Michael Norskov suggested we play this. I did and then Walker revealed he gave it a crack a couple of days ago and didn’t think it interesting enough to post about. Which lead to a little RPS-chat-room debate about why he didn’t, and why I thought Sophie Houlden had nailed it, admittedly in a pretty mean-spirited way. And the fact we were having the debate at all probably meant it was worth posting about. In other words, it’s one of those videogame deconstruction things which wind some of you up right rotten.
It’s the Linear RPG. You can move along a line in both directions. As you do so you suffer damage. You move to the right, you gain experience points. Get enough XP and you go up a level, increasing the size of your health bar. When you reach a node, you restore your health and save your progress. Any time you die, you go back. And as you travel to the right, a story scrolls in the background. In other words, to read the story, you have to carry on walking. Eventually you get to a bit where you can’t reach the next node, forcing you to wander back the way you came and go back and forth until you’ve leveled-up enough to make it. Eventually, you’ll get to the end of the story. Oh – and the story is a openly scornful stomp through RPG tropes. Oh noes! Iz the bad guy! And Etc.
Like most of the deconstructions, the point is “This is all there is to these games”. And in an reductio ad absurdum – and man, I hope I’m that firing that particular round the wanky latin-o-gun correctly – way, show their underlying pointlessness.
Walker’s reason for not posting it? Well, he’s never played an RPG where he’s had to backtrack to gain levels so he can make progress. Therefore, its analysis of mechanics was bullshit. It was saying nowt.
This made me think two things:
1) Walker’s had a lot of luck playing RPGs.
2) Sophie hasn’t been clear about what she’s talking about.
What she’s really talking about is a jRPG rather than a western-model one. The clues are there in terms of the specifics of the story she choose to tell, and how she’s reduced it. jRPGs have traditionally been totally linear stories. The only obstacle to your progress tends to be fights. Whether you win them or not depends on your character rather than… well, there you go into the question of how much skill there is in a fight versus you just having to be harder. Sure, some RPGs slow your progress by misjudging how much power you’ll have a specific point so you can go back and grind up so you can deal with the problem… but saying all do is a bit of a stretch.
In other words, I suspect, her reductio ad absurdum is flawed – it just describes a bad example of the genre. And reducing the genre to a bad example of the genre is the thing which makes The Linear RPG seem so mean-hearted. It doesn’t exist to examine it. It exists to mock it. And that’s just a trifle cruel.
Beautiful executed, with great visual flair, though.
Related Stories:
CdrJameson:
Show, don’t tell applies metaphorically to everything. With game story, do, don’t tell might be applicable and it might not. Sometimes an interactive sequence is far preferable to a cutscene (especially when it involves the actions of the protagonist) and sometimes a cutscene is fine.
Tell is never okay. Show is sometimes; okay. Show is always preferable to tell, even in games. Do is sometimes preferable to show.
Haha, what a mess.
Mean spirited seems to nail it. Game mechanics are easy to mock in hindsight. It’s as it if some said, ‘Waitasec, that Space Invaders has a certain repetition to it’. Linear RPG seems little more than visual sarcasm: the lowest form of gaming wit.
I’ve got to say, this perfectly replicated the experiences I’ve had with all the JRPGs I’ve played in the past (which is admittedly not many): confusion, frustration, and finally endless repetition and grinding because damnit, I’ve come this far and I’m going to see it through to the end rather than admit defeat to a collection of moving pixels. And then I reached the end and it all felt decidedly anticlimactic.
I suspect I’m probably not the game’s intended audience, of course…
This is also technically a “Strawman” argument, if I’m not mistaken.
But really, that’s ok, media has this genre already known for reductio ad absurdum, it’s called a Satire, more specifically: Farce.
Still, in my mind, there’s only half of the work here. To be more complete. an absurd SOLUTION should be made by the author. Then we are talking; the Modest Proposal of RPGs.
Hmm I don’t mind JRPGS but that’s because I know what I’m getting into, a 20 hour story that I basically do the fights for. Its a good game for me because I’m usually rubbish at games so it makes me feel that I have actually done something even though i haven’t actually done something.
So damn true.
