I think that "saving the world" isn't just boring but also can be sometimes detrimental to the game design, instead of making difficult choices or having a specific argument to convince a character/faction to join you, it's just the most obvious argument "united we stand, divided we fall". Also, the stakes are so high that it's impossible to realise how much your character values everything in the world, especially if your game takes place only in a part of the world and the other parts of the world are barely described in the game
A smaller, more local problem also makes an evil path make a lot more sense. If a gang bandits / raiders / barbarians are threatening to overrun the town, joining the villains, climbing their ranks, and taking over works as an evil path. If the world or universe is going to be destroyed, even Evil Mac Evilman will need to do the good quest to save their own skin in most cases.
I think saving the world as a power fantasy is extremely dull; however, if it's a burden, curse, or painfully earned, it can be justified. The main character Aya in Parasite Eve is constantly haunted by a dead loved one and witnesses horrors along the way. Her saving the world feels earned by the end, and her powers during the game almost felt like a curse. She never asked for this. It doesn't hurt that she's a working girl in modern day New York. She's not some cocky teenager with a magical sword, but someone far more grounded, albeit with some '90s action hero moments.
I think it is only a problem when they slap you in the face with it. Countless JRPGs do it really well where you struggle to survive and then you end up in a postion where you can save the world. Games like FF14 with its painfully bad writing hit you in the face with it from the start and then you have a world that doesn't acknowledge what the MSQ defines. Early in the game it says you are the savoir of everyone with each city celebrating you and then you go right back to being a delivery boy its just soo poorly done.
@@lrinfiI was thinking about Guild Wars 2 in this where the bickering of the orders kind of abruptly stops because of the argument, but yeah this is a thing too. For example I've been playing Dragon Age Origins recently and half of the main "gathering army" quests basically choosing one faction out of two, and the other has to be killed
@@Blueprint4MurderI haven't played JRPGs so I'm going to agree with you. Same with FF14 but I'm guessing it has the same issue as GW2 original storyline which has similar issues
Totally with you on preferring "scoped problems"; they have so much more potential to drive interesting factional and character conflict. (By contrast, it doesn't serve anyone's interests to literally end the world.)
Wasteland 3 does this really well - the entire story premise is basically 'Secure our supply chain' which sounds dull as hell but ends up forcing you into faction conflicts that are really interesting with outcomes that aren't always obvious.
This is one of the many reasons I love Citizen Sleeper. The stakes are either personal or effect people you care about. Even at it's biggest scale you know you are probably going to change nothing outside of that scope. You don't solve anything perfectly, it's a constant compromise.
nearly had a panic attack reading that tilte haha really thought Tim was about to say he's bored of this channel now, signing out. love watching his vids.
That title was a surprise to me as well because I had never gotten the impression so far that he was bored with what he was doing! Although he did say a few times that there's less fun to be had for him working on the games industry these days, like the Avoiding Burnout video. But bored? No! After listening I do understand his "boredom" though and several games have bored me out with similar issues.
I've always liked how the Fallout games have handled how your character gets introduced to the world and that includes New Vegas where you have amnesia. You might disagree with me on this, Tim, but here's why I think it worked really well. Your character has a mundane life and the game opens with you getting your brains scrambled. None of what you did in the past ever really mattered and your only motivation is revenge and rightfully so I think. That, to me, is how you nail amnesia. It's not about who you were but who you, the character, and you, the player are going to be.
Okay, but Disco Elysium utilizes the amnesia trope really well. It's not just to get justification for all the lore dumps, but to become Raphaël Ambrosius Costeau, the superstar hobocop.
I'd argue that Disco Elysium is more a subversion of that trope than a game that plays it straight. Yes, you've lost your memory -- but you also know exactly how that happened in the first place, which gives you a LOT of information on the kind of person you were -- or are. It's the difference between a blank slate and a slate that's only been partially erased, where you can kind of make out what used to be written in spots.
Obviously there will be instances of all these things that were good, otherwise they wouldn’t have become overused in the first place. It’s more of a list of things to be careful about using than absolutely never use them in any case.
