The lull of RPGs

[AngryBritishAce]

If an RPG requires the players to constantly think about numbers and the combat mechanics, you're not roleplaying, you're simply playing a game. Not to say I don't enjoy that style of gameplay; I enjoy tactical combat and moving around my characters to fulfill different roles like in games such as DA:O. But when you put that in front of immersion, story telling and getting into your character, then it's not roleplaying.

Someone "gets" it.

I'm glad I'm not the only one.

I shall take this chance to quote Gary Gygax (in a small documentary on the Futurama film "Bender's Game"), who, when asked if he invented role-playing games, said "No, as long as kids have been playing cops and robbers and cowboys and indians, they've been playing Roleplaying games." Just this quote alone reaffirms what we said, that you don't need pen-and-paper styled combat and tactics to create a good RPG, all you need is the ability to "become" your character and live in the world as your character would.

 

[OrpheusTelos]

Well, Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD Remix just came out...

 

[chainguns]

The fuck is an RPG?

No seriously, the fuck is an RPG?

In this forum people are talking about Mass Effect, Skyrim, Deus Ex, and New Vegas like they have more than some basic details in common.

Let's think about what RPG means. Role Playing Game... That could be any game ever made, so there must be something more.
Is an RPG defined by it's leveling system? It's story? It's characters?

The fuck is an RPG?

Examples of *some* RPG conventions (the more of these a game has the more of an RPG it is)

Player skill vs character skill (ie stats) ideally turn based (or RTwP) combat
Choices and consequences (ideally with cut content if you picked A over B)
Levelling and loot
Story driven
Exploration (ideally open world)
Multiple builds and approaches (eg can finish as a half-orc rogue or Barbarian cleric)
Quest based gameplay, ideally requiring some sort of 'joining of dots' by connecting various NPC info and lore

In a nutshell, a game that tests your thinking skills above your reflex skills. If a game has a lot of the above mentioned items, but tests mainly reflex, then it's called an "action RPG" or aRPG. If it were just "playing a role" then Football Manager or Call of Duty would fit the description.

 

[Silverfox99]

RPGs are not declining. I hate when gamers try to say things like this. The problem is that many gamers want the old experience of a RPG, but in many ways those games were crap. Not once in the last ten years did I think to my self 'hey ya know what I should play Pool of Radiance again',or 'Hell Ya Ultima for the nes let do that for a month.' Don't give the shinning classic examples of RPGs and then whine about the quality of RPGs. There were many crappy or only decent RPGs at the time BG was released. Games like PST don't happen very often. Instead of whining about how today is not yesterday why not try to enjoy today?

Because many AAA WRPGs are streamlined.

I have no problem with streamlined games. It is not always a good thing but it also isn't a bad thing. There is a reason why most people like Pathfinder over D&D 2.1 or even D&D 3.5. Pathfinder did streamline the game and made it so you enjoyed the game more because of that. There is less bullshit that you had to go through to play the game, ya know the fun part. Sometimes that can go to far and take away from the role playing like in D&D 4. A good modern RPG has a balance to it and overall I find the modern RPGs to be better.

 

[Ranorak]

^^ This. If an RPG requires the players to constantly think about numbers and the combat mechanics, you're not roleplaying, you're simply playing a game. Not to say I don't enjoy that style of gameplay; I enjoy tactical combat and moving around my characters to fulfill different roles like in games such as DA:O. But when you put that in front of immersion, story telling and getting into your character, then it's not roleplaying.

Funny, I remember being a lot of thinking about numbers and combat mechanics back when I was playing DnD.
Or is that not a RPG?

RPG's all come from the early table top games, and those games had two major aspects.
The Roleplaying.
and the Roll Playing.

The Roleplaying was about characters, exploration, dialogues and stories.
The Roll play was about combat mechanics, dice rolls, leveling up and picking perks.

