If it comes down to western RPGs over the last couple years, there are only two companies providing us with high quality titles: Bethesda with Oblivion and Fallout 3 and Bioware with Mass Effect 1 & 2 and Dragon Age.
I just can’t seem to warm up to Bioware titles. After giving it some thought, i figured it all boils down to this: Open-World atmosphere and “feeling in control” (aka having many choices). While Bethesda titles throw me into a big world with a main quest guiding me through the game and dozens of side-quests plus the first-person view which just makes it easier to draw players into the gameworld because “you’re in it” and not just watching your player move through the world, the Bioware titles are inherently linear with the side-quests merely trying to give me the impression of a big world. In case of Mass Effect, this failed misably with their empty-world planetary side Mako-missions. That was a terrible and inexcusable drop in quality which led to me not doing any side quests at all because they felt so out-of-place.
As for choices, it seems to me that choice in Bioware titles boils down to just dialogue options whereas in Bethesda titles, you also get to make choices in the world. How you approach your goal, how you decide to finish a quest. Admittedly that is also possible in Bioware games but somehow it doesn’t have the same emotional impact, largely because those choices seem superficial when most of the game is obviously scripted. For example, in Dragon Age when i approach a group of people standing right in the middle of a crossway, i know that there will be a cutscene forced upon me and i have to get into this conversation. In Oblivion and Fallout 3 this rarely happens and when it does, it is scripted as part of the quest. I leave the house, and someone talks me up. He doesn’t stand there waiting for me to approach him, he (or she) approaches me from seemingly out of nowhere. Much more believable.
Speaking of which, suspension of disbelief. Bioware repeatedly kills it for me. One thing that stood out was the blood in Dragon Age. After a measly fight with a few rats, me and my companion are strewn with blood splatters. Way over the top. The conversation after that already fight felt a little bit out of place but when i went on and met my dear mummy, she was so worried about me even expressing i had the desire to follow my father into battle. There i stood, bloody as hell already, and mummy didn’t want to let me go to war. Plus i should really go see my brother and wife and son. So they were also very happy to see me, never mind i had blood all over me. Just great. I think this is one of the out-of-place ideas that Bioware allows because they don’t have a director who says no to these things. Or maybe it was marketing because blood & violence sells? Or maybe it was a programming geek who said we can do it and then he did and everyone saw there was blood and it was cool and everyone would love it. Right. But don’t get me wrong: i love blood & guts in games! In Fallout 3 it’s way over the top as well but somehow, it just fits into this grimy, ruthless world. It does not stand out as odd, in that case it just is cool! Maybe that’s because the characters have the common courtesy to clean themselves up when they go into dialogue.
And then, Bethesda titles do a great job of having both an open-world and relatively but not completely linear quest-dungeons. Bioware in turn is basing their world on top of linear quest-dungeons, so naturally places more often than not seem a little crammed while the parts in between can be awfully empty and usually are. This discrepancy adds to me sensing that this isn’t really a world i’m exploring, i’m merely moving from point A to B without any choice whatsoever.
What about eastern RPGs then? I must admit that i very much enjoyed playing Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey. They have been my first exposure to eastern RPGs ever and i loved it. Are they linear in nature? Mostly, yes. But they do two things much better than Bioware RPGs: they have a really compelling story to tell which is often tied into the action, this has really drawn me into the games in the first place. And then they try not to hide the fact that moving about the world vs. fighting are two different modes of gameplay, while Bioware, for whatever reason, choose to keep the dice-throwing mechanics in it’s combat system. Which makes it perfectly awkward to shoot at an enemy, seeing the crosshair over his body, yet missing every second bullet because you’re not well-trained with that particular weapon. Fallout and Oblivion instead rely on tried & true FPS combat mechanics and that just fits right in just like the turn-based combat of eastern RPGs is a welcome refresher because i can really make useful decisions during combat.
Overall, Bioware RPGs to me are combining the wrong elements to create their games and game worlds. It seems like a compromise in so many aspects, i’d rather choose the action-oriented open-world playstyle of Bethesda RPGs or the eastern RPGs with their impressive story-telling and turn-based combat. Not something that’s in-between and trying hard to stay true to the core of older Bioware RPGs like Baldur’s Gate. I’m sure, had i played this game back then, i would have loved it. But as a matter of fact, once i got a Bioware collection of old RPGs, the only RPG from them i really, really enjoyed was Planescape Torment. And that wasn’t even made by them.
In the early days of this blog i picked on Mass Effect because i so much wanted to be in love with the Space Opera which it wasn’t. I decided to pick this game to pieces and blog about each aspect of the game i didn’t like, in order to further my understanding of why exactly i didn’t like it even though i had played through it. After 3 blog posts each going for some nervewracking detail i made a list of things i would still have to write about – and the list was over one page of bullet points – so at this point i stopped writing because given the level of detail i was looking for, i’d probably still be writing about it to this day.
Plus the ruptured anterior cruciate ligament (Kreuzbandriss) i had just 9 days after the last post stopped me from pursuing my blog at all for months. So i never picked up Mass Effect again. Neither did i pick on it again. That is, until now but fortunately, i can just redirect you to the best ranting about Mass Effect i’ve read and two follow-up posts Back on Mass Effect and How to have fun in Mass Effect, all by Krystian Majewski. He says what i’ve been saying ever since the game came out – it’s an unfinished, rushed product, period! Krystian puts it this way:
“Mass Effect is ALL filler. You can clearly see how the developers were desperate to create just STUFF in order to get their checklists done. So even in rather polished missions like Feros you get 4 fetch quests which can ALL be solved in ONE big room. You can clearly see how initially, there was a much more complex environment planned which had to be slowly reduced to this single room simply because there was no time for something more complex. In the end, there wasn’t even time for some basic tutorials.”
