Microplay
Fritzkrieg and I got to check out the local branch of Microplay (http://www.microplay.ca/), which is a pretty damned cool gaming store. At least, the one where we live is. They had all kinds of crazy gaming paraphenelia on display, including a full-blown Virtual Boy and a wall of rare Sega RPGs, incluing Lunar: The Silver Star for Sega CD and Phantasy Star IV for Genesis. Overall the selection of games there was excellent. They even had copies of Xenogears and Persona 2 for PlayStation. Come to think of it, I'm not sure why I didn't break down and buy that copy of Persona 2 then and there. I will strongly consider doing a lot of my game shopping there from now on, although it is a long way out of my way--we're talking about a 30 minute drive to get there, when my usual spot (an EB Games) is only 10 minutes away. But game stores like Microplay are not a luxury to be taken lightly, that's for sure; I'll just have to make time for it.
Fragapalooza 2006
Fragapalooza (http://www.fragapalooza.com/) is on this weekend. In fact it's happening right now, as I type this, and has been happening for the last two days. Today I went down to the site with a buddy of mine (Ace-High) to partake as spectators. Good times; I could see myself wanting to participate as an entrant sometime.
The culture out on the floor was definitely amusing. There were all sorts of games going on; the majority of it was Battlefield 2, although I also saw a bit of Counter-Strike, some Quake GL, and too many others to exhaustively enumerate. One group had setup a GameCube and were playing Super Smash Bros along-side their PCs; that stood out. Another guy was playing Marvel vs. Capcom 2 on what must have been an emulator. Yet another guy was playing Dance Dance Revolution using arrow keys (fairly common, I know.) A lot of people were watching various movies, TV shows, and anime. At least two guys were watching Clerks 2 (still in theatres, not yet released on DVD), and I could have sworn some guy was watching Bubblegum Crisis--the old one.
We brought our Nintendo DSes along in the hopes that we'd find some pick-up games, and while we did play some DS, there didn't seem to be others hanging about with them. One guy passed us and tossed of the comment "DS--For the Lose!" if I heard him correctly. I think that may have been some kind of attempt at PC gamer hate-on for non-PC games, but I could easily be mistaken; it didn't seem worthwhile to press for clarification from him.
I'm not a big fan of case mods, personally, but I don't hold anything against them either, and they sure look pretty in the dark. I was glad to see that out of the whole floor, I only noticed one Dell XPS and one Alienware case, which is to say that just about everyone had their own custom-built box (and really, that's the only way to go with serious PCs.) Intel had sponsored the play-off area with some nice looking boxen, and nVidia and ATI were both there with demo booths and free play areas. The effect of the illuminated case mods is amplified somewhat when you've got a bunch of identical models sitting in a row.
I made use of one of the free play areas to see what F.E.A.R. is like on a
real GPU. It sure was cool. The environments themselves only seemed marginally better, but the enemy models were very much more detailed, and the difference was especially clear during bullet-time shootouts. Whereas when I'd played F.E.A.R. on my home PC, enemy targets had been fairly generic rag dolls that went limp when they were beaten, on the more modern PC I could see exquisite detail as bullets flew through the air and victims crumpled under fire.
In the end, Ace-High and myself didn't hang out for too long. Things move pretty slowly if you're just a spectator; you really need to be there with a rig to keep yourself entertained. I did get a chance to observe some of the crazy WarCraft 3 skills happening in the tournament, though. Those guys have
mad mouse skills. If I do end up entering some year, I'll be sure to stay well away from the RTSes. :)
Disgaea: Battle History of the Evil Kingdom
It's done--it's finally done. At 63 hours of play-time, I've finished Disgaea: Hour of Darkness (that's the North American title), and hardly a moment too soon considering that the sequel is nearly upon us. I probably could have finished the final level a couple of hours earlier, but once you get into a good rhythm in the Item World, sometimes it's hard to stop.
Disgaea is far from perfect. It's a bit of a grind and the battle system is a far cry from the most sophisticated Tactical RPG game systems out there. But what Disgaea lacks, it more than makes up for in style, and then some. It is a Tactical RPG, which is not a genre for everyone, but the charm of this game is undeniable: it's funny, it's approachable, it's endearing, it's addictive, and it has fantastic staying power. At the end of my 63 hour journey to finish Disgaea, I'm left with the warm, fuzzy feeling that Disgaea is more the sort of game that one is never really finished with. Disgaea may not be technically impressive, but it is a masterpiece of a game with a strong and well deserved cult following.
I'll throw out some general advice for anyone who is just starting Disgaea:
- Use the Transmute option on your characters to power them up to better classes. The advantage of doing this over creating new characters every time is that your transmuted characters retain their learned skills, which is really handy because you'll get some really powerful moves late in the game if you keep at it. In order to transmute a character, they have to gain a few ranks in the Dark Assembly first, but that should be no problem.
- When you have a level 1 character (at any point past the start of the game, that is) and you want to level them up quickly, equip them with really strong items to boost their stats so they can kill enemies at much higher levels than themselves right away. This trick is a staple in La Pucelle Tactics, and it still works in Disgaea.