I made this comment awhile back and (I think, don't quote me) Tim commented something to every rule has exceptions or something. He seems to regard Disco Elysium pretty well
I think the reason is it didn't feel like an excuse to bring the character up to speed at the same time as the player, which to me is the problem with amnesia in games. Rather, it was the low point in the characters arc, losing who you were and what you choose to become now IS the main question the game poses. Amnesia was just one part of that, along with the skill/personality system and all the interactions having that former identity looming over them.
Tim doesn’t review games, but I’ve always wanted to know his thoughts on Disco Elysium. The game does almost EVERYTHING Tim says you shouldn’t in an rpg, but it’s still an amazing game.
I learned real quick in my D&D games to not use "save the world" conflicts. It means that anyone that stands in the players' way has to be evil: there's no character decision where "Yeah let's destroy the whole world" makes sense. As soon as I switched to human-caused conflict (like a war between neighboring nations), I was able to create characters that made sense and were sympathetic on both sides of the conflict.
The thing you mentioned about some combat feeling more like "following a rhythm" is probably why I enjoy style/spectacle fighter games like DMC and Bayonetta, or really any game that emphasizes stylish combat I'm given the room to experiment and find my own rhythm rather than being forced to follow the same one or two beats that the game is clearly designed around
I love watching these videos! I am not a game designer, programmer, or anything related. However, I often watch your videos and take good advice out of them in relation to my own interests. I'm an aspiring musical artist. It's interesting to see the similarities between one creative process and another
Tim I just want to say that you've been my favorite personality in gaming dev for a long time now. Going all the way back to Troika. These videos have really cemented in my mind exactly why you were. I wish more devs really strove for your devotion to player freedom and real choice. You mentioning how an RPG needs to react to the player really brought to mind Gabe talking about how he had an, in his words "narcissistic" urge for the gameworld to react to him and his actions, and how true that statement rung for me. When I play games I always want the world to feel alive and like it exists after I stop playing. I want to know my choices and actions affected the world and left a mark on the people living in it. It''s something incredibly unique to games and the games that do it are always the ones that feel special and important.
I wouldn't call it a "narcissistic" urge, although I suppose it can turn into one. It's perfectly natural in that human beings are social creatures with in innate need to feel a sense of purpose and belonging in the real world. Why should that be any different for a character in a virtual world? And, yes, "the savior complex" is not a complex those great leaders throughout human history everyone knows the name of exhibited in their lifetimes (though their "followers" very often have) and yet their contributions changed the course of the world they lived in the most unexpected and, often, delightful ways. "Art anticipates life," so they say, yet I don't see an awful lot of anticipation in art today so much as the treading and retreading of old, worn, familiar ground.
@@lrinfiAs I said those were Gabe's words not mine but it does touch on our need to feel the world respond to us in meaningful ways. That's what makes games such a unique artform. I'd also say that it isn't necessarily that the world validates you or lets you save it. Just that it responds to you. If you steal from a shop, maybe the shop goes out of business. If you feed a dog maybe it doesn't die and helps you in the future, maybe it goes feral and kills an important character. Who knows? It's just little things that show the world operates on choice and consequence. In Gabe's case it was just that when he shot the world the world should have decals showing he shot it.
I have to agree with some of your points there Tim. I know how useful amnesia is in story telling but I wish I don't have to see it used again. I also not fond of merging multiple genres in hope of getting something new, it's not easy to do and it will end up messy or one genre overpowering the others. But that being said, it has to be understood that finding something new is tough and even if we did, developing it is not so easy.
Today Tim shreds the Divinity series... ...and on a similar note I'm tired of "puzzles" that amount to playing Where's Waldo with some needle in a haystack item without know what you're supposed to be looking for.
This, of all things, actually made me replan my upcoming DnD campaign! Sometimes tropes are fun, but the point of a scoped problem(s) really stuck with me. Thanks, Tim!
The saving world trope is just traditional storytelling, nothing wrong with that. Thing is, when the story doesn't somehow signal the utter hopelessness humanity has to face on a daily basis, that'll lead to the player not caring and even ask themselevs why even bother save this world? Example: this could be done by playing a game with amazing characters that you can see struggle against the state of the world and thus motivate the player to continue to fight evil or somehow be there to show and inspire them to fight against their nihilisitc way of thinking.
