I tend to think of "the world is ending" as being terrible writing from the outset. If you're starting from that, you've only yourself to blame.
The world is ending but here's a side quest - will RPGs ever solve their urgency problem?
Submitted 1 day ago by chloyster@beehaw.org to gaming@beehaw.org
Comments
Flamekebab@piefed.social 1 day ago
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
Witcher 3 did it really well by having the “end of the world” stuff being centered around Ciri, and Geralt is just kind of along for the ride and isn’t really entirely sure what is happening, and his impact on whether she succeeds is rooted in whether he supports her as a father figure. Most of the game is Geralt not really having any idea that this end of the world stuff is happening to Ciri at all, until near the end.
jabathekek@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
I feel that. I’ve been playing satisfactory since way before 1.0 released, and my head canon was “Boring Interplanetary Camp Job”. but when 1.0 came out suddenly I have to sAvE tHe WoRLd too. gah.
Khrux@ttrpg.network 1 day ago
Funnily enough The Witcher 3 is one of the games I always think of for the trope of not following the plot. Often I think of the ludonarrative dissonance specifically between Gestalt’s paternal drive to find and protect Ciri Vs Gwent.
For large scale, AAA open world games, I mostly think of Breath of the Wild, which transparently sets itself up as being about taking as long as you need to get strong enough to save the world and Red Dead Redemption 2, which doesn’t care about the stakes of the world.
I sometimes can’t wrap my head around the fact that Witcher 3, BotW and RDR2 were each two years apart. I don’t feel any open world game has occupied the cultural space those games did since.
bl_r@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
I wrote a short dnd campaign (4 or 5 sessions) with the main NPC who framed the adventure being a self important egomaniac, and the only world they saved was his world-sized ego. Making that NPC trusted by the players and breaking that trust by seeing the actual stakes of the adventure was a pretty neat idea, and it would have been a good start to my dming.
Unfortunately i ate the “save the world” pill and binned that idea for a shitty campaign about saving the world and it died the classic death of all campaigns: scheduling.
I think I might eventually run that game when I get back into DMing or start with a new group.
DdCno1@beehaw.org 1 day ago
Are you DMing online or in the real world? I got to play a single campaign (well part of one) of Traveller until the DM didn’t have time for us anymore (because he was getting back into his actual job of being a military officer - go figure) and to say that I enjoyed it immensely was an understatement. I had a great time both learning how these games work and trying to find the limits of what’s possible. I’d love to do this again sometime.
PatheticGroundThing@beehaw.org 1 day ago
I don’t really think it’s a problem at all. It’s on the level of game mechanics being taken too seriously like “why does a sword in my backpack weigh enough to slow me down but not a sword in my belt?” or “how come these vegetable merchants are willing to buy random crap I found in a cave?”
Fallout 1 has a hard timer you have to obey before it is too late to do your main objective and you lose the game. That shit stressed me out so much I just didn’t continue playing.
samc@feddit.uk 1 day ago
For me it becomes an issue when I try to make decisions from my character’s perspective. If I try to lean into the RP part of RPG then I often feel like I have to leave a load of content behind because it just wouldn’t be a high priority.
I agree with the FO1 timer though. I ended up beelining to the necropolis and got trapped in an endgame bunker because I didn’t want that timer hanging over me.
BigBananaDealer@lemm.ee 1 day ago
dude i did the same exact thing at level 2. couldnt get out of the jail cell
_Lory98_@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
I don’t think it’s comparable to those examples as it affects the pacing of the story, instead of being just an abstraction of a system.
In my case it has damaged (and in some cases ruined) my experience of the story or made me skip side content, as I can’t ignore it.
jlow@beehaw.org 1 day ago
I mean the real world is ending atm and all humanity is doing is side quests …
OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
I’m not even doing side quests. I’m just idling on Lemmy.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
It’s end of the world as we know it… and I feel fine.
jlow@beehaw.org 17 hours ago
At the moment, maybe.
bender223@lemmy.today 16 hours ago
Bruh, it’s just a game 🤷♂️
dino@discuss.tchncs.de 52 minutes ago
Huh? I didn’t read the article, but your comment makes no sense? Only if you misunderstood “the world is ending” as the realworld, I guess…scratches head
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
Honestly, toughest part of Baldur’s Gate 3 is recognizing how much there is to do despite the fact that you literally have specific characters haranguing you to move the story forward (I’m looking at you Frog Wife, we’ll get to your fucking Creche when I’m ready!), which makes you feel like maybe there’s a time limit.
