Thinking About RPGs

With Dragon Quest IX around the corner I couldn't help but to think of how RPG's have been panning out lately. RPGs have been all over the place this last generation - whether good or bad - and I feel that developers out there need to learn to keep it simple with some titles instead of trying to re-invent the wheel.

I use Dragon Quest as my jumping off point for the fact that it's very traditional as a turn based RPG. Each edition to the series is mostly the same except for a few games that give an extra "oomph" to the battle system or even how characters progress in the game, Granted, it's not much for that series, but it leads me to my next thought about Final Fantasy.

Final Fantasy has always played its part well to me. Every game tried something new; slowly progressing the series to implement some now vital roles to the formula of RPGs. Where FF1 got us to the basics like Dragon Quest, 2 gave us a new way to address quests through conversation trees and key items. FF3 gave us the job system, 4 pushed story-telling through characters, FF5 gave us sub jobs, 6 materia and amazing interactive scenes (opera), 7 brought us strongly into the new era, 8 was junctions and character driven, 9 brought us back using many of the elements from other Final Fantasy games, FF10 gave us the best way to do turn based and switching out party members (all of them) mid battle, 11 was online, and 12 gave us gambits and the best battle system (imo) giving you the idea of an MMO but still kept it ATB (active time based) like FF4 and on.

So why am I bringing up Final Fantasy so heavily? When going through the 12 (I know I'm forgetting 13 but I will get there) you get a feel of a simple transition that sets up what future games could use seamlessly throughout. I feel that RPG's don't have to be drastically different when it comes to battle systems to make them feel different so long as you have engaging story, good characters, and a fresh take on a strong classic formula. I have been happy with Mistwalker Studios for their ability to hone in on the progression of where the last generation of RPGs has brought us. Lost Odyssey brought the strong characters and story, filled the game with beautiful writing, and the core gameplay is a great feel for the classic scene. Blue Dragon took everything from the past Final Fantasy games and found a way to make a lot of it work as a cohesive unit.

Now obviously in this generation we do have some wonderful changes in the way we think of RPG's. Games like Oblivion and Fallout gives us the freedom and choice in a more action based RPG that really changes the pace and feel of the genre. Mass Effect put shooting in the forefront and RPG elements to back it up along with a very well implemented conversation system full of consequence. Eternal Sonata and Tales of Vesperia have also done a good job of doing an action/encounter based battle system. So there are definitely ways to stray from the formula successfully, but when thinking of your traditional fare of role-playing titles, I usually feel like a few out there are trying to either capture a new crowd; hurting their core audience and score, or even being overly complicated by trying to introduce too much to the player at once and getting more complex from there.

In closing, to tie this ramble up, I feel that we need to try not to jump to far ahead and really see what's been working over the last decade with our RPG titles. The most successful are that way for a reason - giving you the basics, keeping it simple, yet innovating on the core functionality of a solid system. I'm anticipating the upcoming RPG titles for the Wii because I see this idea happening and I hope that they keep it that way.

So yeah, there's a thought I guess,

-Eddie