The 100 Greatest Games of All Time? Well, No.
Most obvious indication? Every BioWare game since Neverwinter Nights (with the exception of Dragon Age 2) is on the list, but only three Origin games (Privateer, Wing Commander 4 and Ultima 4 appear on the list…with none of these ranked higher than 84th.
To be fair, there are a lot of worthy entries on the list, but there are also a lot of entries that make you scratch your head and wonder. Surely, Ultima 6 or Serpent Isle deserve a mention? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
The folks at WCNews note that the list skews somewhat toward Nintendo, and that is certainly true. But really, that’s not what I find egregious about it. What I find egregious about it is that Final Fantasy gets two entries in the top fifteen, and Origin’s battery of top-tier games gets nary a mention in the same range. Now, granted, you’d expect to find some inaccuracies like these in any fan-built list, but even so…it’s very disappointing.
And people wonder why I am leery of trusting the opinions of fans of any series.
These kinds of list will always skew in a “consoletard” direction (yeah, I went there) because they’re not true academic exercises. They’re aimed at the general public and they need to contain games that public is familiar with.
And to the average gamer on the street, the phrase “legendary game series” translates to Mario, not to Ultima. I bet they have Halo at a high spot, too.
Every game SINCE Neverwinter Nights, you say? What about the ones before it.
Halo’s on the list, somewhere in the middle.
And I didn’t notice any of BioWare’s earlier games; no Baldur’s Gate or MDK2.
That’s pathetic. I trust at least Fallout is better? (no, not Fallout 3)
I saw Fallout 2, for sure, and I think Fallout as well. Honestly, by about midway, I was just skimming anyhow.
gah. replace ‘better’ with ‘there’. I’ve been checking exercises all day…
Hmm… just went through the list and though I’d comment on a few things that stood out (more than the other 93 things that stood out):
47 – King’s Quest
I’m actually really surprised this ranked. But it makes me wonder what the list is actually about… “Greatest Games” or “Most influential games”. Because this list has some from both, and many really shouldn’t be on the same list with each other.
18 – Fallout 3
I have no problem with this, apart from the fact some crap games ranked higher than it. When thinking “Greatest Game” in terms of gameplay, complexity and polish, I’d have to rank Fallout 3 higher than any Ultima. But it would rank very low in “Influential Games”.
11 – Goldeneye 007
This deserves its position. Awesome game that should come close to topping both “Greatest Game” and “Influential Games”. After Doom 2, this pretty much started FPS multiplayer.
5 – WOW
It’s gotta be there, I guess.
3 – Super Mario Bros
Again, an “Influential Game”, not a “Greatest Game”. Almost every PC game ever made is a better game. But meh.
2 – Final Fantasy VII
Poor Ultima. Remember the days when Ultima used to still beat Final Fantasy on these lists? It’s been too long since Ultima died. It has been forgotten.
1 – Zelda, Ocarina of Time
You know, I don’t think anyone who has played this game would have any problem with it being number 1. I sure don’t. It really was an awesome game.
Actually, one omission that really is bad is Ultima Online. If any Ultima should be on the list, it is UO.
Runescape was a far better game than ultima online ;).
Is jak and daxter on there or even ratchet and clank?
Sim city original but not sim city 2000! When I played those two games side by side, when I was younger… 2000 was totally king. I went through the agony of sim city original “why are my buildings disappearing, what is going on!” Fought my way through it to make some pretty nice towns. But at the end of the day I had way more fond memories of 2000 than the original!
If these scores were voted upon, I’m glad gothic made the standings!
Portal is only on there because of portal 2…
I don’t think I saw street fighter or virtua fighter, or mr bones! Now Mr Bones was an untouchable game. Perfect in every way and completely unique.
1. OOT
2. Ultima 7
3. Mr Bones
I beg to differ on fallout 3. Maybe it’s my bias against ridiculously huge maps you need to run 5-10 min to each town to traverse. Getting lost in a huge wasteland that all looks exactly the same, with a really poor world map. I remember there was a sniper I wanted to befriend in some town. Alas, he was unbefriendable due to some sloppy coding, or the quest being unfinishable. Either way, I didn’t think the polish was too thick considering the rich game fallout 2 was.
