How "essential" NPCs killed RPGs

[invock]

Word of advice : I am NOT saying Bethesda is the only studio relying on essential characters in their RPGs. I am perfectly aware this plague has already touched numerous other games.
I give examples from Fallout 4 because A) It particularly shows in Bethesda games and B) Fallout 4 is the current sensation.
Thank you for your understanding.

 

I kinda like Fallout 4. I do. I like the environment, I like some gameplay ideas (settlements, weapons customization), and I love Boston, so having the opportunity to roam around this wonderful city after the Apocalypse really hyped me when it was officially announced.

But I really dislike what Fallout has become since Bethesda has taken over the IP.

The lore established in the original episodes is overlooked more than once, and it really annoys me but hey, I guess "things in the West are not the same as in the East" so I have to deal with it.

What I really HATE though, is the overabundance of "essential characters" in it.

They are everywhere. Companions, children, merchants and their bodyguards, and of course, worst of all, quest NPCs.

 

Now I know why : If they're killed, the story cannot continue. So we have to make them essentials.

Well, I'm sorry to say this Bethesda, but this is the perfect illustration of your laziness.

Any roleplayer knows it : a good Gamemaster or Videogame writer ALWAYS has a "plan B". An excellent one even has plans C, D, E and F.
I PLAY A ROLE. That is the very definition of roleplaying.

I wanted my female character to be a psychopath who lost her mind after seeing her husband executed in front of her and her baby taken (not a spoiler, these are the ten first minutes of the game).
She would have been totally obsessed with the idea of finding her little Shaun, no matter the cost, and NOTHING would have stood in her way. If anyone was to "negociate" with her and only offered to help her only in exchange of a service, she would have shot them in the face and gone on her way to find another clue.

 

Would I have been able to play this way if the game was written the same way F1 and F2 were ? Yes, definitely.
Can I play this way in Fallout 4 ? Nope. Why ? Essential characters.

 

F4 forces the player to play a certain story, following a defined path that CANNOT be avoided or diverted.
Essential moment 1 > Essential NPC 1 > Essential moment 2 > Essential NPC 2 > Essential moment 3 > [...] > End of story.

Is it some kind of cynicism that made you guys name one of your factions the "Railroad" ? Because the track is completely in my face.


What replay value does Fallout 4 have ? Zero. Nada. Zilch.
If I want to play the game again with a "totally different" character, going to different places and trying to do other things, good for me. I will be able to play around with the different factions and rally one instead of the other. Great. Will I play the main story any differently ? Nope. Because the essential moments are tied to essential NPCs and the story will unfold the exact same way every single time.

I won't even talk about the fact my conversation choices have no influence whatsoever on a discussion because that's yet another subject (even though it's tightly tied).

 

What makes old Fallout players so adamant about Fallout 1 and 2 being superior was the absolute freedom those games gave them. If I wanted to be a goody two-shoes avoiding fights and surviving with my wit and my speech abilities, I could. If I wanted to be a psychopathic brute with 1 intelligence, crushing everything and everyone on my way until I found my water chip, I could. If I suddenly decided, for no real reason, to make my companion's head explode with my shotgun, I could. If this guy was pushing it and I decided I was done negociating informations with him and placed a bullet between his eyes, I could.

There was no "I'm not really dead, let me breathe and get back on my feet" bulls***. It was roleplay.


I already know that once I'm tired of modding, playing with settlements and weapons, I'll just rush the plot, finish the game and never touch it again. Because there's no point.
Bethesda and other companies MUST give up on those stupid essential characters that ruin any possibility of RP. Until then, all they will do will be considered "open-world action games inspired by RPGs".

Edited December 7, 2015 by invock

[joshman0130]

I know exactly what you mean especially with the companions.

I threw a plasma grenade at dog meat because he was in the middle of a bunch of enemies because I knew he wouldn't die and that's broken.

If your companions can't die and you're playing as a good character there's no emotional attachment to them whatsoever.

