Most Influental Game Yet?

@darji: Of course, GTA 1 as well, quite few games to list haha

How the hell is The Last of Us influential? It's not even a year old.

@i_dead:

What games did they influence specifically? What industry-wide trends can we trace back to these particular games?

@video_game_king: Hell dude give it a year, can point you some indie games influenced by its story telling. Many up coming games will take that path, influence is not restricted just to past. Even The Order 1886 looks influenced by the way it tells its story.

Maybe he should have stated up to what year LOL

Look if you want to talk influence it goes this way. Every first game in every genre influenced games up to this day, simple as that. Without them there would be nothing.

As far as action adventure games go I find it very important to mention Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Not the most influential of course however the game itself brought ideas from all over the place but it was also hugely influential to games that followed. From God of War to ubisofts own Assassins' Creed (obviously) to Uncharted it's very clear the influence Sands of Time had in 3d action adventure games for over a decade now.

The question isn't about innovation, it's about influence.

Setting aside the fact that The Last of Us is so new that it's pretty much impossible for it to have influenced anything yet, the game itself is more an improvement and refinement of the strides Naughty Dog made with the Uncharted games in terms of storytelling and gameplay. The most likely element of Naughty Dog games to be influential is the way they record dialogue and motion capture in a stage like setting with all the actors together. Even if you wanted to attribute the rise of this type of motion capture, being implemented in the upcoming Infamous Second Son for example, that influence would more aptly be attributed to Uncharted 2 than The Last of Us.

Moving on, can you name even a single game that borrows anything from the David Cage games you mentioned? You could say they're innovative, but influential? The only games being influenced by David Cage games are his subsequent games. Even things like Telltale's recent games are far more an evolution of the point and click genre than anything like the interactive films Heavy Rain and Indigo Prophesy.

Also, in your original post debating the influence of COD 4, you were unknowingly supporting the argument you thought you were disproving.

see someone mention CoD, you are fucking joking right. Thanks to CoD most games started chasing online play even tho the best experience is single player for those genres, example GTA V, they sacrificed so much from signature single player GTA for boring, broken, repetitive online.

Right here you agree that COD is influencing other games. Nothing about the term influential implies a positive effect, and in fact it could very easily be argued that COD4 was influential in a very negative way, but that's irrelevant to the topic of its influence. The fact of the matter is COD 4 had a wide reaching impact on the industry, making it extremely influential.

Super Mario Bros. Without it the console market wouldn't be as prosperous.

@edsone: There just aren't very many games like Morrowind at all so not sure what you point is exactly. The whole appeal of the Elder Scrolls/Bethesda Fallout games is their uniqueness. Also they don't really have action, hence they're not regarded as action RPGs by uh... anyone.

Dark Souls has very solid distinct gameplay as opposed to pretty boring generic fantasy gameplay; that is the main point where it stands to be copied (Dragon's Dogma has already done this to some extent, Deep Down obviously will as well); the second being difficulty and the third being metroidvania elements in a game where you don't expect it.

How is Heavy Rain influential... ? Predictable story-wise and boring gameplay-wise. The only thing that game has going for it is the graphics and acting but even then LA Noire did that better (it was developed around the same time so I would say they are competitors on that field)

Honestly I'd have to say Morrowind. It had everything. A beautiful, diverse open world, so many things to do, an actually great storyline, all in an open world RPG. I think a lot of games have tried to achieve all those things but none have ever really had the same effect as Morrowind did, for me anyway. Skyrim came close but they streamlined (dumbed down) a lot of the RPG systems and the story was pretty dull.

I think also up there is Ocarina of Time.

The original Super Mario Bros. has a great case. It gave tens of millions of people a reason to purchase a home console, codified a wide swath of genres that large amounts of games that came out afterward would try to emulate, and helped save the video game industry from complete collapse.

It's gotta be Doom (or Wolfenstein)

Quake changed everything.

Yeah I'm really leaning towards just saying QuakeWorld or Arena. It's basically the baseline for online multiplayer AND FPS games.

I'd probably say CoD4. Possibly WoW.

I can't think of any other games that so many developers were openly trying to compete with for so long. It was insane. If we're talking single games and not franchises as a whole, I might have to give it WoW the slight edge simply because I feel like it's still considered the baseline for MMOs. Not Ultima. Not Everquest. It's World of muthafuckin Worldcraft that, despite hemorrhaging subs these past few years, still stands in the forefront of most MMO players' minds.

For a variety of reasons, I'm hesitant to say it changed gaming as a whole, but I think without question it absolutely changed the MMO genre and PC gaming to a certain extent.

@fredchuckdave: A game doesn't need to be very similar to the other. Influence takes many forms such as the Zelda inspired z-target system in a variety of otherwise very different games. Same goes for the elder scrolls series. One of the things that stands out the most is its vastness almost sandbox like. Surely you'll find that elsewhere however the way it's done here has come to influence games now. Maybe I should have mentioned Skyrim but the series have been building popularity over the years and only recently to the point of influencing other developers. Take the soon to be released The Witcher 3 or Dragon Age 3 for instance. Also Fallout 3 and New Vegas of course. Even Dragon Quest IX developers said the game was influenced by Oblivion!!! I think the quest system. That's off the top of my head. For its obvious current relevance I mentioned it.

The metroid style exploration is not surprising at all in DS even if it's one of the elements that made me interested. Though not exactly a rpg but with rpg roots I could mention Soul Reaver that does just that. If anything it's simply the huge influence of metroid and castlevania in all sorts of game. About it's difficulty there's always been hard games that stood out. From the last 15 years Devil May Cry have been a big influence but usually not due to being hard. Ninja Gaiden was also successful. I don't see Dark Souls becoming the most influential game yet at all. Hopefully it'll influence some but that remains to be seen.

