Multiplatform Video Gaming Role Play Woes [Archive]

MetroAlien

2022-09-12, 01:18 AM

Hello, this is my first attempt at opening a thread.

I'm sure many of you notice how most video games that get labelled as "RPG" have barely any role playing elements, if at all...
A lot of the time, a "levelling up" mechanic is all a game needs to "earn" the label in the first place.

I can't help but think of "Destiny 2" or "The Division", which are listed as "RPG-shooter" in many online stores or websites.
Now, to me at least, these games are nothing like an RPG.

I thoroughly enjoyed "Vampire Masquerade Bloodlines", "Pillars of Eternity", "Drakensang" and "Neverwinter Nights" (specifically, the Diamond Edition) for their open-ended quests that can sometimes be resolved through dialogue/exploration alone, or can even take on different twists based on your character's background.

Don't get me wrong, I love "diablo-like" games. I can't count the hours I've sunk into each of "Dungeon Siege", "Sacred" and "Torchlight".
But I can't help but feel that these "level-up-only RPGs" are muddying the water on what the genre is actually supposed to be about (namely role play)

Sometimes I even feel as thought strategy games, of all genres, have more role-play elements in them than so-called RPGs. For example, while "Crusader Kings" is nominally a military strategy / development game, in practice most of your interactions with the game's world happen through "role-played" choices and inter-character drama.
Diplomacy in "Civ 6" or "Total War: Shogun 2" (albeit with mods) do more for my role player soul than many "in-name-only" RPGs despite all their flashy "quests", "loot" and "character builds".

Believe me, I had high hopes when "Vampire Masquerade Bloodlines 2" was first announced, but yeah... well...
On the plus side, Obsidian has promised us a new game and their track record has been stellar.
Also, there was a story-game based on "Vampires" recently... forgot it's name, but allegedly it mixes role-play with visual novel.

Eldan

2022-09-12, 01:58 AM

Yeah, "RPG" just has come to mean "can level up your character's skills". It's just what it is. I guess that's why you should watch trailers and read reviews first before buying anything.

Try Disco Elysium, if you haven't. That scratches a lot of roleplaying itches.

Lord Raziere

2022-09-12, 02:01 AM

Yeah, I remember the days of Bioware rpgs. say what you will about them, but their simplistic choice systems did get me into roleplaying games and they did provide enough choice and make those choices matter enough to feel like roleplaying. I still play Skyrim and Fallout New Vegas as rpgs rather than getting anything new, and even then Skyrim doesn't really provide a lot of actual choices. I picked FO4 because it was one sale recently and I'm probably going to play that and replay Outer Worlds just for variance whenever I'm done with Amalur/ME trilogy (which will be soon Amalurwise, going through Fatesworn DLC mainquest since my experience with Amalur sidequests are that they are largely meh, only worth it for the exp and I doubt I need to be max level to beat Fatesworn, and that combat is more repetitive than I remembered. Amalur counts as rpg because it does have dialogue choices, just not as good as Bioware)

now? I don't really consider most games that come out to be rpgs at all. they're just leveler games. and I agree with the strategy game sentiment of being conducive to roleplay. roleplaying as a conqueror or leader of a nation can be fun in Civ 6, or as all kinds of empires in stellaris.

Starbound with mods comes close to roleplaying I feel like, because you can just create any structure you want, use any equipment you find, and just have fun roleplaying as this space explorer going through the galaxy to some random planet, finding some random town or ruins and interacting with it. no leveling either.

I've really try to play Divinity 2 Original Sin, but I just keep drifting away from it, even though its actually good roleplay, I think it because I'm not used to the old isometric design top down design on this realistic 3D world. like, if it was more 2d sprite like, or something I'd probably love it but to me its just such a weird way to do it, probably because I'm used to Bioware's more up close third person thing.

like the thing is, all dialogue heavy games are now becoming pure dialogue as visual novels, all the action or strategy games going pure strategy or action, and roleplaying games have been founded on being a mix of dialogue, strategy, action, things like that. to videogames, roleplaying is a mix of genres when video game design I think has been simplifying itself because either:
-they're making mobile games to make money and thus want to simplify as much as possible, and dialogue/choice heavy games complicate that
-or they are making such big triple A games they focus all on the visuals, gameplay itself to have any time for good choices or dialogue that roleplay requires and deliver a pure good experience of that game
-they're a small indie company that can only make a visual novel because they don't have expertise or money to combine the visual novel elements with actual gameplay elements.

like I just hope we reach a visual plateau, where they can't really improve the visuals anymore, so that the only thing left is to make games with actual depth, because roleplaying games require some measure of mixture and depth to work right, because roleplaying is a layered thing that has take into account a lot of things that don't all work the same.

MetroAlien

2022-09-12, 02:26 AM

Wow!
Amalur is a blast from the past... I had to stop playing it to focus on school and just kinda forgot about it.
I'll need to check out that remake they did.

I remember liking how the NPCs tell you their version of events/lore, so you really need to ask around to get a full picture.
That's a unique design choice that I wish more games did. Of course it requires a lot of quality writing

I think maybe Disco Elysium has something like that too? It's been on my radar for a while now. I've just been too busy going through the Yakuza series.

As for graphics vs depth... I like to refer to the concept that "limitations produce art".
One of my lecturers in a design theory course liked to describe the process of "design" as

the conflict of the designer with the limitations of their medium of choice

Now, she was talking about technical design, but I think it applies to creative design just as well.

Back when the medium of video games was limited by CPU power and memory to the point that it was barely possible to represent a single humanoid shape, game designers had to work around that limitation to make games engaging nonetheless.

In one of the episodes of "Game Center CX" the show host plays old-school text-based detective games.
Some of them have a feature similar to Fallout 1, where you can ask any NPC about anything by typing a single word.
This made me think... surely text-generation AI will soon be advanced enough to come up with on-the-fly replies for NPCs in a rudimentary game like that?

If that were made possible, role playing video games could be taken to the next level.

Man... this idea completely flies in the face of the "art as limitations" shtick I brought earlier, doesn't it?
there I go contradicting myself again...

Lord Raziere

2022-09-12, 03:37 AM

I mean I never knew that about Amalur.....because I never needed to ask. all the quests are "go here, kill this" in some form or fashion and the true villain often is revealed by me doing that anyways. but then again, everything being a little too solvable by violence is a criticism that can be said against Skyrim as well.

as for Disco Elysium....sigh I might play that someday eventually, if only to see why everyone talks it up aside from the funny skill personality things I see people joke about and what little I've seen others play of it. I guess I'm just not that interested in roleplaying some eccentric washed up detective. Like I get the appeal of the skill-personalities, but I wish it was attached to something cooler y'know? because I like it conceptually but I'm just not that interested in everything else about Disco Elysium.

I mean such AI generation would probably still have logical limitations and/or a designer would still have to set certain limitations of what they can generate, as a setting must have focus and too wide and you'd probably get sentences or responses that don't make any sense if they don't.

Eldan

2022-09-12, 04:25 AM

as for Disco Elysium....sigh I might play that someday eventually, if only to see why everyone talks it up aside from the funny skill personality things I see people joke about and what little I've seen others play of it. I guess I'm just not that interested in roleplaying some eccentric washed up detective. Like I get the appeal of the skill-personalities, but I wish it was attached to something cooler y'know? because I like it conceptually but I'm just not that interested in everything else about Disco Elysium.

Yeah, you're always going to be an eccentric washed-up detective, there's no way around that. There's a lot of small things you can tweak, but you're always going to be a cop who after 20 years on the job, taking on way too many emotionally draining cases at once, succumbed to drug-use, alcohol and depression.

It does a few things really well. World, building, emotions, writing, but if we're specifically talking about the roleplaying, it's I think that the game allows you to **** up and **** up hard. Failing various social skill checks or saying the wrong thing in dialogue can make you feel like a total *******, and it's not a temporary thing. It puts thoughts in your character's head that will come up again later, and characters won't just forget it.

That's a thing that just felt refreshing to me. Most games don't allow the player character to be a total ****-up. You're a hero with some minor setbacks, or maybe a villain.

The interesting thing is that while there are hundreds of skill checks in the game, you can actually finish the game without passing a single one of them, except for a single one the game lets you retry several times and helps you along with if you fail too often. There's even an achievement in the game for solving the murder case without ever looking at the crime scene or the body. IT really just lets you do your thing.

Vinyadan

2022-09-12, 04:56 AM

Don't get me wrong, I love "diablo-like" games. I can't count the hours I've sunk into each of "Dungeon Siege", "Sacred" and "Torchlight".
But I can't help but feel that these "level-up-only RPGs" are muddying the water on what the genre is actually supposed to be about (namely role play)

If I recall correctly, Diablo was created on the mold of roguelikes, then got shifted from turn-based to real-time. So in RPG terms it's fundamentally a dungeon crawl.

NRSASD

2022-09-12, 06:50 AM

Yeah, I know what you mean about there just not being any rpgs about. I’m currently playing Morrowind for precisely that reason. The other big contender I’d recommend is Crusader Kings 3, because you play a royal house and it rewards you by playing to your current character’s foibles.

Regarding Disco Elysium, I adore what it does, but it’s also trying to have a conversation with me about regret over one’s personal life. That topic is kinda anathema to me, so I’m not interested in engaging with the game on that. Maybe in 20 years I will be?

Eldan

2022-09-12, 07:48 AM

factotum

2022-09-12, 08:00 AM

Well, the problem there is that CRPGs need to have an ending, and generally providing multiple different endings with different ways to get there is a heckuva lot of work that isn't likely to result in better sales because the sort of players who actually want that sort of thing are in the minority. The original Fallout games did it to an extent, but even there what they basically did is split the world into smaller chunks and provided different outcomes for each section, then showed the results of that in post-ending cutscenes. I don't think, for example, that you can have a Fallout 2 main quest ending that doesn't involve blowing up the Enclave base, though.

NRSASD

2022-09-12, 09:24 AM

Vinyadan

2022-09-12, 09:59 AM

Morrowind is an interesting case, though. Excellent worldbuilding and writing, great freedom, but you don't really make any choices, do you? Sure, you can kill important NPCs and end the main quest, but that just ends things, it doesn't let you change how it goes. Killing Vivec doesn't lead to a bad ending where Dagoth Ur wins, it just leads to no ending.

You can make choices, just not in the main quest. I think Balmora came early in development, so they put a nice number of choices there. The lady for the Mages Guild will give you a number of quests that can be solved through murder, but you don't have to. In some quests she wants something from someone and asks you to get it any way you want, making it clear that she doesn't care about the well-being of that someone; in others she sends you to kill people, but you can talk to them and let them get away instead.
In the Thieves Guild, you can get a key by stealing it, buying it, or winning the owner over. Once you get the key, if you enter the residence, you will find a body. You can then report it and search for the killer, and you can choose whom to execute (I never tried, but I believe the wrong choice will make the main quest impossible to finish). You also can choose which side to be on between the Fighters and the Thieves Guild.
In House Hlaalu, most missions I have seen could be finished in various ways. You are sent by a Hlaalu to kill a kwama queen in the mine of a rival. But you can tell him on her and get paid not to do it. And you can still do it anyway, and get paid by both, getting compliments by the questgiver for your style. There is a string of missions where a Hlaalu councillor sends you to work for a Hlaalu administrator. You can just do what the administrator tells you to, or you can report back to the councillor who is collecting evidence to get the administrator jailed, who will offer you a different way to complete the quest.