- Use the Dark Assembly lots to keep store inventory up to date. Later on in the game, money should be easy to come by; I found that I didn't spend as much money on strong items as I should have. On the other hand, it's not hard to come by powerful items through random combat in the Item World either.
In continuing with my exploration of Nippon Ichi tactical RPGs, I did start briefly on Phantom Brave, which is the next game chronologically from Disgaea (don't be confused by the fact that La Pucelle is actually an older game than Disgaea, although it wasn't released in North America until later.) I've only just scratched the surface of Phantom Brave, but it does strike me as a much more complex game, with many more stats to keep track of as well as more sophisticated strategies involved in combat.
Although I still struggle a little bit with the control scheme in Phantom Brave (mostly because I have Disgaea programmed into my fingers), I'm really impressed by the fact that you can access orders through multiple contexts: for instance, you can "click" (X button with cursor) on the active character, select an action, and then select a target for the action, or you can click on the target first (instead of on the active character) and then select the action. Little touches like that are slick.
Anyway, there will be more about Phantom Brave--and hopefully Makai Kingdom and Disgaea 2 as well--in comming months.
Suikoden V - First Impression
When I say "first impression" in this case I really mean it--I've only played through an hour of Suikoden V so far, and for an RPG like Suikoden V, that's barely anything. Nevertheless, I do have a few things to say that could easily turn right around within the next few hours of gameplay.
Suikoden V is definitely Suikoden--the characters, story, and battle system are spot-on with the classic Suikoden style. This is a very good thing. As for the visuals, I find them really hit-and-miss; some of the scenes and designs are really pretty, and others are quite bland. I miss the good ol' Suikoden artwork of old from back when it had 2-D graphics.
What really impresses me the most so far, though, is the plot, but there is a catch: the writing hasn't been the greatest. Some of the dialogue is gripping, and the good parts are the punchy bits that are really telling of a character's personality or advance the plot in a significant way. But a lot of the dialogue is basically filler--a whole lot of chit-chat that effectively goes nowhere or makes a really simple point in a very long-winded fashion. Although I find flimsy RPG dialogue painful in general, it's made worse in Suikoden V by the fact that cutscenes with voice-overs cannot be skipped, and there sure are a lot of them (within the first hour of the game at least.) I find myself repeatedly in a situation of reading well ahead of what a character is saying, seeing that they don't really have a point to make, and having to sit through several seconds of dialogue anyway. Ugh.
In spite of that major short-coming, however, I've found that Suikoden V has good storyline with lots of drama, and intrigue--it's far better than your average RPG plot. Perhaps the wishy-washy dialogue and the only moderately impressive artwork prevent this from being a true masterpiece of an RPG, but so far I've been completely hooked regardless. Of course, having only played the first hour of the game, I've hardly done any fighting at all--which is sort of a shame because the combat system seems pleasant enough, but I won't fault Suikoden V from doing a lot of plot development up front as long as the gameplay picks up later and the story stays as gripping as it is right now. It's too early to say if Suikoden V is as good as, say, Digital Devil Saga (that would be high company), but the potential is there.
Another RPG that I've tried out recently is Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana (not the recent sequel, but the first one--which is actually Aterlier Iris 6, from what I understand.) Atelier Iris has been amusing, but also a fairly hollow RPG experience when push comes to shove. The visuals are definitely fun, and I have no gripes with the combat system, but the storyline is very thin and the whole production is quite a bit kiddie for my taste. The game is still fun, but it's definitely aimed at a younger audience; and while I can certainly stomach it, I find myself pining for a more mature experience (like Suikoden V, or even Growlanser Generations.) I will likely continue to play Atelier Iris and I'll check back again if it does anything interesting, but so far I've seen no indication that it's particularly great.
I'd also like to quickly correct myself. I think I mentioned earlier that BioWare is putting out Neverwinter Nights 2, but it's actually being created by developer Obsidian. One hopes that they can do the game justice.
Final Fantasy III DS
Amazingly, in my "DS Games to Look Forward To" list, I somehow managed to omit Final Fantasy III DS. Perhaps my subconscious deemed it to be too obvious to be worth mentioning, but I'll say a bit about it here: it looks in
credible. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that it will be the best Final Fantasy product to come out since Final Fantasy X, and I'm really looking forward to it. It should arrive on Nov 1st.
Speaking of portable FF experiences, Final Fantasy V Advance is slated to come out pretty soon too--Dec 1st, according to EB Games--and... Final Fantasy VI Advance at the same time? Those will be worth scooping up, particularly FF VI which is my personal favourite of all Final Fantasy games.
