I've been a lot more into open-world and action type RPGs lately, because among other reasons, they have just been a lot better than traditional tactical/map-based cRPGs recently. That will probably not change with the news of Larian making BG3. So I've been thinking today about what I would like to see from new isometric cRPGs that they aren't doing right now. Below is the stuff that I think is most obvious that would help this subgenre move forward:
- A massive world with many different climatic regions: mountains, deserts, tundras, jungles, plains, woods, steppes, etc. Ideally, these wouldn't just be cosmetic, but have real effects on your character/party, and require specific preparations to survive in them. In cold climate your party might need warm clothing over their armor, in a desert, they might need to take off heavy armor and maybe put on light reflective clothing. In a jungle, they might need insect repellent, in the mountains, special climbing equipment.
- Your party would have to carry food and water and other necessities with them (for example, ropes, crowbars/levers, spyglasses, medical supplies, hunting equipment, etc), and regularly refill those resources in natural, non-abstract ways. So refill food by shopping at food merchants, or hunting yourself with your party in your travels, refill water by stopping at rivers and doing it, and so on. Animals would have some simple AI causing them to run away at your party's approach, so the hunters would have to be skilled at stealth/traps/etc.
- This one is going to be controversial, and it's more experimental in nature, but I think it would be a good idea to remove mundane spell casting from the game. No more legions of casters running around and performing magic like breathing. This is what differentiates good fantasy (e.g. Lord of the Rings, ASOIAF, etc) from the cheap video game fantasy. In good fantasy, magic is a fantastical and rare force, and witnessing it is an experience in and of itself. In a typical RPG, magic is just another, dumber flavor of combat. I think it's ok to have a magician class in the game, but its role would be fairly different. It would be a special support class, performing rare and important magical rituals for non-combat related purposes.
- Similar to the point above, I think it's time to differentiate between combat and non-combat roles in the party. I am so sick and tired of every class being balanced around combat, which creates terrible and boring combat systems. Wizards, who are either just archers with special effects, or if they spec into cc, always break the balance. Rogues/assassins who "magically" utilize the most boring mechanics (e.g. backstab, vanish), and yet can one-shot enemies. Healers who are impossible to kill, etc. I don't think that you can create a truly deep and interesting combat system as long as you are trying to balance all these completely different things against each other (regular melee/ranged combat, magic, subterfuge, healing, etc).
So my approach would be different. I would keep the combat close to real life medieval stuff (melee fighting, archery/crossbows, slashing, thrusting, parrying, blocking, dodging, different types of movements, feints, defenses, etc). This would be much easier to expand into a lot of deep actions and interactions, and then you could have your specialized combatants be a part of your party, but then other roles would be there for non-combat stuff, and engage in combat as secondary, weaker participants. So you might have a thief who is there to scout, spot and disarm traps, steal things, and get to hard to reach places. This would be an essential role for the party's success, but in combat, he would just be an amateur in the back. The hunter is needed to provide the party with food, and can also double as an archer in combat. The healer/medic is needed to take care of various diseases/injuries in between combat, and also heal using conventional methods after fights, but again, they would not contribute much during combat. So the challenge would be to put together a party that can succeed both in combat and outside of it.
- Putting all the points above together, traveling between various cities/regions would be an adventure in itself. When you have finished questing around a particular city/settlement, and are ready to travel to the next one, you would have to make sure your party is staffed by the right people to get it through all the challenges on the way, that it's also equipped with everything that it needs to make it. You would have to consult the map of the world/continent to plan out your trip. For example, if you see mountains in the way, make sure at least one party member is skilled in climbing, that you have enough ropes and climbing steaks, and so on. Also, you would need to plan out your route in such a way as to always be close to rivers and waterways, so you can refill your dwindling water supply. When camping to rest, you would need to assign guards in shifts, and when fast forwarding, there would be a random chance that you get attacked by the locals, in which case, your guards would alert you, and a battle would commence. Different stats could influence this. Imagine how cool it would be to finally make it to the destination city, probably in tatters, with most of your supplies gone, and party injured and filthy.
- As far as the story direction, it would be great to stay away from whiny psedo-dramatic crap as in Pillars of Eternity and Baldur's Gate 2, but also away from constant humor as in Larian games. Just some realistic sounding plot with a lot of intrigue, mystery, and ideally, political tie-ins. Think stories more like Baldur's Gate 1, Age of Decadence, or the Witcher series. Something bad is happening, nobody knows exactly what, it's kinda scary, and you are sent to investigate/correct, but you are a bunch of nobodies, everyone treats you like shit until you start achieving stuff, and even then, everyone still mostly treats you like shit. Similarly to the Witcher series, I would also keep it relatively low-fantasy. Mostly human or other humanoid settlements, with monsters and other creatures being rarer and living on the outskirts of society. I think this helps to keep things more mature.
- For maps, I would prefer BG1's contiguous adjacent maps to the hub based structure of BG2, or the point of interest structure of NWN2/Kangmaker. But ideally make them even larger, say each map is 4 times the size of BG1's maps, so you can travel around it for a while, seeing different things. And the next map will continue with the same terrain as the previous one, until you see it change. But unlike BG1, a lot more interaction possible with the world. Have rope and climber? Climb that mountain. Or descend into well. Cut down tree to create a makeshift bridge. Maybe if you have a skilled carpenter in the party, put up a palisade quickly for your camp in a dangerous area, to help with defense. Hunt animals for meat (using stealth), then cook it and eat it to survive. Get water from streams. Cut branches into arrows. Climb a tall tree near a camp to get more time to respond to night attacks. If have the skills, maybe cut down wood and build a boat to sail downstream quicker. And a ton of other things.
- Intelligent puzzles. None of that find 4 mcguffins, put them together, activate lever bullshit. Maybe dungeons would have puzzles based on local lore. So it would help to have a scholar party member, who would have reading skill, and go through the manuscripts in the local library. Or also talk to the local intelligentsia. Or just puzzles based on logic and figuring stuff out, like in Ultima Underworld. I would make these optional though, for some optional extra loot, because some people might hate this sort of thing.
