That's a bit simplistic. The indie sector releases a lot of crap, whereas the mainstream industry allows the existence of awesome games like Crysis, wich is a terrific aesthetic experience -- thanks to the graphics, and thanks to the money that big companies can put on the table.
Disclaimer: I like Fallout, Planescape Torment and the like.
That's also on the simplistic side. The main thing that big budgets support is a particular style of design that scales to vast amounts of content - the gameplay is simple and repeatable, typically revolving around a few simple/interchangeable actions, but the environments and characters are greatly varied, and in-depth scripted events and cutscenes are considered the leading additive elements - the prime distinguishing factors. With current game technology, the budget can effectively get as large as desired, and the game's content will become correspondingly more and more polished and epic to accommodate. Technology is very much in a background, supporting role, once you're talking about AAA games.
At the indie end of the scale, budgets and schedules are too fractional to support a content-scalable design well. That doesn't stop indies from trying those, of course(the obvious way to make a new game is to clone an old game and swap out or add more content), but the success is usually better found by taking a specific approach to the gameplay - small, focused designs, rather than sprawling, interchangeable ones.
The first two Fallout games sit at an intermediate stage on this axis, but I actually still found them too big for my own tastes. To me, any game that presents a seemingly endless bounty of content tends to start feeling overwhelming. The last CRPG I really felt comfortable with, and explored every last bit of, was Dark Sun: Shattered Lands. That was a 1993 game, and many other games from around that period(Betrayal at Krondor, Ultima 7) already go past my comfort/scale threshold.
Comments
That's a bit simplistic. The indie sector releases a lot of crap, whereas the mainstream industry allows the existence of awesome games like Crysis, wich is a terrific aesthetic experience -- thanks to the graphics, and thanks to the money that big companies can put on the table.
Disclaimer: I like Fallout, Planescape Torment and the like.
That's also on the simplistic side. The main thing that big budgets support is a particular style of design that scales to vast amounts of content - the gameplay is simple and repeatable, typically revolving around a few simple/interchangeable actions, but the environments and characters are greatly varied, and in-depth scripted events and cutscenes are considered the leading additive elements - the prime distinguishing factors. With current game technology, the budget can effectively get as large as desired, and the game's content will become correspondingly more and more polished and epic to accommodate. Technology is very much in a background, supporting role, once you're talking about AAA games.
At the indie end of the scale, budgets and schedules are too fractional to support a content-scalable design well. That doesn't stop indies from trying those, of course(the obvious way to make a new game is to clone an old game and swap out or add more content), but the success is usually better found by taking a specific approach to the gameplay - small, focused designs, rather than sprawling, interchangeable ones.
The first two Fallout games sit at an intermediate stage on this axis, but I actually still found them too big for my own tastes. To me, any game that presents a seemingly endless bounty of content tends to start feeling overwhelming. The last CRPG I really felt comfortable with, and explored every last bit of, was Dark Sun: Shattered Lands. That was a 1993 game, and many other games from around that period(Betrayal at Krondor, Ultima 7) already go past my comfort/scale threshold.