nearly had a panic attack reading that tilte haha really thought Tim was about to say he's bored of this channel now, signing out. love watching his vids.
That title was a surprise to me as well because I had never gotten the impression so far that he was bored with what he was doing! Although he did say a few times that there's less fun to be had for him working on the games industry these days, like the Avoiding Burnout video. But bored? No! After listening I do understand his "boredom" though and several games have bored me out with similar issues.
I've always liked how the Fallout games have handled how your character gets introduced to the world and that includes New Vegas where you have amnesia. You might disagree with me on this, Tim, but here's why I think it worked really well. Your character has a mundane life and the game opens with you getting your brains scrambled. None of what you did in the past ever really mattered and your only motivation is revenge and rightfully so I think. That, to me, is how you nail amnesia. It's not about who you were but who you, the character, and you, the player are going to be.
One effective thing that hit me in Arcanum-often in towns you could ask about work. If you did so in Cumbria, the townsfolk would say "look around, Cumbria is dying! There isn't enough work for the citizens!" It was a bit of tell along with show, but it was in a brief conversation and a negative response to something that normally got a positive response so it stood out. Brief but effective.
Totally with you on preferring "scoped problems"; they have so much more potential to drive interesting factional and character conflict. (By contrast, it doesn't serve anyone's interests to literally end the world.)
Wasteland 3 does this really well - the entire story premise is basically 'Secure our supply chain' which sounds dull as hell but ends up forcing you into faction conflicts that are really interesting with outcomes that aren't always obvious.
This is one of the many reasons I love Citizen Sleeper. The stakes are either personal or effect people you care about. Even at it's biggest scale you know you are probably going to change nothing outside of that scope. You don't solve anything perfectly, it's a constant compromise.
Tim spitting FACTS! I´m on the same boat...no amnesia anymore please, no "the bigger the better" open worlds, no boooring monologues "why did i became evil".
What do you think of the idea of playing a psychopathic character (by the medical definition), but they're only as "evil" as they need be / you dictate? Their main motif of getting around being (rational) self-enrichment
I think that "saving the world" isn't just boring but also can be sometimes detrimental to the game design, instead of making difficult choices or having a specific argument to convince a character/faction to join you, it's just the most obvious argument "united we stand, divided we fall". Also, the stakes are so high that it's impossible to realise how much your character values everything in the world, especially if your game takes place only in a part of the world and the other parts of the world are barely described in the game
A smaller, more local problem also makes an evil path make a lot more sense. If a gang bandits / raiders / barbarians are threatening to overrun the town, joining the villains, climbing their ranks, and taking over works as an evil path. If the world or universe is going to be destroyed, even Evil Mac Evilman will need to do the good quest to save their own skin in most cases.
I think saving the world as a power fantasy is extremely dull; however, if it's a burden, curse, or painfully earned, it can be justified. The main character Aya in Parasite Eve is constantly haunted by a dead loved one and witnesses horrors along the way. Her saving the world feels earned by the end, and her powers during the game almost felt like a curse. She never asked for this. It doesn't hurt that she's a working girl in modern day New York. She's not some cocky teenager with a magical sword, but someone far more grounded, albeit with some '90s action hero moments.
I think it is only a problem when they slap you in the face with it. Countless JRPGs do it really well where you struggle to survive and then you end up in a postion where you can save the world. Games like FF14 with its painfully bad writing hit you in the face with it from the start and then you have a world that doesn't acknowledge what the MSQ defines. Early in the game it says you are the savoir of everyone with each city celebrating you and then you go right back to being a delivery boy its just soo poorly done.
@@lrinfiI was thinking about Guild Wars 2 in this where the bickering of the orders kind of abruptly stops because of the argument, but yeah this is a thing too. For example I've been playing Dragon Age Origins recently and half of the main "gathering army" quests basically choosing one faction out of two, and the other has to be killed
@@Blueprint4MurderI haven't played JRPGs so I'm going to agree with you. Same with FF14 but I'm guessing it has the same issue as GW2 original storyline which has similar issues
I love watching these videos! I am not a game designer, programmer, or anything related. However, I often watch your videos and take good advice out of them in relation to my own interests. I'm an aspiring musical artist. It's interesting to see the similarities between one creative process and another
Okay, but Disco Elysium utilizes the amnesia trope really well. It's not just to get justification for all the lore dumps, but to become Raphaël Ambrosius Costeau, the superstar hobocop.
I'd argue that Disco Elysium is more a subversion of that trope than a game that plays it straight. Yes, you've lost your memory -- but you also know exactly how that happened in the first place, which gives you a LOT of information on the kind of person you were -- or are. It's the difference between a blank slate and a slate that's only been partially erased, where you can kind of make out what used to be written in spots.
Obviously there will be instances of all these things that were good, otherwise they wouldn’t have become overused in the first place. It’s more of a list of things to be careful about using than absolutely never use them in any case.
I made this comment awhile back and (I think, don't quote me) Tim commented something to every rule has exceptions or something. He seems to regard Disco Elysium pretty well
I think the reason is it didn't feel like an excuse to bring the character up to speed at the same time as the player, which to me is the problem with amnesia in games. Rather, it was the low point in the characters arc, losing who you were and what you choose to become now IS the main question the game poses. Amnesia was just one part of that, along with the skill/personality system and all the interactions having that former identity looming over them.
Tim doesn’t review games, but I’ve always wanted to know his thoughts on Disco Elysium. The game does almost EVERYTHING Tim says you shouldn’t in an rpg, but it’s still an amazing game.
I learned real quick in my D&D games to not use "save the world" conflicts. It means that anyone that stands in the players' way has to be evil: there's no character decision where "Yeah let's destroy the whole world" makes sense. As soon as I switched to human-caused conflict (like a war between neighboring nations), I was able to create characters that made sense and were sympathetic on both sides of the conflict.
The thing you mentioned about some combat feeling more like "following a rhythm" is probably why I enjoy style/spectacle fighter games like DMC and Bayonetta, or really any game that emphasizes stylish combat I'm given the room to experiment and find my own rhythm rather than being forced to follow the same one or two beats that the game is clearly designed around
Tim I just want to say that you've been my favorite personality in gaming dev for a long time now. Going all the way back to Troika. These videos have really cemented in my mind exactly why you were. I wish more devs really strove for your devotion to player freedom and real choice. You mentioning how an RPG needs to react to the player really brought to mind Gabe talking about how he had an, in his words "narcissistic" urge for the gameworld to react to him and his actions, and how true that statement rung for me. When I play games I always want the world to feel alive and like it exists after I stop playing. I want to know my choices and actions affected the world and left a mark on the people living in it. It''s something incredibly unique to games and the games that do it are always the ones that feel special and important.
I wouldn't call it a "narcissistic" urge, although I suppose it can turn into one. It's perfectly natural in that human beings are social creatures with in innate need to feel a sense of purpose and belonging in the real world. Why should that be any different for a character in a virtual world? And, yes, "the savior complex" is not a complex those great leaders throughout human history everyone knows the name of exhibited in their lifetimes (though their "followers" very often have) and yet their contributions changed the course of the world they lived in the most unexpected and, often, delightful ways. "Art anticipates life," so they say, yet I don't see an awful lot of anticipation in art today so much as the treading and retreading of old, worn, familiar ground.
@@lrinfiAs I said those were Gabe's words not mine but it does touch on our need to feel the world respond to us in meaningful ways. That's what makes games such a unique artform. I'd also say that it isn't necessarily that the world validates you or lets you save it. Just that it responds to you. If you steal from a shop, maybe the shop goes out of business. If you feed a dog maybe it doesn't die and helps you in the future, maybe it goes feral and kills an important character. Who knows? It's just little things that show the world operates on choice and consequence. In Gabe's case it was just that when he shot the world the world should have decals showing he shot it.
I made a map in minecraft once with a story of its own. There are some oddities around the map to make the player wonder, but if you head west there you'd find an abandoned, old, destroyed castle and village. If one explored further they'd find a buried library with a few different books filled with lore and history of that kingdom and how the land came to be the way it was. It's totally optional to find, and for those that like to explore would find it pretty interesting.
Most things are written so that younger generations can have that "oh, wow, I've never seen this before" moment. For someone who's seen where many of the concepts originated though, it does indeed feel boring though. I agree. Story writing is the same thing as fashion or music though. Every design concept is just recycled every 20-40 years as a new generation becomes adults and haven't experienced it the previous time. I think we who saw the start of the games industry are especially spoiled in this regard, as we had so many _actual_ first experiences. Now we're at the time where things will just loop around again. Overall, this is just something we just have to accept as a fact of life. Everything old is new... to _someone_ anyway. 🤷♂️
I don't make games and have little desire to, but as an avid gamer I absolutely love watching your videos and hearing about everything that goes into making the games that I do play. It gives me a much greater appreciation for what you guys do and makes the games more fun knowing how much thought and effort are actually put into them. Every gamer should watch your videos.. especially the ones who always complain.. very insightful. ❤Thank you!!