"If the world is meant to end, so be it. Let it end and be reborn." -- Arngeir, Graybeards, Skyrim Most players I've seen approach that with the attitude that that's...well, that's just crazy thinking, kind of missing the whole "be reborn" part. We humans tend to think of time, especially, in linear terms and strictly in terms of beginnings and endings, but, "worlds" (of men) and eras have come and gone throughout the course of human history and we're still here. What if we did let "the world" end and be reborn anew in Skyrim? I suppose we'll never know. We weren't given the option.
One of my biggest gripes with RPG's and something I think Obsidian does so well, is how much established back story they give the player. I loved in FNV that you were just a person put into a situation, like most of Obsidians games, they really understand that about RP.
That first point is probably my favorite. I love low to medium stakes stories. Something that is just an event happening in a world that will continue whether or not the quest is seen through to the end. Usually a journey of personal growth more than anything else.
I still don't understand why there are barely any RPGs that send you to a different kingdom to justify lack of knowledge of customs or general world knowledge. Or at least put you in a prologue where you play as a child to do some world building/introduction.
by the way, i such hate modern systems of level up, and absolutely love arcanum system. she was a simple but super interesting. you saw a high level magic or high level technic branch, and you think "oh, damn I want it, I want disintegrated spell or mechanic spider, and you go right to it. but now every games give you a ton of useless spell, you look at all these and think ... "I bored now"))) I don't want any of this. This is biggest reason thy I dream about arcanum remake... for a start)
"Top 10 things you loved from your favourite games and glued them together" This feels like so many games and why I bounce off of them so quick. They don't have a personal identity. They take things from other games or media and smash it in their game without totally understanding it. So we just get half understood poorly implemented boring regurgitation of ideas. I'm hoping to avoid such pitfalls with my own game by focusing on what's important to me specifically and my specific interests, while keeping it light hearted and goofy.
"We need to close these Oblivion Gates!" No thanks. Imagine how much fun The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion would be if the player could join Mehrunes Dagon.
Oblivion was ok, but I never understood why they removed float. It took a dimensions out of the game, and that type of lazy development is why the IP is in the gutter. Morrowind was the best ES because of it and its monsterous lore despite its bad combat and painfully reused assets. It is the least they could have done with the ever-shrinking world the next few games gave us. They flirted a little with it in dishonored, but it was more of a platformer mechanic and didn't feel great.
Or Morrowind. Both Dagoth Ur and his minions attempt to convince the Nerevar to join them, but you literally can't say yes or even flirt with the idea. Would have made a great alternative end-game as an evil playthrough. Convince whatever factions you can to join the new faction lead by two demi-gods. If they refuse, destroy them. Destroy the imperial friendly factions. End with a climax of storming Vivec with a bunch of corpus monsters, kick down the door, and kill Vivec.
Well, technically you COULD say "no thanks" and go on about your day, you just wouldn't be able to finish the main story. But that's arguably the worst part of the game anyways so...
The amnesia part made me laugh. Becaus I remember watching Madnaloregaming make a review on STALKER, where he said "like most mid 2000s video games, you have amnesia." I had to pause and think on the games I played in/from that era and got the "oh god, he's right." moment. Soo, soo many games with amnesia.
Thank you very much for this list. It is actually preferable to reviews :) One question I have for you is: What do you consider great examples of choice and consequence (from both your games and others) and how do you hope this RPG element evolves in the future? Thank you again for these great videos! Have a great day :)
One of my pet peeves is a game is establishing an in world logic and then later breaking that logic for trivial reasons. Also when a game doesn't have in world logic at all, just constantly contradicting itself. It might be petty, but even the smallest things can sometimes break my immersion. I'm not saying it has to be realistic (but it certainly doesn't hurt), it just has to make sense within the game or it's gonna lessen my experience significantly.
