nearly had a panic attack reading that tilte haha really thought Tim was about to say he's bored of this channel now, signing out. love watching his vids.
That title was a surprise to me as well because I had never gotten the impression so far that he was bored with what he was doing! Although he did say a few times that there's less fun to be had for him working on the games industry these days, like the Avoiding Burnout video. But bored? No! After listening I do understand his "boredom" though and several games have bored me out with similar issues.
I've always liked how the Fallout games have handled how your character gets introduced to the world and that includes New Vegas where you have amnesia. You might disagree with me on this, Tim, but here's why I think it worked really well. Your character has a mundane life and the game opens with you getting your brains scrambled. None of what you did in the past ever really mattered and your only motivation is revenge and rightfully so I think. That, to me, is how you nail amnesia. It's not about who you were but who you, the character, and you, the player are going to be.
One effective thing that hit me in Arcanum-often in towns you could ask about work. If you did so in Cumbria, the townsfolk would say "look around, Cumbria is dying! There isn't enough work for the citizens!" It was a bit of tell along with show, but it was in a brief conversation and a negative response to something that normally got a positive response so it stood out. Brief but effective.
Tim spitting FACTS! I´m on the same boat...no amnesia anymore please, no "the bigger the better" open worlds, no boooring monologues "why did i became evil".
What do you think of the idea of playing a psychopathic character (by the medical definition), but they're only as "evil" as they need be / you dictate? Their main motif of getting around being (rational) self-enrichment
Totally with you on preferring "scoped problems"; they have so much more potential to drive interesting factional and character conflict. (By contrast, it doesn't serve anyone's interests to literally end the world.)
Wasteland 3 does this really well - the entire story premise is basically 'Secure our supply chain' which sounds dull as hell but ends up forcing you into faction conflicts that are really interesting with outcomes that aren't always obvious.
This is one of the many reasons I love Citizen Sleeper. The stakes are either personal or effect people you care about. Even at it's biggest scale you know you are probably going to change nothing outside of that scope. You don't solve anything perfectly, it's a constant compromise.
I think that "saving the world" isn't just boring but also can be sometimes detrimental to the game design, instead of making difficult choices or having a specific argument to convince a character/faction to join you, it's just the most obvious argument "united we stand, divided we fall". Also, the stakes are so high that it's impossible to realise how much your character values everything in the world, especially if your game takes place only in a part of the world and the other parts of the world are barely described in the game
A smaller, more local problem also makes an evil path make a lot more sense. If a gang bandits / raiders / barbarians are threatening to overrun the town, joining the villains, climbing their ranks, and taking over works as an evil path. If the world or universe is going to be destroyed, even Evil Mac Evilman will need to do the good quest to save their own skin in most cases.
I think saving the world as a power fantasy is extremely dull; however, if it's a burden, curse, or painfully earned, it can be justified. The main character Aya in Parasite Eve is constantly haunted by a dead loved one and witnesses horrors along the way. Her saving the world feels earned by the end, and her powers during the game almost felt like a curse. She never asked for this. It doesn't hurt that she's a working girl in modern day New York. She's not some cocky teenager with a magical sword, but someone far more grounded, albeit with some '90s action hero moments.
I think it is only a problem when they slap you in the face with it. Countless JRPGs do it really well where you struggle to survive and then you end up in a postion where you can save the world. Games like FF14 with its painfully bad writing hit you in the face with it from the start and then you have a world that doesn't acknowledge what the MSQ defines. Early in the game it says you are the savoir of everyone with each city celebrating you and then you go right back to being a delivery boy its just soo poorly done.
@@lrinfiI was thinking about Guild Wars 2 in this where the bickering of the orders kind of abruptly stops because of the argument, but yeah this is a thing too. For example I've been playing Dragon Age Origins recently and half of the main "gathering army" quests basically choosing one faction out of two, and the other has to be killed
@@Blueprint4MurderI haven't played JRPGs so I'm going to agree with you. Same with FF14 but I'm guessing it has the same issue as GW2 original storyline which has similar issues
Okay, but Disco Elysium utilizes the amnesia trope really well. It's not just to get justification for all the lore dumps, but to become Raphaël Ambrosius Costeau, the superstar hobocop.
I'd argue that Disco Elysium is more a subversion of that trope than a game that plays it straight. Yes, you've lost your memory -- but you also know exactly how that happened in the first place, which gives you a LOT of information on the kind of person you were -- or are. It's the difference between a blank slate and a slate that's only been partially erased, where you can kind of make out what used to be written in spots.
Obviously there will be instances of all these things that were good, otherwise they wouldn’t have become overused in the first place. It’s more of a list of things to be careful about using than absolutely never use them in any case.
I made this comment awhile back and (I think, don't quote me) Tim commented something to every rule has exceptions or something. He seems to regard Disco Elysium pretty well
I think the reason is it didn't feel like an excuse to bring the character up to speed at the same time as the player, which to me is the problem with amnesia in games. Rather, it was the low point in the characters arc, losing who you were and what you choose to become now IS the main question the game poses. Amnesia was just one part of that, along with the skill/personality system and all the interactions having that former identity looming over them.
Tim doesn’t review games, but I’ve always wanted to know his thoughts on Disco Elysium. The game does almost EVERYTHING Tim says you shouldn’t in an rpg, but it’s still an amazing game.
I learned real quick in my D&D games to not use "save the world" conflicts. It means that anyone that stands in the players' way has to be evil: there's no character decision where "Yeah let's destroy the whole world" makes sense. As soon as I switched to human-caused conflict (like a war between neighboring nations), I was able to create characters that made sense and were sympathetic on both sides of the conflict.
Most things are written so that younger generations can have that "oh, wow, I've never seen this before" moment. For someone who's seen where many of the concepts originated though, it does indeed feel boring though. I agree. Story writing is the same thing as fashion or music though. Every design concept is just recycled every 20-40 years as a new generation becomes adults and haven't experienced it the previous time. I think we who saw the start of the games industry are especially spoiled in this regard, as we had so many _actual_ first experiences. Now we're at the time where things will just loop around again. Overall, this is just something we just have to accept as a fact of life. Everything old is new... to _someone_ anyway. 🤷♂️
I don't make games and have little desire to, but as an avid gamer I absolutely love watching your videos and hearing about everything that goes into making the games that I do play. It gives me a much greater appreciation for what you guys do and makes the games more fun knowing how much thought and effort are actually put into them. Every gamer should watch your videos.. especially the ones who always complain.. very insightful. ❤Thank you!!
I love watching these videos! I am not a game designer, programmer, or anything related. However, I often watch your videos and take good advice out of them in relation to my own interests. I'm an aspiring musical artist. It's interesting to see the similarities between one creative process and another
The first one is why I quite enjoyed the story in Cyberpunk 2077. You're solving your own problem. The world doesn't care whether you live or die. But while you're trying to do something for yourself, you're making an impact and becoming famous, and you also get to see subtle changes in the world that are a result of your actions.
