#wrpgs

Much as I love Superman and comics, one of my other great loves is WRPGs. Last couple of years have been seismic within the RPG industry between the major players of Bethesda, Bioware, and CDPR all stumbling in various ways, Microsoft buying up a bunch of the medium sized developers and also buying Bethesda, and the spread of RPG elements into every genre to the point they've become the norm. Thought I'd take a break from writing up capes for a bit and just offer my thoughts on where some of the major RPG developers stand currently from my point of view.

Still the kings of the genre, despite their failure with Fallout 76. Todd not being heavily involved with that seems to have allowed Bethesda the same excuse of "it was the B-team that fucked up, the A-team won't let us down!" that initially excused Bioware's failures with Mass Effect Andromeda. Further helping their case is that Starfield, their upcoming game, is their first new IP in generations, and it looks exciting! Todd has hyped it up as his dream game, we know part of the reason it's taken so long is they've finally made a major effort to bring their engine up to date, and there has been a shortage of AAA space opera RPGs aside from Mass Effect which increases interest in this.

For the record I was not a Fallout 4 fan. Shooting mechanics were finally tolerable outside of VATS, the level design was a lot more fun to explore without the green filter from F3, and I enjoyed the companion system over the follower system of previous Bethesda games. But the story and voiced protagonist sucked, the quest design was reduced to fetch this and kill that with zero complexity involved, and the settlement building was really boring for me personally. They were clearly trying to incorporate some of the faction mechanics and storytelling from FNV, but Bethesda's writers at their best aren't even on the same planet as peak Obsidian. F4 felt more like a Borderlands game than a proper Fallout game, and what's frustrating is that Far Harbor showed they are in fact capable of doing something closer to a traditional Fallout game. Bethesda always does this, the vanilla game is a stripped bare dumbed down version of the previous game, and then they put out a DLC that shows they DO in fact get what long-standing fans of the franchise like about their games (Shivering Isles, Dragonborn). Why can't they just do that in the main game then?

Getting bought out by Microsoft may not really impact BGS at all. They were the crown jewel of Bethesda, aside from MS giving them the funding they need I think Todd will still have free reign to do whatever he likes. Ideally "whatever Todd likes" means more RPG elements since now with MS owning them, they no longer have to continuously strip out more and more RPG elements in order to widen the appeal of their games. Keeping an eye on Starfield for now, let's hope it kicks off this gen for them with a banger.

What a fall from grace this studio has experienced. Their biggest success in recent years was Dragon Age: Inquisition, a thoroughly mediocre game that got completely outshone by Witcher 3, Bloodborne, and Fallout 4. Bioware was lucky to release it when they did, because if they had waited a year it would have gotten savaged by the press. But it came out in a slow year and was able to acquire a level of success. Lucky for them because the two games prior (DA2 and ME3) and the two games after (MEA and Anthem) have only sunk this studio's reputation deeper into the mud. MEA was a massive flop, their attempt at soft rebooting the franchise crashing and burning like a rocket to Garrus' face. Anthem was an even bigger disaster, their brand new IP meant to be the "Bob Dylan of gaming" instead debuting as a shallow Destiny clone that brought nothing new to the table except the flight mechanics. Bioware had always been known for their stories, but with Anthem it was the gameplay that everyone praised while criticizing everything else from the story, to the loot, to the grinding.

Many higher-ups at Bioware have left the company in recent years, and at this point I think it's fair to say that the only thing this current Bioware has in common with the Bioware of old is the name - even the logo has changed! Their priorities are different, one of the new heads at Bioware I understand was playing DAO and remarked that they no longer have any desire to get as dark as DAO did. Bioware doesn't make mature RPGs anymore, they make Ubisoft tier open world collect-a-thons that double as dating sims for their sex starved fanbase. Hard to feel any real enthusiasm for their upcoming games, they just don't seem interested in making ones that appeal to my taste anymore.

Dragon Age 4 and the Next Mass Effect feel like make it or break it for this studio, but people have been saying that for years, and despite multiple high profile failures, Bioware endures. Their ME remaster seems to have been aimed at reestablishing some goodwill with the public before their next new offering. I'm skeptical of DA4, the only thing that's keeping hope alive for me is that Weekes is taking over as lead writer, and I hope that means Weekes can deliver a good story if nothing else. Trespasser was a major step up over the other DLCs but DA4 seems to have been a game mired in development issues. At one point it was "Anthem with dragons", but then Anthem bombed and EA seemed to have given them more freedom after the success of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Guess we'll see what they make of it. NME using Liara to attract attention was intriguing, does this mean they're going to go with a canon ending, likely Destroy given the dead Reaper and no glowing green circuts? We won't find out until after DA4, and I'm even more skeptical of Bioware handling ME than DA, but I'll definitely watch the trailers for it and see if they offer anything of interest.

