Things That Sucks

[Munderbunny]

I wrote a post for a long-abandoned blog about things I hated about RPG video games (before I ever played TQ), and I was looking over it and thought it would be a good drop here (far more appropriate than where it was first posted).

I'd like to note that I wrote this before playing Titan Quest. This is the list:

1.) It's always the same horde of evil – Don't get me wrong, I don't exactly get these games for the story, but man, do they all have to be the ******* same? It's always some crap where you're in some medieval place and there's an evil horde of evilness encroaching on the lands. It's always the same army. It's always some word salad of shadow/horde/evil/darkness. Yes, I love the skull-face adornments on the evil armor and all, but does it always have to be the same?

2.) You're always the one – Even though you're some lowly peasant orphan from nowhere, you'll soon learn that youre the child of some great mucky-muck who may or may not still be alive.

3.) You always start out slinging rocks – You go through some long intro about the encroaching horde and your role as the savior of the lands, and what do they do? Your first assignment is to take this stick, go into the forest, and kill all the frogs. When you're done you'll be given a dagger, and your next assignment will be to go into a different forest and stab all the mosquitoes to death. Yeah, you're the direct descendant of Clackarax the Mighty, with the blood of dragons or some **** coursing through your veins, and you're expected to go out and stop the hordes of vile evilness with a leather tunic and a stick. Yeah, nice planning.

4.) It's always the same plot – It's what makes those cut scenes so ******* painful. "Ah, Zirrath, I've been waiting for you."—I know he's been waiting, because I've been standing in front of him for fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to talk to him—"The grand Empress Lich'ana is in league with Xach'arax. She and Xach'arax are planning to betray King Fe'mur. They have the aid of his son, Syr'aleen, who has been corrupted by the dark magic of the dark sorcerer Zy'gote, who is leading a dark army of evil corruption toward us."

5.) You always just bash – The hideous plot wouldn't be so bad if you actually got to play in it. But after that five minute cut scene about who is betraying whom, they say, "Quick, now you must go into the forest with this bow and kill all the wolves!" And it just goes on and on. No matter how convoluted they manage to get the story, your mission is always the same: "Go here, kill everything."

6.) ******* STATIC! – The game never ******* changes from beginning to end. You can get burlier weapons, like the diamond-crusted, demon-possessed, master hatchet, but now all the enemies just take a proportionally greater amount of damage to die. And you can get your shining, dragon-tooth, plate mail of the gods armor, but all the enemies deal a proportionally greater amount of damage. You can spend thirty hours to go from swinging a stick at a frog to swinging a blue-fire enchanted war hammer at a demon lord, and they'll both just take 3 hits to die.

Titan Quest managed to avoid those 6 potholes pretty well. In Titan Quest,

1) it's not the same horde of evil.

2) you're not the chosen one (though there is some of this grand hero stuff in there).

3) you don't start out slinging rocks. While you are underequipped, you are attacking with an actual weapon and are fighting the actual monsters (though, there is a painful amount of crows and boars to be dealt with).

4) it's not the same plot. Though, because of the way the game played, the plot becomes blurry rather quickly.

5) it is largely dominated by "kill everything" quests and "kill everything, and while you're there pick up my shiz" quests. This doesn't necessarily apply, as all we really want to do in TQ is kill ****.

6) it is NOT static. Monsters don't just gain hitpoints and damage, they gain a huge number of skills that create increasingly dynamic fights. While not taken to the limit as could have been done, TQ has far more replayability than any ARPG I've ever played as a result.

So, you know, do good again and HAPPY NERDYEAR!!!

[Stormy Fairweather]

I want an ARPG where you can choose to be an orc, skelly, minotaur, etc, start off in the farmland killing peasants, and eventually burn the entire human kingdom to the ground and declare yourself supreme ruler of all.

... then demand an endless line of virgin sacrifices (the sacrifice would be the virginity, not the girls)

[medierra]

1.) It's always the same horde of evil – Don't get me wrong, I don't exactly get these games for the story, but man, do they all have to be the ******* same? It's always some crap where you're in some medieval place and there's an evil horde of evilness encroaching on the lands. It's always the same army. It's always some word salad of shadow/horde/evil/darkness. Yes, I love the skull-face adornments on the evil armor and all, but does it always have to be the same?

Don't worry, the evil horde in Grim Dawn is only mostly the same. Yeah, I'd love to come up with some refreshingly clever totally new type of story but frankly, the nature of the gameplay really works against that, especially in a top-down ARPG. The hack-n-slash gameplay demands a story-line that allows for an endless supply of evil meatbags to quench your thirst for blood and loot.

That said, I think our story still sort of fits into this mold but does offer something a little more complex and interesting than the "orc" (or substitute other cheesy name for evil, savage, humanoid things) overrunning medieval towns.

2.) You're always the one – Even though you're some lowly peasant orphan from nowhere, you'll soon learn that youre the child of some great mucky-muck who may or may not still be alive.

This, on the other hand, really isn't a plot element dictated by ARPG gameplay. I really don't like this kind of thing either.

