It’s a name which is already on the lips of many who pine after a classical school of RPGs. But not nearly enough, for our reckoning. The last time we talked to designer Vince D. Weller, he proved himself the indie-RPG equivalent of the early Manic Street Preachers in a I-hate-dumbed-down-RPGs-more-than-Hitler sort of way. Is he similarly angry today? Not really. But he’s still more outspoken than any forty other given developers and takes time to shares his and his team’s vision of what the RPG should be.
RPS: It’s been a while since we’ve last talked. Care to bring RPS’ readers up to date with what you’ve been up to? What’s Age of Decadence’s progress?
Vince D. Weller: We are slowly getting there. A combat demo should be released in a few months. The demo will be set in an arena district of one of the towns and will show what the game looks like. You’ll fight different opponents, ranging from local scum and captured criminals to gladiators and professional fighters looking for easy coins. You’ll fight against single fighters and groups; fast, lightly armored opponents and heavy, ironclad juggernauts. This should give you a good feel of the combat and give us plenty of feedback to work with.
In unrelated news, the game was voted as the second most anticipated RPG by RPG Watch readers. We were offered a good publishing deal by a large North American publisher, although I’m not sure if that’s the direction we’d take. And a French gaming magazine did a several page AoD article/interview. Needless to say, we appreciate this support.
RPS: The team have all loved RPGs for years. Has actually constructing one made you appreciate different parts of the genre or other games more or less?
Vince D. Weller: Not really.
Being puzzled by the question, I asked Oscar, our artist extraordinaire, to contribute. Here is his answer:
“Well, it certainly changed my views on RPGs. Seeing how RPGs work and how easy it is to do simple checks (see Vince’s lore and reputation examples) and add some depth to gameplay, made it harder for me to accept and enjoy shallow gameplay. I subconsciously look for missed opportunities where you can insert choices and options without increasing the overall workload.
Vince used this example in some interview:
“Let’s take “The Witcher” as an example. For storytelling reasons your character is arrested when he tries to enter the city and thrown in jail. In the jail your character is asked to kill a creature in the sewers where he meets an important NPC. That’s the drama- and twist-filled story. It works great in a book format where the reader is following adventures of the main character, but it’s too restrictive in a game where the player IS the main character.
A better design would have been to offer an alternative. Allow the witcher to enter the city via the sewers (after fighting the guards and escaping or after being warned about the ambush as a reward for developing relationship with the villagers) and then run into the above mentioned NPC who will offer you to join him to kill the creature. As you can see, it’s still the same overall story and direction, and the alternative doesn’t require new art assets and tons of development time. It reuses the same situations – the arrest, the creature in the sewers, the knight NPC, the same villagers, and the same sewers, but suddenly you get an important choice instead of a forced situation that you are unable to avoid.
That’s our design “philosophy”, for the lack of a better word.”
That’s what I’m talking about. There was a time when I thought that Final Fantasy 7 was the greatest RPG ever, but that time is long gone.”
RPS: What’s the key important parts of RPGs for you? Why? And how does Age of Decadence deliver on them?
Vince D. Weller: I’d say that role-playing is probably the most important aspect of role-playing games. I know it sounds crazy, because these days RPGs offer anything but role-playing… What? No. Playing a role is not role-playing, son. Role-playing means freedom to do whatever you want within the boundaries of a storyline. I’m not talking about abandoning the storyline Bethesda style and exploring the world. I’m talking about a game giving you a general goal and letting you complete it in different ways, using different skills and abilities. See this article creatively called What’s a role-playing game? for more info.
Why is it important? Take Baldur’s Gate 2, for example. It has a lot of great qualities, but it’s not really a role-playing game. It’s more of an action adventure game with adjustable stats. Yes, I know. I’ve really done it now. Sir, can you please put the pitchfork down? Thank you. Anyway, if one were to replay BG2 one would have exactly the same experience, give or take few meaningless choices. Games like Fallout and Arcanum, on the other hand, can create very different experiences and let you do things differently when you replay them. That’s one of the AoD’s main features.
There are many different, logically fitting ways to complete quests, there are little things like Streetwise and Lore checks that can completely change your perception of situations and add new options, and then there are reputation checks that can change NPCs reaction. Here are some examples:
As you can see, here we have two very different outcomes of the same situation. Mind you, even this situation is optional and a direct result of you intimidating a powerful NPC and trying to get something for nothing. Should you be more reasonable or find a way to handle your objective without this NPC involvement, this conversation wouldn’t happen.
