Andromedada

 

It's hard for me to hide the fact that I'm a sentimental sap that will fall for anything infused with nostalgia, it speaks right to my heart. I am also a sucker for fiction that blends social commentary, philosophy and fringe science. It's part of the time consuming information addiction that afflicts my mind. That sounds a bit pretentious, I know. But I'm lucky that there are masterpieces that allow me to indulge in spades. When my heart and mind are being spoken to it's all too easy to get blindsided and, from time to time, I have to deal with the resulting hangover. Here we need to be ever optimistic and seize the opportunity to try and learn from the ordeal, analyse it to bits and then rant about it on the internet. It may well be both cathartic and enlightening.

One of the works I read as a hungry, fledgling bibliophile was Frank Herbert's Dune. It's an amazingly rich science fiction told through the eyes of a fresh protagonist as he learns about different forms of government, culture wars, state and religion. What it means to be human and when humanity is lost. The book became a series. The series went on until it ran out of steam and the author passed away, presumably a happy man. I imagine the Herbert estate enjoyed its fair share of royalties but eventually those must have run out of steam too. So it fell to Brian Herbert to team up with Kevin J. Anderson to write more Dune books. The plot trivialized the events of the original books with its onion-like structure. The story was set 10.000 years before the original books, which is a frighteningly long time to set the stage or hold a grudge. The leading characters were a Harkonnen cast as the good guy and an Artreides in the role of the bad guy. A reversal from the original. If I were to make a stab at why the new books had few interesting ideas, I'd say it was because the authors had to work from Herbert's table scraps. They couldn't stray to far from the original either or risk losing its tone. This is why the Dune prequel books set the stage for events about ten millennia in the future in a universe that seemingly doesn't change much in the interim.

Speaking of serialized science fiction epics, when George Lucas made the Star Wars prequels, he famously said he wanted to make them rhyme with the original trilogy. New scenes would echo older scenes. From both thematic and stylistic viewpoints. Results were disappointing. The proposed rhyming way of composing the new script didn't quite pan out, all style with little substance.
For Lucas, they were a way of having the old work try and write the new. A guiding hand, or a crutch, from the past. To me, the performance a particular rain dance. Make it rain! Make it rain! Revenge of the rain! A creative person is in a desperate position when he falls back on magic. Maybe imitation isn't the method to recapture lightning in a bottle.

Dune prequels, Star Wars prequels. Surely you're starting to see rhymes. The latest verse in this dreadful poem is called Mass Effect Andromeda. It too, rhymes. Let me shine a light as I compose a list of sorts, by no means complete. Though it should give some indication of the issues at least. Bear with me as I rack my brain in an attempt to try and impose some structure in the telling.

~
First things first

_{The first look at Andromeda wasn't bad at all.}

Mass Effect Andromeda is the forth game in the series but not a direct continuation of it. It takes place between the first and second installments and tells the story of a massive private colonization effort towards the Andromeda galaxy in order to safeguard the future of galactic civilisation and the Milky Way species - some of them at least - just in case signs of the oncoming Reaper onslaught, a galactic extinction event, are true.
The expedition consists of a hub station called the Nexus and a number of race specific Arks. All are headed towards a handful of golden worlds. The player is cast in the role of one of the children, Sarah or Scott Ryder, of the human Pathfinder: Alec Ryder. A Pathfinder is an elite scout in charge of directing the colonization effort for his race. He also has the added value in the form of SAM (Simulated Adaptive Matrix), an Ai that acts as a hand holding mechanic and personal deus ex machina. Unfortunately not so much for Alec as he doesn't survive the first mission. The story kicks off as he kicks the bucket and with his dying breath transfers his Pathfinder title and SAM link to the player's character. After that, the player takes all the blame of the initiative's mishaps, is left to solve the crisis and has to make all major and minor decisions. No small feat for someone who has neither the qualifications nor the experience to handle the task.