Nailed it….the exact reasons I haven’t really played a game for 12 months & last game I was really excited about was 5-6 yrs ago. Been gaming for 45 yrs & looks like it’s coming to an end 😢
This, of all things, actually made me replan my upcoming DnD campaign! Sometimes tropes are fun, but the point of a scoped problem(s) really stuck with me. Thanks, Tim!
I have to agree with some of your points there Tim. I know how useful amnesia is in story telling but I wish I don't have to see it used again. I also not fond of merging multiple genres in hope of getting something new, it's not easy to do and it will end up messy or one genre overpowering the others. But that being said, it has to be understood that finding something new is tough and even if we did, developing it is not so easy.
I love it when Villians do a monolog and the player can punch em while he is on it. Also the common used Traits can be used as a twist: Why do you save the world! - I don t Save the world I just want revenge because one of your minions broke my teddy!! Great Video!
That first point is probably my favorite. I love low to medium stakes stories. Something that is just an event happening in a world that will continue whether or not the quest is seen through to the end. Usually a journey of personal growth more than anything else.
Thank you very much for this list. It is actually preferable to reviews :) One question I have for you is: What do you consider great examples of choice and consequence (from both your games and others) and how do you hope this RPG element evolves in the future? Thank you again for these great videos! Have a great day :)
This is why indie is such a thriving market. Innovation is the driving force behind a lot of indie games and it makes them stand out so much more than your average AAA game.
The first one is why I quite enjoyed the story in Cyberpunk 2077. You're solving your own problem. The world doesn't care whether you live or die. But while you're trying to do something for yourself, you're making an impact and becoming famous, and you also get to see subtle changes in the world that are a result of your actions.
Hi Tim - I haven't yet watched all of your videos (there's a lot of them!) so I apologize if you've addressed this before, but I was curious if you've tried Disco Elysium. I ask because I too often get tired of nonstop combat if so many RPGs - it's just about the only path to character growth you'll find in RPGs, so playing a game like DE that has no combat was a real breath of fresh air to me. It has a lot of character customizability and lots of interesting choices, though it does lean kind of heavily on the amnesia trope. But I really enjoyed it and would recommend giving it a shot if you haven't played it.
The amnesia part made me laugh. Becaus I remember watching Madnaloregaming make a review on STALKER, where he said "like most mid 2000s video games, you have amnesia." I had to pause and think on the games I played in/from that era and got the "oh god, he's right." moment. Soo, soo many games with amnesia.
Woah, been watching you a while and had no idea you worked on Temple of Elemental Evil. It has always fascinated me as a dnd game. So many great mechanics I havent seen since. Never finished due to the difficulty as a kid, but I mean to finish it someday
Biggest trope that annoys me these days is the sympathetic villain. All over movies and TV shows. No one can ever just be a remorseless psychopath or a delusional grandiose murder clown, they all have to be the way they are because someone stole their lunch money in the third grade or whatever. Whatever happened to plain nasty motivations like revenge or jealousy or just lust for power?
Today Tim shreds the Divinity series... ...and on a similar note I'm tired of "puzzles" that amount to playing Where's Waldo with some needle in a haystack item without know what you're supposed to be looking for.
i tend to think that the collective memory of the target audience of a lot of games is of a lesser scope than that of my own life. i've had similar feelings to the ones you expressed: i've seen this mechanic or trope a dozen times and it no longer has any life in it. however, i wonder if the game makers figure that they don't need new ideas, but rather new customers. those now tired ideas hooked me for some time before they got old. when the newest generation comes of age and they encounter this or that trope it'll grab them just like i was initially grabbed. it's a slightly depressing thought, but i do wonder if the industry has left me behind in the sense that it's no longer all that interested in appealing to me. each year it seems fewer and fewer games come out that truly wow me and with development time increasing that trend probably wont abate soon. as someone a bit further along the path than i, any thoughts tim?
I cannot emphasize how much i agree with your first point enough. I am sick to death of saving the world. I can only imagine how much worse it is for you, since you've been playing games so much longer than I have. I don't understand why so many writers (regardless of medium) don't seem to understand that personal stakes are always more engaging than universal/existential stakes. Hell, one of my favorite games of all time begins with the protagonist looking for their missing father (who was on an airship that disappeared) before spirallng out into a larger story of conspiracies and villains oriented around... a succession dispute in small backwater kingdom. The villain wasn't some sneering demigod threatening to destroy anything... dude was just a boilerplate misogynist upset that a woman might inherit the throne instead of a man.
what a great explanation..I also didn't like some of those types of things but I couldn't figure out why..what I really dislike the most is the yellow paint of shame, I'd love to hear what u think about it..I like the hand holding but only when it's really subtle, like breadcrumbs
100 percent agree. Especially snarky or sarcastic charcaters. Moments of sarcasm add some humanity; constantly sarcastic... why would I bring that guy on my adventure?
+1 to the “Simon Says” style combat. Attack window, evade with I-frames, attack window, parry, attack window. Pretty much any AAA action RPG has this now, probably because of From games. There’s gotta be another way, designers.
by the way, i such hate modern systems of level up, and absolutely love arcanum system. she was a simple but super interesting. you saw a high level magic or high level technic branch, and you think "oh, damn I want it, I want disintegrated spell or mechanic spider, and you go right to it. but now every games give you a ton of useless spell, you look at all these and think ... "I bored now"))) I don't want any of this. This is biggest reason thy I dream about arcanum remake... for a start)
I don't think sarcastic NPCs inherently can't work and I don't think the issue is that they've been overdone. The issue is that the writers who gravitate most commonly to sarcastic characters use that as a crutch and write the most nauseatingly unoriginal and unfunny dialogue. They think that the sarcasm alone is some magical layer that turns all the lines to gold.
"Top 10 things you loved from your favourite games and glued them together" This feels like so many games and why I bounce off of them so quick. They don't have a personal identity. They take things from other games or media and smash it in their game without totally understanding it. So we just get half understood poorly implemented boring regurgitation of ideas. I'm hoping to avoid such pitfalls with my own game by focusing on what's important to me specifically and my specific interests, while keeping it light hearted and goofy.
The saving world trope is just traditional storytelling, nothing wrong with that. Thing is, when the story doesn't somehow signal the utter hopelessness humanity has to face on a daily basis, that'll lead to the player not caring and even ask themselevs why even bother save this world? Example: this could be done by playing a game with amazing characters that you can see struggle against the state of the world and thus motivate the player to continue to fight evil or somehow be there to show and inspire them to fight against their nihilisitc way of thinking.
"If the world is meant to end, so be it. Let it end and be reborn." -- Arngeir, Graybeards, Skyrim Most players I've seen approach that with the attitude that that's...well, that's just crazy thinking, kind of missing the whole "be reborn" part. We humans tend to think of time, especially, in linear terms and strictly in terms of beginnings and endings, but, "worlds" (of men) and eras have come and gone throughout the course of human history and we're still here. What if we did let "the world" end and be reborn anew in Skyrim? I suppose we'll never know. We weren't given the option.
One of my biggest gripes with RPG's and something I think Obsidian does so well, is how much established back story they give the player. I loved in FNV that you were just a person put into a situation, like most of Obsidians games, they really understand that about RP.
" I'm good looking but nobody understands me *waaah" lol, thats funny as hell! Not gonna lie Tim, if you made a game that roasts tropes of other " RPG"s I'd buy it brother!
complexity for complexity's sake is one of those things where I both hate it and then play a whole bunch of games that are full of it. case in point - total war: attila. the western roman empire campaign of fighitng attila and 1-hour-plus end-turns from multiple small town battles in a row and "oh god who declared war on me *this* turn" made it one of my favourite total war campaigns of all time, but the town building mechanics were broken (oh, you upgraded your farms to fix the food problem? shame you don't have the sanitation for that, enjoy the endless plagues and public order debuffs, also Winter Is Coming so you still have a food problem) and you look up a steam guide with templates for making optimal towns that make tens of thousands more than whatever you thought was a good idea...
Omg is this the first time you feature a clip? It was a great timing for the content at hand😂😂 I think ur right about most of these, like the sarcastic npcs
I hate how most choices in RPG's either have no consequences at all, or give you a choice that is so mechanically superior to the others that you'd never choose the others. My favorite choices in RPG's have pros and cons, so it doesn't feel like there's a best choice and I have to actually think about what I want to do.
Same as with Movies. Saving the world from some unexplained Just-Evil-TM as been completely overused and also wrongly used. If every movie in your series (yes thinking of Marvel movies) has the same narrative of "We / I have to save the world - again" it just becomes unbelieveable, no matter how creative the threat / saving might be. And that's a shame, because saving the world makes for a hell of a movie (or movies) but it has to be earned throught the series and with complexity. LOTR is my favourite movie and yet I dont critize it for using an overused trope. Because "the Evil" is complex and actually to a degree within every character. And it is about defeating that evil within you AND defeat those that couldn't defeat theirs on their own. That makes for multiple interesting characters and plotlines.
