He's completely right. RPG's are essentially a relic of the past. When video games first started, and there were only about 100 pixels, it was essentially a small technological step up from something like Dungeons and Dragons. The computer did the dice rolling, made a terrible graphical version of you and you're enemies, and the player would go around trying to collect items to make the fictional world seem bigger and more immersive. Everyone would have aspects of Dungeons and Dragons, such as numbers and stats, and items to improve their stats. There would be a text based story to guide you along, and that was considered fun three decades ago. It was a very primitive time.
Fast forward to the 21st century, and we now have realistic graphics, enemies that react when you shoot them, massive artistic environments and a huge emersion. It?s no longer necessary to keep scores and stats on pieces of paper. It?s no longer necessary to tediously search for items which completely interrupt the flow of an otherwise incredible experience (looking at you Mass Effect and Bioshock) because numbers in video games are practically dead. There?s no reason to put them on life support by introducing tedium, repetition, and annoyance into the players experience and calling it integral to gameplay. As Yahtzee said, when criticising the scanning part of Mass Effect 2, ?This is supposed to be an exciting space adventure! Commander Shepard should acquire resources by shooting them out of a monsters face, or by extracting them from the throats of alien hotties with his tongue.? When I pay for a game with my hard earned money, I don?t want it to throw a clipboard at me and call it fun. Clipboards and stats are for work. Video games are for fun.
As for plot being related to RPG's, I look for plot in videogames, and there are few games fun enough for me to play them if they don?t have a good plot. However, tediously upgrading items and counting stats is not at all necessary. Harry Potter didn?t spend half an hour repairing, selling, and upgrading at the vendor before defeating Lord Voldemort, Luke Skywalker didn?t run around Endor trying to collect items to defeat Darth Vader, and the Fellowship of the Ring didn?t have to look at an annoying item screen before battling to save Middle Earth. These are just annoying relics from a technologically inferior age. Let?s get rid of them so I don?t have to work when I want to have fun at the end of the day.