From there the game doesn't know what to do with itself. When the new Pathfinder finds the Nexus, it is dark and sleepy. Ryder is also the very first of the Pathfinders to find his way to the station, all other Arks appear lost. Before long we're informed that an entire chapter has already come to pass. The target planets are in dire shape and deemed uninhabitable. There was an uprising against the managerial staff, it was subdued and the rebels were banished from the Nexus. These outcasts then sought refuge on the golden worlds to eke out a living on them... and succeeded! Having missed all the action, that is to say: the player doesn't get to experience any of this, it befalls the Pathfinder to create the circumstances to make the golden worlds habitable so that the initiative on the Nexus finally feels the need to actually do something and send colonists.
I case you missed the contradiction: the uninhabitable planets are being inhabited. But for some reason the Nexus is mired in inaction and can't send settles of their own, because their ceremonial Pathfinders who are tasked by paving the way are nowhere to be found. Seeing as though prospecting is less of an issue now, the player is chiefly tasked with fighting hostiles and pressing the magic button that marginally improves weather conditions. The game makes the latter the big linchpin, as only Ryder is up to the task because he's the only Pathfinder with the connection to the enhanced Ryder SAM that solves all problems.

~
Axial twist

_{The launch trailer already has a subtle excuse embedded into it. It also features about 60 percent scenes of the final chapter of the game.}

The game's initial impressions left me puzzled. Maybe suspicions should have been raised when the Mass Effect Andromeda PR spun the initial pitch of the original Mass Effect (ME) into "a game of exploration" in order to to sell the idea that Mass Effect Andromeda would be a game worth your time because it, like its progenitor, would be about exploration. Only this time, Bioware would deliver where the original, according to them, failed.
The problem here is that this exploration angle doesn't show in Mass Effect. Anyone who played it knows it's driven by the narrative, not by a thirst for exploration. The lead character, Shepard, isn't an explorer. He's a military specialist. An operative for the government to investigate and solve issues discretely and by any means necessary. A kind of space Bond. Bond tends to explore a specific kind of hills on his adventures but it's not the same. Shepard could scale hills in a planetary rover called the Mako but it was an optional mechanic in that game that was cut in subsequent games.
Still, regardless of spin: why exploration? Why would you, as Bioware, keep mining for copper when you had struck gold with the original's story and characters? With Andromeda, Bioware doubles down on copper and tries to sell it as an upgrade.

Why did Bioware select exploration as one of the main pillars for the concept of the new game? The answer lies in its design. Andromeda is an open world game and exploration gels best with the trend in mainstream gaming. Why bend your game to adhere to a popular trend? Because it's conveniently puts a mark next to "open world" on the dollar checklist. Why make your own game, when the market dictates what you should make? Winning numbers feel safe.
A bet hastily made however because Andromeda's open world doesn't even function all that well. The directionless design allows one to skip certain parts to do them later. However this game presupposes you actually do the beginning bits at the start. On one occasions I unwittingly skipped a beginner quest because I drove off in the "wrong" direction. After about 40 hours of gameplay I finally discovered this quest and it felt like traveling back in time: The ingame characters voice their amazement at the attacking alien hordes the beginner quest throws at them... even tough they had encountered countless of these aliens, had met their leaders and had bested their champions. My party was appalled by the abandoned outpost and the loss of human activity in the area the quest took place in, wondering what would happen with the rest of the planet... even though they had, by then, already settled the planet with a new city-sized outpost!
I skipped the entirety of Havarl, the presupposed second planet, at the very end of the game's story. Again, the same naive wonderment of my player characters about the alien technology on Havarl struck a false note because they had seen much more elaborate tech by then - including flying, mechanical sand worms (thanks, Frank Herbert)! Please remind me of the point of having an open world as ill-conceived as this one?

~
The small beyond

Open World design?

In the context of gaming, this design concept usually points towards large worlds that allow the players to roam free and explore, create their own stories, interact with the world, its systems, its denizens. It usually also means that mechanics in open world games need to have a mind of their own, work like clockwork that adapts to the the player's behavior and interacts with him or her. Often there's the idea of choice and consequence that interlocks with RPG game design. Story telling in the Open World can be tricky because of its non-linear nature. Especially when the player starts sequence breaking, contingency checks need to ensure the story still flows in a natural way. The clock must not skip a beat.

