Games: Role-playing.

In the area of RPGs, many players have voiced their desires of entering a role-playing realm to enact their own stories, disliking the fact that they have to follow storylines of variable linearity. While this is possible in the traditional version of the genre (pen and paper), such a task becomes curtailed by current technology in its electronic version. Currently, there can be no such thing as a player telling his own unique story in electronic worlds because the technology currently limits us to follow the pre-established path written by the creators of a game. In some cases the path is wider than others (Oblivion vs. a Final Fantasy, for example), but it is still a great deal of someone else’s story.

The only worlds in which a current player could truly play his own character and story would be Rogue-like worlds- dungeon crawlers in which the player has little to no interaction with Non-Player Characters, and therefore no infiltration from someone else’s storyline. Here the player is truly free to decide who his character is, what is his/her background, and why the hell did he/she decide to explore the Temple Of Quasi-Biological Annoyance.

Because human communication relies on specifics, it is impossible for a computer at this point to create an NPC interaction that would feel both natural and suitable to the way the character has been playing the game without pre-established narrative margins. In an old fashioned tabletop adventure, a group of travelers arrive at a town in strife. Technically speaking, the adveturers can do anything at this point (provided they have an inventive GM)- they can choose to aid the ailing town, ransack it, or even take control of it by, say, taking over the crime syndicate that runs it. The options are limited only to the players’ imagination (and the improvisational skills of his GM), whereas in an electronic format the options are limited to the designers’ imagination and the flexibility of the technology. There simply can be no improvisation.

This is why so many worlds that try to pander to the current craze of Open-Ended Gameplay feel… broken, with areas and NPCs that feel disjointed and strangely disconnected from the greater picture. It is the threads of history that bind a world together- not just ancient history but recent history, as fresh as last night’s news of a raid. It creates a common atmosphere, a common experience between the inhabitants of the land. Open-ended worlds must necessarily lack any heavy influence from these threads because History also carries its younger sibling, Story, and a Story must, by necessity, make some allowances for linearity. It is an inevitable realization, but it is one we have to make: At this point, we do not have the technology to truly create an accurate role-playing experience. Rather, we are creating an Adventure-Playing experience- an interactive literary escapade where we are asked not to incarnate the protagonist but rather accompany them and, yes, choose their fate… while we may identify with many fo them, they are their own persons (or, more accurately, someone else’s creation), even if we are the ones choosing a great deal of their path. It is no accident that while many people remember the *gameplay* in Oblivion fondly, many more more people remember the intricate storylines woven by Final Fantasy VI and the character development.

A storyline adds a sense of tension, whereas an open-ended world can leave you feeling without much tension at all… in Oblivion, you could complete the demon-gates quests at your own leisurely pace (only the last one is timed), the nature of the realm would not change at all, and that really detracts from the atmosphere in a world that is supposedly besieged by otherworldly entities that are advancing upon it. Instead of dissolving the illusion that everything is staged for the player’s benefit, Open Ended worlds actually reinforce it- you either have two alternatives: Let the major events depend on when the player gets to them (as in the closing of the gates), or have them happen independently, on a certain timescale. The problem here is that the first one creates a “Truman Show” type world that won’t move significantly without the player, and the second one creates a world that moves without him… meaning that in order for him to get his money’s worth he has to engage actively in the storyline so he doesn’t miss it– and for all that trouble, you might as well have created a linear (or modular, web-based, etc) storyline to begin with!

The one game I know that can pull off the first one convincingly is the Grand Theft Auto series. Why? because instead of being Young Lad With The Sword Destined To Save The World, your mission scope is much smaller- you’re not really saving the world, at most you end up affecting a part of the city, and always yourself, but that’s it. The games pull off the illusion of being in a busy, thriving city marvelously, always making you feel that you are a citizen there and not the equivalent of Wonder Woman running through the streets, and the the gap between missions makes sense with the way they structure the story . But GTA is action, and Obligion is RPG, and you will find very few RPGs out there whose main line isn’t “Save the world.” Ultimately the problem is scope. The bigger the scope of the storyline, the harder it is to implement it with existing technology.

I certainly do look forward to the day we can finally have a fluid and exciting role-playing experience (perhaps in the form of Augmented Reality?), but until then I am content in joining a party of adventurers on their quests. I don’t want to be them in particular… as long as they’re not complete idiots, it should be enjoyable…. right?