The thing you mentioned about some combat feeling more like "following a rhythm" is probably why I enjoy style/spectacle fighter games like DMC and Bayonetta, or really any game that emphasizes stylish combat I'm given the room to experiment and find my own rhythm rather than being forced to follow the same one or two beats that the game is clearly designed around
I made a map in minecraft once with a story of its own. There are some oddities around the map to make the player wonder, but if you head west there you'd find an abandoned, old, destroyed castle and village. If one explored further they'd find a buried library with a few different books filled with lore and history of that kingdom and how the land came to be the way it was. It's totally optional to find, and for those that like to explore would find it pretty interesting.
I love it when Villians do a monolog and the player can punch em while he is on it. Also the common used Traits can be used as a twist: Why do you save the world! - I don t Save the world I just want revenge because one of your minions broke my teddy!! Great Video!
Tim I just want to say that you've been my favorite personality in gaming dev for a long time now. Going all the way back to Troika. These videos have really cemented in my mind exactly why you were. I wish more devs really strove for your devotion to player freedom and real choice. You mentioning how an RPG needs to react to the player really brought to mind Gabe talking about how he had an, in his words "narcissistic" urge for the gameworld to react to him and his actions, and how true that statement rung for me. When I play games I always want the world to feel alive and like it exists after I stop playing. I want to know my choices and actions affected the world and left a mark on the people living in it. It''s something incredibly unique to games and the games that do it are always the ones that feel special and important.
I wouldn't call it a "narcissistic" urge, although I suppose it can turn into one. It's perfectly natural in that human beings are social creatures with in innate need to feel a sense of purpose and belonging in the real world. Why should that be any different for a character in a virtual world? And, yes, "the savior complex" is not a complex those great leaders throughout human history everyone knows the name of exhibited in their lifetimes (though their "followers" very often have) and yet their contributions changed the course of the world they lived in the most unexpected and, often, delightful ways. "Art anticipates life," so they say, yet I don't see an awful lot of anticipation in art today so much as the treading and retreading of old, worn, familiar ground.
@@lrinfiAs I said those were Gabe's words not mine but it does touch on our need to feel the world respond to us in meaningful ways. That's what makes games such a unique artform. I'd also say that it isn't necessarily that the world validates you or lets you save it. Just that it responds to you. If you steal from a shop, maybe the shop goes out of business. If you feed a dog maybe it doesn't die and helps you in the future, maybe it goes feral and kills an important character. Who knows? It's just little things that show the world operates on choice and consequence. In Gabe's case it was just that when he shot the world the world should have decals showing he shot it.
I have to agree with some of your points there Tim. I know how useful amnesia is in story telling but I wish I don't have to see it used again. I also not fond of merging multiple genres in hope of getting something new, it's not easy to do and it will end up messy or one genre overpowering the others. But that being said, it has to be understood that finding something new is tough and even if we did, developing it is not so easy.
Nailed it….the exact reasons I haven’t really played a game for 12 months & last game I was really excited about was 5-6 yrs ago. Been gaming for 45 yrs & looks like it’s coming to an end 😢
This is why indie is such a thriving market. Innovation is the driving force behind a lot of indie games and it makes them stand out so much more than your average AAA game.
" I'm good looking but nobody understands me *waaah" lol, thats funny as hell! Not gonna lie Tim, if you made a game that roasts tropes of other " RPG"s I'd buy it brother!
I don't think sarcastic NPCs inherently can't work and I don't think the issue is that they've been overdone. The issue is that the writers who gravitate most commonly to sarcastic characters use that as a crutch and write the most nauseatingly unoriginal and unfunny dialogue. They think that the sarcasm alone is some magical layer that turns all the lines to gold.
Caesar didn't just ramble and tell you how scary and bad he was. You could get information from him when you finally met him, but his "reputation" preceded him, so to speak. You heard about his army and his followers and the things they'd actually done, you'd experienced them. So when he appears as this well educated, eloquent man... He's not a maniac.
He didn't have an issue with villain dialogue, but with villain MONOlogues. When the villain just speaks at you for an extended period of time for no reason other than they need to tell you why their evil. Caesar works because he's trying to convince the Courier to join him, or he's trying to intimidate the Courier into stepping away. He's listing all his accomplishments in an attempt to sway you, rather than going on a 5 minute diatribe in the middle of the final showdown.
One of my biggest gripes with RPG's and something I think Obsidian does so well, is how much established back story they give the player. I loved in FNV that you were just a person put into a situation, like most of Obsidians games, they really understand that about RP.
Today Tim shreds the Divinity series... ...and on a similar note I'm tired of "puzzles" that amount to playing Where's Waldo with some needle in a haystack item without know what you're supposed to be looking for.
Hm, this might be beyond stupid but: how about having those "cliche" characters spread around a game where you can exploit the shortcomings and boredom of those type of characters? I mean like roasting the "sarcastic one" for his "originality" or having the "telekinetic" girl been bullied into using that power for your own gain, or even better, having an "Evil Wizard" in one town where everyone fears him like it is the black plague, but once you reach his tower you realize that he actually is such a Lore Dump that his ramblings eat away the will of his victims without him realizing this. I know is a long shot, but during the video I was thinking about this type of characters being so outdated that everyone else in the game would feel more dynamic and alive, making that group into the empty carcasses they actually are.
The saving world trope is just traditional storytelling, nothing wrong with that. Thing is, when the story doesn't somehow signal the utter hopelessness humanity has to face on a daily basis, that'll lead to the player not caring and even ask themselevs why even bother save this world? Example: this could be done by playing a game with amazing characters that you can see struggle against the state of the world and thus motivate the player to continue to fight evil or somehow be there to show and inspire them to fight against their nihilisitc way of thinking.
"If the world is meant to end, so be it. Let it end and be reborn." -- Arngeir, Graybeards, Skyrim Most players I've seen approach that with the attitude that that's...well, that's just crazy thinking, kind of missing the whole "be reborn" part. We humans tend to think of time, especially, in linear terms and strictly in terms of beginnings and endings, but, "worlds" (of men) and eras have come and gone throughout the course of human history and we're still here. What if we did let "the world" end and be reborn anew in Skyrim? I suppose we'll never know. We weren't given the option.
This, of all things, actually made me replan my upcoming DnD campaign! Sometimes tropes are fun, but the point of a scoped problem(s) really stuck with me. Thanks, Tim!
Biggest trope that annoys me these days is the sympathetic villain. All over movies and TV shows. No one can ever just be a remorseless psychopath or a delusional grandiose murder clown, they all have to be the way they are because someone stole their lunch money in the third grade or whatever. Whatever happened to plain nasty motivations like revenge or jealousy or just lust for power?
I think we have to be better about defining genres. I think it hurts games sometimes. It's hard to manage expectations when the term 'RPG' means so many different things to so many people.
