Mind of the BeholderPart 5

Looking for group!

Pictured: Ranger, Wizard, Hunter, Guardian, Berserker, Gardener, Ring Bearer, Esquire, Paladin.

Most of the role playing games I like have a class-based and party-based system, a fact that must colour everything I write in this series. They're in the Hybrids I like, MMOs I dabble with, the old D&D Infinity Engine Games I remember fondly, and the modern RPGs they influenced. They're in the Japanese RPGs I am tangentially interested in, the occasional Pokemons, some pixel based Final Fantasy games, an archaic thing called Dragon Quest, the brilliant Nintendo masterpieces called Fire Emblem and the RPG that turns boys into men, Dark Souls.
A subset of western RPG are the European RPGs, a rare and interesting breed. Woefully underrepresented on my played-list, even if I started with them as far back as Rage Of Mages. I still need to play any of the Witcher games and I could have spend a few more hours with our own Larian games. As far as mainstream RPGs go I'm still very much a fan of what Bioware and Obsidian put out. The same goes for Blizzard. I was infatuated with Guild Wars, a game I can't keep thinking about when playing its successor. The monumental RPGs of the last 15 years define much of my tastes in RPGs today and all of them had their own take on the class system.

Role playing games literally fill my days. The RPG I'm currently working on at Larian Studios has me involved in the modest roles of Graphics and User Interface Designer but the fact that I get to work on an actual Computer Role Playing Game that topped the Steam best-seller chart for weeks is enough to make me gag with pride.
The thought that kicked off this series of Mind Of The Beholder was the fact that Divinity: Original Sin is a Classless RPG, which a rare beast to me. 'What is a classless RPG?' I asked myself. I thought the term sets wrong expectations, maybe 'free flow class system' would be more accurate if it allows for characters to use skills and embody traits from both Warriors and Mages. Literally mixing classes. In a classless system the expectation is that words like "Warrior" or "Mage" and the structure they represent would be expunged. I am splitting hairs. Admittedly, most role playing games I stick by, play with this idea. Not by chance, I like such systems.

Defining a class cordons off parts of gameplay. But what happens when those boundaries aren't there? Change is the spice of life so it stands to reason to allow for more freedom. RPGs run the gamut, some games allow complete reclassing, dual classing, multi classing, etc. But even classes themselves could become more flexible. Why not have a sword-wielding Mage? After all, it doesn't take much effort to think of all the magical tricks that could apply to a sword. Why stop there? There's plenty of precedence too: Link wields a sword that shoots magical bolts. this Quan Chi fatality, Mesmers, Guild Wars' illusionist swashbuckler, use swords as a magical conduit. Drizzt Do'Urden dual wields a pair of scimitars, he even named them. Gandalf dual wields a staff and sword. I dual wield a fork and knife on a daily basis.

_{Rangers, like Drizzt Do'Urden, are famous for their dual wielding.}

Character Class?

A character's class could be described as its role or profession in the world and is defined by traits, restrictions, rules, playstyle; A Warrior wears heavy armour and wields melee weapons and shields in close combat. The Warrior is usually suited for absorbing damage, taking hits on behalf of the party as he is most resistant to physical abuse. Or he takes the one to take the slow but sure approach to combat, low damage but high survivability. Depending on the system, a Warrior could also be cast in a ranged or melee DPS role, focusing on dealing damage instead. The particulars of classes often depends on the fiction or context they inhabit.

In many cases classes are derived from the fiction. From Tolkien to Gygax to Miyazaki. The class descriptions are a result of the stories that birthed them. Sometimes classes can be problematic for story reasons. I had a hard time believing Mass Effect's Shepard would be an adept, given the amount of grief Biotics get and the rigours they endure during training. It seems very unlikely that Shepard could get a similar training given his possible origin stories. He also doesn't suffer any from the side effects from Biotic implants. Dragon Age: Origins did this more convincingly. Every Race/Class combination had its own unique origin story that explained them in the fiction. And why there are no Dwarf Mages. It gave the character a motivation to get involved with the main story. Likewise with Star Wars: The Old Republic, where each class starts out in its own corner of the universe, with a unique storyline. Subsequent Bioware games haven't bothered as much with explaining its classes.

On the whole, Bioware class systems are very much inspired by classic D&D. Luckily they aren't the only developer thinking about classes. To name but one, Squaresoft was equally inspired by D&D and rethought classes for their Final Fantasy game and called them jobs. Each character could become whatever job and grow stronger in said job. At any given time, the player is allowed to switch jobs or resume an old one. This new job would start the character from scratch, but the old job would retain its level and benefits gained would carry over. So it became possible to use Warrior perks as a newly reclassed Mage. The more high level jobs, the more character perks.

_{Final Fantasy V's range of jobs, props if you can name them all.}

Nintendo has its own take on the job system in its brilliant Fire Emblem series. Clear and simple as most Nintendo games are, it has base and advanced classes. Each receiving perks. For instance, a character that starts out as a Chevalier receives two class specific perks. It advances to the Paladin (mounted, speed, magic resistance, swords and lances) or Great Knight (mounted, physical defense, swords, axes, lances) class. Each of which yield their own pair of perks. Those perks persist through reclassing. Some of which counterbalance deficiencies from other classes. But it is the characters that makes the system stand out. Each of them has a natural inclination towards certain roles, collecting perks helps unlock their full potential. These inclinations and perks are inheritable, something to consider when you pair up characters and encourage them to have some offspring. Fire Emblem fully encourages the player to experiment.

Characters can serve more uses, for variation, for play styles (ranged combat vs melee combat), lore flavour (a party made up out of evil aligned classes). A class can be a job or role put on a character. A Necromancer conjures up different character image than a Cleric would. Of course those aren't set in stone. Obsessed with the undead, nefarious, self-loathing, eye twitching, nocturnally perverted... all realistic traits for a Cleric, putting those traits on a necromancer may provide an interesting twist on the player's expectations. Putting Malicia and Devotio together in a party where they need to cooperate sets up a comedy that writes itself: Hating each other at the onset, but then becoming fast, complimentary-role-filling-friends after they vanquish the ultimate evil. Each character is a tool in the shed, each challenge in the game could use a selection of these tools, which when put to good use form a sum greater then its parts. Cooperation is key.

_{Guild Wars 2 has a spectacular take on the Necromancer class.}

Obsessed with the undead, nefarious, self-loathing, eye twitching, nocturnally perverted... all realistic traits for a Cleric, putting those traits on a Necromancer may provide an interesting twist on the player's expectations.

It's hard to mistake a Warrior with full plate armour for spellcaster. There are a lot of associations that go with the usual typecasting. Putting a type on characters also helps explain what they are supposed to do. It also makes it easy to explain what its options are. Focus on the weapon in your hand, or focus on the shield in the other. Or go hog wild and ditch the shield to use both hands for weapons. It's also easier to role play. It's easier to get that a Wizard is book smart and a Warrior would know thing or two about weapon smithing. Compartmentalizing reality is something we do naturally and it's no different in games. But there's merit in subverting the player's expectation. It's what makes Pratchett's Discworld novels such fun to read: A Wizard university where it's exceptional to care about books, a Wizard with no affinity for magic, an elderly Barbarian blind to his own age, a society where everyone eyerollingly knows what the deal with ceremony is... in this universe that turns the fantasy genre upside down, the long lost heir to the kingdom, pure as morning dew, strong as an ox and thick as treacle - the usual starry eyed golden boy we find in every fantasy is the subverted element.
It takes much more creativity to come up twists on known formulas than to copy them. One of those being the usual trinity suspects. But the trinity is a system, not a class definition, and it could be made to work with whatever classes you can invent. Who says a Warrior should draw enemy attention when a Jester, or even a Bard, seems much more suited.

