|
Most RPGs are not RPGs. Indeed, I find most video game RPGs to be an extension of the old genre of Adventure games [1] that encompassed such notable games as Sierra’s Space Quest series, LucasArts’ Monkey Island series, and LucasArts’ Grim Fandango. Yet despite their lack of RPG-ness, video game RPGs enthrall me far too much, causing many a day to while away in saving pixelated worlds from the ominous fall out [2] of some overtly clichéd evil [3]. And it has been like this for years. I have played from the contrived autumnal nostalgia of the Old School RPG through the rise of the so-called New School RPG. While some changes have occurred alongside the obvious technological improvements, notably the increase emphasis upon story and cinematics, it seems to me that little difference exists between the schools (of thought) [4] and that some staples of video game RPGs are hindering RPGs creatively and keeping them from being more RPG-esque. So it is that I would like to offer a brief critique of video game RPGs looking at the areas of choice, time, and interactivity.
I. Choice
I have always found the lack of choice in many video game RPGs to be silly. For instance, take the choice given you at the beginning of Shining Force to see the king or not: if you choose yes, the game continues on as normal; if you choose no, you will be told “Surely Not!” then promptly asked the same question again and again until you choose yes. This is ludicrous. Why bother having the choice in the first place? Or, take the choice to go or not go into the North Crater at the end of Final Fantasy VII: should you choose to enter the crater the game continues on to your final battle with Sephiroth; should you choose not to go, nothing happens – literally nothing happens (evil lies dormant) as you spend days wandering aimlessly leveling up or getting richer at Gold Saucer. Again, this is ludicrous. Or, take a game like Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn that has some element of choice in it, where decisions you make have some ramification (good things positively effect your reputation and bad things negatively effect it) and characters can irrevocably die. But this too seems ludicrous with the power to instantaneously reload a game should something bad happen [5].
Choice is needed in video game RPGs. Choice, choice, and more choice. RPGs are about roleplaying, and choice is directly related to the ability to roleplay. I am stating the obvious here for obvious reasons: nobody goes around doing only good things or gets to instantly change when something goes awry. When I do something in a video game RPG it should matter. If I can revoke it easily than my choice is meaningless and roleplaying ceases. Video game RPGs must have choices and those choices must be irrevocable. For instance, Big Blue Box’s upcoming Xbox RPG Fable, is an excellent example of an video game RPG designed with the player’s choices in mind. Everything that is done directly affects what the player’s character will become. Yet, Fable, for all of its genius, should not be an innovative new game, but a common video game RPG in a choice-oriented genre. Looking back to the roots of the RPG genre, one wonders what ever happened to Richard Garriot’s Ultima series and why has its choice-oriented design been so forgotten.
Of course, the question of how much choice should be in an RPG is always an issue. For most video game RPGs that are currently made, story is the driving factor with player interactivity taking a backseat. This is a flawed premise. If story is the overriding factor, and in the end, what the player does or does not do matters little, then RPGs and games in general are the wrong medium to be developing a story on. Indeed, most Square/Enix products and many Japanese-inspired video game RPGs should be novels and not RPGs [6]. RPGs are all about roleplaying. Taking away the player’s role and the ability to make choices and change the ending strips RPGs of their essence. Linearity is the great enemy of roleplaying.
Yet, an overarching storyline is inescapable. Story [7], as always, remains as the way we view the series of twists and turns of passing moments that are stitched together to form a comprehesive whole. Without story, most players would feel cheated and disoriented by a lack of goal. But story is not the problem (usually). It is linearity. If we turn to pen and paper RPGs, we find that a GM usually has a general gameplan in mind for where he or she wants the players to end up, but little to no specifics. Indeed, how the players get to where the GM wants them to be is the entire roleplaying experience. The players get to choose and make their way however they see fit, while the GM, like some jazz player, weaves their actions into a improvised story that will play out as he or she sees fit. At the moment such an open approach is technically impossible in a single player RPG [8], but its general principle of multiple paths to travel is quite applicable to video game RPGs. Some video game RPGs already incorporate such a design, most notably the RPGs of Black Isle Studios, but for those that don’t, there needs to be more choice in RPGs.
II. Time
Time passes. Things change. But the static worlds of many video game RPGs are like Grandma’s house: they never change. And like Grandma’s house, this tends to make things dull and frustrating since you can never touch and change all those intriguing little things that hang on the walls and sit on the shelf. The lack of change in most RPGs is appalling, from the repetitive NPC conversations to the pre-rendered graphics. In a recent RPGamer editorial, Andy B points out the absurdity of evil remaining constant and unmoving while the player can parade about the game world, leveling-up indiscriminately. I agree. If there is no time constraint in RPGs, there in no change; and if there is no change, there is no choice; and if there is no choice, then roleplaying ceases. RPGs need change. The evil in RPGs needs to change. But not only this. The towns in RPGs need to change as well. And the NPCs in RPGs need to change. And the characters in RPGs need to change. And the player in RPGs needs to change.