Here we have 3 different lore-based variants of the same conversation.
Like I said, role-playing.
If you want to see more, here is a direct link to 27 dialogue screenshots illustrating different options within a quest.
RPS: What do you think people’s response to Age will be?
Vince D. Weller: Some people will like it. Some people will hate it. The usual. If I have to guess, I’d say that most people would ignore it because hardcore RPGs with lots of text and a decade-old graphics don’t tend to sell a lot. However, there are people who like such games and I really hope that they’ll enjoy AoD. Our aspirations don’t go further.
RPS: What are you looking forward to in 2009? And predictions or trends you see coming? What about the RPG? Better or worse than 2008?
Vince D. Weller: Well, it’s shaping up to be a great year. Dragon Age, Divinity 2, Diablo 3, Risen, Alpha Protocol, and maybe even the Alien RPG. Plus another NWN2 expansion (hopefully with George Ziets on board) and Fallout 3 extra content. Plus indies – Eschalon: Book 2 and Geneforge 5. Best year since 2002.
Predictions? I’ll be playing a lot of RPGs in 2009. I can’t tell you how I know these things, so don’t ask.
Anyway, thanks for the opportunity, Kieron. Thanks for reading, folks.
RPS: Our pleasure. Thanks for your time, Vince.
Age of Decadence will be out in the future.
Related Stories:
@Rickman – I don’t know that my definition of an RPG matches Vince’s, but the fact that a lot of games traditionally considered to be RPGs don’t fit his definition doesn’t make it silly or wrong. It just means they aren’t RPGs to him.
Personally, I keep having to correct people who claim the Zelda games are RPGs….
I do think stats make a game RPG or not. Would adding stats to Doom make it RPG? Sure, if the stats would be the main way player interacted with the world. Similiarly Warcraft3 might not be an RPG, but notice all those stats and leveling-up was called “RPG elements”.
If you take a look at any early pen and paper RPG modules you will find plenty of extremely linear adventures. Dungeon adventures are perfect example of that, altough not the only one, I mean heck..some of THE finest written adventures ever published (namely Orient Express for Call of Cthulhu and Last Supper for Vampire) were extremely linear.
So if I played a linear dungeon-centric adventure of DnD does it somehow mean I didn’t play RPG at all? I can’t agree with that.
What is often heard and rightfuly so is that a GOOD Gamemaster allows players to have plenty of freedom and ability to shape the plot (heck, most recent modern indie games actualy mechanicaly set it up so that players have influence over the plot) and by extention a GM that just puts a players on a strict railroad and takes the freedom away from them is considered a bad GM, but he still is a GM.
Therefore my opinion is that stats are what makes a game RPG, while freedom and ability to shape the plot is what makes an RPG good or not.
Stats determine the genre, freedom determines the quality
Rpg is wierd. In many ways only the truely open world games are rpg’s. If someone says “you can’t go there!” and its because the game isn’t able to deal with it rather than your character isn’t capable “you can try and cross the river but you can’t swim” then its very much not an rpg. But even if you are funneled down a story and set of environments do you make choices? In most japanese rpg’s you most certainly don’t make meaningful choices, final fantasy 7 serving as a prime example. That game was at its most interesting when you had more than 1 thing to do like infratrating the brothel. But that is the standard in oblivion with the narrow exception of the find 20 piles of dirt quests.
Zelda, a lovely adventure game, but its open world in a way many japanese rpg’s are not, so i understand the confusion japanophiles suffer. At least console gamers have the freedom heavy rpg’s now. The freedom of expression heavy ones seem to remain pc exclusive and mostly, from the 90’s.
I’m definitely looking forward to this, even though I’m terrible at role-playing. I always play myself in any given situation, which is why I struggle any time I attempt to take a more evil path. It’s gotten to the point where I actually feel bad for whatever npc I slighted and proceed to be good the rest of the game, even if it means having a very similar experience as I had in a previous playthrough.
Mass effect had *punch in face* dialogue options. But i want an rpg to go a step further. I want a dialogue system where *punch in face* is ALWAYS an option, even in romance paths. And if dragon age doesn’t have a guy who asks for 20 wild boar heads who you can punch in the face to complete the quest 3/10.
