Recommend me a very stereotypical western RPG.

Preferably for the PC, and nothing by Bethesda Softworks or Black Isle Studios, please.

Dragon Age is pretty damned good AND stereotypical.

Note that while there's a lengthy history of 1st-person RPGs (matter of fact, nearly all early ones were) in the west, I kinda' dislike them. Also, since you're ruling against Obsidian, I'd probably throw Bioware in as the other gimme.

Everything by Spiderweb (Exile/Avernum, Geneforge, Nethergate, the lattermost being my personal favorite,) Basilisk's Eschalon series, the Ultima series, various older D&D games like the “Gold Box” series, and the older VTM game.

I probably should have noted that I excluded those companies on the basis that I've played most of their games I'm interested in.

edited 29th Oct '10 9:46:07 PM by SpellBlade

Ultima 7 and Ultima Underworld are both excellent games.

Neverwinter Nights. You can get it and its expansions for pretty cheap now.

Temple of Elemental Evil is pretty stereotypical. It's also pretty bad unless you're in love with D&D's combat, though.

Yeah... I'd honestly prefer something good.

Anyways, thanks for the suggestions folks. Keep 'em coming.

Divine Divinity? It's pretty much Diablo: The RPG Version.

Torchlight

ToEE was made by what's essentially Obsidian. Also, Torchlight's really too much like Diablo to be an RPG.

^ No, it wasn't. Very few Troika people have gone to Obsidian, and the only one of them who had any role in writing design (and not on TOEE), Brian Mitsoda, is now working on an indie.

DDO.

Also, not sure if B Etrayal at Krondor qualifies as stereotyped, but I'd recommend it.

Dungeons And Dragons.

Well, you didn't say it had to be a CRPG...

Ah, but he said preferably for the PC. Speaking of which, doesn't it strike anyone else as odd that in spite of having enormous numbers of the world's best programmers in their playerbase, nobody ever made a really good piece of software for running tabletop games on a computer, or for that matter a solid client/server protocol for running tabletop games over a network? At best they seem to be offhand affairs consisting of simple calculators bundled with horribly buggy static ebook readers.

While I'd go out on a limb and say gamers are lazy (speaking from experience), don't underestimate the power of the rabid fan. I'm guessing that maybe some of these programmers refuse to work together (and a game like that should definitely be a team effort) for strangely asinine reasons like "He runs Necrons! I refuse to work with him!"

I don't deign to assume that I know anything about tabletop games or their community, but that's how something works elsewhere as well.

EDIT: As for suggestions... do browser-based games count? If so, Kingdom of Loathing.

edited 31st Oct '10 11:57:55 PM by ryaw

@ blakyoshi 7, Eric DHV: Well, I'd already suggested DDO, so...

Someone mentioned the Exile series and its remake, Avernum. Those might be worth your time if you're not big on fancy graphics.

I can't think of a lot of memorable RPGs I've played. My gaming experience is more focussed on Tactical and Strategy games and Sims.

edited 1st Nov '10 2:22:32 AM by Lancer