I could go on and on, but I’ll some it up like this. Harold in dc? Rivet city ripped off tanker in san fran in f2. Towns and villages consisting of 5 people or less… everywhere. I’ll never forget the Antor vs the Mechanic quest… they were totally making fun of themselves.
Weren’t we promised hundreds of endings?
On the other hand, SLOW MOTION BLOWING STUFF UP IS SUPER COOL!
Micron Magic:
I’m with you here; Sim City 2000 was tops. And did you have SCURK, the Urban Renewal Kit?
Okay, let me just say that slow motion explosions are in fact cool. But I take your point in what I assume to be its intended sense, which I assume to be a comment about how mindless action sequences and visual flair have been substituted for compelling plot in many cases.
I think one of the main problems is Ultima fans tend to have Ultima on too high a pedestal. I’m about as big an Ultima fan as there is, but I also know it had its problems. Fallout 3 did a lot of things better than the Ultima series did. Sure, it did some things worse too. But the things that people pick out about Fallout 3 tend to be problems Ultima had too…
5 people per town? (I’m sure most Fallout towns had more than that, but anyway…) Excluding random guards, most Ultima towns were the same. In Ultima 6, Trinsic, a huge walled city, had 8 inhabitants. In Ultima 5 it had 7. In U6 Moonglow had 8 inhabitants. It was the same in plenty of other towns in the Ultima games. What made Ultima towns different from other games in my opinion was the fact the NPCs all had character, and that they all seemed to be part of a community. Fallout 3 managed to do that well also.
As for the landscape looking all the same, that happens in almost every game. Ultimas always used the same tiles, the same trees, the same rocks, over and over. There would usually be a few different types (grassland, forest, snow), but within those things the landscape was always pretty much the same.
Fallout 3’s map is pretty much the equivalent size of an Ultima in 3D. Walking speed is not as fast (as walking Ultima-speed in a 3D game would look very silly) so it takes longer than it did in Ultima. But if you looked at a top-down map and at the scale of the towns, etc in the games, they would pretty much match up.
I wasn’t planning on making this a “Defend Fallout 3” thread, but it does kinda get to me that people tend to pull apart and attack Bethesda games, which are the closest things to Ultima that we have these days (and do a lot of things right). Fallout 3 was a huge step forward to making an Ultima-like experience, since it was the first time Bethesda has managed to make characters actually seem like they were unique and living in the world (Morrowind also managed it to a lesser extent). They still fall short in some things (world interactivity, companions, continuity) that made Ultima great, but each game they seem to get a little bit closer.
I don’t expect much from these ‘best of’ lists but…
No Xcom, Jaggad Alliance, Bauldur’s Gate
Nor lesser known games (atleast amongst general gamers) such as Darklands, Planescape Torment, or Arcanum
The list manages to include FFT and 5-8 (Cloud from VII apparently uses a gunblade), about 5 Metal Gear games, most of the Mario games. I’m not arguing against any one of these specifically but I would’ve hoped that the list would have had a broader scope than listing sequel after sequel.
I never had a chance to play SCURK.
It’s a little of both. I thought the slow motion blowing stuff up was amazing… if you had the option to turn it off. I was also disappointed with the lack of groin shot.
I really wanted to like f3. I REALLY wanted to like f3. I always felt it was huge shame to leave fallout with fallout 2.
It’s true, Bethesda games share some similarities with ultima or fallout1-2. And I never thought about it before, but that’s totally true, ultima 6 has small towns also.
On the other hand, it’s a different visual perspective. You were only allowed to see one house at a time on screen in u6. And each character had a specific purpose. I won’t speak of u5, I never made it very far in that one. But u6, each house almost felt was made around the npc it was in.
I gave fallout 3 a good 30 hours. I met the radio guy, I honestly don’t remember what he had to say. Walked all over the map. And only rivet city, the crater town, and that sky scraper building had more than 5 people. Someone pointed it out on a forum, I didn’t believe it myself, but yeah, I started counting and the towns have 5 people or less.
When you go on that raised highway structure, in f3, and you talk to the leader or mayor or whatever he’s called of the self proclaimed village and there’s only 1 family living there with him… I just can’t buy it. I mean, is everyone a scavenger? I don’t see any brahmin pens. I don’t see a field here or there. I don’t really see much signs of anyone doing much at all. I’m more comparing f3 to f1-f2, but since we make the u6 comparison.