Other locations however are nowhere near as inspired, and don't go much beyond the kill/fetch quest. There's a number of slave quests where you can help the slave or betray him, however (one in Suran with a fugitive slave, and one in Hla Oad with a slave that has been packed with drugs and you are supposed to take her to the Camonna Tong in Balmora to be sliced open).

Also, killing Vivec opens up a different, well-hidden way to end the Main Quest. As far as I know, that is the only (secret) choice you can make, and it's a very consequential one, although it doesn't change Dagoth Ur's fate.

KillianHawkeye

2022-09-12, 10:58 AM

Well due to the influence of D&D and other tabletop roleplaying games, leveling up and numerical stat bonuses are inextricably tied to the RPG genre.

And when it comes to computer game versions, the numbers part is what the computer is really great at. That's why these hybrid genres like action-RPG or FPS-RPG, which meld action or FPS gameplay with RPG systems for character development, have even become possible. And turns out, enough people like the extra complexity in their action or FPS games to make these genres successful.

I think what OP is really complaining about is lack of story. Story and choices are typical for RPGs, but not really necessary. You can have a hack 'n slash RPG or a dungeon crawl. Rogue-likes originally fell into this category, where you're just doing the numerical and combat parts of the RPG, and they've been around for four decades now! Taking on a role in a roleplaying game doesn't always mean creating your own unique character or making important story decisions; sometimes it just means acting out a script or following along where the game leads you.

But on the other hand, you can attach a story or meaningful choices onto almost any genre of game if you want to.

Lord Raziere

2022-09-12, 02:53 PM

Eh, I disagree. dungeon crawls aren't actually roleplaying, they're just action. combat. no different from beat em ups.

"But Raziere" I hear a hypothetical person say "dungeon crawling is the core of DnD's experience, the first rpg ever!" yes. did I stutter? dungeon crawls by themselves aren't roleplaying. roguelikes are the epitome of a dungeon crawl and I never found them particularly conducive to roleplay because its just going through corridors, avoiding traps and attacking people, its repetitive.

as following a script....no. videogames do that for you with cutscenes is the problem, there is no room for you to mix in your own stuff, like its already done for you there is no point. maybe some ttrpg people write scripts and follow those, but I don't see a game with a set story and character as roleplaying even if its in the genre, because all the roleplay work has been done by the creators. I'm not even following a script, because the dialogue and cutscenes already play it out. like if I play something like Tales of Bersaria, I like the story and whatnot....but I don't consider it conducive to roleplaying my own character. I can appreciate the story sure, but I never at any point actually find myself roleplaying as them. I'm just a distant observer.

and thats the problem with what your saying Killian: good story doesn't actually translate to roleplay but neither does leveling and combat. I love a good story sure, if its done for me its just reading a novel in a different medium. while pure leveling and combat, is hard to say even exists outside the pure roguelike where you just thrown into random dungeons to fight and pick up upgrades with no explanation. its thus action/tactical combat scratches the action or tactical part of my brain depending on its style but not my roleplaying itch.

I can't define anything that doesn't fulfill the roleplaying requirement as a roleplay experience.

Zevox

2022-09-12, 04:22 PM

Video game RPGs and tabletop ones are simply two different things. If you go back to some of the oldest video game RPGs, you can generally see how they took inspiration from tabletop RPGs in some way or another - with the first Final Fantasy there's obvious D&D influences in the class system, and particularly the magic system, which has actual spell levels and spell slots, for instance. But as the genre developed in video game form it became something very different from what we associate the term with in tabletop RPGs - or several somethings, actually, since it's a wide genre with many sub-categories, and a lot of people disagree on what deserves and doesn't deserve the label at this point.

At the end of the day though, it's silly to bicker over what is and isn't an RPG. The term is too widely used at this point for such arguments to ever resolve anything. I might not personally consider something like Dark Souls to be an RPG due to it not feeling like it has much focus on its story, but that won't stop other people from calling it that, any more than some people not feeling like JRPGs with no story-affecting choices to make shouldn't be called RPGs will ever stop me from calling them that. At best you can try to hash out the various subcategories and what belongs to each - JRPG, WRPG, action-RPG, strategy/tactical RPG, etc.

The one that bugs me most at this point is that there are two different uses for Action-RPG out there these days. PC-centric players tend to use it to refer to games in the vein of Diablo, while console-centric ones like myself use it to refer to RPGs with more action game style combat - the "Tales of" series, The Witcher games, etc - despite those being very different things. Unfortunately there's not really a good solution to that, either, at least as far as I can figure. You'd need a different name for one or the other, but I can't imagine any other name for the latter, and not being a fan of Diablo-esque games can't think of what else to call them either.

Rynjin

2022-09-12, 04:54 PM

I've always thought of games like the Witcher 3 as "action-adventure RPGs". They have a lot more in common with action-adventure games mechanically than "pure" RPGs.

Anteros

2022-09-12, 07:23 PM

I just don't think the label means all that much anymore. It's so generic that it's no longer a useful descriptor and I usually use different ones if I'm searching for something to play.

Well, the problem there is that CRPGs need to have an ending, and generally providing multiple different endings with different ways to get there is a heckuva lot of work that isn't likely to result in better sales because the sort of players who actually want that sort of thing are in the minority. The original Fallout games did it to an extent, but even there what they basically did is split the world into smaller chunks and provided different outcomes for each section, then showed the results of that in post-ending cutscenes. I don't think, for example, that you can have a Fallout 2 main quest ending that doesn't involve blowing up the Enclave base, though.

Tyranny tried to do this, and the wheels absolutely fell off towards the end. Although I think that had more to do with wanting to set up DLC/Sequels and doing a terrible job than the difficulty of writing an ending.

Starbound with mods comes close to roleplaying I feel like, because you can just create any structure you want, use any equipment you find, and just have fun roleplaying as this space explorer going through the galaxy to some random planet, finding some random town or ruins and interacting with it. no leveling either.

Off topic, but have you tried Terraria? If you liked Starbound then you'll probably like it as well. Starbound is basically just "Terraria in space but worse"

Lord Raziere

2022-09-12, 11:38 PM

Off topic, but have you tried Terraria? If you liked Starbound then you'll probably like it as well. Starbound is basically just "Terraria in space but worse"

I haven't, Terraria just sounds like Starbound not in space, which sounds worse than Starbound to me. you'd have to tell me the specific details of Terraria that make it better than literally being able to going from planet to planet exploring environments and mods that improve upon Starbound- the appeal of such thing is hardly just in the potential of the base game, becuase I purchased Starbound entirely for the mods.

Anteros

2022-09-13, 02:12 AM

I haven't, Terraria just sounds like Starbound not in space, which sounds worse than Starbound to me. you'd have to tell me the specific details of Terraria that make it better than literally being able to going from planet to planet exploring environments and mods that improve upon Starbound- the appeal of such thing is hardly just in the potential of the base game, becuase I purchased Starbound entirely for the mods.

Terraria also has a thriving mod scene.

They're similar games that have similar concepts, and play very similarly. Starbound was literally made by a guy that used to work on Terraria. You only go to one planet, but it's huge and there's a ton of different biomes, items, bosses, cosmetics, events, things to explore, etc. I've played both and Terraria offers way more exploration and diversity than Starbound did. Gameplay is very very similar to Starbound except more streamlined. Bosses are faster, and so is your character. There's hundreds of items and most of them are unique in a way more than just + stats. They add gameplay changing things like dashes, double jumps, sprints, invulnerability frames, etc.

Obviously there's going to be some differences. You don't go into space, there's almost no clearly defined story, and the early game is a bit slower but ramps up to be much faster later. If you enjoyed one you'll probably enjoy the other though.

Eldan

2022-09-13, 02:58 AM

Lord Raziere

2022-09-13, 03:37 AM

Terraria also has a thriving mod scene.

They're similar games that have similar concepts, and play very similarly. Starbound was literally made by a guy that used to work on Terraria. You only go to one planet, but it's huge and there's a ton of different biomes, items, bosses, cosmetics, events, things to explore, etc. I've played both and Terraria offers way more exploration and diversity than Starbound did. Gameplay is very very similar to Starbound except more streamlined. Bosses are faster, and so is your character. There's hundreds of items and most of them are unique in a way more than just + stats. They add gameplay changing things like dashes, double jumps, sprints, invulnerability frames, etc.

Obviously there's going to be some differences. You don't go into space, there's almost no clearly defined story, and the early game is a bit slower but ramps up to be much faster later. If you enjoyed one you'll probably enjoy the other though.

Yeah but if its so good, now I don't want flowers for algernon myself because I like the concept of a space adventurer going around using fabricator tech too much. like the entire point of this thread is roleplaying, and Starbound fulfills this fantasy of this nanofab-astronaut adventurer that can go wherever and do whatever and make whatever in the galaxy, and if Terraria doesn't have the same sci-fi feel that kind of interferes with that fantasy, because Starbound's still better than No Man's Sky in that the character is actually customizable and the planets are more interesting.

Eldan

2022-09-13, 03:51 AM

Nah, Terraria definitely doesn't have that Scifi feel. That was absolutely what I loved about Starbound as well, building my own space station, fabricator-teching my way around the universe. It's just that after a while, all the planets were more than a bit samey, the monsters too.

factotum

2022-09-13, 05:12 AM

I've played both, and I reckon the NPCs in Starbound are more intelligent than the ones in Terraria--they're quite capable of climbing ladders to reach their assigned rooms, for instance, which Terrarian NPCs don't seem to be.

Cespenar

2022-09-13, 08:35 AM

On the "labels" vein several posts above: I feel like the need for labeling is getting ever so weaker since player exposition to games are more from direct gameplay videos nowadays, as opposed to just written pieces of "gaming journalism" days, which needed those tags to get the point across.

Anteros

2022-09-13, 08:41 AM

I should get back in Terraria. I played it for maybe one afternoon before I got into Starbound. And Starbound really does have that problem, it gets quite samey after a while. Most of the creatures are rather uninteresting to fight, though it has some nice randomly generated dungeons.

Are there NPCs, villages and so on in Terraria? I don't remember any from when I last played, years and years ago.

There are NPCs, but they're not super advanced. You basically meet whatever obscure requirement there is for the NPC to spawn, build them a house, and they spawn in. They mostly just exist to sell you different things, although some do have other functions or rudimentary quests.