Due to popular usage, stats are heavily associated with RPGs. That’s why stats are considered ‘rpg elements’, and Diablo is an ‘action-rpg’. I always hated popular usage though.
The crux of an rpg as stated by many, including the Vault Dweller, is choice.
Take the old Quest for Glory games (for those old enough to have played them). They had stats, story, and different solutions to problems depending on class (fighter, mage, thief, paladin), but there was little to no meaningful choice with regards to the main story. This is why they were billed as adventure games as opposed to rpgs because that’s exactly what they were.
That being said, there are very few true role-playing games, and plenty of adventure games disguised as role-playing games. So, contrary to popular belief, adventure games aren’t dead, although great adventure games like The Longest Journey, imho, ARE dying.(Dreamfall isn’t really a game, just a story.)
That’s my 2 cents, rambling, tangents, and all.
I’ll have you know that I very much with my gut here. Let’s see if I can dissect this. I think it has to do with the way I see roleplaying. I grew into roleplaying on the stereotypical AD&D fantasy.
Second, it offers character creation which offer differentiation (and I’m used to it a lot). This is not to say that you can’t have a perfectly good rpg without such.
Thirdly, atmosphere. This is, I’ll admit, very subjective. But everything from the UI to many of the character portraits and the calls you hear in the market to sell Uridium helped to improve the feeling of it being a roleplaying world. A backdrop, so to speak.
Of course when I take a step back I realise a rpg just needs a world which is relevant, relaively fleshed out and meshes with the roleplaying aspects of the game.
Well, with playing a role (and I know the caveats, when applied without regards for choice). Of course there should be choices, but it also depends on what those choices can be.
There are people who play free-form tabletop rpgs as well as people who like a more rail-road type of campaign such as Baldur’s Gate 2 offers with the players’ choices therein being less defined yet not necessarily absent. You could argue that choosing for a solid storyline over choice makes a game less of an rpg, but I think this is the case with crpgs more than with rpgs entire, simply because most crpgs offer the player only few additional choices aside from what storyline to follow and how to do so.
I’ll agree that the act of roleplaying itself has to do with freedom and choice and, in tabletop, having fun together, in many things. The degree of how much freedom and how many choices you have depends on what the game/game master/setting/system allows. Even your party members will direct your choices somewhat.
The question remains, of course, where we, individually, draw the line.
Addendum:
The player can have as much freedom as he wants, but without a setting to define, limit and interact with them it becomes more of a game of free association. Then again, pure freedom makes it more difficult to direct the player’s choices.
You often have a setting/background etc, to clarify this. But with clarification comes limitation. As I said in my revious post.
What can you do? How can you do it? Where do you come from? Where are you trying to go? Who wants to stop you? Etc. Usually, not all of the answers to these are provided by the player. Or, not directly, anyway.
I guess I’m just saying that having some boundaries can inspire and enhance rather than choke the gameplay to death.
Qabal: For me what makes a game an RPG or not is stats and Player Skill Vs Character Skill. STALKER has some RPG elements, but its all due to the player skill if he hits the target or not. Deus Ex, on the other hand, can be classified an RPG as such.
And honestly, C&C are way overrated. Sure, it’s nice to have, but for me having good tactical combat (like Temple of Elemental Evil),a nice world to explore (like Might and Magic), and a good character progression system (like Wizardry) is much more important.
He didn’t insult BG2 fans.. just said it wasn’t an RPG. I find quibbling details on definitions rather pointless as one way or another they have no bearing on my enjoyment of a game claiming to be an RPG.
That said this and Dragon Age are probably my most anticipated games in 2009 and the mass of actual choice and consequence that appears to be at the centre of AoD is something I’ve been wanting in a new game for a long time.
I guess I’d like Vince a lot more, if he’d spend less time and energy talking about “true” roleplaying games and presenting his personal opinion about what makes a roleplaying game as some sort of universal truth when it’s in fact just an opinion.
Then again, I’m really looking forward to AoD and I guess Vince wouldn’t be making this game if he didn’t feel so strongly about these issues, so I’m kinda glad that he is the person he is.
ooh and he never insulted everyone on RPS, just the vocal idiots who were saying turn based was dead/stupid etc.
Okami: Fanatics, on average, make good art. Dillentantes, on average, make good critics.
