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| Dragon Age 2 by jeep 09/05/2011, 5:44pm PDT | ||||
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| Earlier I typed a bunch of shit about Dragon Age 2's demo (not the game) because it was ineffective and lazy, and strongly implied that the game would be ineffective and lazy. I was looking at this thing with its tedious grey rocks and stupid reworking of old cliche'd mobs that just brought how much they suck to the player's attention. The demo openly broadcast all of the problems with Bioware lately: they built their company adapting tabletop RPGs to the PC, and now they're slowly forgetting how tabletop RPGs work without learning how to make video games, and it's incredibly frustrating because I'll take a bunch of interface weakness in return for that RPG adaptation. "RPG Elements" are bullshit and games that have them are bullshit. They're not even meaningful enough to be a scam, they're just game devs trying to get away with the minimum effort required to differentiate one boring shooter from the next. So Bioware (EA?) does some market research into how kids these days they like the RPG Elements and - somehow - comes to the conclusion that what their already-fully-differentiated actual RPG needed was to be stripped down to RPG elements. They looked back at Baldur's Gate 2 and said "centers on one city, with subplots and sidequests, but maybe if we drop the whole 'ambition' thing we can crank this baby out real fast."
Every videogame that implements a fucking inventory system has an "RPG Element" but Elements don't make RPGs and they never will. RPGs are are about meta-thinking, scale and scope. They're big and complicated and they appeal to people who deal with big and complicated concepts in their school and work and read about them in fantasy and science fiction novels in their spare time. RPGs have random skill effectiveness because the player accepts his character is not him, and it turns out that's fucking good because RPGs start small and then expand in weird directions until the original play mechanics can't support all of the ambitious stuff the designer's thought of and then halfway through the game you just have to take your party of six dudes and fight the 3 waves of 300 backstabbing kobolds one turn at a time and sure it's absurd but really it's just well past time for the player to accept his character's awesomeness as well as the general usefulness of his supporting healers. RPGs force you to make choices and fucking live with them: you're a fighter or a mage and if you're a fighter/mage you just aren't going to be as good at shit and when it comes right down to it there's always stuff you can't access because you aren't a thief or a cleric. Sure I want to be good at everything but I know story and balance and really I'll just come back later and do another playthrough where I pop open the console (fuck you DXHR) and max everything out to coast through the story again and see what I was missing. The video game problem with DA2 is that it's clearly a rush job at a point in the series where it just can't be. No one talks about this but the reason sequels are aesthetically acceptable in video games where they aren't in films is that the first film is a contained whole where the first game has new tech and a new story and tons of design choices based on that new tech that just don't work out, and it takes the second game to get the tech and design mismatches ironed out in a way where they support a more ambitious story, and then you're done. Don't plan a fucking trilogy because video game stories are still shitty and can't support it, and you hit your tech peak in the second game anyway. The film differentiation is perfect because as films start to adopt some of this video game production shit in post they also hit the sequel benefit. Spiderman 2 isn't better because Alfred Molina acts circles around everyone in the film, it's better because they got the Spiderman tech 'right': moving through the city, moving through a scene, fighting and swinging and jumping fluidly through the whole movie. Further evidence of Fallout's eternal awesomeness is the accidental break between two and three: one is good, two is technically superior with a bigger story, three is 10 years later with a new engine and is a completely different game. Now make four and stop until you have another big leap in how games are presented. So you can make an RPG and people bitch about play control and action, or you can make a shooter and people bitch about how it's shallow and a copycat of everything else, why can't you just compromise? Because the truth isn't always in the fucking middle, South Park. Put your dogeared copy of Atlas Shrugged down and pay attention: In the end this problem with DA2, with RPG Elements, with sequels and everything else is not that complicated to explain: market research on a half-understood artform is the ossification of that artform. I can line up a few arguments about what games are like or what patterns exist and point things in any direction I want but the reality is there still hasn't been enough new things tried for anyone to know - not even fucking Valve - what the real deal is with any certainty. So when it's time to make that $100M decision and the evidence you drop on the table is "our market research suggests that we need to differentiate our game in the marketplace and also we need to make it more like every other game in the marketplace" the only reasonable investor response is "Take that shit to a sparsely-read webforum, your dumb ass is fired. Now hire someone who has a basic grasp of software engineering and tell them to make something awesome." There are comprimises that work: Deus Ex is a good videogame that is also a good RPG, but go back and play GoldenEye or Resident Evil 2 and put a machete in Bond's arm: DXHR is a console title. DA2 is a console title. At a time when everyone is openly talking about moving back towards the power and flexibility of the PC, EA's market research is years behind, and their games are shit. They'll keep making money off Madden but everyone's heart sinks when they buy another game company and everyone is right: each of those companies will burn down like candles and EA will never, ever know how to make a video game. Their every success is an accident and their every decision comes at their consumer's expense. There won't be a protest or a boycott, just an eternity of 15 year olds pissing their birthday money into John Riccitiello's mouth over and over again, forever. /jeep/ ...so I guess someone who wanted to make a lot of money would ignore the market research for a second and look at a bunch of one-and-done titles that fell short like Alpha Protocol and realize that it bites to lose money on the first one but it's the second one that is the perfection of the idea and wouldn't you just rake it in hand over fist if you were the one to grab Chris Avellone and run through Alpha Protocol 2, Arcanum 2, Bloodlines 2, Jade Empire 2, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth 2, et al. Just don't let Obsidian make them, I love their ideas to death but when's the QA department's first day? |
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