While people here laugh at most of the answers on that ES thread, it just goes to show that there's more than one definition of RPG as a video game art form. Many games are called RPGs when they are not, and many RPG elements are added to other genres to provide depth and immersion. So, there are more hybrids today than ten years ago.
Let's look at another series that exemplifies classic RPG and action RPG or RPG Lite: Westwood's Lands of Lore. The first Lands of Lore was a classic CRPG in every sense, developed by team members who had worked on the Eye of the Beholder series. The second and third Lands of Lore were action RPGs without many of the elements we know and love from classic RPGs.
They were set in the same universe and were related to the plot of Lands of Lore (particularly LoL 2). Yet, I still enjoyed Lands of Lore 2 and 3 despite their deviation from the first game. Would I have preferred a graphics update to Lands of Lore that was truly an RPG? Yes, but I played what I got with the attitude "It could be worse".
It can be argued that Bethesda Softworks went from classic RPG form (Arena and Daggerfall) to action RPG with Morrowind and are going further with Oblivion, but I don't see it that way. Did anyone here know people who considered Arena's real time combat and first person perspective to not be RPG enough? I'm not talking about my friend who only played pen and paper and didn't consider any CRPG to be a true RPG, but people who were used to turn based party RPGs with a combat screen separate from the exploration map.
Also, Daggerfall was sometimes considered a heresy because it went from pen and paper XP based levelling to skill use levelling. It was a major change in it's RPG generation and Oblivion is making similar changes re: ditching dice rolls for combat. What's so wrong with Oblivion is development by marketing study rather than developer vision. The former's flaws lie in failing to meet everyone's expectations by letting the vaguest idea of "fun" decide what's in and what's out. The latter's flaws lie in making a game that will appeal only to hardcore fans. They are trying to strike a balance, but I'd prefer if they addressed why something wasn't popular and fix that rather than simply ditch it because something else got a few more votes in their polling.
All this number crunching arguing over clothes is silly. Clothes and armor do not make the RPG man. Choice available in every aspect of the game makes the RPG the purest example. Anything with less choice is a hybrid, and simply attaching a pen and paper style rules system on an RTS chassis (Baldurs Gate) or applying fantasy world lore to an action/adventure chassis (Lands of Lore 2) creates a hybrid that can be marketed as an RPG and even fondly remembered as an RPG, but it's still not an RPG.
Can't say whether Fallout was an RPG, I haven't played it, but I have my doubts that Baldurs Gate is an RPG just as I have my doubts that later Final Fantasies were RPGs. Oblivion is still an RPG, but we'll see if TES V or Fallout 3 are RPGs in the truest sense.
Twinfalls said:
Kvatch is under siege as part of the linear MQ. It gets razed by the DEMONZ, in the same exact way, every time you play the game. It is not a variable province under siege by a faction - meaning you could join sides, as envisaged by Ted Peterson.
BTW, Why does Pete always get so much stick? - he's just the PR guy.
That's because they can't do in this generation what they want to do regarding sieges. They are still moving in that direction with real destruction to the town and consequences for the inhabitants. Since the Empire's falling, they could quite easily do a siege when dual core and newer GPU hardware allow more than seven or eight NPCs on each side in a battle. For now, they seem to be restricted to raids. As for the linear MQ, that's to please the "can't find Caius" but want to beat the game in under 30 hours crowd. We know that cities and nobles will have agendas, just like in Daggerfall and that's where the intrigue lies and much of the over 200+ hours of gameplay lies.
Pete gets all the stick because he's the PR guy. Todd and Gavin get some because they're out there doing interviews. MSFD gets stick here because he does what he won't do at TES. Heck, he even got mad at me awhile back when, after hearing about the middleware, I quipped "At least you guys won't have to do as much work" when I was simply joking about their not having to reinvent the Xngine.
We all know NETImmerse issues doomed Morrowind's performance, and some were speculating they were doing the engine from scratch again. MSFD doesn't get ticked off at people here, or just LOLs, he doesn't flame. That's because this seems to be his PR assignment. Pete preaches to the "gee graphics ummmm" Homer Simpsons of the mainstream console community and MSFD preaches to the hardcore CRPG, but both of them take the TES forums for granted because the sales are a given.
Todd and Gavin just repeat the mantras and add "sorry we can't talk about that now", which is their anti-PR assignment.
edited GPS to what I meant GPU, all that kvetching about the compass got in the way of designating the graphics processor unit, plus I did this post yesterday at work while on my break, so I didn't proofread like I do at home.