As for dungeons...not in the same way that Starbound implements them. You might go to an area, explore it, get the unique loot, and fight the boss...but it's not a separate map with its own mini-plot the way Starbound generates it.

Terraria is more about exploring, finding crazy stuff, building neat items and arenas, and fighting tough bosses. You'll meet a boss and think "how am I ever supposed to beat that thing??!" and then you'll come up with an item and arena combination you can make to do it. It starts out arguably slower than Starbound but by the end ramps up way higher.

Yeah but if its so good, now I don't want flowers for algernon myself because I like the concept of a space adventurer going around using fabricator tech too much. like the entire point of this thread is roleplaying, and Starbound fulfills this fantasy of this nanofab-astronaut adventurer that can go wherever and do whatever and make whatever in the galaxy, and if Terraria doesn't have the same sci-fi feel that kind of interferes with that fantasy, because Starbound's still better than No Man's Sky in that the character is actually customizable and the planets are more interesting.

Hey, that's fine. It was just a suggestion on something I thought you'd enjoy. If what you like about Starbound is the atmosphere and feeling like a spacefarer I don't think Terraria would ruin it because it doesn't try to do those things at all. It's more that the gameplay loops of explore/build/fight are similar than the space aesthetic.

No Man's Sky has also come a long way by the way. I don't know when you last tried it, but as someone who played around launch and refunded it I was very pleasantly surprised when I tried it recently.

Ionathus

2022-09-13, 09:29 AM

Psyren

2022-09-13, 11:58 AM

I've really try to play Divinity 2 Original Sin, but I just keep drifting away from it, even though its actually good roleplay, I think it because I'm not used to the old isometric design top down design on this realistic 3D world. like, if it was more 2d sprite like, or something I'd probably love it but to me its just such a weird way to do it, probably because I'm used to Bioware's more up close third person thing.

All I can say is stick with it, it's a fantastic game. Great story, great characters, great combat, great voice acting, varied builds, romances (including queer ones), multiple endings... Larian nailed that old-school Bioware feel and it's no wonder they got tapped by WotC to make Baldur's Gate 3 after knocking it out of the park on this game. I especially love the environmental/elemental system that lets you do things like break an oil barrel and set the oil ablaze with your fire spells and then put out said fire by conjuring rain and then electrify the water etc.

KillianHawkeye

2022-09-13, 12:06 PM

factotum

2022-09-13, 01:48 PM

FWIW, my definition of a CRPG has always been a game in which your in-game character's skills are at least as important as your own twitch gaming skills. Probably doesn't fit all corner cases but it works for me.

Lord Raziere

2022-09-13, 04:02 PM

Are actors not playing a role? Is the character from ROGUE not the role that the player takes on when he's exploring the dungeon?

You're free to disagree, but I'm saying that your definition of roleplaying is vastly more limited than the one in practical use in the world. It doesn't always mean "being in control of the narrative" or "making choices that matter", those are optional components. Popular ones, true, but not essential.

My definition is practical. your definition pretty much says any game is a roleplaying game, its too wide. By your definition, Halo is a roleplaying game because your taking on the role of/acting out Master Chief shooting everything around him, its meaningless.

Anteros

2022-09-13, 05:55 PM

My definition is practical. your definition pretty much says any game is a roleplaying game, its too wide. By your definition, Halo is a roleplaying game because your taking on the role of/acting out Master Chief shooting everything around him, its meaningless.

Meaningless or not, that's how the word's been used for the last...decade? Two? Words mean what society says they do, not what we think they should

All I can say is stick with it, it's a fantastic game. Great story, great characters, great combat, great voice acting, varied builds, romances (including queer ones), multiple endings... Larian nailed that old-school Bioware feel and it's no wonder they got tapped by WotC to make Baldur's Gate 3 after knocking it out of the park on this game. I especially love the environmental/elemental system that lets you do things like break an oil barrel and set the oil ablaze with your fire spells and then put out said fire by conjuring rain and then electrify the water etc.

Really now? I'll give you combat, romances, and multiple endings. In particular the sheer variety of ways they allow you to approach any particular combat is amazing. It's an absolutely fantastic game. But the story reads like it was written by a writer for the Scooby-Doo show, and while the characters are all extremely interesting concepts, most of them are about as fleshed out as a skeleton. They're completely silent for the vast majority of the game. Larian is a fantastic game designer, but not much of a writer. It's fine for Divinity because the series treats itself like a comedy most of the time and you're not supposed to take the story seriously, but it certainly doesn't deserve any praise.

Rynjin

2022-09-13, 05:59 PM

But the story reads like it was written by a writer for the Scooby-Doo show, and while the characters are all extremely interesting concepts, most of them are about as fleshed out as a skeleton.

I'm genuinely not sure if this is a joke about Fane or not, but either way I laughed.

My favorite part of Original Sin 2 is that one of the random "companions" is actually the real main character, but you only know it if you actually play as him.

Lord Raziere

2022-09-13, 06:02 PM

Meaningless or not, that's how the word's been used for the last...decade? Two? Words mean what society says they do, not what we think they should

I'm Chaotic, screw society, its often dumb and often wrong about a lot of things.

NeoVid

2022-09-13, 06:02 PM

Cikomyr2

2022-09-13, 06:36 PM

I think what people historically called "RPG" should be renamed "Adventure-RPG", and we just abandon the plain RPG to anything that has level up element.

an Adventure-RPG is a game where the primary gameplay loop is not necessarily linked to combat. otherwise, it's an Action-RPG.

JRPGs are not Adventure-RPG. Fallout 1 and 2 were Adventure-RPGs.

Anteros

2022-09-13, 07:16 PM

Zevox

2022-09-13, 07:34 PM

I'm Chaotic, screw society, its often dumb and often wrong about a lot of things.
Unfortunately for you, it cannot be wrong about this. Language is essentially widespread consensus among people that certain sets of sounds (or shapes representing sounds, when in written form) have certain meanings. If most people who speak a language use a word to mean one thing, they are correct by definition, because others who speak that language will understand their use of the word. The only way you could hope to change that is to simply try to convince enough people to start using it differently that your preferred use becomes widespread, which, well, good luck trying to force something like that.

Languages evolve and change, and words often end up meaning something very different over time from what they did in the past. Its the nature of the beast.

Rynjin

2022-09-13, 07:56 PM

I'm Chaotic, screw society, its often dumb and often wrong about a lot of things.

Raise feeny hooperchoke, abble flugen chismnob.

Lord Raziere

2022-09-13, 08:36 PM

Unfortunately for you, it cannot be wrong about this. Language is essentially widespread consensus among people that certain sets of sounds (or shapes representing sounds, when in written form) have certain meanings. If most people who speak a language use a word to mean one thing, they are correct by definition, because others who speak that language will understand their use of the word. The only way you could hope to change that is to simply try to convince enough people to start using it differently that your preferred use becomes widespread, which, well, good luck trying to force something like that.

Languages evolve and change, and words often end up meaning something very different over time from what they did in the past. Its the nature of the beast.

That doesn't make it less dumb. "literally" doesn't mean "literally" anymore, society has lost my respect for any of its "unchangeable nature of the world we live in" aspects. screw those aspects! they're what keeps making things horrible! we should stop pretending as if they're something positive in disguise.

Rynjin

2022-09-13, 08:46 PM

That doesn't make it less dumb.

It doesn't make it any less unable to speak?

screw those aspects!

Why do you want to distort or twist around these aspects?

they're what keeps making things horrible!

Why are these things shuddering?

Zevox

2022-09-13, 08:56 PM

That doesn't make it less dumb. "literally" doesn't mean "literally" anymore, society has lost my respect for any of its "unchangeable nature of the world we live in" aspects. screw those aspects! they're what keeps making things horrible! we should stop pretending as if they're something positive in disguise.
Without language, we'd have no good means to communicate with others - possibly no means to think in the abstract ways we can, even. Language is massive, fundamental good thing for humanity.

That it changes and evolves as it does is neither good nor bad, it's simply fundental to how it works at all. You can complain all you want about individual instances you personally dislike, but you almost certainly will never be able to undo them, and definitely cannot prevent the process from happening again. You may as well try to stop time.

Lord Raziere

2022-09-13, 09:47 PM

That it changes and evolves as it does is neither good nor bad, it's simply fundental to how it works at all. You can complain all you want about individual instances you personally dislike, but you almost certainly will never be able to undo them, and definitely cannot prevent the process from happening again. You may as well try to stop time.

I fully acknowledge the factual reality of the situation.

I just don't feel need to follow the scripted emotional expected reaction of just shrugging it off, because no matter what the reality, I like my definition better, because it makes more sense than a decayed half-definition to vague to work anymore.

Rynjin

2022-09-13, 10:17 PM

I fully acknowledge the factual reality of the situation.

I just don't feel need to follow the scripted emotional expected reaction of just shrugging it off, because no matter what the reality, I like my definition better, because it makes more sense than a decayed half-definition to vague to work anymore.

The problem is that it makes it quite literally (literally literally, not figuratively literally) impossible to hold a meaningful conversation if one person rejects the meaning of language everyone else is using.

It's sort of like going to Mexico and getting mad when everyone there doesn't speak English. I guess it's fine if you speak your own language, but it's odd to inject yourself into conversations where people are discussing a subject in the language everyone else speaks with "well in my lingo it doesn't work that way".

At a certain point you're going to have to "shrug it off", because you're not going to make everybody else accept your unique definition of a word. This leaves you with the only (reasonable) options being to either use the definition everyone else uses to keep participating, or bow out because your personal language makes it impossible to contribute.

That is, to my knowledge, the reasoning behind why the forum has a rule against speaking foreign languages or "typing incoherently". The post may be insightful but if it's not in a language others understand, it's not useful.

Lord Raziere

2022-09-13, 10:35 PM

The problem is that it makes it quite literally (literally literally, not figuratively literally) impossible to hold a meaningful conversation if one person rejects the meaning of language everyone else is using.

It's sort of like going to Mexico and getting mad when everyone there doesn't speak English. I guess it's fine if you speak your own language, but it's odd to inject yourself into conversations where people are discussing a subject in the language everyone else speaks with "well in my lingo it doesn't work that way".

At a certain point you're going to have to "shrug it off", because you're not going to make everybody else accept your unique definition of a word. This leaves you with the only (reasonable) options being to either use the definition everyone else uses to keep participating, or bow out because your personal language makes it impossible to contribute.

That is, to my knowledge, the reasoning behind why the forum has a rule against speaking foreign languages or "typing incoherently". The post may be insightful but if it's not in a language others understand, it's not useful.

Yeah but look at how annoying it is that you have to clarify the meaning of literally there, its stupid!

roleplaying game no longer actually means roleplaying, which is stupider! Its not 1:1 anymore, and that ticks me off to no end! instead its saying one thing and expecting people to know your talking about a completely different thing just because its popular. roleplaying referring to a leveling system is just so wrong and unrelated! its claiming understanding while being harder, less clear and more byzantine to understand, because things no longer refer to things they refer to, but rather something that is tangential to it! and apparently the only option is acceptance so we can't understand anything! Its so dumb!