3.) You always start out slinging rocks – You go through some long intro about the encroaching horde and your role as the savior of the lands, and what do they do? Your first assignment is to take this stick, go into the forest, and kill all the frogs. When you're done you'll be given a dagger, and your next assignment will be to go into a different forest and stab all the mosquitoes to death. Yeah, you're the direct descendant of Clackarax the Mighty, with the blood of dragons or some **** coursing through your veins, and you're expected to go out and stop the hordes of vile evilness with a leather tunic and a stick. Yeah, nice planning.

This won't be the case either.

4.) It's always the same plot – It's what makes those cut scenes so ******* painful. "Ah, Zirrath, I've been waiting for you."—I know he's been waiting, because I've been standing in front of him for fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to talk to him—"The grand Empress Lich'ana is in league with Xach'arax. She and Xach'arax are planning to betray King Fe'mur. They have the aid of his son, Syr'aleen, who has been corrupted by the dark magic of the dark sorcerer Zy'gote, who is leading a dark army of evil corruption toward us."

Well don't worry, no cut scenes... I think Zygote would be an awesome dark sorcerer name though. ; p

5.) You always just bash – The hideous plot wouldn't be so bad if you actually got to play in it. But after that five minute cut scene about who is betraying whom, they say, "Quick, now you must go into the forest with this bow and kill all the wolves!" And it just goes on and on. No matter how convoluted they manage to get the story, your mission is always the same: "Go here, kill everything."

That sounds like a pretty awesome mission to me. We'll try to make the story less convoluted.

6.) ******* STATIC! – The game never ******* changes from beginning to end. You can get burlier weapons, like the diamond-crusted, demon-possessed, master hatchet, but now all the enemies just take a proportionally greater amount of damage to die. And you can get your shining, dragon-tooth, plate mail of the gods armor, but all the enemies deal a proportionally greater amount of damage. You can spend thirty hours to go from swinging a stick at a frog to swinging a blue-fire enchanted war hammer at a demon lord, and they'll both just take 3 hits to die.

On TQ I was a little restrained in this case by the vision I was handed for the game, which was an ARPG accessible to the "mass-audience". Obviously, I don't want to make Grim Dawn impossibly hard in normal mode because we still want to appeal to a wide range of players. However, we are shooting for more of the core ARPG player as opposed to your average grandmother, so I think it makes sense to up the general skill level of enemies. Prepare for Dactyls 2.0

[Rhis]

6.) ******* STATIC! – The game never ******* changes from beginning to end. You can get burlier weapons, like the diamond-crusted, demon-possessed, master hatchet, but now all the enemies just take a proportionally greater amount of damage to die. And you can get your shining, dragon-tooth, plate mail of the gods armor, but all the enemies deal a proportionally greater amount of damage. You can spend thirty hours to go from swinging a stick at a frog to swinging a blue-fire enchanted war hammer at a demon lord, and they'll both just take 3 hits to die.

However, we are shooting for more of the core ARPG player as opposed to your average grandmother, so I think it makes sense to up the general skill level of enemies. Prepare for Dactyls 2.0

For those of you that enjoy this kind of gameplay, don't worry. My new console command "agrandma.iamone" will normalize everything.

[Alek_tq]

For those of you that enjoy this kind of gameplay, don't worry. My new console command "agrandma.iamone" will normalize everything.

...


that console command is probably the best god mode cheat I've ever seen so far.

[BlueCrayon]

To follow up on comment #5, I think it would be interesting to have some quests that were a little more puzzle-like and not as linear.

For me, Hades Treasure was the best quest in TQ/IT, because it wasn't what I would consider a completely linear quest, and took some thought to complete. Most other quests were "find so-and-so who is lost in the woods", and so-and-so just happened to be in the woods that were on the way to the next town. How convenient. With Hades Treasure though, you had to find things and back track. Also, you weren't told what you had to find, so you basically had to figure it out. There was still quite a bit of bashing involved too.

[Kir4]

The "Hades' Treasury" quest stopped being funny after I solved it the first time. Usually, I even twink the stones to save me some travelling time. :/
When it comes to ARPGs, puzzles generally don't contribute anything to long-time-motivation, because once a puzzle is solved, it turns into routine. Unlike fighting monsters for loot, that kind of routine won't make you feel any better...

[Catsy]

I actually like that quest--and some of the bosses you fight are /hard/ on Legendary, not to mention all the spear and bow mobs you fight along the way.

[khrotos]

A big grievance for me in RPGs is cutscenes. I love how TQ realized that players were interested in playing the game instead of watching a short CGI movie at every turn.

Another grievance is minigames. I bought TQ for a fun ARPG experience, and that's exactly what I got. Nothing more, nothing less. So many games lose their focus these days.

I also liked the fact that you started as some warrior guy/gal who decided to fight the good fight, and you stayed that way, with no stupid twists about you actually being the child/chosen one/amnesiac lover of some god or whatever.

[Paulg568]

I like the cut scenes. Its nice to see the story in an awesome cut scene. The opening video for titan quest was amazing with the medusa breaking into the temple. The first time I played the game I was hoping to see a battle with a telkine or the very least one at the end of the titan being slain.