Most anticipated RPG of 2005

[Hieremias]

RPGdot has an <a href="http://www.rpgdot.com/index.php?hsaction=10053&ID=1067">article</a> about the major RPGs scheduled for release in 2005. There's quite a few, including many good-looking ones. 2004 sucked for RPGs, it looks like 2005 should be better.

The big daddies are Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion and Gothic 3, though both have a good possibility of being delayed to 2006, which would really suck.

Then there are some console adaptations like Knights of the Old Republic 2 and The Bard's Tale, both of which I expect to be brief distractions but nothing worth writing home about.

But aside from these there are some "smaller" (ie lower budget) games being made, most from European developers, and I'm hoping at least one turns out to be a pleasant surprise (remember, this is how the Gothic series started, as a low-budget title from a no-name European developer). The Fall: Last Days of Gaia is a post-apocalyptic party-based RPG, already released in Germany to good reviews except for some technical problems (let's hope those get fixed for the english version). Dungeon Lords is supposedly an "action RPG", which is bad, but its lead designer D.W. Bradley (from the Wizardry games) promises a Gothic-style free-roaming world and complex factions, which is good. And The Witcher is really interesting, it's using Bioware's Aurora engine but with a completely new renderer, and it showcases amazing graphics and a hugely detailed world.

My most anticipated? Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion obviously. But I'm remaining optimistic for The Witcher.

[Hieremias]

Here's some screenshots for The Witcher, and yes, that actually is the Neverwinter Nights engine (heavily modified, anyway).

<img src="http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2004/screen0/915112_20041022_screen001.jpg" width="800">

<img src="http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2004/screen0/915112_20040923_screen001.jpg" width="800">

<img src="http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2004/screen0/915112_20040802_screen003.jpg" width="800">

<img src="http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2004/screen0/915112_20040802_screen002.jpg" width="800">

[Aku]

Hmmmm.....kind of a Thief setting. Me likes.

[Renzatic Gear]

From what I've seen of it The Witcher looks awesome. I haven't read much about it, but I like the style it's showing off. If it has a PnP mode to it I might consider jumping in, one of the reasons why I couldn't ever get into NWN was because the enviroments always looked so bland and samey to me after awhile.

Beyond that you the current board favorites: ES4 and Gothic 3. Oblivion is gonna be really interesting for Thief fans, since they got one of the old LGS guys on the team they've been reimplementing the stealth aspects of the game to mimic what we saw in the Thief series but with stat modifiers. At low levels you're just some guy squatting in the shadows, but at high levels you can be Garrett.

Oh yeah, Bethesda once said that the game world would be smaller than Morrowind, but now they're saying it'll be bigger...go figure.

You also have STALKER. It might not have stats, but it has the character interaction and exploration of most big name RPG's. Too bad it's been hit by a big delay, but I'd rather have a late game than a game with tons of annoying ass bugs.

And last but not least you have Dungeon Lords and Dungeon Siege 2. They probably won't have the depth the aforementioned titles have, but they'll be a blast for online play.

Wow, these last few months have been good for games. I went through the first 3/4ths of the year only buying 2 games, now I have tons I'm looking forward to.

[Hieremias]

I don't have much expectations for Dungeon Siege 2. The first game was pretty silly, mildly entertaining in multiplayer (but only because it's one of the few games that offer co-op), but a complete chore in single-player.

Everything I've read about Oblivion makes it sound like the absolute perfect game. I mean there's nothing missing (on paper anyway). They claim the NPCs will all function with independent AI routines and schedules, the stealth aspects will be greatly improved, combat will be much better, a huge playable world, and an editor even easier than the last one. Honestly, if they pull it off it'll be like crack cocaine.

I'm a little nervous, though, that some of these claims will backfire on them. Having each NPC with its own AI routines is a great idea, I just wonder how easy it'll be to break it. It was kinda silly in Morrowind when, the very moment you committed a crime in public, every soldier and guard on the island knew about it. You could teleport to an entirely different city and they'd still be chasing you. If they're going to overhaul the stealth aspects they'd better overhaul the consequence system.

If you explore RPGdot you can find <a href="http://www.rpgdot.com/index.php?hsaction=10075&games=830">a LOT more info</a> about The Witcher. There's enough stuff there to keep you reading for hours if you want. I didn't realize before that along with using Bioware's engine, this game also has a lot of Bioware support (Bioware even gave some of its booth space at E3 for The Witcher). The game seems to lean on the action side of things, which I'm not crazy about but I won't mind if they can still offer a large, detailed world to explore. To me that's the crucial aspect of any RPG: a large, interesting, go-anywhere environment to explore and interact with. It's what made Morrowind one of the greatest games of all time, and it's what made Knights of the Old Republic a huge disappointment.

