic training. I'm so lame but Clint Eastwood said it best, a man has got to know his own limitations. Give me dice and stats for the win. Come on MAGIC MISSLE,,,, hero needs a new pair of shoes . . . . .
 
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Assassin Creed unity 2014
Gothic 2 2002

Crazy. They were way ahead of the times back then. Still are in many ways IMO.

I wish more devs in general would try their hand at RPGs with handplaced and static design. Their games also have a lot of brilliant little touches that would make good study material for any RPG devloper today.
 
PB managed to strike a stable and good balance between simulation, rpg mechanics and story telling in their games that is not found elsewhere (because it is quite complex). Obsidian only managed to come close and excel in the story telling part in Fallout NV when they used the simulation capabilities of the Fallout 3 engine.

AC and Farcry games have simulation capabilities with focus on action but no detailed rpg mechanics and factions.

I guess that what makes PB games appealing to a wider audience - its the balance, not being better in one aspect or the other.
 
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I don't think there is anything wrong with talking about other game genres here. People do it all the time in the thread - "what have you been playing lately?" and other times too, in various longstanding threads. Just because people are really into rpgs doesn't mean they aren't interested in other game genres (obviously). Gaming is gaming. It doesn't matter what game genre it is, they all are influenced by games from their same genre and also other genres too. It's all blurring together these days anyhow, rpg elements are really popular, and even put into first person shooters.

You misunderstood. No one here is saying there's anything wrong with discussing other genres. I talk about non-RPGs almost as much as RPGs. That doesn't change that this is an RPG site first though.
 
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@Fluent; - Thanks. I read that different areas are harder (much like many earlier RPG I used to play) and hadn't thought that maybe some reviewers didn't take that into account so consider the difficulty more ruthless than it actually is.

Just seeing this. No problem man. My thought is that reviewers are used to the standard style of modern level scaling that something like Gothic/Risen/ELEX throws them off. Not a judgement on anybody, it's just that PB doesn't really hold your hand and your typical gamer who isn't familiar with their RPG design may not understand how they work.

Quick example, but the one ELEX preview that claimed the difficulty curve was "broken", tried fighting a Swamp Golem at level 1. Enemies like that are probably killable in most other modern RPGs at whatever level you find them. In ELEX (or Gothic, or Risen 1), stumbling on that troll equals a literally-impossible battle that you have to get stronger for and come back later. Simply put, there is zero level scaling in PB's games, tougher enemies are hand-placed in strategic positions (usually guarding good loot or some special area you can't access yet, etc.) and you have to be a certain level or have a certain quality of gear to survive.
 
It's kind of an obvious point though isn't it? Again, this is a site for RPG enthusiasts. Why would you need to make the point that people here largely prefer RPGs over "other" open-world games?

It's fairly obvious...I was pointing out that this "open design" isn't anything unique to PB games and that most people ( or at least in this thread) are unfamiliar with it because of not having as much experience with non rpg open world games.
And since that is not really related to rpg systems ( of char progression and leveling), they are definitely comparable.

Quick example, but the one ELEX preview that claimed the difficulty curve was "broken", tried fighting a Swamp Golem at level 1. Enemies like that are probably killable in most other modern RPGs at whatever level you find them. In ELEX (or Gothic, or Risen 1), stumbling on that troll equals a literally-impossible battle that you have to get stronger for and come back later. Simply put, there is zero level scaling in PB's games, tougher enemies are hand-placed in strategic positions (usually guarding good loot or some special area you can't access yet, etc.) and you have to be a certain level or have a certain quality of gear to survive.

That is actually good example of poor design...for instance, Black Troll in G2, is easily killable at any level when it comes to required player skill or tactics( as it has very basic AI and simplistic attack pattern)... it is simply a matter of patience as ( from the start of the game) enemy damage/resistances are massively ( and unrealistically) disproportionate next to the player.
Compare it to something like Monster Hunter series where defeating a certain "boss" creature requires a combination of study, tactics, strong understanding of mechanics and high level of skill, while offering plenty of flexibility on how to handle it.
This is a typical misunderstanding of what makes the game difficult, especially among rpg players.
 
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It's fairly obvious…I was pointing out that this "open design" isn't anything unique to PB games and that most people ( or at least in this thread) are unfamiliar with it because of not having as much experience with non rpg open world games.
And since that is not really related to rpg systems ( of char progression and leveling), they are definitely comparable.

Where did someone say it was unique to PB? Although you could easily make the argument that they were one of the very first to do it with a fully 3D game.

I also doubt there are many people here who are completely unfamiliar with other open-world games. The general population here at The Watch doesn't strike me as being that naive. I'd wager almost every member here has tried at least a few non-RPGs at one time or another.

That is actually good example of poor design…for instance, Black Troll in G2, is easily killable at any level when it comes to required player skill or tactics( as it has very basic AI and simplistic attack pattern)… it is simply a matter of patience as ( from the start of the game) enemy damage/resistances are massively ( and unrealistically) disproportionate next to the player.
Compare it to something like Monster Hunter series where defeating a certain "boss" creature requires a combination of study, tactics, strong understanding of mechanics and high level of skill, while offering plenty of flexibility on how to handle it.
This is a typical misunderstanding of what makes the game difficult, especially among rpg players.

Gothic 2 was released 15 years ago. It's pretty easy to make such comparisons when talking about a game that old. Besides, almost every game has things that can be exploited if the player knows how.
 
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Nobody is misunderstanding Bobo. You keep trying to compare apples to oranges. Monster Hunter for example can focus on its combat because combat is 90% of the game. So of course it will be more intense than PB's games because PB has to design other systems and content beyond a combat simulation, i.e. balancing an overall RPG design.

PB games are what they are because they create a unique blend of traits, a blend that isn't found in any other RPG currently on the market.
 
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