I know the feeling! First and second games are worth a playthrough though if you can stomach the retro graphics (some can't). It's one of the only RPG's I know of that react to ALL your statistics, like this example of a playthrough with 0 intelligence.

https://youtu.be/IuBjeLiWhek

THAT is one of the greatest things ever.

I'm surprised you skipped those games. Not an RPGer?

Imagine if someone made an RPG set in the Fallout universe?

Well, I like all the classics like early Megaman, Nobuo Uematsu, Yasunori Mitsuda, Hitoshi Sakimoto, anything from Falcom (Y's, Xanadu, etc).
There are some truly oddball compositions out there that are dear to me, like a lot of the work of Zuntata, which was an in-house band for Taito in the 90's. Similarly, a lot of the weird, sample-based music from the Amiga-era, from people like Chris Huelsbeck, Dave Wittaker and Rob Hubbard.
In recent years, from Japan I've really gotten into anything that Yoko Shimomura has done, and Michiru Yamane upended/revitalized some of the later Castlevania's music in the best way possible.
I will always go to Koichi Sugiyama's Dragon Quest music whenever I want to turn someone on to truly beautiful game compositions (chills), or just relax. Also Matt Uelmen's music for Diablo 2 and Torchlight games also veers toward more contemporary genre's, but is atmospheric, masterful and provides a really well-done alternative sound for what we usually get in interactive media.
Some super strange stuff that just sticks out as not belonging anywhere else: Katamari Damacy's OST, the VibRibbon soundtrack, the Neverhood soundtrack by Terry Taylor, the hidden gem that is the "Moon: Remix RPG Adventure" soundtrack (seriously a great one; check it out).
I have a lot of game music and it's my primary soundtrack while I work.

Count me in on the hate boat. I loathed FF7 for its broken system. It was the only game out of any RPG games I've played that I've managed to hit L99, either voluntarily or involuntarily. It just happened. Reason why I hate it? Imagine the this setup:

Cloud + Ultima Weapon + 8 Counter-Attack materia attached, two extra party members.... vs JENOVA.

Result: it died after 1 round of attack.

Is it a reason to get a PS4? Hell f'ing no. I'd rather play the "Tales of" series and Star Ocean.

I absolutely hate 7, but we all knew this was inevitable. The game was responsible for introducing millions of people to RPGs, in the same way Halo introduced millions of console gamers to a proper multiplayer FPS (controls aside).

@947bis - that nearly brought a tear to my eye and explains EXACTLY why i was disappointed with Fallout 3. Or better to say, disappointed that it was given the label of Fallout instead of something like "Post Apocalyptic RPG".

FO3 had no subtlety. Sometimes you'd make decisions in Fallout 1&2 that you'd not even realised you'd made. Or chosen a dialogue option that you had no idea would affect how the game played out. There were multiple options to solve "quests" (there was no formal quest log) that would significantly alter the state of the rest of the game - what bases and equipment you had access to, and how you could ultimately finish the game. You could sneak into places, or disguise yourself and walk in, lie your way past NPCs, demolish your way in, then ultimately sabotage their base or fix it for them, ruin a gang's drug and slave trade, have sex with a crime boss's wife (or daughter if you preferred) and rob their safe before sneaking or shooting your way back out - and then the rival family would love you! It's as though the money they saved on not having voice actors for *every* NPC or graphical wizardry was spent on designing interesting, intertwined and thoughtful characters and situations, which were more fulfilling despite being a text only deal.

Fallout had so much character and charm and personality... It was genuinely funny and involved - in every area there would be many storylines that could affect each other directly and change the story, or change your reputation in the wasteland and affect your options elsewhere. FO3 feels cold and dead by comparison. In FO3, the decisions you make give the illusion of depth, when in actual fact only a small number of "decisions" affected the game at all, and even then, the consequences were not surprising or not impactful to the same degree.

God, i wish i could bottle the feeling of playing Fallout 1&2 back in the day.. i wish i could explain it to you young whippersnappers!