Now some RPG's focus on the roleplay and some games focus on the roll play. Both come from the same root, and both are called RPG's.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I can give a single example which can sum up both the OP and the fundamental changes to our beloved RPGs. To illustrate, a single feature from two BioWare games. Namely, the romances in Baldur's Gate II and the same in Dragon's age II.

In Baldur's Gate II you had the option to romance Vicnoia, Jaheira or Aerie for the males and Anomen for the female PCs. Now each of the characters had a different personality and the approach to each romance was different too. At no point did the player know the right thing to say, or whether any particular conversation was even relevant. Understanding the character was the key to succeeding.

Jaheira was grieving for her late husband, a possible companion in the first game. She needed space to grieve, a sympathetic ear and no pressing hard. Aerie was shy, inexperienced and full of self doubt. Rushing her or being anything other than sympathetic about the loss of her wings led to a swift end to any romantic potential with her. Viconia is even harder to read. As well as being evil by nature, her upbringing and early experience turned her (not unsurprisingly) into a cruel, cold hearted, jaded *****. With her, sometimes saying what seemed like the entirely wrong thing was in fact the right approach. Non-stop perseverance and a refusal to rise to her baiting and needling was the only way to win her. I haven't got the foggiest idea about Anomen as I've never had him in my party quite honestly (he's a poor man's Kheldorn to be quite frank).

These romances developed over the course of the entire adventure with conversastions happening at the strangest of times. Aerie could have a baby, Jaheira could find happiness again and Viconia could change alignment. They could also leave the party, fight over the Bhaalspawn and bicker with each other. And all of the above doesn't account for the restrictions, such as the potential LIs refusal to date dwarves, half orcs, elves or gnomes (in varying combinations), for example. Simply because that's not how they roll.

In Dragon's Age II, you just clicked the conversation options with the glowing yellow heart on it as you went. At the end of Act II, you had sex and everyone would sleep with anyone. There was no in-fighting or jealousy and no one ever left the party. That's literally the entirety of the romances in DA2.

A decade ago, BioWare made a game with many, many orders of magnitude greater depth and satisfaction, in 2D, than they did with fully voice-acted, 3D characters. Dragon's Age: Origins was much, much better in this regard, though still not up to BG2's standard. I cannot say whether it's the fault of poor writing, EA interference or what, but the difference is astounding. BioWare used to make legendary RPGs with great depth, nuance and complexity. Now they make cinematic, action RPGs for teenagers.

 

[Machocruz]

There has been a lull in RPGs trying to model the systemic complexity and possibility space of pen and paper RPGs, to be precise. I would say there are only a handful of video games ever made that have even strove for that standard: Planescape:Torment, Fallout games excluding 3, early Elder Scrolls, Arcanum, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Deus Ex. These offered quests with multiple solutions and multiple outcomes, in an attempt to emulate the kind of freedom of improvisation and problem solving that tabeltop RPGs offer. Some of these let you alter the plot line and create emergent situations through dialogue or play choices (Deus Ex's 'Anna Navarro situation' being THE prime example of this). They had character creation and/or dialog options extensive and varied enough to enable unique character identities or 'builds.' You were held to your character design choices -if you selected poor/low combat skills, then you were stuck being a poor fighter, and no amount of skill with Ninja Gaiden was going to change that. It's like acting according to a script of your own making; if you're role is to play a Minnesota school teacher, you can't break character and start acting like President of Iran.

So, there are still plenty of RPGs being made, but very little with the depth or complexity of older classics. You have to understand that the people behind those games played PnP RPGs, understood the goals and systems of such games. Today's developers often have not. Their only point of reference is other games, other genres.

Plus, the AAA market is ALL about accessibility and maximizing profits, not specialist design. RPGs are traditionally complex, cerebral types of games, and most of the entertainment audience just want to consume stimuli. Plus it's easier, quicker, and less expensive to make a simpler arcade RPG than a simulationist one.

