As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I like the idea of open-ended RPG video games, but not morbidly undirected games. Morrowind has yet to reveal its purpose to me - Previous versions of the Elder Scrolls games had a clearer path to the “End”. Also, Morrowind doesn’t make it easy to follow certain “career paths” in spite of how you align your starting stats, if you know what I mean.
What most people consider a “short” RPG is something that will take me weeks to complete. I am a 30-something full-time working married father with other interests besides turning into a 24-hour XBox junkie, and I just don’t have time to “kill just a few more monsters to level up before taking on that quest,” the purpose of which I’ve long forgotten.
What I want out of an RPG video game is this:
- Concise
- I don't want to play the same game for an eternity and just get slowly/steadily more powerful but hardly anywhere in the story. If the game has all of the other elements that I want, I'm not going to feel cheated if the game only takes an hour to complete.
- Open
- I want to take "open-ended" a little farther than "non-linear" and "Morrowind-like". I want a finite problem tree with different possible solutions based on my character skills. For example, I want to encounter a locked door and either pick the lock if I'm a rogue, or bash it down if I'm a fighter. If I'm a wizard, I want the option to take a different challenge path to avoid the door entirely.
- Episodic
- I bring this up a lot, and people don't hear me saying "replayability", but that's really what I'm saying. I want my RPGs to be discrete missions that take a short amount of time to complete and might contribute to a larger whole. I don't want to necessarily need to complete them in a specific order, and I don't need to have all of them contribute to "finishing" the game, if such a thing can be done. In fact, it would be more cool if you could "finish" the game more than once, don't you think?
- Incentive
- Do people really play games just so they can work their way up to the uber-weapon? There must be a better incentive to play - make the game fun to play, not just the skills. There should be an incentive to play outside of kicking butt. Character motivations are key to actually playing a role.
- Control
- People will disagree with me on this most, I think. I hate controlling more than one character, especially in real time. If you're going to write this kind of game, don't call it an RPG unless you're going for multiple personality disorder. Make the single character experience rich enough and you won't need the extra party members. I'm not ruling out companions, but make them AI-controlled and not mission-critical.
- Eye-Candy
- I think this is stupid to even mention, but the game should do something visuall extraordinary every time you play, and it should be reasonably different each time. Seeing new fighting/spell graphics each time makes me look forward to the fight sequences. Key the graphics to the power of the abilities, maybe? And give enemies special resistance graphics when they have them.
- Dialogue
- I am tired of talking to everyone in the town to get the story of the missing boy/ruined crops/mysterious visitor. I want one person to know everything and I want to recognize him immediately. Moreover, I either don't really want to use a dialogue tree at all (they are usually used to hide game depth behind menus that could have been a long string of dialogue) or I want one that's going to make a difference when I play. If I tell the lost maiden that I'm a hunter rather than the prince of the realm, I want her to behave that way toward me until she learns otherwise.
These are just some of the things that I would like in a real console RPG. Most games fail on the first point, Concise. I tell you that I am no longer in the 30+ hours per week crowd of video game players, and I’m not the only one. I really like video games, but I can’t commit that much time to them. It’s curious that in my age group there are so many people that could afford a good $50 video game, and so many people that are growing into this age from playing the 30+ hour habit, yet there aren’t really games that cater to our needs for something cool that you can pick up and play for an hour or a half hour, and be done for a few days.
I would buy all of the games that came out like this.
Another note: Optimatch on XBox Live sucks, too. There is no such thing. I stink so bad at games that they can’t even find anyone to play at my level. I suspect that everyone on Live plays on Live all the time, and knows all of the sneaky tricks. My MechAssault record is silly bad. I dare not even try any of the Rainbow Six-like games on Live, or I’d spend more time in the menus getting into a game than I would being alive on the battlefield.
Can someone at Microsoft please add a feature to Live that lets me connect to a group of players that have similar playing habits? One game here or there and not that good at it? Cripes, I just want a challenging match that I can win now and then.