Now, some obvious technical and economic difficulties exist, but I wish to offer two ideas for bringing an increased sense of time to video game RPGs. One, limit the scope of RPGs. Why do these worldwide catastrophes need to happen? Oodles of unnecessary time and creativity are wasted [9] in constructing huge worlds that end up mostly empty. Why not have an RPG take place in one area or even one town? Take Nintendo’s Animal Crossing. Everything happens around one town and one central area. The result: things change: a lot: and a greater level of roleplaying and immersion achieved resulting in a far more enjoyable experience than running about a desolate Final Fantasy map [10].
Secondly, do away with the archiac character stats/experience system listing character traits as abstract numbers, such as ATK (Attack) 10 or MP (Magic Points) 15/15. While originally used as player aids in pen and player RPGs to streamline gameplay and stimulate the imagination before being used by computer and video game developers, such a system is now obsolete, misplaced, and ineffective in video game RPGs. This was a good system in the past when graphics and AI were a luxury and the gamer was expected to bring 16-color, 2D sprites to life, but with current technology, such a system is a hinderance. Numbers are meaningless to most. The common dislike for and difficulty with mathematics makes this overwhelmingly blatant. Changes in RPGs should be sensual like those perceived in reality, and not numeral [11]. For example, when a character, say a swordsman, changes and grows with the events that happen - whether it is talking to a NPC, fighting a battle, performing a duty, or some such task where experienced is gained – the swordsman should not be rewarded the meaningless, abstract numbers known as experience points and then go up some fictitious thing called a level. Indeed, if the swordsman gains strength, then the polygonal render of the swordsman should get bigger. Or take a hero(ine), if the hero(ine) gets wiser or gains more knowledge as he or she undoubtedly will during their quest, then such changes should be reflected in NPC conversations. Of course, some changes, as in real life, will be unnoticeable from the outside, but will manifest themselves in different ways through the character’s actions. A good example of a video game RPG that does character change well isThe Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. As the game changes so does Link. Link is not some static character with a strength of ten who can do this and this and then do that and that once his strength goes up one point. Instead, Link can only lift heavy things when he’s been given a magical bracelet or grows older [12]. These changes, as well as other changes done to other player characters are crucial to the player’s sense of time, and thus, to roleplaying and immersion.
Both of these are only suggestions, yet the need for time is RPGs remains. More time in RPGs increases roleplaying which leads to a deeper immersion for the player. A common mistake is to desire a timeless RPG, one that reaches everyone as a universal myth about a hero(ine) who saves the world. But timelessness is a myth too. Time passes. And it’s time video game RPGs change with it.
III. Interactivity
Sometime soon, Valve’s Half-Life 2 will finally be released after months of having to jerk off to all to short clips of direct feed. I can remember salivating profusely alongside millions of other gamers when the first video for the game was released over a year ago. But between the curvaceous facial animations, sweet particle effects, and sexy level design, what got me ROFWTF horny was the ability to interact with just about any part of the environment. Call me interactually repressed if you wish, but my lifetime of playing video game RPGs has left me a monster. How long have I spent running around static rooms wishing to move fixed tables or explore immovable desks and bureaus. Fux0r sux0rs. All these f00 RPG designers who dangle pretty environments in front of my nose, but never allow me to release myself upon them. Grrrr, I’d like to do a little visceral tempting of my own upon their repressive RPG game design. j00 d34d f00. Ph33r m3 fux0r. 1 0wn3d j00 when I eviscerate your interactually repressive self limb from limb. Ahhhrrrr…
…ahh…mmm…(burp)…w00t, that felt good…though to dislodge any acusations of ignorance, I will again acknowledge that there have been some technical limitations preventing enviranmental interactivity in the past. But such an excuse is no longer legitimate. When I enter a room, I should be able to move what I what, playing with the room’s contents in whatever whim my fancy chooses to dabble in at the moment. Nothing prevents roleplaying more than the inability to interact with the environment seen. I have quit games in frustration because I was unable to interact with the levels around me [13]. This begs the question: why bother creating levels full of eye-candy if you cannot interact with the level at all? Indeed, this is a question all RPG designers should take to heart, for the way levels were built in the past, from tiled side-scrollers to Square/Enix’s pre-rendered backdrops, have locked video game RPGs into a horrendous design. This must change.
