Yes, I realise that other games have done similar things since Baldur’s Gate. I don’t like them either (to the extent that I’ve played them). The reason I’m making the comparison is because Drakensang is doing something DIFFERENT, ie. putting the focus on turn-based mode (thought I’ve been underwhelmed so far). I mention Baldur’s gate because that is the first game that made me start to hate the genre. I’m not picking on Baldur’s Gate, I’m using it as an example of what’s been wrong with the whole genre for the last 15 years.

And Baldur’s Gate is nothing like the Gold Box games. Everyone moving at the same time means your moves don’t always turn out the way you expect if some gets in your way. Spells are targeted before casting, which means your targets (and allies) may be in a completely different place when the spell fires. There’s no grid, so its very difficult to gauge things like a spell’s area of effect. And you can change your armor in the middle of combat. What’s with that? And I just don’t agree with you about the path finding. I’ve had too many PC’s charge off in the wrong direction just because they bumped into someone else in the party for a moment.

If you don’t mind those sorts of things, well then be happy! Modern RPG’s are made with people like you in mind. They are more “realistic” in a way, I guess (especially if you imagine that the characters are brain-damaged), but its too chaotic doesn’t allow for the kind of precise strategy that the gold box games did, and that frustrates me.

Thanks for the comment!

But … I mean the Infinity Engine was a lot of things, poor pathfinding was not a noticeable flaw. Really, all it did was take the gold box game and sped the time scale up so that you could watch it interactively and it mostly made sense.

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It some places it is still a cornerstone of PC RPG design, on that reason alone its hard to take this very seriously.

I totally disagree that this episode educated parents about ESRB labels. I don’t think they even showed what an ESRB label looks like. The only information they conveyed about the labels was that, in their opinion, they aren’t good enough. I don’t think that motivates parents to seek out more info.

The Fifth Estate could have given parents a comprehensive lesson about ESRB labels in about 10 minutes, and they would have if they cared one iota about educating parents. They didn’t even give a link to more info on the web.

Thanks for the comment, though!

The pic you posted at the top of this article as a joke explains to parents what the M means, but without the red banner where does a parent, not exposed to gaming, really get this info from? Video games don’t even use the same letter indicators as movies, a system that at least has wider awareness.

The point about educating parents about game ratings is a real point, and one that should be discussed. In that respect, the Fifth Estate episode did just that - informed a lot of parents about game ratings, info that they were not aware of.