Rynjin

2022-09-13, 10:40 PM

Yeah but look at how annoying it is that you have to clarify the meaning of literally there, its stupid!

I did that as a joke, I wouldn't read too much into it lol. Context makes it clear whether the use of literally is hyperbole (an accepted linguistic use for pretty much any adjective), verbal irony (ditto), or straight language; admittedly less clear in text.

roleplaying game no longer actually means roleplaying, which is stupider! Its not 1:1 anymore, and that ticks me off to no end! instead its saying one thing and expecting people to know your talking about a completely different thing just because its popular. roleplaying referring to a leveling system is just so wrong and unrelated! its claiming understanding while being harder, less clear and more byzantine to understand, because things no longer refer to things they refer to, but rather something that is tangential to it! and apparently the only option is acceptance so we can't understand anything!

The thing I don't really understand is what is this era of games that you consider "real roleplaying games"? Like what games, exactly, qualify?

Because to my knowledge for the most part RPG has pretty much always been a mechanical definition ("it plays like the D&D ruleset") and not anything else. Video games, especially early video games, are too constrained by the limitations of software to be "true" roleplaying games, and always have been. Thus, RPG meaning something MUCH different in video games than in tabletop.

Lord Raziere

2022-09-13, 10:46 PM

The thing I don't really understand is what is this era of games that you consider "real roleplaying games"? Like what games, exactly, qualify?

Because to my knowledge for the most part RPG has pretty much always been a mechanical definition ("it plays like the D&D ruleset") and not anything else. Video games, especially early video games, are too constrained by the limitations of software to be "true" roleplaying games, and always have been. Thus, RPG meaning something MUCH different in video games than in tabletop.

:smallsigh:

Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh now I realize this is the part where you inevitably drag me down into exposing how my view is a narrow limited viewpoint within a snapshot of time and turn my empowering anger into nothing but depression and bitterness. thanks a lot, you've already made your point, I'm discussing this no longer.

Zevox

2022-09-13, 11:41 PM

MetroAlien

2022-09-14, 01:56 AM

I guess actors "play a role".

And I guess when your GM railroads the entire campaign, it's still, technically speaking, a session of D&D.

But I think both of us would agree that it's not a particularly good session of D&D. It may have been a great story and overall enjoyable experience, but it's a poor example of what we expect when we join a hypothetical D&D table, IMHO.
Kinda like getting served delicious tacos when you ordered pizza?

my strongest example of a "good" video-game RPG is a bit controversial... I'm talking about KotOR 2.
It's notorious for being an unfinished product, and as such it's hard to argue about what was developers' the "true" vision.
But I can list specific aspects that hooked me and explain why I think they represent "good" opportunities for role-play.

While yes, the "main" story is linear, many characters (not only the player's crew) have their own individual stories, some with multiple endings.
Now, you don't always have your entire crew with you. You have to choose which characters' stories you're going to develop and when. You may also choose to not visit some non-crew characters.
Once the story progressed, you could have missed some opportunities with some characters.
In effect, "character scenes" become almost like a resource for the player. You can "trade" opportunities for scenes with significant consequences, in a similar way as you can "trade" the opportunity to learn a new feat for upgrading an existing one.
However, in case of "character scenes", what you get isn't an optimised "build", but an "optimised" story, so to speak.

TL;DR how you play the game has lasting impact on the narrative, and the how part isn't merely about choosing specific items or skills, but actions that choose to do (or not to do), more importantly: actions that aren't mandated by the story.

Thinking about it, iirc STALKER had a hidden system that determined your ending based on "how" you play... but I'm not too familiar with the details on that.

DaedalusMkV

2022-09-14, 02:24 AM

I was just having a discussion about game genres yesterday, where I pointed out that in Telltale games, the only thing you do is roleplay... But they don't fit any definition of 'RPG' I've heard. Something's wrong here.

The last game in the RPG genre where I was able to come up with a character concept and keep all my decisions in character was New Vegas, and it was also pretty close to being the first game to give me that opportunity.
It's not the lack of the RP in Telltale games. It's the lack of a G. The Telltale style tends to be billed as Interactive Fiction rather than as an RPG because, well... A couple of very easy often optional QTEs does not a game make. Telltale has much more in common with visual novel design than it does with any sort of real video game. If anything, I'd class them as fully animated visual novels, or interactive movies. Like the FMV games of my childhood, really, just a lot bigger and better done.

Something akin to Telltale with more mechanics to it could be an RPG, for sure. In fact... I think that's pretty much what Alpha Protocol was, honestly. And for all that it was a buggy imbalanced mess of a game, in classic Obsidian fashion it's probably still one of my favorite RPGs ever. Played through it three times, got a near completely different experience all three times.

Thinking about it, iirc STALKER had a hidden system that determined your ending based on "how" you play... but I'm not too familiar with the details on that.
Nope, sadly. They might have hoped to implement one at some point, but no STALKER game has ever had any such system. The ending of the first game, Shadow of Chernobyl, was either 'choose your own death' if you didn't do some investigating and dig up a few MacGuffins, or 'Pick from three endings in a conversation with The Big Important Thing at the end of the game' if you did. Clear Sky only had one 'real' ending, with a few scenes along the way that detailed what happened to the factions you could have picked as you played the game, but all three were totally binary.

I suppose Call of Pripyat technically had such a system, in that it was functionally an epilogue that detailed the fate of all the NPCs you interacted with over the course of the game, but it was really just about what outcomes you picked during the 'quests'. Very simple and straightforward, straight out of Fallout. Did you help the Bandits take over Yantar? Ending A. Help the Independents take out the Bandits? B. Neither? C. Repeat for the 10ish things in the epilogue, roll credits.

Lord Raziere

2022-09-14, 02:36 AM

my strongest example of a "good" video-game RPG is a bit controversial... I'm talking about KotOR 2.

Yeah I like Kotor 2 as well man. its kind of sad that it either gets dislike for being unfinished or gets dislike because some people don't like Kreia. personally I liked that scene when you give a beggar some credits and it plays out badly no matter what you pick because thats just the culture and conditions of Nar Shadda, you doing one good deed doesn't magically change it for the better and thats a good roleplaying moment because its properly placing the PC in the context of the world: they're just one person and they have to grapple with the fact that Nar Shadda is bigger than them, and thus that the action they take is important not for consequentialist reasons but because it is good or right to them, and that giving a beggar 5 credits was good even if they lose it right after.

that moment is more meaningful as roleplay than something like the entire story of Tales of Symphonia, because thats just a story, I'm not the protagonist in anyway, I don't contribute anything to that tale in reality, because if I went on youtube, looked up something like "tales of symphonia the movie" you'd get the whole stories cutscenes without any of the gameplay and still get a good experience. I did just that for Xenoblade Chronicles 3, just watched a video of its cutscenes with no gameplay involved and it told its story well enough that I didn't feel I missed anything. the gameplay was completely irrelevant to the story. its a story game sure, but its not really roleplaying even though its an rpg, because roleplaying doesn't happen in those cutscenes where all the story takes place, its just a movie cut up so that you have endure a long treks of a pointless kill-loot cycle in between parts of it. if you can cut the game part out of the story, you haven't made a game conducive to roleplaying even if its an "rpg", because your just watching a poorly-paced movie with kill-loot breaks.

but I can't do the same for Kotor 2, because there are multiple play throughs and ways you can do that game, the dialogue choices and puzzles and actions and such and so on are therefore actually important to experiencing the story how you want to do it. many times there different ways to achieve the same thing and thus you can't do the same thing because each playthrough isn't the same and thus can be different with a different character you make. like you said, how you play the game has a lasting impact on it, which can't be said for something that doesn't offer that.

MetroAlien

2022-09-14, 02:56 AM

no STALKER game has ever had any such system. The ending of the first game, Shadow of Chernobyl, was either 'choose your own death' if you didn't do some investigating and dig up a few MacGuffins, or 'Pick from three endings in a conversation with The Big Important Thing at the end of the game' if you did.

Ah, yes... I only remember being very confused after getting the bad end as a wee teen and never touching it again.
And the cheeky breeky, of course :wink:

I guess Dark Souls tries to do what I described with how you don't have to interact with certain characters, but on the flip side it doesn't have much in the sense of story, or even "scenes" in general...

Also, I just remembered Mount & Blade, which "allows" you to make your own story by being a sandbox in the first place. This comes at the cost of there being no characters... (only named persons with little progression, if any at all)

Someone already mentioned Crusader Kings 3. I am aware of it, and it does basically all the things I'm looking for. All that's keeping me away from it is the pricing policy :sigh:

Batcathat

2022-09-14, 03:13 AM

OP, if you haven't played the Baldur's Gate series, I highly recommend picking up the Enhanced Editions. An abundance of choice and loads of dialogue options really set my RPG bar high at a young age. There's so much you can do and so many different ways you can play - and the fact that you've got a party of 6 and they all play off each other (especially in BG2) makes the roleplaying aspect very fun. Not the most nuanced choices, but I've been surprised numerous times by the number of ways I can derail the story that the designers accounted for.

As much as I love the Baldur's gate series (and I have the dozens of playthroughs to prove it. I've probably played through it at least every other year or so since my early teens and I'm now in my late thirties), I think this is overstating the amount of choice. Yes, there is a lot of (usually very well written) dialogue but its impact on what happens is limited at best and most quests are fairly linear. Don't get me wrong, there are certainly more choices than some games and the games are fantastic in general, but it is also rather limited in some ways.

Lord Raziere

2022-09-14, 03:16 AM

I guess Dark Souls tries to do what I described with how you don't have to interact with certain characters, but on the flip side it doesn't have much in the sense of story, or even "scenes" in general...

Yeah Dark souls is.....weird, from a roleplaying perspective. there is a lot of choice in terms of gear and build, it leaves a lot open to how your character thinks about all that they do and such because protag's silent, so there is a lot to fill in, but there isn't really anything to encourage it either? like there is just enough lore and characters to not be flavorless, the environments and such do have a story behind them they just aren't told outright to you and the only resolution is killing them all because your past the point where anything can be done except restarting the cycle of ages basically.

like in Elden Ring I picked the thief class, and I roleplayed as a bandit from like Caelid with a cockney british accent, so she went about everything real pragmatically when going through the Lands Between, was both sad and triumphant when she killed Radahn because that was her leader once and he truly tried to protect Caelid as best he could and went all the way to the Haligtree to get revenge on Malenia, was happy to see Patches, did her best to save the girl-lizard, things like that. it was a lot of empty space filled by roleplaying, but I didn't really need to roleplay.

like thinking about it, I'd say something like Dark Souls or Elden Ring is roleplay-neutral or mostly roleplay-neutral. you don't have to roleplay and fill in the blanks, but you can do if you want, unlike Xenoblade 3 which can you can cut out the gameplay to treat it as a movie and thus not roleplay at all, or Kotor 2 which actively encourages roleplaying.

