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harlatan ,

Bullet time was popularized in max payne.

simple ,

Dark Souls popularized the stamina meter and the “dropping all your money on death and having to go pick it back up” mechanic. Not to mention spawning a subgenre of similar games like Lies of P and Lords of the Fallen

kratoz29 ,

Please people, help me out with this, which game popularized any modern game to be a huge ass open world action RPG?

My best bet is that it is The Witcher 3’s fault.

PunchingWood ,

First thing that came to mind are the Dragon Age games before, at least Inquisition was sort of action RPG.

Before that in a lesser extent the Assassin’s Creed games, although they were more action than RPG.

That said, I greatly enjoyed all these games, including Witcher 3.

tfw_no_toiletpaper ,

Probably any Bethesda game

Cornelius_Wangenheim ,

GTA3 is the one that started the trend.

kratoz29 ,

Hmm, it lacked the RPG part though… GTA San Andreas on the other hand 😀

Cornelius_Wangenheim ,

I wouldn’t call most of the modern ones real RPGs either.

MalReynolds ,
@MalReynolds@slrpnk.net avatar

Been around since at least early Final Fantasy / Chrono Trigger SNES era (for some values of action). Maybe Atari ‘Adventure’.

XTL ,

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_(video_game)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_(video_game)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angband_(video_game)

Depends on how you constrain that idea. Open worlds were a very early idea, but old computers were somewhat capacity limited in how much content you could have.

r00ty Admin ,
r00ty avatar

I would say older than that (well maybe not elite), as much as the tech could handle it you should include:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_Esprit

Here you had several town maps, including dual carriageways, main roads, side roads, one way streets. And you could just drive down any of them. They were all nondescript, but the amount of memory really limited what could be done.

There was also the games using the freescape engine. Driller, Darkside and Total Eclipse. These were all about as open world as you could achieve on the hardware of the time.

In terms of "open world" the definition is open to interpretation. I'd argue that text based adventures were open world too in their own way. So it really depends on what features people agree makes an "open world" game as to what the first game that contains all those features was.

UndercoverUlrikHD ,

It started long before that, I think ubisoft in general was hugely influential in that trend.

9point6 ,

The first RTS is an obscure Japanese game called Herzog Zwei,

Westwood studios then made Dune 2 and Command & Conquer which basically polished and popularised the genre for the rest of the world.

Pretty much every RTS that followed took at least some inspiration from how those games worked

RootBeerGuy ,
@RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Warcraft came a year before Command & Conquer and improved on many concepts that Dune II introduced.

9point6 ,

Yeah, you’re right to highlight warcraft although I don’t think it’s a clean line with Warcraft between dune 2 and c&c. C&C was probably around 2 years into development by the time Warcraft came out, and my assumption is most of the actual game design was pretty finalised by that point. Though I’m sure some minor influences made their way in, I don’t think Warcraft massively affected the kind of game we got in the end.

But yeah that’s not to diminish the contribution of warcraft to the genre, there’s loads of games that followed copying the Warcraft style of RTS, even as part of the c&c series in the end with Generals.

TheMinions ,

Assassin’s Creed and the Open World Gameplay design. It definitely existed before then, but after AC came out, it felt like every RPG switched to the open world map.

r00ty Admin ,
r00ty avatar

There have been "open world" games since the 1980s. Just of course, memory limited how big that world could be, and how much you could do in it. The genre as a whole is ancient.

TheMinions ,

For sure. AC just popularized it.

delitomatoes ,

I think Spyro was the first mainstream game to standardise achievements, you could do random stuff in-game and it gave you a little pop up, carried over to Ratchet and Clank and now every game has official achievements

UndercoverUlrikHD ,

I think Spyro was the first mainstream game to standardise achievements, you could do random stuff in-game and it gave you a little pop up

Which one did that?

sirico ,
@sirico@feddit.uk avatar

Arma 2-3 have been responsible for at least 3 major multiplayer genres.

dabu ,
@dabu@lemmy.world avatar

First thing that came in to my mind was Gears of War with its specific third person view and hiding behind covers. I don’t think it was the first game with that mechanic but the most influential one

RootBeerGuy , (edited )
@RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Third person view in an FPS (first person shooter) type of game was first seen in the first Lara Croft game, I think?

MagicShel ,

I think you need to be more specific than just “third person”. Third person view was in Pong, Pac-Man, Asteroids, Centipede, etc. It’s the default for most games.

First person was probably introduced with Battle Zone.

Which, I don’t mean to sound pedantic, I just literally don’t really know what you mean here.

RootBeerGuy ,
@RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Then you will need to extend that to the OP of this comment chain as they didn’t specify either what Gears of War is. I am going to edit my comment to clarify but I do feel you are too pendantic for asking this.