As much as I am a fan of the trinity, I do think there's something to be said about breaking it. Especially the healer role is somewhat problematic, it's arguably the most valuable role but the least spectacular to play. It could be expanded to give it a bit more sheen. Either adding defensive skills or an entirely different take on the support class like Guild Wars (respectively: Monk, Ritualist and Paragon), make it an offensive class where its projectiles heal teammates like Wildstar or make it a Mage with an affinity for healing magic. But there's ways around getting health back without a healing class. Which is perhaps the best way forwards. If something doesn't work as well as intended there's merit in replacing or cutting it. In the case of Dragon Age: Inquisition, the healer was replaced with a limited stack of potions. This also prevents the party from healing back up to full in-between encounters. Reintroducing some risk to exploring. This seems to have been inspired by Dark Souls, which puts the fear of dying back into players because of its relentless difficulty and limited healing mechanic. Note the word limited mentioned again, I'm seeing a trend. All of this makes it easy for a game to qualify as hardcore. Otherwise, when healing is available on tap, each encounter has to be potentially lethal. The difference is that in the one you could die from a thousand papercuts, the other could provide a more puzzle like set of encounters where players need to formulate a battleplan. Obviously, I'm more partial to the latter.

If I want to talk about solo play and the god-character in context of this post, I really should mention a single player RPG, right? How about Fallout 3. It didn't have something called a class but specialization would occur anyway. This answers my earlier question of what happens when there is no class structure: I would effectively make my own "assault rifle class". My custom made AR class also had other specializations bolted on top, he was a pretty good hacker! So some solutions could result from hacking, and they may have had a different outcome that the other, more standard, solution of shooting until the conflict comes to a natural end.

_{Fallout 3's box art made quite clear this wasn't a game to take lightly.}

However there was no way to hack, charm or buy your way out of a fight with super mutants. Which exposes a sore point in the system: one has to make and end up with a character that can overcome all obstacles. Or to put it differently, the game has to provide multiple solutions to a problem for a wider range of play styles. However, in a world of limited budgets, limited hard data storage this means either the game has to become relatively more simple or the player has to become, de facto, a god among mere mortals. Which is a way of letting the player brute force his way through the game. Personally I think it also breaks immersion, doubly so if the story casts you as a plebeian, inexplicably rising above the rank and file or worse still: it can make the game boring. While god characters games have to tone down the challenge. Death in a god character game is a problem. Obviously once your character goes down, the game ends. In a party based game there's more leeway, it doesn't finish the fight for the entire group. A downed character can get revived. It also opens the door for perma death, in which a downed character is gone forever. The perma death of a god character is a possibility as well, but it's pretty hard to weave it into the game's narrative if the game ends with it. The only real possible drama is when the player realizes he's wasted a life, possibly his own.

A Warrior using a wand? A Jedi Knight using a blaster rifle? Preposterous! Is it?

A salient problem with class-based structures is player freedom and flexibility. A class will often get skills that lack any ties to the weapon the character is wielding, which means this weapon becomes irrelevant as it basically gets demoted to 'something to hit the enemy with when not using skills' or is just another piece of gear to boost stats. This takes away from the character's uniqueness, leaving nothing but a vessel for whatever range of skills it carries. In most cases, classes get a limited set of equipable weapons. A Warrior using a wand? A Jedi Knight using a blaster rifle? Preposterous! Is it? Why not tie weapons to the greater web of mechanics?
A half-way solution is to specify skills that require X or Z weapon, but this also works against class flexibility - because X or Z skills is then linked to the sword-class, or bow-class. It's easy to see that weapons replace classes here, making them, in essence, one and the same. I would argue that weapons should have an impact. Just like Blizzard took a page out of the action game playbook with Diablo 3, RPG makers may consider taking inspiration from the unique weapon attack cycles in games like Darksiders or Dark Souls even if only for variation.

This is where the classless RPG could provide a solution where, ideally, all the skills have to be usable by all configurations of outfits and weapons. Skills that are weapon agnostic. Taking inspiration from Skyrim's infamous sword swinger. Let's say there exists a skill called 'Sweep Attack' that denotes the character use its weapon in a wide 120° arc in front of it. This could apply to melee weapons - resulting in a wide sweeping attack and hitting everyone in the arc. It could also apply to ranged weapons where it would mean the character fires a volley of arrows in an arc over a long distance. It could even apply to magical staves or wands where it casts an arc of magical fire or ice, burning or freezing enemies caught in the cone-like attack. This would make this skill truly classless since every character, no matter what its build or weapon, could use it.
This also means that weapons could slot their primary function or effect into skills, transforming them in a way. A magical projectile skill could gain a knockdown effect if a blunt weapon were used or become a fireball if a magic wand with a fire damage type is wielded. Weapons as part in the greater web of connected game mechanics, rather than an appendage that just needs to be there.

_{Though not classless but vehemently anti-min-max, Dragon Age: Inquisition let me play a Tank Mage anyway when I specialized my Mage as a Knight-Enchanter. Oh, the Irony!}

As with all things, a classless system should have balance and proper restrictions. For instance to prevent Mage Tank Syndrome where players min-max their character for maximum offence and maximum defence. Another argument for limited skill bars, balanced stat allocation and a party with members specialized for their role in the gameplan. Additionally the power versus defense trade-off could be explained in the fiction.

_{Guild Wars has a class that manipulates the enemy's energy.}

In the end it's impossible to remove specialization from RPGs and we shouldn't strive to. You may as well take the role out of role playing. Better to take the concept and run with it, the more creative the better. As with the theoretical classless system I mentioned. I like systems that lets one class bleed over into the other. I like the way a class or subclass can direct the way you play a character. I like the odd classes too. Final Fantasy Four Warriors Of Light had a Salve-Maker class, Fire Emblem has a Bride class. Think about Blue Mages, Red Mages, Mesmers, ritualists, wayfarers... any game that has odd classes able to play a vital part in a game's gameplay surely points to a game with interesting and creative systems. I like how certain classes are able to focus on specific elements or abilities of the enemy. In guild wars a Mesmer drains the energy pool and directs the enemy spell casting behavior. At the time, I hadn't seen the like. All of these mechanics, and those like it, are symptomatic of a system that offers more depth than the plain "A Warrior absorbs damage". Of course it doesn't exclude this basic function, dealing damage is a primary gameplay element and taking damage is pretty much a given. But allowing the player to pick apart all the different gameplay details and manipulate them is the hallmark of a system complex enough to accommodate it. A system made for player interaction and creativity. Something to aspire to.

Related posts:

• Mind Of The Beholder, Part 1, where I talk about past RPG experiences.
• Mind Of The Beholder, Part 2, a long overdue rant on leveling and experience grind.
• Mind Of The Beholder, Part 3, about how RPGs are being influenced, by example, design and market.
• Mind Of The Beholder, Part 4, simplicity in RPGs and the evolution thereof.

Mind of the BeholderPart 4

Something about simplicity

This is no mere ponder.

There once was a plumber. A simple, practical man, his overalls a second skin which come in handy whenever he needs to get down to business. Ready to collect his due anytime, anywhere - even if he needs to knock a few heads. Never does it tarnish his sunny demeanor. He's not just some plumber, he's the royal plumber. He cleans out all the pipes, in all the castles, in all the lands. He'll never stop, even if his employer gets kidnapped by a capricious giant turtle dragon that shoots fireballs. He scoffs mushrooms to bulk up, gets high on psychedelic flowers, dons a cape to fly like Superman, wears the corpse of a raccoon to use its tail as a flail. He stomps all the wildlife in his way for coin, because there's no such thing as a free lunch and his favorite shrooms are expensive. He's out to slay the dragon and save the princess like Saint George. You know of whom I speak, it's-a-Mario from Nintendo.