Vinyadan

2022-09-14, 05:18 AM

Nope, sadly. They might have hoped to implement one at some point, but no STALKER game has ever had any such system. The ending of the first game, Shadow of Chernobyl, was either 'choose your own death' if you didn't do some investigating and dig up a few MacGuffins, or 'Pick from three endings in a conversation with The Big Important Thing at the end of the game' if you did. Clear Sky only had one 'real' ending, with a few scenes along the way that detailed what happened to the factions you could have picked as you played the game, but all three were totally binary.

The STALKER 1 fake/bad endings actually were based on your situation at the end, but that situation depended on how you had played previously. For example, whether you had accumulated lots of money without using it, and that's something you had to do all along the game. If you had less than X money, a good reputation, and hadn't killed faction leaders, then it was another ending. Other endings depending on your reputation, amount of money, and the number of living or dead leaders. It's interesting that these endings were all about the personality and wishes of the character.

KillianHawkeye

2022-09-14, 12:55 PM

GloatingSwine

2022-09-14, 02:00 PM

But my response was to your critique of what constitutes roleplaying. You're forgetting my first statement was that RPGs have the character development mechanics, like attribute points and leveling up. To be an RPG, you have to combine the roleplay with the game elements that are common to the genre.

Halo has none of that.

I think a good reference is found in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM1yR7WYqgM

A good RPG happens when the player can make choices in defining their character mechanically that give them different approaches to solving problems that extend beyond "which colour fireball do you shoot them with".

NRSASD

2022-09-14, 03:33 PM

Someone already mentioned Crusader Kings 3. I am aware of it, and it does basically all the things I'm looking for. All that's keeping me away from it is the pricing policy :sigh:

Yeah, the pricing can be pretty egregious especially now that they’re upping the price of the flavor packs. That said, it is a very solid game otherwise. Long and drawn out though

Cikomyr2

2022-09-14, 05:29 PM

I think a good reference is found in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM1yR7WYqgM

A good RPG happens when the player can make choices in defining their character mechanically that give them different approaches to solving problems that extend beyond "which colour fireball do you shoot them with".

Or you are consistently allowed nonviolent paths to conflict or dilemma resolution.

How would Dishonored rate in term of RpGness?

MetroAlien

2022-09-14, 09:01 PM

Dishonoured and Thief are interesting.

They probably give the player the best in terms of mechanical choices as to how you can go about solving a problem, but I dare say that the end result is more or less the same regardless.

I haven't played Dishonoured 2, so maybe I'm missing out. But I have this impression that most choices you make in that matter mechanics-wise, more so than story-wise.
Which isn't a bad thing, by any means. That's what the game is going for, obviously.

I think Prey, the more recent one, was kinda like that too?
And Undertale...
Yes, Dishonoured is the Undertale of stealth games.
And Betehsda's Prey is the Undertale of Bioshock games.

PS: personal insider joke here. I consider Bethesda's Prey to be a (spiritual) sequel to the Bioshock series, because the gameplay and setting are basically identical to Bioshock, just with a "space" skin on it.

NRSASD

2022-09-14, 09:25 PM

Psyren

2022-09-15, 02:41 AM

Really now? I'll give you combat, romances, and multiple endings. In particular the sheer variety of ways they allow you to approach any particular combat is amazing. It's an absolutely fantastic game. But the story reads like it was written by a writer for the Scooby-Doo show, and while the characters are all extremely interesting concepts, most of them are about as fleshed out as a skeleton. They're completely silent for the vast majority of the game. Larian is a fantastic game designer, but not much of a writer. It's fine for Divinity because the series treats itself like a comedy most of the time and you're not supposed to take the story seriously, but it certainly doesn't deserve any praise.

The plot was probably one of the weaker points but it was still decent. It certainly had more depth than, say, Dragon Age Inquisition.

And I love the Setting and Characters. And the races - how many CRPGs not only let you be undead, but let it matter? DOS2 is a marvel.

GloatingSwine

2022-09-15, 04:04 AM

PS: personal insider joke here. I consider Bethesda's Prey to be a (spiritual) sequel to the Bioshock series, because the gameplay and setting are basically identical to Bioshock, just with a "space" skin on it.

You mean Psychoshock?

It's only called Prey because Bethesda had the license hanging around and made Arkane use the title.

Because the 2006 Prey was apparently so well received*?

Or you are consistently allowed nonviolent paths to conflict or dilemma resolution.

And more than one that isn't a single dialogue check. Even if they're different kinds of dialogue checks with different people, and they hang on different skills the player might have. Every RPG should at least aspire to Fate of Atlantis' "Wits, Fists, and Team" paths, but without the lock-in.

* Actually I'm in the camp that it was a perfectly cromulent shooter for its time, it's just that its time was too interested in brown and realism to have space aliens, spiritwalking, gravity platforms and guns that plugged into your eyes.

KillianHawkeye

2022-09-15, 12:57 PM

A good RPG happens when the player can make choices in defining their character mechanically that give them different approaches to solving problems that extend beyond "which colour fireball do you shoot them with".

Yes, a good or great RPG will give the players more choices, but my whole argument in this thread is that RPGs that don't do that are still RPGs.

Gatekeeping in media or entertainment is just one of my biggest pet peeves, so I have to stand up for things sometimes. People's personal preferences don't stop a thing they don't like from existing or being a part of their favorite series or genre. Especially one as broad as RPG, which is an umbrella that contains many increasingly specific sub-genres.

Lord Raziere

2022-09-15, 05:30 PM

Yes, a good or great RPG will give the players more choices, but my whole argument in this thread is that RPGs that don't do that are still RPGs.

Gatekeeping in media or entertainment is just one of my biggest pet peeves, so I have to stand up for things sometimes. People's personal preferences don't stop a thing they don't like from existing or being a part of their favorite series or genre. Especially one as broad as RPG, which is an umbrella that contains many increasingly specific sub-genres.

Yes "rpgs" that can be replaced by cutting out all the mechanical parts to watch all the cutscenes thus making them movies with odd cuts from the beginning of a fight to the end of one, yet despite this flaw are more enjoyable than actually playing it because you don't waste your time with pointless kill/loot bull that has no affect on anything except forward progress, so why bother? there is more important things than merely getting to the end.

watching a movie is the same level of interactive depth as the "rpgs" you talk about. the difference is that the movie just gives you a good story all at once, doesn't waste your time. the videogame on the other hand wants you to mindless grinding and pointless upgrading and bosses to earn your next cutscene in drips. its like paying in installments with time instead of money.

Rynjin

2022-09-15, 05:39 PM

Lord Raziere

2022-09-15, 05:50 PM

Ehhh, I'm not the hugest fan of JRPGs either, but they're not all awful, and what you're describing are the awful ones. I quite enjoyed Bravely Default II last year, for example. It's mechanically complex enough for fights to be fun, and involves the fun sort of grinding with everyone having access to different jobs that reward you for actually leveling multiples on one character.

Its not about quality though.

I liked Xenoblade Chronicles 1 2 and 3, I like Tales of (Blank) games, I like their stories and want to experience them, they're good stories.

its just that their mechanics are completely irrelevant to doing that, and aren't all that great mechanically to like on their own merits. and they take a long time with tedious stuff that doesn't matter.

but a good story doesn't a roleplaying make. If I'm passively watching a movie thats not roleplaying. if I'm just engaging in combat mechanics, inventory management or moving a digital character across some game map thats not really roleplaying either, thats just stuff I need to do. If I have to do the latter to watch the former, that gets you an "rpg" by common definition now. I'd rather just watch the movie, thank you very much, than pretend I'm not doing that by engaging in pointless grinding to get only get drips of that movie at a time.

Rynjin

2022-09-15, 06:00 PM

Its not about quality though.

I liked Xenoblade Chronicles 1 2 and 3, I like Tales of (Blank) games, I like their stories and want to experience them, they're good stories.

its just that their mechanics are completely irrelevant to doing that, and aren't all that great mechanically to like on their own merits. and they take a long time with tedious stuff that doesn't matter.

Well, that's what I mean. If the mechanics are "not all that great" and can be described as "tedious"...they're not good. That's a quality issue. This is aside the debate on what makes an RPG an RPG, it's just my opinion that if the experience of playing a game can be completely replaced by watching the cutscenes, it's not a good game.

Hell if a game's experience can be completely replaced by watching a LET'S PLAY, it's not a good game.

KillianHawkeye

2022-09-15, 06:02 PM

Yes "rpgs" that can be replaced by cutting out all the mechanical parts to watch all the cutscenes thus making them movies with odd cuts from the beginning of a fight to the end of one, yet despite this flaw are more enjoyable than actually playing it because you don't waste your time with pointless kill/loot bull that has no affect on anything except forward progress, so why bother? there is more important things than merely getting to the end.

watching a movie is the same level of interactive depth as the "rpgs" you talk about. the difference is that the movie just gives you a good story all at once, doesn't waste your time. the videogame on the other hand wants you to mindless grinding and pointless upgrading and bosses to earn your next cutscene in drips. its like paying in installments with time instead of money.

You're missing the "game" part in Roleplaying Game. The combats, in your example, are the game. The story, with varying degrees of interactability such as they may be, provide the roleplaying.

Why bother winning the fights and getting the treasure and equipping your characters in an RPG? Because it's fun! Experiencing the story is your reward for surpassing the game challenges.

Again, I think you're clinging too hard to your hyper-specific definition of how an RPG should be, and arguing over semantics rather than accepting that other people have different desires and goals when playing these games than you do.

If I'm passively watching a movie thats not roleplaying. if I'm just engaging in combat mechanics, inventory management or moving a digital character across some game map thats not really roleplaying either, thats just stuff I need to do. If I have to do the latter to watch the former, that gets you an "rpg" by common definition now.

Hate to break this to you, but that's ALWAYS been a part of the definition of how video game RPGs work. Always!

I'd rather just watch the movie, thank you very much, than pretend I'm not doing that by engaging in pointless grinding to get only get drips of that movie at a time.

Then I suggest you go do that?

EDIT:

Hell if a game's experience can be completely replaced by watching a LET'S PLAY, it's not a good game.

Hey now, there are lots of games that I'd rather watch someone play than play them myself. That doesn't make them bad games.

Rynjin

2022-09-15, 06:09 PM

Hey now, there are lots of games that I'd rather watch someone play than play them myself. That doesn't make them bad games.

You may prefer to watch them, but for most of those games I doubt the experience can be entirely replaced by watching it. I like watching LPs too, but typically they entice me to play the game afterward.

If not...they're probably not very good.

KillianHawkeye

2022-09-15, 06:15 PM

You may prefer to watch them, but for most of those games I doubt the experience can be entirely replaced by watching it. I like watching LPs too, but typically they entice me to play the game afterward.