World of Mana
I made a passing reference to the "World of Mana" series in my last post. For those of you hard-done-by, English speaking Seiken Densetsu fans who haven't already gotten a taste of the revived mana series, check out the official Square-Enix site for World of Mana (in Japanese):
http://www.square-enix.co.jp/mana/
There should be plenty there to bring your hopes up. Way, way up. :)
DS Games to Look Forward To
One thing that has disappointed me about the Nintendo DS is that it has suffered from the summer gaming drought along with the rest of the industry. This year is/was supposed to be the "year of the DS," and while it started out really promising with the DS having several solid titles for it (Metroid Prime: Hunters, Mario Kart DS, Tetris DS, to name a few), combined with the fact that the DS Lite is simply an amazing product all-round, the summer months have been really slow for noteable DS releases (along with releases for every other platform.) It's a shame that the DS wasn't able to capitalize on these slow summer months when it wouldn't have had much competition.
Things will pick up in the fall, for the DS as well as for everything else. Will the DS still be able to claim the this year as its own by Christmas time? A lot of that depends on the strength of the forthcoming DS games versus the strength of what's expected for the PS2, XBox 360, Wii, and possibly even the PS3. Let's have a quick peek at some of what's expected for the DS. The given release dates are from the EB Games web site.
Star Fox Command (Aug 28th)
While the idea of a Star Fox game for DS is certainly appealing, I'm a little bit wary of the Star Fox franchise these days. Star Fox is one of those Nintendo franchises that, like F-Zero, commanded a great deal of novelty and magic when it first came out, and hasn't been able to top itself since then. Compared to Nintendo brands like Metroid and Zelda, Star Fox just doesn't seem like a lot to get worked up about these days. We'll just have to wait to see what the critics say about this one.
Mario Hoops 3-on-3 (Sept 11th)
I have a soft spot for basketball games, although Mario-branded sports games aren't always the greatest. Then again, sometimes they are great, and I really like the idea of a 3-on-3 basketball game for the DS. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this one ends up being anywhere nearly as worthwhile as NBA Street. Again, whether or not I take a closer look depends entirely on what the critics have to say about it.
Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2 (Sept 25th)
The original Mario vs. Donkey Kong (GBA) is a fantastic little platformer that combines puzzle elements with challenging gameplay. I didn't love it enough to think that it necessarily warrants a sequel (to be honest, I'm not even really finished with the original game), but since the sequel is for a different platform, perhaps they'll find novel new uses of the DS technology to improve on the game's formula. This is yet another game that has promise but needs critical support for me to buy into.
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates (Oct 1st)
Personally, I think that Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles is brilliant. Not so much as a Final Fantasy game, but more as an action-RPG along the same lines as... uh, Secret of Mana and Illusion of Gaia, I guess. Why is it that I have to reach all the way back to the 16-bit generation to think of a solid action RPG? There was Alundra, but that was a little less like an RPG and lot more like Zelda. My point is that FF:CC is a great multi-player action-RPG in an era where games of that genre seem to be scarce. I would almost go so far as to say that FF:CC is going to be difficult to screw up, in that as long as it vaguely resembles its GameCube ancestor and does a good job of supporting multiplayer, it will be worth having. I'm willing to take enough of a risk on it to get hyped up about it before the critics have even weighed in.
SNK vs Capcom: Card Fighters (Oct 2nd)
This is a silly game for me to look forward to. Really, I've never enjoyed the sort of scaled-down fighting game offering that portable devices provide, although I imagine that the PSP would be up to snuff. So much of the fighting game experience comes from the gorgeous sprites and rock solid game controls, which are two elements that are frequently lost in the conversion to a minature platform. On the other hand, the Nintendo DS is fairly powerful (it's no PSP, but it's at least as powerful as any 32-bit era console), and the draw of wireless multiplayer is not to be taken lightly. I
love the SNK vs. Capcom series, and if the DS can do it justice, then I'm all in for that. If the DS version turns out to be severely scaled down and looses a lot in the process, then I'll be disappointed--but probably not surprised.
Children of Mana (Oct 30th)
The Seiken Densetsu series returns! Actually, this isn't such a big deal--there was the Legend of Mana game for PlayStation and Sword of Mana for GBA, neither of which was particularly worthwhile from what I've heard, although I do lack first-hand knowledge of these games. Secret of Mana absolutely rocked my world back in the day, though, and I remain utterly betrayed and devestated by the lack of an official release of Seiken Densetsu 3 in North America. Well, it looks like Square-Enix is serious about resurrecting the Seiken Densetsu series with its new "World of Mana" series, of which Children of Mana for the DS and Dawn of Mana (Seiken Densetsu 4; Legend of Mana is a "gaiden" or side-game in the series and it not actually Seiken Densetsu 4) for the PS2 are the beginning. This could be the start of a new era for action RPGs, or it could just be Square-Enix shamelessly milking an old franchise. Either way, I need to find out for myself.
Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin (Nov 21st)
At this point in time, there's not much point in explaining the deal with Castlevania. If you haven't already tried Castlevania for GBA (get the Castlevania Double Pack!) and/or Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, you absolutely need to do that as soon as possible. If you like those games, you will like Portrait of Ruin, and if you don't like them, you won't. Personally, I think that the Castlevania series has been absolutely incredible over the last two years and that it's a brilliant staple of portable gaming. I have every reason to invest myself in Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, and I'm really looking forward to it.