It’s a pretty accurate description of almost all RPGs. Even if you remove the backtracking bits, it’s still evident how the genre hasn’t really gone anywhere in years.
What The Linear RPG really nails is how the narrative and the gameplay in almost all games(not just RPGs) are virtually unconnected parallel threads. And this almost damns the entire medium as a means of cultural expression.
I understand what you’re saying Kieron but, come on, did you not laugh at the ‘Bruce Lee’ speed setting for the Pegacorn?
What I found interesting was that to level up I just ran back and forth past an inn, not necessarily backtracking. Staying near save points is basically the heart of Final Fantasy levelling. Made me chuckle.
I don’t know if it’s truly a bad example of the genre. If you cleave the RPG genre into two, East and West, this is actually quite a common format. And not considered bad by a large gaming subculture.
I think it’s okay to deconstruct things to their basics if it’s done for the right reasons. Not to mock something but to better understand it so you can improve on it IMO.
In fact if this wasn’t a nasty piss take but funny it would be alright. Although maybe it wasn’t meant to be and it is just Mr. Gillen’s views rubbing off on me.
Not sure why Morrowind was bad for having books in it.. pretty much none of them required reading and only contained backstory / side tales of the world itself.
The thing is, as rubbish as they are, there’s also a gem of brilliant design in the grindy RPG formula. The genius is that they have implicitly selectable difficulty levels. A more “skilled” player (whatever that means in the circumstances) needs to grind less, and a less “skilled” player can either try repeatedly, or go away to collect more plusses before trying again. Both are forms of grinding.
WoW uses this system very cleverly both while levelling (doing instances underlevelled and doing them overlevelled are very different game experiences) and during the endgame (some people spend weeks gearing up in heroics before starting raiding, whereas others pile straight in still wearing their level 70 epics).
This simulation misses that subtlety. If the combats required you to play an absurdly fast game of pong, and each point of XP slowed it down slightly, it’d be closer to accurate.
Nick:
It’s not that Morrowind was bad for including books at all, but the books are the only way you learn about the wider world.
Yea, I didn’t find it that mean spirited. If it ended with a song like YHTBTR maybe people wouldn’t be mad at it.
Jaxtrasi, you also learned about the world through the crapload of conversations. There are also a lot of subtler world details if you look closely, like they murals in Vivec.
Also, they didn’t use books to communicate the plot very often. Most plot-relevant things happen through interactions with plot-relevant characters. The books just provide an optional way for the player to learn more about the setting. You can get through the main questline without reading a single book, and it will all make sense.
Morrowind DOES have a very static world. Things tend not to happen, and when they do it’s more a matter of NPCs telling you that they do than you seeing them with your own eyes. But the books are a very, very small part of that.
. . .
Also, grinding is NOT a piece of brilliant design. You’ll find, I think, that people who are very skilled at grind-heavy games are so not because they’ve found the best ways of developing their characters to be more effective with less grinding involved. Rather, the people who are more skilled at JRPGs tend to be so because they know how to grind more efficiently. Instead of progressing through the game as best they can, and repeatedly hitting a difficulty wall because they’re underleveled, they instead find areas where they can gain experience more quickly, and spend time milking those areas until they’re OVERleveled and can progress through the story in relative ease.
With the WoW example: common wisdom (as of a few years ago. I’m not quite current) was that you should be grinding enemies one to two levels below you, because they gave the best balance between XP reward and time lost from resting, healing, and dying.
This makes the game easier for skilled players, who know how to grind quickly and efficiently, while it becomes harder for unskilled players who consistently try to push ahead with the story because it doesn’t occur to them that when they going’s comparatively easy for decent rewards they should hang around and grind it for a while. This is because the skilled players know that they’re in a game where they become more powerful by grinding, while the unskilled players are less aware of this and instead try and solve the problems in front of them with the tools at their disposal.
Elements layered over this design (Real-time elements, reflex-based games, etc) are intended to distract you from the core, grindly game. This is also why lots of RPGs have a card game or similar optional minigame in them. Things like that are there to make the game look like it’s got more stuff in it than random encounters and cutscenes. This occurs with various level off success.
Thus, the fact that the Linear RPG doesn’t involve a scaled-difficulty ping-pong game on top of the leveling is part of the deconstruction. It’s an additional element often layered over the core gameplay that’s been removed to illustrate how the core game works.
