Obsidian: RPG Genre Can’t Evolve Because Players Are “Resistant to Change”

Megalith

Megalith

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Fallout: New Vegas and Knights of the Old Republic II developer Obsidian Entertainment spoke at Reboot Develop this week and mentioned that they want to evolve the RPG genre radically, but it is difficult to do so because its audience is too traditional and demand elements such as hit points and stat tweaking. But Obsidian believes that RPGs are defined by how actions affect a story, not numbers.

“Fans tend to skew towards the more hardcore cases and they tend to be fairly resistant to change. I don’t want to paint too broad of a stroke there, but RPGs can be a lot more than we have done with them so far. There’s much more than we can do, and it’s much more radical.” He pointed to Bethesda’s success with Fallout and The Elder Scrolls games as examples of a developer taking role-playing games in a different direction.
 
Preach it!

I get there's a demand for pen-and-paper style RPG video games, but personally, I can't stand it.

I just hope Obsidian puts their money where their mouth is.
 
In my opinion, Raising "stats" appeals to our addictive nature to acquire, improve, and increase our standing. Doing this in a quantifiable and visible way, we get immediate gratification. Look at the "slot machine reward" animations as you level up... these are designed to stimulate us.

So, calling hardcore RPG'ers "too traditional" may be missing the actual mechanism that is driving these players to play these games right from the get go.
 
They did run up against this in the PoE kickstarter, where they took a poll of the backers between pure turn-based and real-time+pause. Obsidian recommended turn-based but the backers wanted rt+p like the old Infinity engine games, so they went with the backers' choice.

Obsidian has only worked on either crowdfunded games or on franchises they don't control, so I don't see where they'll find room to do something radical that isn't affected by established preferences, in the kind of huge RPG they are known for.
 
At what point is a game no longer an RPG game?

This is like bitching that FPS games could be so much more but people think FPS game should be first person and involve shooting things. Think of how better that games could be if they were 3rd person tactical games that involved more stealth and less shooting.

If you remove stats and hit points from a game then what you have isn't an RPG game, it is an adventure game.
 
Exavior said:
At what point is a game no longer an RPG game?

This is like bitching that FPS games could be so much more but people think FPS game should be first person and involve shooting things. Think of how better that games could be if they were 3rd person tactical games that involved more stealth and less shooting.

If you remove stats and hit points from a game then what you have isn't an RPG game, it is an adventure game.
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What Obsidian is saying is that adventure games can be designed with roleplaying in mind, but these days the term "RPG" defines a very specific type of game.

It's like the word "MMO". It's supposed to be a blanket term for games with lots of players, but it's come to be a term for a WoW clone, and not something different like PlanetSide 2 or Scrapes.


E: And the problem is that it's not just semantics. Developers feel compelled to stay in the ruts these terms create, which in turn deepens the rut.
 
brucethemoose said:
It's just semantics. What Obsidian is saying is that adventure games can be designed with roleplaying in mind, but these days the term "RPG" defines a very specific type of game.

It's like the word "MMO". It's supposed to be a blanket term for games with lots of players, but it's come to be a term for a WoW clone, and not something different like PlanetSide 2 or Scrapes.
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Planetside with peak player population pre-mech expansion is one of the best all time MMO's. It's a shame Planetside 2 never captured that feeling.
 
Mchart said:
Planetside with peak player population pre-mech expansion is one of the best all time MMO's. It's a shame Planetside 2 never captured that feeling.
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2 is still alot of fun, IMO. I wish there were more clones of it.
 
Exavior said:
At what point is a game no longer an RPG game?

This is like bitching that FPS games could be so much more but people think FPS game should be first person and involve shooting things. Think of how better that games could be if they were 3rd person tactical games that involved more stealth and less shooting.

If you remove stats and hit points from a game then what you have isn't an RPG game, it is an adventure game.
Click to expand...

I don't see anything non-RPG about running a campaign with no stats and no hit points. I can't fully conceive of one in my head but that doesn't make it an impossibility.

Maybe if you eliminate the idea of a character sheet, even a hidden one, that would actually erase the core concept of a RPG from a game.
 
There's always been that divide among role-players vs roll-players. Complaining that people are resistant to change because your are crossing that age-old picket line is pretty damn redundant.

Besides, numerical stats provide additional feedback; an understanding of what is going on, game mechanics, player intuition, meta-gaming and theory-crafting, unique character builds, and other game value. Adding story doesn't have to detract from or replace these mechanics, thus stripping number stats out in favour of story-based mechanics is completely unecessary unless you want to refocus your studio's efforts on providing enough story to compensate for all that lost content -- which will be difficult.
 