[Aku]

Morrowind's huge explorable world left a lot to be desired in my book. Too much of it was those dreary ashlands, where every ten steps you got attacked by a cliff racer. Most of the caves, tombs, and shrines along the way were virtually identical. But there were some interesting places, mostly the cities. And Solstheim was cool (except for the laggy performance). Still, I would prefer a slightly smaller world with more uniqueness than a huge world with a lot of cookie cutter stuff. The great thing about Morrowind is the mods, which lets you import lots of new places and things to add variety to the landscape (I loved my castle keep!).

[Suicides-by-Steve]

Dungeon Lords is on my short list. Wizards and Warriors (done by Bradley as well) was a game that I SOOO miss... Damn you and that trade Renzatic! ;) STALKER is another that I want badly.

Oh, BTW- I played Bard's Tale already (on the PS2). Complete crap. It's nothing like the original at all, and was a complete disappointment. The view is overhead, your guy looks up at you and complains about the narrator (trying to be funny), and extra party members are "summoned" not created in Adventurers Guild like the original. I would suggest downloading the original game and an emulator to run it on, rather than waste anymore time researching this game.

[Hieremias]

Aku while you may not have liked the Ashland part of Morrowind, it was definitely not "cookie cutter stuff". The entire world was hand-made, and the fact that it was well-proportioned (ie large wastelands, as you'd expect in real life on a volcanic island) only added to the realism. Gothic 2's world was fun to explore, but never came close to convincing you it was real. It was far too artificial, too immaculate and neat.

Steve, I didn't expect much from the Bard's Tale. It got pretty bland reviews on the consoles, and when an RPG gets slammed on the consoles you know it has to suck.

RPGdot has a <a href="http://www.rpgdot.com/index.php?hsaction=10053&ID=1069">continuation</a> of that article, describing some of the indy RPG projects in the works. Some look pretty bad, but <b>Chronicles of Ny</b> could be interesting. The article also finishes with this interesting section:

Looking beyond all the games we've covered, there are a couple of RPGs officially announced and several more in development that haven't been officially unveiled. Irrational's BioShock (a spiritual successor to System Shock), BioWare's second original property Dragon Age and Obsidian's Neverwinter Nights 2 are sure to be worth watching. Arkane is working on a project using the Source engine and Divine Divinity 2 should be deep in development. Fallout 3 and Baldurs Gate 3 are somewhere in the pipeline, even if full production hasn't commenced.

The baby-Blizzards - Flagship Studios and Castaway Entertainment, will be revealing their next-generation Diablo-killers, although expect them to be concentrating on multiplayer blockbusters rather than a rich singleplayer RPG experience. Iron Lore (founded by Brian Sullivan of Age of Empires fame) is working on an action-RPG and they will be looking for that magic "blockbuster" formula. The importance of Jade Empire (Xbox) as BioWare's first original setting can't be underestimated and expect this to come to the PC at some point.

Looking further ahead (and with increasing speculation), BioWare has at least one more project using Unreal technology to be revealed and Troika should have two teams that are presumably working on something - possibly some version of the post-apoc project that has seen a couple of screens released. Obsidian has all but wrapped up KotOR 2 and inXile will soon be done with The Bard's Tale - will they break out the Wasteland rights they acquired some time ago and what will they do with it?

[Aku]

Aku while you may not have liked the Ashland part of Morrowind, it was definitely not "cookie cutter stuff". The entire world was hand-made

Yeah, but they reused a lot of the same stuff. Are you telling me that all the caves, tombs, shrines, dwemer strongholds, and egg mines don't all look the same? Many have the identical layout. But I'm not going to nitpick it. I don't expect them to individually create 150 unique locations. I'm just saying that there is a sameness to Morrowind after you've been playing it for awhile. But thanks to all the great mods to keep it fresh.

[Hieremias]

Yeah, but they reused a lot of the same stuff. Are you telling me that all the caves, tombs, shrines, dwemer strongholds, and egg mines don't all look the same? Many have the identical layout. But I'm not going to nitpick it. I don't expect them to individually create 150 unique locations. I'm just saying that there is a sameness to Morrowind after you've been playing it for awhile. But thanks to all the great mods to keep it fresh.
They look similar in architecture, but no, none of them look the same. You're never, ever given the impression that you're exploring a tiled world, one with repeating segments (unlike Neverwinter Nights). Everything in unique, even among dozens of different houses the interiors are all unique. The ruins are all different, the caverns are varied. I mean a cave's a cave, but they add a lot of unique flavour to them.

Everytime I play Morrowind I'm floored at the level of care and detail that went into the world. Yes, the NPCs suck and the combat is simple, but the scope of the environment drowns out these complaints.

Now I feel like installing Morrowind again. You know after all the times I've played it, there are still areas I'm not very familiar with, and still quests I've never done. I've never joined the Telvanni, I'm not very familiar with the entire northeastern quarter of the island. Damn I love that game.