Interestingly, not all RPGs are like this! I’m replaying Baldur’s Gate this week, and it is all about using the tools at your disposal. Fights get super-easy when you’ve outleveled them, but even difficult fights can totally be won by low-level parties with some good tactics and a little luck. This has not happened in any JRPG I have ever played.
As a counterpoint to Noc:
http://speeddemosarchive.com/Morrowind.html
But yeah, I get your point. Don’t worry.
You bastard, Kieron. How do you write legibly when you’re drunk? I’ve had to check this worthless three sentences about six times so far.
You can exploit the movement-experience system by moving constantly to the left while on the first node. After sufficient repetition this will give enough health to make it between nodes.
It is mean, but the jRPG is a genre that deserves abuse.
Lv 75 and counting.
I don’t think this is the kind of behavior the author was trying to encourage ¬¬
@undead dolphin hacker(if that is your real name)
We say we want choices that actually matter, but when we get it we Quicksave before every conversation, or print out a FAQ and follow the optimal path, or come on forums and bitch when a choice made ten hours ago affects the game in a way we didn’t think it would, and it’s Unfair and Bad Design.
I think there is a spectrum here, on one end there are people who like consequences and the ability to make choices, on the other, people who like to power level and always want to see the ‘real’ ending. From a game design perspective I can see the dilemma here, you can’t make all the people happy all the time. However I think modern games tend to err on the side of (for lack of a better term) the power leveling perfectionist.
It’s rare to see games today where you choices have real consequence. It’s even rarer to see games where the game world / rules are just plan hostile. Games like nethack and dwarf fortress spring to mind as being designed with the philosophy that “dying is fun”. Another, non-ascii, game that springs to mind is capcom’s Dead Rising, which drew a lot of flack for taking place in quasi real time, allowing a player to miss critical events and basically screw up royally.
I don’t know where I am going with all this, though I personally would like see more games that allowed the player to fail, rather then guiding you through an adventure that has all the danger of nerf playground. I think certain indie games will lead to a revival of ‘failure’ based gameplay, by placing an emphasis on making the failure part fun instead of frustrating.
My kingdom for an editor.
For an upcoming JRPG that does require actual skill at grind-heavy gaming, try . You’re a standard JRPG hero who has to stop a demon lord from casting a world destruction spell- but you have 30 seconds to stop him. Grind against the clock- take too long and it’s goodbye, don’t grind enough and get pulverized.
There’s a PSP demo available, if you’ve got access to one.
…I would like an editor, too.
Well designed, well executed, and totally nails jRPGs. Or at least nails the common perception of them, from both inside and outside the fanbase. But perceiving and playing are two very different things. There is so much more to them beyond the grind and the linearity*, good and bad. Still, the only absolute difference I perceive between jRPGs and western RPGs is that you’re commonly forced into a role in jRPGs, so perhaps RPG is a severe misnomer; is that the source of all this unnecessary animosity?
I used to think it was the grind that people hate, since that’s also the main complaint against MMOs (as a game). I must be immune to it as a game-aholic, as most games seem a grind to me. Slaughter the next twenty or fifty guards/aliens to get to the next boss fight, kill boss, repeat. Build my main base and defenses, thwart the enemy’s advances while pushing forward, take expansion bases, crush opponent, repeat. Drop T shaped block onto L shaped block, drop I shaped block into hole, four lines vanish, repeat. No, I think the grind is a weak excuse, as I’m not sure I’ve played any RPG without grind (except maybe Fallout 3, but that’s because I picked up some kickass gear right from the start; it felt like cheating).
The mocking tropes are just petty (Angsty teenagers? Man, the internet seems to be nervous about “angst” these days). The most accurate one I’ve heard is on the use of spiky hair. Really, I can’t name a jRPG without spiky hair. And I just don’t give a pootonky about hair in a game, or most other style choices. No… maybe I do. I think if the characters had been sporting a more reasonable do, y’know, like the kind you’d wear for an interview, I’d probably not have as much fun. Oh, I happen to own a leather coat, too. Angst, man. …Angst.