I think this is an inherent problem with genres that probably can't be solved, unless you create a ton of subgenres, at which point the use of genre to describe something becomes useless because nobody knows or understands all the different labels. The genre debate happens everywhere, in books, movies, music etc
by the way, i such hate modern systems of level up, and absolutely love arcanum system. she was a simple but super interesting. you saw a high level magic or high level technic branch, and you think "oh, damn I want it, I want disintegrated spell or mechanic spider, and you go right to it. but now every games give you a ton of useless spell, you look at all these and think ... "I bored now"))) I don't want any of this. This is biggest reason thy I dream about arcanum remake... for a start)
That first point is probably my favorite. I love low to medium stakes stories. Something that is just an event happening in a world that will continue whether or not the quest is seen through to the end. Usually a journey of personal growth more than anything else.
I cannot emphasize how much i agree with your first point enough. I am sick to death of saving the world. I can only imagine how much worse it is for you, since you've been playing games so much longer than I have. I don't understand why so many writers (regardless of medium) don't seem to understand that personal stakes are always more engaging than universal/existential stakes. Hell, one of my favorite games of all time begins with the protagonist looking for their missing father (who was on an airship that disappeared) before spirallng out into a larger story of conspiracies and villains oriented around... a succession dispute in small backwater kingdom. The villain wasn't some sneering demigod threatening to destroy anything... dude was just a boilerplate misogynist upset that a woman might inherit the throne instead of a man.
"We need to close these Oblivion Gates!" No thanks. Imagine how much fun The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion would be if the player could join Mehrunes Dagon.
Oblivion was ok, but I never understood why they removed float. It took a dimensions out of the game, and that type of lazy development is why the IP is in the gutter. Morrowind was the best ES because of it and its monsterous lore despite its bad combat and painfully reused assets. It is the least they could have done with the ever-shrinking world the next few games gave us. They flirted a little with it in dishonored, but it was more of a platformer mechanic and didn't feel great.
Or Morrowind. Both Dagoth Ur and his minions attempt to convince the Nerevar to join them, but you literally can't say yes or even flirt with the idea. Would have made a great alternative end-game as an evil playthrough. Convince whatever factions you can to join the new faction lead by two demi-gods. If they refuse, destroy them. Destroy the imperial friendly factions. End with a climax of storming Vivec with a bunch of corpus monsters, kick down the door, and kill Vivec.
Well, technically you COULD say "no thanks" and go on about your day, you just wouldn't be able to finish the main story. But that's arguably the worst part of the game anyways so...
Hi Tim, as someone who was born in 1997 I am a HUGE fan of the Fallout Series. Especially the older Fallout games, just wondering. Is it possible for Obsidian and Bethesda to work together on a Fallout game in the future?
Thank you very much for this list. It is actually preferable to reviews :) One question I have for you is: What do you consider great examples of choice and consequence (from both your games and others) and how do you hope this RPG element evolves in the future? Thank you again for these great videos! Have a great day :)
"Top 10 things you loved from your favourite games and glued them together" This feels like so many games and why I bounce off of them so quick. They don't have a personal identity. They take things from other games or media and smash it in their game without totally understanding it. So we just get half understood poorly implemented boring regurgitation of ideas. I'm hoping to avoid such pitfalls with my own game by focusing on what's important to me specifically and my specific interests, while keeping it light hearted and goofy.
I don't really like "saving the world" either, although a lot of RPGs I like start with something simple that eventually grows into "saving the world" or at least "saving the region." But I've also seen a lot of "the world can't be saved" in games that gets annoying. That one feels like someone saying "I don't want to save the world, but I don't have any ideas of my own." I actually like the varying good/evil endings in Infernax. Although it feels like the "most good" and "most evil" endings in that game are actually better in terms of, the story goes further compared to the regular good/evil endings that have kind of a false ending. It's also got a fun "redemption" ending, although that one borderline requires following a guide. But anyway, Infernax's most good/most evil endings have you fight big final bosses (different ones) for different reasons, and they tie into the good/evil.
I still don't understand why there are barely any RPGs that send you to a different kingdom to justify lack of knowledge of customs or general world knowledge. Or at least put you in a prologue where you play as a child to do some world building/introduction.
Hi Tim - I haven't yet watched all of your videos (there's a lot of them!) so I apologize if you've addressed this before, but I was curious if you've tried Disco Elysium. I ask because I too often get tired of nonstop combat if so many RPGs - it's just about the only path to character growth you'll find in RPGs, so playing a game like DE that has no combat was a real breath of fresh air to me. It has a lot of character customizability and lots of interesting choices, though it does lean kind of heavily on the amnesia trope. But I really enjoyed it and would recommend giving it a shot if you haven't played it.
The issue I have with most evil playthroughs is that it tends to be petty / kill all the things type evil. I don't think I can remember many games where the evil path is one where you manipulate or simply bluff your companions through the game to turn on them at the end. KOTOR did it somewhat (although I cannot remember the details, must be 10 years or more since I last played it) and that was fun but a game where you can talk to the evil companions and have them work in the background so when your pc does the big 'I have been playing you all along' and you can take over as the leader of whatever region/land/area in the game, almost the Palpatine evil kind of thing. Sounds like ToEE (I had a disk copy ages ago, never go around to playing it) might do something like that which is cool but I find it so rare in games to have that kind of path where the evil feels more grounded.
One of my pet peeves is a game is establishing an in world logic and then later breaking that logic for trivial reasons. Also when a game doesn't have in world logic at all, just constantly contradicting itself. It might be petty, but even the smallest things can sometimes break my immersion. I'm not saying it has to be realistic (but it certainly doesn't hurt), it just has to make sense within the game or it's gonna lessen my experience significantly.
I hate how most choices in RPG's either have no consequences at all, or give you a choice that is so mechanically superior to the others that you'd never choose the others. My favorite choices in RPG's have pros and cons, so it doesn't feel like there's a best choice and I have to actually think about what I want to do.
The concept i like the most is when you create a character, or have a character that starts out as nothing specific, but then you shape them how you want in the world you was put in, without the threat of something global or existence-threatening to happen, but with more human stories, more grounded problems, etc.
Yup. I've always dreamt of a big, open-world sandbox RPG where you're free to do whatever, without any big Main Quest imposing itself on everything. I think The Witcher 3 came closest to that, with how you could just lose yourself in the mundane "job" of Witchery, which (I think) would've been more than enough, by itself, to make the game worth playing. The main plot, such as it was, such as I remember, was also pretty low-stakes, as I recall. Just an old man trying to find his daughter, and maybe help her out a bit once he does.
The amnesia part made me laugh. Becaus I remember watching Madnaloregaming make a review on STALKER, where he said "like most mid 2000s video games, you have amnesia." I had to pause and think on the games I played in/from that era and got the "oh god, he's right." moment. Soo, soo many games with amnesia.
100 percent agree. Especially snarky or sarcastic charcaters. Moments of sarcasm add some humanity; constantly sarcastic... why would I bring that guy on my adventure?
