Age of Decadence Interview
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Q: What about the design aspect? What games influenced you the most?
A: Fallout and Prelude to Darkness. Fallout set a new standard and demonstrated what games could be like. Prelude showed me that great games could be done by small indie teams, that it's possible to make a good role-playing game if you really want it, despite what the industry tells you by mentioning 50-100 people teams. Too bad few people knew about that game.
Fallout is an undisputed masterpiece. There are games that did more, games that had better combat, better role-playing, better character system, better setting (well, ok, the setting was superb, so strike that), better story, more options, more things to do, etc. Overall though, when all those features formed a game, they worked so well with each other and were so brilliantly thought-through, that the end result was far larger than merely the sum of its parts. The game flow, story development, location design, the logic of the world were fantastic. Fallout 2 didn't have that, failing to capture the "magic" of the original.
As for Prelude to Darkness, while it lacked the polish and focus of Fallout, the role-playing elements were incredibly strong, offering a much better role-playing experience than most commercial garbage you see on the shelves. Add non-linearity, branching main quest, well developed turn-based combat and you have a must-play game for any RPG enthusiast.