Hi Tim - I haven't yet watched all of your videos (there's a lot of them!) so I apologize if you've addressed this before, but I was curious if you've tried Disco Elysium. I ask because I too often get tired of nonstop combat if so many RPGs - it's just about the only path to character growth you'll find in RPGs, so playing a game like DE that has no combat was a real breath of fresh air to me. It has a lot of character customizability and lots of interesting choices, though it does lean kind of heavily on the amnesia trope. But I really enjoyed it and would recommend giving it a shot if you haven't played it.
There's few things that disappoint me more and faster more when you're introduced to long, well-acted dialogue and conversations between npcs and then once in a while you get to pick one of two options which you can TELL just by reading the lines given to you, it will not change any of the dialogue or anything happening in the game. You just press 1 or 2 and everything keeps going.
complexity for complexity's sake is one of those things where I both hate it and then play a whole bunch of games that are full of it. case in point - total war: attila. the western roman empire campaign of fighitng attila and 1-hour-plus end-turns from multiple small town battles in a row and "oh god who declared war on me *this* turn" made it one of my favourite total war campaigns of all time, but the town building mechanics were broken (oh, you upgraded your farms to fix the food problem? shame you don't have the sanitation for that, enjoy the endless plagues and public order debuffs, also Winter Is Coming so you still have a food problem) and you look up a steam guide with templates for making optimal towns that make tens of thousands more than whatever you thought was a good idea...
A really cool game that has many of the things you mentioned but it's done in a really fun way (at least to me) is kingdome come deliverance, pre named character, somewhat of a linear story, combat choreography. Still a good rpg I think.
In defense of the Open World: It can be very reassuring for players to know that they can always go out and kill some enemies to become stronger. The Open World can function as a personal balancing element, possibly preventing players from getting stuck on a difficult fight. Tyranny comes to mind as a game that did the opposite; I always felt like i had to pick dialogue options and otherwise act in ways that levelled skills (like extending combat to cast more spells) because there were limited options to level skills and i didn't want to end up underpowered later on. Also, i think that being a veteran gamer (since the 80s in my case) can be kind of a curse. I will also complain that modern shmups aren't as good as Raptor (1994). It's tough for someone to come up with something that we haven't seen a dozen times before.
Woah, been watching you a while and had no idea you worked on Temple of Elemental Evil. It has always fascinated me as a dnd game. So many great mechanics I havent seen since. Never finished due to the difficulty as a kid, but I mean to finish it someday
I wonder what you think about Pathologic 2, because it has a lot of the points that you said lol, but it's so different at the same time, I think it's a very unique piece of art that I really enjoy.
This title is so funny to me, because for many years whenever I am on social media and someone says "I'm bored" my reply is "Play Fallout" or "Play Fallout 2". I have a long history doing that and people sometimes say they don't have that game or that they aren't gamers, but in some cases they are interested.
I have a feeling he's talking about Hi-Fi Rush when he brings up the rhythm game. One of my favourite action games of the last 5 years. Could also be everhood but I haven't played that.
I'm honestly struggling to remember any BioWare game that didn't have the grand evil something coming to destroy the world, with the exception of Dragon Age 2, but that was the result of a very rushed development cycle, not purely creative ambitions to make something smaller in scope. Still, for setting the entire game in a single location and exploring that at least somewhat I give it huge thumbs up, certainly liked it way more than Inquisition with its bland huge maps and MMO-lite fetch quests.
Same as with Movies. Saving the world from some unexplained Just-Evil-TM as been completely overused and also wrongly used. If every movie in your series (yes thinking of Marvel movies) has the same narrative of "We / I have to save the world - again" it just becomes unbelieveable, no matter how creative the threat / saving might be. And that's a shame, because saving the world makes for a hell of a movie (or movies) but it has to be earned throught the series and with complexity. LOTR is my favourite movie and yet I dont critize it for using an overused trope. Because "the Evil" is complex and actually to a degree within every character. And it is about defeating that evil within you AND defeat those that couldn't defeat theirs on their own. That makes for multiple interesting characters and plotlines.
what a great explanation..I also didn't like some of those types of things but I couldn't figure out why..what I really dislike the most is the yellow paint of shame, I'd love to hear what u think about it..I like the hand holding but only when it's really subtle, like breadcrumbs
Tim- I heard this quote on a podcast about Saturday night live and thought of you. Jim Downey on political satire- “reward people for knowing stuff, but don’t punish them for not knowing stuff.” Seems like your take on lore.
