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I can't imagine why any of you would willingly crawl back to me after Chris so kindly reminded you all what a real DA is like. Man, do I have you people snowed.

Anyway, I'm going to attempt to make up for yesterday's unscheduled absence by making tonight's column gratuitously verbose and overlong.

Let's go.

A little Q&A

Hi Erin, One thing that's become such a cliche we no longer even notice it is the experience system. I mean, we frequently have characters who are already supposed to be mighty warriors, jaded bounty hunters, or soldiers with a life of combat training behind them. So how come after a couple of hours of fighting rabbits or slimes they're suddenly twice as good as they were before? Another is the idea of HP. Even supposedly normal humans have the ability to have a sword thrust through their major organs, take a bullet in their head, or be set on fire with no worse injury than falling dramatically to their knees after a while. How about a Bushido Blade styled RPG, where a single blow can maim or kill a character? Then you've got equipment limitations. What exactly stops a fighter from picking up a staff and hitting someone with it? Why can't mages wear a suit of armour? How can a ring tell if its wearer is male or female and refuse to be worn? Why are ancient civilisations always so much more technologically advanced than the current ones? Did the Romans have mechs? Did the Greeks develop FTL drives? What do the creatures in dungeons live on when there aren't adventurers around? How do NPCs survive when stepping outside the village means getting attacked by random monsters every few steps? Why is the last boss nearly always an angel, a dragon, or a human mutated by power into a big tentacle thing? Oh, and since someone was going to mention this link, it might as well be me. The RPG Cliche page can be found at: http://guardian.simplenet.com/text/rpg.html Enjoy, Greg A. Lamb

I'm gonna do the spirit of Allan Milligan, and moreover, DA's Q&A origins, proud, and systematically tackle each of your queries to the best of my ability.

In most cases, the strength and skills of grisled war vets can so easily be improved upon because they've been out of the fray masquerading as aging uncles with far-fetched adventure stories (or working desk jobs after retiring from the frontlines of the Evil Empire's military) for so long their percentage of body fat has risen to around 30%, effectively replacing any muscle mass they may have had and making even ascending stairs a formidable enemy. Running around the world map after comparatively fleet-footed rodents and slimes, then, is an easy way to unclog arteries hardening after a few too many dark flans.

Regarding HP, there are a lot of RPGs where doing away with it just wouldn't work. Tifa, for instance, would have been rendered paraplegic (if not a non-living mass of coyote fodder) by her unfortunate run-in with Sephiroth were it not for central characters' uncanny abilities to shrug off devastating physical harm, and I shudder to think of the uniquely disturbing hentai doujinshi this might have spawned.

Gender-specific and other proprietary equipment is all a result of socialization. Much like [most] male children wouldn't dare bust out a Barbie on the playground thanks to our cut-and-dry gender roles, male fighters won't wear Minerva vests because they're girly, and women need equipment that might be strong enough for a man but PH-balanced for a woman, lest they elicit jeers of the "phatty dyke" variety. I can only suppose that something similar holds true for swordsmen who won't wield clubs and mages who refuse to don chainmail; they're the jocks who avoid nerdly pursuits like chess and the academics who wouldn't be caught dead at a pep rally.

Roman civilization was in fact replete with mecha, but the technology was not their own -- they ripped it off wholesale from the Egyptians, whose durable mechs (predating Khufu and Khafre) helped them to achieve their wonders of ancient architecture. Made from the earliest recorded plastics, these mechanical wonders have long since decayed in the Egyptian sun.

Dungeon creatures don't actually subsist on adventurers; they're merely defending their digs. Monsters form a complex ecosystem all their own, with many feeding on lesser monsters, some sustaining themselves on bioluminescent fungi, and others ... mealworms. Which neatly ties in to my next answer:

NPCs survive outside their villages by carrying massive bags of mealworms.

Lastly, final bosses are always angel, dragon, or many-tentacled human for lack of anything sexier.