I use them as pack mules and bullet shields.

 

Bethesda could have given branching questlines or at least branching conversations.

I know where you're coming from i'm the same way with the difference between Morrowind and Skyrim.

 

They had seven years to develop Fallout 4 into the masterpiece that it is today...(sarcastic)

All that said I am having a lot of fun playing Fallout 4 for what it is.

[JimboUK]

I couldn't agree with the OP more, essential characters have made them lazy. For a bit of fun in the imageshare I played through New Vegas killing everyone I met, quest givers, merchants, everyone and the game let me do it, I was able to finish the main quest because every time I killed a quest giver I'd find a note or something letting me continue. The only character that would not die was the Yes Man, he respawned which is fair enough, he's an AI on a network, being able to jump between units makes sense. Bethesda won't let you do anything like that, they put you on rails and won't let you deviate from what they've decided you will do.

 

I think Bethesda would get less criticism if they were honest and stopped trying to pass their games off as RPGs, they're not anymore, the rot started with Oblivion and it's been downhill ever since. Fallout 4 is good if you forget it's supposed to be an RPG, treat it like Far Cry and it's fun enough.

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/images/69824/? My rant is stickied at the top of the comments, I wrote it over two years ago and wasn't far out when I said what FO4 would be like.

[Signette]

As much as I agree with you, OP, I still have to say this:

Sooner people realize that latest TES and FO games aren't actual RPGs but sandboxes (one with swords and magic, and other with guns and mutants), the quicker those compaints will be no more.

 

Now let's see the big picture. Main stories are painfully linear, in dialogues all you can do is basically ask questions (like some freak detective) and say yes/no to accept/decline quest. I can't remember any lively conversations with NPCs, those were more like questioning. The only time we could somewhat affect main plot was in Fallout NV, but still quite limited, no actual world impact, mentioning in epilogue. Factions had basically only 2 conditions: talkative or hostile (attack on sight). Yes, writers and developers are lazy, they truly can't deliver any decent RPG experience, though using this acronym as marketing trick, but in all honesty I never actually got these games for that.

 

How do I enjoy TES and new FO? Example:

Skyrim, I download and activate immersion based mods, like hunger/thirst/sleep/cold/heat. Making changes to climate, activate some huge gameplay and combat overhauls to make one helluva hardcore survival game in gorgeous fantasy enviroment. It's priceless when you drag yourelf across frozen tundra at night, hungry, cold and tired to death. You can barely move, vision is all blurry, wind's blowing snow in your face and suddenly you get attacked by a pack of wolves from the forest which can kill you right now. Those situations really make your blood pumping and grant you outstanding immersive feelings.

 

In FO3 I downloaded Space Marine power armors and weapons, looted capsule of dead marines and roleplayed mad Black Templar with huge bolter and chainsword. In FNV I downloaded cowboy garbs and gear, some thematic quests and didn't go so far as in previous, but I still had a blast of fun compared to main story, sidequests or anything devs worked so "hard" to deliver.

 

Those games are more like clay, you can shape them the way you like. Without mods and your own imagination it's more like raw program code than finished products.

 

Regarding companions, I love party-based RPGs, but AI in TES/FO is SO goddamn dumb, they get stuck all the time, facetank enemies, have no idea about positioning and tactics, always getting in your way and that's logical if Beth made them essential, but it's breaking immersion in unimaginable ways so I just had to play ALL Beth games solo, it's just way too painfull otherwise.

Edited December 7, 2015 by Signette

[Vagrant0]

Erm, you do realize that most oldschool western RPGs also had either unkillable or nearly unkillable NPCs. Baulders gate, Planescape Torment, ect had npcs which either took no damage, or which had instant kill abilities. Even in tabletop RPGs, it is fairly common for DMs to give key NPCs very high levels or other advantages to make attempts to derail the story very short-lived.

