Is this game still worth playing?

[Legacy_Lilura]

               

Play Pong!, and even NWN2 will look good. Scrub that, Pong! looks better.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_icywind1980]

               

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think NWN looks all that bad. I mean ofc it's not amazing graphics like in Witcher 3, but it is still a quite serviceable game. The entire world is 3D and that to me is a big thing. Add in all the graphical updates and textures made my the community, and you have a very nice experience. Now with modern games, if I can't spin my mouse around and see 360° or look up at the sky, chances are I'm not gonna play it. IMO, any new game that comes out that's RPGmaker, 2D, Iso or top down is just being cheap and skimping on the player experience.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               

Now with modern games, if I can't spin my mouse around and see 360° or look up at the sky, chances are I'm not gonna play it. IMO, any new game that comes out that's RPGmaker, 2D, Iso or top down is just being cheap and skimping on the player experience.

 

You are missing out on some really great games then. Don't Starve is an amazing game but uses 2D billboard graphics in an ISO view. It is my favorite right now because the game play is very well designed. The Shadowrun series of games by Harebrained Schemes are very fun RPGs with lite-tactics and combat, but simply an iso-view. I didn't play Pillars of Eternity and it also doesn't have the experience you restrict yourself to being another iso.

 

In my view, its far better to design a game's interface and graphics to meet the game play requirements rather than to get hung up on pushing the latest technology to the limit just for the sake of eyecandy.

 

This is one reason why I still play NWN. Its almost as developed graphically as it would ever need to be. NWN2 took it too far in my opinion for what this is. The only thing NWN would really need is modern shaders and perhaps better lighting, but its otherwise perfect for what it needs to be. I can live with out postprocessing affects like bloom and blur and all that. And I don't need really complex environments. The 2.5 D environments are actually fine for what we do. It would be nice if it was a real 3D thing, but I'm not sure how this would affect modding or the speed at which the level information is translated from server to client.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_icywind1980]

               

You are missing out on some really great games then. Don't Starve is an amazing game but uses 2D billboard graphics in an ISO view. It is my favorite right now because the game play is very well designed. The Shadowrun series of games by Harebrained Schemes are very fun RPGs with lite-tactics and combat, but simply an iso-view. I didn't play Pillars of Eternity and it also doesn't have the experience you restrict yourself to being another iso.

 

In my view, its far better to design a game's interface and graphics to meet the game play requirements rather than to get hung up on pushing the latest technology to the limit just for the sake of eyecandy.

 

This is one reason why I still play NWN. Its almost as developed graphically as it would ever need to be. NWN2 took it too far in my opinion for what this is. The only thing NWN would really need is modern shaders and perhaps better lighting, but its otherwise perfect for what it needs to be. I can live with out postprocessing affects like bloom and blur and all that. And I don't need really complex environments. The 2.5 D environments are actually fine for what we do. It would be nice if it was a real 3D thing, but I'm not sure how this would affect modding or the speed at which the level information is translated from server to client.

 

They might be great gaming experiences for you, but they won't be for me. I will constantly be frustrated by the lack of physical depth to the world and the controls will endlessly annoy me. Especially RPGmaker games, they feel like I'm going back in time. Nostalgia doesn't do much for me, and the story is not nearly compelling enough to make me suffer NES graphics. As far as iso games, the only ones I can tolerate are Torchlight 2 and Path of Exile, but really not for very long as I get a headache trying to crane my head in a way that will allow me to see more. (Which never actually works though.)

 

I googled the games you listed and they disappoint me. They would be leaps and bounds better in full 3D. If NWN which came out in 2002 can do it, so can these ''so called modern'' games. And I plainly disagree about the about the graphics. I don't need it to be the latest and greatest. My computer still can't even run Guild Wars 2 due to system specs. But it is a minimum requirement for the game world and characters to be 3D. I won't waste my limited gaming time on anything less.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tchos]

               

Nostalgia doesn't do much for me

They would be leaps and bounds better in full 3D.

 

Doesn't do anything for me either.

But count me as another one who's glad those great games aren't in full 3D.  Some of us like the style.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MayCaesar]

               

I don't think 3D is necessarily better than 2D or vise versa. For me the main thing has always been the graphical aesthetics rather than level of detail or 2D/3D. A game like Planescape: Torment wouldn't be any worse in beautiful 3D than it is in 2D. Maybe it would have a different feel, but then Mask of the Betrayer demonstrated that games of this kind work well in 3D as well.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tchos]

               

Yes, I think Planescape: Torment would definitely benefit from a 3D facelift.  They used some pretty bad 3D assets to make that game, and didn't even clean up the resulting 2D images with artistic touchups like the other Infinity Engine games did.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_icywind1980]

               

Doesn't do anything for me either.