There will be a quiz

RPG and cliche go together like chainmail and bikinis. case in point: if project ego is the future of roleplaying games, then why do you go bald if you study magic? why does dressing like a 'bad' person make people frightened of you, and dressing 'good' make them respect you? why does the game's plot involve your parents being killed by unknown assailants and your quest for justice? and why couldn't they have ditched the tanning in the sun and fields of rippling corn to free up a bit of memory for a female avatar instead of forcing you to play the boy-from-small-beginnings-with-great-destiny? because the revolution will be cliched. i guess we're suckers for them by now. ben.

I'm not going to argue your practical upshot, here, but by all accounts I've heard, Project Ego allows you to play with either a male or female avatar -- a small detail which thrusts your every word into a gravely questionable light. We're not fond of spies around here; you'd better damn well be who you say you are.

Hopeless family man

Erin - I just want a main character with a complete family. Mother, Father, a sibling or two that isn't insanely jealous and planning on revenge. Is that too much? Ehh, that's more than a little whiny, but hey. Actually, I'm a real stickler for classic guy saves princess plots. You say cliche, I say classic. Personally, I think the biggest innovation this could see is along the lines of girl saves prince, girl saves princess, and guy saves prince. Though I would personally prefer the whole hetero thing, I'm sure that any other variant on the standard romance angle, if done well, would be extremely entertaining. I guess I'm really just a hopeless romantic. Peace, Ray Stryker, well, maybe not hopeless...

Personally, I don't necessarily want to see the save-the-princess formula struck from gamedom entirely; I just want to see it shaken up a little. Nary's the time I play SSB:M against a pair of CPU players that I don't team Peach up with Bowser in a half-assed attempt to see one of my longest-held gaming fantasies half-assedly realized. Since Mario RPG I've known in my heart that the Koopa King and the Mushroom Princess should really get together. Peach just needs to get her goddamned contact lenses cleaned and realize how much more eminently desirable Bowser is than that short, soggy, aging plumber. Never once, I'd wager, has Bowser bent over to assess the clog situation in somebody's toilet bowl and treated all and sundry to an unobstructed view of his shaggy Italian crevice.

Ah, Bowser.... She's just a little girl, incapable of the pure, smoldering, unplatonic love I will always have for you....

Time is on my side

Mademoiselle Mehlos, I'm not sure if this counts as a cliche, but it's certainly a major quirk of most RPGs that I can't live without: nothing happens until you bother to show up. Big meteor rapidly descending towards the planet? I'm busy breeding chocobos. It can wait. (And it will.) Agahnim's about to suck the energy out of Zelda? But I haven't hunted down all the goodies in the Light World yet! And I'll arrive a second too late anyway... Need to be in the gatehouse at precisely 8pm? Explore the sewers as thoroughly as you like on the way, because time itself will distort to allow you to make it! I don't like to be rushed. I'm the type to methodically try every suspicious length of wall for hidden switches, check every last room and passage, find every secret no matter how out of the way it is. I even sat through the horror that is the Card Queen's Quest to have a full deck of TT cards. Call me obsessive-compulsive if you must, but I believe in being thorough; experiencing the entire game. That little cliche allows me to do that. Because hey, I've always got enough time... - ChocoMog ZERO, who's never had a chance to play Majora's Mask, but gets the feeling he'd hate it

Most assuredly you'd hate Z:MM, but at least time can be reset if you dally too long, which is more than I can say for Pikmin, which would undoubtedly drive you clear out of your skull.

...

Well, if I'm looking at games as an escape from the real world, then my favorite cliche will have to be the badass loner. So many greats: Ashley Riot, the GTA3 guy, Shadow. Sure, they're usually shallow characters, but people say I don't have much of a personality anyway, so it's all good. I can still overthrow cults, wreak havoc, and abandon my party without any prior notice with the best of 'em. On a related note, another cliche common to these characters is the ability to pronounce "...". I mean, it was acceptable in text based games because of hardware restrictions (I imagine "..." is equivalent to giving someone "the eyebrow" or some such look), but with all these new fangled talkie games, it can get a little awkward. Take Metal Gear Solid 2: "..." can mean silence, "Huh," or "Grr," . Hell, my friends and I were cracking up when we saw that that was the subtitle when she was crying. Hmm...on second thought, keep the ability to pronounce punctuation marks, they provide a good laugh when the story gets a little long winded. Torgo frequently says "I am the reinforcements," to which people reply "...."

