Has anyone played Divine Divinity?

[--Pete]

Hi,

That was my take on what Pete had said, not what I actually believe. I'd still like for him to name an RPG that fits the criterion that he gave.

First, it is pretty clear from what I said that role playing is more an attitude of the players than an intrinsic characteristic of a game. Even in a well designed PnP RPG with a good DM, a group of players can (and often do) ignore all the potential interactions and just explore, kill, loot, and level. So, it is easy to turn what was meant to be an RPG into a dungeon crawl. Going the other way is not as easy.

Now, the category RPG predates personal computers. FPS, RTS, etc., do not. So, for a computer game to be considered an RPG, it needs to meet the same criteria as non-computer games. Strictly speaking, I don't think any computer game is there yet, although some games can be used as DM kits on steroids.

But even if we don't look for strict compliance, we still have to evaluate just how much freedom the game allows the players. BG allows quite a bit within the overall arch of the story. D1 and D2 allows nearly none. It is mostly a question of what choices a player gets to make. In a few places in BG, one can choose to return the quest item to its owner or sell it for much more. There are other such choices. There is nothing comparable in D1 or D2.

In WoW, there is even more room to role play than even in BG. Partially that is because there is no 'final' objective. Partially that is because the world actually does have two factions that are in, if not conflict, at least tension,and players populate both factions (unlike in D1 and D2 where all the players are 'good' and all 'evil' is computer controlled).

But, in the final analysis, all this is meaningless. What it all boils down to is whether the player ever has to ask himself, "How would this character react in this situation?" and the game giving him the freedom to make a reasonable choice. Leveling, stat points, etc., etc., are just the insignificant trappings. If the player has to make decisions based on the avatar's character, then it is an RPG even with none of those trappings. And if such decisions are unnecessary (or, as is the case in D1 and D2, almost impossible), then no amount of the trappings makes it an RPG. And that is a fact, no matter what a bunch of non-gaming marketeers may think and claim.

--Pete