MagicShel ,

Thank you. Sorry. Never played that game and didn’t know that was specific to FPS. I know some arcade shooter games had that mechanic, but not in the context of free-roaming FPS. I think you’re right about Tomb Raider.

GeneralEmergency ,

Operation WinBack from 1999 is considered the first third person cover based shooter.

sirico ,
@sirico@feddit.uk avatar

This is true but Gears popularised it

cyberpunk007 ,

Souls games. Popularized invasions.

rustydrd ,
@rustydrd@sh.itjust.works avatar

Perfect example that “popularized” is different from “popular”.

rustyfish ,
@rustyfish@lemmy.world avatar

Don’t know if this counts, but Resident Evil 4 killed off the tank controls and single-handedly popularised third person cameras for survival horror games.

Sterile_Technique ,
@Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world avatar

Iirc Halo was the first to use left joystick as forward/backward and left/right strafe; and right joystick as look up/down and pivot left/right.

I even recall articles counting it as a point against the game due to its ‘awkward controls’ …but apparently after a tiny learning curve, the entire community/industry got on board.

acosmichippo , (edited )
@acosmichippo@lemmy.world avatar

I thought goldeneye had that basic controls concept a few years before. and Turok was pretty close before that.

edit: ah forgot n64 only had one joystick. but basically the same with the left d-pad and middle joystick.

chemical_cutthroat ,
@chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world avatar

I think you are right, but the N64 controls used the C buttons as analog inputs for camera movement.

Chozo ,

If we're talking Goldeneye, I believe the C-button aiming was an alternate control scheme. IIRC, the default controls had the stick control both your forward/backward motion, but also your left/right turning, instead of left/right strafing, so your aim was controlled horizontally by the stick, but vertically was pretty much locked on the horizon at all times. To do fine-tuned aiming, or to aim vertically at all, required holding R to bring up the crosshairs which you could then move with the stick, while standing still.

In hindsight, it's amazing that we ever tolerated that.

faercol ,
@faercol@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

You’re correct. In addition you could strafe using left/right C buttons, and you could look up/down using up/down C buttons, but that was awkward and not really designed to aim.

But we also must remember that those games had an auto lock system. Your character would actually target the ennemies by himself, you would only use the crosshair to dona headshot when you have time to aim, or to aim at a specific object in the game.

But yeah, that seems so clunky compared to what we have today

AsakuraMao ,

One of my friends still owns an N64 and wants to play Goldeneye and Perfect Dark sometimes. This control scheme raises my blood pressure so much lol.

chemical_cutthroat ,
@chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world avatar

I got anxiety just reading your post. Ugh.

mememuseum , (edited )

The original Medal of Honor for the Playstation 1 had an alternate control scheme that let you move in the modern dual stick manner.

GetOffMyLan ,

escapistmagazine.com/alien-resurrection-playstati…

Alien resurrection was the first and got panned by critics for it

Cornelius_Wangenheim ,

The original XCOM is the source of grid based inventories.

Star Control 2 is the first RPG that did the standard dialogue interface where you talk to someone and choose from multiple replies.

RightHandOfIkaros ,

Metroid, which spawned more than half of all indie games.

cyberpunk007 ,

More than half seems bold, otherwise I agree

RightHandOfIkaros ,

It sure feels like more than half of them label themselves as some blend of metroidvania, as long as it isnt a cardbattler or a roguelike, its 100% going to label itself a metroidvania.

cyberpunk007 ,

I guess I just look at it as you’re saying FPS, MMO, RPG, RTS, etc are less than half.

makr_alland ,

Spacewar! was a F2P PvP game with no microtransactions and no battle pass. Although it’s hard to quantify exact player numbers (it precedes Steam charts), for a while it was the most played videogame in the world.

Its real-time graphics and multiplayer combat were very influential, and widely copied by many other games.

sneezycat , (edited )
@sneezycat@sopuli.xyz avatar

It also popularized the “mechanic” of online matchmaking through steam for pirated and abandoned games. Thank you Spacewar, very cool.

Edit: the Steam one is a test game for their steamworks system with source code from the original game. The more you know.

Anticorp ,

Warcraft started an entire genre of games. Blizzard took that concept and created StarCraft, which spawned million dollar tournaments.

Pea666 ,

You mean RTS games? Warcraft is from ‘94, two years after Dune 2 was released.

rimjob_rainer ,

I think he means Mobas or Tower Defense games

RootBeerGuy ,
@RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Yeah, however before Warcraft there was Dune II. But I am not sure which one was more popular at the time and I think Dune II came way before Warcraft.

I think why Dune II is more notable though is that the first Dune game was more of an adventure style came, not a strategy game. Then they changed the game with its successor and introduced the asymmetrical factions that each had a few unique units with differing strategies.

Warcraft took that concept further of course. But even there its rather Warcraft II that really had a big breakthrough.

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