Quantum Leaps in RPGs

Gamasutra has up an article, giving out 'awards' to titles that made a genre what it is. Today, they have memorable and impactful role-playing games; a top five with five honorable mentions. They're all very worthy titles, but I'm not sure about their placement on the list. None of the Ultima games make the top 5? Really? From the article: "Ultima V - The Ultima series allowed the player a level of freedom found only in a few games today. Through the origins of the series, the game had fits and starts where some ideas worked and others did not. By V, however, the central core of the game was completely worked out and many games today are 3D versions of this ground breaking title: Elder Scrolls comes to mind. Though other games at the time were similar, Bard's Tale for example, they did not have the scope of story and adventure, nor did they encompass so many technologies of the time. -James Edwards, Microsoft"

Re:I can only agree on the Choices

[Jorelli]

Enemy scaling due to character level was bad because the enemies respawned very easily once you hit a loading screen, which are EVERYWHERE in oblivion. I played this game for a while and got a pretty strong character going simply by sidequesting. When I went back to the main quest it was actually impossible because it was scaled so poorly. None of the NPC's could survive to help me for more than a second when they were supposed to fight along side me.

Also, Oblivion has very bad art. The graphics are very sharp, but the art is very bad and unoriginal. The characters look horrible. That cheeta guy is stupid. However, I will give credit where credit is due; the buildings look beautiful in that game and the architecture is interesting. The forests looked pretty nice too, as did a lot of the animals in the game. But the fact of the matter is you play a humanoid and all the NPC's that you interact with are humanoid and they all look like doodoo. (lolz doodoo)

Another thing I hate about Oblivion was the amount of mana spells cost compared to how much damage they did. I tried to make a character that was focussed on spell casting with some blade skill in order to get myself out of trouble when I have to. After playing the game for a couple of days, spamming my spells for no reason got their skills to max and they were still weaker than my sword. I verymuch dislike how easy it was to abuse the skill leveling system. Since it was so easy I couldn't stop myself from sneaking into a wall by leaving the controller with a weight on it to get sneak skill while I made myself dinner, or spamming summon spells then doing an hour of rest time.

Auto travel is bad because it makes the world small. Auto wait is bad because it makes time-based challenges......not challenging. "Do this, then come back tomorrow". Normally this took some time management. Not anymore. Anytime you fought something and you were about to go into another room it was easier to just wait an hour than to heal yourself because the heals were so weak and your mana would run out so fast.

It was just a very bad game. (...imo)