The Open World leads to another coveted check mark that goes hand-in-hand with it: a crafting system. Here it's expansive to the point of confusion. Item and inventory management was streamlined out of the first Mass Effect games for not being part of the core gameplay. So why include it? Because crafting in games is hot. Crafting is all the rage. So get ready to mine and craft all over again.
It's the insistence on an open world that gives this sort of extensive crafting system legitimacy. It gives players the opportunity to roam the vast boring world in search of truffles like the pigs they are. This is the next game, after Dragon Age Inquisition, in which Bioware not only fails to replicate the quality of its own past games, but also of those of the other developers they hope to copy. Namely: Bethesda's Skyrim and apparently, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
The proof is all over the map. On which icons are scattered as if a designer sneezed on it. The player's task is to drive to these icons and pluck, collect, shoot or talk them out of existence. Unless they are fast-travel points, in which case you must unlock as many as possible in as little time as possible lest you run the risk of wasting even more time driving around, cleaning up Andromeda's mind-numbingly dull worlds.

~
Vroom vroom

The driving is done in the Andromeda variant of the aforementioned Mako: the Nomad. Which is sold to us as a superior alternative. Even though it lacks the Mako's massive cannon and machine gun - remember: the first game was all about exploring! Instead Nomad has two swish driving modes, "fast for plains" and "slow four wheel drive for anything above a slight incline". The functional-tank-combat-gameplay from the original Mako was replaced by abysmal-switch-gear-gameplay that comes into play anytime you leave the road.
The gear switching mechanic is a feeble mask for the the missing combat gameplay which couldn't be present because of, you guessed it, the open world. You see, the game expects you to get out of the vehicle from time to time for some third person action gameplay to deal with combat encounters that are strewn about the maps. Adding cannons to the vehicle would allow you to blow away those encounters in short order and thus would also bypass the entire on-foot combat gameplay that defined the series.

Driving, driving, driving, driving.

The lack of real world logic "tanks are better at dealing and taking damage" gets in the way of the flawed gameplay-inspired logic "explorers don't need guns because they don't get into combat, but combat is fun so get out there and risk you life anyway". The original Mass Effect used the Mako sequences as a palette cleanser. Andromeda forces its boring vehicle on you because it's the only viable way to traverse the open world without feeling the need to stab yourself in the eye with a biro.
The bulk of the gameplay consists of getting unrelated quests from generic, seemingly identical NPCs, then checking the map, then driving out into the wasteland to resolve the icon. The map UI is clumsy but necessary... The driving, always the driving. Switching gears. Getting out to pick up the essential minerals you supposedly need. More driving. Getting to a dead end that results in more driving. Avoiding combat encounters because they only waste more time. Detours mean more driving. Driving, driving, driving, driving... Then you close the game because real life intrudes your gaming habits. Staying within Bioware games, Star Wars The Old Republic drove this much better with efficient zones and quests that drove directly into the main storyline - better voice acting and animation and driving too. It was hands drive a better Mass Effect game than Andromeda.
Know what would have been a true superior exploration tool? A flying craft. There's plenty of them about too: civilians have them, merchants and enemies have them, anyone but the Pathfinder team has them!

~
Blah blah

Bioware remembered that if Mass Effect had loads of dialogue in it, the new game needed loads of them too. So they took on the dumb work of giving voice to everything save the furniture.

The original Mass Effect came with a universe that exaggerated the world as we know it today. With people and cultures that range from being in development to warlike to the scientific. From Empires to matriarchies. From pirate paradise to police state. From cerebral to brain washed. A very wide spectrum of human existence enlarged to a galactic scale. The balance of power, the relationships between individuals and species shone true every conversation the game allowed you to have. Every dialogue built on your understanding of this universe. It even came with a healthy dose of subtle humanist impulses, to my great delight - this is what sets this property above all others. My post on Mass Effect 2 dove into that topic.
Not so in Andromeda. Bioware remembered that if Mass Effect had loads of dialogue in it, the new game needed loads of them too. So they took on the dumb work of giving voice to everything save the furniture. I say dumb because it seems the mission statement went no further then to "write dialogues". The result is hours upon hours of babble that never goes beyond the petty history of the characters you meet. Because of that they're all boring in the same way. What is the point of having the Patherfinder hear an Asari pilots say she likes flying her shuttle craft? Well, the point was look like Mass Effect. Unfortunately Bioware has developed an appetite for their own foot in doing so. Enter the character called Hainly Abrams.

