But, I LIKE this Cliché!

[scatman45]

How about the ever abundant supply of Bandits?

I was just about to say the exact same thing.

 

[Nadiril]

http://project-apollo.net/text/rpg.html

giant list of RPG Cliche's. Pretty funny at points
Eg "The Higher The Hair, The Closer To God (Cloud Rule)
The more outrageous his hairstyle, the more important a male character is to the story."

 

[Wrds]

HAHA oh wow this article made me laugh.

That last one about doing everything was just priceless.

 

[jark.jark]

I'm pretty certain you could buy time extensions in fallout 1 in the form of a water caravan for quite a high price.

 

[oathblade]

European style settings with Ninjas / other cultural contamination (Im talking to you Katanas)

The suicidal NPC. 'Yea I'm gonna lose this fight but damn it fight to the death!'

More money in rewards than the NPCs could make 'Heres some gold for helping me, its my life savings but golly you killed those ten wolves so good you deserve it.'

Monsters guarding stuff they can use (Thank you Goblins comic

 

[DracoSuave]

The only people who don't try and surrender/talk their way out of you killing them at the end of their dungeon are either overconfident assholes (Like Jarvia) or religious zealots (like the Cult in Haven).

Actually, the Cult in Haven tries to make a deal with you. This is how you get the Reaver specialty.

 

[xqxm]

I effin' hate RPG games. Or well, hate is a strong word, but i've never really gotten into them. It just strikes me as the most ludicrously boring way to make a game, and i say that not only because i know people who play tabletop RPG's.

Without further ado, here are the cliches that destroy RPG's for me!

* Dialogue menues (I mean, Leisure Suit Larry even had a text parser)
* One click autoaimed gear and level showdowns (It doesn't matter how skilled you are, because it never takes real skill to defeat an opponent. Only virtual skill and gear acquired through grinding your buttocks off.)
* Padding quests (HELLO THERE MY LAD GET X SHOES OF GNOLLWITCHES AND BRING THEM TO MY BROTHER LAZYSOD IN WANKSHIRE)

And, what i think is the biggest one:
* Improving your character (Yes, the very core of RPG gameplay. You must delve in and tinker with your characters stats and abilities and gear and make sure that everything is just right, and if not, grind some more! Because why have skill when you obviously have so much time on your hands)

That's not to say RPG's are beyond any help. I remember enjoying Silver a whole deal, because of it's seamless character upgrading partly, there were no levels or immersionbreaking xp, they'd just get better with time. The only customisation came from a variety of swords, shields and distance attacks you could outfit your party with, and it was actually fun. Dialogue menues even took second place to forcing the dialogue in the direction the game wanted it, which i think is a much preferable alternative to making you roleplay BUT ONLY as Good, Neutral or Evil response. Play it if you ever get the chance.

 

[Galad]

Here's a list for you all that will trump anything you can think of. Beware, it is ridiculously long, and all of them apply to at least one game you know.

http://project-apollo.net/text/rpg.html

Bookmarked for its sheer Win. Thank you, Sir (or Madam)!

Do I Have to do EVERYTHING Around Here?

"Welcome to our town, stranger. The king has been poisoned, the well is contaminated, the princess has been kidnapped, the drawbridge is broken, the fields are overrun with wolves, we lost contact with the monastery, the merchants are all squabbling about something, the dock workers are rioting, the inn is infested with rats, there are undead in the graveyard, one of the ships is under quarantine, there's a curse on the temple, several town guards are taking bribes, an evil mage has been kidnapping young women, a supply shipment is over a week late, the Duke hasn't been acting like himself lately, a bad minstrel is annoying people in the town square, goblins have moved into our sprawling sewer system, widow Creekjoint has lost her cat, a priceless artifact has gone missing, and we've got an entrenched criminal organization that we're all too chickenshit to fight. If you could fix all that we'd be much obliged."

"Uh... hi?"

Two words: The Witcher (enhanced edition)...

Yep, TW is great for its "have a hard choice between one shade of grey and another" type of moral dilemmas in its quests..

 

[RandV80]

One word: Grandia. Maybe my favourite RPG of all time, and a veritable cliché storm. And I love it for just that reason. It took goodness knows how many much-loved clichés and deployed them unashamedly and playfully, from the kid hero runaway, to multiple spirit-s, to the (physical) End of the World, to the ancient, lost, but highly advanced civilisation.

What made Grandia good was it set out with a story to tell and characters present, seemed to have fun doing so, and didn't care what clichés it flagged up so long as they keeping things fun. In my opinion that game is the standing example of why a well-deployed cliché is never a bad thing no matter how often used it may be.

I'll agree on this, a game that shamelessly takes all the old cliches but makes it fun can be great. On the opposite side, another game thats great because it breaks away from so many is the Suikoden series (most notably II and III). Most notably being changing the 'world saving event' cliche to the borders of a single country or two in a much larger world, the 'hero' character usually has a strongly written background for being the hero, and so on.

For general RPG cliche's, how come your party can stock up on a variety of healing potions and magic and use them to have prolonged dungeon crawling campaigns and battles, yet none of the bad guys think to buy a healing potion or learn and use the cure spell.

Also, for the D&D like games, how about the constantly resting wizard? Use up all your magic slaying the two dragons right before the final boss who's on the verge of destroying the world? Just rest for 8 hours and get your spells back, the evil tyrant could use some quality tetris time and is happy to wait for you!