On the other hand, maybe there does need to be a time limit so the urgency is real? In the original Fallout, on release, you had something like 100 in-game days before The Master found Vault 13 and it was game-over. They later removed this because it was seen as too difficult… but I actually dislike that it got removed. Maybe change how long the player is given, but still, give them something to press that urgency as an actual, real, urgent thing.
averyminya@beehaw.org 1 day ago
I agree with the other user who said it’s a writing problem e.g. choosing the immediacy of end of the world plot device. Unless it’s done with very specific circumstances, like Overcooked 1 where the first level is the Spaghetti Monster Apocalypse and then you jump back in time through a portal. I think Dragon’s Dogma 2 is a good example of this exact problem the article raises though. It’s a relatively short game, but there is no end of the world. There are 2 major events, your destiny as the Arisen to fight the dragon that killed you, and the in-world politics of a government and some corrupt individuals working to prevent this event for their own plan.
I mention this game primarily because it uses a mechanic that many completionists tend to dislike - there are “timed” quests. Not all of them, usually ones that make sense to run out of time on (but again, not all of them.) So for example, at one point there is a quest to attend a masquerade ball, which is a permanent main story quest until you choose to attend. This is the exact issue the premise of the article brings up, where time is infinite until you decide to continue.
And yet, at the same time, there are a few quests where you may encounter a random NPC who is asking for help for someone who goes missing, and if too many in game days pass by, well… They die.
Ultimately I had other pacing issues with the story, but I did really enjoy how it goes about “solving” urgency when an in-game world timer exists. I’ve never been the biggest fan of time-managed items, (for example, raw potato, ripened potato, rotten potato over the course of 1-3 days), but Dragon’s Dogma 1 and 2 both did it fairly well since the items that do expire 1) make sense, it’s food, and 2) are in fair abundance. It helps solve the hoarding of your items, gives you a little extra money if you sell it as the right phase, and allows for varied item combinations as well (raw+item = curative, ripe+item = stamina, rotten+rotten = oil for lantern or status effect combinations).
I think really the issue just comes down to what is fun gameplay mechanics? Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu for PS2/Gamecube had timed levels, a mechanic that makes sense for a game centered around saving people before they kill hostages. Star Ocean had an in game timer matched to clocks, so the only way to stop the timer was to turn off the game. After (24?) hours, it’s game over. Quite frankly… timed mechanics are usually seen as gimmicky and are not very popular - they may have moments of appreciation, but I’m not sure if it’s a beloved mechanic.
Which in turn results in, “I have you now Spider-Man! In just 8 hours my bomb will blow New York to high heavens!” And then the player goes to help every child get their balloon back before the main story progresses.
pruwybn@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
Surprised this article didn’t mention Ludonarrative Dissonance, which this seems to be an example of.
theangriestbird@beehaw.org 1 day ago
This approach is so common in RPGs it’s like dwarves with Scottish accents; a better question to ask would be whether there’s an RPG that doesn’t do it - one that hurries you up instead?
I mean…Dark Souls is the obvious answer, but that’s almost a different subgenre of RPG. Dark Souls does have side quests, but they are obscure and often incidental to the main quest. They also skirt this problem by having “time” be a loose concept in the lore - in every game, the world is in the process of slowly ending, in a literal way that fucks up the flow of time.
brsrklf@jlai.lu 1 day ago
Some games fix this issue by making the player trigger the change they want and bring the fight to the big powerful threat themselves, on their terms.
In fact one of my favorite RPG has the player characters being the ones trying to end the world as they know it.
I do think the extreme example, the old RPG trope of the big bad looming in the red-tinted sky and being just minutes from firing the world busting laser while you finish your quest list, is rather cringe. Maybe don’t invoke this in a game where time is basically irrelevent.
Thavron@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Some games fix this issue by making the player trigger the change they want and bring the fight to the big powerful threat themselves, on their terms.
Yes but even in this scenario it’s a bit strange that the threat in question is just twiddling their thumbs waiter for the player.
brsrklf@jlai.lu 1 day ago
Depends. If they’re already in a position of power, they basically win if nobody rises against them.
What often happens is they did try to stop the hero through the game, and failed.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
It’s not an RPG, but I think Owlboy handled it expertly.
Each level, Owlboy is out to handle some dangerous issue that is happening. By the end of the level, he succeeds.
The thing is, in the background, other things are happening. Almost every time you “succeed” the story moves forward to tell you, “oh, while you were doing that, THIS was happening that made all you just did basically pointless and we’re all even more screwed than before.”