 

[COMaestro]

After reading all these definitions of RPG, I'm honestly curious what most people would consider to be the first RPG video game they played.

According to those who insist you need to immerse yourself in a role and fully get into the character and the story, then I'm hard pressed to find many RPG's in existence. Any game without a customizable character can be chopped from the list, because you can't influence the character's personality, which includes most JRPGs. But I could argue that I can be fully invested and immersed in someone else's story, say Joel from The Last of Us. Since I'm playing his role and I'm fully immersed in the character and story, is tLoU an RPG? I don't think anyone here would agree with that, me included, but going by this definition...

For me, I think I'd consider Final Fantasy II(IV) to be the first RPG I played. Sure, the characters have a script they are following and you can't alter it other than wander around ignoring the story, but I sure as HELL was invested in the characters and story. I played it for hours before finally being forced to set down the controller and go to bed.

I think RPG has always been painted by the D&D brush in that you need to have different character options, levelling/progression, and equipment in order to be considered a RPG in video game terms. The actual character or "role" aspect was overlooked for the setting, aesthetics, mechanics, and overarching epic storyline that is typically involved in your average pencil & paper RPG. As such, that's what I look for when I'm looking for a video game RPG. Yes, I want a good story with good characters as well, but even a game that does a poor job with these can still be considered an RPG, just like a non-RPG can still have an immersive storyline with great characters that I am invested in.

 

[briankoontz]

I very much agree with the OP. Baldur's Gate 2, released over 13 years ago, is still clearly the best RPG ever made, and it's closest competitor might be Planescape: Torment, released 9 months prior. I've played plenty of low-budget RPGs, but none of them are as good as the Witcher series or Dark Souls. Because of the large amount of content in a great RPG, they aren't well suited to low budgets generally, not like platformers, fighting games, or tower defense games.

Developers are so self-consciously saying that they keep wanting to write great stories these days. Back in 2000, stories were just considered part of the game, it was no big deal. Even the pretty good stories in the Witcher games pale in comparison to those in the greatest RPGs.

More of the focus these days is on super-powering the main character, with everything else suffering. Harvey Smith for example worked on Deus Ex, a great game released in 2000, where despite the main character being a hyper-advanced nano-augmented highly-trained agent felt kind of normal over the course of the game. Compare this to Harvey Smith's latest game, Dishonored, where the main character blinks from rooftop to rooftop, possesses animals, and stops time.

There's been a shift from the real to the supernatural. Consider the change in Elder Scrolls protagonists, from standard lowly fresh-off-the-boat would-be heroes in earlier games to the superpowered Dragonborn in the latest.

Compare Origin System's (makers of many classic RPGs such as Autoduel and Ultima Underworld) motto of "We Create Worlds" with Volition's approach to the Saints Row series, where the protagonist is a combination of Spiderman, Superman, and the kitchen sink and the world is a toy made to amuse him.

Game developers used to not be cynical. They wanted to make amazing worlds for the player to explore and interact with. Now they want to create elaborate fantasies with no real substance (consider the Call of Duty series) to appeal to the fantasies that THEY suppose gamers to have. They are no longer trying to serve the actual interests of gamers.

That's why Minecraft succeeded. It's a legitimate effort to appeal to the actual interests of gamers, not the cynical fantasies that game developers have about the supposed fantasies of gamers. That's why the Sims series succeeded.

Reality is not dead. Humanity is not dead. Gamers are real people, we want to improve our lives through many means, games being one of them, and we want worlds to explore. We want to explore human possibility, not superhero possibility.

Game developers should not be asking "how many copies of my game have I sold?" but "how many human beings have I helped through my games?"

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I want to briefly (if it's possible for me to be brief) mention Elder Scrolls too. Skyrim was a very good game, but also shows the signs of being a console game made for a console generation.