8:30 For me, what comes to mind in terms of “combat RPGs” are JRPGs like the Final Fantasy franchise. However, what works in favor for Final Fantasy is that, through the art style and presentation, the type of RPG is made clear from the get go. Final Fantasy 3 makes it clear from the beginning that it’s a linear combat focused RPG through its opening introduction. The problem with some other games is that the linear nature is obscured or hidden from the start. If an RPG is gonna be linear or combat focused, it’s fine unless that fact is obscured or the linear narrative is boring. You can still role play as a predesigned character in a prewritten story and enjoy it, but what that means is that the writing has to be *even* better than an open choice narrative. Linear narratives shouldn’t be an excuse for lazy writing. It means the writing has to be even better. 😊
I think we have to be better about defining genres. I think it hurts games sometimes. It's hard to manage expectations when the term 'RPG' means so many different things to so many people.
I think this is an inherent problem with genres that probably can't be solved, unless you create a ton of subgenres, at which point the use of genre to describe something becomes useless because nobody knows or understands all the different labels. The genre debate happens everywhere, in books, movies, music etc
Hm, this might be beyond stupid but: how about having those "cliche" characters spread around a game where you can exploit the shortcomings and boredom of those type of characters? I mean like roasting the "sarcastic one" for his "originality" or having the "telekinetic" girl been bullied into using that power for your own gain, or even better, having an "Evil Wizard" in one town where everyone fears him like it is the black plague, but once you reach his tower you realize that he actually is such a Lore Dump that his ramblings eat away the will of his victims without him realizing this. I know is a long shot, but during the video I was thinking about this type of characters being so outdated that everyone else in the game would feel more dynamic and alive, making that group into the empty carcasses they actually are.
The concept i like the most is when you create a character, or have a character that starts out as nothing specific, but then you shape them how you want in the world you was put in, without the threat of something global or existence-threatening to happen, but with more human stories, more grounded problems, etc.
Yup. I've always dreamt of a big, open-world sandbox RPG where you're free to do whatever, without any big Main Quest imposing itself on everything. I think The Witcher 3 came closest to that, with how you could just lose yourself in the mundane "job" of Witchery, which (I think) would've been more than enough, by itself, to make the game worth playing. The main plot, such as it was, such as I remember, was also pretty low-stakes, as I recall. Just an old man trying to find his daughter, and maybe help her out a bit once he does.
Oh gods, thank you Tim! I get so miffed with MMOs and the unimaginative players who reduce the game to "rotations". Often, it creates a nasty feedback loop, where the players who play with rotations are the loudest voices, resulting in the game developer pandering to them and making the game even MORE rotation-based. It's completely irrational of me, but that Nineties/Noughties part of me wants to challenge them to a 1v1 in something like Quake and utterly destroy them because they can't cope with the unexpected. Then I remember I'm old and my reflexes aren't really up to competitive FPS games any more :D
Hi Tim, as someone who was born in 1997 I am a HUGE fan of the Fallout Series. Especially the older Fallout games, just wondering. Is it possible for Obsidian and Bethesda to work together on a Fallout game in the future?
I feel like todays games are too watered down. What happened? In modern games, you are almost ALWAYS the hero, boring. Why can't I be a villain? Hell, why can't I just be a nobody exploring this new world? Its so fucking boring. And you are 100% right. Its always "hero, please save us" and its meaningless. Also, one of the core pillars of RPGs is the strengths and weakness system. And yet modern games don't have that as a core aspect of the game. WHY DID THEY REMOVE IT? The whole "I have fire magic, cast fireball on fire elemental, fire elemental dies" WHAT?!?! Fire Elementals would be literally be immune to fire damage.... like come on. I had a guy argue that its "too hard to keep track of every strength and weakness of enemies or the player themselves" WHAT? So they are admitting they don't have common sense? YIKES. Insane. A skeleton is immune to piercing and bleed effects. They don't have any freaking skin. So use bludgeon weapons, fire magic, or holy magic. IT MAKES SENSE, you don't have to spend years thinking it over. Its simple to figure out. But there are legit gamers going "no its not" and saying "I just want to have fun" what is fun about running around and 1 shotting every monster/enemy? BORING. Which takes me to lack of challenge. Everything is easy. WoW used to take months of grinding to hit max level. Now in retail you can hit max level in less than a week of /played time. WHY? WHY was it dumbed down? Why did they make it so easy? I NEVER die in modern WoW, its basically impossible to die unless you aren't paying attention.... WoW classic, you can easily die, even veterans still die, because sometimes random things happen and bam, you got overwhelmed and died. I swear, I have a whole game in my head, MMORPG wise, even with a story! I would go with an Japanese Manga Isekai meme story. You died, you are being reborn in another world, or summoned by a god/goddess. The player would get to choose based on how they start the game. But everyone ends up in this new online world. And because you are new to the world, it makes sense that you don't know the story/lore of the world. So learning about it, is not only fun, but makes sense. So after being created you choose a major town to appear in. Inside their church system. So you appear in the summoning room. Based on how you started, the NPC there will speak to you differently. So someone who chose to reincarnate into that world, they will be greeted with a story aspect of "Oh, we weren't expecting anyone, we didn't summon anyone, you must be a reincarnation. welcome to the world of blahblahblah" and if you chose the summoned route, that same NPC will greet you with "Thank you for answering our summons, we need to populate our world with new people, blah blah blah blah story story story" its so easy. I could think this shit up in my sleep its so easy. From there, you don't have classes. It would mimic the oldschool way of Star Wars Galaxies. The things you do, you gain experience. You want to use spears, use spears. You want to learn lightening magic along with spears, use both. How to access your skill menu? It would be explained as part of the story. Perhaps you are given a magical ID card like typical Isekai RPG/Fantasy based shows do. And when you place that card on a special table, a menu appears for you to set stats and skills. Maybe you have a magic wooden tablet that allows you to select skills and such. There are so many ways to make it fun and interesting instead of a typical "press tab to open menu system, scroll through a million menus, etc".... your backpack. I loved the Diablo system of packpack design. You can carry seemingly as much as you want, as long as it fits your backpack. Perhaps you want to be a crafter, so you buy a giant backpack that reduces movement speed but gives you insane space compared to a typical adventurer. That's one idea. Another is simply to have everyone buy magical sacks that have different size spaces inside them. How they work would be explained lore wise and be fun to learn. The world would be open world, you can live anywhere you want. You can pay rent to an NPC city (expensive, but safe zone aka no PvP, same with running a shop) or you can live in a guild run city, where you can hire NPC's to protect your town. Too many MMO's don't have player run cities. The few that try do the most watered down, not fun version possible. New World for example. The towns already exist, specific factions take them over based on how much they help build it. BORING. How about withing a "safe zone city" influence range, a player driven guild can purchase land. Once that land is owned, you pay taxes to keep it (basic upkeep, money sink, fair priced based on size) and you can build your area how you want. You can give access to guild members only, invite only for non guild members, or a simple "pay for plot" system where anyone can live there. They can size lots how they please and lock them to any of those 3 options. so you could have guild housing where non guild members wont be able to build in that lot. And then you could have area's that are designated for anyone who wants to live there as long as they pay their tax. PVP wise, you could have guild wars where a guild destroys your guilds town aka raiding it. There would be a system in place with proper rewards, and destruction would be equal to creation. too many games that have building mechanics, its usually 100x grind to build and barely 1x grind to destroy. Like rust, you spend a week building your base and someone destroys it in less than 5 minutes. That is not fun or fair. I would make it fair. Discuss with the "team" and yeah. I have a million and one idea's, many to fix PvP aspects to stop trolling (killing noobs for fun because "i can" prevetion measures). There is so much we can do with games, as they are just code, but developers choose to go the most basic and boring route possible. It makes me sad. Maybe im just a dreamer and maybe autistic (even though never been diagnosed?) or maybe i just care about video games and have actual passion. I wish I could give a game development studio all my idea's. they don't even have to pay me. just make a good game for once. but they never do....
Yeah it's similar for me, I've played so many games/rpgs over the many years, it can get really annoying seeing rehashes. But I think the worst part about it is if you go on the forums for said game to vent or give feedback at least, there's sometimes a good chunk of people that just chime in and give stupid explanations like "they gotta appeal to the casuals" or "every big rpg has to have romances!".
I'm an upcoming author(hopefully), and i have this same feeling when reading books with the same story lines over and over. All it does is make me want to keep writing my book and show these mortals something new 😅
I have a feeling he's talking about Hi-Fi Rush when he brings up the rhythm game. One of my favourite action games of the last 5 years. Could also be everhood but I haven't played that.
Caesar didn't just ramble and tell you how scary and bad he was. You could get information from him when you finally met him, but his "reputation" preceded him, so to speak. You heard about his army and his followers and the things they'd actually done, you'd experienced them. So when he appears as this well educated, eloquent man... He's not a maniac.