I don’t know what you mean when you say the world maps are equal in size from u6-f3. U6 is a really small map. It probably takes 10-20 min to cross the entire world map from void to void. The only way I can compare the two is how long it takes me to move around it. The avatar moves unrealistically fast in u6, but that’s ok to me. Doesn’t all have to be 100% realistic.
Bethesda makes a realistic, large, and beautiful world. I haven’t played dragon age or mass effect, so I can concede, it’s closer to ultima than the console rpgs. But I could also say it’s closer to halo than ultima(in graphic style alone). I just don’t like Bethesda’s style.
I wouldn’t have said anything if you said elder scrolls series, but old timer fallout fans can’t let f3 go. The thing is, no rpg will ever be as good as my first. No jrpg will be as good as ff6 to me. Not even new isometric rpgs. The first will always be the one that sticks with you.
Maybe that is the reason. I never played Fallout 1 & 2 (I think I refused to since I considered them rivals of Ultima or something… silly me). If they are really that good, I might have to finally get around to playing them.
Since every list is different and right/wrong in its own way, here’s mine (personally influential and genre-defining):
Personal Computer (Microcomputer):
Might & Magic I & II
Ultima IV – VII
Adventure Construction Set
The Bard’s Tale
Wing Commander I & II
NES:
Castlevania
The Legend of Zelda
Metroid
Contra
Rygar
Ultima Exodus
Final Fantasy
Dragon Quest
Life Force
Blaster Master
PC Engine:
Ys I-IV
Exile
Flash Hiders
Gate of Thunder
SNES:
Super Castlevania IV
The Legend of Zelda – A Link to the Past
Super Metroid
Final Fantasy IV
Street Fighter II
Playstation:
Gran Turismo I-II
Metal Gear Solid
Grand Theft Auto
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Playstation 2:
Gran Turismo 3-4
Red Faction
Time Splitters
Ace Combat 3
Playstation 3:
Gran Turismo 5
While there are countless other games on all platforms that I’ve enjoyed, these are probably the most important of what I’ve played. Notice the near complete omission of modern AAA games… Sad, really.
Fallout 1-2 are definitely up there with ultima as far as a living world experience goes. The turnbase combat is a lot of fun. But prepare for a clickfest.
If you’ve played a fetch quest/kill a monster/start off in a castle as a savior to a kingdom/jumped over bowser/hijacked a car/etc/etc once, you’ve played them all.
Yeah. But for each of those there is always a best. Just gotta make sure you work out which those are and play them.
Wait… don’t you start off Ultima 6 as the savior to the kingdom? And UW2? Perhaps that can work out well. But I know what you mean. Dragon Age does companions awesomely, but it is still just a typical RPG. As are most of them. Hence me ranking Elder Scrolls at the top, due to its openness and randomness of quests (such as going into a painting to a world of paint in order to find someone)
So wait…Epic Mickey was a side quest in Morrowind?
The quest where you go inside a painting is from Oblivion, actually. It truly was one of the strangest quests in the game, and one of those I still remember after many years.
It wasn’t quite like Epic Mickey, though 😀
I love Fallout 1&2 but they’re like the farthest thing ever from a “living world”. As much as they consider Ultima one of their major influences, the whole living world and interactive world aspect was never a parimiter in the Black Isle/Bioware/Obsidian philosophy.
Fallout 3 and New Vegas (regardless of what one might feel about their gameplay, design, writing and so on…) are much more virtual worlds that Fallout 1&2 ever were.
Sure it was! People would have problems within their cities. People would have other cities. The choices you made effected the ending dramatically. Rather than 3 endings it had multiple for each city.
There was agriculture.
Nearly every item was movable.
Vault city was reliant on gecko for electric.
You could shoot people in the groin! Enough said?
Towns had a realistic amount of people, with each town having a reason for being. Mining towns, caravan towns, etc.
You would receive different status’ in each town such as, vilified, adored, child killer, neutral, etc. And each rep came with it’s consequences.
You could be a slave trader.