Yoshi's Island 2 (Dec 1st)
Hey, a sequel to Yoshi's Island--the vastly underappreciated "Super Mario World 2" game! Given the excellent visuals and gameplay of the original Yoshi's Island, combined with the recent success of New Super Mario Bros., I'd say that Yoshi's Island 2 has some pretty big shoes to fill. It's ambitious for Nintendo to tackle this title now, which leads me to hope that they have some sort of plan for it and that it's not just a money-grab. At the very least, it's something to keep an eye on, I guess.
Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (Mar 1st, 2007)
Zelda, of course. There hasn't been an unremarkable Zelda game since... well, ever, actually. Okay, there were those "Oracle" games for GameBoy Color, and those weren't too exciting, but otherwise you really can't fault the series. Zelda games tend to come in three varieties: good, great, and totally awesome. Here's to hoping that Phantom Hourglass manages to be worthy of attention in the midst of all of the awesome next-gen gaming that's going to be happening on the Wii.
The Surprise Factor (Tenchu? Bubble Bobble? Mage Knight? DS Air?)
As much as I've already listed games and said "this could be great, but I'll need to wait to see what the critics say," I've overlooked or chosen to skip a whole mess of other DS titles that have the potential to be great but are by no means a sure thing. Keep your eyes glued to sites like Metacritic in case there's a surprise hit that rises through the ranks to become "the" DS game to have.
Wii Feature Wish
One thing that's always disappointed me about the Nintendo DS is that you can't hook it up to your GameCube in place of a GBA. If you have four people together who all have DSes with them, you can't sit down to play Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles or Zelda Four Swords Adventures. That's a bummer.
What kicks ass about the Nintendo DS is that it's going to have Wii connectivity features. Fantastic. What kicks ass about the Wii is that it's going to play GameCube games. Woo-hoo. Say, I wonder, is it possible that while playing GameCube games on your Wii, you'll be able to link your DS to them as if it were a GBA?
My gut feeling tells me "no." From a technical standpoint, I would speculate that the DS's GBA emulation feature just isn't compatible with its wireless capabilities. But if there was some way to make that feature work--if it is at all possible--hoah boy would that ever kick ass. Still, something tells me that my friends are still going to need to bring their GBAs over if Zelda Four Swords Adventures is going to happen.
As an aside, I've had to create a Gantt chart (Google it if you don't know what I'm talking about) as part of some project documentation for work. While chatting about it with my friends, I made the joking speculation that if one carries my "checklist RPGs" idea to an extreme, future PC RPGs could feature full-blown project management software--including Gantt charts--for managing your character's quests. You heard it here first, folks.
$2000 Dream Machine
Hey, this is post #100. Hooray for me. Anyway, today I want to talk about PC hardware, which calls for an important disclaimer: I'm not some kind of hardcore PC hardware guru who really knows what he's talking about. I'm a console gamer at heart, and the only reason that I can put together a gaming PC is because just about any idiot can order PC parts online and assemble a working system--most of the parts don't even fit together unless they're meant to. That having been said, I do know a little bit about computer hardware, but you shouldn't take my word as being the final authority on anything or buy a particular piece of hardware just because I mentioned it. I'll do my best to only mention good stuff, but my best might not be good enough.
I noticed today that my current gaming PC at home--which I've been meaning to replace for over a year now--is getting to be radically out of date. The CPU's AMD Athlon 2200, a socket 754, and I think the RAM is clocked at either 200 MHz or 333 MHz--but certainly no more than that. The video card is a budget Saphire Radeon 9600. It's hard to believe that I play games like F.E.A.R. and Oblivion on this thing, especially given what $2000 will buy you these days.
Socket 939 is out, and the new Socket AM2 is in. Of course, everyone knows about dual-core processors and such. Personally, I often doubt their true value--I was always taught that having a single processor running at, say, 20% extra speed (over each of the dual processors) will tend to work better for most apps than having two processors. Besides, two processors just fight over memory access anyway, don't they? Maybe things have changed since I was last educated on the subject, but it seems to me that memory access has tended to be the bottleneck in computing for more than a few years now.
That's why DDR2 memory clocked at 800 MHz is such a great thing. A year ago, I would have been willing to pay $400 for 1 GB of something like that, and now you can get 2 GB for roughly $200. Where gaming PCs--or even PCs in general--are concerned, memory is as important as your CPU, and yet most people (myself included) are still stuck with 512 MB sticks of slow RAM that cost $55 each.
There's also these freaky new physics accelerator boards out. That is definitely a hot idea; I ranted back when Half-Life 2 came out that in-game physics were becoming as important a feature of game graphics as poly counts, and I figure that these physics accelerator boards could one day be the difference between "Half-Life 3" chugging at 12 FPS or screaming at 60 FPS. As for the here and now, there are no games (that I know of, at least) that support physics accelerator hardware, and $300 is a lot to ask for something that only plays demos. If I did get one of these things, it would only be to experiment on as a programmer.