_{Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentations of their women.}

The universe Mario inhabits is related to our reality in the same way an acid trip is and even though it may not make sense, it makes perfect sense as a game where rules rule. They've barely changed: navigate this spacial maze, run and jump, collect coins, splat enemies, defeat the dragon and save the princess. Easy to understand, the crazy world Mario inhabits doesn't get in the way of game logic.

There once was a hero of no repute and no description. He filled in the blanks and did not worry, he worked things out as he went along. He wanted to swing a sword. He'd swing it until he'd become the best Sword Swinger in the whole world. Then he realized the sword swinging was rather ethereal and couldn't deal very well with the realistically fleeing A.I. of the world's inhabitants so he made a career switch to swinging a bow and arrow. A resounding success! When our hero discovered he could perch atop a boulder and snipe giants with impunity he used realism to break the rules governing this universe. He also discovered that the world more or less dictated the way one was to behave and that it didn't make any qualms about breaking its own rules. Rules such as a prison having keys for all but one cell door, ironically this happened to be the only occupied cell. The hero's mission was to bail out the occupant with coin, which he did, but then the guard joked that he'd let him go 'eventually', little did any of us know the key must have been destroyed and this was an obvious bail-out racket. Or else all of this makes little sense.

_{Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentations of their women.}

We are all sentient machines that explain. The highly interactive world I thought a game like Skyrim would portray is a pipe-dream. Bethesda had to ship the game at some point and I think they did right with Skyrim, even though some elements drove me up the wall. I'm all for an interactive world. I'm all for far-reaching consequences. It stands to reason that if you poison a town's water supply, anyone who drinks from the well gets ill. Yes, this has been done before, but I've yet to see it as mere possibility. Not as part of a task where the game supplies a button to click to apply poison to the water. Entirely different still if the game mandates through a quest text, that the well needs to be poisoned and all that's required is that:

1. The player get the necessary 10 ingredients from slaying glowing rotworms
2. Synthesize the poison by clicking the Synthesize action button supplied with the quest
3. Apply the poison by clicking the well

This final example is usually found in a game that is built for questing and not for interactivity. It's also as exciting to play as flipping switches. On the other hand, having to feed my companions in Ultima 7 was, while funny at times, a chore. I could lead to interesting situations in a highly interactive world, but if feeding is abstracted to the following isolated actions it becomes annoying:

1. Either collect ingredients for food or earn currency to afford it
2. Spend either to obtain food
3. Put the food into the player character

While realistic, it's not fun to play unless it ties into other meaningful game mechanics. In this case, if the food is there to prevent a debuff, and I assume this applies to NPCs and not just the player's party, why can't I poison the well so that I can prevent the removal of the debuff? A game not only has to simplify reality, it has to do something interesting with the result.

Because of their time investment, their associated cost, their hidden complexity, their demanding nature, it seems apparent that MMORPGs may be getting pushed (back) into a niche unless they can solve one or more of the listed issues.

The checklist quest I mentioned before is typical for MMOs. They have a reputation for supposedly being easy. But I feel as though I've made a grave error when I mentioned this before: MMO's are more complex than they let on. Especially at the highest level, where every feature comes into play. I recently continued my stint in Star Wars: The Old Republic and was momentarily lost in its complexity even though I had played it for months before. MMO's demand hundreds of hours which in turn lets players nestle themselves into its web of mechanics and mini games. By which I really mean that the MMO player interested in endgame content isn't casual, but very hardcore. Complex is a way to describe how a raid boss fight is conducted. There's little to sneeze at because this is essentially the multiplayer equivalent of a Metroid boss fight.

_{Wildstar's boss fights are some of the best in class.}

Because of their time investment, their associated cost, their hidden complexity, their demanding nature, it seems apparent that MMORPGs may be getting pushed (back) into a niche unless they can solve one or more of the listed issues. Wildstar's entire success hinges on its ability to appeal to the most hardcore MMO player base. How the genre is to succeed while having to rely on a shrinking audience is worth a guess. But sure, having a MOBA styled PvP map seems like a worthwhile effort.

I thought it curious how hardcore an MMO can get, considering the trend of other big releases. Diablo 3 is a lot simpler than its predecessor. The Elder Scrolls games have lost some of their rules over time. Dragon Age, as seen in the previous post, has been dramatically and ruefully simplified. However, not all of it is bad. Simplification usually happens for good reasons. I buy coffee in its ground-up form rather than as beans. This saves me the hassle of grinding them up myself; I'm not hardcore enough to enjoy grinding.

In general, there's nothing wrong with streamlining. Less is more. But quality of life isn't the only argument for keeping things simple. For instance, Guild Wars is proof that limiting the skill bar in a party based RPG can have great gameplay value. At the time this set it apart from games that would plaster the screen with floating skill bars. With limited options, the player must select the right ones. Synergize skills, build a party with a game plan then test it against the game's challenges.

_{Guild Wars' skill bar, 8 slots is all you have to work with, better make the most of it. This includes an Elite skill, distinguishable by the gold trimming.}

This is the reason I was excited to hear that Dragon Age: Inquisition would also feature a limited skill bar. Eight skill slots is all you have to work with. Eight skills to be carefully selected from a wealth of strategic options. Eight representatives of a tactical plan, each character fulfilling a role in a large master plan that will foil the schemes of the arch-villain du jour. Sadly, I later learned that DA:I doesn't have the wealth of strategic options I would have liked. It still has the trinity roles, but each role only has a handful of skills - leaving some out in favor of others doesn't even factor into it. It is possible to combine roles to a fair extent but suffice to say that the game has a very narrow focus.

_{Dragon Age: Inquisition has a limited skill bar but you won't be able to fill it long before the game's finale. The setup in the screen is that of a Knight-Enchanter, its gameplan is to conjure magical armour while it wades into combat wielding a magical sword. That's it. Strategic choices are quite limited.}

I think the reason for the eight skill slots has everything to do with controller design, the game's UI is a dead giveaway. A controller has four (face)buttons, each of which is assigned to its own activated skill. Swap this initial set of four with another set of four using a trigger and you end up with the total of eight skills. I can't call this a console compromise because the classes were built from the ground up to function with only a few skills, but it does influence the game design taking it a far away from Origins - this was also its main source of criticism.
Dragon Age: Inquisition thoroughly simplified the character building by removing attribute point management - Dragon Age: Origins still had this - and has chosen to put the attribute growth on the passive abilities in the various skill trees. This ensures that if you go down the skill tree of a tank build where lots of hit points are a concerned, enough attribute points will be added to constitution, which governs the HP pool. This takes away user error, but one could argue it also takes away user choice.

I have slagged on god-character RPGs a lot in these series. But, admittedly, Diablo 3 does it rather well. It's where it slaughters demons by the hundreds. This is a class based game, each with its unique style and limited skill bar. The player is allowed to swap skills on the battlefield. Different problems, different solutions. Sadly, the game doesn't really take advantage of this: the players only need to build an effective damage dealing character so there's a tendency towards cookie-cutter builds. Here the game becomes too simple for its own good. Even if Diablo dictates what happens in the action RPG genre, there's plenty of wiggle room for competitors.

_{Diablo 3 has a limited skill bar, skill selection is mostly governed by personal preference rather than the game's challenges.}

It also removed attribute point management, Blizzard did the logical thing by removing a mechanic that just led to Min-maxing. Which is the phenomenon in which players maximize the primary statistic on a character, ignoring less useful stats. Using the game rules and simple maths it's possible to figure out at what stat allocation a character is at peak performance - once known, why deviate from it? In this case you could end up with a warrior with 265 strength, 15 dexterity and 15 intelligence. The requirement on melee weapons and damage output would typically be based on strength, so why add points to anything else? An image comes to mind of a barbarian who can twist open a jar of pickles in one go but can't tie his own bootlaces. I usually feel min-maxing is a bad thing too, because it allows the player to sidestep part of the game design, particularly if it isn't very sophisticated. I think Blizzard did the right thing. Diablo isn't an RPG in the classical sense so it doesn't hurt the game.
Note: During the writing of this text, the Paragon system patch was released in the ramp up to the Reaper Of Souls expansion. This allows max level characters to put paragon points into certain stats to specialize the character even more.