 

Yes, it is possible to do a story without these things. but that creates other issues. For one, it means extended time spent developing story or events for things which normally wouldn't occur, or building content based on contingencies. This is development time that quite frankly, very few game companies can afford to spend the resources on, just to reward people for trying to intentionally derail the game they wanted to make. Back to the tabletop analogy, while a DM might not anticipate it and go with a player killing a key NPC for lols a few times, eventually they will get tired of having to trash their week of preparation every time because of one player. For a commercial game however, having a designed element which drops the equivalent of a Tarrasque or level 20 wizard (D&D and most other tabletop games have dozens of similarly "unbeatable" encounters for just this reason) on the party because they've gone so far off the intended path of the campaign is not an easy thing to implement. It would also have about the same amount of annoyance for the players, and only lead people to try and think that that element is something that you are supposed to defeat legitimately.

 

The annoyance to players is actually less if they initially hit a brick wall when trying to go outside the intended path instead of hitting an even larger one several steps later. A single action can be undone or recovered from easily; realizing that something you did several hours ago just ruined your game is often much harder, and usually means playing through content... Made worse if the realization point came after spending several more hours trying to get around that wall. On a commercial game, having unwinnable conditions leads to customers who will report your game as being broken, unfinished, or just have a disappointing "ending". Even trying these days wouldn't get past an approval committee since development budgets tend to be extremely tight and limited to only those things related to the intended path of the game... With even intended and central aspects cut or toned down because of time, hardware, engine, or budget constraints.

 

That said, is it a bit high in FO4... Not really. I believe Skyrim and Oblivion had a larger number of essential NPCs. That's actually saying something considering how much more of FO4 is strongly tied to story events.

[billyro]

I almost always play as a good character (I get attached to my characters, which makes me feel bad if I do evil), so essential characters don't really bother me. I wouldn't blame the increasing-shallowness of RPGs on them - more on the fact that the missions don't have much multiple choice. It's especially apparent in Fallout 4, where sometimes all 4 dialogue options lead to the exact same thing.

Edited December 7, 2015 by billyro

[Vagrant0]

As much as I agree with you, OP, I still have to say this:

Sooner people realize that latest TES and FO games aren't actual RPGs but sandboxes (one with swords and magic, and other with guns and mutants), the quicker those compaints will be no more.

FO4 and Skyrim are still roleplaying games. They are still games where a significant portion of the content is centered around the player assuming a role of someone in that world and making decisions based on that role that affect the story of the game. Not every decision has to be meaningful, or important to official cannon. Just deciding to head in one direction instead of another arguably means having a different experience or sequence of events from the perspective of the player.

 

As opposed to an adventure game where the sequence of events/experiences are usually fixed or fairly rigidly defined. Or opposed to a sandbox, where the player is not given any background, or real position within the game, but is tasked with defining that role themselves. In this context, FO4 is closer to being a traditional roleplaying game (as designed) than Skyrim since the player's role is more defined and central to the game storyline. As restricting as it might feel to not be able to just kill everyone you come across, for the character that the player is playing, being a sociopath conflicts pretty strongly with being from a time before the chaos where they raised a family in a nice suburb.

[JimboUK]

 

This is worth watching.

[Vagrant0]

This is worth watching.

I don't disagree with most of it, but I would argue that customizable characters are not a required component. You can still do a tabletop game where the players are using characters created by a DM that is designed for a more fixed campaign. A handful of oldschool D&D modules were laid out in this way since the concept of the module was that it was something that people with only limited experience could play through an adventure with minimal setup time. No, it's not as diverse or interesting as a fully open and custom campaign, but it was something that made this type of game more accessible for those just getting into them.

 

Which, is kinda the big thing about RPG videogames. They are something that can introduce more traditional elements to players without much complication, in an easier to digest setting. In this light, FO4 is only continuing the trend.

[Signette]

 

 

This is worth watching.

Absolutely, many valid points and summary is:

There's always Wasteland 2 (now DC). I seriously can't touch any FO games (post FO2) after W2, feels like open-world dumbed down Call of Duty reskin with loot, senseless dialogues and exp points =/