He didn't have an issue with villain dialogue, but with villain MONOlogues. When the villain just speaks at you for an extended period of time for no reason other than they need to tell you why their evil. Caesar works because he's trying to convince the Courier to join him, or he's trying to intimidate the Courier into stepping away. He's listing all his accomplishments in an attempt to sway you, rather than going on a 5 minute diatribe in the middle of the final showdown.
The issue I have with most evil playthroughs is that it tends to be petty / kill all the things type evil. I don't think I can remember many games where the evil path is one where you manipulate or simply bluff your companions through the game to turn on them at the end. KOTOR did it somewhat (although I cannot remember the details, must be 10 years or more since I last played it) and that was fun but a game where you can talk to the evil companions and have them work in the background so when your pc does the big 'I have been playing you all along' and you can take over as the leader of whatever region/land/area in the game, almost the Palpatine evil kind of thing. Sounds like ToEE (I had a disk copy ages ago, never go around to playing it) might do something like that which is cool but I find it so rare in games to have that kind of path where the evil feels more grounded.
Hey, Tim. Your comment on the amnesiac protagonist cliche reminded me of Planescape Torment, which I think is the game that used the trope in the best way. I'm curious if you have any insight or anecdotes about the game and it's production since it was published by Interplay.
Neat video! I've been wondering. Most times when you refer to RPG, you describe western RPGs. What are your thoughts about JRPGs and other RPGs? Strengths and weaknesses with the different RPGs? (I do realize that many JRPGs are a bit trope-y, especially with the chosen one and saving the world. But still, would be interesting to hear it more in-depth)
I don't really like "saving the world" either, although a lot of RPGs I like start with something simple that eventually grows into "saving the world" or at least "saving the region." But I've also seen a lot of "the world can't be saved" in games that gets annoying. That one feels like someone saying "I don't want to save the world, but I don't have any ideas of my own." I actually like the varying good/evil endings in Infernax. Although it feels like the "most good" and "most evil" endings in that game are actually better in terms of, the story goes further compared to the regular good/evil endings that have kind of a false ending. It's also got a fun "redemption" ending, although that one borderline requires following a guide. But anyway, Infernax's most good/most evil endings have you fight big final bosses (different ones) for different reasons, and they tie into the good/evil.
Thank you for mentioning "Open World" as a boring feature when there is no need for it. However i have a question about Major types of RPG games and by whom and how it is decided. Like, if this game will be an isometric, or 3rd person shooter, turn based or live action, open world or smaller hub areas. I understand that it happens very early in the development, but what is the reasoning behind it and on what level it is decided. (Partly it bothers me because we are getting Avowed instead of Pillars of Eternity 3. And i guess PoE2 was not as financially successful, but it was a really good game!)
It may not be Tim's answer but a lot of that comes down to budget and resources/talent. Camera perspective is often dictated by the budget, first-person games can be more budget-friendly than third-person since third-person requires many more animations where the full body is animated, different/more visual effects (dust/dirt from walking), and different/more sound effects and/or voice lines (idle animations, sounds to match what the character is wearing, etc.) That requires a lot of time, talent, and resources, which costs money. Some first-person games don't even have visible arms/hands so only the swing of a sword or the recoil of a gun is animated. Isometric games have a camera much further from the player character and other assets, which means the assets can be simplified. Less time is spent modeling assets, fewer details in textures, animations can be faster or have less detail. It can also be dependent on the engine being used. Unreal Engine 4 was notoriously difficult to use for open worlds so many UE4 games had levels separated by loading screens in some way. Making first or third-person games often means the player needs to be able to see farther than they would from an isometric perspective, so there needs to be further draw distances and culling of assets in any direction the player can look. Isometric perspective typically results in fewer visible assets at any given point, so performance can often be easier to manage due to that fixed angle. These are all decided during pre-production (ideally) before the game properly enters development. These decisions are typically made by game directors and leads but some may come from higher up the chain depending on who is supplying the budget. Hopefully this provided some perspective. This is something that could be talked about for hours, especially with someone as experienced as Tim. tl;dr: games require talent, resources, and time, which typically comes down to the budget.
@@bloogalooga Thank you for detailed answer. But that would kinda mean that isometric games would be significantly cheaper to make, and also would allow much prettier graphics from the distance like it was in PoE2 for example. And yet we are seeing a long trend to move to 3rd person. I know that it is considered to be a better sell, but is there any financial data behind it?
I like open world games. Thing is: the open world concept can be done well and not so well. Part of the problem is the 'bigger is better" philosophy, imo. Bigger isn't always necessarily better. (The 'wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle' anlogy comes to mind.) As Tim pointed out, what's the point if the vast majority of it is empty space? The larger the world, the more space to fill and that space is generally being filled with procedurally-generated POIs. If you don't have an unlimited library of handcrafted assets from which those POIs are built, they're going to become very samey-samey very quickly.
Riding my horse around for hours in ER was painful. I played countless JRPGs yea the Hero tropes can and should be laid out in ways that you fall into saving the world. A lot of JRPGs do it well, but then when you go to mmos most do it horribly the worse of which is FF14 where after a few quest every main city celebrates you as the great savior and then you go back to delivering tea and cookies to people. Raiding goes beyond wow it also exists in Ultima, EQ, wow, and more the reason it is as you describe is because of 3rd party programs have completely defined each battle. It wasn't always like that you use learn on the fly, or get a description from a player that had done it which is why we use to wipe for months learning. Now the 3rd party app guys are so efficient they practically just organize the shuffled mechanics. A lot of good points nice video.
I wonder what you think about Pathologic 2, because it has a lot of the points that you said lol, but it's so different at the same time, I think it's a very unique piece of art that I really enjoy.
Great video, Tim! Villain monologues are the worst. My favorite part of Mass Effect 2 was the option they gave in a bunch of dialogues to interrupt someone to do something. And usually that something was spectacular and violent. I found it incredibly satisfying. I have a question for you about open world RPG design. Do you have a particular balance of quest content that you try to reach? Is there a process that goes into determining how long/complex the main quest is vs. how many sidequests there are and where they are in your world?
I still don't understand why there are barely any RPGs that send you to a different kingdom to justify lack of knowledge of customs or general world knowledge. Or at least put you in a prologue where you play as a child to do some world building/introduction.
![Megan Thee Stallion - Bigger In Texas [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/QxTkZTLWdo4/mqdefault.jpg)
nearly had a panic attack reading that tilte haha really thought Tim was about to say he's bored of this channel now, signing out. love watching his vids.
lol! Exactly what I thought when I saw the notification pop up. Phew! The sense of relief is real.
That title was a surprise to me as well because I had never gotten the impression so far that he was bored with what he was doing!
Although he did say a few times that there's less fun to be had for him working on the games industry these days, like the Avoiding Burnout video. But bored? No!
After listening I do understand his "boredom" though and several games have bored me out with similar issues.
I've always liked how the Fallout games have handled how your character gets introduced to the world and that includes New Vegas where you have amnesia. You might disagree with me on this, Tim, but here's why I think it worked really well. Your character has a mundane life and the game opens with you getting your brains scrambled. None of what you did in the past ever really mattered and your only motivation is revenge and rightfully so I think. That, to me, is how you nail amnesia. It's not about who you were but who you, the character, and you, the player are going to be.
+1 I like amnesia as a player backstory option and not as a writer's trick.@@omicronoverlord3533
hi everyone, this is tim. im bored of this shit now, bye lol
Completely off topic but you liking my comment yesterday! Absolutely made my day!! Me and my coworkers got all fan girly about it!!❤❤❤
The power move of liking the comment about liking the comment. Tim you're a legend 😄
@BasicWorldbuilder I call it “mega-liking”.
One effective thing that hit me in Arcanum-often in towns you could ask about work.
If you did so in Cumbria, the townsfolk would say "look around, Cumbria is dying! There isn't enough work for the citizens!"
It was a bit of tell along with show, but it was in a brief conversation and a negative response to something that normally got a positive response so it stood out. Brief but effective.
Totally with you on preferring "scoped problems"; they have so much more potential to drive interesting factional and character conflict. (By contrast, it doesn't serve anyone's interests to literally end the world.)
Wasteland 3 does this really well - the entire story premise is basically 'Secure our supply chain' which sounds dull as hell but ends up forcing you into faction conflicts that are really interesting with outcomes that aren't always obvious.
Tell me you haven't played Arcanum, without telling me you haven't played Arcanum.
This is one of the many reasons I love Citizen Sleeper. The stakes are either personal or effect people you care about. Even at it's biggest scale you know you are probably going to change nothing outside of that scope. You don't solve anything perfectly, it's a constant compromise.
A Buffy reference... I'd give two thumbs up if YT would let me
Just what I was going to comment.
Tim spitting FACTS! I´m on the same boat...no amnesia anymore please, no "the bigger the better" open worlds, no boooring monologues "why did i became evil".
