There is something like that in “hard to be a god”.
You need to change clothes all the time, in order to talk with people or stop people from attacking you.

[…] the upside, Fallout 3 implements something that I talked about in one of my previous posts: it makes wearing the right clothes for the right job beneficial. You see, each type of clothing […]

Stalker is a straight shooter with some RPG elements. Not a bad game but quite buggy. Enemies will often see and shoot you through walls, and if you leave an area and then backtrack you can often trigger the same scripted event.

I never actually finished it. I was playing it around Christmas, then I got that blinking dash thing happen and never reinstalled it. I still have my save games somewhere but I didn’t really feel like getting back into it lately.

Never played Stalker, is that really good (I mean apart from the realism of the gun attitude)?

At the moment, I am playing a bit Dungeon Lords. It is relaxing but very linear and totally unrealistic (my character is now carrying the equivalent of a small truck in weapons, arrows are simply unlimited in amount, goblin armors fit big humans and most doors in towns are just textures).

@Caroline – Morrowind actually partially does that. For example beast races can’t wear any shoes. Armors however seem to be universal.

But you are right. It seems that most games give you loot drops that are tailored specifically for your character. I always found it funny when a goblin would drop a piece of Armor that was the right size for my Tauren warrior to wear. :P

@Alphast – btw, did you play Stalker? In that game if you walked up to an NPC with your gun drawn they would freak out, and aim their weapon back at you telling you to drop it. :) I always thought it was a really nice touch.

Without going that far, I think a game which requires you to keep your weapons sheeted when you are facing major VIP’s (or risk being attacked by its guards) would not be that annoying and add a little bit of realism. In such spaces it would ask you to be super sneaky to keep your weapons at hand (undetected) or to either live them at the entrance in a container (Morrowind/Oblivion style) or keep them in a bag.

Interesting idea. I agree with Matt, though, that having wardrobe requirements might become annoying. Wouldn’t that also open the avenue for cross dressing avatars? Wouldn’t it be more interesting (and annoying) to find clothing in the game that is not suitable for your race or gender? Like some armors can be so big that if you have a smaller framed avatar, it would be impossible for him to wear it without altering at an armor smith or some other NPC. I’ve personally never played Morrowind, but I’m currently playing Oblivion. I guess it’s one of those games that give you so much freedom that it never grows old.

@Matt` – you are right. I was thinking more among the lines of Morrowind where you can essentially take over any house in town and make it your temporary base or build your own mansion later in the game.

Some games just run you through different locations as part of a quest without any permanent place to store your loot. But these type of games usually let you have a infinitely large backpack.

@Alphast – you are right, it does matter in little ways. I think there are extra remarks in there for when you are wearing a really damaged armor, when you are wounded or when you are sick. This is one of the reasons why it is the best game ever.

But I believe that the fine clothing doesn’t actually improve NPC disposition towards you or offer you any bonuses to speachcraft and mercentile skills.

Fair enough, I am not going to complain for another post on my absolute favourite game of all times. This said, I always believed that wearing fine quality cloths or armour did help you with social interactions in Morrowind. Try to talk to a local with commoner cloth and try again with high quality ones and you will notice the extra remarks in the dialogue: “I haven’t seen someone dressed like that in a long time”… And so on.

That would make for interesting playing, but if it was handled badly could become very annoying. I think it would work best in the RPGs where you have some permanent place of residence (to store all your outfits), not so much if you’re playing the adventuring traveller.

I suppose you could just have a “change clothes” menu, like a second inventory – if you can carry half a dozen different weapons without showing a bulge below your clothing then toting around a full wardrobe isn’t that much of a leap. But for any attempt at realism it would need to all be stored somewhere sensible.

Alternatively it could become annoying in the sense of “stupid game won’t let me in to see the stupid king without the stupid fancypants of +3 finery, which are only found at the end of a long and stupid side mission that I can’t be bothered with”. At which point I’d probably decide to just kill all the guards and force my way in to an audience with the resident VIP.