Were it not for Bioware's most recent games being two massive flops back to back, CDPR would inarguably be the studio that has fallen the hardest. Certainly they're the studio that's experienced the biggest whiplash with regards to their reputation in gaming, from the darlings of the industry and their fanbase after Witcher 3, to likely the most hated and certainly the most mocked after Cyberpunk 2077. Cyberpunk 2077 was supposed to be the game that showed they weren't just "the Witcher studio", instead they smothered their brand new IP in the crib by releasing an utterly broken game. Making matters worse was their deceptive marketing, refusal by the upper brass to listen to their developers which resulted in numerous delays (with the game still not fit to be released by their final delay), and then more lying from the heads about how they totally didn't know their broken game was broken.

More than a single failure of a game, what Cyberpunk 2077 did was utterly destroy the internal and external image CDPR had been cultivating. They liked to portray themselves as "the good guys", punks in an industry full of suits, developers who "left greed to others" as that one infamous tweet put it. Well nobody buys that line anymore, not the fans, not the press, and likely not even the developers themselves given the rumors that post-Cyberpunk internal meeting had developers ask the upper brass if they recognized the irony of their situation. A game meant to examine corporate greed became a high-profile example of the same trends it was meant to criticize. CDPR is going to have to find a new identity for itself now, they'll never be able to have people accept them as different from other major entities like EA or Activision after their recent fiasco. I don't think their situation is hopeless however.

They're supposedly working on the next gen versions of Cyberpunk 2077 and Witcher 3, along with expansions for Cyberpunk 2077. Bioware was able to start rebuilding their reputation with their Mass Effect remaster, I think CDPR can do likewise if their next gen versions and expansions are good. I think their next project should be a Witcher 1 remake for consoles, get the whole Geralt trilogy playable on consoles and remind people why they loved CDPR in the first place. Afterwards get started on Witcher 4, and maybe consider making a new IP. Cyberpunk needs time to recover, people aren't going to forget what happened any time soon, but if CDPR puts out good games again, I think they can return to the franchise in the future.

Don't really have much to say about these guys. They have found their niche since Demon's Souls and have faithfully stuck to that formula ever since. Sometimes they play with the formula a bit, as they did with Bloodborne and Sekiro, but every game they've made since Demon's Souls falls pretty neatly into the "Soulslike" formula. I enjoy the Souls games and am looking forward to Elden Ring. Would be cool to see them really try to make a game that is completely different from the rest of their catalog, maybe an Armored Core reboot, but if they want to stay in their lane then I'm fine with that.

Now here's a studio that I have mixed feelings about. On one hand they've been a studio mainly handicapped by time and money in the past. Known for games with sophisticated writing a cut above their peers, while also being broken and buggy, Obsidian fans have always dreamed about what they could achieve with the proper support. Their successes (Fallout New Vegas, Knights of the Old Republic II, NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer) are legendary within the RPG fanbase as are their failures (Alpha Protocol) plus numerous cancelled games that never saw the light of day such as Stormlands. Said cancelled games ended up really hurting Obsidian, at one point I think they laid off a 1/3 of their workforce, pushing them into trying to rebuild with the Pillars of Eternity franchise.

Pillars was a mixed bag, critically both games reviewed well, and the first sold well too, but the sequel did not sell nearly as much. Personally I enjoyed them both, but neither had writing of the same quality as Obsidian's past gems such as FNV (despite Josh Sawyer serving as game director for both) and looking up the current roster of writers it's shocking how few names from the old days remain at Obsidian still. The Outer Worlds, which hyped itself up as being a spiritual successor to FNV, reviewed well and I think sold well, but it seems to have joined DAI in the "well-received at release but was pretty mediocre in hindsight" category. Personally I question whether Obsidian should keep chasing the ghost of FNV, why not make an RPG in the Bioware party model like how they started out? No one is competing with Bioware in that domain!

I want to believe that MS money and support is going to finally allow Obsidian to achieve their full potential, but I have doubts about the talent left at Obsidian. They're definitely not on the same level writing-wise that they were back when they were putting out broken games. Is it just a question of money and time, or do they need to start recruiting new blood to breathe new life into the studio, or even try to get some of their old guys back? Question is on my mind as I wait to see what Avowed will offer, I'm rooting for them to deliver.

If Obsidian is Bioware's younger brother, InXile is Obsidian's. Obsidian at least was able to put out a few AAA hits, InXile was never able to do that. They had a brief foray into AAA games with Hunted: The Demon's Forge, but I believe that was a flop which nearly killed them. Contenting themselves with mainly trying to recreate the glory days of the isometric era - which to be clear I am a fan of - InXile never put out anything that garnered as much acclaim as what Black Isle and Bioware did, nor did they really build a cult fanbase like Obsidian did. MS buying them up offers them the opportunity to really break into the mainstream, their next RPG is apparently an AAA steampunk game with first person perspective. Being able to go to Obsidian, Bethesda, and Arkane for help potentially means this could be their first big hit. Intrigued to see what they put out now that they're no longer scrapping by.

