Design Blog

Sunday, March 22, 2009

On RPGs...

I'm working on adding the unreleased RPG that I've been working on at Big Huge Games to my resume page in the future, but before I do, I wanted to talk about some of the things I've been learning from working on one.

Now as a bit of background, I mostly played JRPGs before getting into this industry. As a bit of background, the JRPG or Japanese RPG genre is named as such because the majority of titles with this style of design come from Japan. Now there is actually a significant distinction in design between JRPGs and their counterpart Western RPGs, one which I had been aware of before starting this job, but never really took the time to explore until I started working on a Western RPG myself.

The main differnence in design between the two is that Western RPGs are traditionally drawn off of the old Dungeons and Dragons style tabletop RPGs and usually contain a high degree of character customization including having stats such as charisma, strength, or wisdom. Additionally because of this focus on the player being the character in the game, these games traditionally have more than one way to solve a given quest. If the player wants to open a special locked container, he could intimidate the person with the key, steal the key, pick the lock, or even make an acid potion to eat through the lock.

JRPGs on the contrary tend to contain fully developed characters who's stats and abilities automatically grow as the player goes through the game. These types of RPGs traditionally focus more on telling a specific and special story that is tailored to the characters given to the player to control. While there is usually some level of customization available it tends to lean more towards the aesthetic or battle influincing changes such as new clothes or a different set of fighting skills.

The difference between the two design styles of the game never really stuck me that strongly until my work on the Big Huge RPG. First of all, because I was working on a western RPG I was asked to play as many of them as I could, so I played some Neverwinter Nights, some Mass Effect and some Fallout 3, all of them well known and well reviewed RPGs. I was still playing some great JRPGs at the same time including Disgaea, Odin Sphere, and Final Fantasy, so there it became easy to compare the two RPG styles. Additionally working with quest designers to implement quests in the game also brought many other things to light that I had not previously considered while playing JRPGs.

Now just to be clear, I like both genres even though I have mostly played JRPGs in the past, I don't intend this post to be a declaration of loyalty to one genre or another, simply a design analysis of what seem to be the strong points of each and the reasons why.

The western RPG system has many positive aspects to it. The most important one that I see is replayabilty. Because there are usually multiple ways to solve any given quest over the course of a given game I found myself wanted to play games like Mass Effect multiple types in order to try more than one solution to the problem. Additionally, because the character customization allowed me to pick from six different classes, each that had a different playstyle I was encouraged to play the game more than once simply for the combat aspect (which I did). In the JRPG genre the solution to extend playtime like this usually comes in the form of a "secret" or "bonus" dungeon that has content much more difficult than the rest of the game which requires some level of grinding to complete. Even though I tend to play more JRPGs it's rare that I bother to play them more than once. The story and events don't change on the second playthrough so it doesn't seem worth it. Even though some of the events in a wester RPG will be the same on the second playthrough there is usually enough different content (usually as a result of the way I'm playing) to keep it interesting for a second time through.

Now this model has some problems as well. In a JRPG the designers know pretty much exactly how things are going to play out in terms of events and dungeon order. There are far less unknowns to deal with in quests as well which means that the designers can focus more on other aspects of the game such as the combat or item systems, or even the cinematic presentation of the levels. Western RPGs have to worry about odd scenarios such as:

- Many western RPGs are free roaming, how do you scale dungeons so the player is not overwhelmed?
- If the player can solve the quest in multiple ways, how does that affect the world and subsequent quest? Each of these scenarios might have to be built.
- How do you balance the different methods of solving problems in the game world? If a player with a high charisma score can talk his way out half the problems in the game, will he be frustrated when he is forced to fight a boss and is not strong enough?

These are all problems in the RPG style that need to be dealt with in addition to the normal tasks such as building the levels, and scripting the main storyline events. As a result of this I tend to feel that JRPGs feel more solid and cohesive overall. There seem to be more bugs and glitches in western RPGs that I've played as well, possibly as a result of the massive variation that can be spawned as a result of trying to create dynamic worlds that can respond to so many player inputs. A final problem with creating so much extra content is that not all players will experience it. While I did play Mass Effect through twice, I'm hard pressed to play it a third time, which means I've only really experienced 1/3 of the combat styles in the game, and I still haven't explored all the solutions to each quest. This happens sometimes in JRPGs as well, but the amount of alternate scenarios and bonus content is far less in general. The designers have to realize that a large chunk of the work they are doing will not ever be experienced by the majority of the player base, even if they play the game more than once.

So all in all, I can't say I have a preference between the two types of RPGs. They each have their own merits and deterimets and it's going to be up to the player which type of experience they prefer. However, as a designer I think it's worthwhile to be aware of these types of differences while working on a game in order to maximize the effectiveness of the experience provided to the player.

Labels: big huge games, design philosophy, RPGs

posted by Saikyo at 9:33 AM