Lawyers, Guns and Money -
February 12, 2001 - Chris Jones
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed
within this column are those of the participants and the
moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the
GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive
material afoot.
Well I went home with a waitress, just like I always do. How was I to know she
was with the Russians too?
Don't say we didn't warn you.
There's nothing new under the sun, and nothing I want to talk about that
I don't get to in the column. But I'm not gonna apologize for this - I'm
ok with my complete lack of an interesting intro, and you should be too.
Onward.
| That's one smart CD you
got there... |
| Hey Chris,
Yeah, its really Drew's topic, but, what the heck. I've pretty much come to
the conclusion, that total freedom will not come until we get a Turing Level
AI. What was the quote from Sid's Alpha Centauri, 'we are no longer in the
business of writing software, but teaching the software how to think.' Something
like that. When, if, the technology ever gets good enough to have an AI taught to be
good Game Master, then we might have something, until then, we've still got branching
storylines and multiple endings.
Now something else has occured to me, and its sort of in line. with random encounters.
While I've been playing Skies Of Arcadia lately, and I've noticed something.
I've fought all the random encounters I've come across and its no big deal since
they rarely last more than a round, but with all the leveling up I've done,
random encounters cease to be a challenge, heck, boss battles cease to be a challenge
(and where -are- those monsters coming from? is there some monster factory somewhere?)
And because I'am this powerful, I am no longer a small fish in a big pond, but a big fish in a
small pond. There is nothing that serious threatens or challenges me.
What I'd like to see is less an emphasis on combat. I wanna see more puzzles
and traps. And I don't want to have to deal with fighting enemies while figure
out the traps and puzzles. Hmph, if there was a Raiders Of The Lost Ark RPG,
then Indy probably would've hit Random Encounters while even running from the
giant boulders. We could probably just dispense with this leveling up business
completely and have stats depend solely on what weapons + armor are equipped.
I want to be able to talk and negotiate and bluff my opponent into thinking that his
super weapon would have no effect on me, so he'd probably be wiser in not using it.
Am I asking too much? Am I?
Andrew Toth |
While I appreciate the potential of having really good artificial
intelligence in a game, I gotta say the idea leaves me a bit cold. If we
get into Drew's "total freedom" we get closer to something that's more like
a simulation than a plot-centric console RPG. Not that that's a bad thing,
it's just not what I'm interested in, unless the simulation is of
something truly spectacular. (Like, say, Niven's Smoke Ring.) On the other
hand, I don't even think you'd need a Turing-complete AI to have decent
amount of realistic choice in a game. A well-constructed rule-based system
would do nearly as well - "Farmer Bob hates your guts if you elope with
his daughter and/or burn his barn down." And that's something that could be
built today, with a sufficiently motivated developer.
| It's just the
intelligence that matters, not the artificial |
| Hey Chris!
THE solution for more freedom in games would be what Drew already
suggested : human involvement. In games like the upcoming Neverwinter Nights
it is possible to play online with a human games master. Thus, the game
becomes just like a pen and paper RPG, still bound to the limitations of the
software of course, but still...
I liked Baldur's gate's approach to morality as well : you could do good
things and bad things, and your reputation would change accordingly. If this
was expanded upon, you could become famous or infamous across the land,
creating (perhaps unwanted) attention. Player Killers would have to be
really careful lest they have to contend with every bounty hunter and hero
in the country, whilst heroes might make powerful enemies who'd impede their
progress from behind the screens. Something like that, anyway.
But then agin, didn't Sartre say something like "man is bound by his
ability to make choices"? Old Jean-Paul would love the current crop of
RPGs...
Sir Farren, PKK.
|
Doing any kind of gaming with an immediate, human game master has
it's own share of perils and perks, tho. Their ability to immediately
recognize and react to new situations is something you'll definitely
benefit from, but at the same time, a lot of the real human GMs I've
seen resort to excruciatingly cliched plots and not a small amount of
arbitrary judgement. Basically, the game can only be as good as the
GM him/herself is, which is great if they're the next Sakaguchi or
Matsuno, but that's not terribly likely. On the other hand, such a
setup would be a great training ground for the next Sakaguchi or
Matsuno, and everybody has to come from somewhere. Think of it as a
heavy-duty version of RPGMaker and you'll get it.
| From a different angle |
| In regards to Drew's subject, the kind of freedom I'd really like to see in
an RPG is the option to replay it from a different main character.
See, most RPGs use the main character as a crutch - all the truly big choices
and hardships rest on his shoulders, with all the world his cheerleaders.
Often other members of your team are recluses and oddballs going absolutely
nowhere in their lives until the hero shows up. But by changing the main
character every time, each character actually has a life that exists beyond
the obligatory backstory-of-20-years-ago.
