The glory of Quest For Glory

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This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity.
Last week, when GOG.com announced that Quest For Glory was the newest addition to its collection, I was delighted. In fact, I'm not sure that there's a game series that could have induced as much joy. I think some others, like Wizardry or a collection of old SSI games, might have been better and more important, sure. But I have more love for Quest For Glory than those other games. I'm not the only one, either: The Quest For Glory games are great games, yes, but they're also special games.

Quest For Glory is a five-title series of adventure/role-playing hybrids, with the first release in 1989, and the last in 1998. They were published by Sierra - a company whose fate was recently detailed to Joystiq by Leisure Suit Larry creator Al Lowe - and used similar interfaces and graphics as other adventures, such as King's Quest or Gabriel Knight, combined with combat systems that varied from game to game.

Being a genre hybrid is one of the surest ways to become a beloved game. Panzer General, Deus Ex, and Mass Effect are all crossover hits, thanks in part to combining role-playing with other genres. Quality hybrids manage to feel both fresh conceptually and comfortable to actually play, a winning combination.

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JoystiqThe glory of Quest For Glory originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 17 May 2012 17:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Read more | Comments (0) | May 17th, 2012

Freedom Force: Superhero role-playing done right

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This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity.
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The Avengers' huge success in its first week of release may represent the pinnacle of the superhero takeover of mainstream culture. Superhero comics have long been comparable to video games' bigger brother, with many of the same criticisms and stereotypes and similar slow paths to respectability. There's always been a great deal of crossover between the two, especially in terms of games based on comics. Most of these were platformers or brawlers, and most, like licensed games generally, were mediocre at best - with a few exceptions.

Roleplaying games especially seemed to be a natural fit for superhero games. Both usually have origin stories, over-the-top villainy, straightforward morality and, most importantly, characters overcoming adversity by gaining more strength and greater power, with single characters or small party dynamics. There were a few attempts of varying success, like the simple RPG/adventure hybrid Superhero League Of Hoboken, but it still took until 2002 for a great superhero RPG to be released: Freedom Force.

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JoystiqFreedom Force: Superhero role-playing done right originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 11 May 2012 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Read more | Comments (0) | May 11th, 2012

How Mass Effect 3′s role-playing roots empower the multiplayer

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This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity.
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"I just want to see how this integrates with the single-player campaign," I thought, clicking on the multiplayer option in Mass Effect 3's main menu. I had no expectations of making it a habit. Like many people, when the multiplayer component was announced, I thought it sounded completely extraneous. Once I started playing, though, I fell for it, and have been putting more time into the multiplayer than the campaign.

Arguments about whether Mass Effect 3 is a role-playing game or not have existed since the first game's release. Regardless of which side you take in those, Mass Effect does include many components of role-playing games, two of which are essential to the multiplayer's success: world-building and character development mechanics. Of course, there are simple gameplay reasons to enjoy the co-operative gameplay of Mass Effect 3 online. The levels are well designed for dynamic changes within matches, and waves of enemies seem ideal for both difficulty and time. But those things aren't what make it special.

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JoystiqHow Mass Effect 3's role-playing roots empower the multiplayer originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 04 May 2012 20:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Read more | Comments (0) | May 4th, 2012

Why skills are in, attributes are out in modern role-playing games

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This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity.
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It took four or five levels gained for me to realize something was different. I was playing the Diablo 3 open beta last weekend, merrily leveling my monk up, when I noticed that half the time a gained level just happened, without me needing to do anything. Sometimes I could choose new skills, yes, but I wasn't given five points to distribute to my core attributes like Strength, Vitality, etc. There's a little bit of text that notes which attributes have improved, but that's all. Diablo 3 isn't the only major recent role-playing game* to downplay the importance of its characters' core attributes. Mass Effect 3 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, both released within six months of Diablo 3, avoid core attributes entirely.

Skyrim and Mass Effect 3 don't include attributes at all, in fact, something that would have been unthinkable for a computer role-playing game at the dawn of the genre. But the lessened importance of attributes isn't necessarily a sign of the simplification of the genre (although that's often part of it). Instead, it's part of a trend in which skills, not attributes, serve as the most important statistical measure of an RPG character.

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JoystiqWhy skills are in, attributes are out in modern role-playing games originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 27 Apr 2012 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Read more | Comments (0) | April 27th, 2012

The surprising accessibility of older RPGs

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This is a weekly column focusing on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity.
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One major problem with loving role-playing games is that old titles can be hard to accept due to difficulty. RPGs are particularly vulnerable to this because their focus on plot and core mechanics over technology mean that they age well. Fans and critics view games in the genre over a historical continuum of relative equality, instead of simply making the assumption that better technology makes for better games.

