Some very good points of criticism in here. However, I also have to agree with
YourConscience in that the original post is taking these statements out of context.
With regards to one-hit kills:
It would either turn a game into a reload-fest or a God-like mode. Awesome.
What he's basically suggesting is that we should have arcade or atari gameplay where you get 3 lives and die from one hit and badly timed jumps.
Have you guys played
Bushido Blade on the Playstation? It's a weapon-based fighting game, but unlike
Soul Calibur, you don't just whack each other with your swords until one fighter's hit point bar hits zero. The controls are fairly complex, as is typical in fighting games of the
Virtua Fighter style, and the game also adds three stances which determine the moves that are available to you. Certain attacks are more or effective versus a high/low/medium stance, and each stance defends better against particular attacks. One quick blow to the head or chest will often -- but not always -- kill you. Strikes to the arms or legs will disable that particular limb, usually after 1 to 3 hits. Yes, it is possible to be stuck kneeling/crouching and defending yourself because your legs have been taken out (and occasionally winning that duel with a well-timed riposte).
It's actually a really great game. I think it's one of the more intelligent fighters out there, and I find it to be somewhat more strategic, relying less upon memorized combos of up, down, A, X, left, B, up, up, up, A+B.... Duels tend to end very quickly, or continue for a long time. An Action/RPG based on this type of fighting system could be pretty cool; your accumulated XP could be used to improve your on-screen character's responsiveness, ability to evade blows, accuracy with his/her own strikes, etc.
As a side note, the fighting areas in
Bushido Blade are quite large, and are connected to one another, so that you can actually run away from your opponent into an adjoining "arena" and continue the fight there.
Molyneux also pondered the fact that he reckoned 80 per cent of gamers only ever really used one button at a time, suggesting that new developments in game context sensitivity would mean that a single button press could be assigned to many actions.
This isn't necessarily a bad idea. Think of games like
Ocarina of Time, The Wind Waker, or
Beyond Good & Evil on the Gamecube and how the A button (the green one in the centre) is used to examine something, pick up an object, perform a leaping attack, evade, crawl, leap onto and grab a rope, sidle against a wall, or perform any number of other actions, depending on the context. And then think back to the Apple II-era
Ultima games with all of its (i)gnite torch, (j)immy lock, (k)limb ladder, (d)escend ladder, and the like, which are all essentially the "Use" command. Or the old Sierra text-parser games where you could spend 15 minutes trying to figure out which synonym for "use" the designers wanted you to use for a particular task. You don't need a "jump" button in the 3D
Zelda games, as you only need to run (not walk) off of an edge (with an eligible landing spot in range) for the game to know that you are jumping. It wouldn't be a great system for a true platforming game, but it works very well for adventure or RPG titles.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time has a somewhat more complex control scheme, but I've always been impressed with how easy it is to pull off some very fluid moves without convoluted button presses, mainly due to contextual sensitivity. That doesn't mean the game is easy, but that the controls aren't a barrier to experiencing all the game has to offer.
I think that's mainly what Molyneux is getting at; I highly doubt he's advocating a return to one-button joysticks. But today's gamepads with their 10-12 buttons are perhaps a little excessive, as are PC games with dozens of different keystroke commands.
Hell, just think of
Ultima VII: Left mouse button - hands, right mouse button - feet. Left-click once on an object to look at it, double click it to use it, click and drag to move it. Hold down the right mouse button to walk, or double click it to walk to a specific location. You basically have context-sensitive, one-button interaction with the entire world.
I believe it can only be realistically be done in a tactical game, not RPG. For example Mount & Blade will benefit greatly from one-shot-kills, but in RPGs, where you have HP and stats, it will defy the purpose of the game. But then again, I love tactical games like OFP and R6, just because of that. Sure you can get killed by one bullet, but you can also kill anyone with just one bullet. It is brutal, but it is fair.
As a couple others have pointed out, you can have an RPG without Hit Points. A few pencil & paper RPGs have used a wound status sytem, such several of the West End Games' RPGs -- Star Wars and later their other games based on the D6 System, and Paranoia. I think some of the D20-based games use it as well, and I know it's an option in the D&D 3.5
Unearthed Arcana book. When you get hit, you make a check of some sort (such as your Strength or Toughness or a Vitality Save verus your opponent's damage roll) to determine if you get wounded, which may slide you one category futher down on the continuum. It might be Healthy --> Wounded --> Incapacitated --> Mortally Wounded --> Dead, for example. (I think Paranoia added "Very Dead" and "Vaporized" to that scale as well.) It's a decent way of avoiding inflatable Hit Points and the process of having to grind them down as the totals get higher and higher.
Most RPG combat systems eventually boil down to this same war of attrition, as the player and the AI-controlled opponents trade blows that do X amount of damage Y number of times until X*Y exceeds one combatant's Hit Point total. Well, not just RPG combat systems, and it tends to apply to both turn-based and real-time combats. The game needs to be smart enough to take the environment into account, and if the PC ends up backed into a corner holding his massive greatsword, then pressing the "attack" button won't try to swing the sword when it will most certainly strike the walls, but will have the PC kick his opponent, head butt, strike with the pommel, or even drop one hand from the sword and grab a torch conveniently within reach on the wall.