(Or so I’ve tended to think, anyway)
KG
I’ve got my eye on this BUT am I the only person who plays RPGs mostly for the combat and the stats and fast forwards through the dialogue because since about Planescape+ era it’s all been utter tosh. No matter what the background is to the game it’s all the same story dressed up a little different and the same characters being 100% good or 100% evil. So monotonous. AoD at least looks to have taken a more intelligent approach.
Props to The Witcher which I eat and drank for about a month. Combat sucked but it didn’t matter because THAT was a great game, bugs and all.
KG – love that analysis.
Vince if you’re still around, I have a SPECIAL REQUEST™ for AoD. Since it seems to be partly based on the roman world, I’d like the two-handed Falx*, to make an appearance as a weapon. It will most probably enhance AoD’s awesome factor by several hundred percent.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falx
I think fanatics make good art that is based on personal performance and expression. Art based on construction, team-work and creating a frame-work for others to express themselves maybe needs a cooler head.
Plus, of course, fanatic is a terribly polemic word. Commitment is a better way to describe why certain people are able to achieve such amazing things. But then ‘commitment’ wouldn’t make for as fun a quote.
Er, how else do you define a word except through how it’s used? CRPGs are CRPGs because of traditional usage. We can recognise a dungeon crawler as a crpg in the same way we can recognise a sheep as a sheep. Because they have recognisable qualities we’ve come to associate with certain words. CRPGs have a long and illustrious pedigree that goes back to Alkalabeth, and it’s to that which we refer when we talk about crpgs.
There’s no need to be literalist about the word. Or any word whatsoever. Post-modernism does not mean “set in the future”. Not every game is an adventure game despite every game being about adventures. These things have a history and usage outside their literal meanings. Quest for Glory wasn’t an RPG because it’s obvious to anyone that it’s an adventure game with rpg elements. It was great fun, however we pigeonhole it.
I do hope Age of Decadence is good, but choice alone isn’t going to make it good or make it a “true” rpg. What’s going to make it good is whatever it does that engages us. Options alone can’t do that. It’s the thing that makes those options enjoyable, what makes most games enjoyable, I suppose, that’s essential here: the writing.
Finally someone who gets it! I really hope this sells well and it shows mainstream developers you don’t need to invest several million dollars into graphic and marketing to sell well.
BTW BG2 looks much better with it’s 10 year old graphics than Dragon Age, although I don’t care much for the graphics. And BG2 is RPG.
Hmm, as someone who loves and has replayed BG2, Fallout and Arcanum numerous time, I have to disagree about the “experience” point. Sure, the story doesn’t branch as much in BG2 as the others, but the game play experience in BG2 is far more varied depending on class/companion choices than in the other games. Also, Bioware has always been vastly superior to Troika or BI when it comes to cultivating a modding scene, which also adds a great deal to the replayability.
AoD does look pretty nice though. :)
“Playing a role is not role-playing”
Isn’t it? I’d have thought the fact that the words are the same would indicate it is.
Ok, so I disagree with him on his definitions, and it seems like some of the things he claims to be innovative I’ve seen done before. Still, I’ll be looking out for this.
Okay… words.
Huffing a cat is cat huffing.
But watching a cat huffed infront of you is not cat huffing.
But watching a role played infront of you is not role-playing.
Thats the issue, in many role playing games you are not playing a role, you a pressing a button to progress a script.
“Thats the issue, in many role playing games you are not playing a role, you a pressing a button to progress a script.”
Which surely is exactly what playing a role entails right? I mean if you really are playing a specific character in the story, then there is only one way he/she would act, so what choice you’d make was already made for you the minute you decided to play that role.
And how is this in any way worse than pressing a button to progress the same script with slight variations? Or pressing a button to advance one of 4 scripts, or 100 scripts. You’re still just pressing a button in the end. The script were already written, you never really had any choice in the first place.
Dillentantes, Kieron?
I’ve dabbled in Highway 61 Revisited and Desire myself.
/gets coat
@Heliocentric:
Invariably, you’re playing some kind of role in all games. Which means by Morph’s definition, all games are role playing games.
Which gets us absolutely nowhere.
Ahhh, it’s close now is it Vince. You wouldn’t tease your old buddy now would ya?
So looking forward to this game!
I suppose, the problem is this is a subjective issue which people are alligning to as if its an objective truth.