I take exception to your negative outlook on "..."

I've been saying "..." since FFIV -- in fact, it's my family's credo.

All the world loves a turncoat

Hi Erin, By now, you've probably written up the entire 3-12-02 segment of Double Agent, but I figured writing about cliches is something I feel okay doing. My first favorite cliche is the one where the orphan finds out he is some sort of destined child meant to save the world. Haven't we seen this enough? Sure, its been spun on a lot of times, such as Zidane from FFIX, but it still remains cool. It has that romantic feel, and it is easy to use if you ever need to write a short story for an english class... Second, is the one where the bad guy dies. Yeah, we see it every damn time. Well, almost every damn time, as far as I can tell. I want to see a game where the bad guy becomes the good guy mid-game, or something. It makes you think about how faded that line is. You know, the one between good and evil. That would be nifty, huh? Third, the home of the hero is burned, or the hero is banished from his home. It is the same thing, really, because you never see them again. So, here are my un-cliches... things you'd never expect to happen in the game: 1)The hero dies, and the nerdy kid comes out of his shell. Think Raiden from MGS2, except we like him, and Snake would... okay, bad scenario, because Solid Snake never dies. Lets just say that Cloud REALLY died in FF7, and Cid REALLY had to lead. That would be close to this. 2)The bad guy becomes a good guy. Only Magus from CT is an example of this, along with Harle from CC. Lynx is a technicality, becuase Lynx switched bodies. I mean someone like Sephiroth helping the group against some eviler evil. Can't think of anything else that is remotely interesting. Instead, I will simply say this: Cliches are interesting, but what about un-cliches. Think about it: what would you want to have happen in a game that you never thought possible? "Each of us allows our feelings to be a trigger... Letting them loose changes our world, time, and history." ~Chris

"Good guys" and "bad guys" temporarily putting aside their differences to smite a greater evil is one of my all-time favorite least-done things, actually. I spent all of FFVII vainly hoping Sephiroth was gonna undergo some major change of heart and decide he'd rather fight alongside my group of dweebs alongside some greater danger than find the Promised Land and have it out with the planet. When it became pretty clear it wasn't gonna happen, I began to faintly hope for the cooperation of Rufus or a Turk or two.... and all I got was Reno's faintly supportive call to leave us be because he's a lazy sonofabitch.

Stretch of the imagination

Hey Erin Been a while since I've written, but snapping your spine does put a dent in your online activity for a while. ANYWAY... Favorite cliche? Love is probably THE overdone cliche in RPGs.. but personally, I liked it better when the characters were pudgey SD sprites, speaking badly translated text. Even FF7's cartooney poliginal protagonists did it OK.. but more modern 3d models, with badly acted voices.. just shatter it for me... While Locke pining over Daryl got to me, Squall whining about .... Heck, I don't even remeber her name.. just annoyed me. I think it's because the cuter small spites allow the imagination to fill in the gaps to your pleasing. When I see a well made graphical and voice acted character, all the little nuances are decided for me.. and if they aren't someone I can identify with, then it just isn't gonna happen for me. (ie: the entire cast of FF8, certain members of FFX) On the other hand, Cecil, Rosa, Rydia, Locke, Terra, and Cloud, and Tifa maybe... They didn't have quite as many little details filled in- this lets you imagine the details, and fill them in as you like.. (Like I've occasionally done in my art.. (http://www.geocities.com/obsidian_0/oz-rydia.jpg) So I guess my favorite (dying) cliche is little cartooney characters.. Obsidian Zero aka Joseph Picard

Heck, son -- you don't even remember Setzer's name. Or maybe Celes', depending on how you wanna flip that.