While mechanics and storylines may be roughly comparable, interfaces have definitely improved, and this is the problem. It's one thing to say that Wizardry VI has the best and most complex class system in gaming, but quite another to try to play it without knowing that you need to draw or find maps of its dungeon. Alternately, I can't count the number of people who I convince to try the original Fallout, only to see them getting frustrated at its difficulty spikes, lack of effective auto-save, and occasionally obtuse item manipulations. It happens to me to sometimes, especially with games that I didn't play when I was younger, which is why I was surprised recently to fall in love with Might & Magic III: Isles Of Terra.

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JoystiqThe surprising accessibility of older RPGs originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 20 Apr 2012 20:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Read more | Comments (0) | April 20th, 2012

The delightful smoothness of classic Japanese role-playing games

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This week, Rowan Kaiser and Kat Bailey have switched roles -- with Rowan taking lead in this week's column focusing on the wonderful world of Japanese role-playing games.
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I was only defeated once in Suikoden. Even that was an accident - I thought it was a fight I was supposed to lose. Calling the game "easy" is something of an understatement. With a little bit of planning, you can win virtually every fight in the game, including the final boss battle on auto-pilot using the "Free Will" option in the combat menu. Yet, despite this easiness, Suikoden is one of my favorite Japanese role-playing games. "Easy" isn't the right term for it exactly. Instead, Suikoden is smooth.

"Smoothness" isn't a common criteria used to judge games. If anything, it's the opposite. Getting the difficulty level just right, so that the game seems like a challenge but is completable with practice, seems like it's an ideal. Or, you can use Sid Meier's model of games as "interesting choices" - but if the game isn't challenging, those choices don't seem to matter, right? I think acceptance theories like those are part of the reason that Japanese role-playing games are considered less important than they used to be.

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JoystiqThe delightful smoothness of classic Japanese role-playing games originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 12 Apr 2012 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Read more | Comments (0) | April 12th, 2012

What makes role-playing game combat good?

Posted by Rowan Kaiser | Filed under gAmINg

This is a weekly column focusing on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity.
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Last week's column on changes in role-playing combat systems through history ruffled a few feathers, so I thought it would be a good idea to discuss what, in my opinion, makes for good RPG combat systems. I had no intention of sounding like I hated turn-based combat (since my two favorite RPGs use it!), or that every new game was better than old.

Responsiveness may be the single most important component of a good combat system. I mean "responsive" in a broad fashion, specifically encompassing four different forms of responsiveness that can all work together: pace, information, animation, and sound.

Responsive pace means that when you press the button to have something happen, that thing happens quickly. In Jagged Alliance 2, one of the greatest tactical RPGs of all time, you click your mouse and you immediately see what happens. Your choices register instantly. Or, in games like The Elder Scrolls: Arena and Daggerfall, your sword follows your mouse when you hold the attack button, and you see the effect instantly. On the other hand, there are games like Anachronox, a fascinating Ion Storm homage to Japanese classic Chrono Trigger. Anachronox does extremely well at setting a tone for the game with interesting characters and narrative, but its sluggish combat is a major drawback and renders the game extremely frustrating in battle-heavy areas.

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JoystiqWhat makes role-playing game combat good? originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 06 Apr 2012 16:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Read more | Comments (0) | April 6th, 2012

Diablo’s Descendants

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This is a weekly column focusing on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity.
With Diablo 3's release date set, I decided to take a look back as the series' legacy --and play some of the better Western-style action/role-playing games around. Last week I talked about how Fallout, not Diablo, became the model for a generation of blockbuster role-playing games.

But Diablo did wield some influence. The first initial wave of clones didn't make much of a splash, but around the time Diablo II came out in 2000, the action/RPG style began to grab more attention. In 2002, Dungeon Siege and Divine Divinity were both released to some acclaim, but they never really fit the model of a Diablo clone. Dungeon Siege was as much Ultima VII and Baldur's Gate as it was Diablo, while Divine Divinity merged many concepts from Fallout and similar games with a real-time core. Missing from both? The constant clicking that, to me, defined Diablo.

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JoystiqDiablo's Descendants originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 27 Mar 2012 20:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Read more | Comments (0) | March 27th, 2012

Fallout: The first modern role-playing game

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This is a weekly column focusing on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity.
It wasn't supposed to be Fallout. After the role-playing game genre crashed in 1995, new models for the style began to appear. Smart money would have been on the wildly popular Diablo to become the trendsetter, where Fallout was an underdog from the start. At the 2012 Game Developers Conference, Fallout's lead producer, Tim Cain, described its creation: he was the only Interplay employee assigned to the game for months, it was almost canceled twice, and when it shipped Cain was told it was a "risk" despite the low level of company investment.

Despite all that, the original Fallout has become widely known as one of the greatest and most influential games of all time, and the model for the biggest RPGs of recent years. Several weeks ago I argued that Ultima was the most important game series of all time, but Ultima's influence through new games was almost gone in 1997. Fallout was its replacement; it was the first modern role-playing game.

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JoystiqFallout: The first modern role-playing game originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 16 Mar 2012 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Read more | Comments (0) | March 16th, 2012

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