Role–playing games (RPGs) are easily my favourite genre of video games. Video games as a platform are a perfect way of obtaining your daily fix of escapism, and not surprisingly, RPGs fit the bill better than platformers and multiplayer shooters. In this post, we go through five things that are needed to make RPGs great. In RPGs, you play a character who develops in some way as you play – perhaps their appearance, their abilities and their story. A good RPG can transport you to another world which you are able to interact with and shape. Examples include fantasy RPGs such as The Elder Scrolls series, sci–fi RPGs like Bioware’s Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect; and many others that don’t quite fit into either category, such as the indie gem Bastion.
In the history of videogaming, RPGs have seen a general shift away from lists of numbers (à la tabletop RPGs) towards more immersive, character and decision–driven experiences. Most RPGs are still all about the numbers, but these days they’re often hidden behind a glossy, expansive world or shiny, streamlined menu screens. Old–school ‘retro’ style RPGs are still out there – The Legend of Grimrock, released earlier this year, is a great example of a dungeon crawler RPG that is unashamed to have statistics and numbers at the forefront of its gameplay.
In an expanding market for gaming, RPGs have inevitably become more accessible for non ‘hardcore’ gamers. Whether this is a good or bad direction for RPGs to go in depends upon your personal choice – is it dumbing it down or the next best step for the genre?
In this column I will discuss the individual elements that are key for an RPG to become great, rather than good. I’ll also try to amalgamate these separate strands and pitch my ‘perfect’ RPG to you, dearest readers, to see what kind of game I’ll make my company of game developing slaves produce next. It’s unlikely that you’ll agree with everything you read – in fact, I’d be worried if you did. Opinions do not equal fact, after all…no matter what some on the internet would tell you.
Setting and non-player characters (NPCs)
The most important thing for me in an RPG is immersion. Yes, the ‘I’ word. I’ll be the first to admit that it’s an overused word in gaming spheres – “that skimpy armor is breaking my immersion!”; “where the heck is my battleaxe being stored? It’s breaking my immersion!”, and so on. Yet immersion is important – so long as you draw the line between gameplay and immersion at a sensible place, however. Having a non–player character speak in 21st century slang in a medieval fantasy setting is not okay. Having an NPC gain new funds every week in in–game time is okay.
If the setting is not immersive, then an RPG loses all its magic. It’s easy for a good game to have a poor setting. Endless copying and pasting of textures might save developers time and money, but at a certain point it becomes irritatingly noticeable, and past that it makes me lose all motivation to play the game. Why should I care about this map, this world, if the developers couldn’t be bothered to make it look different to the rest of the map? RPGs with large, ambitious worlds suffer from this problem most often. Look at The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, a good game, but it’s immediately clear that 90% of their voice acting budget was spent on Patrick Stewart, who only gets a few minutes of speech; and Sean Bean, who didn’t even get to speak with his deliciously gruff northern accent. I mean, why employ Sean Bean if you’re going to make him lose his Yorkshire tones? Anyway, I digress. The NPCs in Oblivion are bland, for the most part. With only a handful of voice actors, a few different outfits and cookie–cutter conversations, connecting with these characters is difficult.
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is an interesting example to look at here. Often lauded as the best Elder Scrolls game so far, most of Morrowind’s characters were far from interesting, and there were a great deal of areas that appeared to be replicated, but the landscape and culture of Vvarndenfell ensures that Morrowind is remembered as a game with a great, unique setting. From silt–striders to ash storms to Telvanni towers – it did not fall completely into the usual archetypal high–fantasy medievally type setting that we’re all used to. And that made it very special.
Uninteresting characters, bland terrain and unimaginative landscapes can easily destroy an RPG.
Character progression – stats
Feats, skills, talents, powers, attributes, spells, abilities and traits. RPGs use many terms to describe the additional skill your character gains as you play through their story. In KOTOR, The Elder Scrolls and Dragon Age, not to mention dozens of other games, we’re used to fortitude or vitality increasing our max health, strength increasing our close–range damage output, and willpower increasing our magical capabilities. These attributes have featured in RPGs from the beginning of time, and have clearly persisted for a good reason: they force us to specialise, to make a choice; a noticeable choice that has a significant impact on our playstyle. Sure, you can make it hard for yourself and play a warrior with pitiful amounts of vitality or a wizard with lots of points in dexterity and strength. But choosing a route, a speciality, for our characters is an important and satisfying part of any role–playing experience.
Here the ‘trinity’ of gaming presents itself: tank, healer, and DPS (damage–per–second). Clearly the trinity only features in games that are either multiplayer or where you can spec out companions (KOTOR, Wizardry 8, etc.), but most RPGs require a lone player–character to specialise to some degree. Specialisation is important, and adds to replayability value (more on that later), but here some RPGs can be unforgiving. With so many different attributes, especially in, say, Morrowind, it’s very difficult for a newcomer to know what to pick. In my first venture into Morrowind, I played as an archer with medium armor and a talent for certain magicks. Alas, by not investing in Security or Alteration, I had no way to open locked objects, which halted my progress in many of the quests I stumbled upon. I had a choice: to spend all my time and gold attempting to level up one of the aforementioned skills, or to reroll my character, selecting different major and minor skills than I would have liked.
That brings up a major gripe I have with progression in RPGs: being forced to play a certain way. There are two obvious ways developers can, and do, solve this problem. First, most simply, present players with ways to refund their spent attribute and skill points; and second, give the player several ways of tackling the obstacles in front of them. Neither of these solutions are perfect, yet both have their merits. Having companion systems helps reduce the problem almost entirely – Sten can tank, Morrigan can become adept at herbalism, and my character has a talent for picking locks and disabling traps. In games where lore, or purely the style of gameplay, only allow solo adventuring, a combination of the two points I presented at the start of the paragraph can reduce the chance of a player hitting brick walls. Give me a free points refund at level 10. Let me force my way through this door rather than standing there stabbing at the lock repeatedly (Morrowind players, that one’s for you). Give me a hand when choosing which skills to level up for the first time. Above all, don’t punish me for choosing my favourite playstyle.
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