Let's use FFVII as an example. When Cloud and the others meet Cid, he's
wallowing in self-pity about his missed shot at being an astronaut, and Shera
tells you the 'story from long ago'. If you could replay the game with Cid as
the main character however, he begins by earning his way up the Shinra
military ladder via ingame missions, growing ever more careless in his
actions, until a faulty oxygen tank he ignored costs him his dream. Which is
better?
Another bonus could be playing as the villian. As the saying goes, no bad guy
ever thinks they're a bad guy, and in the right hands a viciously brutal SOB
could suddenly become a tragic hero. Picture Sephiroth: lied to, manipulated
by his superiors, and driven to a quest for revenge. There's at least twenty
RPG heroes with that story design nowadays.
In general, RPGs would become much deeper, satisfying experiences if
developers changed the player's question of 'what's going to happen to him'
to 'why is it going to happen to him'.
SonicPanda |
There have been games that have done something like this, but never
quite from the purely Rashomon perspective you're suggesting. But
ironically, your suggestion would limit freedom strongly - the big
advantage to such a system would be picking up on all the small details of
the plot as it was seen from different perspectives, which would tend to
preclude any major branching. I also doubt you'd want to play with every
character, but being able to see things from the villain's standpoint
is intriguing - heck, you might even start out as the hero, and then switch
to the bad guy only to realize that, knowingly or unknowingly, everything
the hero was doing was actually evil. There's some real potential there, no
doubt.
| A blessing or a curse? |
| I took a look into the theorem suggested by an
irate reader and decided that is was not, in fact, a "flame" as you
thought, but was actually a compliment.
Q(FF#?)= .5Q(C)
The quality of the latest Final Fantasy game is equal to half the quality
of the quality of your column. Applying some simple algebra to make the
true meaning clear (stop me if I'm going too fast)...
Q(C)=2Q(FF#?)
The quality of your column is equal to twice the quality of the latest
Final Fantasy! Wow, what a rave review! Congrats Drew!
Oh, and about random battles...I don't mind them, especially in FFVIII,
when I could use Diablos' abilities to lower the encounter rate or even
turn off the encounters. Maybe having the option to choose different degrees
of encounter rates would make random battles less annoying.
-Vince XII the Math Major (how useful...)
|
Indeed, it is a real compliment to Drew that someone would write
that - until you realize that the writer of that letter was down on
all recent FFs. On the other hand, I'm a huge fan of the recent FFs, as
are many people, so I think Drew still comes out of the deal ahead.
| The Word of the
Metatron... er, Edatron |
| Heya Chris,
Just wanted to give an extra answer to yesterday's question
about the PSO and Paper Mario reviews and maybe some quick
insight into how the industry works.
Both companies (Sega and Nintendo) do support us and got us
reviewables, but support and support prior to retail date are
different things. I have Conker right now for the school paper
here, but sometimes games don't arrive until near or even after
the retail copies ship. Both reviews will be up within the
week, and I can satisfy curious readers by saying both look to
be very positive.
-Ed M.
|
As always, thanks for clarifying some bit of official GIA policy,
Ed. You're really quite good at that... have you considered going into
journalism or PR work as a career?
Oh, wait... never mind, you already are. Carry on, then.
| It's not that great,
but I'd gladly kill you for another hit |
| I would like to respind to the letter in yesterday's column entitled
"Failure Star Online, eh?". You should really read it first, it makes my
following statement much funnier. Go ahead, I'll wait.
OK. I agree with everything he says. But why can't I stop playing it.
WHY!!!!!! WHY CAN'T I PUT DOWN CRACK PIPE!!!!!!!!!!!
H-Box
I've lost my girlfriend. My grades are slipping. I'm now highly anti-social.
My family is about to kick me out. I'm hooked on PSO. Please, don't follow
in my footsteps.
(The preceding advertisement was paid for by Parents against PSO.) |
Aside from many different sources claiming that what really defines
someone in PSO is the size of their mag, I know very little about the
game... which means I should probably get a quick education by making it a
column topic. More below.
| Have lute, will travel |
| "In fact, I don't even think fighting would be necessary
to create an intricate, enthralling RPG."
This statement has me intrigued. Now I know this is off topic, but I had
to find out about this. I know you guys are proponents of Final Fantasy 8,
which I can't say I care for, but you seem to like the fact that leveling up is
basically a joke. New ways utilize an antiquated system. I don't agree with it,
but I can understand it. But, no battles at all? You're getting dangerously close
to this "graphic novel" concept that people seem to hate. Now I'm not saying I
disagree or anything....yet. But I'd like to have this point elaborated, if possible.
What would FF8 be without battles? A very long, boring narrative about a team
consisting of "a guy who just reached puberty and a chicken-wuss". (I loved Seifer)
And besides, without battles, what would you do with all of those left over Dragon Fins
and Ochu Tentacles? Any clarification would be much appreciated. Keep up the good work guys!!
Dragonmastergill
|
I can't speak for what Drew was thinking with this statement, but I
can make a suggestion as to how it could be successfully interpreted.
