Is it possible to show time passing in an RPG?

[BrotherRool]

To just clear things up, I'm talking about weeks and days and months rather than years ala Assassins Creed. I think we know how to show large time gaps in RPGs and whilst it's probably pretty expensive it's always a very cool way to show your world when it's possible.

But I've found that RPGs are pretty bad at showing the passage of time. One of the great things about Half Life 2 is there's always a sense of time passing, mornings become middays become nights and it's clear that Freeman is taking a journey that's very much taking place in time. And one of the best things about Arkhum Aslyum was the way the game made it clear that all this was taking place over roughly one day and just how tiring that is for Batman.


But I've never seen an RPG (western that is, FFX had a sense of time passing and in general if you're telling a linear story there's no reason not to do this) that manages this. They can have day night cycles, but they always feel very artificial, the time has no impact on your character and it cycles far too quickly and it doesn't ever feel like it's taken time to get to a place. In the story of an open RPG I've never had the sense that it took the character days or weeks or months to progress, it just kind of happens devoid of time. It was a flaw in ME3. The dream sequences were even more obnoxious because we've never really seen Shepard sleeping before and we have no idea of the time scale or time passing that gives the sleeping some context. And it was hard to gauge the scale of the crucible and get a feeling of the Reapers advance when we don't even know how long it took. Was it days or weeks or months? I genuinely don't know

But is it even possible? If the worlds open, is there any way to give the story a sense of taking a certain length of time without crushing player freedom. Can you design it so that there's a short scene of the player taking a rest in an Inn when he arrives at a town, or have the world get dark when he approaches one and give him a stat penalty until he manages to find shelter. Would that work and would that be too unfun?

 

[SajuukKhar]

The only time ive seen an RPG show passing of time is by making a time skip, and making the time skip its own section.

 

[roushutsu]

Closest I can think of would be Persona 3 and 4. You play out the entire day, doing different things throughout the day, and the passage of time actually does play a part in both of them. After X amount of days, you have to fight a big boss in 3, or you've reached the "time limit" to save someone in Persona 4. Granted, the time cycles go by rather quick, but considering that Atlus tries to break the day down and keeps track of the days and months, it's close to what you're thinking of.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

It could certainly be done, I'm just not sure what the point would be.

Seiken Densetsu 3 and Ogre Battle are both games I remember that had a constant day-night cycle. Ogre was more impactful with it, because nearly all units moved/fought better either at night or in the daytime, and in the morning you taxed your captured cities to pay the upkeep on your army. Furthermore the game kept track of the total number of game days and nights to completion of the final battle and that affected the ending you got. My record is about 60 days IIRC, which seems pretty fast to fight a war spanning 3 entire countries but not unreasonable.

That's probably the most common use of it, affecting the ending and punishing the player for dawdling too long. In the Romance of the Three Kingdoms games the years and weeks are kept track of and all rulers and officers have a set time of natural death, so you want to conquer China before your ruler's time is up. It's turn-based with one week equal to one turn, but the same idea could easily be adapted to any real-time game with any kind of day/night cycle. Take more than 2 months to kill the villain and save the princess, and you will find her already dead, leading to a most depressing ending. That could certainly make a player think twice about overusing the inn.

 

[Akytalusia]

i'm not sure if it's what you're looking for, but there's Radiata Stories, a tragically overlooked gem. a lot of the mechanics and secrets revolve around it's unique time mechanic.

 

[RatRace123]

I actually would like to see a greater sense of demonstrating change in environment and time in RPGs. Something like characters growing longer hair or sporting stubble then beards as time marches on.

It's not a huge priority though, since it's a very minor and mostly visual element within games. It'd still be cool to see in more games though.

 

[maninahat]

RPGs, in general, tend to have a story that's set over a long period of time. IN the case of FPSs like Half Life, the entire story just follows a two day period, but RPGs have a much larger sense of scale.

I think there is room to do a short term rpg that places more story emphasis on the switch between day and night, but generally rpgs are slow burners which take so long to tell their grandiose story, days and nights pass without consequence.