But your underlying sentiment was one I used to share ... and then I became a graphics whore, much like young people grow increasingly disillusioned with literature because it doesn't facilitate nearly the same degree of neural shutdown as television.

Déja Vu Dungeon Man

Hail and welcome back, Agent. My favorite cliché is one that I'll never tire of no matter how overused it becomes - the "déja vu dungeon." Ya know, when the first major place you explore ends up also being the site of something important later in the game? It doesn't always have to be the final area or anything, but anything that lets you come back to where it all started and find out that it's a much more singnificant place than you thought, I love. As to what we'll never get rid of, I don't think RPGs will ever give up telling us that if we "don't hurry, all is lost!" even though I doubt anyone buys that one anymore. I do think (and we're already seeing some of it), we'll start seeing even our naíve first-time heroes on the lookout for clichéd ways things could go wrong, and consciously avoiding them. Characters will take a few minutes to say things like "Hey, maybe we shouldn't break this ancient seal, considering that it's the only thing keeping our enemy away from completing his set of Sacred Objects," or "You know, ever considered that maybe the Wise Persons Or Beings who keep popping up to give inspirational slogans might be using us to do their dirty work for a darker purpose?" -Toma Levine

I'm partial to the Déja Vu Dungeon myself -- but for one small detail: invariably, the Déja Vu Dungeon presents you with a decent view of about nine treasure chests you can't hope to get at until 40 hours later in the game. Of course, you don't know this at the time, and put in a good 5 hours beating your party against the dungeon walls attempting to find the secret passages that must logically be there, since developers have not yet reached the levels of cruelty required to pepper a dungeon with unobtainable goods.

Till now I've only been fighting with 40% of my TRUE POWER!

Erin, Why does every(well, almost every) RPG have the bad guy always reverting to his TRUE FORM at the end? Bad Guy: I've done toying with you, now feel the power of my TRUE FORM, blah blah. I swear I can count at least 4 final fantasies(4,6,7,9) that do this....and I dunno how many other RPGs. So seriously..why do they overuse this and what the hell does it really mean? Can't they just have a bad guy who's a badass when you meet him, and still a badass when you fight him? Not the wimpy guy who turns into a badass. Is there some sort of history or mythology I'm missing? --lee *an engineer who's TRUE FORM is a drow with a big 2-handed sword* riiiiiight.

They do this for the same reason I field DA during the week and let Drew cover weekends: it's more dramatically effective to build up to some acid-spewing subhuman badass than just listening to the same basic twaddle all the time.

In the pursuit of happiness

Greetings, Erin, Although this isn't quite on topic (and is probably too late to make it for the March 12th column anyway), I'd like to ask a question of the readers. What's the most unusual experience you've had when buying or attempting to buy a game? For me, it was back when the first Lunar came out for the Playstation. Since it was summer and classes were finished, my brother and I drove to the mall around noontime, figuring we'd grab lunch and pick up my game. When we got there, however, there was a huge crowd standing outside one of the entrances. No one was allowed to go in, because, apparently, there was a fire. The mall was undergoing renovations at the time, and somehow or another a bucket of roofing tar had ignited. Now, the mall was in an L shape, with the food court (and the entrance I was at) being at one end of the L, the game store at the other, and the fire at the corner, which explained why I didn't see anything. Still, it was rather disturbing, and I hoped that they would put the fire out quickly. They did, and later than night (rather anticlimactically) I drove back and picked up my game. To this day, though, I'm the only person I know of who's ever had to delay purchasing a game because of a fire in the mall. MasaMune

In the continuing spirit of this week's "fun" topics, I say we go with this....

Closing Comments:

Well guys, that's pretty straightforward; even you couldn't screw it up. What fun misadventures have you had in the line of hunting down that latest gem for your crown....?

Tomorrow.

- Erin Mehlos