Morrowind a decade ago had different classes which excelled and lagged behind with different skills. Males and females had different stats, as did the different races. There were multiple weapon classes each of which came in short and long varities. There were 3 types of armour, many armour slots and many different schools of magic with many, many different spells. Star signs were chosen at creation and fixed for the game. There were two, very well hidden and/or guarded sets of Daedric armour in the entire game.

Skyrim had characters of any race and gender have the same stats across the board with no differences beyond racial abilities and starting bonus. There were two weapon classes really, 1H and 2H (which can subdivide into sword/axe/mace but specialising in any one of them was barely any effort since most 1H or 2H skills applied to all three types). There were 2 armour types in five slots only. Any character could learn and excel at any skill without restriction and change anything they wished, almost entirely removing the role from role-playing. A warrior could become archmage, a mage could lead the Companions with no real pre-requisites (Mage Guild has a pathetic entry test almost everyone can pass). Daedric armour is player craftable and sold in shops. Player could change star sign whenever they felt like it.

Please don't mistake the above for dislike as Skyrim was a great game, particularly on PC with mods and in spite of the horrid console designed menus, UI and controls. But it too, like BioWare's more recent games, has nowhere remotely close to the level of depth Morrowind did.

But my beloved PC platform of choice was relegated to second-class citizen many years ago and no one except MMO and indie developers really publish on it any more. Gaming, RPGs in particular, has changed a lot and while there are some welcome changes, the "broadened appeal" and removal of depth, puzzles, challenge and so on has generally been for the worse. I think Microsoft abandoning PC gaming to concentrate on XBox is the biggest reason for the shift but it's too late to change it now.

So much for brevity.

 

[infinity_turtles]

I feel like perhaps I'm missing some sarcasm, but...

It's not the 1990s anymore. Not every JRPG can be lumped in with the Final Fantasy series.

I love everygame you listed, but they all came out in the 90s.(There's been SMT games since of course, but Shin Megami Tensei itself came out in 92)

 

[Machocruz]

An RPG doesn't need to have any complex mechanics in place, it just needs role-playing. Mass Effect has more role-playing than pretty much any video game RPG.

It does actually. RPGs are simulations of actions and reactions. What do you think "role-playing" is? It's interacting with various systems (environments, people) and dealing with various reactions according to your character's characteristics, which is enabled and enforced by complex systems. That's why RPGs are harder to make than action games, or platformers. Higher complexity.

What determines a RPG is what you can do outside of combat, and fucking half of Mass Effect 2 is making choice after choice shaping your Shepard into his/her own character.

Combat is part of a RPG if the RPG deals with combat. If you're role-playing an Army Ranger on a mission, engaging in combat is a major part of your role. Role playing is not just dialogue choices.

If an RPG requires the players to constantly think about numbers and the combat mechanics, you're not roleplaying, you're simply playing a game. Not to say I don't enjoy that style of gameplay; I enjoy tactical combat and moving around my characters to fulfill different roles like in games such as DA:O. But when you put that in front of immersion, story telling and getting into your character, then it's not roleplaying.

You're role-playing when you're thinking about numbers (which are just a form of data telling you where your character stands on a world scale of attributes)and whether your character should attempt in action based on their skill level and chance of success. And if you're role-playing a fighter in combat, part of your role is understanding the combat mechanics, as a real fighter understand their tools, lay of the land, tactics,probability of success etc. And combat during a combat encounter should come before story telling. In fact, the combat is part of the story being told. Role-playing doesn't just mean "talking to people".

Mass Effect 2 and 3 are more RPGs than 99.9% of RPGs out there, past or present.

No evidence provided here. I doubt you are even aware of half of the RPGs that have been released over decades of video game development.

Infiltrator Shepard can't use a shotgun in ME2, Vanguard Shepard can't use a sniper rifle, any Shepard is a bad Adept unless you pick the Adept class, etc. How is ME2-3 shooter with RPG elements when the fucking core of the game is fucking role-playing? ME2-3 has what many video game RPGs (that aren't actually RPGs) don't have one instance of. Final Fantasy is just an adventure game with a tacked-on combat system (usually a very bad one), there's no role-playing in any of the games. Lastly, how are ME2-3 shooters when you don't even have to shoot?