So, it keenly points out the enemies aren’t waiting around, in fact, they’re doing dastardly things while you’re busy trying to save the day, so much so that your character continues to feel like a failure despite many successes. I think it’s a great way to present and write a story, to show that your character isn’t the only one in the wider world that things are happening to and can’t handle all problems at once. Things happen outside of their control and outside of their vision, just like in our real lives.
theangriestbird@beehaw.org 1 day ago
In fact one of my favorite RPG has the player characters being the ones trying to end the world as they know it.
Which one would that be?
brsrklf@jlai.lu 17 hours ago
It’s
spoiler just in case
Xenoblade Chronicles 3
bonegakrejg@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
It kind of works in Elder Scrolls games. You’re typically just some random dude getting roped into stuff you barely understand so it makes sense that you don’t have much of a sense of urgency. And the main quest usually has parts where you’re encouraged to go do other stuff to build up skills and join factions.
Arkthos@pawb.social 3 hours ago
In Skyrim the main quest constantly tells you about how urgent it is for you to do the next steps. You must heed the summoning of the greybeards, you must hurry along to the dragon graveyard. Time is constantly of the essence.
And then every other part of the game encourages you to goof around.
Oblivion is the same with this. Morrowind went the opposite direction with the story at times pretty much telling you to goof around for a bit before continuing the main quest (probably because people were less used to open world games maybe?).
I think daggerfall had you on actual timers so if you weren’t at the correct locations in time the game would be impossible to complete. Which sure is a way to resolve the false sense of urgency lmao.
zero_spelled_with_an_ecks@programming.dev 1 day ago
It works in Morrowind. When you go to do the main quest, the guy in Balmora says you look like a scrub and to come back when you’re not so green. Oblivion immediately tells you to take the amulet somewhere. Skyrim requires main quest progression for a few things like the civil war.
ryven@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
In Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, the world is ending, and the 13-day timer is very real. You basically get told “do as much as you can before the world ends” and let loose. So there’s urgency AND side questing.
And of course you have the opportunity to spend that time doing things that are completely irrelevant to making progress, like collecting silly outfits and forcing Lightning to wear them so that Hope can laugh at her.
perishthethought@lemm.ee 1 day ago
Does the Outer Wilds solution count?
theangriestbird@beehaw.org 1 day ago
Time sensitive but you can start the time line over at any point?
perishthethought@lemm.ee 1 day ago
True and you can do that as many times as you like. But to really get to the ending, you are racing against the clock.
TachyonTele@lemm.ee 1 day ago
That’s why i love Metroid so much.
The works doesn’t end until you decide it will.
Glide@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
I can’t help but read this headline as, “with climate change and the rise of fascism, the real world is ending, but how is this for a distraction: why can’t RPGs get the sense of urgency right?”
And like, this is genuinely an article and discussion I’m interested in, so this is not a criticism of anyone or anything other than the ambiguity of language.
HeavyRaptor@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Because the world isn’t “ending”. Yes climate change might bring famine, destructive weather events, or plague but in the meantime we are living in the safest, healthiest, and most technologically advanced era of humanity up until now, especially for those of us living in democracies. Most diseases that would have killed you a few hundred years ago have been solved, in general there are very few wars (compared to the constant on and off warfare in history anyway), and in most of the world slavery has been eradicated.
Yes, there is societal divide (mostly due to economic difficulties and how social media influences people), yes there is bigotry and a rise in nationalism but much of this is only noticeable because of the media and the 24 hour news cycle. There has to be a constant issue hanging over our heads to make sure we are glued to our screens 24/7 improving shareholder value of the companies supplying the news on the current crisis.
So in conclusion, there are some global issues, but there is no reason not to go on an adventure, pursue that girl/boy you like, build a shed, or do whatever “side quest” you are up to at the moment. It’s not like you’re gonna solve climate change alone but you’ll be completely miserable if that is all your life is about. The world is not ending for now, go do your side quests.
OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
RFK wants to ban vaccines entirely in the US. They’ll come back frighteningly fast if he does that. They’re only “solved” as long as we keep up our vigilance.
There are more slaves alive today than at any point in history.
barsoap@lemm.ee 20 hours ago
Image
p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 hours ago
Don’t take your democracies for granted. If people aren’t around to fight to keep them that way, they don’t last.
Glide@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
I think I disagree about the severity and urgency of some of the things you’re talking about, but I do agree. I restate: the only thing I am criticizing here is the ambiguity of language. It’s the “side quests” that give life flavour, and to give them up to deal with the “real problems” would be choosing to stop living because you’re too worried about surviving.
But still, strange title choice.
jlow@beehaw.org 1 day ago
Oops, I just commented tge exact same thing befire reading your comment.