Does it matter if people don’t finish games any more?
Just 6.4% of players who have bought role-playing adventure Pillars of Eternity have actually completed it, according to the
PC gaming service, Steam. This critically acclaimed throwback to genre classics like Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale returns us to a period in which playing games was a much more demanding experience. I finished Pillars of Eternity a few weeks ago and the experience has left me crushed.
Does it matter that people don’t finish games anymore? Because they do not. Apparently only
15% finished Alien Isolation. Deus Ex: Human revolution stands at about 25%, while Bioshock manages a more respectable 35.9%. With Bungie’s online shooter Destiny, there’s a large percentage who have never actually played the game co-operatively, or seen the end game content – and only 15% have completed a raid.
Of course, measuring all of this is difficult as the figures shift according to genre and the meaning of the term “finishing a game”. With Pillars of Eternity, a workable definition is completing the core narrative in a single-player campaign and receiving an achievement. A month after release, most people haven’t done that – and that is hardly surprising.
Finishing a long RPG can be a commitment that means ignoring new releases, other ways to spend your free time (including the myriad gadgets and social media sites competing for our attention), and indeed, ignoring the rest of life altogether. With 100-plus hours of content, Pillars of Eternity is a major commitment.
It is, in some ways, a sort of oddity in a world that tends to converge on a game for a few days before leaving it for the next big title. Pillars of Eternity is built around a vast and amazing core narrative, complete with fascinating side-quests. You’re at your leisure to complete the main campaign – or you can just murder key NPCs and see where that takes you (although unlike other old-time RPGs such as Morrowind you can’t carry on down your merry murderous path forever).
It’s the stories that make it so brilliantly engrossing, though – yet those final moments that lead to a personalised conclusion based on the actions and decisions you inflict on the world, are seen by so few.
Characters v story
Let’s consider Divinity: Original Sin, an RPG that looks similar to Pillars of Eternity but shares little else. The story tone is different and the combat is turn-based. Despite being released last year, only 5.6% of Steam players have fully completed the game. Again, as an RPG this is a game built around a story with narrative threads that eventually need to be sewn together. But if only 5.6% of people actually see the end, does that mean role-playing titles are actually more about their character levelling and progression mechanics than the actual story?
Rather than reaching the end of narrative decision-trees that have been built up throughout the story or witnessing the journeys that allied NPCs make as you drag them on your character’s own vain quests, will most players just focus on slaughtering NPCs for XP then gathering up loot?
I loved Baldur’s Gate and I love Pillars of Eternity, but I had to make time in my diary and force myself to keep going to finish it. As a player, I want to see every possible outcome, every dialogue reaction to a situation that departs from the standard “good hero fights evil villain” narrative, every subquest that nudges you into a morally ambiguous act.
This is not the game’s fault; it is mine and it means finishing a game like Pillars of Eternity takes a lot of time. It is also mentally taxing: Pillars of Eternity uses exquisite dialogue and written cues to show how characters react, which means the player has to use his or her imagination to “see” most of the game. That is not something most gamers are used to these days.
Games spell things out for us now. Even in a title as detailed and character driven as Dragon Age: Inquisition I’ll see a villain doing villainous things as they spout villainous words because they’re a villain and that’s what villains do. I don’t have to use my imagination to see the subtext behind their actions, to gauge why what they’re doing matters to them.
‘Leap of faith’
Most modern games don’t ask the player to interpret the wry smile on another character’s face. The narratives are built on enjoyment and, as games are chiefly meant for recreation rather than as a test of emotional intelligence, there’s nothing wrong with that. Old-time RPGs did not adhere to that idea: back then, “fun” was what you made it and you were not guaranteed to have any.
If you want enjoyment out of the genre classics, you have to commit to the world that the game presents to you; it’s a leap of faith. And given the difficulty of grasping Advanced Dungeons & Dragons mechanics in a game like Baldur’s Gate, for example, you’re not always guaranteed to land in a wagon of hay.
There is a point in Pillars of Eternity where you’re given the option to fight an insanely difficult battle, or to make a morally dubious decision, avoid the fight and still get what you want. Normally I’d save a file, follow one decision tree and then go back and follow another. But I was too tired for another difficult fight by this point in the game and I enjoyed the outcome of my decision so much I just accepted it. I’m fairly sure I know the outcome of what would have happened if I’d have fought, but at the same time I don’t really know.
Maybe knowing and seeing everything are less important these days; maybe we are different now. But I don’t regret chasing Pillars of Eternity to its end – even if it did take forever.