Indie horror games are the worst with the cliched "You were a bad person the whole time." It shows a lack of creativity, meaning, and writing chops.
gotta love a kojima monologue about otakon banging his step mom and having a romantic relationship with his step sister
What do you think of the idea of playing a psychopathic character (by the medical definition), but they're only as "evil" as they need be / you dictate? Their main motif of getting around being (rational) self-enrichment
Fallout 1 Harold is the ultimate lore dump character for me!! Strictly optional, and delivered in a way where you don't even realize you're learning.
Came here hoping to hear about sarcastic NPCs and I wasn't disappointed. :D
I think that "saving the world" isn't just boring but also can be sometimes detrimental to the game design, instead of making difficult choices or having a specific argument to convince a character/faction to join you, it's just the most obvious argument "united we stand, divided we fall". Also, the stakes are so high that it's impossible to realise how much your character values everything in the world, especially if your game takes place only in a part of the world and the other parts of the world are barely described in the game
A smaller, more local problem also makes an evil path make a lot more sense. If a gang bandits / raiders / barbarians are threatening to overrun the town, joining the villains, climbing their ranks, and taking over works as an evil path. If the world or universe is going to be destroyed, even Evil Mac Evilman will need to do the good quest to save their own skin in most cases.
I think saving the world as a power fantasy is extremely dull; however, if it's a burden, curse, or painfully earned, it can be justified. The main character Aya in Parasite Eve is constantly haunted by a dead loved one and witnesses horrors along the way. Her saving the world feels earned by the end, and her powers during the game almost felt like a curse. She never asked for this. It doesn't hurt that she's a working girl in modern day New York. She's not some cocky teenager with a magical sword, but someone far more grounded, albeit with some '90s action hero moments.
I think it is only a problem when they slap you in the face with it. Countless JRPGs do it really well where you struggle to survive and then you end up in a postion where you can save the world. Games like FF14 with its painfully bad writing hit you in the face with it from the start and then you have a world that doesn't acknowledge what the MSQ defines. Early in the game it says you are the savoir of everyone with each city celebrating you and then you go right back to being a delivery boy its just soo poorly done.
@@lrinfiI was thinking about Guild Wars 2 in this where the bickering of the orders kind of abruptly stops because of the argument, but yeah this is a thing too. For example I've been playing Dragon Age Origins recently and half of the main "gathering army" quests basically choosing one faction out of two, and the other has to be killed
@@Blueprint4MurderI haven't played JRPGs so I'm going to agree with you. Same with FF14 but I'm guessing it has the same issue as GW2 original storyline which has similar issues
Your channel is a wealth of gaming and programming knowledge. Thankful I found it!
I love watching these videos! I am not a game designer, programmer, or anything related. However, I often watch your videos and take good advice out of them in relation to my own interests. I'm an aspiring musical artist. It's interesting to see the similarities between one creative process and another
I love how vested you are in player agency and the player having freedom. I heartfully agree with and love every syllable of this video.
Okay, but Disco Elysium utilizes the amnesia trope really well. It's not just to get justification for all the lore dumps, but to become Raphaël Ambrosius Costeau, the superstar hobocop.
I'd argue that Disco Elysium is more a subversion of that trope than a game that plays it straight. Yes, you've lost your memory -- but you also know exactly how that happened in the first place, which gives you a LOT of information on the kind of person you were -- or are. It's the difference between a blank slate and a slate that's only been partially erased, where you can kind of make out what used to be written in spots.
Obviously there will be instances of all these things that were good, otherwise they wouldn’t have become overused in the first place.
It’s more of a list of things to be careful about using than absolutely never use them in any case.
I made this comment awhile back and (I think, don't quote me) Tim commented something to every rule has exceptions or something. He seems to regard Disco Elysium pretty well
I think the reason is it didn't feel like an excuse to bring the character up to speed at the same time as the player, which to me is the problem with amnesia in games.
Rather, it was the low point in the characters arc, losing who you were and what you choose to become now IS the main question the game poses. Amnesia was just one part of that, along with the skill/personality system and all the interactions having that former identity looming over them.
Tim doesn’t review games, but I’ve always wanted to know his thoughts on Disco Elysium. The game does almost EVERYTHING Tim says you shouldn’t in an rpg, but it’s still an amazing game.
I love the slightly sarcastic, “Tim getting worked up”. Really funny, but also conveying very useful advice! 😂
It's a rant but makes sense😂😂
I learned real quick in my D&D games to not use "save the world" conflicts. It means that anyone that stands in the players' way has to be evil: there's no character decision where "Yeah let's destroy the whole world" makes sense.
As soon as I switched to human-caused conflict (like a war between neighboring nations), I was able to create characters that made sense and were sympathetic on both sides of the conflict.
Tim dropping the game design equivalent of T Pain's "Do something else!!"
"We got Dragon's Dogma! We got Dragon Quest! We got Dragon Age! We got Dragon Everybody!!! DO SOMETHING ELSE!!!"
The thing you mentioned about some combat feeling more like "following a rhythm" is probably why I enjoy style/spectacle fighter games like DMC and Bayonetta, or really any game that emphasizes stylish combat
I'm given the room to experiment and find my own rhythm rather than being forced to follow the same one or two beats that the game is clearly designed around
Tim I just want to say that you've been my favorite personality in gaming dev for a long time now. Going all the way back to Troika. These videos have really cemented in my mind exactly why you were. I wish more devs really strove for your devotion to player freedom and real choice. You mentioning how an RPG needs to react to the player really brought to mind Gabe talking about how he had an, in his words "narcissistic" urge for the gameworld to react to him and his actions, and how true that statement rung for me. When I play games I always want the world to feel alive and like it exists after I stop playing. I want to know my choices and actions affected the world and left a mark on the people living in it. It''s something incredibly unique to games and the games that do it are always the ones that feel special and important.
I wouldn't call it a "narcissistic" urge, although I suppose it can turn into one. It's perfectly natural in that human beings are social creatures with in innate need to feel a sense of purpose and belonging in the real world. Why should that be any different for a character in a virtual world? And, yes, "the savior complex" is not a complex those great leaders throughout human history everyone knows the name of exhibited in their lifetimes (though their "followers" very often have) and yet their contributions changed the course of the world they lived in the most unexpected and, often, delightful ways.
"Art anticipates life," so they say, yet I don't see an awful lot of anticipation in art today so much as the treading and retreading of old, worn, familiar ground.
@@lrinfiAs I said those were Gabe's words not mine but it does touch on our need to feel the world respond to us in meaningful ways. That's what makes games such a unique artform. I'd also say that it isn't necessarily that the world validates you or lets you save it. Just that it responds to you. If you steal from a shop, maybe the shop goes out of business. If you feed a dog maybe it doesn't die and helps you in the future, maybe it goes feral and kills an important character. Who knows? It's just little things that show the world operates on choice and consequence. In Gabe's case it was just that when he shot the world the world should have decals showing he shot it.
As if I couldn't love this channel more, now there are Buffy clips inserted. Amazing.
Man, one of my fave videos from you so far. I'm so glad someone (especially someone with an extensive background in the industry) has said this.
I made a map in minecraft once with a story of its own. There are some oddities around the map to make the player wonder, but if you head west there you'd find an abandoned, old, destroyed castle and village.
If one explored further they'd find a buried library with a few different books filled with lore and history of that kingdom and how the land came to be the way it was.
It's totally optional to find, and for those that like to explore would find it pretty interesting.
Most things are written so that younger generations can have that "oh, wow, I've never seen this before" moment. For someone who's seen where many of the concepts originated though, it does indeed feel boring though. I agree.
Story writing is the same thing as fashion or music though. Every design concept is just recycled every 20-40 years as a new generation becomes adults and haven't experienced it the previous time.
I think we who saw the start of the games industry are especially spoiled in this regard, as we had so many _actual_ first experiences. Now we're at the time where things will just loop around again. Overall, this is just something we just have to accept as a fact of life. Everything old is new... to _someone_ anyway. 🤷♂️
I don't make games and have little desire to, but as an avid gamer I absolutely love watching your videos and hearing about everything that goes into making the games that I do play. It gives me a much greater appreciation for what you guys do and makes the games more fun knowing how much thought and effort are actually put into them. Every gamer should watch your videos.. especially the ones who always complain.. very insightful. ❤Thank you!!
Thank you for putting up a video every day.
Nailed it….the exact reasons I haven’t really played a game for 12 months & last game I was really excited about was 5-6 yrs ago. Been gaming for 45 yrs & looks like it’s coming to an end 😢
I'm happy that Tim uses kilometers instead of miles.
This, of all things, actually made me replan my upcoming DnD campaign! Sometimes tropes are fun, but the point of a scoped problem(s) really stuck with me. Thanks, Tim!
I have to agree with some of your points there Tim. I know how useful amnesia is in story telling but I wish I don't have to see it used again. I also not fond of merging multiple genres in hope of getting something new, it's not easy to do and it will end up messy or one genre overpowering the others.
But that being said, it has to be understood that finding something new is tough and even if we did, developing it is not so easy.
Not a big JRPG fan, Tim?