You could go through the whole game without killing anyone.
Each action or thing you said to people, could effect the outcome of the storyline. That, in my opinion, is enough of a living world aspect to me. Besides political alliances within towns and reliance of towns upon other towns.
I can’t speak of fallout 3 expansions or of New Vegas. But NV was made by bioware. And from what I hear, yes, it’s more like the originals. In regard to f3, ugh, the high points were stolen from f1 f2. And I don’t consider a village of 3 people who live off the end of a broken highway a village. Is everyone a scavenger in f3? I don’t remember seeing one farm or brahmin pen. A town of cannibals, and no explanation how people survive in this wasteland? Antor and the Mechanist quest, they were making fun of their own writing. Wasn’t there a town that harvest children? HOW COULD HAROLD TRAVEL FROM THE WEST COAST TO THE EAST COAST? Wasn’t there some matrix type thing involving Chinese soldiers? The crater town was built around a nucler bomb… Each town just didn’t make sense to me, each town seemed to be mostly on it’s own. It was almost like each town could’ve been a tech demo for the game.
F3 is a working game, no question. A lot of people love it. I don’t consider it a living world, there’s too many unexplained events. I guess it all depends on your definition of living world.
Minor point of order: New Vegas was made by OBSIDIAN, not BioWare.
Obsidian are an independent RPG developer based out of California. They have, admittedly, produced a couple notable sequels to BioWare titles, but they are not a BioWare studio.
My mistake, either way, still a viable point.
Quite.
And it’s worth noting that your point only concerned New Vegas for as long as it took you to remark that it is much more like the originals, which is true. It’s a top-tier RPG, a fine Fallout game, and a keen demonstration of just what great heights Obsidian can soar to as a developer.
Hence my insistence on them getting their due credit. 😉
I guess we really must have different definition of a living world. You’ve described me how Fallout 1&2 have an interesting and well thought-out world, and how it deals with choice&consequence (which is something Ultima rarely ever did). And I certainly agree with all these qualities.
But it’s not enough to make it a breathing and living world IMO. Which is of course kind of the “issue” with the Bioware/Black Isle/Obsidian philosophy (I put them together because while there are some variation – with notably Bioware becoming more cinematic and Obsidian more about C&C – they are very closes in mant wats). They can have wonderful and very well written worlds but they never feel like immersive living breathing world like Ultima or Gothic did.
If I’m thinking “Living World” then I usually think more about the behaviour of the NPCs than what the player can do.
In Ultima/Oblivion/Fallout 3 the people of the world actually go about their daily business (due to them both having a nifty scheduling system). NPCs will wake up, have breakfast, go to work, chat to people on the way, go to the tavern at night, return to bed and lie down to sleep.
Without that, the rest of it can’t stop the game from seeming lifeless. In most RPGs you might be able to make every choice, change the story in whatever ways you want, but the NPCs still don’t like moving from their one position in the world (usually leading to the designers having to force the game to be either night or day). Morrowind explained that by saying everyone had insomnia I believe, so the world was exactly the same at night as it was at day.
I’m not saying that is the only thing, but that is the one thing that only certain RPGs do that set them apart in that area, in my opinion.
Well, again, I never played NV. It’s not Fallout 3, .
It’s super tough to compare post apocalyptic future to medieval fantasy. Fallout 1-2 are definitely a lot different than ultima, no question. And both created their own world in a serious, yet different, fashion.
Gothic 1 I have very fond memories of. G2-G3 I couldn’t buy into with a serious lack of women and children. Which was ok in Gothic 1 because it was a mining/prison colony.
NPC scheduling is definitely cool. Nothing could compare to u7 in that area. Even if games like u7 and f1-f2 didn’t have graphic fidelity to show people talking to each other. It’s true f1-f2 didn’t have much npc scheduling. But doesn’t it bug you, there was no farmers? Or brahmin hearders? Or water traders? Why is that supermarket full of food if the bombs dropped hundreds of years ago? Why is there a nuka cola factory filled with cola hundreds years after the bombs dropped. Caps are pretty important, you’d imagine that would be raided long ago.
The story was more consistent and complex than f3. It had a logical reputation system, rather than stackable karma. It had logical sized towns, with each town serving an actual purpose, with an explanation for food sources.