Since RPS has lately had some thought-provoking pieces on industry-shaping and groundbreaking games, I hope that in between the well deserved sardonicism we can think to ourselves on what exactly jRPGs have given us, despite all the things we hate about them.
(*I don’t understand the thought behind the term “linear RPG.” Are there non-linear stories out there? I mean I can run around Tamriel, the wasteland of DC, or Sigil and the planes and create my own stories, but I can do that in my imagination, too. I can think of some games where there are meaningful choices to make, but not many, if any at all, where you can escape the script, and these games are not the norm in any genre or sub-genre. Story linearity is all-inclusive.
Or is linear referring to the game world, because that’s a commonplace “failing” of the majority of games, not to mention the subtle contradiction in saying the game is linear yet you have to frequently backtrack before being able to make progress, which comes up in Houlden’s crafted critique too. Consider why you play RPGs in the first place: maybe to advance a story, to fight unique boss fights, to explore another world, to be another person, to escape entirely into an alternate reality, or maybe just to watch numbers slowly increase. Are any of these conducive to or hindered by spacial linearity? Where linearity is a problem, what kind of “non-linearity” is the solution and is it feasible?
Oh, don’t point out that you can’t explore within linear bounds. It’s not just that all games are bounded to begin with, but you can explore just fine along a set path. You’ll be experiencing something new either way you go about it. If it’s a matter of depth, that’s a poor way to judge exploration, as everything is subject to levels of magnitude no matter whether linear or open-world.
This aside became quite long … sorry.)
El Stevo: Depends what you count as Legilible, really.
MrFake: I suspect jRPGs could be the backbone of something I want to write. Everyone says how stories in games are pretty terrible and wonder when we’re going to get better ones. I want to flip that around – I wonder why we feel interested in stories in games which we would have no interest in any other medium. And often it really is genuine involvement in sub-literate trash.
KG
Every single genre could be broken down into a simple game like this. Same with illustrating different genres of movies. All are very basic and archaic. Pointing it out and making a game poking fun about it certainly isn’t worth noting. Walker was correct in not writing about it.
@KG
That sounds like an interesting article idea. But then, you do like the story in Bioshock, so I don’t know :P.
(Of course, the story in Bioshock, as much as is there, is better than what you can see in most games and is enhanced by the game’s atmosphere. But still. Is it great in a real sense?)
@Chris R
I think given Farcry 2 was open world, there was an expectation on the players part that it was going to be more than just run & gun through out. There was almost certainly the opportunity for the developers to make a decent first person open world story driven action RPG, but they never had any ambitions to go that way. That there has been a degree of player dissatisfaction with the game accordingly that the missions are monotonous and lacking in depth will no doubt impact upon whatever the developers make next. Personally I’m excited to see what they come up with, as it might well be the next step in computer RPG games finally throwing off the shackles of the largely redundant P&P tropes of ‘levels’, ‘Character classes’ and ‘+3 swords’.
All of these mechanics are hangovers of games where in the resolution of players actions are determined solely through open statistical assessment. In open 3D game environments, where physics can be simulated, the necessity for that kind of thing rapidly dissipates and in fact often intrudes on the game play experience. One minute you’re in a dungeon soaking up the atmosphere, the next your wading through endless inventory screens to tweak a bunch of abstracts. It’s continually taking you out of the one thing modern computer games are exceptionally good at doing and that is of putting you firmly in the game space. Why do people love Half life 2? Because you encounter it as if it was you. You truly are Gordon Freeman through out. Farcry 2 rightly builds on that legacy, it just didn’t build upon it enough in terms of mission depth in my view.
Interesting game btw, but it does seems like it’s beating things a little cruelly.
The best thing about this:
@MrFake
I think when people talk about “grind”, they’re talking about an activity that isn’t especially engaging or enjoyable on its own, but is done to gain more in-game power; either to get to a more enjoyable gameplay mechanic, or to see more of the story, or whatever. Tedium as gatekeeper, essentially.
Tetris isn’t grind — people don’t keep destroying blocks, despite it being tedious, so that they can eventually have fun, they do it because destroying blocks is fun and challenging.