Perhaps a good turn would be towards Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda series. While the levels of Zelda have always been rather sparse, Nintendo has always made up for it by allowing the majority of the environment to be interactive, from cutting down grass to breaking pots. Such actions may seem aimless, but this is interactivity, and it layers on immersion. Indeed, Nintendo has intuitively realized that immersion, and by extension roleplaying, comes not from eye-candy but from being able to manipulate eye-candy [14]. Zelda has textured its playability and gained millions of fans worldwide from the fact that it and its world are playable. It boggles that so many RPGs are lacking in such a fundamental way. And yet, it would do many video game RPGs good to extend further into the Zelda paradigm of interactivity, doing away with mistaken idea that story, rather than the player’s actions as a roleplayer, is the driving force of RPGs [12] and that gazillions of random battles make up for whatever interactivity a game is lacking [15]. Too many times when I play video game RPGs, I get the feeling that the game is some sort of monster lurching forward in its story, that in the course the game gets fed up with having to suspend itself to wait impatiently for me to press some button a few times before lumbering on its way. This is not roleplaying. Roleplaying results from the player (role)playing the game, not riding some train-of-a-story to the end of the line.
Or does it? In a recent RPGamer editorial, TitoPaul presents an askewed interactivity by suggesting two ways that a video game RPG could interact with the player, instead of vice versa: one, by featuring a neurotic protagonist who deceives the player in the telling of the story as a unreliable narrator, much like a Vladimir Nabokov novel or David Lynch film [16]; and two, by having the game interact behind the player’s back i.e. causing some characters in the player’s party to secretly threaten NPC’s lives or furtively filch a few gil from the player’s stash. While intriguing in their own right, TitoPaul’s ideas point to a bigger idea, namely that instead of the player playing the game, the game plays the player. His two ideas fall neatly into two categories of how such a playfulness can be achieved: one, by confounding the player’s expectation; and two, by giving the player the role of participant, rather than a passenger who is nothing more than excess baggage to the story or some divine being where every action of the player directly determines the game.
The first way is an approach often utilized in many of the current horror games. In such games as Capcom’s Resident Evil or Konami’s Silent Hill developers will often use dark, ambient environments or haunting, ethereal music to create the expectation that something scary is about to happen. From corners, to broken windows, past creaking doors, the player is strung along by the game expecting some horrific creature like a zombie to jump out of the shadows at any moment. Sometimes this happens, but most of the time it doesn’t. The tension is all create by the game within the player by playing upon the expectations that in such and such a place (dark, scary corners), such and such will happen (a zombie will jump out). Or take Silicon Knights’ oft-alluded to title Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem. In this game, the player is truly played by the game when the sanity meter drains away and random events begin to happen, leaving the player unsure of whether what’s happening is really happening or not. Such designs tinker with the player, confounding what the player thinks he or she knows in a dance of mysterious playfulness, all the while inviting the player to rethink what he or she knows as it tugs they deeper into a world of continual surprise and possibility. It is under this category of confounding the player’s expectations that TitoPaul’s idea of an unreliable narrated RPG falls.
In the second way, RPGs become more like real-time strategy games featuring characters, much like units, which are constantly moving and changing outside of the player and the player’s actions. To illustrate, imagine an antagonist, say Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII, who instead of being a scripted final boss at the end of the story [17], travels around the game world interacting with its inhabitants, swaying their opinions of the player (Cloud), learning the game world’s history, discovering secrets, solving puzzles, and forming a party of his own just like the player (Cloud) does. Eventually Sephiroth’s party would meet the player’s (Cloud’s) party for a final battle. In a sense, such an approach would be similar to playing a MMORPG, except that all the characters would be controlled by the game’s AI rather than people. By treating the player as a participant, a single impetus in a game world of character(s), a level of interactivity and roleplaying is achieved like never before. It is under this category of player as participant that TitoPual’s idea of the game’s secret interactions with the player falls.
Both of these ways of having the game play the player would add a much needed postmodern flair to the blossoming genre of video game RPG. Yet, whether a designer chooses to integrate such approaches or not is unimportant next to the overwhelming need for more interactivity within video game RPGs. I suspect that too many designers, while creating incredibly imaginative worlds that exercise and satisfy their own muses, have given too little thought to their audience, neglecting their players’ desires to be part of their world, exercising and satisfying their own muses; and unless, changes are made, players like me will continue to feel isolated as video game RPGs remained inpenetrable to our efforts to inhabit those make believe worlds where our imaginations can run free and uninhibited, and we can roleplay like true hero(in)es.
Conclusion
I digress. I ramble. I mutter like some poorly localized RPG. And in the end, if you, dear RPGamer reader, have made it here, then I can only hope that you have roleplayed this critique with(out) me. Yet whatever the case [18], I shall continue to endure these video game growing pains as RPGs spiral out into the void and meaning between their designers’ muses and entertaining commercialism [19].