If not...they're probably not very good.

There are many games that I've watched that are made enjoyable by the person playing them even if they're not my kind of game, or that are interesting enough to watch but complicated enough that I don't really want to learn how to play them. I don't see how that makes them a bad game? :smallconfused:

I mean, I watch professional sports sometimes, but I don't play any of those sports myself.

Lord Raziere

2022-09-15, 06:18 PM

Well, that's what I mean. If the mechanics are "not all that great" and can be described as "tedious"...they're not good. That's a quality issue. This is aside the debate on what makes an RPG an RPG, it's just my opinion that if the experience of playing a game can be completely replaced by watching the cutscenes, it's not a good game.

Hell if a game's experience can be completely replaced by watching a LET'S PLAY, it's not a good game.

But it can still be a good story to experience.

if anything your reinforcing my argument; choice in the story is a huge gameplay feature that contributes to the mechanics of an rpg, as opposed to an "rpg". Fallout 4 is not very good but I will acknowledge it as solidly as a rpg instead of an "rpg" because it allows for this choice even if its not very good story or choices of outcome. not a quality issue, because Fallout 4 is more an rpg to me than Xenoblade 3, even though Xenoblade 3 is better, and can't be replaced by watching a lets play.

You're missing the "game" part in Roleplaying Game. The combats, in your example, are the game. The story, with varying degrees of interactability such as they may be, provide the roleplaying.

Why bother winning the fights and getting the treasure and equipping your characters in an RPG? Because it's fun! Experiencing the story is your reward for surpassing the game challenges.

Again, I think you're clinging too hard to your hyper-specific definition of how an RPG should be, and arguing over semantics rather than accepting that other people have different desires and goals when playing these games than you do.

But I don't need to do the game part. if the game part is all it is, its not enough roleplaying to be worth calling it that, and if the roleplaying part is no different from me watching a movie, then watching marvel movies is roleplaying now I guess. hey guys lets go to the theater to roleplay the new movie thats coming out. y'know silently by looking at it and thinking about it in our heads so we don't disturb the people around us who are only watching it and not secretly roleplaying it.

Rynjin

2022-09-15, 06:27 PM

There are many games that I've watched that are made enjoyable by the person playing them even if they're not my kind of game, or that are interesting enough to watch but complicated enough that I don't really want to learn how to play them. I don't see how that makes them a bad game? :smallconfused:

I mean, I watch professional sports sometimes, but I don't play any of those sports myself.

You're confusing preference (I don't want to play this game) with what I mean (I don't need to play this game).

For example, I like watching tennis. I do not like playing tennis.

However, watching and playing are two very different things. Watching it is in no way replacing the experience of playing tennis.

If a game is so devoid of interactivity that watching and playing are synonymous (like many bad visual novels or walking simulators), or the gameplay actually DETRACTS from the experience (bad JRPGs with an entertaining story), it's not a good game.

MetroAlien

2022-09-15, 07:52 PM

You may prefer to watch them, but for most of those games I doubt the experience can be entirely replaced by watching it.

Hard agree to this!
I can definitely see how some games can be mostly replaced by a movie, but in most cases there's more nuance.

One of my favourite examples is the Yakuza series.
Definitely, by far the most eye-catching thing about it are the hyper-stylised, flashy, melodramatic cut scenes with fast-moving, heart-wrenching plots.
But I would never think it's a good idea to make these games into movies.
For one, the stories they tell are too detailed and simply too long for a movie. Also, the action of a singular game is paced in a way that doesn't lend itself to serialisation, as in a TV drama or movie series.
The story is written and structured so that it's best consumed at the same pace most people play games. That's deliberate.

Also, there's the idea of engagement in the story. The punches and swerves of the narrative are made all the more effective by the fact that you, the player, personally put in effort into achieving the protagonists' goals.
When the mentor gets killed, it means you won't get goodies from them to help you.
When the bad guy falls, it's because you went through hell and back to make them pay.
A film-viewing experience simply doesn't offer that.

That's not even mentioning all the optional side-activities. The Yakuza series in particular is a rare example, where the amount of genuinely engaging side-activities maybe even eclipses the main gameplay in terms of content.
From QTE-based sports games, to fully implemented arcades, to fully implemented casino games, to collect-a-thons, and even a fully implemented nightclub-manager-and-dating-simulator... there are numerous incentives to start up the game, even if you don't plan to engage with the main story.

Rynjin

2022-09-15, 08:10 PM

But I would never think it's a good idea to make these games into movies.

You are wiser than Japanese filmmakers. (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0991243/)

KillianHawkeye

2022-09-16, 12:54 AM

choice in the story is a huge gameplay feature that contributes to the mechanics of an rpg, as opposed to an "rpg". Fallout 4 is not very good but I will acknowledge it as solidly as a rpg instead of an "rpg" because it allows for this choice even if its not very good story or choices of outcome. not a quality issue, because Fallout 4 is more an rpg to me than Xenoblade 3, even though Xenoblade 3 is better, and can't be replaced by watching a lets play.

Wow, I already thought it was hard to communicate with you before you started using rpg and "rpg" (in quotes) to mean two different things. Now I just have no idea what you're talking about. Your words look like English, but you're not speaking the same language as I am. Not at all. :smalleek:

But I don't need to do the game part. if the game part is all it is, its not enough roleplaying to be worth calling it that, and if the roleplaying part is no different from me watching a movie, then watching marvel movies is roleplaying now I guess. hey guys lets go to the theater to roleplay the new movie thats coming out. y'know silently by looking at it and thinking about it in our heads so we don't disturb the people around us who are only watching it and not secretly roleplaying it.

Just say you don't like a thing. It's fine if you don't like something. If you only care about roleplaying and not gaming, then roleplaying games aren't for you. Try improv acting, instead? That doesn't stop the game in question from being a game that other people might enjoy, however. There's no need to for the patronizing tone or excess sarcasm.

BTW, it's the actors who are roleplaying in this scenario, because a film takes no input from the audience. A game, even one without meaningful choices, does. That's the thing you can't seem to understand? Pac-Man is a game. Avengers: Endgame is not.

If a game is so devoid of interactivity that watching and playing are synonymous (like many bad visual novels or walking simulators), or the gameplay actually DETRACTS from the experience (bad JRPGs with an entertaining story), it's not a good game.

Okay, I slightly misunderstood you. I agree that visual novels, even ones that offer a degree of limited choices, are not games. I also don't consider a choose-your-own-adventure book to be a game. Interaction is so crucial to the definition of something BEING a game that there are IMO literally no examples of games which fit this "watching is synonymous to playing it" definition. That's not what I'm saying at all. I do try to keep my definitions of things broad, but realistically there are limits.

What I am saying is that you can experience the majority of most games ~ possibly the most important parts, if they're story-heavy games ~ by watching them. You'll miss out on the accomplishment of completing the game yourself, but the importance of that varies from person to person.

Lord Raziere

2022-09-16, 07:27 AM

Wow, I already thought it was hard to communicate with you before you started using rpg and "rpg" (in quotes) to mean two different things. Now I just have no idea what you're talking about. Your words look like English, but you're not speaking the same language as I am. Not at all. :smalleek:

Just say you don't like a thing. It's fine if you don't like something. If you only care about roleplaying and not gaming, then roleplaying games aren't for you. Try improv acting, instead? That doesn't stop the game in question from being a game that other people might enjoy, however. There's no need to for the patronizing tone or excess sarcasm.

BTW, it's the actors who are roleplaying in this scenario, because a film takes no input from the audience. A game, even one without meaningful choices, does. That's the thing you can't seem to understand? Pac-Man is a game. Avengers: Endgame is not.

1. I think your exaggerating here.

2. Ah no, don't gatekeep me. If you have a rule about not gatekeeping what rpgs are, then why do suddenly have none about gatekeeping who can be a roleplayer? there is no need yes, I do like and want to express how ridiculous I find the notion of viewing a cutscene or playing a game without meaningful choices or input as "roleplaying" as not everything in this world is about what we need to do through art and sarcasm is a form of art, but let me restate my point in a more direct way and less sarcastic way then even though you've already got it: viewing a cutscene of a videogame is no different from viewing a movie and any notion that I have any input about said cutscene is false. and just because I like the roleplaying part of it more, doesn't mean I somehow hate gaming entirely.

I am fully aware that these are games and we're talking about games. I am fully aware of the "earn your ending" mentality you are talking about where you think its worth earning that ending despite no choice being offered. I just don't see a need to take that mentality except when a game is WORTH the mentality. Nor do I think of that mentality as roleplaying. they are separate. they can combine and work together when the right game comes along but they are not the same or always there at the same time. Before you ask if you can get to the end or completion of a game you must first ask if its worth playing, finishing or completing that game in the first place. hard work is not inherently valuable by itself, for I could get sucked into some game with needless padding or other bad design elements that could make everything take way too long. for something like Dark Souls or Elden Ring, the mentality is worth it as no story is there to get in the way of it and all is designed around encouraging and perfecting the earning of victory.

however this earning-of-victory mindset is not roleplaying. it is no different from earning victory in Doom Eternal, or Halo, or a puzzle game, or a strategy game or any other game. roleplaying however is not about victory or about passive observation. the only time to roleplay in the rpgs you describe are BETWEEN the cutscenes- and even then there is no point. the next cutscene will make the character's feelings clearer then without your input or even contradict what you roleplay.

such design is, to get away from the airquotes, is a diet rpg: an rpg without any actual roleplaying involved, for your just listening to the lore and the characters talk then your killing and looting things so they can talk some more. its all done for you so you don't have to participate or contribute, only engage in a mechanical cycle that lives in a separate world: in one world, the world of cutscenes, the protagonist is a hero with thoughts and feelings and so on and so forth, and in other they might as well be a puppet of your whims where none of these whims are important or relevant so they might as well have never happened. much like a diet soda, it apes a real soda without any calories or taste, emulating soda in all the ways that don't matter.

leveling? looting? doesn't matter. you can roleplay without these. they matter very little, unless your really interested in roleplaying highly materialistic people and go out of your way to act out your characters reactions to getting new items in a videogame to yourself which I've never really done, excitement about that parts more a OOC gamer reaction to me. I'm not judging if you do, I just would find it would take too long and nonsensical to act as if UI mechanistic things have any effect on the actual world depicted myself personally. like I like high damage numbers from an epic loot weapon combining with my build then leveling up as much as anyone else, but I'm under no illusion that these are somehow depicting an actual weapon of that world or how the fight would actually happen, or how the person actually grows and develops. because they're probably not meant to be accurate. the rpgs where it is meant to be accurate tend to get real meta about it and while thats interesting there has been a backlash against being meta that makes it non-viable in the long term.

so like I guess if your really insist on roleplaying the character in those gaps of tedious travel time, looting a nonsensically rarity colored item and leveling up, that can be roleplaying in the diet rpgs but I don't see it as worth it, they're not really the moments I'm interested in and I don't see why other people would be interested in them, and I don't see those segments as depicting those times accurately enough to roleplay off of, because those are the most gamey segments. I game during them but I don't roleplay during them. you have to do better for me to roleplay and game at the same time, and the cutscenes aren't better because there is already art being done there, why mess it up? If they wanted me to roleplay in that cutscene they would've give me an opportunity or designed it so that I could give input on it. it does everything without me, so I am only to observe and behold what the creator wants to depict and say and respect what they are trying to say as long as it meets some standard of sensible. thus there is no roleplaying, only the audience and the author- the actors are just another form of author to the audience.