Diablo's story is insanity incarnate. Typically Blizzard, who continue to publish a sort of fantasy anime with a western Warhammer-esque esthetic. Featuring overconfident characters with megalomaniacal vocabularies, wielding words like "misbegotten" as if they were never used in a Blizzard game before. It's really quite funny: Sanctuary is the sort of place that's a one-to-one conversion of real, I use the term loosely, life monotheistic beliefs and superstitions, in a what if it was all true way. This is the setting's most relevant point. An earth-shattering, eternal conflict between good and evil where mankind is victimized, slain, enslaved and ultimately championed. Both forces of good and evil are heinous - only humanity has the right mix of salt and pepper to rise above the conflict - a sentiment I can appreciate. Vanquish demons and angels alike and so remove the conflict that poisons the world. Encapsulated in this caricature of delusions is the solution to it: stomp it out with extreme prejudice. Should you feel a little down on the whole premise there's the materialism needed to stoke your rage, loot fixes everything.
 
A bit of a shame, really. The game could be more thrilling if the pace was turned down a bit, and the enemies tougher, smarter and fewer. Anyone would argue this would make the game less 'Diablo', who am I to argue. Maybe there's another game to scratch that itch.

Diablo 2 didn't have class flexibility (skill trees, no respec) and an even more limited selection of active skills. Hotbars weren't yet current and the game forced the player to only use the two mouse buttons. Skills could be hot swapped by using the F-keys, it was clunky and hard to use. Its sequel fully incorporated modern interface design and made the game much more approachable. Diablo 3's gameplay received a similar treatment. Something as simple automatic gold pickup removes the tedium of having to... "aim and click" the cursor on a few coins then wait for the character to complete the move and pickup routine. Much more satisfying to watch the coins fly into your pockets, like a reverse gold fireworks, and it all happens without forcing you miss to a beat of the action. And let's also be honest: in a game where any sort of grind is involved wasting time is anathema.

_{Health orbs, shown as red spheres, keep the pace of the game up.}

Another noticeable evolution in the Diablo formula is the use of health and mana potions. The first two games had the, presumably unintended, phenomenon of potion chugging, meaning you could 'cheat' your way out of tough spots by using health pots which would restore hit points over a very short time. Chugging one after the other would make the player character near-invincible until they were all spent. In Diablo 3 this was corrected by putting a long cooldown on the use of potions. To compensate, slain baddies now drop health orbs which, like gold, are magnetically absorbed and replenish some health. Notice there's an added bonus for gameplay here, bosses are able to spawn additional baddies that drop health orbs too, making the fight less punishing and potentially more interesting as the developer can count on the fact that health replenishment is available during the fight. Which they cannot if the player has a limited and uncertain amount of potions. Not forcing a restart once health runs out relieves some of the stress while learning the fight too. This kind of regenerative health also makes it almost impossible for a player to get hard locked into a situation where he has neither potions and money, in which he has to restart the game, rerun the level, or grind more mobs for more - all of which are generally a bad experience. Taking a page out of the Zelda and God Of War playbook, health orbs fit rather nicely with the absurd premise of this game and its action gameplay. It's also easier to suspend your disbelief when an abstract idea like 'health orbs' are involved then it is to accept that a character instantly consumed a vial of liquid or in the case of Skyrim: an entire roast pig. Solving this is easy enough: take away the basis in reality is to remove the illusion-breaking issues that clash with said reality.

Many games use the eat-to-heal mechanic. Think of the Bethesda games. Worse yet, think of early World Of Warcraft, where the player character would always have to sit down, eat and drink in between fights to heal up. It coupled the unrealistic idea that food heals wounds with the realistic idea that eating takes a long time. Inanely absurd! It was one of the early signs that this game was not for me - it encouraged me to pull out hair, nails and eyes while waiting for the animation to finish.
An example of a game where I can get on board with the concept of food and cooking is Guild Wars 2 where it is one of the available, and optional, disciplines. The food it yields provides a temporary stat buff. This game's professions even provides a real sense of experimentation as the player is allowed to match ingredients to discover new recipes. It feels more playful than tedious.
When it comes to healing, GW2 adheres to the modern idea of rapid health regeneration, or even resuscitation with a severe stat penalty, once combat has ended. Numerous games use this to bypass the manual healing a player would usually have to do by casting a healing spell, then wait for it to come off cooldown, then to recast it till the character is back at full health. Needless to say, this bogs down pacing and creates tedium.

_{Guild Wars 2 is full of good ideas, but lacks some of the ones that made the original such a unique design.}

Like its predecessor compared to its contemporaries before it, Guild Wars 2 is special and may as well have "Detox MMO" for a subtitle. The reluctance to waste the player's time with grind and nonsense is part of the developer's design philosophy. It doesn't have any signpost quests but area based, timed missions the player just wanders into while exploring. Participating is optional and the rewards are according to player performance. It has flexible classes. It doesn't have a library of skills, its skills are tied to weapon types which in turn also dictate playstyles. Toggle between two weapon sets for adaptability and combos.

_{For comparison's sake and symptomatic of how this game is played: Guild Wars 2's skill bar, 3 slots for the main hand, 2 for the off-hand, a healing skill, 3 class skills and 1 ultimate.}

It has a personalized story that defines your character as a personality and not just as a player avatar. It uses a handful well-defined hero characters as anchors to the world instead of endless anonymous quest givers. It doesn't have separate PvP and PvE gear tracks. It doesn't have a sub fee. Sadly though, it takes a step away from being a Role Playing Game and towards being an open playground theme park. It doesn't have the 'poison the well' interactivity, but it does have spontaneous events that make the world appear more alive than the competition's. However, it also doesn't have the trinity and its mechanics, it doesn't have its predecessor's companion system and its open ended party building. These last two points have a pretty big impact. What makes having a party so valuable? Well, I really should make a separate post on the topic.

Related posts:

• Mind Of The Beholder, Part 1, where I talk about past RPG experiences.
• Mind Of The Beholder, Part 2, a long overdue rant on leveling and experience grind.
• Mind Of The Beholder, Part 3, about how RPGs are being influenced, by example, design and market.

Mind of the BeholderPart 3

Divergent paths

Sometimes, you just have to let go.

When talking about RPGs one of my most used phrases "It's just like an MMO" is a slight against some modern RPGs, but not always. Something definitely happened to RPG design after the success of World Of Warcraft (November 23, 2004). Think of the hotbars, checklist questlog, exlamation mark questgivers, quest waypointing, talentrees, gear grind, colour-coded loot, the Trinity. Many of these micromechanics help make sense of the machine that is the game itself. Competitors need to feature most if not all of these in their own games not just because WoW does it, which applied as a general rule is slavish, but because they are good ideas. One could argue that because of the rise of MMORPGs, which must appeal to a wide audience to stay afloat, old school RPGs have been left in the dust. The genre had evolved. For better or for worse, where the money went, there's where developers will (or had to) go. This also left some old school PC gamers feel ostracized. Switching to console RPGs was hardly an option, devoid of MMOs, console RPGs were mostly (third) person action RPGs and geared to a wider audience - a far cry from nineties games such as Baldur's Gate (December 21, 1998). In fact I have heard it said quite often from console gamers, that Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance (October 22, 2002) was their introduction to the franchise - yet the game more closely resembles Diablo than a its PC ancestor. Personally, I wouldn't touch it with a stick.

