Cusith: You think being able to do something other than murder every wild creature in existence is an adventure game trope?
dtgreene: No, I was saying that being able to avoid battles and resolve encounters in non-violent ways to be more of an adventure game characteristic.
(Of course, there *is* Undertale, but I think that game isn't so easy to categorize.)
You actually don't have a choice how to deal with "battles" and "encounters" in adventure games. They are mostly linear, and not much about player choice.
Undertale is RPG, there is no much to argue about that. But you had nonviolent solution to a combat in RPG-s at least since Ultima IV, and pretty much perfected in Fallout and it's derivatives.
dtgreene: I should probably point out that one of the major problems I had with the IE games was the real time with pause combat system (which I have described as combining the worst of turn-based and real-time combat while lacking the rhythm of turn based and the fluidity of real time), so I have a feeling I probably wouldn't like the game if it uses that system.
thuey: Oooh I'm huge on game mechanics discussions. I'd love to hear you elaborate more on this.
My personal take:
- I hate real-time combat in RPGs. Real-time is supposed to be about learning patterns, reflexes and timing. But then the "RPG"ness of it automatically makes you stronger just for playing (leveling up). So there's an inherent contradiction with itself.
- Moreover, real-time combat in RPGs tend to be of two types:
Action/combo oriented - Something like Namco's Tales series, which bores me to death due to the mashiness and juggling enemies as much as possible
"Guided" - RTS-like, where you don't have precise control over a character, but you command them to do things. These are the Diablos / Torchlights. This is even worse than the action-oriented approach, because you click and the game decides how to do it. (A click on an enemy has your character walk first to the enemy and then strike based on some AI, compared to you manually positioning your character wherever you want, and then hitting whenever you want). The other flaw of this method is that could also be down to how fast you can click on icons / hit shortcuts, making it less about the action and more about UI management.
Both types are odious to me.
- Having a real-time party-based game is awful. Usually you control one person, and the AI controls the other characters. I find the problem with this to be that you have to fight not only against the opponent, but also your allied AI because they don't do what you would have done.
- The Infinity Engine makes the vagueness of real-timeiness tolerable. The fact that you can pause means you can set up precise instructions to each of your party members, taking the Allied AI issue out of equation. It also doesn't make it a click/mashfest that action oriented RPGs tend to be.
Is it perfect? No, I still think turn based is superior. But it's definitely a decent solution to a problem it's created.
Pretty much completely incorrect but you are allowed to your opinion. Only reason why IE combat was good is in it's decent to brilliant encounters. Pure RT is superior to RTwP in any game, reason why they put it in IE games is because they wanted to show "exciting" combat which doesn't exactly works in RT do the party based nature of a game and D&D rules.