If you value virtual world experience by seeing npcs eat, sleep, pee and talk to eachother more than a logical karma system(which effects how npcs treat you), necessary npc roles being filled, and consistent storyline.
NPC scheduling is great, but if they have no hunters or farmers, it turns into simply a working game to me. Much like U9, or Gothic 3.
Micro:
Except Ultima 6, of course. The scheduling in Ultima 7 wasn’t what was truly novel about how that game handled its NPCs; what was novel was its use of the same system to create in-game scripted sequences. Serpent Isle then took this to new heights of awesome.
I’d argue that having farmers or hearders or things like that helps make the world feels more realistic… but doesn’t makes it a “living breathing world”.
I’d say a virtual world aspect for me is based on several factors: interactivity (using items, moving things around and all – which most RPGs don’t have anymore), NPC schedules, night&day cycles and general immersiveness.
Fallout had basically none of that except for night & day cycles.
I’d argue that “Logical karma systems” as you put it and storyline are vastly different things from a virutal world. These are parts of the gameplay and storyline but not of the virtual world aspect.
Ultima VII had basically no coice&consequences; no faction or any kind but it’s still one of the best virtual world ever created.
Basically these are different beast altogether. You can have a wonderful virtual world mechanics even if a plotless environement (ie: Ultima Online is actually a wonderful exemple of it), while you can have great C&C, design and storyline… in an environment which has nothing of a virutal world (which defines really most modern RPGs).
In other worlds for you a game feels like a virtual world when the world make sense from a writing standpoing, but for me and Thepal the virtual world is more about a general feeling and specific world simulation mechanis unrelated to the writing.
On a side note I don’t get the complaint about Fallout 3 – Fallout 1&2 also had *plenty* of place you could still loot from even so long after the bombs dropped so it’s not so different. I guess this might come from how the game is designed – with the dual scale map of Fallout 1&2, this could give the sense that since everything was so set apart you’d have things still left unexplored, while with the seamless approach of Fallout 3 it obviously makes it feels like things are all close to one another, hence everything should have been found since after all the player can walk to it.
(This is an argument which I guess you can make for ANY seamless VS dual-scale approach, this is very true about Ultima as well… the seamless world made Britannia more immersive, but less realistic in essence. Ditto for Fallout).
Regarding Gothic, I gotta point that Gothic 2 had quite a bit of women NPCs actually. All settlements (except I think for the monastery) have women and there are some even involved in quests (the Thieves’ Guild leader was a woman for instance). However yeah, for some reason there were no woment at all in Gothic 3… that just felt silly. Arcania goes back to having quite a bit of women though, and ditto for Risen.
Did Ultima VII actually had scripted sequences outside of the Avatar’s arrival ? As I recall pretty much everything in U7 was told through dialogue narration, it’s really Serpent Isle that took the ball on the “scripted sequence” thing and ran with it.
Well, to be fair, any scripted npc schedules can be compared to each other. But I always felt it was cool how bakers would bake, farmers would farm, people would light the street lamps, open/close shutters. Original Ultima 6 wasn’t that in depth with my memory.
You’re flirting with the boundary between scripting and engine (specifically: object interactibility within the engine), I think.
You couldn’t open windows or bake bread in Ultima 6 because the tile assets and usecode didn’t support that, just as the bed assets and related usecode didn’t support the Avatar sleeping therein. But NPCs could (and did) use beds, and I’m sure that had the windows and ovens been interactible, they would have used those too.
Actually, Oblivion and Fallout 3 have a scheduling system that is so much better than U7’s that it makes U7 barely even rank. The problem with it though is that the developers didn’t make the most of it.
Those who have messed around in SI’s cheat engine will have seen the scheduling system (I used to turn the Castle of the White Dragon into my personal palace, complete with dancing girls and patrolling guards). It basically has a number of tasks (Patrol, Wander, Bake, Barmaid, etc) and you can tell NPCs what to do for each hour of the day and where.
Oblivion has almost no limits to what you can do. I could set Dupre to, every second Sunday, walk to Fawn if he is hungry, kill the first person he finds and then eat their remains. But only if it was overcast and he didn’t have the money to buy food. I can only assume that Fallout 3 allows even more freedom (I haven’t really modded in F3). Add in a little bit of scripting (yes, that was all without scripting anything extra) and you get pretty awesome things happening.
