Another problem with hiring 'unskilled' writers to do all those tedious descriptions is that they might not mesh very well with the mood of the game, or with each other. They might take too many liberties with existing lore, and would thus have to be read by whoever is in charge of the lore, and who might in turn feel as if they have more important things to do that read through tons of tedious descriptions. Well, what do I know?
I probably could have explained my "unskilled" jibe a little better. Basically, "unskilled" as in "not an artist, programmer or level designer," but of course if you were going to outsource it to freelancers you need careful supervision and review of lore. I was thinking more in terms of somebody with some writing chops who knows the developer's games inside and out.
But with any alley of game development you need to carefully channel and control the creative energies of the individual. Games where
The Vision is not adequately preserved and conveyed are starkly obvious. All Fallouts since the first, for instance.
I don't get why game companies don't try and use economy of scale. Why didn't Atari make another contract for ToEE 2 or another greyhawk module that could of used the same resources. The engine was there, all the graphics were there, all the rules.
Sagelike. ToEE looks pretty darn gorgeous graphics wise, it's certainly more than passable in todays market. I think it's missed opportunity. Obviously The Sims was a great deal more popular than ToEE, but the model it uses, of almost episodic content could surely work elsewhere, especially with RPGs.
Actually, this has been done in a FP game before, a non-rpg curiously enough. It was Metroid Prime on the gamecube and it worked well there.
From my grand total of 20 minutes playing Metroid Prime, I do remember that, and it's an excellent functional example of the goings on in this thread's rambling train of suggestion. It adds so much to the sense of exploring and paying attention to the virtual world around you. If I remember, it even had many practical uses, like evaluating weaknesses of enemies, and hidden goodies in the environment.
I agree with Kamaz on that it's very foolish to see in black and white and say that all new 3d games are inferior to old 2d games just because of the graphic aspect. You could make a very stylish and memorable game with the latest GameBryo/Havok engines. Moreover, superior rendering capabilities actually complement the design concepts.
It's not a matter of current 3D games being inherently inferior, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest a downward trend in actual gameplay, or at the very least, a big gameplay plateau, with visual upgrades to the same old. As for implementing design concepts, it is true that advancing technology does permit more complex implementations, but it's rarely taken advantage of, and when it is, it's little more than a visual upgrade.
You've also got to consider the state of the industry in this whole discussion. Sure, in theory you can push the technology to the point of photorealistic simulation, but along with that, you have massive increases of labour requirements. A single game can be a multi-million dollar enterprise in development costs alone.
So why continue to push the industry in the direction of burgeoning costs and marginal profits? I agree that in theory, you could push games far enough that textual descriptions become somewhat redundant, but where's the gain? Sooner or later, game development economics are going to hit a wall. In fact, a fairly convincing argument could be made that it's already past it.
Now the suggestions in this thread are necessarily saying, "take a step back" although personally, I could quite easily live without ever playing a game with anything more than diffuse maps. It's more a "stem the flow." Why push to make text obsolete, when really, high-end graphics themselves are redundant in the face of effectively integrated textual description? In fact...
It would only make the player wander: what the fuck you made this graphic engine for, if you can't show me every emotion, every expression?
That's exactly what the developers/publishers should be asking.
/me shrugs, with a condescending grin as if I've got it all figured out.
Now, consider exactly what is involved in creating a photorealistic representation of myself, animating it, rendering it, and then presenting the final product. Is it really worth the gain? Is the viewer going to understand what it's about, or are they going to simply look and say "what's that ugly bastard smiling about?"
I honestly don't see the point, beyond pandering to a fickle market that's going to push demand beyond the reasonable means. Why not work toward pleasing a demographic that doesn't have an expectation of an incremental increase in visual wizardry?
I mean, fuck, if I were a publisher, funding a multi-million dollar project, and I stumbled upon something like Mount & Blade, I'd really have to wonder why it is that many people can derive a great deal of pleasure from something with an
infinitesimal cost sheet, comparatively speaking, and I'd be trying to figure out how to get into the hearts and wallets of these strange people who don't seem to give a fuck if those "all important" graphics are bleeding edge or not.
[edit]In fact, arguably the biggest advantage to come from burgeoning commercial game content is that it takes longer to pirate a 4gb DVD image than it does to pirate a few meg of indie developer's blood, sweat and tears.