Yeah, who knew how much of a nerd I was, eh? Sorry I got a bit rambly. Every time I read over one these 20 page dissertations on the history of CRPGs from Akalabeth forward, all based heavily on D&D, I'm amazed at the originality of ideas. Such a wealth of ideas that a now being overlooked despite our technological ability to make them so.

Of course leveling is such a huger part of RPGs these days, but was slightly less so in a pre-CRPG era. The stat focus was just a roundabout way of trying to accomplish some characterization, but instead of being a means to an end, it became the end. Beyond that, if you look at a games like Daggerfall there are like a million stats and specializations. NO you can't be a master of all of them. NO you can't be every class simultaneously. NO you can't be best buds with every good and bad faction at the same time.

Even more. Actions had consequences. You go crawling unprepared and you get f***ed up. You don't have unlimited inventory space. You can't simply break laws and then pay a fine to get away with it. Have you thought of this concept in Oblivion? "Hey guard, sorry about killing that dude... he's 1000 Septims. We cool? Oh... and if I give you another 1000 can I kill your brother too? Really? Awesome!" Also, there was no danger. You couldn't accidentally wander into a dungeon and get mercilessly one-shotted because the monsters are far too high.

I used to like this. I didn't like the idea of being boxed in or of a game being too hard. After playing some older games I realize how silly this is. Games are about beating now. They aren't about enjoying the journey or about the experience. You play an RPG to level up really high and kick something's f***ing skull in. What about enjoying exploring and getting stronger but not necessarily becoming a demi-god? What about specialization where you can cast awesome spells, but you're made of paper or you're great with a sword and board, but you couldn't cast a decent cure spell to save your soul so you carry about 50 potions?

These days even paper mages are beefy and in most games that aspire to more of an old school, free-roaming style, you can still wear the beefiest armor, cast the biggest spells, and heal the crap out of yourself so much that it's a joke to waste inventory on consumables.

What about concepts like permanent death. Sounds terrible and harsh and even I think so, but do any games these days have any sense of urgency or danger? Not really. You can just quick load out a problem, not that it would be a problem because you have to do the equivalent of sticking a fork in a light socket to die in modern games.




That said, I'm intrigued a lot by Demon's Souls. It seems to be very much deeper than modern RPGs. There's an action element but not like Oblivion where you just hack all day. You have to know what you're doing. It's also very hard and there are dire consequences for failure. That type of danger makes success more satisfactory imo. It's apparently so hard that Destructoid couldn't finish the game in time to review it. I'll probably pick up a PS3 in November and this will be one of the first games I pick up.

I'm also enjoying Monster Hunter Freedom Unite. Not so much an RPG, but some elements. The difficulty is pretty intense and highly skill based. As a result, when you've been up against a wall for a while with a wyvern you just can't kill... and you farm up some better gear and you watch their attacks and you plan your strategy... when it actually works it is SOOO rewarding. By comparison, most RPGs these days are about as rewarding as slapping in a DVD, hitting the play button and managing to watch it through to the end.

Granted, these games are so much in the traditional CRPG genre, but they do have that cost/danger/reward ratio that made old CRPGs intense yet gratifying.