I'm Mika, bearing the family name of Foreverold in your language, and was born to see the rise and consequently later the fall of gaming. Maybe I caused the slight shifts by my buying habits on my part, as the combined effect of all of us turned to lead the gaming in the sad state where it is now. For that part I'm sorry. Yet I think countless generations before me have said the same thing about the new emerging trends, and I do not believe that this writing would have any effect on anyone. That I do not dare to hope that, world has taught me to be careful of anything that I wish for, as those wishes might even become true. Nevertheless, I don't actually know the reason why I'd write this exactly here, but I tried to write the following as well as I could, using as varying language I could for a non-native speaker of your language. It is a story of my computer RPGing history, a story of becoming interested in it and then being quenched by it, with a bittersweet ending with the old stuff that actually ended up doing the quenching. I try to write everything as close to the truth as I can recall, but I cannot guarantee that everything is exactly what happened, memories tend to change over time.
My RPG history starts at the year 2004, coinciding with a comparatively late age compared to the of my compatriots. It was a warm and sunny summer evening when my roommate, for some reason that I don't know even today, decided to pirate Knights of the Old Republic II, little knowing of the path it would take me. I saw it for a while, and decided to ask what sort of gaming that is. So far I had always considered RPGs as uninteresting, as they tended to leave a lot to hope for towards the actual game play. This one was placed in Star Wars universe, something that was much more readily accessible, and the 3D accelerated surroundings gave a sort of impression that this might be something to look for. As you know, these sort of things start with small steps. It took me a while for them to convince me to try one, and they recommended to start with Knights of the Old Republic.
I got the game some time later, and boy, I was hooked relatively quickly. It is interesting how things look like from the further perspective of age, but finding an interesting game is very close to being addicted to something - and sometimes you do get addicted. Some sleepless nights were spent playing it, always trying to do the good stuff. I found most of the images on my screen captivating and motivating to go further exploring the possibilities. It is the sense of wondering and exploration that drove me at first. But at some point the limitations given by the designers start to become obvious, and one starts to calculate the best possible combinations of character statistics and various items. Soon this becomes a minigame in itself. Nevertheless, I found the story of the game good at the first playthrough, but since one does not find everything on the first time, a story relying on a twist does not actually last long and tends to become a drag. However, the game was executed very Star Wars like to the end, and there actually were several touching moments. Meanwhile, I had developed a relatively bad addiction to this, and played through the game something like 6 times, each time becoming slightly worse due to this story has been told aspect.
Nevertheless, I had to find more of this stuff, and continued on to the Knights of the Old Republic II. At the start, it became clear that this game has a much more underlying themes than anything in the prequel. That though, worked with me, and I became even more interested in it, if my reader could imagine that being possible at all. Holy heck, the sidekicks were a lot more interesting, most of them having a background much deeper than could be discovered in the prequel. Countless nights were spent playing that, and yes, I admit it went to optimizing things too, but there was something more, a type of content that worked with me. To this day, I still don't know how many times I played this through, but I suspect it starts with 1 and has two digits. This time, it wasn't possible to optimize the character stats fully, as now a lot of things depended on different stats, items that may or may not be created by random loot generator, each leading to a slightly different play through. The fates of the companions were touching too, but in a different way than before. But in the end, the gaming addiction is sort of easy to get over with. After realizing a lot of time was spent in front of the computer screen, I started to do something else in real life too.
But I had once been hooked by RPGs, and there was no telling when that could happen again. It did strike a couple of years later with the original Fallout package. Now Fallout, that was a different sort of experience. Set in a rather possible and yet very twisted future while still keeping that special glint in the eye, this one does earn its name among the classics. I do like that this RPG actually rewarded intelligence, as it has actually been one of the main attributes of this species becoming the dominant on this planet. The story was relatively simple, but that does not equal to not interesting or bad. Keeping things simple tends to work better, as it leaves more space for the game play. This has actually been my attitude up to this day, until I discovered something else. I was also challenged with moral dilemmas, and towns' fates actually depended on my actions; while this is also true in KOTOR II and to a lesser degree in KOTOR I, there was something in Fallout that made it more memorable - and bigger. KOTOR II was memorable on its own right too, circling around the philosophical themes but somehow not quite reaching the bottom of them. Yes, but there was again an addiction to Fallout, which lasted something like five to six play throughs. And yes, in the end it did become on optimizing the character too, but I discovered again that I could not optimize him completely as dropping the intelligence to very low levels made him dumb as a brick that actually had consequences. And yes, it was a couple of mornings when I realized I have to go to sleep when sun was starting to rise - and this is in Scandinavia! At some point I even started to have red blood vessels around the eyes!
