Re: OT: The Future of Computer Strategy Games
But isn't that the case with all media? There are very clever websites with amateur web design whose conent is brilliant, and commercial websites with excellent design and graphics but very banal material. Hollywood puts out big budget FX movies where the story or subject matter isn't as intriguing to many people as some low budget indie flicks. Smaller newspapers have better, more attentive local coverage than big ones.
On the other hand, from time to time you have projects that marry the two. The LotR trilogy in movies is probably a good example of this, where you had state of the art CGI and blockbuster movie production values, but it remained faithful to the story and were just great to watch. The only complaints I've heard about these movies are from people who reject sword-and-sorcery stories because they don't like the genre.
Despite our apparent differences in video game tastes, I think we can all agree that Master of Orion or its sequel(s), MOO2:BAA (and MoM), were great games that offered up many (probably countless) hours of fun and replayability. They also had high production values for their given eras. I don't know how many of you played Fallout, but that game stands out as one of the greatest RPGs of all time, and it was a quality game in all respects from a major publisher. Star Control 2, which has been mentioned as a good game by many here (and I'll definitely agree with) had great music, great presentation, great graphics (for its time) and probably the best storyline I've ever seen in a computer game. Starcraft (and all of Blizzard's games) while they may not be your preferred fare, offer up excellent production values, albeit traditionally aimed at lower-end specs for their time to be available to as many people as possible. They make up for low system requirements with great artwork, voice acting, presentation, and game/interface design. They're a mainstream company that makes very fun games.
I don't think games necessarily lose their quality when you add good graphics or major studio-level production values. It's just that there's so much crap out there in general, finding the few games that offer both great presentation and great content can be difficult. The overabundance of mediocre games with multi-million dollar development pricetags can make it seem like only crap games get the flash, but that's not always the case.
Off the top of my head for semi-recent offerings: Supreme Commander, Company of Heroes (and its younger cousin Dawn of War), anything Valve's released (or soon will release) on the Source engine, and Will Wright's upcoming Spore (provided it does what they claim it will do).
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