Appearing like any ordinary NPC but with an introduction that goes a little like this: "Hi, I used to be a man, but I came to Andromeda to be a woman, because that's who I really am."
Where to begin. A problem with this is that transsexual people don't really identify as their born sex and thus don't go announcing it like that to strangers. For all intents and purposes, a trans woman is a woman. Only to a special kind of outsider would it appear that "This man wants to be a woman!". By making this sound so important, it's literally the only topic Hainly talks about, the writers seem to imply that trans people are only important because that in lieu of any other character trait they may have. It's even one of her motivations for traveling to Andromeda. The original game portrayed a galaxy that had moved past these kind of petty fears. Now we are to believe that transphobia is so threatening in the Milky Way that fleeing in this way seems like an attractive proposition. Hainly Abrams is like a diversity trophy Bioware has awarded themselves.

~
Argle-bargle

Now, let's just for the sake of argument agree that exploration should be front and center of a Mass Effect game. Then why is there so little to discover?

Now, let's just for the sake of argument agree that exploration should be front and center of a Mass Effect game. Then why is there so little to discover? The encountered aliens are capitalist, bipedal, breathe oxygen, have two genders, communicate in the same way as humans, are Buddhists, are Imperialist, use pistols, rifles and shotguns that are identical to human designs, use Arabic numbers, use digital data. The list goes on and on. Things are so familiar that I was surprised to find that the Alien leader wasn't an orange buffoon dressed like an envelope stuffed with soppy oatmeal.

Why are the aliens you encounter in Andromeda more human then some of the original races? The Krogan, Salarian, Volus, Geth, Hanar, Turian and Elcor are all more alien in design than the Angara and Kett. No explanation is given why these are so close to humans, require the same living environments as Humans, have a very similar societal structure as humans and are at roughly the same technological level as Humans. Keep in mind that these are races from another galaxy about 600 years in the future. I won't even ask where there are birds in Andromeda.
The current conflict between the two Andromeda races is immediately of capital importance to the Milky Way races. Instead of observing the situation, the humies wade into the fray with next to no resources.

Andromeda introduces two new Alien races to the stage. First, the Andromeda natives: the Angara. Cuddely, big lipped, big eyes. There can be no doubt that these are the good guys.

_{The Angara}

I kept calling them: fish-people. Not only do they look like fish, they seem to have their character traits based on, what would be typically linked to, the star sign Pisces: emotional, spiritual, insecure, whimsical, hard to define... Sure enough, perhaps not surprising, after a cursory search I found out that, indeed, the Andromeda galaxy is seen in the Pisces constellation. Maybe it takes an old hand in astrology, no I don't advocate it, like myself to notice and uncover this. "What are the aliens from the Pisces constellation like? Why, like Pisces of course!". This is yet another shortcut and nothing more. Being emotional doesn't even do anything significant for the functioning of the Angara. It only makes them slightly whiny. They aren't a race of berserkers that fight harder when they are angry. There's no 'dark side comes with power' connection. It's just another throw-away character trait that is bolted on top of this race. To me it also undermines the scientific inspiration of the originals if you start basing new story elements on pseudo science.
The Angara have female spiritual leaders for a society that seems written by Margaret Mead. A big incentive for fighting for the Angara, the game seems to suggest, is to prevent their pure way of life to be lost.
First contact with the Angara is a laughable affair too, Ryder literally simply walks out the ship alone, unarmed, unmasked, and shakes the alien leader's hand. A small handshake for man, a large gesture for mankind.

True to life, ugly appearance means evil nature.