Mchart said:
Planetside with peak player population pre-mech expansion is one of the best all time MMO's. It's a shame Planetside 2 never captured that feeling.
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Even "pre-launch" when the servers were being stress tested was some of the most fun I ever had in a game. High concentration combat, stealth that worked... and then they added more maps when the game needed to shrink. Poor management killed that game.
 
What are they bitching about? Make a great game and people will but it. The real problem these days are developers only want to make games filled with micro transactions. The game is secondary to the micro transcribetr.
 
nomu said:
Obsidian has only worked on either crowdfunded games or on franchises they don't control, so I don't see where they'll find room to do something radical that isn't affected by established preferences, in the kind of huge RPG they are known for.
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Not entirely true. They did create and release one new IP. Alpha Protocol, which most people praised the dialogue and choices but lament the actual gameplay. It was actually a relatively solid game though.
 
Megalith said:
Fallout: New Vegas and Knights of the Old Republic II developer Obsidian Entertainment spoke at Reboot Develop this week and mentioned that they want to evolve the RPG genre radically, but it is difficult to do so because its audience is too traditional and demand elements such as hit points and stat tweaking. But Obsidian believes that RPGs are defined by how actions affect a story, not numbers.

“Fans tend to skew towards the more hardcore cases and they tend to be fairly resistant to change. I don’t want to paint too broad of a stroke there, but RPGs can be a lot more than we have done with them so far. There’s much more than we can do, and it’s much more radical.” He pointed to Bethesda’s success with Fallout and The Elder Scrolls games as examples of a developer taking role-playing games in a different direction.
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Good job telling your customers they are Luddites...great way to continue selling your games....
 
players are not reluctant to change, you just need to stop listening to idiots, not every opinion matter, especialy from kids or youtubers.
and nothing is easier than making a great RPG, which relies mostly on a great story, great dialogue, and engaging side activities, if you got these things you get a good RPG, the more polished it is the broader the appeal will be, to end up with a bad game you need to have a pathetic team to screw the game's up
 
IMO Obsidian made a successful modernization of the CRPG with Pillars of Eternity. There's nothing wrong with a fresh take on top-down, isometric D&D CRPGs.

If they want to try something new and fresh, go for it. But Pillars of Eternity was a critical and commercial success. I really don't see the issue here.
 
nomu said:
I don't see anything non-RPG about running a campaign with no stats and no hit points. I can't fully conceive of one in my head but that doesn't make it an impossibility.

Maybe if you eliminate the idea of a character sheet, even a hidden one, that would actually erase the core concept of a RPG from a game.
Click to expand...

The difference between an adventure game (Legend of Zelda) and a role playing game (Final Fantasy) is that role playing games have your character get more powerful via actions they take. An adventure game you are just as powerful at the start as you are at the end with only a change of items changing your progression. You are saying that you can remove the 2 or 3 things to separate the two genre and then still have a way to call a game clearly one or the other.
 
I'm currently slogging my way through pillars of eternity and it's got amazing story telling and dialog and text and things I like but the whole CRPG nonsense makes it brutal to actually play. I want to focus on the fact my character is an Orlan monk from a frozen tundra and build a character that's cool not oon were I'm managing fireballs from my mage.
 
Ignoring the fact that the term RPG was well defined before video games were a thing I don't think you can eliminate stats while retaining complex character development which IS integral to being an RPG.

The best RPGs give you the ability to develop your character in very different ways but even when they have fairly linear character progression it serves as a good way to introduce new abilities that open up new strategies and gameplay elements which can keep the game from getting stale. Personally I've always liked stat heavy RPGs because I enjoy figuring out how they all interact and coming up with the best strategies/exploits for gameplay and character development.

That being said I think they're getting too hung up on labels, a game that doesn't fit neatly into a category might be harder to market but if it's good people will buy it.
 
These guys are idiots as far as I'm concerned. The main selling point behind a role playing game is the evolution of a character. From gear, how that gear improve stats, items, etc etc. All in a very tangible visual way. I want to 'SEE' my improvements. In my inventory, my bank, player housing if the game has it, etc etc.

Besides, he can simply turn numbers off for that part of his audience if he really wanted to. They can have both if he really wanted. He doesn't need to pick either / or.

Sounds like they want an easy way out as working with numbers and gear, etc etc takes a lot more effort? Lot of these companies making hundreds of millions of dollars and are still constantly bitching about having to provide content. Who really knows what's the deal with this guy but it's more than he is telling us.

if he wants to make an Oregon Trail then go make one.