That's enough of a pre-amble. Now I'm going to get right into the heart of the matter with a raw listing of the hardware that I'd put into my $2000 PC if I were to buy it right now:
- Thermaltake Armor JR. Tower Case (don't forget the OCZ 520W power supply, sold separately)
- ASUS M2N-E ATX AM2 Nforce 570 Motherboard
- AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Dual Core Processor Socket AM2 Windsor 2.0GHZ
- OCZ Platinum XTC PC2-6400 2GB DDR2-800 Dual Channel Memory Kit
- Sapphire Radeon X1900 XT Video Card
Those are the interesting components, anyway. Some of the highlights of this particular setup include the following:
- AM2 socket CPU
- Nforce 5 motherboard chipset
- PCI-E 16X
- DDR2 800 MHz dual-channel RAM, and plenty of it
I figure that just about any rig packing those features can't go horribly wrong. If you're less budget-minded, you can easily step up on the CPU and the graphics card; similarly, if you're more budget-minded, you can skip out on the dual-core CPU and go for a single core AM2 CPU (I'd be tempted to save a couple hundred bucks that way, myself.) Another way to save/burn extra money is to go with a different case: the Antec Sonata II will save you cash (you can do away with the separate power supply), while Lian-Li cases will get you better quality at the cost of more cash.
Matt prefers nVidia's GeForce series products over Radeon, from what I've heard. I've also heard that the Radeon X1900 XT holds its own against the GeForce 7900 GT and then some (the benchmarks I saw were for a Diamond Radeon X1900 XT and a eVGA GeForce 7900 GT, as published in Maximum PC magazine.) Similarly, at the level of Radeon X1900 GT versus GeForce 7800 GTX, it's a toss-up, although GeForce is reportedly better at running Doom 3 and Quake 4. Personally, I'm not particularly attached to either GeForce or Radeon cards at the expense of the other--they're both great. :)
So there may not be much happening this summer in terms of new releases, but with a brand new gaming rig, all of my old PC games would suddenly be like new again. It's a crying shame that I don't have $2000 to spare at the moment, but my day will come. Oh yes, it will happen one day.
What Makes a Great Console RPG
I've ranted a bit about some of the design issues facing PC RPGs recently, so I thought I'd swing the camera around and take a look at console RPGs. The simple fact of the matter with console RPGs is that the majority of them fall flat. In my opinion, it takes an exceptionally good production effort to make a great console RPG. Perhaps this is because console RPGs tend to be lengthy and somewhat repetitve in nature, so any flaw in the game is bound to be experienced by the player many times over. In order to create a successful console RPG, it's vital that every aspect of the game be finely crafted.
I know console RPGs inside and out. They're my favourite genre of video game, I've been playing them for about 15 years now, and I'm about to give you the skinny on what to put into one. For those of you who aren't actually in a position to make a console RPG, you can turn this rant on its side and get something of a checklist of what to look for in a console RPG from a critic's perspective.
Because a lot of what there is to say about what goes into a great console RPG is obvious, I'm going to divide sections of this article into "the obvious" and "the not-so-obvious." The not-so-obvious bits highlight aspects of console RPG production that I feel are somewhat underappreciated or a little more difficult to get a handle on.
Artwork - The ObviousArtwork is the most important element of a console RPG. Console RPGs are
not strategy wargames where players will forgive the crappy visuals because the gameplay is good. Console RPG development is for producers with massive budgets to spend on artwork, since you will need illustrators, designers, animators, modellers, and other such talent working around the clock to make your game as pretty as it can possibly be.
What you are ultimately trying to create here is an immersive, escapist fantasy universe, so your game needs to be a beautiful place that your audience will want to escape to. While it's generally true that video games require more artistic development than technical developent (ie. programmers) to be successful, it is especially true of RPGs. Don't fret much over the technical capabilities of your game engine; good artists can make up for the short-comings of a dated game engine, within reason. That having been said, artists will do the best work given a good game engine to work with.
Artwork - The Not-So-ObviousMake sure your project has a gutsy and innovative artistic director who doesn't always make "safe" decisions. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and often a game with striking visuals is more interesting than a game with pretty visuals. A lot of RPGs these days have relatively uniform anime artwork styles, so it's possible for a game with a daring concept and an original artistic style to really stand out.
You need a top notch musical score to accompany your game. Let me make this perfectly clear: you don't
want it--you
need it. A console RPG's soundtrack is arguably as important as the visuals, which is to say that it's as important as any other aspect of the game. The music that the player hears will go a hell of a long way towards establishing mood and drawing an emotional reaction, and although a lot of players don't think that they're paying close attention to the music during the game, players are invariably influenced by the music whether they realise it or not. The music that you have in-game should be good enough that you would listen to it on its own; if it's not up to that standard of quality, then you're crippling your RPG project.
Story & Writing - The ObviousConsole RPGs generally follow a manga-like template in terms of writing: they have character-driven stories that tend to also focus on setting while developing the plot in concentrated spurts. If you're going for this kind of a setup, your characters need to be very interesting and likeable. "Interesting" does not translate into "weird;" a bizarre character with no depth is only marginally better than a plain character with no depth. Depth is what really matters, so make your characters mature and give them real feelings--a sense of humour, a calling in life, emotional baggage, and other such dramatic characteristics. Originality counts, but you'll find that characters with a lot of depth to them end up being original whether you plan for it or not. Hire some good writers who understand these kinds of things, and make it clear that you're not merely trying to assemble colourful characters for a children's story but are actually in search of meaningful drama. It may even help to think of your RPG as being adapted from an existing piece of work such as a novel or screenplay, even if it isn't.