In the future no-one will stop me spamming 6 to select the 6th diologue option
*punch in face*
What’s stopping you now? ;)
*has an thought*
@Neut You are a genius!
*punches neut*
Heliocentric: it’s not just an objective/subjective thing. Words, apart from their literal meaning, take on a life of their own – that’s something people just have to accept. I agree with you that jRPGs by and large don’t allow you to play a role, but they fit the template of what the term “RPG” has come to refer to. Arguing against that to a large extent is as futile as any discussion that is purely about semantics. Yes, Thief: The Dark Project has had me playing a certain (pre-defined) role to a much larger extent than Final Fantasy X. No, the former is not more of an RPG than the latter.
HAH! Words are subjective, the characters i type out might mean anything to me or anyone else who reads them.
But punching people in the face only means one thing!
That you wanted to put your hand where that persons face was more than you didn’t. Trurth.
I’ve been thinking about it…
I was wrong, who am I to tell people what they mean when they punch people in the face. I am so ashamed I will now live in self exile, by punching anyone I meet….
…In the face.
I’ve been waiting for a text heavy, old skool RPG to get lost in for years.
Certainly looking foward to this.
“I want a dialogue system where *punch in face* is ALWAYS an option, even in romance paths.”
that would certainly put a new spin on the bioware template of the good, the bad and the neutral.
perhaps the modder who made the nwn2 oc bishop romance thingy can work on it!
Due to it being manically busy at work & home I haven’t been able to give this article quite as much attention as I’d like, but I’d also weigh in that it’s a mistake to assume the mechanics make the experience. P&P have rule sets as a means of decision/action resolution, increasingly with computer games there are ways to reach decision/action resolutions that no longer need to subscribe to these P&P mechanics in an overt fashion (open stats PG games generally put metagaming over role playing let’s be brutally honest here). Yes there are limitations to what can be achieved at present, but the more a game keeps you in the game space and less in the interface, the more emotionally immersive they can become, and that is the strength of the medium. Sure such games might not offer up the myriad range of options some people might like, but even games like Fallout 1 & 2 pail in comparison to the infinite choices available to a someone participating in an actual P&P campaign (the limits being their imagination rather than some writers). So if quantity of choice is a non issue then quality is where computer games can excel. From my perspective the embryonic computer RPG is to be found in games like Deus Ex, GTA IV, Farcry 2 & The Witcher rather than games that wholly ape other mediums.
@James G: Spoiler for me too :(
Dorian Cornelius Jasper: if you can’t see the joy inherent in a character armed with a damp quilt and a bucket of urine then, frankly, there’s no hope for you… ;-)
“I want a dialogue system where *punch in face* is ALWAYS an option, even in romance paths.”
Dear Morph,
Would it trouble you, to point out to me, where it is that Vince makes any claim towards “innovation”?
sincerely,
The Idiot
*”there’s more to a successful roleplaying game than offering relevant and meaningful choices.”*
How do you play a role without choices that are related to it?
Don’t worry about that, Vince has specifically stated, on multiple occasions, that Age of Decadence is not innovative or revolutionary, but evolutionary. Take the road that Black Isle/Troika has taken and continue in that direction to make a better RPG (…of that sort, whether you want to call it a “true RPG” or not).
@Pkt
If that were truly the case then he’d be building on the legacy of VTM:B, and this is clearly not doing that.
And honestly, C&C are way overrated.
Videogames are way overrated.
@kadayi: “Clearly not” because it’s similarly focused on roleplaying and choice & consequence, or what? Sure, VTM:B might lean a bit more towards the action side, but hey, there’s still Fallout/Torment/Arcanum/Unnamed post-apoc project.
@Pkt:
VTM:B followed a slightly different evolutionary path from AoD. You might want to check out Scars of War’s development for an RPG that seems to be going further down the VtM:B path.
AoD is consciously in the Fallout/Fallout 2 mould, and that’s exactly where I want it to be.
I’m already hooked. Actually, my first impression on this article was that I liked the style of the pictures. Very old school, very lovely. After reading the article I know this is a must-buy. If this game is as good as I want it to be, I hope you guys earn millions with it.
*the vocal idiots who were saying turn based was dead/stupid etc.*
Don’t worry, as long as Generic brownngreypostapoc 3 isn’t mentioned by name they won’t come back.