The genre formerly known as RPG
Mass Effect comes out on the 2oth, and it is a symbol of something terrible which is happening in the industry, through greed - sheer unadulterated greed - the genre formerly known as RPG is becoming the genre known as Shoot-Em-Up with RPG bolted on. Every game site you go to is raving about how Mass Effect will appeal to hard core shooter fans as if that’s a brilliant development. It’s a brillant development for BioWare and anyone who stands to make money from this title, and bad news for hardcore shooter fans and RPG fans alike. Why?
Well you see you can’t appeal to everyone. And you can’t make a game appeal to everyone without loosing something. Just as you can’t have security without loosing freedom, you can’t have an RPG that appeals to hard core shooter fans without loosing the essence of the genre. At the beginning of the 80s there was a great explosion of digital watches that could do everything… but they weren’t long in falling out of favor. By doing so much they were really rather crap. Most people these days have a watch; a good solid watch that tells the time, nothing more and nothing less, and it’s all you’d ever want. So by making an RPG that appeals to hard core shooter fans, is it really an RPG? That I leave to you.
Sure this new breed of almost RPG are very very pretty to look at, they are gorgeous, and probably damn fun to play; but do big budget titles fill us with a sense of fulfillment in the same way that the classic CRPGs do? Recall classics such as Ultima, Wizardry, Bards Tale? By considering such a question, we are not looking back, but looking forward to the way it could be, to the way it should be…
CRPGs were always best on the PC, and they were made to be gripping, to steal hours of your life and draw you into another world which was brought alive not just by graphics but by the power of your own imagination and by the depth of gameplay. When you take RPGs to consoles, they start to loose the depth and complexity that might have made them a brilliant RPG in favor of ease of play (read wider audience = more money). And it is all about the money.
Worse still, these new RPGs are increasingly coming out on the consoles first. Since they are being primarily developed for consoles, everything that was good about PC based RPGs has been lost.
I have nothing against Mass Effect as a game. I love hybrids, Deus Ex blew my mind, and I’m sure I would enjoy playing Mass Effect. It is just coincidence that it is Mass Effect which spurs this article. It could have been any game, but it just so happens that with EA’s purchase of BioWare; Mass Effect has become the focal point illustrating all that is wrong with the games industry. This was helped along by the fact it isn’t available for the PC - like second citizens PC gamers now have to wait, indefinitely. Weren’t we the ones who nurtured the RPG industry from its infancy? And as Will Wright pointed out, the mouse is still the best input device out there.
EA is already the most un-daring, un-innovative and greedy company in the universe. Out of the 30 odd games they release in a year they stipulate that 1 must be a new title. They are rather proud of that fact. 1 new title!? That means 29 (approx.) sequels! And the sequels we get aren’t just the third part, or the fourth part - Madden #25 anyone? Some say, that EA’s sequels can no longer be called sequels; versions, upgrades, roster updates, but not sequels - because that would imply significant enough differences to justify it being called a sequel. Just look at how hard they’ve been flogging the Burnout horse! Here’s a quote I rather liked:
In the future, I imagine EA will just send you a box that has “Madden” hastily written on the side in Magic Marker, and a little midget will pop out and punch you in the nuts, then take your wallet.
– William Haley, destructoid.com (Link to article here)
Asides from the endless flow of money grabbing sequels, what else has EA brought to the games industry? Actually, they’ve killed more great developers than I could even begin to list. I could dedicate an entire website dedicated to the promising developers that disappeared after an EA acquisition. They killed many a great, long running, CRPG series. Ultima was killed by EA. Eye of the Beholder was also killed by EA. Lands of Lore as well. Have I missed anyone? I’m sure I have. Now the makers of Balder’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights have become thrall to EA. That’s just that damage EA has done within RPGs! Think of the rest of the damage industry wide. So what will happen to the RPG? We just don’t know. Softened to appeal to as wide as audience a possible - shadows and dust.
Despite everything I’ve taken exception to, about Mass Effect as an RPG (namely it has been designed to appeal to hard core Shoot-Em-Up fans & won’t be available for the PC any time soon); Mass Effect might be among the last of the great mainstream RPGs.
It has happened so many times in the past that we know what could very well happen now - BioWare will attempt to make another brilliant RPG, and EA will press them to release it early, buggy, incomplete - to increase the profits. The people won’t buy it because they can’t stand the flaws. Then EA will then take an Axe to BioWare. It’s happened several times before. Wait and see…
Since the industry is focusing more and more on Hybrid RPG-Shooters, they have literally decided for us that Epic CRPGs aren’t worth the effort making. The game related media, online sites and magazines are just as shallow, promoting only the big budget monsters - as if graphics are everything.
It would seem that games like Ultima, Wizardry, and Bards Tale are all a thing of the past.
But they are wrong…
Because the Indie developers are going to save us from the soup of monotony spewing forth from the mainstream games industry!
To be continued…