The drought on the RPG front didn't last forever, though. During E3 2004, A spiritual successor to the classic Baldur's Gate was announced by Bioware under the title of Dragon Age. Key here is that the developer wanted to make this game out of their own volition, for old times sake, rather than meet an explicit demand. Nothing proved it would sell well. Back then, the newest Elder Scrolls game, namely Oblivion (March 20, 2006), was also making a name for itself. It seemingly blew its contemporary Neverwinter Nights 2 (October 31, 2006) out of the water when it came to popularity. Both Dragon Age and Elder Scrolls were seemingly only subtly influenced by what WoW had done. Each had its own way, firmly rooted in their own school of RPG design. Both series are still popular and it's where the market and public eye is at the moment. What expectations do they create? They are different, but the two schools of thinking seem to be converging.

_{Dragon Age: Origins in full realtime-with-pause glory.}

What is the Trinity?

The Trinity is an informal denotation given to the interplay between tank, DPS ('damage per second' or 'deeps') and support roles in RPGs. Each has a main task and has to rely on the other roles to get its job done. A tanks takes the attention and subsequent damage the enemy deals out, but can't dish out a lot of damage. The tank trades hit points for time. If they run out, the fight is lost. The DPS deals out the damage on behalf of the good guys, but quickly swinging whatever weapons around and being quick about it means he needs to wear a lighter sort of armour and as such can't take damage. The support, or healer, is a precarious role that sustains the hit points of the rest of the party often while also boosting the defensive and offensive abilities. Advantages to the trinity: easy to understand, makes people/classes play together.

Since finishing Knights Of The Old Republic (July 15, 2003), Bioware no longer uses the D&D ruleset and has chosen to create their own system that has both feet in computer game design. With it they have made their own highly intricate fantasy universe, that has a lot of parallels to our own world. Politics, racism and sexism, the divide between science and religion, social class systems, Plato's Republic, stuff like that.
But it was also influenced by MMORPG design. For one, DA:O is a party based RPG with three basic classes. The mage, the warrior and the rogue. It also includes the gameplay mechanic of aggro. This a basic set-up for the trinity, very much as seen in World Of Warcraft. When you hear people say "it's single player WoW", they're not far off the mark. There are more strategic options still, but the inclusion of the trinity as a game mechanic was a novelty.

What is Aggro?

It stands to reason that enemy AI will target the party member that is hurting it the most. This is always the DPS, usually a squishy mage. To make the tank work in this scenario, it is given skills such as taunt, or stances that generate an exaggerated amount of "threat" towards the enemy, this forces said enemy to direct their blade to the tank and away from the mage. This "Aggro" mechanic makes fights manageable and the tank reliable. The job of the tank is to smartly manage enemies in addition to his defensive and regenerative skills. It may seem a little unrealistic to be able to pull away an enemy from a friendly mage, protecting her with the push of a button but you have to remember that this is just another way of manipulating and pulling the strings woven into the game's mechanics. Empowering the players, allowing them to master their situation rather than suffer through it. Aggro mechanics are relevant, since they have made it out of the MMO and into the single player RPG.

All in all, Dragon Age: Origins (November 3, 2009) is a rather quiet game. It doesn't have the flash of other games, like a still water belies its depth, its biggest strengths aren't seen during a brief glance at some gameplay. You can't appreciate the characters and humour in this game without spending a little time with it. Nor will it be easy to spot what goes on during a fight, what skills are used during what phase. The active pause makes all this complexity manageable but you'd need a commentator to talk you through the process as a spectator.
You'll also need to finish the game to experience the full range of consequences to your actions - they're quite significant. Made even more so because they influence the sequels. It's true that not many of these changes make the sequel into a different game but the reality of the world is altered, giving it a different connotation and shifting the context.

Bioware had little to prove after Mass Effect (another unique IP, released November 16, 2007) became an immense success, but expectations were high for this new IP nonetheless. Would lightning strike twice? After all, both games and their respective fictional universes were masterfully created. Pop culture was still reverbing from the success of The Lord Of The Rings trilogy and hardcore RPG gamers were tantalized by Dragon Age's promise of a return to form.
Regretably and in spite of critical acclaim its actual success left somewhat to be desired as it failed to become a blockbuster hit. A reality confirmed once its sequel sold less and public interest seemed to have cooled off dramatically.

At the heart of the perceived failing of the Dragon Age franchise, when it comes to marketing, is the discrepancy of developing a core game, and selling it as a casual one.

At the heart of the perceived failing of the Dragon Age franchise, when it comes to marketing, is the discrepancy of developing a core game, and selling it as a casual one. The way this opaque box of mechanics was marketed to a console market (let's be honest: the PC crowd knew what they were in for) with a flashy Lord Of The Rings and 300 inspired trailer that succeeded only in misrepresenting what the game was actually like.

_{This is the trailer for the most important, tactical, party based RPG in recent history.}

Feeling the marketing department didn't do enough with this trailer, it went another step beyond what Dragon Age 2 was like with the Dragon Age 2 trailer, which sold people a different game altogether. This put off both the hardcore, who had to accept a compromised and dumbed-down sequel, and the casual audience who were buying a cat in a bag.

_{And what game do you think this game is like? Here's how this fight really plays out.}

Dragon Age 2 (March 8, 2011) is a game seemingly inspired by Mass Effect 2 (January 26, 2010) which was a tremendous success for Bioware. So it broke away from DA:O, got a named protagonist and story based, linear level design. It banked big on character and story, but left the world design to "functional at best", a polar opposite of "open world". It was also a party based tactical RPG and not a third person shooter. It sold worse than its predecessor and Bioware got the message that this was the wrong direction for their game. Personally, I don't see why some people lose their mind over DA2, I had a lot of fun with it - my only gripe being the respawning enemies that would screw up my carefully planned battles.

_{Skyrim's Logo made quite clear this wasn't a game to take lightly}

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (November 11, 2011) has been the thé ultimate in many top RPGs lists. I'm a little unclear what the criteria are exactly but I'm sure the open world and free-flow class system play a big part in the success of this carve-your-own-path spectacular. The Elder Scrolls has always been known for its open ended gameplay: you're a hero of no repute and no description. Fill in the blanks and don't worry, you'll work things out as you go along. Want to swing a sword? Swing it and you'll get better at swinging swords - presumably this is just like real life - you'll even become the best Sword Swinger in the whole of Tamriel. Skyrim is a game where you grow big, larger than anyone else, larger than life. A god among mere mortals. A god-character. How is all of this made possible? Because a power fantasy is a very marketable idea.

Suspension of disbelief is one of the reasons I am disappointed with Skyrim. It's not just about the MMO-like checklist quests or the lack of a (good) narrative. I have a hard time believing this is a medieval world. Every town has a population of five people. Each of them living in a spacious mansion sized home with room and perishable foods to spare. Why is there a war exactly? But touch any of it and the town guard will descend on you like gnats on a knave. In the name of justice and fair play they'll pick a fight with the man who just slew a dragon at the town gates, mistaking their their paper-thin personalities for plot-armour. In many games I generally don't like very much, I'll keep to the Sith code of morality (thanks, KotoR), which means they either apologize and let me go or I walk away over their dead bodies. Duty bound by stupidity, the AI invariably makes the wrong choice. Enemy tactics are limited to rushing headlong into your sword-swinging and then, when they don't get their due in an explicit death animation, they sometimes flee in a straight path ideal for catching persuing arrows with their backs. When a fight starts it's a pretty chaotic affair with boring, whiffy combat. It seems a theme with Skyrim to make every gameplay element as invisible and uneventful as it can. The interface is horrid. Character growth and specialization are literally covered in smoke and mist - mouse over the dots in the nebula one more time to reveal the tooltip! Sure, it becomes better with mods but I'm afraid the underlying system the game is based on aren't very good. Where is the game-part? It epitomizes the god-character with special purpose and destiny, superpowers and scores of clueless bandits dumb enough to think they can best you. Building you character seems secondary, if you're a sword swinger you'll finish the game by swinging swords. The interesting thing about Skyrim isn't about its combat or strategy. It's about walking this strange world, discovering... what exactly?