Fallout 1 was a technically antiquated VGA (that's right, 640x480, 256 colours) post-apocalyptic turn-based tactical RPG where you could not control you team mates during combat. It was a bit buggy (and so was F2). It was Mad Max, without cars.

And yet.

Fallout is arguably the best world-building work in the history of video games. People are probably going to dispute that, but most other games are built on pre-existing lore or works, or do not have that scope*. Fallout built its world pretty much from scratch, conflating a pre-war 1950's, golden-era, overly-optimistic world-view with the bleak desolation of the nuclear holocaust that ensued (to clarify for those who really know nothing about Fallout: in this universe a nuclear war happened in the 50s**. all that's left is from that era). Beside its content which was plentiful in and of itself, this created a contrasted, yet highly coherent and mature world (and by mature I don't just mean killing friendly NPC, I mean doing Morally Very Bad Things that don't necessarily result in graphic scenes). An open world that you could roam freely, be surprised by a new discovery that you made, and at the same time find these discoveries to fit perfectly with the game's logic. In most large games you just access new areas or are carried by the story, in Fallout you would go "Holy shit I'm in the middle of a city populated by centenarian ghouls!", shortly followed by "ho, of course it's full of ghouls, that's perfectly normal". There are not many games that have this mix of unexpected/logical and dark/humorous content.

Fallout 2 had the same ho-my-God-how-could-they-get-away-with-it VGA engine (so next to zero evolution there), but quadrupled the world map (with a minimum overlap with the one from F1) and brought it fifty or so years forward, expanding the world greatly (there are now rival quasi-city-states, and your action may influence their future), while also building on the first one: some antagonists 'classes' from F1 have now grown their own identity and became NPC, and some characters are still around -- a young character you saved in F1 went back to her settlement, became its leader, built it into a town, and is now in the process of expanding it into a new state...So Fallout 2 is basically the same game, except they did that one important thing: push the game world's boundaries even more. You could never guess what next city would be like, but you could bet it would have some crazy shit in it, and yet somehow still make sense.

That's why many people don't like Fallout 3. It is not in itself a bad game, but comparatively, it's kind of coasting. Also it's too damn easy.

I'm sorry, I got carried away, you were asking if you should play the previous ones? No, you 'should' not. But you could, and for F1 & F2 you would certainly not lose your time if you know what you're getting into. And if you don't, at least go and watch their intro on Youtube, they'll give you the feel of the world.

* Possible contenders in terms of "original video game world": Elder Scrolls (vast, but less original), Deus ex (not as large), Bioshock (same), Final Fantasy (original and vast, but not as complex). Any other idea?
** Technically not the 1950s, but in practice the 50s + a bunch of high tech gizmo.

It had to be the one game I'm actually interested in hearing about.

Josh Sawyer, Chris Avellone and the rest of Obsidian's einherjar - the mighty saviours of the Fallout universe storming straight from the triumph of New Vegas to resurrect classic Baldur's Gate-style isometric rpgs? Who are these heroes? They couldn't really pull it off again, could they?

I turned my head away from the development of this game; there are too many ways for it to disappoint - some of the combat mechanics sound worryingly 4e D&D to me - but here I find that it's been released and is...good...pretty...has pathfinding issues?

I just realized I know nothing about RPGs.

Your video, If RPG Video Game Characters Were Honest, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This achievement has earned you your "Pop Star" Level 30 Badge!

I thought the solution was rather obvious, actually.

You fix things by making games where people are portrayed as... people. Not trophies to be acquired, not sexual objects to be drooled over, and not stereotypes.

You couple that with continued criticism of games that continue to rely on sexist, racist, or homophobic tropes.

And guess what? That's already happening. People have been saying that games need to change for a while before Sarkeesian showed up. Bioware acknowledged the issues and started trying to include more realistic characters in its RPGs years ago--and caught flak for it even back then.

To address your other... points?

My daughter asked me the other day why she can't play as the princess in Super Mario Galaxy 2 (or any of the other Mario games we own). And I had to tell her it's because the Princess got kidnapped. Her response was to ask if she could play as the Princess once we freed her from Bowser. And I had to tell her no.