"Ok the dragon hits you and your dead! ... Ok? Well, how much damage did the dragon do? .. It doesn't matter, we want to tell a story not worry about hit points. You have no more hit points anymore in our new style of RPG's. WTF? Why? Cause we want to use art, story and music to tell our stories. No more stats. You can still find weapons and use them but not more stats. Instead of lots of different weapons with stats we will now just give you a Silver Long Sword with a Ruby in the Hilt and that's all it will be called now. Stats just get in the way of telling our new style of story. Ok, FCK this."
 
Exavior said:
The difference between an adventure game (Legend of Zelda) and a role playing game (Final Fantasy) is that role playing games have your character get more powerful via actions they take. An adventure game you are just as powerful at the start as you are at the end with only a change of items changing your progression. You are saying that you can remove the 2 or 3 things to separate the two genre and then still have a way to call a game clearly one or the other.
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Power isn't a requirement in an RPG. As long as things go on and come off a character sheet that affect your interactions in the game world, and other entities behave as if the same thing happens to them (whether it's faked or consistent) that's an RPG. Doesn't matter if those things are stats or relationships or macguffins.
 
JosiahBradley said:
I'm currently slogging my way through pillars of eternity and it's got amazing story telling and dialog and text and things I like but the whole CRPG nonsense makes it brutal to actually play. I want to focus on the fact my character is an Orlan monk from a frozen tundra and build a character that's cool not oon were I'm managing fireballs from my mage.
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Then stop playing the game. There are a lot of other easier to play games out there where you don't have to manage fireballs.

And, just to be clear here, you do know that Pillars of Eternity if one of the most celebrated RPG's on the market or in history for that matter. And, yup, you guessed it ... it's because people like to manage their 'Fireballs' haha.
 
Don't mistake hardcore RPG fans with the mainstream market you're really talking about. It's not the RPG hardcore and faithful that are resistent to change. It's the lowest common denominator that you pander to who can't comprehend a new learning experience. His comments really sicken me and show how disconnected he is from hardcore rpg players, and how much a of a 'suit' he's become.
 
nomu said:
I don't see anything non-RPG about running a campaign with no stats and no hit points. I can't fully conceive of one in my head but that doesn't make it an impossibility.

Maybe if you eliminate the idea of a character sheet, even a hidden one, that would actually erase the core concept of a RPG from a game.
Click to expand...

It's an adventure game, they already exist. Day of the tentacle is amazing.

As for stats they absolutely make sense, it give you a concrete feeling of evolution as the game progresses, the issue is that most games either get to easy or only give you all the toys right at the end.
 
So, a company says their product can't evolve because they aren't making what the customer wants?
 
nomu said:
Power isn't a requirement in an RPG. As long as things go on and come off a character sheet that affect your interactions in the game world, and other entities behave as if the same thing happens to them (whether it's faked or consistent) that's an RPG. Doesn't matter if those things are stats or relationships or macguffins.
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This^

The key word is "role-playing". You role play as your in-game avatar. In other words, you step in their shoes, and make choices they might make and watch the world react to them. Even a static, premade character would fit the bill, a long as the game world still gives you choices throughout it.
 
SixFootDuo said:
Then stop playing the game. There are a lot of other easier to play games out there where you don't have to manage fireballs.

And, just to be clear here, you do know that Pillars of Eternity if one of the most celebrated RPG's on the market or in history for that matter. And, yup, you guessed it ... it's because people like to manage their 'Fireballs' haha.
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I can't stop playing though. The game is so well written and the interactions are amazing, it's just that when I picked my class I thought I'd be controlling 1 person not 6. I can't even slay a dragon but I do enjoy it's way with words before eating me.
 
I love how he says the genre can be so much more and then he goes on to describe the antithesis. People love the CRPG revival because it is going back to the roots of the genre in the video game space after having to witness its devolution in the name of capturing the casual audience.
 
brucethemoose said:
This^

The key word is "role-playing". You role play as your in-game avatar. In other words, you step in their shoes, and make choices they might make and watch the world react to them. Even a static, premade character would fit the bill, a long as the game world still gives you choices throughout it.
Click to expand...

I respectfully disagree on both counts.

Big choices that effect the overarching story or world are more of a modern addition(a good one I might add) and not confined to RPGs. Traditionally the biggest decisions in an RPG have been in regards to your character with the success of smaller choices dependent on your stats and how well your choices mesh with that. In old P&P RPGs the story was always set and what mattered was the strength and weakness of characters/party and how well their strengths were utilized.

The only way a set PC works in an RPG is if it's a starting point, if you can't change the character your playing a character not a role and I would argue it's not an RPG by definition. The Witcher games are a great example of an established PC that still allows the player to fit it to their play style or change things up; you can focus on combat, signs, alchemy, or some sort of hybrid and those choices change how you play the game.