Lol I don't think Tim likes some of my favorite games
J"RPG"
Love the subtle nod to Hi Fi Rush at 9:36. What a gem of a game
Is that Hi Fi Rush he's talking about? I thought it was Crypt of the Necrodancer.
@@DaRkPlUm Great games either way, though I reckon hi-fi is probably closer to Tim's radar?
@@DaRkPlUm Crypt isn't recent, it's from 2015
I love it when Villians do a monolog and the player can punch em while he is on it.
Also the common used Traits can be used as a twist: Why do you save the world! - I don t Save the world I just want revenge because one of your minions broke my teddy!!
Great Video!
Subverting tropes might make for an interesting future video. Or when to use tropes. Tropes stick around for a reason after all.
That first point is probably my favorite. I love low to medium stakes stories. Something that is just an event happening in a world that will continue whether or not the quest is seen through to the end. Usually a journey of personal growth more than anything else.
Thank you very much for this list. It is actually preferable to reviews :)
One question I have for you is: What do you consider great examples of choice and consequence (from both your games and others) and how do you hope this RPG element evolves in the future?
Thank you again for these great videos! Have a great day :)
This is why indie is such a thriving market. Innovation is the driving force behind a lot of indie games and it makes them stand out so much more than your average AAA game.
The first one is why I quite enjoyed the story in Cyberpunk 2077. You're solving your own problem. The world doesn't care whether you live or die. But while you're trying to do something for yourself, you're making an impact and becoming famous, and you also get to see subtle changes in the world that are a result of your actions.
Love it. Fun getting to see you get worked up. Cool to see the passion.
would love you to comment on specific tabletop games and their mechanics 😢
The legend of lucky boy must continue!
I did talk about Tabletop RPG Influences:
ruclips.net/video/bNf601IoBpc/видео.html
love when you talk about your time playing and running tabletop games, would love to hear you talk about running specific modules @@CainOnGames
Hi Tim - I haven't yet watched all of your videos (there's a lot of them!) so I apologize if you've addressed this before, but I was curious if you've tried Disco Elysium. I ask because I too often get tired of nonstop combat if so many RPGs - it's just about the only path to character growth you'll find in RPGs, so playing a game like DE that has no combat was a real breath of fresh air to me. It has a lot of character customizability and lots of interesting choices, though it does lean kind of heavily on the amnesia trope. But I really enjoyed it and would recommend giving it a shot if you haven't played it.
The amnesia part made me laugh. Becaus I remember watching Madnaloregaming make a review on STALKER, where he said "like most mid 2000s video games, you have amnesia." I had to pause and think on the games I played in/from that era and got the "oh god, he's right." moment. Soo, soo many games with amnesia.
The king is back with his great and insightful thoughts. Love your videos
Excuse my fantastic entrance It was in the moment for now is the TIME OF THE MONOLOGUE, YOU WILL SIT THROUGH THIS UNSKIPPABLE CUTSCENE!
Woah, been watching you a while and had no idea you worked on Temple of Elemental Evil. It has always fascinated me as a dnd game. So many great mechanics I havent seen since. Never finished due to the difficulty as a kid, but I mean to finish it someday
The fact that you have to do a 2 minute preamble so people don't take what you said out of context, or freak out in the comments is just sad.
Biggest trope that annoys me these days is the sympathetic villain. All over movies and TV shows. No one can ever just be a remorseless psychopath or a delusional grandiose murder clown, they all have to be the way they are because someone stole their lunch money in the third grade or whatever. Whatever happened to plain nasty motivations like revenge or jealousy or just lust for power?
Today Tim shreds the Divinity series...
...and on a similar note I'm tired of "puzzles" that amount to playing Where's Waldo with some needle in a haystack item without know what you're supposed to be looking for.
Hahaha watching Tim get worked up and almost physically annoyed by these tropes is so funny. But he's soooo right!
i tend to think that the collective memory of the target audience of a lot of games is of a lesser scope than that of my own life. i've had similar feelings to the ones you expressed: i've seen this mechanic or trope a dozen times and it no longer has any life in it. however, i wonder if the game makers figure that they don't need new ideas, but rather new customers. those now tired ideas hooked me for some time before they got old. when the newest generation comes of age and they encounter this or that trope it'll grab them just like i was initially grabbed. it's a slightly depressing thought, but i do wonder if the industry has left me behind in the sense that it's no longer all that interested in appealing to me. each year it seems fewer and fewer games come out that truly wow me and with development time increasing that trend probably wont abate soon. as someone a bit further along the path than i, any thoughts tim?
I cannot emphasize how much i agree with your first point enough. I am sick to death of saving the world. I can only imagine how much worse it is for you, since you've been playing games so much longer than I have. I don't understand why so many writers (regardless of medium) don't seem to understand that personal stakes are always more engaging than universal/existential stakes.
Hell, one of my favorite games of all time begins with the protagonist looking for their missing father (who was on an airship that disappeared) before spirallng out into a larger story of conspiracies and villains oriented around... a succession dispute in small backwater kingdom. The villain wasn't some sneering demigod threatening to destroy anything... dude was just a boilerplate misogynist upset that a woman might inherit the throne instead of a man.
I just started playing Fallout 1 for the first time and I love it. I keep coming back to it over the newer ones.
Completely agree with all these points. I notice more of these things as I get older and more picky with my leisure time.
what a great explanation..I also didn't like some of those types of things but I couldn't figure out why..what I really dislike the most is the yellow paint of shame, I'd love to hear what u think about it..I like the hand holding but only when it's really subtle, like breadcrumbs
100 percent agree. Especially snarky or sarcastic charcaters. Moments of sarcasm add some humanity; constantly sarcastic... why would I bring that guy on my adventure?
+1 to the “Simon Says” style combat. Attack window, evade with I-frames, attack window, parry, attack window. Pretty much any AAA action RPG has this now, probably because of From games. There’s gotta be another way, designers.
by the way, i such hate modern systems of level up, and absolutely love arcanum system. she was a simple but super interesting. you saw a high level magic or high level technic branch, and you think "oh, damn I want it, I want disintegrated spell or mechanic spider, and you go right to it. but now every games give you a ton of useless spell, you look at all these and think ... "I bored now"))) I don't want any of this. This is biggest reason thy I dream about arcanum remake... for a start)
I don't think sarcastic NPCs inherently can't work and I don't think the issue is that they've been overdone. The issue is that the writers who gravitate most commonly to sarcastic characters use that as a crutch and write the most nauseatingly unoriginal and unfunny dialogue. They think that the sarcasm alone is some magical layer that turns all the lines to gold.
"Top 10 things you loved from your favourite games and glued them together"
This feels like so many games and why I bounce off of them so quick. They don't have a personal identity. They take things from other games or media and smash it in their game without totally understanding it. So we just get half understood poorly implemented boring regurgitation of ideas.
I'm hoping to avoid such pitfalls with my own game by focusing on what's important to me specifically and my specific interests, while keeping it light hearted and goofy.
The saving world trope is just traditional storytelling, nothing wrong with that. Thing is, when the story doesn't somehow signal the utter hopelessness humanity has to face on a daily basis, that'll lead to the player not caring and even ask themselevs why even bother save this world? Example: this could be done by playing a game with amazing characters that you can see struggle against the state of the world and thus motivate the player to continue to fight evil or somehow be there to show and inspire them to fight against their nihilisitc way of thinking.
"If the world is meant to end, so be it. Let it end and be reborn." -- Arngeir, Graybeards, Skyrim
Most players I've seen approach that with the attitude that that's...well, that's just crazy thinking, kind of missing the whole "be reborn" part.
We humans tend to think of time, especially, in linear terms and strictly in terms of beginnings and endings, but, "worlds" (of men) and eras have come and gone throughout the course of human history and we're still here.
What if we did let "the world" end and be reborn anew in Skyrim? I suppose we'll never know. We weren't given the option.
One of my biggest gripes with RPG's and something I think Obsidian does so well, is how much established back story they give the player. I loved in FNV that you were just a person put into a situation, like most of Obsidians games, they really understand that about RP.
" I'm good looking but nobody understands me *waaah" lol, thats funny as hell! Not gonna lie Tim, if you made a game that roasts tropes of other " RPG"s I'd buy it brother!
As soon as Tim said one of his tropes, it immediately made me think of Starfield, and if you've played the game, your know which one.
One of my favourite things about Asura's Wrath was the ability to interrupt boss monologues. "Press X to shut ____ up." It was great.
I found that the reuse of Amnesia being a forgettable experience for you quite amusing
complexity for complexity's sake is one of those things where I both hate it and then play a whole bunch of games that are full of it. case in point - total war: attila. the western roman empire campaign of fighitng attila and 1-hour-plus end-turns from multiple small town battles in a row and "oh god who declared war on me *this* turn" made it one of my favourite total war campaigns of all time, but the town building mechanics were broken (oh, you upgraded your farms to fix the food problem? shame you don't have the sanitation for that, enjoy the endless plagues and public order debuffs, also Winter Is Coming so you still have a food problem) and you look up a steam guide with templates for making optimal towns that make tens of thousands more than whatever you thought was a good idea...
