Editorial How Mass Effect challenged my definition of 'RPG'

[CrustyBot]

 

[IronicNeurotic]

I can not wait for Sea to get in the industry.

He'll be fightin' the good fight for us all.

Edit: Also who is that Harlan Sumgui guy? I mean he isn't totally wrong but he seems to act out of a world where only DX:HR and Bioware games exist.

 

[pipka]

How Mass Effect challenged my definition of 'RPG'

VentilatorOfDoom, I'm disappoint.

 

[ortucis]

Gamasutra lets every random person who has played a game post articles to fill blank space these days. That pretty much means a LOT of casual gamers who are Beth/Bio fans AND Indie developers posting their crap there everyday.

 

[FUDU]

How Mass Effect challenged my definition of "RPG" or How I had a mild stroke, just before I sat down to write this article.

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

The Mass Effect games are the culmination of this trend. Their voice acting sounds like a movie, the camera angles look like a movie, the storyline is divided into movie scenes, and thanks to the film effect, it even has the visual feel of a movie. And this, I think, is what makes many RPG fans react so emotionally to its occasional placement in the role-playing genre. Mass Effect's surprising popularity seems to say that RPGs aren't novels, they're movies now.

Watching the Mass Effect 3 trailer, it looks like it follows exactly the conventions of a trailer showcasing a summer blockbuster action movie. The Bioware crew have gotten pretty good at emulating cinema in a lot of aspects. Problem is, that doesn't mesh too well with the rest of Bioware's design decisions. Action movies want a quick pace, not the plodding speed of a Bioware RPG, complete with lots of sidequests that take away from any urgency in the main plot. It's hard to feel like the Reapers/Collectors/Geth are a credibler threat if you have time to work out Yvonne Whatershernameowski's family issues and always arrive in the nick of time to stop dem' bad dudes. And the actual "action" isn't up to snuff. Did Ahhnuld, Stallone, JCVD, or others slog through tons of filler encounters to pad out movie length? Nope, but Shepard has to. Basically, they want to be like movies in that they have big budgets, high production values, star actors, and all that, but all the while using the exact same game design as they have for the better part of the previous decade. Doesn't work too well.

If they really want to make "cinematic" stuff, they need to radically rethink design. Try looking at Way of the Samurai for how (action) RPGs could really do a "movie-like" experience. Make the game shorter, with lots of room for player choice, and with most fights being against unique opponents as part of the story (there actually isn't a lot of fighting in these games unless you decide to go random slasher on everyone in the gameworld). But Bioware will likely continue to try and stick the square peg of their "four hubs" design into the round hole of cinematic style until they no longer bring in adequate returns and are consolidated/liquidated by EA.