But count me as another one who's glad those great games aren't in full 3D.  Some of us like the style.

 

To each their own, I guess. Oh and it's kind of hard to reply to quotes though, when half the words are cut out. If you don't mind, can you quote my messages full on. They lose a lot of my meaning when you don't.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tchos]

               

I wanted to make it clear which parts of the message I was replying to.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               

I googled the games you listed and they disappoint me. They would be leaps and bounds better in full 3D.

 

While I can accept that you have different preferences for your entertainment and leave it at that, you've gone beyond that in this quote and made a bad assertion that I've seen others accept as given. Its lead to some really terrible game design.

 

As far as the games I mentioned go, not one of those games would be better in full 3D. The Shadowrun games are perfect for what they are. Full 3D would just get in the way of the game play and needlessly bog down development. And even more so, Don't Starve and Don't Starve Together are perfect in regards to presentation meshing with the game play. Don't Starve would be worse in 3D.

 

You may want a more immersive experience aesthetically. Thats fine. I can accept that. As I said I think you are missing out on great games, but if you want to miss out on them that is fine. Play what you like. Enjoy what you want.

 

But from a game design standpoint 3D graphics should only be used if they are needed for or complement the game play. If it is unnecessary, it is better to leave it out and go with 2D or ISO or some other simpler style of presentation that makes more sense for what the game is. And I am particularly glad that quite a few game designers have abandonned the needless obsession with higher fidelity 3D experiences. Its resulted in better games as resources have been put into design of the actual game play rather than yet another custom rolled state of the art 3D engine with millions upon millions of dollars spent on generating art assets.

 

And I am a bit taken aback that I would have to assert this in an NWN forum. The game looked dated when it was made let alone now, and yet has very good game play and immense modding potential because of the simplicity of its design. One example: the aesthetic limitations of the tile based environments are huge, but the advantages of them for online play more than offset this. I could go on and on. NWN is not really a true 3D game, but it fakes it really well and has a great deal of charm because of it. I think they hit just the right note with this engine and thats why most of us are still here.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MayCaesar]

               

But from a game design standpoint 3D graphics should only be used if they are needed for or complement the game play. If it is unnecessary, it is better to leave it out and go with 2D or ISO or some other simpler style of presentation that makes more sense for what the game is.

 

I do not quite understand why you take 2D as some sort of golden standard and 3D as a deviation, not vise versa. It takes roughly the same amount of time to create beautiful 2D models and animations as 3D, since all the models are pre-made in 3D anyway. In fact, all those 2D and iso games you are referring to are actually drawn in 3D (at least, models are), so I could argue that 2D is an unnecessary reduction of a full project caused in older times solely by the need for the games to run on those old PCs. If, say, Baldur's Gate 1 could be run in 3D on PCs of that time without much trouble, you bet the developers would go for it.

 

I don't see any reason to purposefully make 2D/iso games nowadays when high quality 3D games run on modern PCs with little trouble, except for solely the nostalgic purposes (and games like Divinity: Original Sin or Pillars of Eternity were actually done in iso out of nostalgia - the developers made it very clear).

 

That said, I don't see why 3D games should necessarily be better looking than 2D games, or vise versa. It all depends not on the method but on the execution.

 

---

 

On a side note, I do think that NWN1 looks horrible, both technologically and aesthetically. Graphical quality has nothing to do with the reason for me to play this game. '>

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tchos]

               

I don't see any reason to purposefully make 2D/iso games nowadays when high quality 3D games run on modern PCs with little trouble, except for solely the nostalgic purposes (and games like Divinity: Original Sin or Pillars of Eternity were actually done in iso out of nostalgia - the developers made it very clear).

 

What, all of the members of those teams did it just because it made them feel young, and not because it's a valid gameplay presentation style?  What about the gamers who play and enjoy these and other modern pseudo-isometric games (the ones cited are not isometric).  All blinded by this nostalgia?  I absolutely hated isometric-style games for most of my gaming life, and refused to play them.  The first one that I did play was Torchlight, which I got somewhere in 2010, and that was a good game to get me used to it so that I could eventually appreciate Baldur's Gate and the other Infinity Engine games.  Now I see that it's a perfectly valid game presentation type, and I very much enjoy it.

 

How about other presentation styles?  There's no reason to make any more side-scrolling platformers, or overhead 4X turn based strategy games, because it all has to be 1st person 3D?  What if I want to play something that looks like it was hand drawn instead of a 3D Pixar-looking thing or a hyper-realistic thing?