Now, what I think might be the biggest influence in future games from the Souls series is the multiplayer aspect of the game.

Anyway there are much more influential games out there that can easily eclipse Dark Souls influence, in the future. Heck, even Wii Sports could be mentioned here. Even Minecraft!

Now, you say the elders scrolls are not considered action rpgs by anyone??? Also doesn't have action? Are we talking about the same games?

@fredchuckdave: from wikipedia, not the most reliable but you can find it mentioned everywhere so I won't bother listing other sources.

"The Elder Scrolls is a series of action role-playingopen worldfantasy video games primarily developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks."

The first 2 Fallout of course are not action rpgs but:

"Fallout 3 is an action role-playingopen world video game developed by Bethesda Game Studios, the third major installment in theFallout series."

"Fallout: New Vegas is an action role-playingvideo game in the Fallout video game series."

In other words, nothing.

It kind of is, unless you can predict the future or something.

Good pull, I haven't played Sands of Time but that interesting to see a game influence 3 franchises that are very successful.

I feel like the original Devil May Cry was pretty influential - it pretty much established what "character action games" were going to be. I certainly don't think games like God of War would've existed without it.

@edsone: Open World Games are influenced by GTA 3 (and to a lesser extent World of Warcraft) at the core, not Morrowind; again really nothing is like Morrowind except for Oblivion/Skyrim and Fallout 3/New Vegas. Randomly associating every open world game with Morrowind is ridiculous. DMC is influential in one very niche genre; but God of War is more influential in the same genre and also in somewhat different genres (DMC 4 is even heavily influenced by God of War). Ninja Gaiden Black isn't particularly influential; that doesn't mean it's not a worthwhile game as many of the best games of all time aren't particularly influential. Wikipedia is not a good source.

Your argument still has absolutely nothing to do with Dark Souls; so not really sure where you're going with this other than being defensive against some imaginary threat.

I can't point out the most influential game yet, but I thought I'd mention that System Shock 2 popularized the use of audio diaries, and possibly the inclusion of lite role-playing elements in shooters and action-adventure games.

Pong. Without it, where would this website be?

Ocarina of time ? no ? Whatever.

@fredchuckdave: you keep saying Morrowind yet I explained to you why I mentioned the whole series. Due to the series growing popularity Oblivion and Skyrim have been more influential. Yes, open world games have been influenced mostly by GTA III but that's not to say that the elder scrolls open world thing, which is older then GTA III hasn't influenced games. Also I never said anything about associating every open world game with Morrowind. That's different from what I wrote. To prove my point I pointed games so when you say only Elder Scrolls and Fallout have been influenced it's not true.

It's not even necessary but the following quote is from Dragon Age III developers:

""[The next Dragon Age] is going to have the best of features from the prior Dragon Age games, but it's also going to have a lot of things I think players are going to find compelling from some of the games that are out now that are doing really well with more of an open-world feel," Muzyka told Wired.

"We're checking [Skyrim] out aggressively," he continued. "We like it. We're big admirers of [Bethesda] and the product. We think we can do some wonderful things."

Devil May Cry has been hugely influential to action games and it's gameplay has influenced dozens of games. To say otherwise is ludicrous. I didn't say Ninja Gaiden Black has been influential I said it was successful. DMC 4 takes some hints from GOW yes however GOW along many other action games from its generation are very influenced by DMC. Which is not to say GOW was not influential because it was.

I said wikipedia because you can find that everywhere. I made that clear. Seems like you're avoiding the point. You can look up for yourself. You said no one calls it action rpgs yet I already showed you that's not the case, I'll give just a few examples:

from compactiongames about Skyrim:

"The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is the fifth game in the action role playing game series that puts players in the role of the last known dragonborn as they try to defeat a great dragon."

Amazon about Fallout 3:

"The third game in the Fallout series, Fallout 3 is a singleplayer action role-playing game (RPG) set in a post-apocalyptic Washington DC"

You can find everywhere as I said. The series itself was supposes to be more about action then it changed during development to its current action rpg gameplay.

I already said my opinion on Dark Souls so I won't write here again. It's clear and with examples to clarify my point.

Imaginay threat??? I don't think you understand. The Souls series is already one of my favourite series ever. It works very well for my tastes. I see you like it too but that's not the point of this thread!

It's Minecraft. I'm not biased.

Stroker

Well, the game that has influenced me personally the most is Zelda: A Link to the Past, but as far as affecting the industry goes...

I'd say the absolute most influential games are COD4, Mario 64, Donkey Kong, ET (for being a major player in the original video game crash, and the lessons learned from it are pretty important), GTA3, Super Mario Bros., and The Legend of Zelda.

Metroid is very influential in that there's an entire subgenre centered around it, I'd say the Elder Scrolls games' impacts are going to be felt hard soon, and Minecraft will probably be near the top of this list at some point in the future.

Angry Birds

The only answer.

There's only one correct answer and you all failed to grasp it: Xena: Warrior Princess.

Arkham Asylum, The Darkness II and Spider-man 2 for comic book games.

Here's a better question - what is the LEAST influential game? I vote for Homeworld. No one bothered to rip off its ideas for anything worthwhile.

What about Doraemon 3: Nobita to Toki no Hougyoku? Nobody's going to that game for any ideas.

@video_game_king: Are you sure? I'm pretty sure I've seen that strange set of symbols used as a language in many games that have come out since then.

@veektarius:

And before. A lot of games before.

Devo Presents: Adventures of the Smart Patrol.

I think we can all agree on this.

Wolfenstein 3D

@veektarius: LSD: Dream Simulator?

You mean Minecraft before Minecraft?

Super Mario Bros.

Super Metroid is pretty rad.

@alexandersheen: Haha that's gold