Console RPG fans generally like long story sequences, but use them in moderation. Console RPG fans generally also like exploration and fights, so making them sit through hours of story scenes without giving them a chance to experience the world of your RPG project first-hand is not always a good idea. Also--and I can't stress this enough--make your plot sequences consequential. Don't interrupt the player to have a scene where the protagonist and his best friend stop to chat about the weather and how fun it is to be outside. Ideally, every cinematic sequence should advance the plot of the game, and character development should occur through more subtle and less corny devices than demonstrating how the characters interact during moments of idle small-talk. Develop the characters as the plot progresses and don't burden the player with too many inconsequential factoids.
Story & Writing - The Not-So-ObviousIt's very common for RPG writing to focus on character and setting while neglecting plot. Personally, I would like to see less of this. I know that it's difficult to develop a plotline for an interactive experience such as a game, because a scripted plot is usually linear and fun game experiences are usually not. But to me one of the most exciting things about RPGs is that they tell stories, and I want those stories to be told well.
You can get away with shoddy continuity in an RPG project, but you shouldn't abuse this fact. It's common for characters in an RPG to band together into a party without much of a reason for doing so, and it's similarly common for RPG characters to venture off to a certain destination without much justification. RPG gamers will naturally tend to turn a blind eye to these oversights, but these things still have an effect. If your RPG goes the extra mile and provides good, dramatic reasons for the in-game characters to behave as they do, the player will take notice and be left with an overall feeling of how good your RPG's story is--provided that that story is interesting, of course. It is more important for your RPG to have excellent artwork, characters, and setting than it is for it to have a rational plot, but it is specifically because a rational plot is one of those details that is commonly overlooked in RPGs that you can score big points on it with your project.
Gameplay - The ObviousDon't make your RPG too difficult, because your average RPG fan these days will not suffer to be stuck at any point in the game for very long. A lot of them will be playing along with player's guides, and most of them will turn to FAQs and walkthroughs on the internet if they get stuck for even five minutes. You can help to avoid giving the player an excuse to refer to a walkthrough if you are able to make it clear that bonus items can be found and boss battles can be completed using techniques that the player is able to discover for himself.
On the other hand, don't make your RPG too easy either. If all the player has to do is keep pressing the X button to order every character to attack for each battle, then you've just turned your combat system into a mindless grind. Give the player some interesting decisions to make; for instance, give them some options that require choosing between an attack that does weak damage against multiple enemies or strong damage against one enemy. Make sure that the order in which enemies are defeated in combat makes a difference, strategy-wise. Give the enemies specific weaknesses that the player needs to figure out, and introduce new sets of enemies to learn about when the player enters a new location.
The theme of giving the player interesting decisions to make extends to party management as well. "Best Equip" menu options are fine, but there should also be some items with important trade-offs--weapons and armor that exploit elemental weaknesses, for instance. Allowing the player to toy around with party formations is a good idea, but don't make it overly complex if you're going to bother with it at all. Creating an interesting system for levelling up where the player has to choose amoung skills and abilities to develop is another good way to challenge players in terms of party configuration, but be careful not to make it easy for the player to screw it up.
Exploration is generally a major element of RPGs. Maps that fill themselves in automatically are a great feature to have. Also make sure that players aren't interrupted too frequently by random battles while exploring dungeons and the like. If combat is slow paced and/or takes several seconds to load, it can be extremely disruptive and frustrate a player who is trying to figure out the way forward. Fast-paced combat and less frequent random encounters help a great deal to alleviate this issue.
Don't ever make the player play the "hunt the magic button" game. The worst kind of RPG puzzle is where you have a town full of twenty or more NPCs and the player has to find one specific person to talk to in order to trigger the next story event and progress in the game. If the player needs to perform a specific action to advance in the game, they should either have directions (hints, at least) or easily be able to stumble across that action without extensive searching. Ideally, a player should be exploring extensive areas of the game because he wants to do it--not because it's required.
A key strategy for capturing the attention of more casual RPG gamers while still appealing to the hardcore crowd is to make complex aspects of the game optional. It shouldn't be too difficult for a casual player to mash their way through the game, but a player who masters more advanced tactics should be rewarded with bonuses. It's a bad idea to make one of the main story quests very difficult since players could get stuck and never end up playing through the rest of the game, but optional side quests are fair game for being made into especially tough challenges for the dedicated and hardcore players. A simple party configuration should be functional enough to beat the game with, but an advanced player should be able to push the envelope with clever configurations. Setting up the game this way provides a dual experience of being able to casually play the game for the characters and story, or really putting in an effort to master the game system as well.
