Nostalgia Reviewing

One trend I've noticed among reviews, particularly reviews of RPGs, is the tendency to view older games with heavy rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia. It's even more prominent amongst players than "professional" game reviewers. It typically leads to the standard argument of "I like your old stuff better than your new stuff", and decrying current titles in favour of old "classics."

Frequently these veteran RPG players wheel out the old gold box series games or BG1/BG2. Now, not to ruin the parade for what were great games of their time, they simply don't hold a candle to current RPG offerings despite what the most staunch critic might say. For argument's sake, let's look at the simple concept of player choice.

What choices were you given in gold box games? You perhaps got to pick your character's name, alignment, class. But in game choices that actually affected the plot? I can't think of any. I loved the Krynn games, but I never got any real choices that mattered: I never got to save Durfey, spare Lord Soth, or even make a small decision like side quests in Dragon Age or Mass Effect.

So jump forward to the Baldur's Gate series. I loved these games too, but let's not get carried away in saying they're way better than current RPGs. Again, the simple factor of choice proves the increased depth of current RPGs, as sure, you got to pick good and evil in BG, but you didn't have the same number of small impacts on the gameworld, and have people reference those actions and react differently to you because of them. This is, of course, in addition to the obvious aspects of eye candy and comprehensive voice acting and other such benefits we get from modern day games.

The real issue is that the reason people remember those games so fondly, and declare them to be so superior to current games is because of what they didn't show. The lack of detail allowed people to 'fill in the blanks' as it were, and create extra depth and character that simply doesn't happen now because the players are being given more. What do I mean?

I'd like to relate the story of a player who thought there was a subtle romance between Ajantis and Viconia in BG1. Why? Because Viconia would resist every single spell the player attempted to cast on her... except for healing spells cast by Ajantis. Of course, this was nothing more than simple chance, but the player read so much more into it. Because there was a limited amount of character depth, players created their own extra bits of personality in the characters that were presented.

In BG, all we saw of the NPCs was a small character sprite and a portrait. Compare to Dragon Age, where we get every line voiced, we get to see the character's full appearance, their facial expressions, gestures... there's a lot less left to the imagination, hence players have less attachment because they're not adding those extra details in themselves. In modern games, we're getting a more immersive and cinematic experience at the expense of personal creativity that helps increase a player's emotional investment in the game.