_{Lording over Tamriel on a rock with a longbow makes one all-powerful.}

Maybe I aught to do the thing I eventually did with Fallout 3: equip a ranged weapon and believe this an open-world FPS. But the game is boring. Character interaction can make a bland game worth playing but this is a let-down too. The entire population share a handful of voice actors and they all share the same watered down vocabulary. Skyrim also tries its hand at a big living world: if the player makes a splash, the world will ripple. I'm told it's supposed to be open. Elder Scrolls games have always resembled the Ultima games in this regard, its their retro-ancestor. They lied. I remember a particular instance that shattered that illusion...

_{Whiterun jail is where it all came tumbling down.}

At one point in the story I needed to coax the location of a bandit hideout out of a prisoner. Unable to see things my way, story constraints don't you know, the prisoner would only share the info after I bailed him out. Unwilling to cough up coin for the sorry cretin, I decided to search for the cell key by picking the pockets of the 3 present jailers. One of which was seated quite near a wall but I was able to position the camera behind him by jumping on and over his dinner table and crawling into a corner. Stoic and unfazed by my odd behavior he let me rummage through his inventory anyway. It turned out that none of the guards had the relevant key. Odd. I then picked the locks on every chest in the room. Still no key. Hm. Plan B then. As per world design, this jail is also where the player ends up in for crimes against Skyrim', e.g. stealing one to many apples. Since the story can't end with the player expiring in prison, he's allowed to pick the sewer grate in his cell floor to escape. It's game design, alright? The game even provides an easy lock and matching lock-picks under the pillow on the bed. Maybe the guards have more respect for the player than I thought. Ultimately, you escape prison by navigating a linear path out of the sewers and back into the wide world. No questions asked. So I thought: 'I'll open the player cell with one of the keys I did got off the guards, then in the sewers i'll pick the lock of the informant to let him out and that'll win me the info I need.' However, the informant's floor grate doesn't even have a lock! Bloody Bethesda. Extremely annoyed, I paid the guard anyway. Cursing through my teeth that this would end up in a rant someday.

Storytelling in and through the world is also poor. The bar has been raised so many times, even by Bethesda themselves in Fallout 3 (October 28, 2008), that you can't just offer notes and books to tell a story. Since Bioshock (August 21, 2007) we're allowed to expect audiologs that read the text for us, they allow the player to keep playing. Yes, I enjoyed Fallout 3 a lot more and now I wonder if that has anything to do with its pedigree. It at least had some linear sections in which the storytellers could put you through an experience with some flavour.

_{Honest trailer.}

I mentioned trailers earlier, and I recall Skyrim having a much more honest one, showing a first person perspective, in-game footage, the actual game music and the slaying of a dragon; exactly how it's done in game. It didn't have to sell the idea to its audience, as it was already on board. It celebrated its release, rather than sell it. Much to Bethesda's credit. Of course, slashing at a dragon is much more cinematic than watching a party of puppets play a pseudo-turn-based fight from an isometric perspective.

As far as trailers go, Bioware learned its lesson when it came to Dragon Age: Inquisition, which has a much more toned down theme. Danger merely looms here, where in previous trailers it spat of the screen in big red splotches. It has the game's third person perspective in actual game footage, the game's voice-over, classical score and the slaying of a dragon.

_{Honest trailer 2.}

_{This is my Inquisitor. There are many like her, but this one is mine.}

Playing it makes it clear that this game is a consolidation of popular ideas from other bestsellers, in addition to its prequels:

• World Of Warcraft: sidequest design, level gated content
• Skyrim: open world design and presentation
• Guild Wars 2: action RPG combat system
• Dark Souls: limited healing mechanic
• Assassin's Creed: collect-a-thon sidequests
• Mass Effect: character movement, presentation of dialogues, mocap animation, rock-paper-scissors combat mechanics
• Dragon Age: Origins: encounter design, classes, the trinity, segmented open world, story quest experience, choice and consequence
• Dragon Age 2: Class and Skill tree layout, a voiced protagonist

Wether this make DA:I into a patchy rag-doll or a sum greater than its parts, merits examination. Through the grapevine I have heard more than a few voices exclaim 'it's like an MMORPG'. Tabbed targeting, open world, MMO quest design. It's a first glance opinion and therefor doesn't tell the whole story.
The Skyrim-esque open world influence may well be the only chink in Dragon Age's armour as it's the most boring part of the game. One part, mind. Boring mostly at the very start, where it seems the player needs to be eased into the idea of the open world. It should have been faster. Getting to the first real mission where events truly kick off, is paramount. Unfortunately, you may be near ten hours of menial tasks in by then. How very Bethesdian. Yet, this open world's dense enough to warrant exploring. The game world itself is made up out of very large individual zones rather than one large streaming game world. It's what I have to thank the Baldur's Gate flashback for when I first entered The Hinterlands. But it should appear optional at the start of the game, because it is. When I finally arrived at the first major plot spoiler, I found out I was slightly over-leveled (having to use this word in this context is uneasy). But I was happy to do it, because the story has that Bioware charm I keep coming back for. It's here that the game shifts into higher gear and becomes a much more interesting.
Like an MMO, it'll take foreknowledge to determine what is the most efficient way to level-up and get past the level gates. Remembering how good Dragon Age: Origins and even Dragon Age 2 managed their pace makes that last sentence rather depressing to write. Still, being a party and class based game puts it miles ahead of the god-character action RPGs.

_{Spoiler: we won.}

It's hard to ignore the rocky road, if not downwards slope, the Dragon Age games have been on since Origins. Or Bioware's flip-flopping. But the story and characters have remained distinctly Dragon Age throughout. So even if Inquisition goes one step further to broaden its market appeal by introducing action RPG gameplay and a pseudo-open game world, story and attachment to characters will drive you forward.
Given its complexity, a story that needs a long attention span, long character dialogues with many tough choices, I do wonder what percentage of players will finish the game - this could be another cat-in-the-bag scenario. Will the emphasis on open world help sell the game better? If you wanted an open world game, then no. If you wanted a Dragon Age: Origins game, then hell no. It is better than the one in Skyrim for me because it's not as open. But the comparison doesn't really hold water, because at heart this is still a party based RPG with depth when it comes to mechanics and story. It wants you to care about the characters, the conflict, the events and not just about yourself. It's why you'll be willing to do all the menial tasks that you could just as easily skip and keep to slaying dragons in your off hours as the Inquisitor. It's really good on its own merits... but you have to let go of Origins.

Skyrim, which is still selling, has moved more than 20 million units. It has also made a monumental and lasting impact on Dragon Age. Ascribing the open world movement to Skyrim alone is hugely unfair however: MMOs are paramount, The Legend of Zelda should be mentioned, as should games like Assassin's Creed and GTA. As technology progresses, open worlds have become more viable but in themselves don't make for better games. Yet, the trend is clear. As such we will never get another Origins, at least not from Bioware. It falls to other, smaller studios to fill its niche. The vacuum left by the once small now big, is ideal for the still or perpetually small. Think Portalarium, inExile, Obsidian, Larian. As long as the hardcore RPG players are able to support these studios they'll receive the games they want... but you have to let go of Origins.

Related posts:

• Mind Of The Beholder, Part 1, where I talk about past RPG experiences.
• Mind Of The Beholder, Part 2, a long overdue rant on leveling and experience grind.
• Mind Of The Beholder, Part 4, simplicity in RPGs and the evolution thereof.