Notes
1. This is for various reasons, but mostly because video game RPGs share the core characteristics of Adventure games, being a story-oriented walkthrough with oodles of dialogue and puzzles, and are indistinguisable from them with the exception of character statistics and battles. Some may argue that these two characteristics are precisely what sets this strange genre called (video game) RPG apart. I choose to digress, viewing the infernal amounts of stats to be, in most cases, utterly meaningless and the incessant battles to be unnecessary to the roleplaying experience. This is not because I lack imagination or cannot create a character from the jumble of numbers, but instead because the distinction between most characters in a video game RPG is non-existant outside of the ability to cast a certain kind of magic or inflict more/less damage. Indeed, most distinctions between characters is battle-based. This is a mistake. RPGs, as real life, are character-driven and character-based, not stat-driven or battle-based, and not story-driven or story-based. When a player sits down to play a pen and paper RPG, such as Dungeons and Dragons, they play a certain character who has certain characteristics and traits. Pen and paper RPGs give statistics to aid the player (and the other players also playing) in roleplaying the character. Stats are guides for roleplaying, not a quintessence of RPGs and cannot in and of themselves generate a character. Perhaps it would be better to say that RPGs give statistics to aid the player in acting out the character. Roleplaying has more in common with acting and creating than with numbers. Playing with a group of experienced roleplayers will reveal that, while craving to increase their characters stats, the lasting enjoyment of the game comes from roleplaying the characters and creating an adventure together. The same can be said of battles. While battles excite players with a greater level of interactivity and help set video game RPGs apart from their Adventure genre counterparts, battles do not solely define the RPG experience. A player can roleplay without swinging a single sword or casting a single spell. Natsume’s Harvest Moon series is proof of this. This is not to say that battles are not a staple of many RPGs and can come to help define the roleplaying experience, but they are by no means quinessential to its definition.
2. Super Monkey Ball style – of course
3. Apparently the third time’s a charm 4 Link trying to save Princess Zelda from the clutches of the evil Magician Vaati
4. Things change – get over it
5. This may be at odds with current game design paradigms, but I think it a bad idea to give gamers such freedom. While it may be ideal to hope that gamers will have enough integrity to choose a path and stick with it, without reloading if something should go wrong, and seemingly right to give gamers the power to reload as is seen fit, this is asking a bit much. At first glance, taking away the gamer’s privilege of saving at anytime may seem counter-intuitive, but fundamentally, it is not such an offensive idea given the fact that gamers are already subjected to the designer’s whim in every other aspect of RPGs from battle mechanics, physics, controls, etc. Indeed, designers need to realize that gamers are nothing more than slaves: down to the gallies! Of course, I am not the first to suggest such a change as some games have an auto-saving design that saves whenever a new area is reached or an event of great import has or is about to happen; yet, I would like to propose that auto-saving also occur when a choice is made, whether it is some grandiose IhaveChosentoRidtheWorldofAllTrollingThingsTaintedWithVileFoulness or a trite decision to purchase a flower or not. I think that in many cases it would do much good to take the ability to save away from gamers. This would require a greater time commitment on the gamers part, but it would increase roleplaying (by creating choices and situations that matter) in RPGs as well as add a tremendous amount of untapped replayability for all the curious players who wish to play through again choosing a different path.
6. And, as always, the writing would be fifth-rate fantasy at best
7. Or life - as we know it
8. And may always be so
9. And the Lifestream of the planet - all those green, verdant slips…
10. Map (or shall we say dungeon) slogging is about as fun as, oh say, actually having to press a button a few times during a three hour play (movie) session of Monolith Soft’s Xenosaga II: Jenseits von Gut und Boese.
11. This would also do away with the false notion that leveling-up is roleplaying. As Raincrystal asks in her recent essay, ”Now why would anyone want to do something like that [leveling-up]?”
12. Carmine Red's RPGamer editorial comes highly recommended
13. Some of the blame may fall on poor controls or a bad control scheme a la Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, though play controls are just as key to interactivity as level design.
14. Yet eye-candy is still vital, but not alone. Though, neither is manipulation satisfactory alone. Interactivity results when eye-candy meets manipulation, each relating and influencing the other.
15. Getting to watch gazillions of loading screens, battle result screens, and repetitive battle animations (like some bad movie) all the while wearing a hole in the controller by pressing one (and only one) button gazillion times does not count as interactivity and has never sent the fun meter spiraling out of control.
16. Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov wrote such novels as Lolita and Pale Fire. American film director David Lynch directed such films as Blue Velvet, Lost Highway, and Mulholland Dr.
17. Oops, I mean “at the end of the game…”
18. Whether GameCube or PS2, Game Boy Advance or PC, Xbox or pen and paper, theater or film, reading or life…
19. Give them pretty graphics and beautiful music and they’ll play no matter how it moves
|
RSS feed
iTunes