I think jRPGs are most guilty here because the combat rapidly loses its challenge and interest. That is, it usually doesn’t present much of a reflex challenge, so the challenge comes from tactics. Unfortunately, even if there are interesting tactical questions (”pick the right element” is as interesting as playing rock, paper, scissors with a guy that always chooses rock) that aspect is reduced the second time you fight the same group of enemies, and reduced even more the third time, etc. I can’t speak for modern jRPGs, but I know the old Final Fantasies and Dragon Warriors (and their remakes) suffered from filling an entire dungeon with five groups of enemies, and then making you fight one of those groups every four steps you took. Maybe if they just stuck to boss fights they would be ok.
Noc:
Re: Morrowind
That’s why I said “world”, not “plot”. There are a few details about the world outside books, but really barely anything.
Re: Grinding
You’re right that if what you prize is speed, then efficiency in accumulation of plusses is the most effective strategy. That has nothing to do with the point I’m making, because I’m starting with the assumption that your objective is to complete the game (or win this fight), not to hit the level cap. You’re also right that players tend, in the long run, towards that sort of thinking, which also has nothing to do with it.
In WoW, you can complete instances below, at, or above the level (and level of gear) the instance intends. This is a fact. The higher your level and the better your gear, the easier the instance run becomes. This is also a fact. Some players enjoy doing harder runs, so they intentionally underlevel instances (my guild did this while levelling in TBC and while levelling in WOTLK). That many, many players treat the level cap as a goal to reach as quickly as possible doesn’t change the fact that you don’t actually have to, and that in many ways the game is a better “game” if you don’t.
What I said was, that you have a choice between using skill (by conventional definition of skill, i.e. skill at manipulating the game mechanics as in your Baldur’s Gate example) or going away, accumulating plusses, and then not bothering to use skill. This is true in most RPGs, and is more or less exactly the same as turning the difficulty down.
If you can’t beat a boss in God of War, it asks “would you like to drop to easy mode?” You can choose either to drop the difficulty and just spam the attack button until you win, or you can persist, learn the fight, learn to use your tools and win on normal.
JRPGs are like this. You made a general sweeping assumption that “skill” as I’ve defined it doesn’t exist. I’m not a very experienced JRPG player, but I’m experienced enough to know that my experienced JRPG playing friend is better at them than me. His knowledge of the mechanics allows him to defeat enemies more quickly at a lower level than I do.
That sounds like an interesting article idea. But then, you do like the story in Bioshock, so I don’t know :P.
Actually, if you ask me, a methodical deconstruction of Objectivism and, later, the genre conventions of an FPS seems to me to be a rather clever, literate, self-reliant sort of story that I’d appreciate in any medium.
Played the game. I thought it was rather clever, but I wish it said something about what linear RPGs COULD be instead of simply being a caricature of them. It’s kind of like a long-winded, animated political cartoon.
Noobs! I ran a bot on it and maxed my XP out while I watched Come Dine with Me.
“All of these mechanics are hangovers of games where in the resolution of players actions are determined solely through open statistical assessment.”
Its interesting to note that some recent tabletop rpgs have gotten over this hangup and simply sidestepped the issue of drip-feeding character capability progression by having relatively static power levels and focusing the games activity on other sorts of challenges. IMO computer RPG devs need to spend some time playing more forward thinking tabletop RPGs before they decide that the game they are working on absolutely must have XP & levels or its not REAL ROLEPLAYING.
Also I don’t know why everyone is picking on JRPGS, mechanically this reminded me of the MMO more than anything. I’ve never really had to deliberately grind in a JRPG, often because those interminable random encounters are so bloody frequent.
“In WoW, you can complete instances below, at, or above the level (and level of gear) the instance intends. This is a fact.”
Its also a fact that a magical invisible wall prevents you from even entering a given instance if you haven’t accumulated enough ++s. This is only fair in the sense that the game arbitrarily skews the behind the scenes maths so far against you that it would be madness to try and enter at a very low level. Still I find the whole set-up quite galling.
I don’t like to be presented with a seemingly open world only to be held back by invisible walls simply because I haven’t accumulated enough nonsensical pluses. Down with pluses I say!
Also, as I have said before, its OK to be cruel. Cruelty is as interesting as it gets. Even if it seems unsatisfying sometimes its worth remembering that every other possible response is even worse!