A really cool game that has many of the things you mentioned but it's done in a really fun way (at least to me) is kingdome come deliverance, pre named character, somewhat of a linear story, combat choreography. Still a good rpg I think.
There's a point at which we are just reinventing the wheel and not innovating. That's not to say people are lazy, innovating gets harder as more gets done and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery (as well as worth a few bucks). My personal peeve is how phenomenally stupid NPC motivation can be. It's either from the murder hobo school of ethics or ethics comes second place to story convenience. Maybe it's just me but characters are seeming less like characters these days. Just very two dimensional.
Not an RPG but I kinda liked how Omikron the Nomad Soul did the amnesia trope, the idea being that you are a nomadic soul the is in another persons body so you shouldn't know about the world.
original sin 2 wound up kinda doing the amnesia/special boy thing both well and terribly, pending on the character chosen. you'd have one character who was actually very deeply involved with the whole affair and then another who was just... there, present and accounted for by necessity lol
Same as with Movies. Saving the world from some unexplained Just-Evil-TM as been completely overused and also wrongly used. If every movie in your series (yes thinking of Marvel movies) has the same narrative of "We / I have to save the world - again" it just becomes unbelieveable, no matter how creative the threat / saving might be. And that's a shame, because saving the world makes for a hell of a movie (or movies) but it has to be earned throught the series and with complexity. LOTR is my favourite movie and yet I dont critize it for using an overused trope. Because "the Evil" is complex and actually to a degree within every character. And it is about defeating that evil within you AND defeat those that couldn't defeat theirs on their own. That makes for multiple interesting characters and plotlines.
complexity for complexity's sake is one of those things where I both hate it and then play a whole bunch of games that are full of it. case in point - total war: attila. the western roman empire campaign of fighitng attila and 1-hour-plus end-turns from multiple small town battles in a row and "oh god who declared war on me *this* turn" made it one of my favourite total war campaigns of all time, but the town building mechanics were broken (oh, you upgraded your farms to fix the food problem? shame you don't have the sanitation for that, enjoy the endless plagues and public order debuffs, also Winter Is Coming so you still have a food problem) and you look up a steam guide with templates for making optimal towns that make tens of thousands more than whatever you thought was a good idea...
In defense of the Open World: It can be very reassuring for players to know that they can always go out and kill some enemies to become stronger. The Open World can function as a personal balancing element, possibly preventing players from getting stuck on a difficult fight. Tyranny comes to mind as a game that did the opposite; I always felt like i had to pick dialogue options and otherwise act in ways that levelled skills (like extending combat to cast more spells) because there were limited options to level skills and i didn't want to end up underpowered later on. Also, i think that being a veteran gamer (since the 80s in my case) can be kind of a curse. I will also complain that modern shmups aren't as good as Raptor (1994). It's tough for someone to come up with something that we haven't seen a dozen times before.
Omg is this the first time you feature a clip? It was a great timing for the content at hand😂😂 I think ur right about most of these, like the sarcastic npcs
Thank you for mentioning "Open World" as a boring feature when there is no need for it. However i have a question about Major types of RPG games and by whom and how it is decided. Like, if this game will be an isometric, or 3rd person shooter, turn based or live action, open world or smaller hub areas. I understand that it happens very early in the development, but what is the reasoning behind it and on what level it is decided. (Partly it bothers me because we are getting Avowed instead of Pillars of Eternity 3. And i guess PoE2 was not as financially successful, but it was a really good game!)
It may not be Tim's answer but a lot of that comes down to budget and resources/talent. Camera perspective is often dictated by the budget, first-person games can be more budget-friendly than third-person since third-person requires many more animations where the full body is animated, different/more visual effects (dust/dirt from walking), and different/more sound effects and/or voice lines (idle animations, sounds to match what the character is wearing, etc.) That requires a lot of time, talent, and resources, which costs money. Some first-person games don't even have visible arms/hands so only the swing of a sword or the recoil of a gun is animated. Isometric games have a camera much further from the player character and other assets, which means the assets can be simplified. Less time is spent modeling assets, fewer details in textures, animations can be faster or have less detail. It can also be dependent on the engine being used. Unreal Engine 4 was notoriously difficult to use for open worlds so many UE4 games had levels separated by loading screens in some way. Making first or third-person games often means the player needs to be able to see farther than they would from an isometric perspective, so there needs to be further draw distances and culling of assets in any direction the player can look. Isometric perspective typically results in fewer visible assets at any given point, so performance can often be easier to manage due to that fixed angle. These are all decided during pre-production (ideally) before the game properly enters development. These decisions are typically made by game directors and leads but some may come from higher up the chain depending on who is supplying the budget. Hopefully this provided some perspective. This is something that could be talked about for hours, especially with someone as experienced as Tim. tl;dr: games require talent, resources, and time, which typically comes down to the budget.
@@bloogalooga Thank you for detailed answer. But that would kinda mean that isometric games would be significantly cheaper to make, and also would allow much prettier graphics from the distance like it was in PoE2 for example. And yet we are seeing a long trend to move to 3rd person. I know that it is considered to be a better sell, but is there any financial data behind it?
I like open world games. Thing is: the open world concept can be done well and not so well. Part of the problem is the 'bigger is better" philosophy, imo. Bigger isn't always necessarily better. (The 'wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle' anlogy comes to mind.) As Tim pointed out, what's the point if the vast majority of it is empty space? The larger the world, the more space to fill and that space is generally being filled with procedurally-generated POIs. If you don't have an unlimited library of handcrafted assets from which those POIs are built, they're going to become very samey-samey very quickly.
I’m a big fan of the sword and sorcery literary genre. Even though IPs from that genre are very influential I would say that it has been outstripped by the, for lack of a better term, Tolkienian BBEG and the apocalypse type of storylines. I think revisiting some of the tropes from sword and sorcery could give narrative designers idea about how to make their storylines smaller and more personal in scope. I like how if sword and sorcery portrays a BBEG, their plans are usually not world domination and usually only affect say one nation or a region and other parts of the world may not be affected or only hear about that big wizard war going on 3 countries over. The reduced stakes make it so there’s less fatigue from saving the world…again and makes the world feel much bigger than the conflict itself.
nearly had a panic attack reading that tilte haha really thought Tim was about to say he's bored of this channel now, signing out. love watching his vids.
lol! Exactly what I thought when I saw the notification pop up. Phew! The sense of relief is real.
That title was a surprise to me as well because I had never gotten the impression so far that he was bored with what he was doing!
Although he did say a few times that there's less fun to be had for him working on the games industry these days, like the Avoiding Burnout video. But bored? No!
After listening I do understand his "boredom" though and several games have bored me out with similar issues.
I've always liked how the Fallout games have handled how your character gets introduced to the world and that includes New Vegas where you have amnesia. You might disagree with me on this, Tim, but here's why I think it worked really well. Your character has a mundane life and the game opens with you getting your brains scrambled. None of what you did in the past ever really mattered and your only motivation is revenge and rightfully so I think. That, to me, is how you nail amnesia. It's not about who you were but who you, the character, and you, the player are going to be.
