/vr/ - Retro Games

I've always hated what voice acting brought to video games. It meant that scripts had to be far shorter because you have to hire VAs for everything. Every single line of dialogue became dollars to devs.

Not to mention making games more "cinematic" but thats another thread.

>>4947

Well, I personally think what was the biggest hit was 3D graphics. Suddenly companies entered this idiotic race for better and better visuals that had nothing to do with art direction and everything with work hours, so they burned, then, insane amounts of cash on expanding their teams in that direction and producing wave after wave of mostly really ugly basic bitch 3D that aged like shit.

The widening of the audience and influx of infantile players also didn't help. This combined with the graphics race stimulated development to steer towards huge budgets and into the hands of tightassed investors and soulless publishers. Games today are literally too big for the market they exist in, so they have to mainstream them and dumb down for maximum sales. If something's niche its not successful. As far as the suits are concerned everything needs to be Cowadoodie or Clash of Clans.

"Cinematicty" is the next, more recent stage of cancer. Its driven by all the things mentioned above, but wasn't really around, say, 2002.

>>4949

The first serious cancer to hit rpgs was probably Diablo, which wasn't an rpg but brought in an undesirable crossover audience and normalized mindless click to win gameplay almost overnight. It's thanks to this game that tb systems are uncool and every rpg on the market has to be "accessible" for the "modern audience".

>>4988

I love Diablo and they're still quite good games, but I agree with this statement. I never really thought about it like that before but it's quite plausible.

>>4988

>>5013

Blizzard has always been in the business of coming in, casualizing a genre, and then leaving it a hollow version of itself. They absolutely destroyed the MMO genre turning into nothing but copycat theme park games for a decade, and now are doing the same with TCGs with hearthstone.

God I fucking hate blizzard.

>>5023

>Blizzard has always been in the business of coming in, casualizing a genre, and then leaving it a hollow version of itself. They absolutely destroyed the MMO genre turning into nothing but copycat theme park games for a decade, and now are doing the same with TCGs with hearthstone.

>God I fucking hate blizzard.

Truly they are the worst. As someone that unironically enjoys Team Fortress 2 as a casual game that I can have fun with shit like Overmeme sickens me to no end, as I thought it couldn't be worse. They managed to further casualize a game genre that is MEANT to be casual in the first place, whilst taking away any and all applicable fun that could be had.

>>4988

>>5013

Back in the day, when I was but a wee lad I didn't see the problem. "Hey, there's room for both", I thought. However, as years pass I'm more and more convinced what really happened is we were robbed of a superior game. It blows my mind that the doomsayers back in the day writing for old school physical gamer mags scoffing at this new direction were right and that my RPG adventure was about to take a nosedive… The antediluvian treant necknbeards tried to warn us, but the gay world didn't listen.

>>5023

Worst part about it is Blizzard can't really be credited with Diablo, since they took over a different company that was in the process of making it. The potential for a great game world and atmosphere was already there, what they introduced was the cancer. Fuck, I'd still love a Diablo: Planescape-type game, even if it wouldn't be the most playable thing ever, meanwhile the hack&slash gameplay introduced by Blizzard aged like shit.

To top it all off they wasted what good Diablos introduced in flavor with D3. I don't think there ever was a bigger loss of capital in gamedev history than that. I remember, while not even a huge fan of Diablo, being blueballed several times by bogus rumors of the game being developed in the 00's. If that game turned out good and innovative (they had ages to plan it out, for fuck's sake, just hire a dedicated writer for a decade) it'd be easy to introduce some new quality of gaming off its back. To introduce some grand scheme. But this is modern, even more deranged Blizzard, so ofc they just fist fuck dead horse assholes to death now, until the IP said horse is attached to spits out the last cent.

>>5031

>little to no dialogue options

I wish I could enjoy that sort of storytelling, but I can't. Somehow, not being able to react breaks immersion for me.

>>5172

Books tend not to have many dialogue options.

>>4947

When I saw that Fallout 4 was going to add fully voiced protagonists and that Bioware style of choice selection, I knew it would make the writing even worse, and I was right.

In my opinion, most games should do like Baldur's Gate did- have short phrases that are occasionally uttered by the characters, but nothing all that lengthy so you can still have your paragraphs of dialogue if you want.

The only good thing about Diablo 2 was the background music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP9NZPAX_dA