 

There are different kinds of games, and good reasons to make them in different ways.  Vive la différence!

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               

I never "took 2D as a golden standard". Not sure where you got that. What I said was that the presentation should fit the needs of game play. Not all games need to be 3D to be good and many would be worse if they were fully 3D games.

 

In the case of POE or the Shadowrun series they are good because they are not fully 3D. It enabled the developers to focus on game play and story rather than get lost in the details. The design also allows the player to focus on the game play rather than getting lost in the world - which is not the point of those games.

 

If it helps allow me to oversimplify my point:

no one would like a world in which all games are cutting edge 3D first person shooters. For awhile this is how aspiring game devs thought. No matter what the kind of game people were obsessed with first person 3D environments for everything. For many kinds of games it does not work though, and so I am glad that say turn based global strategy games don't limit the view to 3D first person perspective. ITs just crazy to look at that sort of thing as the end all be all of game design.

 

Another example board game ports are best done as top down 2D games with very clearly designed icons.

 

RPGs can be done in a variety of ways. The fully realized 3D view doesn't work for many fo them however. If its a single player RPG focused on world exploration then yes it makes lots of sense. For a party management game with lots of tactics it sucks. If its a game that is not about being immersed in the world but instead story focused with lots of complexity there it also doesn't make sense because that takes lots of work and you need to put your resources into that rather than wasting 90% of your budget on the graphics and distracting your players from what you actually want them to focus on.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MayCaesar]

               

 

What, all of the members of those teams did it just because it made them feel young, and not because it's a valid gameplay presentation style?  What about the gamers who play and enjoy these and other modern pseudo-isometric games (the ones cited are not isometric).  All blinded by this nostalgia?

 

Err, that is not what I was trying to say at all. Not "blinded" by nostalgia, but driven by it. The developers of, say, Pillars of Eternity made it clear in interviews multiple times that they wanted to bring back the feel of Baldur's Gate games. Hence the isometric perspective, since Baldur's Gate had it. People funded this kickstarter project mostly exactly because they liked old school Infinity Engine games and wanted more games of similar design. That was the main and, perhaps, the only reason of the game being isometric. It is not good or bad, it is just what it is.

 

 

 There are different kinds of games, and good reasons to make them in different ways.  Vive la différence!

 

Which is exactly what I was saying. '>

 

 

I never "took 2D as a golden standard". Not sure where you got that. What I said was that the presentation should fit the needs of game play. Not all games need to be 3D to be good and many would be worse if they were fully 3D games.

 

What you said was that 3D graphics should only be used when they are needed to complement the gameplay; if they are not, then, apparently, they shouldn't be used. Quote: "If it is unnecessary, it is better to leave it out and go with 2D or ISO or some other simpler style of presentation that makes more sense for what the game is. ". What if I turn it around and say that 2D graphics should only be used when they are needed to complement the gameplay, and otherwise 3D graphics should always be used?

 

My point is, 2D and 3D are just different styles, totally and equally viable. You said that none of the games you mentioned would be better in full 3D. How do you know? And what if they originally were released in 3D and you would be used to them in this form - would you be saying then that none of them would be better in 2D? And how can you even know how they would be in 3D if they haven't been in 3D and no one could experience what they would be like in 3D?

 

However, like I mentioned, all the models even in 2D and iso games originally are drawn in 3D. It doesn't make 3D the golden standard, but it does mean that 2D games are essentially simply a way of presenting 3D worlds. 2D that you see in, say, Diablo 2 is simply 3D projected to a 2D plane. Since modern computers are able to easily handle most 3D graphics, I don't see the need to project anything on a 2D plane when you can just release it in full 3D and let the player adjust the camera to be isometric (like many people playing NWN1/2 with isometric camera, having the same experience as they would if these games were exclusively isometric). If someone wants to do so, I don't mind, it is a viable way of doing things - but saying that it is somehow more "natural" contradicts basic facts about the way the games are designed. "Natural" would be 2D in a game like Dune 2 which was developed in pure 2D - but such games are next to non-existent in modern production.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               

You are wandering far away from my point so I am not going to follow you there.

 

2D and 3D are indeed different styles of presentation as I mentioned. But there are also different ways of using each. And the way you use them should meet the needs of the game. 2D worked far better in the games I mentioned than a 3D presentation and rotational or first person cameras would have.

 

You are wrong in your assumptions about graphics pipelines in game dev. It is not necessarily all 3D and then worked down to something else. It may have been in Diablo and similar games. But that is irrelevant. Its not how all game art is worked on.