Larian Studios Forums General Chat RPG Chat IGN on the State of the PC RPG

1999 saw not one but two huge RPGs. First up was Planescape: Torment. While there was much to love about this game, one particular design element really stood out. Rather than allowing the player's arbitrary decisions determine the path of character growth, characters in Planescape developed according to how they were used. In other words, the only way to get better at something was to spend time doing it in the game.

Flexibility was also the guiding principle behind the development of 2003's Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. The new game proved that the new 3rd Edition D&D rules are flexible enough to be adapted to new settings. (To be fair, just substituting lightsaber for sword and Force for magic doesn't seem to stretch it too far.) More significantly, Knights of the Old Republic offered a level of moral flexibility never before seen in any game. Nearly every decision players made had the potential to lead their character down the path of good or the path of evil. Those changes would be reflected in the story sequences and the reactions of other characters in the game. Discovering that the game was not only aware of the choices you'd made but would judge you by them was an amazing first for gamers.

The Character Issue
The PC RPG has plenty of surprises in store. Rather than outlining all the noteworthy games of the next few years, let's focus on the few trends that we'd like to see continued and developed in the near future. For the most part these trends continue down paths already laid down out by previous games. In other cases, there are opportunities for new pioneers to tackle subjects that haven't yet been adequately dealt with.

The upside of the looser system is that it saves the player the frustration of starting down a path that they'll later discover isn't terribly interesting. If you start out as a fighter in a traditional RPG and then find out ten levels later that your special abilities either aren't interesting or aren't effective, you've wasted a lot of time. Another bonus is that it makes the whole concept of character advancement seem a lot less arbitrary than it normally does. Suddenly discovering that after you've slain eighty-nine orcs that you can instantly either learn how to use a shield or ride a horse strikes some roleplayers as ridiculous. Knowing that you're gradually getting better at using a sword each time you swing it makes much more sense, even to non-gamers.

But there is a downside to this system. For one thing, characters who are too generic aren't very compelling. To be fair, the pig is particularly aggravating when thrust into the massively multiplayer environment. There's very little, for instance, to separate low-level characters in games like EverQuest 2. Some will argue that the early anonymity can be a compelling urge to develop more as a character but surely there's a happy middle ground between the "anything goes" approach of the open-ended system and the "you can never be anything else" system of most D&D games.

Morrowind for instance lets players create custom characters right at the start. Though there are set classes, these are really just suggested templates and you're free to pick and choose what skills and abilities make up your character. From there, however, the game assigns advancement points to you according to the way that character is played. A mage who finds himself swinging a sword or trying to pick a lock every now and then will naturally develop into a more rounded, unique individual, purely as a result of how the character is being used in the game. It still suffers from the problem of forcing players to choose an identity for their character before they know much about the game, but the fact that characters are still free to develop in other directions is a nice compromise.

Really, it's too bad that most PC RPGs pass over the potential of non-combat solutions to problems. You can most easily see this in the way traditional fantasy RPGs handle thieves. Rather than focusing on the thief's core abilities, most games simply put thieves in a combat support role. According to PC RPGs, you'd hardly think that thieves could ever be capable of much more than simply stabbing enemies in the back with poisoned blades. Building new RPGs that reward players who can spot and set traps, steal items from other characters, and use stealth as a significant component of success rather than a sideline, should be a huge priority for developers. We hope that the new physics system in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion makes at least some of these dreams a reality.

Similar cases could be made for spellcasters as characters who have the ability to alter reality in a variety of interesting ways. So far though, most if not all those abilities pertain only to combat. Finding a way to incorporate a priest's communion with their deity or an open-ended mechanic for a clairvoyance spell will greatly expand a player's sense of freedom and make these archetypes more than just the combat support specialists they currently are. Many gamers and game developers just have a harder time seeing the fun in doing something other than killing enemies.

For better or worse, the RPG genre is currently focused on the massively multiplayer format. Persistent world games make up a vast majority of the upcoming titles in the RPG category and we're seeing more and more of them taking on popular licenses to try to differentiate themselves from the crowd. We've already seen MMOs based on The Matrix, Star Wars and game properties like Warcraft and Final Fantasy. Over the next few years we can expect to see even more licensed properties with DC Comics, Conan, Star Trek, Warhammer and The Lord of the Rings all getting the MMO treatment.

While it's a sound business model to pair a well known license with pay-for-play model, it means fewer options for fans of the focused story telling only available in offline, single-player RPGs. Thankfully, titles like Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights 2 and Fable will ensure that the quality of the offline options remains high, even if the quantity of them remains disappointingly low.

Developers need to reach for a more reasonable middle ground where players can join together in smaller groups but still feel like they're involved in a larger community. Again, D&D Online seems to be tackling some of these issues, not only offering a more intimate MMO setting but also streamlining many of the bumps along the road for grouped play. Eliminating the need for players to run back and forth across the world while also allowing players to share quests with each other will definitely help eliminate the downtime that discourages so many gamers from joining up with others.

Fans of the action oriented approach taken by some RPGs are finding more and more that their tastes are better served on the consoles. Titles like Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance and X-Men Legends offer up no-nonsense action and the cooperative, social format that's sadly lacking in most PC RPGs.