 

[Fensfield]

Of course, the Suikoden series ranks in a really, Really close second on my favourites list XD And I agree, it averts or puts new spins on a lot of the normal RPG clichés, at least in terms of storyline. Most pointedly of all, as you say, is the much tighter focus, but on top of that, how many other RPG's do you know that step away from the 'good guys vs bad guys' cliché in favour of a hundred shades of grey(okay there are a few like this, but almost none so elegant) and a plot that's based primarily on political and courtly intrigue?

It also has some very nice setting and character cliché aversions, Especially in Suikoden V. The best example I can think of is Sol Falena's matriarchy, for a couple of reasons. First, it's developed, admirable, and believable (unlike so many fictional, 'straw feminist' matriarchies), and perfectly avoids making its matriarchal culture Amazon-style; and second, it sticks the strongest candidate for the 'damsel in distress' archetype firmly in the leading role and spends a measure of time dealing with what it must be like to have to make one's way Out of that position.

 

[RootbeerJello]

Animals that inexplicably start ejecting money and fully cooked food when you kill them.

 

[DanDeFool]

Humans being the kind, benevolent race...give me a break. We're capable of startling cruelty and selfishness, but we like to kid ourselves with the idea that we're wonderful and helpful towards all.

Hmm... no. I think you're thinking of Elves here. Pretty much every RPG I've ever seen has humans somewhere in the middle. You may be referring to the fact that just about every RPG has a human protagonist, but that's really just because most people would find a human protagonist more relatable

The Ancient Well-Lit Tomb with Traps that Still Work:

This one doesn't just apply to games. Matthew Reilly's Jack West series of books does that as well. It's actually amusing to find that ancient Chinese tomb traps and Egyptian rituals that haven't been performed in millennia still work after three to five thousand years.

Hell, I'd almost call that an Indiana Jones cliche than an RPG cliche. I mean, weren't the first three Indiana Jones movies released before we had a lot of video games?

Automatic poison-tipped arrow launchers and giant boulder releasing trap indeed...

OT: I like the cliche where you may have enough people in your party to start a small mercenary company and yet you can still only fight with 3 people at a time while everyone else stands back and shouts encouragements, and if those three people get their butts kicked, then the game's over.

Nicely subverted in Final Fantasy X, where you could dynamically swap out party members, and in the second to last boss fight of Final Fantasy VII, where the whole party teams up to battle Bizarro Sepiroth.

 

[Donrad]

theres always in infinite amount of enemies, like i understand when dealing with the undead or demons.
but when dealing with living people.. comeon!
or what if your dealing with humans and undead

 

[WazzizFace]

Just before heading into the final battle...

"Yeah I'm going to save the world now, i'd like 999 potionS please"

"Okay but you're paying for them...."

"BUT I'M GOING TO SAVE THE WORLD, THEY SHOULD BE FREE!! D:<"

 

[The Benj]

BioWare/Obsidian games often times have a court/trial scene in them where you have to talk to individual voters and attempt to convince them to vote one way or another. To varying degrees, I think most of BioWare's games have had such a scene. This is definitely a cliche I've enjoyed.

I remember the one in KOTOR, which pissed me off to no end because the entire quest was a dark side trap. There was literally no way to finish that quest without getting dark side points. I was playing as a light side character for my first playthrough and I had to waste multiple hours trying to finish it in EVERY. POSSIBLE. BLOODY. WAY. After I discovered it was a dark side trap, I had to revert back to a DAYS old savegame. That still pisses me off to this day.

Really? I didn't gain any Dark Side points. *shrug*

 

[The Benj]

I'm pretty certain you could buy time extensions in fallout 1 in the form of a water caravan for quite a high price.

Yep. It extended the time until they ran out of water, but decreased the time before the Supermutants found the Vault and killed them.

 

[matrix3509]

BioWare/Obsidian games often times have a court/trial scene in them where you have to talk to individual voters and attempt to convince them to vote one way or another. To varying degrees, I think most of BioWare's games have had such a scene. This is definitely a cliche I've enjoyed.

I remember the one in KOTOR, which pissed me off to no end because the entire quest was a dark side trap. There was literally no way to finish that quest without getting dark side points. I was playing as a light side character for my first playthrough and I had to waste multiple hours trying to finish it in EVERY. POSSIBLE. BLOODY. WAY. After I discovered it was a dark side trap, I had to revert back to a DAYS old savegame. That still pisses me off to this day.

Really? I didn't gain any Dark Side points. *shrug*

Damn you...damn you good sir!

Now I'll have to go and do the whole friggen thing over again and that is the worst friggen part of the whole friggen game...Just to make sure that I wasn't friggen wrong or something...

FRIGGEN

 

[The Benj]

Mwahaha!
That's all I have to say on the matter.

 

[lleihsad]

Some people seemed to miss the request to name conventions that you think are GOOD. Anyway:

Having an "evil" character of either muted amorality (like Canderous) or who is compelled to serve (HK-47). Adds variety to the party, without falling into the "why the hell is this guy here?" problem.

Humanizing the grunts of the Evil Empire, bonus points if they wind up acting like bored frat boys. Final Fantasy VI got a lot of mileage out of this idea, and it's had a special place in my heart ever since.

 

[Skratt]

Entering houses to "gossip" with the residents. This isn't Canada you know.

BBEs. I love them to death. The bigger, the better. I get tired of fighting progressively tougher coconut shelled humanoids. Just for style, give me a surprise 3 headed giant or a massive snake that weaves in and out of the boss room taking pot shots at you while you spin dizzily around quaffing potions screaming "Is that all you've got!?" at the computer monitor as it attempts to cut the rubber band that connects the torso to the legs of your otherwise indestructible G.I.Joe in fantasy armor avatar.