The comparative simplicity of the Charlemagne expansion is one of the reasons I enjoyed it more than the base game.
@@Esquarious it was a direct preview of the total warhammer system and it really paid off
Omg is this the first time you feature a clip? It was a great timing for the content at hand😂😂 I think ur right about most of these, like the sarcastic npcs
I hate how most choices in RPG's either have no consequences at all, or give you a choice that is so mechanically superior to the others that you'd never choose the others. My favorite choices in RPG's have pros and cons, so it doesn't feel like there's a best choice and I have to actually think about what I want to do.
I think you're better at the 13 min mark -- when the "riled up" part starts to show the passion behind the words.
Same as with Movies.
Saving the world from some unexplained Just-Evil-TM as been completely overused and also wrongly used. If every movie in your series (yes thinking of Marvel movies) has the same narrative of "We / I have to save the world - again" it just becomes unbelieveable, no matter how creative the threat / saving might be.
And that's a shame, because saving the world makes for a hell of a movie (or movies) but it has to be earned throught the series and with complexity.
LOTR is my favourite movie and yet I dont critize it for using an overused trope. Because "the Evil" is complex and actually to a degree within every character. And it is about defeating that evil within you AND defeat those that couldn't defeat theirs on their own. That makes for multiple interesting characters and plotlines.
And yeah I am also bored with games. And a lot of artstyles are very indistincteable too.
I love your view on needing to read books or other side information sources to solve puzzles or fulfill quests. 👍
Very refreshing take!! I was afraid "industry people" just enjoyed this kind of stuff and I was the only one going mental haywire about it
Uncle Tim started memeing! We are truly blessed today!
8:30 For me, what comes to mind in terms of “combat RPGs” are JRPGs like the Final Fantasy franchise. However, what works in favor for Final Fantasy is that, through the art style and presentation, the type of RPG is made clear from the get go.
Final Fantasy 3 makes it clear from the beginning that it’s a linear combat focused RPG through its opening introduction. The problem with some other games is that the linear nature is obscured or hidden from the start. If an RPG is gonna be linear or combat focused, it’s fine unless that fact is obscured or the linear narrative is boring.
You can still role play as a predesigned character in a prewritten story and enjoy it, but what that means is that the writing has to be *even* better than an open choice narrative.
Linear narratives shouldn’t be an excuse for lazy writing. It means the writing has to be even better. 😊
I think we have to be better about defining genres. I think it hurts games sometimes. It's hard to manage expectations when the term 'RPG' means so many different things to so many people.
I think this is an inherent problem with genres that probably can't be solved, unless you create a ton of subgenres, at which point the use of genre to describe something becomes useless because nobody knows or understands all the different labels. The genre debate happens everywhere, in books, movies, music etc
Hm, this might be beyond stupid but: how about having those "cliche" characters spread around a game where you can exploit the shortcomings and boredom of those type of characters? I mean like roasting the "sarcastic one" for his "originality" or having the "telekinetic" girl been bullied into using that power for your own gain, or even better, having an "Evil Wizard" in one town where everyone fears him like it is the black plague, but once you reach his tower you realize that he actually is such a Lore Dump that his ramblings eat away the will of his victims without him realizing this.
I know is a long shot, but during the video I was thinking about this type of characters being so outdated that everyone else in the game would feel more dynamic and alive, making that group into the empty carcasses they actually are.
It's so fun to be Evil!
It's oddly overlooked in games.
The concept i like the most is when you create a character, or have a character that starts out as nothing specific, but then you shape them how you want in the world you was put in, without the threat of something global or existence-threatening to happen, but with more human stories, more grounded problems, etc.
Yup. I've always dreamt of a big, open-world sandbox RPG where you're free to do whatever, without any big Main Quest imposing itself on everything. I think The Witcher 3 came closest to that, with how you could just lose yourself in the mundane "job" of Witchery, which (I think) would've been more than enough, by itself, to make the game worth playing.
The main plot, such as it was, such as I remember, was also pretty low-stakes, as I recall. Just an old man trying to find his daughter, and maybe help her out a bit once he does.
@@Netherfly i had KCD in mind when i wrote this as well
I think I've done all of these as a younger dev, haha! Will definitely mix it up from here on.
Oh gods, thank you Tim!
I get so miffed with MMOs and the unimaginative players who reduce the game to "rotations". Often, it creates a nasty feedback loop, where the players who play with rotations are the loudest voices, resulting in the game developer pandering to them and making the game even MORE rotation-based.
It's completely irrational of me, but that Nineties/Noughties part of me wants to challenge them to a 1v1 in something like Quake and utterly destroy them because they can't cope with the unexpected.
Then I remember I'm old and my reflexes aren't really up to competitive FPS games any more :D
Team ”guessed the reference from the title”, although I had the flaying in mind.
Hi Tim, as someone who was born in 1997 I am a HUGE fan of the Fallout Series. Especially the older Fallout games, just wondering. Is it possible for Obsidian and Bethesda to work together on a Fallout game in the future?
i like ur way ofcommunikation. it a realy previsous language but it never dry and feels always natural
I feel like todays games are too watered down. What happened? In modern games, you are almost ALWAYS the hero, boring. Why can't I be a villain? Hell, why can't I just be a nobody exploring this new world? Its so fucking boring. And you are 100% right. Its always "hero, please save us" and its meaningless.
Also, one of the core pillars of RPGs is the strengths and weakness system. And yet modern games don't have that as a core aspect of the game. WHY DID THEY REMOVE IT? The whole "I have fire magic, cast fireball on fire elemental, fire elemental dies" WHAT?!?! Fire Elementals would be literally be immune to fire damage.... like come on. I had a guy argue that its "too hard to keep track of every strength and weakness of enemies or the player themselves" WHAT? So they are admitting they don't have common sense? YIKES. Insane. A skeleton is immune to piercing and bleed effects. They don't have any freaking skin. So use bludgeon weapons, fire magic, or holy magic. IT MAKES SENSE, you don't have to spend years thinking it over. Its simple to figure out. But there are legit gamers going "no its not" and saying "I just want to have fun" what is fun about running around and 1 shotting every monster/enemy? BORING.
Which takes me to lack of challenge. Everything is easy. WoW used to take months of grinding to hit max level. Now in retail you can hit max level in less than a week of /played time. WHY? WHY was it dumbed down? Why did they make it so easy? I NEVER die in modern WoW, its basically impossible to die unless you aren't paying attention.... WoW classic, you can easily die, even veterans still die, because sometimes random things happen and bam, you got overwhelmed and died.
I swear, I have a whole game in my head, MMORPG wise, even with a story! I would go with an Japanese Manga Isekai meme story. You died, you are being reborn in another world, or summoned by a god/goddess. The player would get to choose based on how they start the game. But everyone ends up in this new online world. And because you are new to the world, it makes sense that you don't know the story/lore of the world. So learning about it, is not only fun, but makes sense. So after being created you choose a major town to appear in. Inside their church system. So you appear in the summoning room. Based on how you started, the NPC there will speak to you differently. So someone who chose to reincarnate into that world, they will be greeted with a story aspect of "Oh, we weren't expecting anyone, we didn't summon anyone, you must be a reincarnation. welcome to the world of blahblahblah" and if you chose the summoned route, that same NPC will greet you with "Thank you for answering our summons, we need to populate our world with new people, blah blah blah blah story story story" its so easy. I could think this shit up in my sleep its so easy.
From there, you don't have classes. It would mimic the oldschool way of Star Wars Galaxies. The things you do, you gain experience. You want to use spears, use spears. You want to learn lightening magic along with spears, use both. How to access your skill menu? It would be explained as part of the story. Perhaps you are given a magical ID card like typical Isekai RPG/Fantasy based shows do. And when you place that card on a special table, a menu appears for you to set stats and skills. Maybe you have a magic wooden tablet that allows you to select skills and such. There are so many ways to make it fun and interesting instead of a typical "press tab to open menu system, scroll through a million menus, etc".... your backpack. I loved the Diablo system of packpack design. You can carry seemingly as much as you want, as long as it fits your backpack. Perhaps you want to be a crafter, so you buy a giant backpack that reduces movement speed but gives you insane space compared to a typical adventurer. That's one idea. Another is simply to have everyone buy magical sacks that have different size spaces inside them. How they work would be explained lore wise and be fun to learn. The world would be open world, you can live anywhere you want. You can pay rent to an NPC city (expensive, but safe zone aka no PvP, same with running a shop) or you can live in a guild run city, where you can hire NPC's to protect your town. Too many MMO's don't have player run cities. The few that try do the most watered down, not fun version possible. New World for example. The towns already exist, specific factions take them over based on how much they help build it. BORING. How about withing a "safe zone city" influence range, a player driven guild can purchase land. Once that land is owned, you pay taxes to keep it (basic upkeep, money sink, fair priced based on size) and you can build your area how you want. You can give access to guild members only, invite only for non guild members, or a simple "pay for plot" system where anyone can live there. They can size lots how they please and lock them to any of those 3 options. so you could have guild housing where non guild members wont be able to build in that lot. And then you could have area's that are designated for anyone who wants to live there as long as they pay their tax. PVP wise, you could have guild wars where a guild destroys your guilds town aka raiding it. There would be a system in place with proper rewards, and destruction would be equal to creation. too many games that have building mechanics, its usually 100x grind to build and barely 1x grind to destroy. Like rust, you spend a week building your base and someone destroys it in less than 5 minutes. That is not fun or fair. I would make it fair. Discuss with the "team" and yeah.
