The World of Western RPGs

As a follow-up, another one of Moby Games’ contributors has created a “The World of Western RPGs” feature that profiles many role-playing games from the late 70’s to the present. These two alone made 1988 a good year:

Wasteland

Made by the same people who made the Bard’s Tale games (with the exception of Michael Cranford, the director of first two) this one is remembered most fondly in the line of old Interplay RPGs because it is considered the spiritual father of Fallout. This game takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, featuring much of that dark humor and morbid situations that made Fallout popular. Gameplay-wise it is a bit of mix of Ultima and Bard’s Tale, featuring the top-down perspective of the former and the rap sheet combat of the latter. It also incorporates lots of skills into the gameplay, as you can climb trees with one character and swim with another. Well, you will not exactly climb trees, I was just trying to illustrate what skill-based puzzles look like. Like all non-Ultima games of that time a lot of the NPC interaction takes place inside the manual. However, something which Wasteland can be proud of, a lot of NPC interaction also happens in-game. The examples you see in the screenshots are, in quality and spirit, way beyond the standards of its era when it comes to writing.

Pool of Radiance

The first Gold Box game. Development studio SSI was previously doing wargames, but around the mid-80’s SSI tried its luck in the RPG market, with relatively crappy games like Phantasie and Questron, basically Ultima clones that did not stand the test of time. But SSI did not give up. They acquired the rights to D&D, the father of all RPGs. Needless to say, this would grant them popularity no matter what they would have done. But they did not try to make cheap imitations of Wizardry or Ultima. They did not want to be just a dungeon crawler developer either. And thus we see one of the first traces of defined narrative in an RPG. They made the game feel like a fantasy novel (players could all go: “This is just like playing a Dragonlance novel, only in Forgotten Realms.”) From the beginning, with Pool of Radiance, Gold Box games delivered stories.

Another distinct feature is the combat system SSI’s past experience in wargames really showed. It has one of the best combat systems seen in RPGs at that time. It is completely right (for lack of a better word) it is turn-based and strategical, and yet so exciting and adrenaline-heavy like an action game, it is difficult and yet so easy, the interface is not cumbersome (you have to think like they did in the 80’s when reading this) it is like magic. Of course, no matter how cool the combat is, it would soon turn tiresome if there was nothing else besides it (and there is a lot of combat). The developers realized this. That is why they put all these nice, memorable “encounters” in the game, interestingly written situations to spice up this lifeless world; a vast improvement over the likes of Bard’s Tale.

Like in Bard’s Tale games, you can travel around the city using a fairly detailed 3D perspective. While it might be hard to distinguish one location from another, you have to put yourself in the shoes of a guy from the 80’s – He most likely would have said: “#%(#%¤(!!! ¤%#%&#ing rocks!! I’m actually in the Temple of Tempus.” Overall, Pool of Radiance is an excellent step forward from the Wizardries and Bard’s Tales, since it introduces a narrative to this awfully sad genre.