My thoughts on Zork (and text-based RPG's in general)

[Howard313]

Back from the dead once again with a new overly-long post for you guys to wrap your heads around. (Sorry I'm not around as much as I used to be, college and life and stuff like that tend to get in the way.)

Not sure if this is that grand of a topic for a forum dedicated to submarine sims, but it's something that's been on my mind lately. Also, seeing as i screwed up in my college schedule (meaning i misread my deadlines and as a result turned in work that was supposed to take up the entire first half of this semester in a matter of weeks, meaning i have about a month break ) so I have nothing to write about but this.

Just a warning, I do ramble on quite a bit in these posts of mine (as I am sure those of you who bother to read my posts already know.) so for those of you who can't be bothered to read this whole essay.

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TL-DR Version

Zork is a good game that promotes the use of imagination. Bye!
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Now, I have a question for you guys. When I say the words "Old School RPG" what comes into your mind?


Okay, while not the oldest rpg in the book it's pretty far back there.




Getting warmer, Ultima was definently a pioneer in this genre but you can still go a tad further back.




Now we are talking, Zork! A game that was made in the late 70's, over 10 years before I was born. Some of you Call of Duty players may know of it as that unlockable minigame in Black Ops (Although I wouldn't know much about that.)

It really amazes me how far we have come in computer technology in such a short time, today's games with their cutting edge graphics and gameplay are truly amazing. They make for great story telling where you can go on epic quests and virtually enter another world.

But with all these enhancements in the graphics department we seem to have lost something along the line....something important.


Yes I know, it's childish and corny, but bear with me, I'm going somewhere with this.

You see, while the typical RPG of today allows you to go to another world that somebody else programmed and designed, a game like Zork allows you to create a world of your own. There is no graphics, no sound effects, no music, nothing except about a paragraph of text describing in brief detail, the area you are in, what you can see, and paths you can take.

The result (for me anyway) is a game that allows you to envision it however you want. Which is actually a pretty fulfilling experience even to this day, it's one of the few games I have played that forces you to use your imagination, not even games on the ATARI or NES did that, sure their graphics are laughable by today's standards but they had them.

I know it sounds like I'm putting down video games with graphics but I'm not, those games are great in their own way. I'm just saying that a game like this, which has no graphics to speak of strongly promotes the use of imagination, something most modern games don't do.

Now, I'm not the first person to say something like this, and God knows how many times I've seen people bash the "newer generation of gamers" for having a lack of imagination, and I do have to agree with that somewhat, I know several people in my hometown who would take one look at ZORK and laugh about how primitive it is before even giving it a chance. But here is the point, I am technically part of that "newer generation of gamers."

As I said earlier, Zork was made well before my time, and it wasn't even a game I grew up with, I first played this game in Highschool, my mid-teens, around 2005. That's after I had already been spoilt by games WITH cutting-edge graphics, dramatic music, etc etc. So it's not the nostalgia talking here, it's something else.

More proof that I was born after my time? Perhaps, I enjoy old black-and-white movies, I prefer music from the 60's and 70's, and I play games like Zork and love them.

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Now, I got the beef of this thread out of the way, there are a few more things I'd like to say, both about Zork and any game like this in particular (Text-based games, especially RPG's)

Zork, was quite well programmed considering what type of game it is and how old it is. I love how if you take the game seriously you can go on an epic quest of your own killing trolls looking for secret passages and collecting treasures, and if you are just messing around with it by doing things like trying to eat the mailbox in the beginning, cussing the game out, or telling your player to attack yourself you can get some pretty funny dialogue in return from the cpu. The designers of it clearly put alot of heart into what they were doing.

Sadly as far as I know the text-based rpg is pretty much a dead breed (although it didn't have much of a lifespan to begin with when compared to other genres.) But wouldn't it be amazing in this modern era for a new text-based rpg to hit the market and be popular? It's probably not going to happen but it is not impossible, similar feats have already been accomplished, Megaman 9 & 10 are two recent entries in the series and they look and play just like old NES megaman games, and as I mentioned earlier Zork was placed as a hidden secret game in Call of Duty Black Ops. Could the developers have placed Zork in there on purpose as a marketing ploy to see if a game like it would still be popular in today's society? And if so, will video game producers make another one like it?

Probably not, but it's interesting to think about. Who knows, maybe games like these belong in the past and we shouldn't try to make more of them.

And as Forrest Gump so famously put it "that's all I got to say about that."
Ciao.