There is something wrong with that!

After having that conversation with my daughter I fired up Torchlight, where I'm currently playing as a Vanquisher. Vanquisher's are rogue-like ranged characters and can only be female. If you want to be a warrior ("Destroyer" in game terms) or magic user ("Alchemist" in game terms), sorry--it's a men's only club. And not only that, but Vanquisher's--regardless of the armor they wear, must bare their midriff and wearing a mini-skirt showing lots of leg and cleavage (do a google image search for Torchlight Vanquisher to see what I'm talking about). Apparently you can't be a Vanquisher without being a sex pot too.

There is something wrong with that! (To be fair, they got better with Torchlight II and allowed any class to be any gender and allowed the women to cover up with armor OR choose to be sexy).

Society doesn't just change by itself. You're right, society is becoming more accepting of diversity--because people are fighting very hard for it.

Take America's attitude towards homosexuality. Look at the strides made in the last 20 years. That didn't just magically happen. There were TV shows that portrayed homosexuals as human beings worthy of respect. There were lawsuits. There were marches and protests. There were speeches. There were YouTube campaigns like "It gets better." A lot of people worked fucking hard to get the message out that bigotry is not okay.

Look, I'm sorry people pointing out to you how fucked up it is how women are sometimes portrayed in games is somehow ruining your ability to enjoy games. But there are serious problems here. Maybe not problems for you, but problems for people like my daughter.

The solution to these problems is not to lambast the people pointing them out. Nor is the solution to sit back and do nothing and hope it all works out for the best. One solution, as I've already stated, is to be openly critical of the messages contained in ALL media (including games). Another solution is to be vocal about the need for more realistic and diverse portrayals of people in ALL media (including games).

You can still have your Damsel/Dude in Distress trope, by the way. I have no doubt lazy developers will continue to use it as a substitute for meaningful story. Just don't expect people not to call out the utter absurdity of it, is all I'm saying.

This has been a damn good year for games even though a lot of the games that should have been good were really sort of rehashes/boring with subpar indie games, Ubisoft reskinning Assassin's Creed for every franchise (I'm looking at you Shadow of Mordor) and then there are all of the bland ass MMO's that looked decent but ended up sucking (Wildstar, ArcheAge). Not that they're bad, theoretically they are decent games but they just don't have the innovation or oomph.

I've NEVER spent $75.00 on a game needless to say a beta, but E:D is definitely worth it. It's my top game of the year (even in beta form). Closely followed by Divinity: Original Sin (fucking awesome RPG), Legends of Grimrock II (fucking awesome old school dungeon crawler (Ultima Underworld / Myst puzzler), Wasteland 2 (awesome Wasteland comeback) as well as Alien: Isolation (great concept, nailed the visuals & sound -- super intense). And then there was Hearthstone which I definitely spent more time playing than anything else.

But, Elite: Dangerous is stunningly brilliant, best sound I've ever heard in a game- it's so fucking good that I invested in a HOTAS & Oculus Rift (haven't gotten it yet though).

Downloading the update now - can't wait to see the changes.

If, by "shit boys traditionally will not do often" you mean "shit inappropriate to the macho-image some boys are encouraged to take on", then it's not odd at all. Those are not the boys that generally play RPGs. It's just one example of why geeks are superior to the run-of-the-mill thugs, hoods and jocks in school. Geeks tend to be willing to use their heads, and not just for busting through walls.

Then let people own grenades, RPGs, flamethrowers, tanks...

Owning any of these are harmless after all... just like guns. It's not like their purpose or effect changes how we should regard them.

I'm very impressed with how interactive and alive they've made the world feel. The level of graphical detail here is reminiscent of The Witcher 2. The combat, while more action RPG than tactical isometric like Origins still looks like it has depth, but just more leans towards the Dark Souls variety with circle strafing to avoid enemy maneuvers and targeting specific boss weak points.

Guess we'll have to see how it turns out, but given how much they've willing to show and the fact that Bioware have proven they always deliver on the plot/storyline I'm pretty optimistic, even after what happened with DA:2.