Going through Fallout, the next in the addiction line was naturally Fallout II, however, I never went that far with it - only two play throughs. It was the ending of this story that didn't work well, while the rest of the game was like Fallout, but more free playing without imposed time limits. However, this probably lessened the impact of the plot (save the world again), but at least there was time to do some wandering, and later, also driving with that car which was fun for a time. The reader has to understand that after these games, it feels like a lot of role-playing games have been seen already. One would need some heavier stuff to get the old spark again. Despite its name, Fallout III along with Dragon Age, Skyrim or Oblivion spike my interest. Make no mistake, I do have seen quite a bit of Fallout III, but I just could not feel or contact with it the same way as the older Fallouts. Maybe I was on a path of recovery from this waste of time? Thinking this, it is a small wonder I was still able to complete my studies ahead of time with good grades, not sure if I could pull this off any more at this age. I do recall being dead tired in the University after some gaming nights.
The recovery from RPGing was relatively swift and lead to multiplayer flight sims that are a sort of time sink, but at least you are doing it in group and the session usually doesn't last longer than one hour, since somebody usually has to do something. I tried going through Mass Effect, but I just cannot seem to be interested in completing it. It is still on my shelf, I maybe completed 10 % of it, but man, this is a boring game. For some reason it just doesn't grab my attention, nor have it sequels. I have all of them on the shelf too, but I haven't even gotten through the first one. So the thought lingers, maybe I just have grown out of this? Not finishing something that I have started is something what I'm not known for. But people do change over time, a lesson from real life that what I think schools actually should actually teach to pupils.
So skip to this year, and I found Planescape - Torment on the bargain bin, and said, hell, it's so cheap so why not? It lied on my shelf for several months, mocking me with a "you haven't played through this one" look every time I saw the cover of it. So a month ago I decided to give it a spin. And holy hell was I in for a surprise! What it comes to story driven games, this one just destroyed pretty much everything I have seen - and probably will see. There never was any noble goal to protect the world, or save the city. The only thing that I needed to do was to figure out who I was! It was so simple, yet elegantly effective in giving so much freedom to the player while still keeping the plot intact. This was a very intense experience of RPGing, going through this one makes one say that I have now actually learned something. Never has my attention been robbed so completely on the small nuances of the game world, making me think that if even this is what I have done or caused? Not to mention of the satisfaction of the end, it was not a happy ending, but it was still a good ending.
Also, thrown out of the window were the typical stat builds of the old games (except Fallout), this one seems to be intentionally designed in a way to trash all the former RPG conventions. Playing through this game took a long time, and occasionally resembled more reading a book - and that's not a bad thing here. With 800 000 words of dialogue, it is no wonder it took me a couple of weeks to play through it, but it was really a full-filling experience. First time in my life I had seen what the story part of an RPG can actually do, and I neglected some of the faults in the game play over it - including massive lags and graphical errors. But if the reader asks me whether Planescape is actually a role playing game, I would answer no. It is not an RPG by the average definition (if that could exist) of role-playing games, it is something else and more important. It became the best role playing game I have ever played, for a first time, my life experience could be mixed with protagonist's in to a seamless fusion. The fate of the companions and the protagonist were actually touching, more so than in any other game I have seen. Was I addicted? I don't know. Nobody was following my behavior like my roommates used to comment on playing KOTOR. There were late nights, but not early mornings this time. Probably not addicted, but feeling that I have now something on my hands that is actually important. This is gaming art.
But it also made me think that perhaps much more greater role should be given to the player imagination, which is might be the thing that I'm missing from the current crop of games? If Planescape gets a sequel that is even close to the original one, there is no doubt I would buy it in an instant. I left Planescape - Torment recently for Baldur's Gate I, feeling sort of satisfied with the former. And I was again up for a shock, but this time it was actually to the worse direction. Baldur's Gate now seems very shallow and gives the sort of seen-this-before vibe. I fully acknowledge that had I gone through the games in chronological order, KOTOR 1 would probably feel shallow. Nevertheless, I'm not actually anymore that interested in completing Baldur's Gate for the role playing's sake, but I probably will due to relatively interesting combat system, but for me this has nothing to do with actual role playing. Jagged Alliance probably does this better.
I now have a sort of dawning feeling of what has happened over time. The imagination of the player is not used that much, and it is probably going to get worse from now. Unless somebody throws something unusual and I mean really unusual in the mix, my RPGing days are over. I leave the scene with mixed feelings, PS:T being such a great experience while being smacked down by the BG:I, hailed to be the greatest of RPGs. I should have realized that at the point of Baldur's Gates the computer RPGing future direction would have been clear, and for youngsters I have to say I'm sorry for not discovering and buying different types of RPGs when they were released back then, leading it to where it is now. It is not completely hopeless, but the seed of hope lies in the independent developers and Kickstart.
If you got to the bottom of this story, You probably think that Mika is having one of his special moments now, but rest assured, you all will complain about the same thing using the same words at some point of time. Just like the older ones did to me. Mark my words on this one.
[HINT: And for those who chose Perception and Wisdom as a dump stat, yes, this is intentionally written this way.]