Action gameplay is one of the two main pillars of the ME series. Action that is combat oriented. The primary action in combat is firing your gun. Unless A. you're suggesting you can avoid all combat in ME2, which is false B. you can use other powers, which is a bit better reasoning, but enjoy being part of the 1% that limits themselves to just powers because you want to make a point C.you're not participating in combat at all, letting your team mates do all the work, which means you're not role-playing Commander Shepard who is a primary combatant in a military organization and is charged with the task (i.e. part of his role in the ME universe and his organization)to engage in combat.

You're looking at it wrong. Many people think RPGs need everything based on stats because the genre basically came from pen and paper games. And, what is an inherent limitation of tabletop gaming? That's right, no player still is involved in any of them because that's a limitation of the medium. You can't bring a sword to a DnD session, awesomely swing it on your turn, and then tell the DM you just landed a critical hit because of how awesome you just swung your sword. The video game medium inherently lends itself to allowing for player skill to come into play so it's natural video game RPGs would allow for player skill as well. There's also live-action RPGs that involve player skill, which existed before pen and paper RPGs.

Stats are just data. Players who want to be informed appreciate this data. And video games haven't reached the point where they can reflect all of the character's attributes through non abstract means.

If character skill doesn't take priority over player skill, then you aren't assuming the role of that character, you're just a player controlling a game pawn. That's why there are rules in these role-playing GAMES, so you don't do shit your character can't do. If you make a character that has poor marksmanship, no amount of skill in shooters should make him more successful in combat, in a proper RPG. That's what playing a role is, assuming the identity of someone with a particular set and level of abilities, particular personality and behaviors. If you make a common mage character with no melee skills whatsoever, in a proper RPG, no amount of Devil May Cry skills will allow you the character to be good at melee combat. Your live action claim is specious as well. So you mean to tell us that if your character in a LARP is a wheelchair bound academic who has never done anything athletic in his life, he should be able to run fast because the player in real life can run fast? Or he should be able to break out some Tae Kwan Do kicks because the player can? If so, then get rid of the R in LARP.

 

[The Gnome King]

What happened with RPGs? Are we going to sit and pretend that RPGs today are as good as BG, PST or deus ex? It feels as though they continually get more and more shallow, if not seize to exist for a couple of years only to come back with another shooter or adventure game with "RPG elements" that goes and calls itself an RPG.

Right now honestly I'm waiting on the new Dragon Age and perhaps an MMO or two in 2014 to get my RPG fix. I am actually playing games from my GoG library right now - Arcanum, Torment, Wizardry 8 and Baldur's Gate 2 have all been played by me, personally, in the past six months. It's not because I lack funds to purchase new CRPGs, it's simply that I'm an "old school gamer" to the developers now, a niche market served by the likes of Spiderweb Software and its Avernum/Avadon series. I do have some hope that there is an old-school resurgence as people realize that as a niche market, former geeks in their 30's-40's have quite a bit of cash and time to play games. I know my wife and I consider gaming to be a major hobby of ours, amongst others.

The last RPG package I picked up was, I think, Spiderweb Software's "humble bundle" deal a while back with all the Spiderweb Software games. The last RPG I actually purchased was either off GoG or... man, was it really Dragon Age 2 and The Witcher 2? Yeah, I think TW2 and DA2 were the only two RPGs out in 2012-2013 that I bothered to pick up.

If you're interested in old school games do check out Ubisoft's Might & Magic X project, it's available to play in early-alpha, I think is what they're calling it... http://might-and-magic.ubi.com/mightandmagicx-legacy/en-us/home/index.aspx is the official site.