8:30 For me, what comes to mind in terms of “combat RPGs” are JRPGs like the Final Fantasy franchise. However, what works in favor for Final Fantasy is that, through the art style and presentation, the type of RPG is made clear from the get go. Final Fantasy 3 makes it clear from the beginning that it’s a linear combat focused RPG through its opening introduction. The problem with some other games is that the linear nature is obscured or hidden from the start. If an RPG is gonna be linear or combat focused, it’s fine unless that fact is obscured or the linear narrative is boring. You can still role play as a predesigned character in a prewritten story and enjoy it, but what that means is that the writing has to be *even* better than an open choice narrative. Linear narratives shouldn’t be an excuse for lazy writing. It means the writing has to be even better. 😊
I've said it before. I would love to have you sit down and talk games with the people at Second Wind. Great commentary and insight from all of you, so it could be interesting to see what fell out if you poked each other's brains for 20 minutes.
@@aNerdNamedJames and thats a bad thing? I do think they share a lot of dev philosophies even in one is an industry veteran and the other is a games journalist/indie dev
Baldur's Gate 3 has the Preset Playable Character options. I only wish they had recorded the dialogue lines for each of them, if you're gonna go half way you might as well go all the way.
Can you in that case share us some examples of the games that did something new? I feel like 90% of games are using partially or fully cliche described here
That narrative designer was right (even if he was being a hypocrite) - sometimes cliches work. I like sarcastic characters. That can't be all they have going for them, but it's a personality trait I like in one of my companions. Side note, I just learned Megan Starks worked on Wildstar. Did you work together there or were you gone by that point? And did you have a hand in her coming over to Obsidian? If you did, thank you, loved her work on Deadfire
A corollary to the "fake evil" trope that really irritates me is when a game claims to have multiple endings or quest paths but one of them is blatantly the "canon" option based on the amount of effort put into it, and the others exist on sufferance for the sake of having options.
Thank you for mentioning "Open World" as a boring feature when there is no need for it. However i have a question about Major types of RPG games and by whom and how it is decided. Like, if this game will be an isometric, or 3rd person shooter, turn based or live action, open world or smaller hub areas. I understand that it happens very early in the development, but what is the reasoning behind it and on what level it is decided. (Partly it bothers me because we are getting Avowed instead of Pillars of Eternity 3. And i guess PoE2 was not as financially successful, but it was a really good game!)
It may not be Tim's answer but a lot of that comes down to budget and resources/talent. Camera perspective is often dictated by the budget, first-person games can be more budget-friendly than third-person since third-person requires many more animations where the full body is animated, different/more visual effects (dust/dirt from walking), and different/more sound effects and/or voice lines (idle animations, sounds to match what the character is wearing, etc.) That requires a lot of time, talent, and resources, which costs money. Some first-person games don't even have visible arms/hands so only the swing of a sword or the recoil of a gun is animated. Isometric games have a camera much further from the player character and other assets, which means the assets can be simplified. Less time is spent modeling assets, fewer details in textures, animations can be faster or have less detail. It can also be dependent on the engine being used. Unreal Engine 4 was notoriously difficult to use for open worlds so many UE4 games had levels separated by loading screens in some way. Making first or third-person games often means the player needs to be able to see farther than they would from an isometric perspective, so there needs to be further draw distances and culling of assets in any direction the player can look. Isometric perspective typically results in fewer visible assets at any given point, so performance can often be easier to manage due to that fixed angle. These are all decided during pre-production (ideally) before the game properly enters development. These decisions are typically made by game directors and leads but some may come from higher up the chain depending on who is supplying the budget. Hopefully this provided some perspective. This is something that could be talked about for hours, especially with someone as experienced as Tim. tl;dr: games require talent, resources, and time, which typically comes down to the budget.
@@bloogalooga Thank you for detailed answer. But that would kinda mean that isometric games would be significantly cheaper to make, and also would allow much prettier graphics from the distance like it was in PoE2 for example. And yet we are seeing a long trend to move to 3rd person. I know that it is considered to be a better sell, but is there any financial data behind it?
