What is a CRPG? Part 4

Would you like to run along a mountain path, through the hardy evergreen forest, hearing the wind hiss around the spiny leaves, reach the cliff edge, take the spit second decision: do I face what's chasing me, or jump and hope I hit the river and survive the fall?

Or would you like a copy of Excel, because you can have that if you want.

The big problem with CRPGs is that they grew from Tabletop -or Pen and Paper, if you prefer- RPGs, which need to use highly visible stats to resolve challenges and conflicts. Because the first CRPGs simply ported the numbercrunching and plusones from the tabletop to the screen, an obsession has ingrained itself in the inds of some CRPG players that those numbers are the essence of roleplaying games.

The thing is, the beauty of computer gaming is that it can take all the stuff that we need to do by hand to create the game experience on the tabletop, and hide it away from us. Yes stat progression is good, but do we have to see it? No, not any more, we certainly don’t have to obsess over it. What we need to see is the world, and our effect on it. One of my favourite Oblivion mods is one that makes all levelling happen automatically, feeding off the already organic, practice based system the Elder Scrolls games use. I never look at my skills page anymore

For a CRPG to be good it does not have to have an exhaustive stat manipulation screen, it has to have either a solid, well presented narrative where the player's choices matter (or don't matter, but in a dramatic fashion, but this is a musing which will have to become another post) or enough freedom for emergeant narrative to grow from the gameplay, or a good combination of both. Add to that a well imagined setting...

Actually, about setting: even a well presented fantasy soup is fine, but can someone please give me a good fantasy RPG without the words 'elf', 'dwarf' or 'orc'. I mean, you can still have the willowy magic users (eg. Feyron, willowkin, imagii?), stocky racial crafters (Hearth clan? Axe lords?) and hairy brutes who hate everything (RGPCodexers!), but at least call them something different. The elder Scrolls, for example, would be much improved by sticking to the '$mer' nomenclature and dropping the bog standard names.

What is a CRPG? Part 2

Here's a biggie: A CRPG is what you make it.

Every time you are given a choice within a game, you are given another choice alongside it. You are not just given the choice to go to location A first, or location B, to blag your way out of a fight or get stuck in, to behead the traitor or forgive him. You are also given the choice of whether or not it is a roleplaying game.

That is to say: you are given the choice to do what will get you the most in-game benefit, or do what the character you are playing would do. The two are not always mutually exclusive, but there will often be times when they don't match up.

Here's a fairly hefty and generalisation filled chunk of example.

Most games presented as CRPGs (certainly in the non JRPG mold) have a slew of exciting things you can do away from the major storyline; running errands for lazy townsfolk, hunting, working for law enforcement or other organisations, etc. These will net rewards, in the shape of cash and kit, they may affect the way various factions in the game percieve your character, and in most cases they will also provide either XP in themselves, or extra opportunities to earn XP to advance your character's stats.

They are also, it should be remembered, a fair chunk of the content you paid for when you bought the game.

But are they what your character would do?

There are some games where there is genuine in character encouragement to get out and bimble about doing stuff. Morrowind, for example, opens with the PC being sent to meet a contact/handler in a foreign town, who informs you that he wants you to get out there,  blend in with the locals, make a bit of a name for yourself and get trained up and kitted out before he'll set you on the mission the powers that be have in mind for you. The main plot situation is simmering, but has been for years and there's no great rush to fix it, just a sense that it needs fixing at some point in the not too distant future. Obviously there are still IC decisions to be made about what quests to take, who to side with in certain situations, etc, but the decision to do sidequests and level up seems natural because you've been told, in character to do so.

One of the biggest problems I had with it's sequel, Oblivion (a game which I should point out that I adore none the less, more on why in another post...) is that the opposite is true. There's a crisis happening right now, lives are being lost, you have a job to do saving the world, so why would you involve yourself in tales of adultry, petty theft, and sexual harrassment in the mages guild?

Then, of course, there's Mass Effect 2. Oh what a beauty. There are plenty of sidequests that pop up in the game -many of them designed to have an emotional connection for the PC- in between the main missions to assemble and ensure the loyalty of a team of high-end misfits. You'd better prioritise them carefully though, too much faffing about at the wrong times can lead to pretty serious punishment, although that punishment only carries any weight if you're emotionally invested in the story and the characters.

So you only have to think like a roleplayer if you're roleplaying.

What is a CRPG? Part 1 of what will probably be an extended meander through my subjective views.

So, in a computer game context, what is roleplay?

I've been pacing around this subject for a while, and rather than blurge all over my personal blog, I thought that it would make a good starting point for the gaming blog I've been thinking of doing for a while now anyway. The main thrust of the argument  is essenially my opinion directly opposed that of the denizens of the RPGcodex forum, or at least those I could glean before the smug aggressive tone of that place made it impossible for me to continue reading.

You see, the prevailing theory there seems to be that stats make a game, that there hasn't been a good CRPG since Baldur's Gate and that the option to engage in activities that entail no systemic benefit or major plot advancement is 'LARPing', and that this is for some reason a bad thing.

Needless to say I could not disagree more strongly.

Here's an example: Mass Effect 2 came under fire for having lots of flashy graphics, and a very limited set of stats and weapons available. Now I like chatacter advancement, I have that impulse, and I love the lewts as much as the next geek, but I found this approach liberating, and much more like roleplay as I've come to understand it.

I wasn't obsessively comparing the stats of twelve different pistols, I wasn't waiting for my next level to see if I could get 4% stronger, I was focussing on my missions, on my people, on my interactions with my colleagues and  the ramifications of my decisions.

In other words, I was much more immersed in the character than the character sheet. And the very strong graphics just made everything more immediate and visceral. Even being forced to play in third rather than first person (first always being my preference) wasn't enough to diminish the emotional impact of events that occurred around me, events which - even mid-cinematic - I felt my actions had a genuine impact on, even if the majority of my choices were binary.