The Humanism of Mass Effect 2

 

Ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a Malo

If there's one thing we can thank the bible for it's the way it has made literary archetypes and memes. At first glance Mass Effect seems to borrow quite a bit of them. Project Lazarus, a club called Afterlife, ascension... Could there be something more going on? In my previous posts I've spotted a very engaged humanist vision in the stories and characters of their games. So I kept my eyes peeled while playing Mass Effect 2. In this post I want to explore how far the bible analogy goes and where it breaks down. Are there any differences? Can it tell us something about our human condition today - which is for some, if not a lot of, people a big part of what defines art.

Mass Effect 2 doesn't seem to be as epic as its predecessor. It's more intimate. The game is much more focused on its characters, interaction and dialogue. The events less grand in scope. Shepard needs to build a team to take out the Collectors. Emphasis is laid on the team building. The taking out is done in, what is presumed, a suicide mission behind enemy lines. Because of this, you end up fighting primarily to save your team, saving the galaxy seems like a secondary objective.

I should say that this post will potentially be one big crackpot theory. As the rather pretentious title of this post might suggest. It's a continuation of my own series started with my Dragon Age post. In which I said that Bioware has a very strong humanist viewpoint. Christians might call it anti-christian. But besides the fact that any religion will feel picked on no matter what, there might something to be said for those feelings, given the biblical names and themes in the game. Also keep in mind that this is what I'm reading from the game and isn't said to be the outspoken opinion of the company.

Religion in Mass Effect is rather curious. Because no alien race in the Mass Effect Universe is religious. That is to say, truly religious in so far as the player would have to believe that there is a "true religion" within the fiction. When Ashley admits she and her family are very religious, Shepard would rather believe her dead father to be a zombie than believe he's watching from heaven. "Wherever that is" she adds, a logical comment to make when you're born in a space-faring civilization. Heaven was supposed to be a sky kingdom in the clouds, as evident in classical paintings, and space doesn't have quite the same kind of clouds nor anything we could naively call "the sky". As Shepard you can confess to Ashley that he is religious, just as she is. It is considered a Paragon choice. However, Bioware has made the Renegade Shepard canon. So they have made Shepard, de facto, an anti-religious Atheist (ruling out even Agnosticism).

The most outspoken religious race in ME are the Hannar. They are a Jellyfish-like race, soft spoken but a bit naive. And because of it, often the butt of jokes. And mostly referred to as "the Jellys".They revere "the inkindlers". A superior race who bestowed knowledge upon them. The inkindlers turn out the be the Protheans. They turn out to be an extinct alien race. Then there's the Asari. A spiritual race. They often speak of "the Goddess". Not an odd choice for a race of females. A further comment on our human beliefs where no deity could be female in a society dominated by men. The game is very positive about the Asari point of view. Yet the faith is dispelled as soon as the Novaria mission in the first Mass Effect. Where Benezia bemoans the lack of a "promised white light, they said there would be..." with her dying breath. It isn't said that the Goddess is an actual deity or a spiritual unconsciousness, but by Benezia's comment there is at least some deception going on. A portion of the Geth, a sapient machine race, worship the Reapers. Because they are supreme mechanical synthetic lifeforms. That they do not fit the picture of an ideal God needs no explanation. Or does it? They are powerful, eternal, or so they say, have worshipers, and promise ascension. Ascension is the term Harbinger, the main antagonist, uses in Mass Effect 2 during the collectors' harvest of human colonies. This because their actual physical biomass will be used to construct a "human reaper". A god in the image of man. Man made god. Or plainly put, a god made out of Human bodies. Bioware is painting quite a cynical picture of what a god is.

The central figure in the series is Shepard. Gathering disciples of all walks of life of many worlds. He's a born leader. His name is Shepard. It's pretty clear that the closest resemblance is Jesus. More so in Mass Effect 2, where he dies and is resurrected with project Lazarus. Lazarus, not Jesus. Indeed not, but imagine what game this would have been if the project had been called "Project Jesus". It would hit the player over the head with symbolism that isn't really necessary. It would change the tone of the game dramatically and would probably offend a portion of the lucrative American audience. And anyway, 'Lazarus' is also often used to denote a situation where one is presumed dead but ultimately isn't.

The meaning of the Illusive man becomes a bit more complicated. He's got godlike qualities, like the Reapers. He's seemingly all-knowing. Apparently lives forever. Doesn't give a sod about his health. Does whatever he deems necessary. Raises Shepard from the dead and like the god of the bit monotheistic faiths: cares about his own people (humans) first and foremost and at the expense of all other. A position that's bound to be problematic in a universe with a variety of sentient species.

Like all Bioware games, there's a lot to do about morals. As with religion. Both have a prominent place in everyday live. They seem linked even to the extent that it's generally, and wrongfully, believed that religion is where morals originated. I noticed that ethics in this story come from the characters themselves, not ever from some dogma or handbook. I could say these characters are a mouthpiece for the writers of the story, schooling the player in modern philosophy.

A prime example is Mordin, a Salarian scientist. It may be a stretch to call it an archetype. But perhaps accurate in this case. He's a genius who's considered a devil by some but does good work regardless. He's got his own set of morals that seem to work well enough. You can't call him an evil character because he's forced to act and tries to make the most of it. He's content to know that no one but himself could have done a better job. Mordin comments on the responsibilities of aiding foreign species and the dangers of bypassing any true need of technology and knowledge. In the context of our history, this is a comment on how irresponsible Humans have been in founding, or rather annexing, colonies. How native Americans were used against each other. How missionaries brought civilization to the "primitive" indigenous people of South America. Or how industrial Europe carved Africa into pieces for its own needs. And with that brought modern weapons into African tribal wars. Wars originating in no small way from the colonization. The Krogan are the analogy.

There are more biblical analogies. Miranda has been made out of the rib of her "father". Tali is a cloaked virgin, untouched, aloof, naive - though Shepard gets a chance to change all that. Garrus is John the Baptist, not quite a failed messiah but a precursor to Shepard. Jacob is symbolic of humanity standing alone. He's been separated from his father and has done just fine in constructing his life. In the story he discovers the faux-paradise his father has landed himself into, confronts the man and finds a repulsive, immoral, self-appointed hedonist King. He's a caricature of an evil, self-centered god. Jacob is disgusted and turns his back on him.

I consider myself to be somewhat of a humanist. I also consider the Mass Effect games to be one of the best games I've played these last few years. The cross-pollination between these make it extra interesting for me. Mass Effect is furthering the case that we have to see some games not only as consumer products but as carriers of information and points of view. Congratulations to the talent at Bioware for raising the bar once again. I can't wait to see where Mass Effect 3 will take us.

Game of 2009: Dragon Age: Origins

For a game that is so heavily story based I think I can still place my fondness of it on its gameplay. It had been a while since my last party based RPG. Yet, it felt familiar. As if I had switched on the light in a room I hadn't been in for years, and everything was still the way I left it.
Dragon Age (DA) feels like the distilled gentlemen's version of what a party based RPG should be. It's for people who grew up playing Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale or Neverwinter Nights. Or for the hardcore MMO players of today. It's for people who enjoy a methodical approach to combat, who enjoy tactics with an abundance of skills and spells. There's somewhat of a contradiction in there though. The thing that is most striking about this game is the evolution it shows. An evolution that has been made in the MMO genre. And it's quite a simple one at that. It's what a lot of MMO developers call the "holy trinity". It's the steady base upon which party tactics are built. The tank, the DPS and the healer. These classes are mirrored in the base classes of the game. The Warrior (tank), the rogue (DPS) and mage (healer). Of course there's plenty of cross-over so Warriors or Mages can have a DPS build, and there's class specializations that push characters into a certain direction, change party tactics or just make a class excel even more in what they are supposed to do.
But it's no wonder that Dragon Age has been called a single player MMORPG. And that's a good thing. A single player game can sidestep most of what is (almost) impossible to do in an MMO, and that is to have a lasting effect in the game world. Cause and effect is also one of DA most remarkable features. From beginning to end there are choices that have to be made and most, if not all, have some sort of effect, either small or big, later in the game. No other company but Bioware has been quite so adept at crafting a narrative structure like this in such a cohesive and new universe.

