When RPG lost its Meaning
I shall preface this post with a recommendation: listen to this song while reading the article, just to give it that small edge over reading it in dead silence.
Well, hello there! As you may or may not know, I am quite the fan of role playing games. You know, stuff like Borderlands, Fallout 4, Skyrim, Far Cry 3...or not (I think I almost gave @unacomn an aneurysm with that sentence). Although some of these games are good, at least by my standards, well, maybe except Fallout 4, neither of them can be considered an RPG (either the game genre or the weapon. I'll leave it up to you).
To showcase the argument (and probably shitstorm) I started in the previous paragraph, I will try to give a definition of the genre to the best of my abilities. A role playing game is, evidently, a game, in which the player/players take up a role inside a world and act on it, if that is their choice. This ability to chose is a fundamental aspect of the role playing part of the definition, because the game needs to be reactive, to take into consideration the decisions of the player and make events adapt accordingly, generating a sprawling cause and effect relationship between the events happening in the game world.
If you look at the games I brought up in the introduction of this very article and filter them through the definition I tried to formulate, you will see that they do not gel pretty well. Why is that, you might ask, and the answer is pretty simple, given the route of the gaming industry at this very moment: a game which has depth will almost always sell worse than a mindless and mediocre action game.
I will tear Bethesda Game Studios a new one for the sake of today's discussion. Why might you ask? Simply because two of their games are on my list of not-rpgs. And because they killed Fallout. Anyway, let us talk about the complexity curve of the Elder Scrolls series. Three different eras can be distinguished in the creation of these games: the quantity era, the quality era and the streamlined era. The games from the quantity and quality eras, although heavily flawed, are really solid RPGs (having the ability to actually fail a quest is a pretty big bonus, at least in my book). The problem arises when we take a look at the oh, so popular frozen wasteland of Skyrim. Most quests are either dungeon raids or fetch quests, with the addition of so many restrictions that it is literally impossible to not succeed. Want to kill an important person, just because? Nope, essential NPC. Want to play as a random person, going around the world at your pace? Everyone knows about the dragonborn hobo who steals everybody's cheese. Spell crafting, so that magic is actually interesting? Nein. In my opinion, Morrowind and Oblivion nailed aspects of the potential of the series. Morrowind has the atmosphere, the incentive to explore and, generally, the lore, all the while Oblivion has the incentive to do stupid stuff just to see how the game reacts and also the full on implementation of radiant AI, a feature which was toned down in Skyrim.
Another facet of the extreme streamlining of Skyrim, and RPGs in general, is the removal of mechanics whose only purpose is to inconvenience the player. Gone are the days of equipment degradation, vampirism having perks and palpable disadvantages, utility skills like Athletics and Acrobatics. Now, the character is 90% normal human, set in stone, Jack of all trades, and 10% hero of legend, saviour of worlds by the means of an ancient power. In Oblivion, you were the sidekick of the hero of legend, in Morrowind, you were a random schmuck who, fortunately for everyone, went through a series of events which let him save the world (pretty contrived too, but it lets your character some breathing room as to be YOUR character, not Hero Saviourman).
To be clear, Elder Scrolls and Fallout are not the sole reason of RPGs today being big fat lies, they are just the most popular and obvious examples for my rant on oversimplification and glorification of said oversimplification. Now, my only hope is that studios like Obsidian, Larian and inXile stick around to breathe life into this game genre, with masterpieces like Tyranny, Divinity: Original Sin and Wasteland 2, which go by the old school definition, adding modern twists to the narrative and mechanics.
All in all, I hope the fans of Bethesda are not going to burn me at the stake because I put the almighty Skyrim under the looking glass.
When it comes to Computer RPGs, yes - aka cRPG which is what people should be using when talking about video games. The tabletop RPG is very much alive and thriving.
Neah, I already had one last week when someone said Witcher 3 wasn't an RPG because you could only play as Geralt and you could only make slightly different versions of him through the skill trees, not a totally different character.
JC Denton: heavy breathing
It might be because I've played every single TES as a Nord, but I actually liked and enjoyed Skyrim a lot. Yeah the mechanics were simplified and the story felt a little too "guided", and yes, that is something we tend to see more and more (and I blame the enemy, console gamers and their casual, joypad-from-the-couch mindless approach), but I found the game to be immersive and vast enough to be thoroughly enjoyed. Of course I ran a super modded version of it so it might have changed some things. Oh and being the hero of the world is getting really old, but it honestly didn't feel that different from being the Nerevarine or the Hero of Kvatch. Also, I had to play it deactivating the objective indicators (why, Bethesda?) and I never used fast travel for the sake of realism. I guess I did play another game, lol.
Leaving Skyrim behind as a personal exception, I have to say I agree with you, what we now consider RPG are just action games with some sort of skill tree or perks that our character gains along the way, and it's really not enough to call them "RPGs".
I guess that after Diablo came out the appeal of linear action games tagged as "RPG" skyrocketed, and I get the feeling most of the games we are talking about are trying to sacrifice a bit of freedom and character developing on one side and a bit of grinding and mathematical character building on the other in order to be a good match to both worlds. Is it too far fetched to look at it this way?
Point 1: I have been saying for a long time that Bethesda rely on the modding scene to fix and improve their games for them. It is truly amazing to behold the amount of changes a person working out of passion to make the game their own, but this studio abuses the passion of such individuals.
Point 2: I do think console gamers want more complex games, stuff that is not just "shooty shooty bang bang dead", but the publishers seem to think that most gamers are not really bright, so they mostly fund games for the lowest common denominator, giving us such mediocre experiences like modern shooters.
You're right, undoubtedly. When I talk about console gamers as "the enemy" I'm basically joking, of course, and I don't think they're idiots. In some cases they just like a game where they don't have to think too much; I'm in Italy, and I've grown up with a bunch of people who played soccer games like Fifa or PES while I was banging my head over Caesar or Patrician, that's why I joke about it. Now I don't want to get philosophical and talk about how society is changing and how we are gradually giving up our critical thinking (and also our non-critical thinking, in some cases), but it is worth noticing that games are indeed going under a massive dumbing down, and that's downright embarrassing in some cases.
@originalworks