+1 I like amnesia as a player backstory option and not as a writer's trick.@@omicronoverlord3533
hi everyone, this is tim. im bored of this shit now, bye lol
Completely off topic but you liking my comment yesterday! Absolutely made my day!! Me and my coworkers got all fan girly about it!!❤❤❤
The power move of liking the comment about liking the comment. Tim you're a legend 😄
@BasicWorldbuilder I call it “mega-liking”.
A Buffy reference... I'd give two thumbs up if YT would let me
Just what I was going to comment.
One effective thing that hit me in Arcanum-often in towns you could ask about work.
If you did so in Cumbria, the townsfolk would say "look around, Cumbria is dying! There isn't enough work for the citizens!"
It was a bit of tell along with show, but it was in a brief conversation and a negative response to something that normally got a positive response so it stood out. Brief but effective.
Fallout 1 Harold is the ultimate lore dump character for me!! Strictly optional, and delivered in a way where you don't even realize you're learning.
Tim spitting FACTS! I´m on the same boat...no amnesia anymore please, no "the bigger the better" open worlds, no boooring monologues "why did i became evil".
Indie horror games are the worst with the cliched "You were a bad person the whole time." It shows a lack of creativity, meaning, and writing chops.
gotta love a kojima monologue about otakon banging his step mom and having a romantic relationship with his step sister
What do you think of the idea of playing a psychopathic character (by the medical definition), but they're only as "evil" as they need be / you dictate? Their main motif of getting around being (rational) self-enrichment
Totally with you on preferring "scoped problems"; they have so much more potential to drive interesting factional and character conflict. (By contrast, it doesn't serve anyone's interests to literally end the world.)
Wasteland 3 does this really well - the entire story premise is basically 'Secure our supply chain' which sounds dull as hell but ends up forcing you into faction conflicts that are really interesting with outcomes that aren't always obvious.
Tell me you haven't played Arcanum, without telling me you haven't played Arcanum.
This is one of the many reasons I love Citizen Sleeper. The stakes are either personal or effect people you care about. Even at it's biggest scale you know you are probably going to change nothing outside of that scope. You don't solve anything perfectly, it's a constant compromise.
I think that "saving the world" isn't just boring but also can be sometimes detrimental to the game design, instead of making difficult choices or having a specific argument to convince a character/faction to join you, it's just the most obvious argument "united we stand, divided we fall". Also, the stakes are so high that it's impossible to realise how much your character values everything in the world, especially if your game takes place only in a part of the world and the other parts of the world are barely described in the game
A smaller, more local problem also makes an evil path make a lot more sense. If a gang bandits / raiders / barbarians are threatening to overrun the town, joining the villains, climbing their ranks, and taking over works as an evil path. If the world or universe is going to be destroyed, even Evil Mac Evilman will need to do the good quest to save their own skin in most cases.
I think saving the world as a power fantasy is extremely dull; however, if it's a burden, curse, or painfully earned, it can be justified. The main character Aya in Parasite Eve is constantly haunted by a dead loved one and witnesses horrors along the way. Her saving the world feels earned by the end, and her powers during the game almost felt like a curse. She never asked for this. It doesn't hurt that she's a working girl in modern day New York. She's not some cocky teenager with a magical sword, but someone far more grounded, albeit with some '90s action hero moments.
I think it is only a problem when they slap you in the face with it. Countless JRPGs do it really well where you struggle to survive and then you end up in a postion where you can save the world. Games like FF14 with its painfully bad writing hit you in the face with it from the start and then you have a world that doesn't acknowledge what the MSQ defines. Early in the game it says you are the savoir of everyone with each city celebrating you and then you go right back to being a delivery boy its just soo poorly done.
@@lrinfiI was thinking about Guild Wars 2 in this where the bickering of the orders kind of abruptly stops because of the argument, but yeah this is a thing too. For example I've been playing Dragon Age Origins recently and half of the main "gathering army" quests basically choosing one faction out of two, and the other has to be killed
@@Blueprint4MurderI haven't played JRPGs so I'm going to agree with you. Same with FF14 but I'm guessing it has the same issue as GW2 original storyline which has similar issues
Came here hoping to hear about sarcastic NPCs and I wasn't disappointed. :D
Tim dropping the game design equivalent of T Pain's "Do something else!!"
"We got Dragon's Dogma! We got Dragon Quest! We got Dragon Age! We got Dragon Everybody!!! DO SOMETHING ELSE!!!"
Okay, but Disco Elysium utilizes the amnesia trope really well. It's not just to get justification for all the lore dumps, but to become Raphaël Ambrosius Costeau, the superstar hobocop.
I'd argue that Disco Elysium is more a subversion of that trope than a game that plays it straight. Yes, you've lost your memory -- but you also know exactly how that happened in the first place, which gives you a LOT of information on the kind of person you were -- or are. It's the difference between a blank slate and a slate that's only been partially erased, where you can kind of make out what used to be written in spots.
Obviously there will be instances of all these things that were good, otherwise they wouldn’t have become overused in the first place.
It’s more of a list of things to be careful about using than absolutely never use them in any case.
I made this comment awhile back and (I think, don't quote me) Tim commented something to every rule has exceptions or something. He seems to regard Disco Elysium pretty well
I think the reason is it didn't feel like an excuse to bring the character up to speed at the same time as the player, which to me is the problem with amnesia in games.
Rather, it was the low point in the characters arc, losing who you were and what you choose to become now IS the main question the game poses. Amnesia was just one part of that, along with the skill/personality system and all the interactions having that former identity looming over them.
Tim doesn’t review games, but I’ve always wanted to know his thoughts on Disco Elysium. The game does almost EVERYTHING Tim says you shouldn’t in an rpg, but it’s still an amazing game.
I love the slightly sarcastic, “Tim getting worked up”. Really funny, but also conveying very useful advice! 😂
It's a rant but makes sense😂😂
Love the subtle nod to Hi Fi Rush at 9:36. What a gem of a game
Is that Hi Fi Rush he's talking about? I thought it was Crypt of the Necrodancer.
@@DaRkPlUm Great games either way, though I reckon hi-fi is probably closer to Tim's radar?
@@DaRkPlUm Crypt isn't recent, it's from 2015
I learned real quick in my D&D games to not use "save the world" conflicts. It means that anyone that stands in the players' way has to be evil: there's no character decision where "Yeah let's destroy the whole world" makes sense.
As soon as I switched to human-caused conflict (like a war between neighboring nations), I was able to create characters that made sense and were sympathetic on both sides of the conflict.
I love how vested you are in player agency and the player having freedom. I heartfully agree with and love every syllable of this video.
Your channel is a wealth of gaming and programming knowledge. Thankful I found it!
