E3 2001: The RPGs
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What makes Republic unique is not so much the idea, as its working out. You don't simply point a character with a sniper skill at an opponent's spokesperson and watch for an indication of the result; rather, you give your sniper a task, and it looks for a good location in a particular 3D city to hide and perform it, after first observing the chosen target's schedule. Then the sniper waits for a good moment-or will instantly fire, assuming you take over and insist. Otherwise, she'll use good AI judgment. There are more than one hundred cities in Novostrania, and thousands of individually skilled people who maintain their own schedules for specific work and leisure activities. Impressive? You bet. Republic's still a ways off, but it's already winning awards for its premise and development-in-progress. It's nice to see a game this distinctive and ambitious not get sidelined by corporate shakedowns or leeches. Elixir Studios has a vision, and they're clearly bent on pursuing it: more power to .m. Through a combination of circumstances, Interplay and Bioware have worked themselves into commanding positions for the RPG market akin to that which SSI possessed back in the early 1990's. There are significant differences, however. For one thing, SSI didn't bother upgrading their RPG game engine until they'd already driven away a significant amount of their audience with endless retreads; for another, most of those RPGs were relentlessly linear and poorly written. By contrast, Bioware, working for Interplay, has rightly tweaked and improved the original 2D Infinity engine and effects. Interplay's various development teamshave moved to a couple of good 3D engines, in NWN and Torn, to keep abreast with the latest video card and CPU improvements. And they've kept several teams of talented programmers and designers busy as the same time, creating uniquely flavored RPGs that would please different kinds of gamers. There's also a sense of maintained contact and genuine interaction between Interplay's various RPG programming divisions and partners and their target audiences, which results in products that cater specifically to what those audiences want. (This last may sound easy to achieve, but consider the tangled interface of Wizards & Warriors as an example of how public input was ignored.)
Throne of Bhaal is a case in point. What could have been an add-on with just some additional dungeons has become, instead, a second game: hundreds of new spells, skills, weapons, and artifacts, experience limits that have been more than doubled, a new, intriguing class (the Wild Mage), and a new party NPC whose interactions will be anything but ordinary: Sarevok, the deranged villain of BG1.
In true form, he died, but apparently got better. This could have been made a short, comical matter, but the BG2 team has woven his resurrection into your character's story most convincingly, and even brought back a figure of power from your past who would take strong exception to Saverok's presence in your party (assuming you add him, of course). I won't give away the contents of that confrontation; suffice to say, having seen it, the thing is great theater, and another instance showing that RPG developers are taking the complexities of moral alignment more seriously nowadays.
In short, ToB isn't simply an add-on; it's a module that turns BG2 into a fresh experience. Sure, the story essentially remains the same, but so many of the parameters have been changed in the mid- and late game that it might as well be a fresh purchase-even if you've played it (as I have) several times, before.
Neverwinter Nights has been written to death, several times, and there's nothing new to add at this point. Suffice to say, it's looking great, and should spawn a series of player-designed standalone and multiplayer modules shortly after its release. I have one overriding concern, having spent sometime observing and playing the game-in-progress at E3: your character can't pause the world while viewing inventory, swapping items, or evaluating spells. RPG strategists who enjoy finding the best way around problems by examining issues from all sides will not be pleased; twitch players will. And this applies to all modules developed by the developers and players, alike, multiplayer or standalone. My guess is that a pause-and-make-choices function will be the most demanded game feature once NWN releases; whether it shows up in a patch (like Vampire: The Masquerade) right after release remains to be seen.
Interplay has had its problems licensing pre-built fantasy worlds and combat systems-they're expensive and grow more so over time, and some of the licensing parties are apt to be rather arbitrary (a comment that could never be made about Interplay's chief officer, Brian Fargo, of course). So it wasn't surprising that with their new RPG, Torn, the company (under the aegis of their RPG development team, Black Isle Studios) has designed its own fantasy franchise. It was a smart move, particularly since the team devoted to the project includes some of the same fine people who developed both Fallout 2 and Planescape: Torment. (The latter title, regrettably, just didn't sell enough units to get the nod from Interplay for a sequel. Damn.) They're also using the LithTech 3.0 engine, which means a great 3D physics model, 24-bit lightmapping, and a level of visual detail that should make all RPGers drool with anticipation.
As a rule, I tend to avoid relating RPG plots, because they provide no true flavor of gameplay, and because they're usually hokey as hell. Torn's plot, however, delves somewhat deeper (for a computer game), calling to mind Ultima VI and VII, and BIS' own Planescape: Torment. In brief: you begin your journeys as a mysterious, if talented vagabond, a wanderer who apparently bears a curse; for wherever you go, disaster strikes those around you. And there's a legend in the kingdom of Orislane, the location of your current travels, concerning a great Hero opposing a terrifying Doombringer. It would be comforting to believe you're the first, but given your unnatural knack for causing misery on a large scale, it just may be possible that you're the latter-or something else, again Where does good intent leave off, and evil actions begin to determine a person's moral proclivities? Ah, moral ambiguity, the stuff of life.