Gameplay - The Not-So-ObviousThe issue of "grinding" in RPGs is a touchy one. Some players appreciate the sense of accomplishment that comes from performing "hard work" to reach a goal, and they like being able to satisfy such challenges without expending much mental energy. It doesn't hurt to make an RPG open-ended enough that players can find grinding-like challenges if they want, but I strongly suggest that if you are going to give players an explicit incentive to grind, you do it very sparingly. To me, the core aspects of an RPG game system are exploration, tactical combat, and party management, and none of these should involve monotonous repitition.
One aspect that separates a good RPG system from a truly great one is the presence of combos. A really interesting game system should be open-ended enough that by combining various abilities together, players can create compound abilities that are far more powerful. Some RPGs try to force this concept by having "combined attacks" in combat where two characters act in concert to perform a super move, but this is not quite the same idea. A good combo should seem almost unintentional--as though it were more of a design oversight than something hard-coded into the game. A serious problem arises, of course, if a really powerful combo arises that wasn't intended and ends up making the game too easy, but even this can be an exciting aspect of the game in itself if the combo is difficult to discover. Single-player console RPGs have the advantage that players don't generally worry about how "fair" moves are against the pre-programmed computer opponents, as long as the game is still reasonably challenging.
SummaryRPGs should be thought of as artistic enterprises first and foremost, but also as fun worlds to discover, engaging stories to be told, and game systems to master. A great RPG encompases all of these aspects through visual artwork, musical score, writing, and game design. A project of such massive scope can only be realised by a team of dedicated and passionate individuals with a lot of resources at their disposal--including a lot of time to develop the project. So if you're thinking of getting rich quick by contracting out for some pretty illustrations and slapping together a quick RPG engine, forget about it. The only right way to make an RPG is the hard way.
TOAW3
Now I'm no grognard, but I have been known to enjoy various strategy wargammes--particularly Korsun Pocket of the "Decisive Battles of World War II" series. I've been meaning to buy a copy of Battles in Normandy, but it's relatively expensive for a wargame, so I've never really gotten around to it. Anyway, another wargame that I've always wanted was "The Operational Art of War," which is a classic of the genre. I was mentioning this to my buddy Matt the other day, and he was saying that his TOAW2 disc stopped working. This got me to searching.
Apparently, The Operational Art of War III (TOAW3) was released last month and completely slipped by my radar. Once I discovered it, Matt and I agreed to buy copies and start some PBEM matches. Of course, I've never played TOAW before, and Matt hasn't played for years. We're rusty, to say the least.
TOAW3 is an excellent wargamming title. There are tons and tons of scenerioes covering a wide variety of modern (and semi-modern) theatres, and the gameplay is fairly simple: move units, set their casualty tolerance levels, and "dig in" or stay mobile. The game system itself is quite complex, however this is the sort of game that doesn't force you to deal with the little details, but in order to master it you need to be aware of the little details so you will know how to employ your units effectively.
I'm still learning to play, so it's difficult to go into specifics, but it's clear to me that there are some very subtle, complex considerations present in TOAW versus Korsun Pocket. For instance, when you're planning attacks in KP, you always know what the final combat odds are before you resolve the attack. In TOAW, there are recon considerations, and just because you have units adjacent to the enemy doesn't mean that you know what their strengths are--let alone what the final combat odds are like. Replacements for damaged units in TOAW are handled automatically and are fairly detailed, whereas KP uses a simple step-based system so that you decide not only exactly where your reinforcements are going, but you know how effective they were and so forth. The power level of units in TOAW is in constant flux--depending not only on their position, but how much they've moved recently and so forth. The power level of units in KP is pretty easy to keep track of. This isn't to say that KP is a simple game; it took me several weeks to learn and has quite a bit of detail. But TOAW appears to have a lot more to pay attention to than KP does.
One unfortunate side effect of this is that playing TOAW makes me yearn for KP (and other titles in the same series) because the game system is immediately familiar to me. I find that picking up any new strategy wargame of any reasonable complexity can be a daunting task, and whereas I've already paid enough dues with KP to be able to just sit down and play (not very well, perhaps, but well enough for my own purposes), TOAW can be frustrating because there's still so much happening on screen that is foreign to me. I'll give have to give myself time and make an effort to play TOAW regularly until I get the hang of it. Matt's PBEM games will certainly give me enough motivation to do so.
So for the time being, I'm in wargammer bliss.
Checklist RPGs
Something has gone awry in the development of the RPG genre. Not so much on the console side of things, although that line of evolution has its own unique problems and has suffered a lot in its own way. But for today, I'm referring primarily to what is going on with PC style RPGs--the kind that started with Rogue, evolved through Ultima, and resulted in World of WarCraft, to speak very loosely of the development of the genre.
It helps to know something of the distinction between Console RPGs and PC RPGs. This is more of a generalization than a formal definition, so bear with all of the exceptions to the rule out there, but PC RPGs have generally presented themselves as immersive game worlds for the player to explore and become lost in, whereas Console RPGs have tended to be more like singular storyline experiences that the player works through, a little like an interactive movie. This distinction gets blurred a lot, but consider a game like Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which has a central story-line but also actively encourages the player to become sidetracked or even venture off to explore completely on one's own. Now compare that with something like Final Fantasy X, which has much less of an exploration aspect and a lot more in the way of character-driven drama.