I like open world games. Thing is: the open world concept can be done well and not so well. Part of the problem is the 'bigger is better" philosophy, imo. Bigger isn't always necessarily better. (The 'wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle' anlogy comes to mind.) As Tim pointed out, what's the point if the vast majority of it is empty space? The larger the world, the more space to fill and that space is generally being filled with procedurally-generated POIs. If you don't have an unlimited library of handcrafted assets from which those POIs are built, they're going to become very samey-samey very quickly.
before the video is over, I'm not sure if you've played overlord 1 or 2 Tim, but they really do focus on the fun of being evil (albeit in a 2000s camp way)
Hi Tim, I was wondering about your thoughts on implementing NPC disposition systems. What kind of scripting comes into play to track these systems and convey this information to the player? Additionally, how should a positive/negative disposition with an NPC affect their dialogue?
In relation to "fake evil path". Is that also a reflection on the option to join the Master in Fallout? Although one can argue that the early examples escape the cliche stamp as they had yet to develop into clichés.
You probably know about them, but I'd definitely recommend to check out the Nier games despite their linearity and action-focus. They aren't perfect by any mean, but the way they play with tropes related to gaming and pop culture to explore truly meaningful themes (for example, the power of social constructs and structures of meaning, and what remains of us the moment they are taken out of the equation) is absolutely remarkable. Nier Replicant especially is brilliant in the way it uses conventions typical of games to highlight a cruel and fundamental aspect of humanity that's never going to change.
There are games that force you to use a pre-made character, but they take full advantage of this. Life Is Strange is an example of a game that would be totally destroyed if some publisher forced them to let the player to create their own character. The story is not just about "stuff that happens in the world", it's about your history and relationships with other people. You can argue that this game wasn't an RPG, but that's an irrelevant semantic argument; the point is that there is a whole dimension of storytelling that is simply not possible when your character materialized into existence this morning and doesn't have any history or know anyone. Phantasy Star 4 was another example that made good use of pre-made characters. The LiS gamelet "The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit" has an interesting approach to the fact that your character has a history that you, the player, don't know about. It leans into the Quantum Leap-style gameplay that emerges where you have to look at things around you to piece together who you are and what your history is so that you know how to act.
Spreadsheet mentioned!! Let's go! 😅 i hate it too For amnesia - when my uncle was alive, i sometimes asked him about something and he tried his best to explain it to me. Or sometimes he'd ask me something and then explained it when i "failed the intellect roll" so to say. That's one possible way to introduce player and character to the world at the same time.
Also at work we have this cool man who seems to know just about everything one can fit into head when it comes to... Eh... Society and world in general, i guess. It's very cool to get into an argument or conversation with him sometimes.
To be fair, there are at least two examples of amnesia trope done (IMHO very) right - Planescape Torment and Disco Elysium. As for pre-made vs player created charcters - That kinda depends on what role character plays in the stroy. Some narrative beats are possible ( or at least, waaaay easyer to do ) only for characters that are alredy pre-established in the games world. And the other way around too, ofc, but for example, I doubt Witcher games would worked so well if players were given their own monster slayers to play instead of Geralt the white wolf.
Riding my horse around for hours in ER was painful. I played countless JRPGs yea the Hero tropes can and should be laid out in ways that you fall into saving the world. A lot of JRPGs do it well, but then when you go to mmos most do it horribly the worse of which is FF14 where after a few quest every main city celebrates you as the great savior and then you go back to delivering tea and cookies to people. Raiding goes beyond wow it also exists in Ultima, EQ, wow, and more the reason it is as you describe is because of 3rd party programs have completely defined each battle. It wasn't always like that you use learn on the fly, or get a description from a player that had done it which is why we use to wipe for months learning. Now the 3rd party app guys are so efficient they practically just organize the shuffled mechanics. A lot of good points nice video.