Secondly, the Andromeda invaders: the Kett. Ugly, bony, slant eyed aliens. True to life, ugly appearance means evil nature. There can be no doubt that these are kill on sight bad guys.
Everyone hates hates hates the Kett with a burning passion. Within minutes of arriving in Andromeda everyone is willing to lay their lives on the line because they hate the Kett so much. No diplomatic outreach is done, no effort is done to make contact. It's guns a-blazing from the word go. Later in the game Ryder learns of the Kett motivation, at which point the hate goes supernova.

_{The Kett}

The Kett seem, quite blatantly, like an amalgamation of the Collectors and Reapers from the original trilogy. They use similar methods and motivations. The collectors harvest bio-matter from existing species to create a new reaper in the shape of the current dominant race and call it salvation. The Kett collect live specimens of species to comically mutate them into more Kett and call it exaltation.
Then there's the Remnant, also referred to as Rem Tech, a neutral faction of drones and automatons that seem to guard and maintain the planets in Andromeda.
There's also an unseen adversary at work in Andromeda. It is suggested that the Remnant creator's race was wiped out by it. Work of the Reapers? Visual hints seem everywhere!
I was expecting a late game twist that would reveal the Reaper connection, linking the Andromeda galaxy to the Milky Way as both would be under supervision of the same super race, experiencing the same cycles. This would set the tone as it did in the original trilogy. Yet this is not the case and the game never expands on the origins or nature of the Remnant - too bad, as I found it a major incentive for the duration of the game. This mystery was almost the sole reason I kept playing. I was suspecting a Reaper reveal around every bend. But there was nothing - not even an alternative explanation. A bitter disappointment.

The presence of the Kett highlights one of the story's biggest flaws: that the exploratory force was sent out without a military grade escort! It seems that no contingency plan was made in case Andromeda was inhabited and the Milky Way invaders were met with a fighting force.
This short-sightedness in the fiction again hints at a spoiler later in the game where the player, in order to meet the opposing military force, begets an army of Remnant machines. The glaring lack of military hardware is filled in with this, literal, deus ex machina one can see coming hours away. How else is the threat to be neutralized? Well, maybe this neutral faction hardware we've seen everywhere in the game can be of use.
At least the Remnant army is a plot point that gets resolved. One that doesn't is that the gene-splicing Kett could and would provide the cure to a deadly genetic disease that afflicts one very important story character.
The entire plot line is harebrained to start with. Alec Ryder uses the Andromeda mission to flee from the human Alliance in the Milky Way for fear of repercussions of his illegal work on Ai. This Ai is the aforementioned SAM, who's made in order to help with finding a cure for the player character's mother who turns out to be alive and with the colonists, in cryosleep under a pseudonym. Wouldn't it have been a better to put her in cryo in the Milky Way while research goes on there and not in the resource and facility starved Andromeda Initiative? The plot point is never resolved, but I assume SAM would be used to magically bend Kett technology to magically create a cure. The problem here is that Alec Ryder has no way of knowing in advance that there will be a gene splicing race in Andromeda. His bet to find a cure in Andromeda seems much worse than it would in the Milky Way.

~
Paragon babysitter

Why is the main character so interested in these strangers? Why wouldn't the Pathfinder bring in professionals from the initiative instead of vagabonds and rogues who've done nothing more than meet him?

As established before. Andromeda is all about exploring. So right off the bat it seems uncharacteristic to have the entire crew dropped into your lap within the first hour of the game. You don't even have to look for them. No tie-in quests. No build up, no explanations. No attachment. All of them appear as unwarranted tag-alongs and as a player you'll feel more like a babysitter than a leader. You'll need to listen to their worries, feelings and petty nostalgia. All of which are unprompted. Why is the main character so interested in these strangers? The only reason he's invested is because the plot tells him to. The dialogues tell starry-eyed, soppy and unrelated stories that don't convey any other message than "care for me!". A pathological tactic from the Bioware writing team that backfires the moment boredom sets in. After that the dialogues feel like a waste of time. Besides, why wouldn't the Pathfinder bring in professionals from the initiative instead of these vagabonds and rogues who've done nothing more than meet him? Being desperate for attention and a place in the world isn't exactly a token of competence.