A common element of many PC RPGs is that the player gets to fashion their own character, whereas Console RPGs are more likely to present a fixed protagonist, and his or her party, whom the player must play as. One can readily see how the former setup lends itself to an open-ended game universe while the latter lends itself to the telling of a rigid storyline. Both styles of RPG can be very rewarding, but for whatever reason the Japanese RPGs of the console world tend to be of the character-driven, rigid storyline type (I think that in this way they more closely resemble manga, which is perhaps the key difference between the Japanese RPGs and their American counter-parts), whereas the more American RPGs of the PC gaming world tend to strive more towards a simulator-type experience, and sometimes even more of a gaming toolkit (Neverwinter Nights, The Elder Scrolls Construction tools) than story-driven game. MUDs and MMORPGs have taken this experience in exciting new directions, where the game world is explored and crafted in a community-driven fashion.
The one development in recent years that seems innocent enough but has really been bothering me is the introduction of the "quest journal." The first PC RPG that I can remember prominently featuring a checklist style quest journal was Neverwinter Nights, but I have since seen it in just about every new PC RPG that I've played (World of WarCraft, Guild Wars, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.) On the surface, quest journals fix a simple gameplay problem: they keep track of where you're at progress-wise in the game so when you get interrupted and revisit the game later you can more smoothly get back into the flow of continuing where you left off. Additionally, they save you the task of having to write and keep basic notes for yourself so you can remember what your quest progress has been and what quests are left undone.
But quest journals also take something away from the experience. Back in the days of Ultima, you had to keep detailed notes if you realistically expected to be able to keep track of your quests and goals in the game. This could be really frustrating and I'm sure it lead to many players (including myself) to turn to walkthroughs and FAQs to figure out how to advance, but on those occasions that a player did insist on figuring it out for himself (I've done it before, honest), it made the game feel that much more immersive. Such RPG experiences more closely resemble reality in that you had to figure out your path through the world on your own, and you couldn't always keep track of everything--at least not conveniently--so you would encounter complications based on simply forgetting something or missing an important clue. As much of a pain in the ass as that was, it was fun because it made the game more engaging. With quest journals, important clues and directions to the next destination are often right at the player's fingertips at all times without any real effort.
There's more to this quest journal thing than removing an element of gameplay, however, because as soon as the quest journal becomes a prominent feature of the game, the game content starts to be designed around it. I don't have a problem with an RPG automatically taking notes for me, because to me it's a serious problem to not be able to figure out where I left off in a given RPG (I can go weeks at a time between sessions of Elder Scrolls IV, for instance.) However, the quest journal is so widely used that it truly becomes a task list, and that work-like feel of the game starts to colour the experience as a whole. With Neverwinter Nights it got to the point--for me at least--where firing up the game felt less and less like entering a fantastic world of adventure, and more and more like starting up a work program and finishing tasks. Similarly when I'm exploring the world of Elder Scrolls IV, I feel like I've got a task list weighing me down; sometimes I can still be daring and go off on random explorations, but there's always the temptation to simply follow the directions in my quest journal. The overall effect is as soul-crushing as going into work every weekday.
A big part of the problem, I think, is that a quest journal really highlights repetitive or cookie-cutter type quests. A lot of RPG quests in Neverwinter Nights, World of WarCraft, or Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion follow common templates--go to a certain location, find a certain item, collect X item drops from enemies found in this area, etc. Solving quests like these doesn't involve much creativity, especially if your map shows you exactly where to go and everything is basically spelled out for you. At least with Ultima you were often only given sketchy directions and had to find your own way to the destination; with Oblivion, you can often skip the travel process entirely by simply clicking on the destination in your map. Such automations effectively simplify questing to the point where little thought or planning is involved--the player simply executes instructions rather than deciding how to approach the problem.
PC RPGs should be about exploration and puzzling out information for yourself, and I think that repetitive and task-oriented quests are nothing short of total death for the genre. Gathering 5 sea shells in one area and moving on to the next to find 5 acorns is a lot like doing chores, only with pretty graphics. There are still some quests out there that feel like genuinely epic expeditions, although they are generally reserved for later in the game when the player's character is high in levels, and/or they are totally optional in terms of the game's primary storyline. Part of this design philosophy may be to appease players who want to be able to finish RPGs without getting stuck, which I suppose would leave true RPG fans out in the cold.
The next time you're playing an RPG, ask yourself if the quests that you're doing are genuinely challenging, or if they're really just time consuming. Some players enjoy the experience of "grinding" towards goals in an RPG, and while I can see a place for some chore-like tasks in an RPG game to give it that sort of appeal, I loathe the idea that the majority of any RPG would consist of such things. I once considered RPGs to be the deepest and most stimulating genre of video game, but fancy quest journals with unambiguous maps have a tendancy to dumb down an RPG so that it requires neither skill nor creativity but merely the player's attention. To me that is nearly the very definition of a bad video game.