A good way to do it is to have a count down. You get a sense of time passing, with the clock running lower at every story beat. In Arkham City, progression was represented by Dr Strange counting down the hours towards the initiation of "project 10". It's a great way to create a sense of immediacy, whilst emphasising the passage of time over a stetched period. You could do something similar to that, only increase the time limit to 24 hours or longer.

 

[RJ 17]

Ummmmmmmmmmmmm I'm assuming that you're not counting The Elder Scrolls games for some specific reason? If you stand there you can watch the sun slooooooowly trek through the sky as dawn becomes day which transforms into noon which goes into evening then on to dusk and night. It even tells you what day, month, and year it is every time you go to your map.

Does this not count for some reason? Because it certainly seems to be almost exactly what you're looking for. Granted, it doesn't necessarily reflect in the gameplay itself as you're allowed to take as much time as you want to do anything you want, but it's certainly keeping track of the time, days, months, and years.

Edit: I do agree, though, that ME 3 would have been better off if they simply put a calender in the top right corner of the Galaxy Map or something so that you get a better sense of time as your traveling from one system to the next. I think I heard somewhere that it's supposed to be like 3 or 4 months from the start of the game to the end.

 

[Folji]

I remember in Dragon Age: Origins, there's this one moment where the dwarven berserker Oghren comments that it's been a year since he joined your party. When he said that, my first thought was "woah, has it been that long?". Kind of like there had been so much travels, places and adventures time had passed by just like that! But considering all the things that had happened along the way, my next thought was "yeah, it really has, here's to a year old friend!"

No real passage of time, though. Just the indication that there had been and a scale that made the claims feel believable. Dark Messiah, just to mention something else, did the same thing with implying a passing of time instead of showing it. But it felt like it took place over the course of a week or two at the most because of how small the actual gameplay scope was.

 

[Quaidis]

There are lots of games that represent the passage of time to one or another extent. Some base the entire game around having to complete your goals in X amount of time. Harvest moon and Rune factory games do this. Monster Rancher did this. Animal Crossing

Didn't Breath of Fire: DQ and a certain Zelda game have a time aspect?

LuxPain on the DS has you live out an entire month, day by day.

Didn't the DarkCloud games have time pass while you played?

Xenoblade has morning, day, afternoon, and night, even plays the music around it. That game was fucking brilliant. Towns people came out at random times of the day and to complete a handful of quests you had to keep track in a journal on what times certain people hung out. They really did master having npcs live their own lives while you were questing.


While not a rpg, Seaman is an older game that employed time. At least that's how I remembered it... Didn't feed your fish for a few days IRL and the fish died.

So there are many games out there, rpg and otherwise, that employ time passing. Just gotta look.

 

[Jason Rayes]

I think a good way to portray it would be the passage of seasons, this could even have an effect on gameplay I guess, some foes only appearing in certain seasons. I guess the problem is how time consuming it would to be for the developer to include this kind of thing. As you said it's not so hard to do in a linear style game like FFX, but in a sprawling open world it might be more difficult to portray in an impactful way. Massive scale RPG's already have long development periods.

The construction of buildings could be another method. Either have towns grow or shrink (This would likely be a system hungry method) or simply have one massive construction going on in the central city hub that slowly gets more and more complete with the passage of time, a temple or tower perhaps?

 

[ERS86]

Ummmmmmmmmmmmm I'm assuming that you're not counting The Elder Scrolls games for some specific reason? If you stand there you can watch the sun slooooooowly trek through the sky as dawn becomes day which transforms into noon which goes into evening then on to dusk and night. It even tells you what day, month, and year it is every time you go to your map.

The OP was talking about games where the day/night cycle, or passage of time, actually matters and effects the gameplay. So yes, while Elder Scrolls has time passing, anything that you can do during the day you can do during the night, quest-wise.

OT: Majora's Mask. Definitely had time as a major component.

 

[skywolfblue]

1) A fixed protagonist so they can change the model as the character gets older. (It's pretty much impossible to Age a player-customized character with good looking results) You also have to age all the other big characters in the game. (Yikes!)

2) Seasons. You're only going to be able to make about 1/4th of the original landmass you had intended for in order to have the budget to make the art for summer, winter, fall and spring. (Unless you have a linear game instead of open world, then it's pretty easy)

If taken in jumps it's not so bad and could work to neat effect. But actually having a gradual process for that would be ~EXTREMELY~ resource intensive, and hardly anyone would appreciate it or notice it. (Can you see any difference in a person who's aged a month? Vs. someone who has aged 20 years is going to be pretty different.)