Grimrock did OK when it came out but I wasn't a huge fan of all the "Eye of the Beholder" style puzzles. I was more of a fan of the old-school Bioware style storytelling RPGs like Torment, or Troika Games Temple of Elemental Evil and Arcanum.

I love turn-based combat, for example, and I think a really spectacular turn-based RPG could be produced - like a Temple of Elemental Evil without all the bugs or need for patching - and it would sell like hotcakes among my friends and I.

As a genre, the "action" RPG style appeals less to me simply because I'm not a fast-twitch reflex gamer, nor am I trying to become one. "Terraria" moves about as fast as I like my games to move.

As somebody who grew up on "Gold Box" games like SSI's "Pools of Radiance" I miss those days because the FPS craze of today certainly isn't really my thing.

 

[Paradoxrifts]

Deus EX:HR was good, but even that was so incredibly shallow in comparison to the original, is it because they're trying to make the games more accessible? are the old school RPGS too niche?

The RPG genre reached its absolute zenith when measured purely in terms of player interactiveness in the short period of time immediately prior to the introduction of voice acting for each and every individual line of dialogue. This more than any other subsequent decision which has since been adopted as an industry standard, has been responsible for robbing the genre of the depth of choice that it once was famed for. With that said, I have enjoyed some of the more streamlined modern-style RPG's immensely and the best examples are still great satisfying gaming experiences especially now that I don't have the time I used to have to sink into a game as I once did.

 

[SajuukKhar]

snip

That would imply that Deus Ex, PlanescapeTtorment, and BG actually did something truly unique..... they did not.

What makes those RPGs stand out is that they were the first video games in general to actually have even a fraction of quality writing that movies and novels had for years. However, in the modern day, with how easy it is to make games, those formally "deep", at least for video games, plot and themes have became so utterly commonplace that they have lost any impact..... just like they have done in movies and novels.
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The supposed "shallowness" of modern RPGs, at least in terms of mechanics, derives largely from the fact that most RPG mechanics were artificial, and built as work around to the highly limited technology of the age they were built in. However, again due to the increase in technology, the need for such workaround systems has largely vanished, and thus, games are mechanically more simple because there is less middle man BS to get in your way.

An example would be how cars have evolved, in the past, you had to get out of your car, and crank the engine using a handle on the front of your car to get it to turn on, nowadays, you can just put in the key and go. It's easier because there is less middleman bs in your way.

Similarly, there is no need for many old-school RPg elements like "attributes" in modern RPGs when you can just make the game let the player swing the sword, or shoot the gun, themselves.
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In terms of characters, if you go back and actually LOOK at the dialog old RPGs had, you will see most of it was to explain details of the world, its customs, and societies, all of which existed because the world itself lacked the ability to show this itself, due to graphics being rather poor.

Again however, due to the advancement of graphics, and technology, which has allowed game makers to just have the details in the world, or in the case of games like TES and Fallout, via notes and books, the need for most of the dialog older RPG NPCs had has vanished, voice acting just came along at the same time.

 

[Bad Jim]

If an RPG requires the players to constantly think about numbers and the combat mechanics, you're not roleplaying, you're simply playing a game. Not to say I don't enjoy that style of gameplay; I enjoy tactical combat and moving around my characters to fulfill different roles like in games such as DA:O. But when you put that in front of immersion, story telling and getting into your character, then it's not roleplaying.

I'm not sure about that. If your situation means you'll be getting into lots of fights against dangerous enemies, you will want to be as good at fighting as you can be. Therefore if you are playing the role of someone who gets into lots of fights, you will need to work for your victories or you will not be getting the full experience. Real soldiers learn about tactics, gamers learn the combat mechanics. Real soldiers train, gamers grind xp. Real soldiers have to follow orders, gamers have to follow arrows.

Combat mechanics don't get in they way of immersion and getting into character, quite the reverse. If your character must fight a lot, then immersion and getting into character require that you master the art of fighting yourself. I'll admit that storytelling suffers though.