Winthur

2022-09-16, 06:49 PM

I absolutely loathe "what is an RPG" threads because they always devolve to the extremely narrow subjective subset of what an RPG is supposed to be and we end up convincing one another that Stardew Valley is more of an RPG than Icewind Dale.
Of course, I click on every single one anyway.

But I don't need to do the game part. if the game part is all it is, its not enough roleplaying to be worth calling it that, and if the roleplaying part is no different from me watching a movie, then watching marvel movies is roleplaying now I guess.

Why bother having the game part in anything at all? Why bother with rulesets for any system when you could just sit around and tell improvised stories to one another?
We're already encroaching the assumption that all of that stuff is complete busywork that gets in the way, and a fun dungeon crawl with friends has "less" roleplaying than a session of passionate love done through private chat in an inn in Goldshire.
We have imperfect simulacrums of the "real" roleplaying experience which include dialogue, an element of risk, managing characters and so on.

I think, as they are, the typical computer RPG environment is good enough for stimulating your imagination in ways similar to how you'd behave in tabletop, like imagining relationships between different characters, acting in some way because "it's the right thing to do" for the characters, and so on. Most players already do that in very subtle ways that are easily dismissable, but the difference is there's no human interaction here whatsoever; it's solitaire.

I think it was the guy who made Etrian Odyssey that said something that boiled down to "if you are imagining how your characters act when setting up camp, if you are picking favourites based on how they do in very difficult situations or very niche situations or whether the dice favor them, if you are imagining ways these characters engage with one another outside of the interactions they have in game*, you're roleplaying". Don't have the exact quote, but I think that's the only way you can have a healthy mindset about computer RPGs if you derive most joy from the narrative elements.

*Also IMHO, it doesn't have to be that your headcanon is completely ruined by what is said in the game because in tabletop, people themselves are imperfect. Out of character moments happen to everyone, retcons happen all the time, and if your reading of certain characters gets completely turned around by an event then you were still engaged enough to bother to think about it.

Lord Raziere

2022-09-16, 07:47 PM

Why bother having the game part in anything at all? Why bother with rulesets for any system when you could just sit around and tell improvised stories to one another?
We're already encroaching the assumption that all of that stuff is complete busywork that gets in the way, and a fun dungeon crawl with friends has "less" roleplaying than a session of passionate love done through private chat in an inn in Goldshire.
We have imperfect simulacrums of the "real" roleplaying experience which include dialogue, an element of risk, managing characters and so on.

Okay you and Killian are now making absurd strawmans of my position. Please Stop that.

The concern isn't that mechanics inherently suck away roleplaying. its that the specific mechanics used do, as opposed to mechanics that encourage roleplaying: dialogue choices, reaction choices, development of relationships, things like that.

this is because we can no longer call things like inventory management, small scale tactical combat of any kind, leveling up, as unique to rpgs anymore. they are clearly being used in other genres without actually enhancing or providing a roleplaying experience, unless you define "roleplay experience" as solely as "grinding then selling the loot you got". the process of this is now just a mechanistic near OOC thing that occurs regardless of the world rather than something that depicts the economics of the world or the growth of the character- its just an assumed abstraction that everyone gets regardless of what happens in the story.

you have explained thoroughly why these things are "GAME" yes, but you continue to ignore or not explain how they promote "ROLEPLAYING" specifically, so that are a "ROLEPLAYING GAME". because if these elements can be applied to any game without any actual roleplaying taking place, how can they honestly be defined as encouraging roleplaying? they are certainly gaming, I will give you that, and they are allowed to be apart of a roleplaying game certainly, all mechanics are- as long as they y'know, actually make it a roleplaying opportunity while also being fun to play. but they aren't valuable by themselves to roleplaying, as games are demonstrating now. you can have legendary loot drop sure but its completely dissonant from roleplaying because that drop has no effect on the world aside from higher damage numbers, no matter its lore you might as well be wielding a really sharp sword as far as NPC's as concerned. you can level up, but since your fast-tracked into being a hero no one notices any growth. just because its not roleplaying doesn't mean its not fun.

now its not to say the kill-loot cycle isn't fun sometimes, but time is money. If I want to enjoy that cycle, things like Skyrim, Fallout 4 or Borderlands does it pretty well with fun weapons and such to use. but don't expect me to waste my time with it in something else where I'm primarily in it for the story and where that is the main draw. the kill-loot cycle is in itself a thing that can be executed poorly or well, because execution is everything. I do not find it logical to see this kill-loot cycle as a form of roleplaying myself, you have your differing opinion and your welcome to it but unless your discussing such logistics entirely in character, it maybe roleplaying-adjacent in that your discussing about roleplaying OOC, but in my opinion is not actually technically doing the act of roleplay. its fine to do this. more than fine. things would not function without this roleplay adjacent talk so everyone is on the same page and no on screws up for everyone else. but OOC is not technically roleplaying, I'm sorry.

Even something like Deltarune on the other hand? roleplaying because even if the outcome is the same, the journey is different each playthrough, because its choices encourage engagement in its story and world even only as one person who doesn't have an agency that overrides everyone elses.

Winthur

2022-09-16, 09:08 PM

its that the specific mechanics used do, as opposed to mechanics that encourage roleplaying: dialogue choices, reaction choices, development of relationships, things like that.

But how do they encourage roleplaying if they're as gamified as every other situation? I can minmax dialogue choices to get what I want because those are predetermined, I don't have to worry at all about how NPCs react to me if I simply do a bunch of quests that makes them like me, and the development of relationships is often supremely superficial, with generic "positive" choices affirming our relationship until we become bros for life or lovers.

You could play Fallout both as a murderhobo that kills everything and an empathic saint that listens to everyone's life story and resolves all conflicts peacably. Both are valid and all of the systems contribute to your ability to make choices and "roleplay". Yet one focuses on killing and looting, and the other specifically on dialogues. What if all of the roleplaying I do is implicitly or explicitly using mechanics that have little to do with your list of "encouraging roleplaying"? Can't I call being a mercenary pyromaniac with a flamer that will take on any challenge with that weapon roleplaying?

Broad genre discussions where you discuss an entire genre solely based on their name always border on sollipsism. People say, for example, that StarCraft has nothing to do with strategy at a certain point because the mechanical component is so essential that you can win faster by just clicking someone to death and pining for better days when competition was less tryhard and where you could still play Total Annihilation against someone who had no idea how to play. The "real time" component, and the way it impacts the mental stack, is often forgotten in these discussions because to an outsider it may very well be that the two players are just smashing the keyboard to get stuff out fast, ignoring all of the split second decision making that takes place. "Real" strategy takes place when two armchair commanders execute maneuvers by feel and, hopefully, know as little about the underlying mechanics as possible.

Similarly, any "what is an RPG" discussion ends up focusing excessively on completely subjective matters, which is why Planescape: Torment may be, in another observer's eye, "worse at roleplay" than Oblivion because you get a predetermined role instead of making your own character. In fact, Planescape: Torment's massive walls of text, focus on a single character's fate over any others have much less to do with the typical idea of what a roleplaying game is that you could argue Black Isle's most true to form achievement is Icewind Dale because it is doing everything it can to simulate a D&D experience. It even has special dialogues and quest endings if you have a party member of a specific class, something Baldur's Gate doesn't do.

And yet still Icewind Dale is always dismissed as a boring hack and slash game and barely an RPG, at best considered only a footnote you play after you've exhausted its sister games.

I think you will like Heroine's Quest, (https://store.steampowered.com/app/283880/Heroines_Quest_The_Herald_of_Ragnarok/) by the way. Genuine recommendation.

Lord Raziere

2022-09-16, 10:05 PM

Because Winthur: a playing someone who fires guns in Fallout 4 is no different from playing someone who does that in any shooter.

a shooter is not defined as a roleplaying game, therefore are we somehow roleplaying in FO4 when shooting and not roleplaying during Halo? or silently playing Halo exactly like everyone else does without any improvised acting count as roleplaying as Master Chief? My personal opinion is that since shooter elements in both play basically the same and I don't roleplay during either of those, neither of mechanics are particularly encouraging for roleplay.

it solves the conundrum quite neatly and I'd rather have roleplaying be tightly defined so that I know what it is, rather than be a vague definition that makes me confused as to whether if its even anything. I am simply being sensible and defining roleplaying games by what makes them unique rather than what they share with everyone else now, because the traits that it used to use to identify itself no longer are unique to itself. you can't define how something is different without pointing out what it has that others don't. because if you define it by things that aren't different....then there is no defining taking place.

Winthur

2022-09-17, 05:09 AM

Because Winthur: a playing someone who fires guns in Fallout 4 is no different from playing someone who does that in any shooter.
You are doing it in Fallout with an explicit choice that comes down all the way to character creation (picking up skills and traits that befit a combatant, not a diplomat) and making all the choices throughout the game that get you into more combat. You are not going into levels with a predefined structure where you have to shoot everything, get to end of the level, and win.

it solves the conundrum quite neatly and I'd rather have roleplaying be tightly defined so that I know what it is, rather than be a vague definition that makes me confused as to whether if its even anything. I am simply being sensible and defining roleplaying games by what makes them unique rather than what they share with everyone else now, because the traits that it used to use to identify itself no longer are unique to itself.

This is like saying Guilty Gear Xrd has diluted the meaning of a shooter game because there's a character with guns in it.

They haven't been since like 2000. If you want to recommend an RPG to someone, you have to most likely specify if they ask it to be more like Arcanum or more like Final Fantasy VI or more like Deus Ex, similarly to how someone who wants more experiences like Medal of Honor might not be looking to play Doom.

For the most part we just agree that this genre has always relied on having a certain set of parts that distinguish it, and it wasn't merely just the narrow subset you claim to be the core.

GloatingSwine

2022-09-17, 06:12 AM

Lord Raziere

2022-09-17, 07:04 AM

You are doing it in Fallout with an explicit choice that comes down all the way to character creation (picking up skills and traits that befit a combatant, not a diplomat) and making all the choices throughout the game that get you into more combat. You are not going into levels with a predefined structure where you have to shoot everything, get to end of the level, and win.

This is like saying Guilty Gear Xrd has diluted the meaning of a shooter game because there's a character with guns in it.

