'NPC Archivist' proves that games aren't all that unrealistic

[boingboing]

Originally published at: 'NPC Archivist' proves that games aren't all that unrealistic | Boing Boing

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[beschizza]

Fun fact, I helped with QA on the Morrowind expansions. Still fascinated by how Oblivion retreated in open horror from the weirdness of Morrowind to become so generic as to end up the enduring touchstone joke about generic fantasy RPGness.

[Rufus_Sanders]

Mmm dont know about the NPC archivist: clearly a lot of congenital Special Needs in those vids and laughing at crack-addled unfortunates seems a little off to me. Dont want to take too much moral high ground here but seems a lot like Bumfights 2000’s era victimlolling.

[Mark_Sniadecki]

Yeah, that YouTube channel isn’t clever, it’s just abusive.

Also–dude, if you want to simulate a game, stop using vertically oriented video footage.

[fuzzyfungus]

What puzzled me(specifically as the sort of not-desperately-hardcore RPG player who I can only assume that they were pandering to) about the Morrowind → Oblivion transition is how the changes that helped with accessibility(like, say, “quest markers” rather than “just go down the river a fair way but if you pass the particularly giant mushroom you’ve gone too far then turn right at the squib swamp and you can’t miss it…”) were more or less unrelated to the massive loss of (pre Shivering Isles) gameworld character.

Morrowind had some cryptic elements(the aforementioned NPC directions, and the always-slightly-jarring ‘combat animations are utterly unrelated to the dice rolls that live behind them’; plus fog and draw distance that haven’t aged desperately well); but they just don’t really line up with its weird elements very much. It maybe bugs and bonemold but you’ve still got your light progression of fantasy materials and your heavy progression of fantasy materials; alchemical reagents are cryptic but learnable just like in every game with an alchemy system, and living in a mushroom rather than a castle isn’t a big deal.

[Alvin_Goodman]

I don’t get how yelling at a meth-head is … clever or an homage to D&D or whatever is going on here.

If you see these real people in distress as NPC’s to make fun of… maybe the problem isn’t them, and your grasp of reality is even more questionable. Bumfights is right.