I think I really pissed that one off, maybe because I shot him in the face!
-Andromeda humour

It also doesn't help these characters that all of them are profoundly unfunny, even when they really try to be the opposite. An example of what passes as funny according to Andromeda is companion Liam Kosta's line from the first mission: "I think I really pissed that one off, maybe because I shot him in the face!" This is the actual tone of a character that Bioware, in publicity, described with flowery language like this: "Every team needs its idealist, and Liam is ours."
That's quite the departure from the norm. for instance, Mass Effect 2 which was pretty grim at times nevertheless left room for humour and self-deprecation. You may remember Mordin singing. Humour proved a charm impossible to lift.
Somewhat easier are Mass Effect 2's loyalty missions, they make a comeback in Andromeda. These are meant to forge a bond with another characters that is so strong they'd fight harder for you. Essentially it's an abstraction from how people bond in real life. You share experiences and become friends through thick and thin. The end of Mass Effect 2 puts the player's relationship with his companions to the test.
Unfortunately, Andromeda trivializes the loyalty mission for nothing other than to unlock that companion's final skill tier in their skill tree. Some missions, like Liam's, have a motivation so out-of-the-blue that I can't for the life of me remember what it's relevance to the story was, what brought it on, or what was the result of it. All I remember is that it was a reckless tumble that risked the team's lives, gained no one anything and many people died. After this Liam wasn't promptly discharged but was simply told not to do it again.

~
Characters within characters

_{Cora Harper}

Your second in command is Cora. She's like a military gargoyle that spouts hardball military copy paste encouragements like "on your feet soldier! We are Asari commando's we don't get lost, we find a way." She's established as uncompromisingly hard as nails. She idolizes her Asari mentor, whom she has never met in person. She values her advice even over yours. "She'll have a plan" is repeated like a mantra. Setting up a plot twist so predictable a desiccated potato could could have seen it coming. We ultimately get to meet said mentor and of course she turns out to be a cheat and an unapologetic egotist.
After learning her mentor is a fraud, even though her textbook lessons were actually sound, Cora, in the good old military tradition, starts blubbering like a child. I guess she wasn't much of a commando anyway if she didn't actually learn those lessens as she keeps telling everyone her mentor has a plan - and she, evidently, doesn't.

In order to have a character come up with a genius plan, the author must come up with a genius plan.

This is a bit of a trick to detract from the fact that, in order to have a character come up with a genius plan, the author must come up with a genius plan. It's much easier to say "She has a genius plan" and then have it as an off-screen event. Easier still to not have to do it at all.
Cora's character takes another dive when she becomes extremely clingy if you romance her. She dreams aloud about settling down, having a home with white picket fence and about eighteen children. Her love for Ryder is pure projection! She's willing to abandon her defining characteristic just to become a mommy - effectively a different person entirely. The game didn't let me break up with her at that point. So I guess the message is: if you have a nice evening out before the suicide mission and make it through, there's a contract waiting for you! Have some fun, but prepare for marriage afterwards.

_PeeBee

I did take a bit of a shine to the chirpy Asari crew mate, PeeBee. She's a young, happy go lucky, bumbling yet genius tech-literate archeologist. She loves loves loves ancient Aliens. She's also a bit naive and needs an occasional common sense update and a tight leech. If you think this all this sounds familiar you're not wrong. She too is a shortcut character. The game tells us she's a rogue scientist, but she's little more than a childish tomb raider. She's basically a poor man's Liara from the original game but with a twist in her personality. Instead of the brooding, shy introvert Liara, she's an outgoing laissez faire extravert. The single switched personality trait is common in this game. Maybe to make something feel both fresh and familiar at the same time?

_{Vetra Nyx}

Andromeda finally introduces female Turians to the world and one has to star in a prominent role. Vetra tries to fill the shoes of a gender swapped Garrus (ME). In stead of a jaded police agent who tries his hand at managing a crew of heroes, she's a jaded would-be mother to her orphaned sister who tries to be a hero.

~
The rest of the crew

_{Nakmor Drack}

Drack (Andromeda) is a crusty old Krogan with a cheery slant. He's an optimist about the Krogan colony and wants to work with the other races.
Wrex (ME) is a crusty old Krogan with a mean streak. He's a pessimist due to the genophage and mistrusts the other races.