What are the names of these tabletop RPGs that you speak of?
EyeMessiah:
That seems like a fairly unrelated complaint about hard level-based content locks. I’m not saying WoW is perfect in this regard, but isn’t it reasonable for them to use some kind of pacing mechanism to prevent you entering every instance on day one?
I see your point about the open world (as distinct from a linear game where you expect to have your progress totally halted by each obstacle) but does WoW ever really claim to be an open world? Venturing outside of the zone you’re “supposed” to be in is always extremely dangerous. Getting to an instance portal you’re too low level to enter is an extraordinary effort.
Except the Stockades, of course.
Let’s not get side tracked into the pros and cons of WoW or other MMOs. As games they are by and large all about the grind as a means to keep you paying & playing, which is the antithesis of where the single player computer RPG could go.
@Eyemessiah
Which P&P games are you referring to exactly? I’d be interested to see how they work
Eyemessiah: yeah, name names. I’m interested.
(Oddly, I’m playing around very vaguely with turning Phonogram into an RPG – and have a character-development-but-no-character-improvement system I’m tossing around)
KG
“I wonder why we feel interested in stories in games which we would have no interest in any other medium. And often it really is genuine involvement in sub-literate trash.”
I suspect it has to do with the vicarious fulfillment of several basic instinctive desires, dominance and control most importantly. I am level 1 and the feral rabbits around the first town can kill me. Now I have ground myself into level 6 muscles and the feral rabits are a joke to me, can’t even hit me for 1 damage. I FEEL SAFER NOW. This is what animals do, they attempt to pacify their surroundings. The awful jrpg stories are an excuse to inhabit that id-construct that we so rarely get to fulfill in our real lives. As long as you can discern spatially where TOWN is and where WILDERNESS is, it’s barely enough. Go out, kill rabbits. Return, rest, go out again. Now it is safer. You are stronger. Safer. Stronger.
I have actually seen a friend of mine fire up a new jrpg and simply *click through all the intro story* to get to the feral rabit grinding.
But yes, write that article, I’d be very interested in reading it.
“I wonder why we feel interested in stories in games which we would have no interest in any other medium. And often it really is genuine involvement in sub-literate trash.”
I’d guess that it’s something to do with being directly involved in the story (and seemingly influencing it) makes it inherently more interesting. Pretty much anything becomes or interesting if we’re personally involved.
For instance, if you were walking down the street in winter and stepped on a patch of black ice and your foot started to slip out from under you, but then you managed to regain your balance. To you that’d be exciting, you’d get an adrenaline rush, you’d be thinking “man I nearly went over there, I could have been badly hurt”, it’d be interesting. To anyone one else it’d be “I nearly slipped on some ice, but didn’t”, not exactly entralling.
Or to quote Mel Brookes: “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into and open sewer and die“
“I wonder why we feel interested in stories in games which we would have no interest in any other medium. And often it really is genuine involvement in sub-literate trash.”
Because it’s your story.
See also: Dreams, stoned/tripping stories, D&D campaign write-ups.
CdrJameson: There’s been enough people’s RPG campaigns that have been turned into pulp fiction to disprove the latter one. Regretfully.
KG
Were there any that weren’t sub-literate trash?
Quality doesn’t matter to counter your argument. That they’re popular is enough.
The Feist Riftwar books are the earliest example I know of, which were fairly accepted as fantasy books.
KG
Maybe it’s the worrying belief of the players involved that it isn’t sub-literate trash. They’re clearly assigning more value to it than it deserves.
I still cringe to think that I wrote a ‘book review’ of a Dragon Warriors campaign for English when I was 12.
It was some consolation that as an English undergraduate I discovered I was apparently being daringly and preciously post-modern.
CdrJameson: I believe the fact Riftwar was based on Feist’s RPG campaign wasn’t common knowledge when it came out.
KG
(Actually, now I think about it, one the exercises I did when learning to write comics was to transform a role-playing session ran by Mark@Edge into a standard length American comic. Which was an interesting one, in terms of choosing what to lose, what to compress, how to present climatic scenes, etc.
Clearly, tosh and no-one’s going to get to read it. But not the point!)
KG