They haven't been since like 2000. If you want to recommend an RPG to someone, you have to most likely specify if they ask it to be more like Arcanum or more like Final Fantasy VI or more like Deus Ex, similarly to how someone who wants more experiences like Medal of Honor might not be looking to play Doom.

For the most part we just agree that this genre has always relied on having a certain set of parts that distinguish it, and it wasn't merely just the narrow subset you claim to be the core.

1. So I'm right and its because of design that allows for my own choices and input that an rpg is an rpg, as I've been saying the entire time. got it.

2. No, your not understanding. Guilty Gear has not diluted the meaning of a shooter, because it doesn't have actual shooter mechanics within it. it is a fighting game. the aesthetic of gun is not the mechanic of shooter. it doesn't matter if you shoot someone with a gun, a wand, a crossbow, a rocket launcher, a small firebreathing dragon or a magical banana, as long as they use the underlying mechanics of a shooter, they're a shooter.

a shooter is undeniably defined by these mechanics encouraging and getting people into a mindset of sharp reflexes, aiming, getting to cover and so on. the gun is just a prop. much how for roleplaying games, some legendary sword is just aesthetic and a prop. similarly a puzzle game gets you into a more thoughtful and analytical mindset, and so on. if a shooter fails to get you into this mindset your probably not having fun, and if a puzzle fails to get you into a puzzle-solving mindset your probably not having fun with it either. therefore a roleplaying game must encourage roleplaying much like a how a shooter game encourages a shooter mindset, a puzzle game encourages a thoughtful puzzle-solving mindset, and a strategy game encourages a strategical mindset. we define other genres by this measure and it works, there is no reason why it wouldn't also work for roleplaying games. the problem is with roleplaying games, people have mistook the destination for the journey, the result for the process: a diet rpg has all the story already written out for you, and thus the process of roleplaying through it isn't possible, much like a GM railroading everything.

thus a diet rpg provokes only the process of observation when it comes the RP part of it, not actual roleplaying. this is not a denigration of their quality overall. I like Tales of the Abyss, Symphonia and Bersaria, I like Chrono Trigger, I like the first three Paper Mario games, and I like the Xenoblade series. these are very good stories, I appreciate the work that went into them in dialogue, setting, characters and such and so on, Paper Mario was a childhood game of mine, I couldn't hate it if I tried.

But! I never found myself roleplaying AS any of these characters. I appreciate them as their own works yes- and thats exactly why I don't. you don't interrupt when someone is telling a story, thats just rude.

Though I'm just one, admittedly weird person. maybe people found a way to roleplay using such games, but I don't see how personally, you'd have to describe how that is achieved. because the times I found myself roleplaying are in games like Mass Effect, Dragon age or KOTOR 1/2, Jade Empire, New Vegas, things like that, because they left enough open for me to have a say and influence things. I can't imagine the same thing being done for something more linear.

Winthur

2022-09-17, 08:33 AM

So I'm right and its because of design that allows for my own choices and input that an rpg is an rpg, as I've been saying the entire time. got it.
Problem is that you dismiss half of the choices you can make in any typical RPG as not being "RPG" enough. Even something as rudimentary as choice of party members in your team is already contributing to the "roleplaying" process. You are constantly making choices as you go. You don't necessarily pick a party member who punches things hard with his fists or one that demolishes everything with spells based on efficiency alone, you do it based on factors that may or may not boil down to their personality, personal preference, and their perceived cohesion with other party members. Your progression with a certain party might be completely different from how someone else progresses with that same party. A shooter does not typically make you do that; you pick whatever you think is best for the occasion, and the skillset and choice involved is completely different.

Systems like dialogue in RPGs are, to me, just yet another layered mini game where you get to get your XP and gold while skipping other mechanics. It has very little to do with "real" roleplaying as well, it's just yet another simulacrum of the idea - like everything else. You are railroaded into one of a few choices and the computer is dangling the illusory choice carrot by making you feel smart because your Speech skill of 113% allows you to say some specific piece of bull in order to magically resolve any conflict.

You are making it so that the ability to talk down someone into a bloodless conflict resolution in a manner completely predicted and arbitrated by the computer, as a direct consequence of having high Speech, is more "roleplaying" than having all of your stat, skill and inventory choices throughout the game culminating in being able to beat a specific encounter in some specific way.

the problem is with roleplaying games, people have mistook the destination for the journey, the result for the process: a diet rpg has all the story already written out for you, and thus the process of roleplaying through it isn't possible, much like a GM railroading everything.
You are still playing a roleplaying game even if the GM railroads everything is the issue. It might not be a very good game, but it still is one.

I just don't know why it's impossible to take the other stuff that most of the time is implicit to the roleplaying genre - building a sense of camaraderie, iterating on how the party interacts with one another, the joy of mechanical progression - and instead it just has to be entirely reflected in stuff like having dialogue choices.

It's all completely railroaded because no RPG can account for every single one of your choices. I have a jerk of a friend who only shows up to D&D to do everything completely contrarian in order to disrupt the game and force me to discard the module - and I mean stuff like "deliberately bringing a joke commoner character to a dungeon crawl and constantly loudly complaining there's no ROLEPLAYING happening, and that he's just playing his role". Roleplaying to him means acting out endless charades of NPCs reacting to his cowardice and trying to futilely push him to do anything that is related to the party goals. "Roleplaying" in that sense can't be found in RPGs because it's a vague term that means both looting and levelling up your character and beating up a dialogue boss with your Charisma and actually whatever the hell you want it to mean.

Trouble is that in Fallout 4, moreso than any previous Fallout even Bethesda ones, perks that benefit being a diplomat don't really exist. In fact there's only one perk that affects persuade checks and it only works on the opposite sex.
Fallout 1's Charisma stat literally had only three checks in the game, all of them completely missable or their benefits achievable through other means, and affected nothing of importance, and a lot of the franchise's perks based around NPC reaction also seemed to be broken because of the system not working very well, so that seems on point for the franchise.

GloatingSwine

2022-09-17, 09:19 AM

Fallout 1's Charisma stat literally had only three checks in the game, all of them completely missable or their benefits achievable through other means, and affected nothing of importance, and a lot of the franchise's perks based around NPC reaction also seemed to be broken because of the system not working very well, so that seems on point for the franchise.

The contrast is New Vegas, which includes all sorts of different skills and attributes in your options for talking to people. Even Fallout 3 would occasionally branch out from just using Speech and use Barter or an attribute.

Cikomyr2

2022-09-17, 06:09 PM

Fallout 1's Charisma stat literally had only three checks in the game, all of them completely missable or their benefits achievable through other means, and affected nothing of importance, and a lot of the franchise's perks based around NPC reaction also seemed to be broken because of the system not working very well, so that seems on point for the franchise.

While you are right that ***charisma*** was rarely used, but the Speech skill was used a lot more than 3 times right?

Vinyadan

2022-09-18, 08:20 AM

IIRC, Fallout 1 had a time where you could insult a BoS guard, and then wouldn't let you apologize to him if your INT was too low, making him permanently offended and locking you outside the BoS base. :smallbiggrin: The game gave you no info about needing a higher INT, which was pretty brutal, but it did stealthily make your build matter.

factotum

2022-09-18, 09:51 AM

It has to be said, low INT being a bad idea was made pretty obvious from the beginning in Fallout 1, given you could only have conversations in baby talk, making it really difficult to accept quests!

Winthur

2022-09-18, 07:40 PM

While you are right that ***charisma*** was rarely used, but the Speech skill was used a lot more than 3 times right?

True, Speech is extremely powerful in classic Fallout.

Now I'm not familiar with Fallout 4 Speech checks, but Speech has always been horribly flawed in Fallout because there's barely any correlation between Charisma and your Speech skill, meaning a 10 Intelligence 2 Charisma Gordon Freeman was nearly always a better diplomat than a 10 Charisma 5 Intelligence character because of more dialogue options available. And the perks that amplified Speech were mostly just percentage increases.

I'd understand it if the point made was that Fallout 4 removed Speech checks completely, but by my estimate Speech has always been "a cool, often slightly lore-expanding way to get a ton of XP for free without having to slog through Fallout combat".

The contrast is New Vegas, which includes all sorts of different skills and attributes in your options for talking to people. Even Fallout 3 would occasionally branch out from just using Speech and use Barter or an attribute.
Fallout 2 has some of those, but they're mostly ridiculous. There's an extremely obscure Speech check that also requires you to have 76% Traps, which is likely not a skill value anyone has ever had this high in that game.

factotum

2022-09-19, 12:28 AM

Now I'm not familiar with Fallout 4 Speech checks, but Speech has always been horribly flawed in Fallout because there's barely any correlation between Charisma and your Speech skill, meaning a 10 Intelligence 2 Charisma Gordon Freeman was nearly always a better diplomat than a 10 Charisma 5 Intelligence character because of more dialogue options available. And the perks that amplified Speech were mostly just percentage increases.

I'd understand it if the point made was that Fallout 4 removed Speech checks completely, but by my estimate Speech has always been "a cool, often slightly lore-expanding way to get a ton of XP for free without having to slog through Fallout combat".

Fallout 4 is like Skyrim--it replaces skills with various perks you can get at different levels. So, instead of Speech being a thing, Charisma affects relevant dialogue choices directly--if you have a dialogue choice that pops up in yellow or red instead of the standard green it means there's going to be a charisma roll to determine if you succeed or not.

Rynjin

2022-09-19, 12:46 AM

Fallout 4 is like Skyrim--it replaces skills with various perks you can get at different levels.

Skyrim still has the skills, so this isn't really a good comparison.

Vinyadan

2022-09-19, 01:25 AM

It has to be said, low INT being a bad idea was made pretty obvious from the beginning in Fallout 1, given you could only have conversations in baby talk, making it really difficult to accept quests!

I wish they had had that in Oblivion.

"Let me see your face. You are the one from my dreams".
"Me like banana!"
"Yes, you most definitely are him."

GloatingSwine

2022-09-19, 08:00 AM

True, Speech is extremely powerful in classic Fallout.

Now I'm not familiar with Fallout 4 Speech checks, but Speech has always been horribly flawed in Fallout because there's barely any correlation between Charisma and your Speech skill, meaning a 10 Intelligence 2 Charisma Gordon Freeman was nearly always a better diplomat than a 10 Charisma 5 Intelligence character because of more dialogue options available. And the perks that amplified Speech were mostly just percentage increases.

I'd understand it if the point made was that Fallout 4 removed Speech checks completely, but by my estimate Speech has always been "a cool, often slightly lore-expanding way to get a ton of XP for free without having to slog through Fallout combat".

Fallout 4 basically did remove Speech checks. It's just tied to the Charisma stat now, and I think there's one quest in the entire game where it potentially affects the outcome (you can convince a guy to start the combat by shooting at you instead of his hostage).

In basically all other situations it just gives you some extra XP or money. Only one of the perks tied to Charisma affects dialogue.

Fallout 4 in general does not care what you do with its perk tree. The primary effect of it is "what shape bullets do you shoot".