Wednesday June 25, 2008 at 14:29
“I know I am in the minority when I wish all combat would disappear from RPGs, but I can’t help but see what a colossal waste of time it is. A story you will remember for a lifetime. How long after you beat that beetle will it stick in your mind? There are very few RPGs where the combat didn’t bother me; two, actually, come to mind. Ar Tonelico, and Mass Effect. Ar Tonelico did it right — it knew the otaku playing it were really after the dating sim aspects of the game…the parts where you dove into your Reyvateil and experienced a deeper understanding of her. So they tied the combat system into that - only by fighting were you able to obtain Dive Points, which were the only way to advance on your psychological ‘dates’. The combat was similar to every other turned based system, but I fought almost every random encounter and loved it, because I was guaranteeing I could date my beloved Misha. Mass Effect handled it differently — combat was part of the atmosphere. No shattering screen transition, with a different combat engine loading up…it was all in the same view. You could talk to a smuggler, then pull out your rifle and blow him away. Similarly, there was absolutely no grinding in that game….events happened fluidly. You leveled, you got experience, but you did it naturally…never did the game want you to go back through fifteen levels fifty times over to get enough experience to go on. It was intelligent, and you were always at a ‘just right’ level. So combat became part of the story, another way to show the kind of life the characters were living. Not a bit of it was forced.”
—
teamlemur.net - Can’t We All Just Get Along?
Well written, thoughful post about the state of RPGs today.