 

[Xeorm]

The OP was talking about games where the day/night cycle, or passage of time, actually matters and effects the gameplay. So yes, while Elder Scrolls has time passing, anything that you can do during the day you can do during the night, quest-wise.

There were some quests that required you to start at night, night changed where guards were in some areas, and of course vampires cared about the day/night cycle.

I think it counts.

I will say that it's difficult, as time passing usually isn't relevant to many RPG's, as they have weird time effects. Like ME3, where mission time will often be less than an hour, but travelling will be significant. Caring about time will often make the story appear weird.

 

[Joccaren]

For most games, no, not really. Its usually a jump in time between one event and the next, or a day/night cycle that effects nothing.

Showing your character become tired is hard in an RPG, because you either have to do it by effecting gameplay - meaning that the longer someone plays the less enjoyable it is likely to get - or by changing character - which is Taboo for RPGs most of the time. Your character is your character, and the game should NOT tell you how they feel or act. Its up to you to decide that.

There was some game that I've played recently that did this well, but I could not for the life of me tell you what it was.

 

[White_Lama]

The OP was talking about games where the day/night cycle, or passage of time, actually matters and effects the gameplay. So yes, while Elder Scrolls has time passing, anything that you can do during the day you can do during the night, quest-wise.

There were some quests that required you to start at night, night changed where guards were in some areas, and of course vampires cared about the day/night cycle.

I think it counts.

I will say that it's difficult, as time passing usually isn't relevant to many RPG's, as they have weird time effects. Like ME3, where mission time will often be less than an hour, but travelling will be significant. Caring about time will often make the story appear weird.

Then again in for example Skyrim, the rubble from the Civil War battle in Whiterun is still there on my character even tough it's been almost 2 years in game time since the war ended.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Yes.

[/thread]

Serious answer: I want an RPG that ages the PC and NPCs as the story progresses, and you select an NPC to continue as when you die (from a pool of children you meet. There would be a default one that is made an option through the story if you choose to have no NPC interaction). No idea of logistics, I assume it's have a bunch of different character models for each NPC and update them as it goes, with real-time aging. If you can produce a child you can continue as them. If possible, the player character is custom and the child has features that are similar to yours and your NPC partner. Ok this is getting ridiculous.

Dragon's Dogma feels sort of like it has a sense of time, with day/night, and the

Spoiler

world changing at the end of the story

which causes a lot of NPCs to change their dialogue, but during the main body of the game it feels pretty static outside of day and night. I would have liked it if, say, goblin infestations got more severe over time until you visited the area and cleared them out or something, but everything is in the same place (except the griffins, which appear after youu see one in a cutscene, I think). Missions timing out might be a bit much, for gameplay reasons, although I find it hard to believe the guy just stays in the same place while I do something else.

 

[Gatx]

Typically RPGs tell epic stories that presumably take place over a long expanse of time, and in that case the day to day isn't as important, so yes it's possible, but it won't be more than a night/day cycle unless the plot calls for it.

The OP was talking about games where the day/night cycle, or passage of time, actually matters and effects the gameplay. So yes, while Elder Scrolls has time passing, anything that you can do during the day you can do during the night, quest-wise.

There's also times where you need to wait a day or two to trigger events.

 

[NightHawk21]

Its after 2am here so if I'm misinterpreting the question my bad, but there are quite a few RPGs with time cycles. All the Elder Scrolls game since Morrowind (maybe earlier idk seeing as I never played the first 2) has a day/night cycle that changes certain things. The Witcher has a day/night cycle which also greatly changes the world. There's also day/night cycles in Red Dead Redemption, the new Fallout games, and Saints Row 3 (I think, haven't payed attention to the time much so I don't know if it moves while I'm screwing around or changes on a mission by mission basis).

I don't know what you mean by the last paragraph, but I know that at least in the Bethesda games (Elder Scrolls + Fallout) there are some things that only happen during certain times of day. There is also stuff like in Elder Scrolls where darkness limits your vision, so you either have to time properly or use stuff to get around that.