The lull of RPGs

[hermes]

What happened with RPGs? Are we going to sit and pretend that RPGs today are as good as BG, PST or deus ex?

Oh, we're talking about WRPGs.

I was confused, because last time I checked JRPGs are still running at full force.

And frankly, maybe it's just because I missed the scene, but I never knew WRPGs to be all that huge in the first place.

Most JRPGs are RPG in name only. If anything, most are just glorified action/adventure games. Most don't have roleplaying whatsoever or even any sort of choice other than in combat. If a game doesn't let you create your character (not just appearance), or at least give you a character that allows you meaningful choice in the story, it shouldn't be considered a ROLEPLAYING game period.

The audience of role playing games is as wide and vague as the term itself. Not everyone plays them to express themselves.
Even in the pen & paper version, there are different people that play them and they like to focus on different things: there are people that like to explore the setting (Fallout), people that like to make their character grow stronger by fighting stuff (Diablo), people that like to be told a cool story (Final Fantasy), people that like to experiment with complex systems (Disgaea), and most of us, who like a bit of all those things.
If there are so many people with so many interests invested on a single game, how do you expect to round them up in a single, all-encompassing, genre?

 

[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?

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

As you can see, it greatly annoys me when people say Mass Effect is not an RPG and it's instead a Shooter with RPG elements or something of the sort. Literally.

its not that its not an rpg, its just a very shallow one compared to its predecessors.

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.

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.

I'm going to say this is the part of your post I disagree with most. Shepard doesn't turn into a different character so much as you choose whether Shepard is currently a dick or not at various points.

Every dialog choice and decision on it's own isn't very character-making at all; however, the thousands of dialog decisions you make over the course of the 3 games shape your Shepard into a unique character and different from everyone else's Shepard.

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.

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

If there is no negative penalty for making your character do things they are inherently NOT good at, then it's not a RPG. ME2-3 are action/shooters with RPG elements. Yes, you do "role play" Sheppard in your dialogue choices, but the gameplay is not that of a RPG.

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?

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.

really? to me the main qualifier for an RPG is that character skill is more important than player skill. And that is what makes the genius of deep stat based games. You have soo many options to tweak a character in those games.

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.

Roleplaying was... not there. At all. In fact if you look at most of the classic CRPGs, they don't offer much if any room for roleplaying.

Then, they aren't RPGs, the one requirement for an RPG is role-playing. Catherine is more of an RPG than any of those games you're talking about.

 

[infinity_turtles]

Almost as much funny as the amount of people that considers Dark Souls an RPG, but dismiss Mass Effect because its "a shooter with RPG elements". Get this... Dark Souls is as much an RPG as Mass Effect 2 and Deus Ex: HR. If you are going to include hack and slash/RPG hybrids into the bag, we can also include shooter/RPG hybrids.

I think people include Dark Souls because it has a less static protagonist. There's plenty of opportunities for role-playing in Dark Souls, it's just based on actions instead of dialogue choices. What covenant do you join, do you bretray that covenant, do you kill this NPC or not, do you help this NPC, ect ect. There's some damn good world building going on and plenty of choices to be made based on that. Most people will just play doing what they want and not think about their character beyond stats, but that's true of most RPGs.

 

[shrekfan246]

To me a RPG is a game where I can create or assume the role of a character and make choices that I and the character would have made.

I don't disagree with that.

Just seems like a lot of people have some rather hilarious presumptions for what actually makes an RPG an "RPG", which most of the time get hung up on aspects of gameplay. Things like leveling up or managing equipment should've never been dubbed as "RPG elements" in the first place, and I imagine the only reason it happened was because the primary forebear of classic WRPGs, Dungeons & Dragons, has loads of it.

Of course, it brings us to the point that a lot of games classified as RPGs don't really let you make significant changes or decisions with the main character, which is why I'm a bit more lenient with how I'll define an RPG.

 

[BarkBarker]

Just my two cents, Voice Acting should only be used to bring out the character more than the story and actions do, because a bad VA can ruin a experience the same way a great one can enrich it, and this is why people can make or break a buy of,say, the next Tales game because the voices are always there...always heard..always grating....always unnecessary, I hate how people don't seem to recognise players find massive issue with annoying sounds in their ear every time a character speaks...and gets hit....and kills a enemy....and calls his attacks SHUT UP ASBEL SHUT THE FUCK UP!

 

[TIMESWORDSMAN]

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?

 

[infinity_turtles]

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.

I'm going to say this is the part of your post I disagree with most. Shepard doesn't turn into a different character so much as you choose whether Shepard is currently a dick or not at various points.

Every dialog choice and decision on it's own isn't very character-making at all; however, the thousands of dialog decisions you make over the course of the 3 games shape your Shepard into a unique character and different from everyone else's Shepard.

I think you'll notice most people are calling out specific games in the series. Those individual moments that have even small impacts on the character became fewer in each one. Most of the character building I'd say happened in ME1, with some in ME2, and damn near none in 3. And given how little previous character stuff was acknowledged across games and how much they changed I'd say it's fair to judge them individually on just how much of an rpg they were. ME3 you're pretty much limited to Paragon and Renegade choices, and the misleading dialogue wheel got worse. Not really fair to compare that to the other two really, since if you stayed neutral more often in them you were basically forced to break character.

Captcha: no brainer. Stop sucking up Captcha. I know this is all debateable and just my opinion.

 

[hermes]

Almost as much funny as the amount of people that considers Dark Souls an RPG, but dismiss Mass Effect because its "a shooter with RPG elements". Get this... Dark Souls is as much an RPG as Mass Effect 2 and Deus Ex: HR. If you are going to include hack and slash/RPG hybrids into the bag, we can also include shooter/RPG hybrids.

I think people include Dark Souls because it has a less static protagonist. There's plenty of opportunities for role-playing in Dark Souls, it's just based on actions instead of dialogue choices. What covenant do you join, do you bretray that covenant, do you kill this NPC or not, do you help this NPC, ect ect. There's some damn good world building going on and plenty of choices to be made based on that. Most people will just play doing what they want and not think about their character beyond stats, but that's true of most RPGs.

I have no problem with that definition. Even when its not my cup of tea, I can appreciate what the game is trying to be, and the people that try to roleplay through the game. However, I do find it funny that people would count Dark Souls as an RPG despite the fact its gameplay is that of an action hack & slash game, but deny that category to games like Deus Ex because it has first person perspective and guns. They both differ from the "traditional" genre definition in being hybrids with other genres, other than that, they have almost all the same elements (skill trees, stat based progression, sidequests, a world to explore). What's good for the goose...

 

[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)