An RPG is a role playing game - a lot of people tend to interpret that
as meaning that you completely inhabit the role of the game's hero,
who's more often than not some sword-wielding teenage kid, but I'd
like to think that it's been expanded by this point to include more of
a 3rd person perspective. That is to say, the main character can be
someone completely different from you, but you'll still maintain
interest in them if the story's well presented. And given that the
characters are very different from you, perhaps they don't all have to
be warriors - we could have traveling merchants, diplomats, doctors,
scribes, poets, monks, you name it. None of these guys would be
particularly likely to get into a fight, or if they did, it's not
something they'd be doing a lot of. But there's no reason you couldn't
build an interesting gameplay engine around any of their skills (a
traveling surgeon might be cool) and still have the earth-shaking
plots and fantastic vistas that most RPGs revolve around.
| Gotta catch 'em all.
No, really. |
| While we're on the topic of stuff that we think should get changed in
future RPGs (like random battles, which for the record I really don't
mind at all) here's my biggest gripe with the genre at the moment:
Dragon Hunting.
Let me explain what I mean. Many RPGs I play start off strong. This is
good, think about all the FFs, in fact almost any Square RPG and you'll
find a fairly interesting beginning. However they tend to taper off
near the end, and the tactic they always seem to lapse into is the
classic forcing the playing to hunt down a successive string of the same
object over and over. To name a few popular RPGs that do this:
FF6: Hunting the dragons in World of Ruin, hunting down each successive
character in WoR
Seiken Densetsu 3: First hunting down all the spirits, then hunting down
all the god-beasts...something like 75% of the game!
Earthbound: Hunting down the 8 sanctuaries, also like 75% of the game
Chrono Cross: The elemental dragons
Any Zelda game: temples, temples, temples!
Secret of Mana: finding all the mana seeds
The list just goes on and on. Every RPG I play, I keep hoping that it
won't resort to this to keep the game going...and I almost ends up
rolling my eyes and going along with it because I have nothing else to
do or I know something better it coming. Seriously, I can deal with
random encounters, in fact I almost like them because they're action,
not listening to sappy or clichéd scenes between the characters (FF9
anyone?)
I really think Square (being the poster child for RPG developers) and
company should work on eliminating THIS, and then if they want to work
on the random encounters, that's fine, but this is a bigger problem in
my book.
- xmatt
|
Huh. You know, I hadn't really thought of it in these terms before,
but xmatt's absolutely right. I don't think rounding up the 7 Magical
Knickknacks of Whatever is quite as bad as tedious random battles, but it is
true that it's become such a common gameplay trick that I hardly even
notice it anymore. Looking back, I can honestly say I've much more
enjoyed games like MGS and FF8 that have more linear narratives... who
knows, maybe we'll see more of them in the PS2 era.
| So he was like,
totally, y'know? |
| Yesterday Drew was all like
"Right, but there were still a lot of artificial limitations. For example,
if I had true freedom within the game, I could say "piss on responsibility"
and do whatever I pleased. In fact, I'd like to be able to do that in a
game; part of the fun of a game is the escapism involved. When you make the
consequences for your actions overly realistic, the room for escapism is
lost, ruining the fun."
and then he was going on like
"Yeah, and that's exactly why I always hated those Choose Your Own Adventure
books, too: the consequences were completely unpredictable and adhered to no
form of logic whatsoever."
And I was left wondering if Drew was serious about the lobotomy thing?
'cause I can't see how someone who wasn't missing part of their brain could
go from lamenting the realistic (i.e. logical) consequences in games to
complaining about the lack of logical consequences to the reader's actions
in CYOA books.
-a headless rubber chicken from mars
|
Again, I can't really speak for Drew, but it sounds like he was
going for a happy medium between the two. In the real world if you get
into a fight, you're likely to get your ass sued by the injured party,
and sword fights tend to fall into the "one hit and it's all over"
Bushido Blade category, rather than the exciting 10 minute long duels
of Soul Calibur. So to an extent, games are great because they give us
an escape from the mundane... but they should still have some backing
logic. Those Choose Your Own Adventure Books were almost entirely
random - pressing a green button could end you up
fighting aliens in outer space, while pressing a blue button would send
you to prehistoric times, and there was no way to tell what'd happen
from any individual choice. Some people might enjoy that, but in general I'd like to have
some guidelines to follow, because otherwise there's no point in
making a choice - might as well just push controller buttons blindly and enjoy
the results.
Closing Comments:
Phantasy Star Online. I haven't played it, know nothing about it,
don't want it spoiled, but would love to hear your thoughts on it.
How's the multiplayer aspect treating you? Does running over the
broadband adapter really make a difference? Is it the size of a man's
mag, or the size of his heart that really matters? Let me know, and
I'll see you tomorrow.
-Chris Jones, fears the deluge
of mag-size jokes that are about to follow
|