Of course, some things I took for granted in SI are a little more difficult. Getting Lucilla to be a barmaid involved creating scripts to work out if someone was sitting down at a chair, then have her go serve them. Still possible, but took a little more work. But most things are easier, and give you more freedom, in Oblivion.
Of course, I also added a little extra stuff in there that makes her do things like pick up plates off the floor and return them to the table if they get knocked off. It’s things like that that Oblivion lets you do, and Ultima 7 was not even close to. It’s a pity the developers didn’t mess with their scheduling system as much as they could have.
Well, ok, but just one question : how many years between U7 and Oblivion?
Well, let’s see…
Ultima 7 was released on 16 April 1992.
Oblivion was released on March 20, 2006.
According to Wolfram Alpha, that is a difference of 13 years, 11 months and 4 days. It is possible that scheduling, scripting, and engine technologies may have had the opportunity to evolve in that time.
Which is my point. We hold on to Ultima as the pinacle of RPGs, but things have evolved. It was the best at the time, but better things have come along.
Kinda leads to my “Greatest game” vs “Influential game” comment in my first response to this thread. Games like King’s Quest and Ultima were some of the most influential games in the industry. They pushed other developers to do better. But they aren’t the best anymore. Ultima has held up better than King’s Quest, as it actually had awesome gameplay, characters and plot, but it doesn’t have the best schedule system anymore. It doesn’t have the most interactive world. It’s not the only game that will let you bake bread. It’s not the only game with awesome companions.
The time difference is only partially an excuse. The graphics back then couldn’t be as good, but an improved schedule system? Had they wanted to, they could have made Ultima 7 do even more (even with disk space issues). 2D is actually easier to create a schedule system in than 3D. Bethesda decided that the schedule system (Radiant AI) would be one of their major focuses for Oblivion. So it was better than anything else I’ve seen.
Bethesda didn’t focus on other things that Ultima did however, and therefore Oblivion and Fallout 3 fall shorter in other areas. Fallout 3 did start getting companions happening, which was one of the main things that Oblivion lacked. Hopefully Skyrim takes that further.
But Elder Scrolls will never match up with one thing Ultima had: continuity. Each Ultima built up the characters and relationships and world even more. Each Elder Scrolls is in a different location. Skyrim is “200 years later”, and not the good kind where your friends are still all alive and waiting to meet you in Trinsic with a fresh batch of corpses. For that reason, I don’t think we’ll ever feel the same attachment to the games as with Ultima.
I don’t mean it’ the only one, I just mean it was the first one. I played Oblivion and enjoyed it ( well, except dungeons which where all based on a few templates ). It’s scheduling system was quite good too, and I must admit that crossing out-quest NPCs on the road, day and night, was something great. I know that a scheduling system is hard to implement ( I worked on U6 Project, you know that ), but also that it can require a lot of resources ( in DS engine for example). And computers have evolved a lot in 14 years ( Moore law : X2 in 18 months ).
So, with the power of computers now, the virtual life system could be far more complex. But most of studios prefer to invest in hi-end graphics and cinematics than in more realism.
One day we’ll get a spiritual successor to Ultima, using current technology. That will be a great day. Unfortunately, I doubt that any of the official ones in the work will be up to scratch. I have the feeling they will be Ultima-like games with 5 year old graphics to allow for social networking.
A game that looks like Skyrim meets Battlefield 3 meets LA Noire.
Has companions with the depth of Bioware games, but don’t just stand around in camp.
AI like Bethesda’s games.
Continuity like Ultima.
Story like Ultima.
Interactivity like… hmm… I don’t think anything has gotten to the level I would like.
Basically, an Ultima-like game that has all the good parts of Ultima, just improved to what a current day team and system could do. I do still think that Ultima had the best formula for putting everything together into an epic game. I just wish some company would pick up on that.
rpg
ultima 7
Baldur’s Gate
fallout12
arcanum
psTorment
Wizardry 8
Curse of the Azure Bonds maybe
(maybe also something from elder scroll)
(maybe TLOZ:OOT also)