_{Jaal Ama Darav}

Jaal (Andromeda) is an emotional outsider alien written by someone who read the definition of 'emotional' in a dictionary. He's unassuming and oddly rational. He amazes the other crew by being so different, but not really. Is amazed by human customs. Talks with an African accent.
Javik (ME) is a rational outsider alien who doesn't know the meaning of the word emotion. He's sarcastic and jaded. He amazes the crew by being so different. Is amazed by human customs. Talks with an African accent.

_{Liam Kosta}

Liam (Andromeda) is a human soldier with a sentimental streak. Family is very important to him. Clings to the past. Wants to break the rules to get things done.
Ashley (ME) is a human soldier with a sentimental streak. Family is very important to her. Clings to the past. Wants to do things by the book to get things done.
These characters are very different because they are of the opposing sex!

There's much to lament here. When you'd ask a Mass Effect fan what their favorite part of the series is, I'd wager a top answer would be the characters. Much like it would be for fans of a series of which Mass Effect took inspiration from: Star Trek. It's the likes of Kirk and Spock, Picard and Riker, that keep people coming back for more. There's a simple soap-like appeal to seeing what's next for your favorite characters. How they will be put through the wringer next. It doesn't really matter if they are in a space battle, meeting an alien society or experiencing a Sherlock Holmes novel on the holodeck. It's all about the characters we've grown attached to. A base requirement is that these characters aren't animated cardboard cut-outs. They need opinions, wants and desires and flaws. So it was with the original Mass Effect cast. Only this time you were up there in the wringer with them. You'd talk to them about it afterwards, but you'd stay to hear their story and perspectives.
Yet, we must remember that EA has pushed the PR narrative that Mass Effect is all about exploration, much like Star Trek was much about exploration. I'm sure you remember Kirk collecting copper ore samples on all those planets.
In fairness, Star Trek actually was about exploration but of philosophical ideas. Star Trek took inspiration from Socrates, Plato, Kant, Sartre, Kierkegaard and humanism, to name but a few. Mass Effect followed and became another rare source to inform us of human progress. I for one like that this type of knowledge can be presented in a creative and entertaining way. It awakens the flame of curiosity, a quest for truth that will surely lead our own civilisation to the Star Trek future we could have.
 

~
Money mutes

Why was the game even made?

Not only did EA miss the point of the franchise, they also missed its audience. One important question is starting to make a contour over the background noise: Why was the game even made?
Original Mass Effect was a product of its time. It had no claim to fame. There was risk involved. But there was a sense of optimism not just in the gaming industry but in the culture at large. As problems in the world started to crystallize: sectarian violence, climate change, a dire political climate... and with it opinions and solutions were also formulated. Critical voices ratcheted up the volume.
Some of that ended up in pop culture, sometimes even through games. At least two games that I played dealt with some serious issues and injected them into the mainstream. Mass Effect (November 16, 2007) and Assassin's Creed 2 (November 17, 2009). Which is to say, tear down the myths and walls surrounding people. To unify under a common humanity and move civilisation forward. Even if the message was simple, at least they had something to say. The developer put the grand idea, some idealism, above big money.

There's the belief that everything will work out and that confidence is a viable substitute for competence. As long as intentions are good, good things will happen.

New Bioware glorifies religious beliefs, valuing mysteries above understanding. The player can only tacitly voice his criticism. "Agree to disagree". It aims not to unify, but to protect and let stand old divisions. Don't offend any sensibilities! Shepard (ME) called people living beyond the grave: "Oh, zombies?". New Bioware calls out the amazing creator behind the universe's beauty. Old Bioware had a name for old gods: Reapers.
The scientific and technological basis of the original game seems to have given way to something quite different. It seems informed by a simplistic sense of morality. It seems to have one simple message: that everything will work out fine and that confidence is a viable substitute for competence. As long as intentions are good, good things will happen. It's like an adventure film made for children in which we can already tell from the first minute that every paragon of virtue will make it out unscathed. It's simply magical!
But imagine if there wasn't a second invader in Andromeda which our heroes could liberate the indigenous aliens from. Even though the end result is the Initiative gaining the upper hand over the Angara. Their domination is presented as liberation and cooperation. The initiative is only good when contrasted to a greater evil.