Most things are written so that younger generations can have that "oh, wow, I've never seen this before" moment. For someone who's seen where many of the concepts originated though, it does indeed feel boring though. I agree.
Story writing is the same thing as fashion or music though. Every design concept is just recycled every 20-40 years as a new generation becomes adults and haven't experienced it the previous time.
I think we who saw the start of the games industry are especially spoiled in this regard, as we had so many _actual_ first experiences. Now we're at the time where things will just loop around again. Overall, this is just something we just have to accept as a fact of life. Everything old is new... to _someone_ anyway. 🤷♂️
I don't make games and have little desire to, but as an avid gamer I absolutely love watching your videos and hearing about everything that goes into making the games that I do play. It gives me a much greater appreciation for what you guys do and makes the games more fun knowing how much thought and effort are actually put into them. Every gamer should watch your videos.. especially the ones who always complain.. very insightful. ❤Thank you!!
Not a big JRPG fan, Tim?
Lol I don't think Tim likes some of my favorite games
J"RPG"
I love watching these videos! I am not a game designer, programmer, or anything related. However, I often watch your videos and take good advice out of them in relation to my own interests. I'm an aspiring musical artist. It's interesting to see the similarities between one creative process and another
The first one is why I quite enjoyed the story in Cyberpunk 2077. You're solving your own problem. The world doesn't care whether you live or die. But while you're trying to do something for yourself, you're making an impact and becoming famous, and you also get to see subtle changes in the world that are a result of your actions.
As if I couldn't love this channel more, now there are Buffy clips inserted. Amazing.
The thing you mentioned about some combat feeling more like "following a rhythm" is probably why I enjoy style/spectacle fighter games like DMC and Bayonetta, or really any game that emphasizes stylish combat
I'm given the room to experiment and find my own rhythm rather than being forced to follow the same one or two beats that the game is clearly designed around
I made a map in minecraft once with a story of its own. There are some oddities around the map to make the player wonder, but if you head west there you'd find an abandoned, old, destroyed castle and village.
If one explored further they'd find a buried library with a few different books filled with lore and history of that kingdom and how the land came to be the way it was.
It's totally optional to find, and for those that like to explore would find it pretty interesting.
I love it when Villians do a monolog and the player can punch em while he is on it.
Also the common used Traits can be used as a twist: Why do you save the world! - I don t Save the world I just want revenge because one of your minions broke my teddy!!
Great Video!
Tim I just want to say that you've been my favorite personality in gaming dev for a long time now. Going all the way back to Troika. These videos have really cemented in my mind exactly why you were. I wish more devs really strove for your devotion to player freedom and real choice. You mentioning how an RPG needs to react to the player really brought to mind Gabe talking about how he had an, in his words "narcissistic" urge for the gameworld to react to him and his actions, and how true that statement rung for me. When I play games I always want the world to feel alive and like it exists after I stop playing. I want to know my choices and actions affected the world and left a mark on the people living in it. It''s something incredibly unique to games and the games that do it are always the ones that feel special and important.
I wouldn't call it a "narcissistic" urge, although I suppose it can turn into one. It's perfectly natural in that human beings are social creatures with in innate need to feel a sense of purpose and belonging in the real world. Why should that be any different for a character in a virtual world? And, yes, "the savior complex" is not a complex those great leaders throughout human history everyone knows the name of exhibited in their lifetimes (though their "followers" very often have) and yet their contributions changed the course of the world they lived in the most unexpected and, often, delightful ways.
"Art anticipates life," so they say, yet I don't see an awful lot of anticipation in art today so much as the treading and retreading of old, worn, familiar ground.
@@lrinfiAs I said those were Gabe's words not mine but it does touch on our need to feel the world respond to us in meaningful ways. That's what makes games such a unique artform. I'd also say that it isn't necessarily that the world validates you or lets you save it. Just that it responds to you. If you steal from a shop, maybe the shop goes out of business. If you feed a dog maybe it doesn't die and helps you in the future, maybe it goes feral and kills an important character. Who knows? It's just little things that show the world operates on choice and consequence. In Gabe's case it was just that when he shot the world the world should have decals showing he shot it.
I'm happy that Tim uses kilometers instead of miles.
“Show don’t tell “ 🎯🎯🎯
A really good advice for all the h3nta1 games.😂
I have to agree with some of your points there Tim. I know how useful amnesia is in story telling but I wish I don't have to see it used again. I also not fond of merging multiple genres in hope of getting something new, it's not easy to do and it will end up messy or one genre overpowering the others.
But that being said, it has to be understood that finding something new is tough and even if we did, developing it is not so easy.
Man, one of my fave videos from you so far. I'm so glad someone (especially someone with an extensive background in the industry) has said this.
Hahaha watching Tim get worked up and almost physically annoyed by these tropes is so funny. But he's soooo right!
Nailed it….the exact reasons I haven’t really played a game for 12 months & last game I was really excited about was 5-6 yrs ago. Been gaming for 45 yrs & looks like it’s coming to an end 😢
This is why indie is such a thriving market. Innovation is the driving force behind a lot of indie games and it makes them stand out so much more than your average AAA game.
Thumbs up for Dark Willow.
Thank you for putting up a video every day.
" I'm good looking but nobody understands me *waaah" lol, thats funny as hell! Not gonna lie Tim, if you made a game that roasts tropes of other " RPG"s I'd buy it brother!
I don't think sarcastic NPCs inherently can't work and I don't think the issue is that they've been overdone. The issue is that the writers who gravitate most commonly to sarcastic characters use that as a crutch and write the most nauseatingly unoriginal and unfunny dialogue. They think that the sarcasm alone is some magical layer that turns all the lines to gold.
Villain dialogue can be great though, like Caesar meeting Courier in New Vegas.
I still wish that high INT Courier could have a real dialogue option where they point out that Caesar didn't actually read Hegel though.
Caesar didn't just ramble and tell you how scary and bad he was. You could get information from him when you finally met him, but his "reputation" preceded him, so to speak. You heard about his army and his followers and the things they'd actually done, you'd experienced them. So when he appears as this well educated, eloquent man... He's not a maniac.
He didn't have an issue with villain dialogue, but with villain MONOlogues. When the villain just speaks at you for an extended period of time for no reason other than they need to tell you why their evil. Caesar works because he's trying to convince the Courier to join him, or he's trying to intimidate the Courier into stepping away. He's listing all his accomplishments in an attempt to sway you, rather than going on a 5 minute diatribe in the middle of the final showdown.
Try to get the point he's making, not the point you want to hear. BORED of comments like yours everywhere on the internet.
@@brettabraham You saved me some typing,
I found that the reuse of Amnesia being a forgettable experience for you quite amusing
One of my biggest gripes with RPG's and something I think Obsidian does so well, is how much established back story they give the player. I loved in FNV that you were just a person put into a situation, like most of Obsidians games, they really understand that about RP.
Today Tim shreds the Divinity series...