Congratulations Bioware, again! Dragon Age: Origins is my personal Game Of The Year 2009. Other possible contenders were Team Fortress 2, Street Fighter 4, Dawn Of War 2, Modern Warfare 2 and Torchlight.

There's a few more thoughts I'd like to share about DA. There seems to be an overarching storyline, regardless of the player's chosen origin and it's that of mages versus the Chantry. In modern terms one would call it Science versus Religion. A theme that really speaks to me. The mages being represented by the Circle of Magi and several independent more experimental mages. The Chantry is a matriarchal church lording over the Circle with an army of Templars. Who are basically Paladins - church warriors - who've been conditioned through indoctrination and Lyrium, the game's fuel for magic, to hunt down Rogue or dangerous mages. Their partial immunity for magic stems from training and lyrium addiction but destroys their mind in the end. The setup for this hierarchy of powers is because Mages have the potential to bring Demons into the physical world if they are not able to resists their seductions in the fade. The fade is the game's version of the dream world into which mages can enter with full awareness. For those who've read any of Terry Pratchett's discworld novels the fade will sound familiar, it really is quite like the dungeon dimensions.
Not only that but mages are blamed for the existance of the Dark Spawn, the games main evil force. It has been told by the Chantry that the quest for knowledge, power and a mission to usurp the Maker (The Chantry Deity) from his throne in the fade has transformed these mages into the first of the Darkspawn as part of a godly punishment. However, if so, where do new darkspawn come from? The games only shows mages transforming into abominations, either physically or mentally. Whether the crime and punishment is symbolic or not, the events are still pinned on mages without actual proof. Later in the game the player character discovers that darkspawn are actually born through a brood mother, like a spider giving birth to live offspring. Further claims of Chantry lies are found in ancient records. Potraying it's most important figurehead, the Prophetes Andraste (the game's equivalent to Jesus, Mohammed or maybe more accurate: Jeanne d'Arc), was not a chosen by the Maker but in fact a very powerful Mage with a political agenda. To further justify the credibility of the claim, it was found in the Shaperate. The Dwarven records of History who have no truck with the Chantry. Their spiritual system being based on ancestors rather than Gods. If all this turns out to be true, and it propably will, in this game universe, that means the Chantry is indeed lying to its followers and duping everyone fortunate enough to have magical talents.
This leads me to believe that in further Dragon Age stories the Chantry will turn out to be the hidden evil pulling strings in order to maintain its power and control. The motivation to keep mages down is the fact that they could ascertain the truth about the makers place, or lack thereof, in the fade. A truth that would shatter the Chantry's credibility. There's even more. The player is almost always able to choose an Atheïst answer whenever religious questions or favors are asked. Answers that range from scepticism to mockery.

This might be a crackpot theory but... The Chantry's setup seems synonymous to the Roman Catholic church and its imperialism of the western world. It may well be that Humanists everywhere might have an ally in the Bioware docters, Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, and their colleagues as voices in this ever more powerful medium. If you want some more proof, please remind yourself of Mass Effect. Where dogmatic belief in the Protheans was dispelled by the relevation of the Reapers. Where near-holy artifacts fall into the profane because facts deemed them to be. Baldur's Gate and Knights of the Old Republic had equally shocking revelations. Discovery and disillusion has been a trope in Bioware games for some time.

Intermezzo

By the lack of new posts it seems as if have been avoiding this blog. I almost have, because it would mean having to look at the date of my last post. A new post was always being conceptualized and then postponed. Not being one to feel guilty, I would rather look the other way and focus on the realities that are more rewarding in the short term. And so, I've been gaming in my spare hours. Like a rat in a Skinner box, I've pressed buttons in arcane sequences to get my sweet reward. And these lasts few months I've been a glutton. The need for relaxation has been in direct relation to the amount of work I've been doing. Where one would grow, so would the other. In short, it's been a very productive period. Both in the professional world as in the Skinner box. To the outside world it seems as if all I do is press buttons, wearing out keyboards, mice and Wacom pens. The same world that sees me effortlessly produce artwork and get satisfaction out of pressing buttons in order to make a game play itself, is starting to think that it actually takes no effort at all.
On both accounts, it is wrong.
My tasks are Crucial as to deserve capitalization and the games I play are as brilliant as any great Belgian novel. Or so I keep telling myself. In the eyes of some one in the know, I must seem like an intellectual of the modern age. Yet to some one in the real world, it must seem like a lazy office jockey who earns a living by letting the computer do all the hard work for him and is addicted to pressing buttons at night. I must have been the nightmare of the previous age. An overqualified hippy with nonsensical morals based on a fantasy world of dreams and drugs. Someone who doesn't know how to take life serious and doesn't know what it is to do actual work. My parents used to threaten me with this actual work by saying: "If you don't do good at school, you'll spend the rest of your life carrying a lunchbox to a factory".

And so, after completing not one but two higher diplomas, one of which is on par with a university degree, I got a creative job that pays reasonably well. However, irony has it that now my parents wag their finger at me for not knowing what actual work is, and that I should probably do more of it, instead of letting the computer work late and playing those silly little games on it when it's done. So on to my blog where I talk about games and only hint at the work I pretend to do!
The next part is about a few games I played, and it's there because I told the blog posting algorithm to mention the names I input before leaning back and sipping my tea. I also mentioned it to write in a manner to attract lustful females and to garner world fame. I'm not expecting it to be flawless, two out of three objectives met is still an acceptable result.

I've played and enjoyed Need For Speed: Shift. The demo convinced me of its quality, and I bought it shortly after. I've always appreciated racing games. Mostly for their obsessive compulsion gameplay of driving a car efficiently. My last serious racing effort was Xpand Rally some years ago and more recently Mario Kart Wii, so I'm hardly an authority on the subject. NFSS has a sense of speed of a roller-coaster, and that's what makes it rather special. Racing a car on one of its tracks feels like controlling a rocket powered skateboard on the downwards slope of an active vulcano. The game has a leg up on other racing games in its style and it's truly phenomenal cockpit view. I've also been known to call it "Top Gear: the game". There isn't much to talk about with this game - there's no higher understanding of life because of it. On my parents scale of approval it would propably score to be "very silly indeed". What they don't know is that I'm using these racing games as a simulator in order to easily acquire a real driver's license. This is, of course, using my parent's mindset that, if games like call of duty are ruthless murder training devices, racing games must be ideal in order to be a driver.

To make matters even worse, I've been dabbling in satanism and demonology! It's no wonder that my feeble Atheist mind would one day succumb to the seduction of the beast itself. Because what could be worse then playing Dungeons and Dragons? Why a computer game that is the tier3 evolution of D&D! And why is this evil ruleset so evil? Because it's a ruleset that's been streamlined in such a way that the computer does all the calculating! Truly this is a magnitude of wickedness not seen in any game all year! (HINT)
Because of it's inherent didactic nature the game teaches among other things: magic, lesbianism, homosexualism, alcoholism, unholy and generally shady dealing, pick-pocketing, cursing, cursing, smuggling, drug trafficking, genocide and worst of all, blasphemy. The name of this unthinkable yet unbelievably seductive abomination is Dragon Age:Origins. On the caring parent's scale this game has fallen of the "silly" and into the "dead serious". It'd probably only be remedied, and I saved, by sacrificing one's eldest son, namely: me.
Or perhaps it's only a phase.
Either way. The game has left me a powerless thrall unable to appreciate any other game.

Self-prescribed medication has been ordered in the form of Modern Warfare 2: murder simulator and Torchlight:Even more devils and demons.