I would also argue that "role playing" requires us to be able to identify with the character and limited customization makes that less likely; I know I'd have a hard time relating to a militant vegan, anti-vaxxer, hindu\christian\muslim\jewish\buddhist, nazi, ISIS, flat earther, hooker player character(well maybe the last part because who hasn't done something they regret for money).
 
brucethemoose said:
This^

The key word is "role-playing". You role play as your in-game avatar. In other words, you step in their shoes, and make choices they might make and watch the world react to them. Even a static, premade character would fit the bill, a long as the game world still gives you choices throughout it.
Click to expand...

So every Tell-tell game is a RPG?
 
I always hated the term RPG for computer games because the aspect that makes computer games RPG har nothing to do with rpg and the element that has to do with rpg is pretty much the same in all games.

Also I dont get what the issue is here. its a label for a certaint thing and if you want to make something new. its not that label. just dont sell a car games as a shooter and you will get fans. By trying to uphold a label and be different is paradoxical in nature
 
I think it's damn hilarious that Obsidian is outright whining about their prospective customers wanting something they themselves want to do away with and it's the customers fault they haven't attempted their breakout approach to gaming.

There are two ways out. Both involve Obsidian not being a whiny little bitch about people not connected to the company making decisions for them!

1) Make games the community wants with the interface they desire and allow them to customize it for more or less clutter (think GoW Immersive mode).

2) If their approach is so novel, just implement it, remove the other points, and prove the case of "why" the game is so much better by showing it in action. But, for God's sake, stop the bitching because the development team doesn't want to take responsibility if it fails to gain traction!

Personally, I'd choose option #1. It lets you make a game people can enjoy (bringing in revenue) and allows the best of old style HP, interface, etc., with the ability to allow the player to engage and try the new approach.
 
I would set two groundwork arguments about Obsidian and their "definition" claim.

1. Obsidian is tired of making cookie-cutter RPG fare, and further taking outsourcing jobs from established IPs which further cement their position in the industry is hurting their image.

Think the movie 'The Other Guys' in which Mark Walburg's character yells, "I'm a peacock; you gotta let me fly!" I think Obsidian is just b*** and moaning about the very hole they dug themselves into. After they broke away from Bioware to form their own company, Obsidian accepted the role as 2nd fiddle to said company and take any job thrown their way.

2. Obsidian wants to broaden the accepted definition of what an RPG is and means when the term is used.

From the comments here I feel a lot of people want to coin a game an RPG because it has RPG elements. Yet, the core is an adventure game or shooter. I honestly say the closest a game came to losing its RPG tag in an effort to "blend" elements was Mass Effect 1. Sorry, ME2 and 3 were adventure games with RPG elements.

Games like Horizon:ZD, Zelda, Tell Tale: Name a Game, etc that focus on static story A~Z, exploration, or choose-your-own-adventure story telling are adventure games. Hell it's there is the story telling identification. An RPG such as some have mentioned above focus on character growth not only through narrative but through bonding with the observer through attachment of character. This is achieved by customization. In the earliest days it was YES pen-and-paper DnD style that eventually evolved into video games.

Movies and music do this bonding through emotional manipulation and philosophical agreement. Given video game's form of interactive nature it has to be more than just emotional or philosophical. It breaks down to human nature and how we judge outcomes of effort. Movies and music = zero effort, so internalize the reward. Video games = minimal to total effort, so externalize the reward.

All adventure games = choose your own adventure
Assume a role, choose plot path, pick up whatever is thrown at your for inventory, follow story to the end.

RPG games = open story telling and character growth
Create a role to insert into the story world, react to story and plot developments to further expand the development of the overarching story,

Sorry, I could go on forever and type out a dissertation on this subject. Even GDC has had entire panels devoted to this very topic. Work calls and I have to earn a paycheck now. Keep the discussion going though, it is nice to see different viewpoints on the topic.
 
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I think "actions affect a story" being the only requirement for the genre is ridiculous. Don't beat the other list cars/drivers in Most Wanted, and you don't finish the story. Is that an RPG? Don't turn on your NES and Princess Peach never gets kidnapped. I guess my laziness is an RPG too.
 
Forget the term RPG then. I have to agree with them. Anything that tries to be too different will ultimately fail usually. Even if people say they're sick of the same cookie cutter thing (game, movie, etc.), what they really mean is they want an incremental change, not a radical change (but still they want some form of change). The best you can hope for is that it includes some good ideas to implement into traditional RPG fare, and maybe years down the line, the game will be seen as ahead of it's time. The problem is, no major developer is going to take a chance with something they know is going to fail. It has to come from the indie scene, but the indie scene is typically just rehashing what's worked in the past too.
 
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