...and on a similar note I'm tired of "puzzles" that amount to playing Where's Waldo with some needle in a haystack item without know what you're supposed to be looking for.
Hm, this might be beyond stupid but: how about having those "cliche" characters spread around a game where you can exploit the shortcomings and boredom of those type of characters? I mean like roasting the "sarcastic one" for his "originality" or having the "telekinetic" girl been bullied into using that power for your own gain, or even better, having an "Evil Wizard" in one town where everyone fears him like it is the black plague, but once you reach his tower you realize that he actually is such a Lore Dump that his ramblings eat away the will of his victims without him realizing this.
I know is a long shot, but during the video I was thinking about this type of characters being so outdated that everyone else in the game would feel more dynamic and alive, making that group into the empty carcasses they actually are.
The saving world trope is just traditional storytelling, nothing wrong with that. Thing is, when the story doesn't somehow signal the utter hopelessness humanity has to face on a daily basis, that'll lead to the player not caring and even ask themselevs why even bother save this world? Example: this could be done by playing a game with amazing characters that you can see struggle against the state of the world and thus motivate the player to continue to fight evil or somehow be there to show and inspire them to fight against their nihilisitc way of thinking.
"If the world is meant to end, so be it. Let it end and be reborn." -- Arngeir, Graybeards, Skyrim
Most players I've seen approach that with the attitude that that's...well, that's just crazy thinking, kind of missing the whole "be reborn" part.
We humans tend to think of time, especially, in linear terms and strictly in terms of beginnings and endings, but, "worlds" (of men) and eras have come and gone throughout the course of human history and we're still here.
What if we did let "the world" end and be reborn anew in Skyrim? I suppose we'll never know. We weren't given the option.
This, of all things, actually made me replan my upcoming DnD campaign! Sometimes tropes are fun, but the point of a scoped problem(s) really stuck with me. Thanks, Tim!
would love you to comment on specific tabletop games and their mechanics 😢
The legend of lucky boy must continue!
I did talk about Tabletop RPG Influences:
th-cam.com/video/bNf601IoBpc/w-d-xo.html
love when you talk about your time playing and running tabletop games, would love to hear you talk about running specific modules @@CainOnGames
Biggest trope that annoys me these days is the sympathetic villain. All over movies and TV shows. No one can ever just be a remorseless psychopath or a delusional grandiose murder clown, they all have to be the way they are because someone stole their lunch money in the third grade or whatever. Whatever happened to plain nasty motivations like revenge or jealousy or just lust for power?
Subverting tropes might make for an interesting future video. Or when to use tropes. Tropes stick around for a reason after all.
Same, every time they start ranting about capitalism or social justice I just space out
I think we have to be better about defining genres. I think it hurts games sometimes. It's hard to manage expectations when the term 'RPG' means so many different things to so many people.
I think this is an inherent problem with genres that probably can't be solved, unless you create a ton of subgenres, at which point the use of genre to describe something becomes useless because nobody knows or understands all the different labels. The genre debate happens everywhere, in books, movies, music etc
by the way, i such hate modern systems of level up, and absolutely love arcanum system. she was a simple but super interesting. you saw a high level magic or high level technic branch, and you think "oh, damn I want it, I want disintegrated spell or mechanic spider, and you go right to it. but now every games give you a ton of useless spell, you look at all these and think ... "I bored now"))) I don't want any of this. This is biggest reason thy I dream about arcanum remake... for a start)
"there is just kilometers of nothingness"
*Starfield has left the chat.
That first point is probably my favorite. I love low to medium stakes stories. Something that is just an event happening in a world that will continue whether or not the quest is seen through to the end. Usually a journey of personal growth more than anything else.
I cannot emphasize how much i agree with your first point enough. I am sick to death of saving the world. I can only imagine how much worse it is for you, since you've been playing games so much longer than I have. I don't understand why so many writers (regardless of medium) don't seem to understand that personal stakes are always more engaging than universal/existential stakes.
Hell, one of my favorite games of all time begins with the protagonist looking for their missing father (who was on an airship that disappeared) before spirallng out into a larger story of conspiracies and villains oriented around... a succession dispute in small backwater kingdom. The villain wasn't some sneering demigod threatening to destroy anything... dude was just a boilerplate misogynist upset that a woman might inherit the throne instead of a man.
Amnesia with a twist: Not only does the PC have amnesia, the entire world does! Its all new to everyone
Completely agree with all these points. I notice more of these things as I get older and more picky with my leisure time.
You are a treasure and you are so right.
"We need to close these Oblivion Gates!"
No thanks.
Imagine how much fun The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion would be if the player could join Mehrunes Dagon.
Oblivion was ok, but I never understood why they removed float. It took a dimensions out of the game, and that type of lazy development is why the IP is in the gutter. Morrowind was the best ES because of it and its monsterous lore despite its bad combat and painfully reused assets. It is the least they could have done with the ever-shrinking world the next few games gave us. They flirted a little with it in dishonored, but it was more of a platformer mechanic and didn't feel great.
Or Morrowind. Both Dagoth Ur and his minions attempt to convince the Nerevar to join them, but you literally can't say yes or even flirt with the idea. Would have made a great alternative end-game as an evil playthrough. Convince whatever factions you can to join the new faction lead by two demi-gods. If they refuse, destroy them. Destroy the imperial friendly factions. End with a climax of storming Vivec with a bunch of corpus monsters, kick down the door, and kill Vivec.
Well, technically you COULD say "no thanks" and go on about your day, you just wouldn't be able to finish the main story. But that's arguably the worst part of the game anyways so...
Well they did have some funky DLC I never played through set in the crazy dimension.
The king is back with his great and insightful thoughts. Love your videos
Hi Tim, as someone who was born in 1997 I am a HUGE fan of the Fallout Series. Especially the older Fallout games, just wondering. Is it possible for Obsidian and Bethesda to work together on a Fallout game in the future?
Thank you very much for this list. It is actually preferable to reviews :)
One question I have for you is: What do you consider great examples of choice and consequence (from both your games and others) and how do you hope this RPG element evolves in the future?
Thank you again for these great videos! Have a great day :)
Disco Elysium is an example of a great use of Amnesia for a characters backstory, in my opinion.
You really hit it on the head on these games Tim. No joke I wish people would listen to you lol
The fact that you have to do a 2 minute preamble so people don't take what you said out of context, or freak out in the comments is just sad.
Uncle Tim started memeing! We are truly blessed today!
"Top 10 things you loved from your favourite games and glued them together"
This feels like so many games and why I bounce off of them so quick. They don't have a personal identity. They take things from other games or media and smash it in their game without totally understanding it. So we just get half understood poorly implemented boring regurgitation of ideas.
I'm hoping to avoid such pitfalls with my own game by focusing on what's important to me specifically and my specific interests, while keeping it light hearted and goofy.
I stopped playing the new Harry Potter game after I realized the story 'choices' made no difference to the story
Planscape Torment and KOTOR 1 are pretty much the only truly good implementations of amnesia in a video game honestly.
