I wonder
when does this transition happened, because up until 2005, I was not
into computer RPGs. I still play TT RPGs to this day, and I am very
skeptical of the whole RPG thing in video-games.
I was once a
developer, I still work with programming and I have done modding for a
good chunk of the last 16 years, and I understand you cannot emulate the
whole RPG feeling in a computer, not even using LLMs.
However, my problem is not the linear nature of the games, but what is done with them, and mostly because of the players.
The
main argument here circles around the idea that RPG is your Role
Playing of a Character. There are points assigned for people who
understands the character, the setting and do it accordingly.
Video
Games however changed it to an idea that the closest that character is
from being you, the player, will be better. I will not take this
argument into politics, but a similar argument must be made: The
character in a game is not meant to represent you.
Today,
games are made into a mess of story, in which a setting and a plot must
be adequate to be played by a character that must be the representation
of the player in that World. That, to me, is the one crippling factor
that hinders the work of any writer into creating a masterpiece of game.
Take
Mass Effect for example. People tend to put it in a pedestal of games,
substantiating along other similar experiences the "pinnacle" of
"Bioware Magic". Bioware so called Magic either still there or never
existed because in that regard nothing really changed.
World
of Warcraft is said to be the pinnacle of RPG, to this day, by a number
of people. It was never. You can say or put forth any argument you want,
those of us alive at time know that World of Warcraft is a "lucky
failure" into being a Warhammer game.
As soon as it lost the
connection with the original story, which is heavily "influenced" by
Warhammer, the game itself plunged into an abyss. Not even leaning heavy
on Lovecraft saved the modern tinge to it.
And what is the underlying problem?
In
my opinion, the underlying problem with all of this is the fact that
RPG translated into games the people celebrate are parodies of a real
life. The tendency of a game to be fast earning and popular as fast as
it can be undermines its longevity and its quality. The RPG becomes a
"Role Creating Game", not a Role Playing Game.
Commander
Shepard started this tend. Embedded in the very first Mass Effect is the
risky proposition that granted the pass to games that burn fast,
bright, and eventually die. Mass Effect itself lost that destiny and
became a sort of cult up to the point it failed in its own shadow. I
dont think Andromeda is bad for the problems with the game systems. Mass
Effect 1 itself was a buggy mess when it was launched, and it only
survived because the gamers at that time were not the modern gamers.
Andromeda in my opinion failed to be included in the Mass Effect "cult"
because it went further into the abyss of self reflecting development.
Mass
Effect introduced a concept that people would say existed before, but
not quite. The games using similar systems for RPGs, like Knights of the
Old Republic (KOTOR), introduced it as a flat out gimmick for the
storytelling, obviously encompassing fixed lines of character building.
Mass Effect introduced the ability make choices and track independently
the effects of each stack of choices. Baldur's Gate first two games did
something very similar, but all inherently limited by the computational
nature of those scores. If you analyze the saves of these games, you
will find out that like some modern technologies people also mistake for
"reasoning", they have scores which trigger certain storylines, or cut
others short.
In a computer RPG you cannot account for
infinite choices and their results. You have data the game has to have
prior to the use, so the answers must be given to the questions it has
in storage. This for the simple games of old. Today you add voice
acting, which is mostly billed by the hour, be it by contract or freely,
and graphics, also billed by the hour. The more options you put in a
game for the story, the higher its cost, so companies must be mindful of
what stories they will tell.
Now we enter in the meat of the question: Identity Content.
The
Mass Effect trilogy itself creates the illusion that "your Shepard" is a
unique result of your choices, but it barely ever is. What it does is
having a full "tree" of what Shepard can be, and your choices open or
close branches in that tree. With some wit, you might observe that no
matter how much you choose about your Shepard, the end result can be
described as a little more than 29kb of data, and most of it to describe
game environment variables, and literal text, being the choices which
are relevant to the game not even requiring a whole 1kb for itself.
If
you take the save editor, you will notice that the data of your choices
you think so important are nowhere to be found. That is because they
are relevant only as direct response to them, things that happen as
direct result of those choices, and will never be brought up again by
your choices, instead, by generic dialogue that might fit your choice in
your mind, but will fit any choice regardless.