Fully agree! Plus i’ve worked on complex role playing games, so i know how this stuff comes to be and why it ends up like exactly that. You usually don’t cut out content that’s been done or is “almost” complete, maybe you’ve written the lines or even had them voice acted already. So you just put it wherever you can just so it stays in the game. On the other hand, maybe you’re bound by contract to deliver 4 side-quests on each main mission or having so and so many sidequests overall and in some cases that only leaves you with the option to just throw this stuff in. I’m not sure if that had to be the case with Bioware given their “perceived status of the RPG developer” but they too have to fullfil contracts and none of us knows their publishing partners and all the other business issues that create a pressure to deliver even if it’s not their best. What really, really astounds me is that Mass Effect is such an obvious unfinished product but it still ranks as one of the highest rated games on the Xbox 360 (#15 with 91%) – in my opinion undeservedly so. On the other hand it’s a good example of effective marketing!
The only grievance i have with Krystians argumentation on how to have fun with Mass Effect is that he says cranking up the difficulty to Insane makes the game more enjoyable. Having just pulled through the badly reviewed Terminator Salvation on Hard difficulty i would generally agree that playing even a “not-so-good” game on a hard difficulty – even if it may be unfair at certain times – makes it more enjoyable in general for a select group of people we tend to call hardcore. There is an innate satisfaction to be found by overcoming difficult obstacles and doing something very few people will even start with. However it has nothing to do with the game or it’s quality per se, in my opinion. It’s the sense of accomplishment that you feel when you advance past a difficult part of any game, and when you eventually finish it. It works in both directions – the excellent Call of Duty 4 on the hardest difficulty was a frustrating stretch a lot of times and on the hardest difficulty level it’s no longer about the game mechanics, level progression, story or scripted events – it becomes a game about the lucky shot, finding good spots the AI can’t get to, and other such trickery but mostly about pulling through no matter what. I grew up with games that WERE this way for a loooong time. So from time to time i can pull through such a game because it reminds me of the “good old days”. You know, just like your grand dad tells that same war story over and over again – even though he wouldn’t ever go back there again … or would he?
Oh, just in case you want to pick up on my own posts, they were about Mass Effect’s Manual Override, 3rd Person Camera and the dreaded Mako and can be found by clicking on the aforementioned links, obviously. The popularity of the Manual Override post specifically showed me that i’ve hit a nerve with that one – much to my surprise after several months that this blog didn’t see any updates there was frequent traffic going to that page. Currently, it ranks second on google for the search term Mass Effect Manual Override. This really surprised me given the no-effort and it did motivate me to pick up on blogging again. Now just see for yourself where it got me!
And speaking of Terminator Salvation, and playing through it on hard: yes, you can call me an Achievement whore but actually i think it’s not THAT bad if you don’t expect a Gears of War – which i happen to not like either … hmmm, i wonder, given the choice, would i rather play Gears of War or Terminator Salvation? I would have to give that some thought …
Krystian also posted his insights about GTA4: Devolution and Story to which i fully agree. We don’t need bicycles in a GTA which i’ve casually touched on in the only post i did after my soccer accident. Anyone who’s asking for frickin’ bicycles in a gangster game doesn’t know squat about good game design – ok, admittedly rude but that just had to be said because these are the people – given the chance – who will feature-creep your project into a heavily delayed, feature-laden, cryptic mess of a warthog (pun intended) no one really wants to play – except for the designer himself and a few like-minded people. That’s how Saints Row came to be. Well, maybe not, i don’t really know but as gamer i noticed the lack of vision with which this game got made (better, bigger, more is NOT a vision). Saints Row 2 is still a fun quick fix but it hasn’t nearly the depth that GTA offers.
I want to enjoy a game and i haven’t enjoyed a GTA as much as GTA IV – and i’ve been a fan from the start of the series which i bought after reading a 6/10 Grand Theft Auto review because i just knew that that’s a cool game. Boy was i ever right. I haven’t been so damn right since i first layed eyes on the DooM shareware game at a friend’s place and my immediate reaction was “Quit the game NOW, copy it, then you can get back and play it, i don’t want to see any more of this – i HAVE to play it!”. Ten minutes later i was on my way home to enjoy this pearl of a game – it also started my game development career but that’s for another post.
The Mako – Mass Effect’s land vehicle – is almost beyond absurd. It is a three-axis six-wheeled monster which basically drives like a medium-boiled peeled egg. What’s up with that?
I’ll tell you what it is for me … the worst driveable vehicle from any Xbox360 game to date! The Mako does not only react very sensitively to your input, turning much too easily, it also hops and jumps wildly over each little bump making it all the harder to keep it on track. Occassionally it will just turn or flip over from all the bouncing and turning it does. Once i even managed to do a double-barrel roll with it. Amazing, but totally uncalled for because i was in the middle of frigging combat!
Of course, I’m thankful that the Mako can never get stuck and it will always roll back on it’s wheels and that i can even drive up mountains with it. And no matter what you do with it, you can’t damage it just by driving and crashing. But driving it is no fun at all because it is much too stressful to keep it going in just a straight line and more often than not you will find yourself driving onto a wall, flipping over or having to back up.
Speaking of backing up … why the hell did Bioware decide that it’s a good idea to have the controls reverse when you turn the camera around? First of all, I died about 5 times driving off a ledge on Prothean Skyway and on Noveria because of the sudden shift of momentum. Secondly, why did they even allow driving off edges? Other locations have invisible barriers so that you can’t pass with your vehicle, why not just block all the deadly areas for the Mako, too? I mean, if you’re so concerned about the casual gamers that surely would have halved their death rate. And we all know that dying in a video game is what often makes people quit the game.
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