I have a million and one idea's, many to fix PvP aspects to stop trolling (killing noobs for fun because "i can" prevetion measures). There is so much we can do with games, as they are just code, but developers choose to go the most basic and boring route possible. It makes me sad. Maybe im just a dreamer and maybe autistic (even though never been diagnosed?) or maybe i just care about video games and have actual passion. I wish I could give a game development studio all my idea's. they don't even have to pay me. just make a good game for once. but they never do....
Yeah it's similar for me, I've played so many games/rpgs over the many years, it can get really annoying seeing rehashes.
But I think the worst part about it is if you go on the forums for said game to vent or give feedback at least, there's sometimes a good chunk of people that just chime in and give stupid explanations like "they gotta appeal to the casuals" or "every big rpg has to have romances!".
Thumbs up for Dark Willow.
I'm an upcoming author(hopefully), and i have this same feeling when reading books with the same story lines over and over. All it does is make me want to keep writing my book and show these mortals something new 😅
I have a feeling he's talking about Hi-Fi Rush when he brings up the rhythm game. One of my favourite action games of the last 5 years. Could also be everhood but I haven't played that.
Villain dialogue can be great though, like Caesar meeting Courier in New Vegas.
I still wish that high INT Courier could have a real dialogue option where they point out that Caesar didn't actually read Hegel though.
Caesar didn't just ramble and tell you how scary and bad he was. You could get information from him when you finally met him, but his "reputation" preceded him, so to speak. You heard about his army and his followers and the things they'd actually done, you'd experienced them. So when he appears as this well educated, eloquent man... He's not a maniac.
He didn't have an issue with villain dialogue, but with villain MONOlogues. When the villain just speaks at you for an extended period of time for no reason other than they need to tell you why their evil. Caesar works because he's trying to convince the Courier to join him, or he's trying to intimidate the Courier into stepping away. He's listing all his accomplishments in an attempt to sway you, rather than going on a 5 minute diatribe in the middle of the final showdown.
Try to get the point he's making, not the point you want to hear. BORED of comments like yours everywhere on the internet.
@@brettabraham You saved me some typing,
The issue I have with most evil playthroughs is that it tends to be petty / kill all the things type evil. I don't think I can remember many games where the evil path is one where you manipulate or simply bluff your companions through the game to turn on them at the end.
KOTOR did it somewhat (although I cannot remember the details, must be 10 years or more since I last played it) and that was fun but a game where you can talk to the evil companions and have them work in the background so when your pc does the big 'I have been playing you all along' and you can take over as the leader of whatever region/land/area in the game, almost the Palpatine evil kind of thing.
Sounds like ToEE (I had a disk copy ages ago, never go around to playing it) might do something like that which is cool but I find it so rare in games to have that kind of path where the evil feels more grounded.
Hey, Tim. Your comment on the amnesiac protagonist cliche reminded me of Planescape Torment, which I think is the game that used the trope in the best way. I'm curious if you have any insight or anecdotes about the game and it's production since it was published by Interplay.
Neat video! I've been wondering. Most times when you refer to RPG, you describe western RPGs. What are your thoughts about JRPGs and other RPGs? Strengths and weaknesses with the different RPGs?
(I do realize that many JRPGs are a bit trope-y, especially with the chosen one and saving the world. But still, would be interesting to hear it more in-depth)
New alignment: Chaotic Goth
This man has seen the entire evolution line of game design. Cliché -> Trope -> Meta
You're not old, Tim. You're just...better!
I don't really like "saving the world" either, although a lot of RPGs I like start with something simple that eventually grows into "saving the world" or at least "saving the region." But I've also seen a lot of "the world can't be saved" in games that gets annoying. That one feels like someone saying "I don't want to save the world, but I don't have any ideas of my own."
I actually like the varying good/evil endings in Infernax. Although it feels like the "most good" and "most evil" endings in that game are actually better in terms of, the story goes further compared to the regular good/evil endings that have kind of a false ending. It's also got a fun "redemption" ending, although that one borderline requires following a guide. But anyway, Infernax's most good/most evil endings have you fight big final bosses (different ones) for different reasons, and they tie into the good/evil.
Thank you for mentioning "Open World" as a boring feature when there is no need for it. However i have a question about Major types of RPG games and by whom and how it is decided. Like, if this game will be an isometric, or 3rd person shooter, turn based or live action, open world or smaller hub areas. I understand that it happens very early in the development, but what is the reasoning behind it and on what level it is decided. (Partly it bothers me because we are getting Avowed instead of Pillars of Eternity 3. And i guess PoE2 was not as financially successful, but it was a really good game!)
It may not be Tim's answer but a lot of that comes down to budget and resources/talent. Camera perspective is often dictated by the budget, first-person games can be more budget-friendly than third-person since third-person requires many more animations where the full body is animated, different/more visual effects (dust/dirt from walking), and different/more sound effects and/or voice lines (idle animations, sounds to match what the character is wearing, etc.) That requires a lot of time, talent, and resources, which costs money. Some first-person games don't even have visible arms/hands so only the swing of a sword or the recoil of a gun is animated. Isometric games have a camera much further from the player character and other assets, which means the assets can be simplified. Less time is spent modeling assets, fewer details in textures, animations can be faster or have less detail.
It can also be dependent on the engine being used. Unreal Engine 4 was notoriously difficult to use for open worlds so many UE4 games had levels separated by loading screens in some way. Making first or third-person games often means the player needs to be able to see farther than they would from an isometric perspective, so there needs to be further draw distances and culling of assets in any direction the player can look. Isometric perspective typically results in fewer visible assets at any given point, so performance can often be easier to manage due to that fixed angle.
These are all decided during pre-production (ideally) before the game properly enters development. These decisions are typically made by game directors and leads but some may come from higher up the chain depending on who is supplying the budget.
Hopefully this provided some perspective. This is something that could be talked about for hours, especially with someone as experienced as Tim.
tl;dr: games require talent, resources, and time, which typically comes down to the budget.
@@bloogalooga Thank you for detailed answer. But that would kinda mean that isometric games would be significantly cheaper to make, and also would allow much prettier graphics from the distance like it was in PoE2 for example. And yet we are seeing a long trend to move to 3rd person. I know that it is considered to be a better sell, but is there any financial data behind it?
I like open world games. Thing is: the open world concept can be done well and not so well. Part of the problem is the 'bigger is better" philosophy, imo. Bigger isn't always necessarily better. (The 'wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle' anlogy comes to mind.) As Tim pointed out, what's the point if the vast majority of it is empty space? The larger the world, the more space to fill and that space is generally being filled with procedurally-generated POIs. If you don't have an unlimited library of handcrafted assets from which those POIs are built, they're going to become very samey-samey very quickly.
Riding my horse around for hours in ER was painful. I played countless JRPGs yea the Hero tropes can and should be laid out in ways that you fall into saving the world. A lot of JRPGs do it well, but then when you go to mmos most do it horribly the worse of which is FF14 where after a few quest every main city celebrates you as the great savior and then you go back to delivering tea and cookies to people. Raiding goes beyond wow it also exists in Ultima, EQ, wow, and more the reason it is as you describe is because of 3rd party programs have completely defined each battle. It wasn't always like that you use learn on the fly, or get a description from a player that had done it which is why we use to wipe for months learning. Now the 3rd party app guys are so efficient they practically just organize the shuffled mechanics. A lot of good points nice video.
I wonder what you think about Pathologic 2, because it has a lot of the points that you said lol, but it's so different at the same time, I think it's a very unique piece of art that I really enjoy.
Great video, Tim! Villain monologues are the worst. My favorite part of Mass Effect 2 was the option they gave in a bunch of dialogues to interrupt someone to do something. And usually that something was spectacular and violent. I found it incredibly satisfying.
I have a question for you about open world RPG design. Do you have a particular balance of quest content that you try to reach? Is there a process that goes into determining how long/complex the main quest is vs. how many sidequests there are and where they are in your world?
Yes, that’s done during the phase I call horizontal slice (I’ve never heard anyone rise call it that). I can do a video on that.
I still don't understand why there are barely any RPGs that send you to a different kingdom to justify lack of knowledge of customs or general world knowledge. Or at least put you in a prologue where you play as a child to do some world building/introduction.
You really hit it on the head on these games Tim. No joke I wish people would listen to you lol