The Mass
Effect Trilogy itself mastered the illusion of choice across its games,
requiring roughly 70kb for its saves, using more environmental variables
unrelated to choices, plus the data of the whole choices of all three
games not occupying 3kb together. And in Mass Effect 3, you can notice,
after playing it enough, that very little end up changing something in
the story.
It is at this point that I talk about the green
car/red car fallacy. A lot of people will spew marketing garbage and
talk about "choices" as if everything you have a choice is a meaningful
branching narrative choice. And then I equate it to saying your life was
saved because you took a green car instead of a red car to go to the
hospital.
Pedantic arguments aside, like a red car being more
likely to be stopped by the police, which is a clear ignorance on how
statistics work, and the fact the people might prefer a given color,
which is irrelevant, the point is: The start and the end are the exact
same, and the color of the car will not change the outcome of that trip
to the hospital, in a game setting. And so wont the hair style or color
of your character, the gender, even things that should, like your
background. There is still to show up a game that is popular among
players justifying the investment, which will change the story based on
your choices of background.
There is a video on YouTube
comparing the lines of Female Shepard and Male Shepard. While it is
meant to show which Voice Actor seems to express what in each situation,
you can notice from there that not even the fact that one is a man and
the other is a woman will change how and what they say, regardless of
the situation being even important to make a distinction.
Modern games are even worse on that.
Baldur's Gate 3, which is a fun game I have spent thousands of hours playing at this point, is a fine example.
You
can say whatever you want, from the technical standpoint, Baldur's Gate
3 is nothing new or groundbreaking in terms of RPG, or game in general.
If you take the time to compare, there is even a 8 second passage in
its ending that replicates, even in positioning, the Mass Effect 3
ending.
It does a few things better than Mass Effect, but
better in the sense of doing the same thing, but more efficiently. It
uses the same scoring method Mass Effect uses. In ME, you have a number
for neutral, friendly, attached, relationship and rejected in terms of
companion dynamics, in BG3 that becomes a continuum. The end result is
of course the same. You have a character that changes their views on a
certain topic based on your choices of dialogue to them. You have
Garrus, you have Shadowheart. BG3 system is more complex, the end result
is the same.
All rest in one simple thing: Gamers do not want it better, they want it crappy.
They
might talk about games doing things differently, like BG3 or Cyberpunk,
but it is actually the same old choices dont change where you going,
just how far you can get. And that is comfortable, that is safe, and
that is tutorial friendly.
It is like an old game, in which
the devs put months of development in a cycle that rewards players from
being smart about the resources, and leaving the environment to farm for
them. Barely no player even played it smart, not even having a tutorial
for that. They instead went there and farmed the living crap of
everything, and then complained things took too long to respawn.
If
it was possible in terms of computing technology to make a game that
replaces every aspect of TT RPGs and allowed players to have meaningful
choices and different ways to go about the story, this game would
probably fail miserably, because no one wants to take responsibility for
their choices in games. And we have facts to show that. WoW introduced
choices in multiple expansions, choices that would change how your
character is definitely. They all got backlash until changed to
meaningless cosmetic choices. There are other examples, but those
complicated the matter, by showing the truth about something people
still not getting: choices do not matter.
Baldur's Gate 3 is
spoken as if it was the pinnacle of RPG writing, from the thousands of
hours I played, and contrary to many players, ended the run most times,
there is not much difference between doing the "full completion" and the
"I know where I am going so I wont be stopping to ask directions" run.
It hides a lot of linearity in cosmetic choices. One of the blatant
examples is racial tailored dialogues. You have the tag for the race of
your character, but for the most part, the story even treats your
character as a generic player character. A drow that will react like all
characters do, even in the Underdark. A duergar who goes around and
their only choices are just the same as all other characters to
reactions any TT DnD narrator would instantly stop to make a round table
on what is appropriate for good RP.
And I am not saying that
to the detriment of Bioware or Larian. What I am saying is that players
do not want good story rich games. They want games to feel good about
themselves playing the game, while complaining the game should do better
about its story and narrative.
It is like many devs have
said in different "game conventions" through the years: People say that,
but we have the data on what they do, for how long, how many times, and
that is what we follow in general.
If players really wanted
what they say they want, nothing would make the "money guys" happier
than knowing it, doing it, and making sure it is done correctly.
The problem is not them.