Mr. Cain what's your opinion of the way SoulsBourne games place the player character into an already ruined world, rather than one that's about to end, so the world is usually rather empty and not populated by many NPCs. The goal is never to save the world and the motivations of the player, his opponents and other characters are all vague and hard to decipher. Players piece together the world's lore and myth from cryptic dialogue and item descriptions. It's never forced on the player, you can play Dark Souls or Bloodbourne and easily miss many critical hints and bits of the narrative. These games don't really have plot in the usual sense though. SoulsBourne games are combat-heavy and not really RPGs in the traditional sense though.
Neat video! I've been wondering. Most times when you refer to RPG, you describe western RPGs. What are your thoughts about JRPGs and other RPGs? Strengths and weaknesses with the different RPGs? (I do realize that many JRPGs are a bit trope-y, especially with the chosen one and saving the world. But still, would be interesting to hear it more in-depth)
Hey, Tim. Your comment on the amnesiac protagonist cliche reminded me of Planescape Torment, which I think is the game that used the trope in the best way. I'm curious if you have any insight or anecdotes about the game and it's production since it was published by Interplay.
Open World: Arcanum had plenty of space that was just there without gameplay. So you must have had a reason to provide that. Sometime unused landscape is there for the immersion.
As minor as I know this point is, I do feel obligated to point out that "before they were tropes they were cliches" is more a reflection of changes in colloquial patterns than in actual lit crit terms -- it's basically impossible to write a story with zero tropes whatsoever, because "tropes" include things as broad as "a hero", "a villain", "minimalistic prose", "ornate prose", "an action guy" & "an everyman".
"a hero" and "a villain" -- The literary tradition is actually "antagonist" and "protagonist", which carries with it quite a lot of permutations including one of the most poignant of all time: "Two souls, alas, dwell in my breast, each seeks to rule without the other. The one with robust love's desires clings to the world with all its might, the other fiercely rises from the dust to reach sublime ancestral regions. Oh, should there be spirits roaming through the air which rule between the earth and heaven, let them leave their golden haze and come to me, let them escort me to a new and bright-hued life!" == Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust
@@lrinfiI'm well aware of "protagonist" and "antagonist" being the more literary way of discussing it (I'd generally guess that most people here are aware of that).
@@aNerdNamedJamesI'm sure you are and "heroes" and "villains" are valid expressions of the antagonist/protagonist tradition, but not everyone *is* aware of that and it makes my skin crawl when "strife", i.e. Heraclitus' "Strife is the father all things", is reduced to "a hero" and "a villain" in the public imagination. Just think of the explosion of possible permutations of "protagonist" and "antagonist" in Western RPGs if they weren't being thought of so restrictively. What can I say? I was an English major. And you know what they say about English majors. ;)
You had me scared there, first a video about avoiding burnout, then daily uploads for days, then this title! I'm glad it's on game tropes and mechanics. One of my favourite breaths of fresh air was Racettear (does it count as an RPG?), in which your goal is NOT saving the world, it's to pay off a loan by hiring adventurers to go into dungeons for you. You control them yourself in the dungeons, and then try to sell the spoils of war in your store. Capitalism, ho! Moonlighter did a similar thing, but it went more heavily on roguelite mechanics, where the choice of how far your greed should take you inside a dungeon is the primary mechanic. Go too far and die, and you lose your loot. In any case, "I wanna upgrade my store" felt a lot more interesting than killing gods or dragons for the N-th time.
I feel like the sarcastic character writing (which sometimes seeps into the world writing too) stems from a lack of confidence from writers, like they need to write a character that's too cool to take anything seriously because the writer is scared people won't take their story seriously so they feel they need to lampshade it constantly.
Save the world: okay if your contribution is only towards the end of the game, but chosen one and we must hurry both detract from the experience usually. I do not get mutch satisfaction from being the guy who did the thing that needed to be done anyways, feels like doing someone else's homework. Leveling: dead levels can be frustrating, but the accounting is its own type of fun, I think best in looter\mmo games with cheap skilltree reset options. Player path: I usually choose the generic goodguy, but I like seeing evil options, makes me feel like I am choosing to do. I have been on occasion disappointed by the evil\weak paths ending in a brick wall right around the corner. What really bugs me however, is overly specific dialogue choices with no option I can bear to pick. I have ended playtroughs that way.