We got this!

A resolute "We got this!" is repeated ad nauseam by the cast. It's how I imagine the creative process developing this thing must have been like: overwhelmed by aspects of game development, struggling to see how everything should fit together, not understanding science fiction, fumbling character building, botching world building, misunderstanding open world design... but having a chipper attitude about it all, confident that it magically will work out in the end because the intentions were pure and honest.
A creative person is in a desperate position when he falls back on magic.

~
In defense of pitchforks

Andromeda hardly tries to earn the price of admission. To briefly summarize: the projected colonization planets turn out to be duds. Luckily for our heroes there are ancient technological planet size engines, called vaults, that conveniently turn the planets into the perfect habitat for humans somehow. Never is it explained why the planets became unstable. Never is it explained why there are vaults at all. Never is it explained why the vaults are broken. Never is it explained why they respond to SAM and the Pathfinder. Never is it explained why the Pathfinder is so important to begin with. Is it because he's the only one with a scanner? Or is it because of the deus ex machina causing Ai? Never is it explained why humans are the standard of living in another galaxy. It's an incomprehensible mess.

At the heart of Mass Effect is a suggested answer to the Fermi Paradox: the Reapers.

So Andromeda poses that all planets are human planets. But when a mouse sees a chunk of cheese wedged in between a plank and some metal wiring. Does it ever stop to think it may be a trap constructed by a higher intelligence? So I thought it would fare our Milky Way colonists. What if they found a table set for a reset? For Mass Effect veterans trying to make sense of it, it would seem that all of this points to a pre-made condition in order to steer evolution in such a way that would allow the Reapers to step in and reset the galactic table. Which is a theme at the heart of Mass Effect. A suggested answer to the Fermi Paradox: the Reapers.
Andromeda even had the ideal topic for getting creative with for real world issues, given the state of the projected golden worlds: Climate change. And it's not just the planets, conditions on the Nexus are dire too, limited resources pose a pressing issue yet never does it occur to anyone to recycle their garbage. Andromeda's comment or solution to this problem? Press the magic button that was enabled by the magic calculations done by the magic Ai in your lucky lucky head. Whenever the word 'magic' falls, I mean to say that none of this is explained within the fiction. The reflex to explain things in a creative way is completely absent. Contrast this with the original game that went through extreme lengths to explain itself and its inner workings in minute detail in its codex. Andromeda is content to leave much to the imagination. It has to, because much of what happens in this game doesn't make much sense.
The gaps in it's fiction is easier to understand when we consider Andromeda is a game where, lacklustre as they are, game mechanics are considered more important than story. The result is a ramshackle skeleton of open world mechanics that tries to fit the clothes of a much tighter gaming experience and comes off looking ridiculous. It's made from a checklist, not from inspiration. It's arrogant and wastes the player's time thinking what it has to offer is worthwhile. It spends capital it didn't earn. It keeps questions unanswered for a sequel that will never be made. It teases DLC that will never see the light of day. It seems it was assumed the Mass Effect label would sell no matter what carries it.
Its biggest attraction remains the concept of the return to Mass Effect. Something so nostalgia driven it has become the best argument for, very simply, playing the original trilogy.

~
Mass Effect is brilliant

_{Not Andromeda.}

In my lifetime I have played the original Mass Effect seven times. I discovered it by happenstance and picked it up almost on Bioware's pedigree alone. What happened next blew my mind. It happened in what seems to me now a lifetime ago. Indeed everyone who worked on it has since retired or moved on. it's a new world now but that doesn't mean it has to be open to be any good.
Which is what you'll find when you're introduced to Mass Effect proper. To me it's one of the best games ever made. So, I'd recommend you play that instead of Andromeda. Much like you'd advise anyone interested in Star Wars to watch the original trilogy. Or to stick to the Frank Herbert's books when it comes to Dune.

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.