These guys fucking rule and they're the ones I think are poised to benefit the most from MS buying out Bethesda. Their immersive sims are amazing, can't gush enough about how great Dishonored and Prey were. Sadly the sales weren't there to support their games, and they had to pivot to multiplayer with Deathloop and Redfall, neither of which interest me all that much. Damn was I disappointed when the "vampire game" Arkane was working on turned out to be a L4D clone. Given their last two games were disappointments, I'm not surprised, Bethesda was likely putting pressure on them to deliver games that could sell well. Fingers crossed Spencer lets them return to making immersive sims for Game Pass, I've heard rumors their next game might be Prey 2 and I would love to play that.

Each of the big three WRPG series of the 80s and 90s seems to represent a different type of D&D adventure.

Wizardry - dungeon

Ultima - urban

(As a side note, Fantasy Life's Plushlings are another good Japanese example of the Mr. Saturn/Moogle archetype that UT's Temmies are consciously modeled after, and that the Orz resemble a grimdark version of.)             

Let’s do a little retrospective comparison, shall we?

Character Creation

JRPGs: A single pregenerated character, or maybe a choice of two if you’re very lucky.

WRPGs: Hundreds of possible builds, exactly three of which are actually viable in the endgame. No, we won’t tell you which ones - figuring it out through pure trial and error is part of the “exploration”.

Character Advancement

JRPGs: Fixed or semi-randomised stat gains on leveling.

WRPGs: Flexible point allocation, affording numerous opportunities to screw yourself when the main questline assumes you've mastered a skill you never bothered to level up.

NPC Interaction

JRPGs: Press the A button to hear one of two stock lines.

WRPGs: Aggro the starting town’s entire population with a single seemingly innocuous dialogue choice.

NPC Recruitment

JRPGs: Journey with a motley collection of princesses, robots and talking cats, all of whom inexplicably have daddy issues.

WRPGs: Realise you can’t actually recruit anyone because you dump-statted Charisma; upon restarting, bring along your choice of Guy With Sword, Other Guy With Sword, Guy With Axe, and Girl With Bow.

Combat

JRPGs: Press A to win!

WRPGs: Press enter to miss (because a starting character has like a 20% hit chance), then promptly get critted by a rat, bleed out and die.

Exploration

JRPGs: Visit a series of towns in fixed order, each with level-appropriate gear in the shops and level-appropriate random encounters outside.

WRPGs: You only have enough hit points to survive one fight between rests; even the most trivial journey is a game of Russian Roulette with the random encounter table.

Storytelling

JRPGs: A linear series of cutscene triggers.

WRPGs: Theoretically nonlinear, except the devs never bothered to test anything other than the “recommended” sequence. If you’re lucky, going off the rails results in puzzling conversations that refer to stuff that hasn’t happened yet; if you’re not, you just broke the main questline. Again.

Documentation

JRPGs: You get a badly translated 16-page pamphlet, and a poster map with a drawing of a busty lady on the back.

WRPGs: You get a 100-page coil-bound tome that purports to explain everything, except the text is dry and over-technical and assumes familiarity with other, similar games, and 80% of it is inaccurate anyway because it’s based on an earlier build.

This was kind of an idea that Nabeshin implanted in me the last time we recorded, Episode 219 of IrrationalPod, which should be out very soon. He brought up how, in his example, in Skyrim, you did feel anything at the close of that story. There was no real payoff, mostly in the player themselves. They didn’t have some emotional revelation or payoff that gave them some kind of deeper gratitude about emotions or people or anything in general. 

To continue on Nabeshin’s example, you remember how you felt at the end of Chrono Trigger. You remember conquering the unconquerable and defeating Lavos, something that seemed so objectively impossible. It was an incredible feeling, from the emotions of glee it released in your brain to the satisfaction of all your party members, and also feeling like you made a legitimate impact on that world.

I think the idea has spawned off in me, to kind of general terms of how JRPGs take you across the whole world. Maybe in retrospect, Tales of Vesperia’s world is a bit small, and there isn’t a ton to it. But the reverse of that is only seeing the Skryim section of The Elder Scrolls’ world, and that being so huge and expansive that it feels like you’ll never see all of it. What’s the disconnect there?  Maybe is it that in JRPGs you stereotypically save the whole world, and by extension of that, you see the whole world? I think that definitely has a lot to do with it, and it also affects how much you, the player, connect with the story. 

Kinda got bored/frustrated/exhasperated with Thief, so I installed some more New Vegas mods and have gotten back into it lately. Been playing the phenomenal New Vegas Bounties mod which is a fully voiced and well written questline wherein you carry out bounty hunter jobs for a shady fella named Randall. It's a lot of fun, with enjoyable writing and banter with Randall, and enough opportunities for stealthy and guns blazing styles for your targets. There's a sequel to it which I plan to try out. 

I also installed Gopher's Advanced Recon Stealth Armor series for some fancier gear better equipped for a stealthy playstyle while still being very much in keeping with the Fallout universe. I went with something of a hybrid with my character's duster/cowboy hat look, but there are a lot of different clothing, nightvision, and helmet options to try out.