I don't really like "saving the world" either, although a lot of RPGs I like start with something simple that eventually grows into "saving the world" or at least "saving the region." But I've also seen a lot of "the world can't be saved" in games that gets annoying. That one feels like someone saying "I don't want to save the world, but I don't have any ideas of my own."
I actually like the varying good/evil endings in Infernax. Although it feels like the "most good" and "most evil" endings in that game are actually better in terms of, the story goes further compared to the regular good/evil endings that have kind of a false ending. It's also got a fun "redemption" ending, although that one borderline requires following a guide. But anyway, Infernax's most good/most evil endings have you fight big final bosses (different ones) for different reasons, and they tie into the good/evil.
I know why narrative designers ignore the "stop the amnesia" advice. They forget it
I still don't understand why there are barely any RPGs that send you to a different kingdom to justify lack of knowledge of customs or general world knowledge. Or at least put you in a prologue where you play as a child to do some world building/introduction.
Hi Tim - I haven't yet watched all of your videos (there's a lot of them!) so I apologize if you've addressed this before, but I was curious if you've tried Disco Elysium. I ask because I too often get tired of nonstop combat if so many RPGs - it's just about the only path to character growth you'll find in RPGs, so playing a game like DE that has no combat was a real breath of fresh air to me. It has a lot of character customizability and lots of interesting choices, though it does lean kind of heavily on the amnesia trope. But I really enjoyed it and would recommend giving it a shot if you haven't played it.
The issue I have with most evil playthroughs is that it tends to be petty / kill all the things type evil. I don't think I can remember many games where the evil path is one where you manipulate or simply bluff your companions through the game to turn on them at the end.
KOTOR did it somewhat (although I cannot remember the details, must be 10 years or more since I last played it) and that was fun but a game where you can talk to the evil companions and have them work in the background so when your pc does the big 'I have been playing you all along' and you can take over as the leader of whatever region/land/area in the game, almost the Palpatine evil kind of thing.
Sounds like ToEE (I had a disk copy ages ago, never go around to playing it) might do something like that which is cool but I find it so rare in games to have that kind of path where the evil feels more grounded.
One of my pet peeves is a game is establishing an in world logic and then later breaking that logic for trivial reasons. Also when a game doesn't have in world logic at all, just constantly contradicting itself. It might be petty, but even the smallest things can sometimes break my immersion. I'm not saying it has to be realistic (but it certainly doesn't hurt), it just has to make sense within the game or it's gonna lessen my experience significantly.
I just started playing Fallout 1 for the first time and I love it. I keep coming back to it over the newer ones.
I hate how most choices in RPG's either have no consequences at all, or give you a choice that is so mechanically superior to the others that you'd never choose the others. My favorite choices in RPG's have pros and cons, so it doesn't feel like there's a best choice and I have to actually think about what I want to do.
The concept i like the most is when you create a character, or have a character that starts out as nothing specific, but then you shape them how you want in the world you was put in, without the threat of something global or existence-threatening to happen, but with more human stories, more grounded problems, etc.
Yup. I've always dreamt of a big, open-world sandbox RPG where you're free to do whatever, without any big Main Quest imposing itself on everything. I think The Witcher 3 came closest to that, with how you could just lose yourself in the mundane "job" of Witchery, which (I think) would've been more than enough, by itself, to make the game worth playing.
The main plot, such as it was, such as I remember, was also pretty low-stakes, as I recall. Just an old man trying to find his daughter, and maybe help her out a bit once he does.
@@Netherfly i had KCD in mind when i wrote this as well
As soon as Tim said one of his tropes, it immediately made me think of Starfield, and if you've played the game, your know which one.
The amnesia part made me laugh. Becaus I remember watching Madnaloregaming make a review on STALKER, where he said "like most mid 2000s video games, you have amnesia." I had to pause and think on the games I played in/from that era and got the "oh god, he's right." moment. Soo, soo many games with amnesia.
There is a trend I’ve seen of games with systems so complicated you are expected if not basically required to use a guide. And I really hate it.
Very refreshing take!! I was afraid "industry people" just enjoyed this kind of stuff and I was the only one going mental haywire about it
The Amnesia games should be the last use of amnesia in a video game
Excuse my fantastic entrance It was in the moment for now is the TIME OF THE MONOLOGUE, YOU WILL SIT THROUGH THIS UNSKIPPABLE CUTSCENE!
100 percent agree. Especially snarky or sarcastic charcaters. Moments of sarcasm add some humanity; constantly sarcastic... why would I bring that guy on my adventure?
Love it. Fun getting to see you get worked up. Cool to see the passion.
Nazeem in Skyrim.
*Saves game*
A really cool game that has many of the things you mentioned but it's done in a really fun way (at least to me) is kingdome come deliverance, pre named character, somewhat of a linear story, combat choreography. Still a good rpg I think.
I think I've done all of these as a younger dev, haha! Will definitely mix it up from here on.
There's a point at which we are just reinventing the wheel and not innovating.
That's not to say people are lazy, innovating gets harder as more gets done and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery (as well as worth a few bucks).
My personal peeve is how phenomenally stupid NPC motivation can be. It's either from the murder hobo school of ethics or ethics comes second place to story convenience.
Maybe it's just me but characters are seeming less like characters these days. Just very two dimensional.
Reminded me of the "Agent Hitler, FBI" meme lol
Not an RPG but I kinda liked how Omikron the Nomad Soul did the amnesia trope, the idea being that you are a nomadic soul the is in another persons body so you shouldn't know about the world.
original sin 2 wound up kinda doing the amnesia/special boy thing both well and terribly, pending on the character chosen. you'd have one character who was actually very deeply involved with the whole affair and then another who was just... there, present and accounted for by necessity lol
YES I love vampire Willow!
Same as with Movies.
Saving the world from some unexplained Just-Evil-TM as been completely overused and also wrongly used. If every movie in your series (yes thinking of Marvel movies) has the same narrative of "We / I have to save the world - again" it just becomes unbelieveable, no matter how creative the threat / saving might be.
And that's a shame, because saving the world makes for a hell of a movie (or movies) but it has to be earned throught the series and with complexity.
LOTR is my favourite movie and yet I dont critize it for using an overused trope. Because "the Evil" is complex and actually to a degree within every character. And it is about defeating that evil within you AND defeat those that couldn't defeat theirs on their own. That makes for multiple interesting characters and plotlines.
And yeah I am also bored with games. And a lot of artstyles are very indistincteable too.
complexity for complexity's sake is one of those things where I both hate it and then play a whole bunch of games that are full of it. case in point - total war: attila. the western roman empire campaign of fighitng attila and 1-hour-plus end-turns from multiple small town battles in a row and "oh god who declared war on me *this* turn" made it one of my favourite total war campaigns of all time, but the town building mechanics were broken (oh, you upgraded your farms to fix the food problem? shame you don't have the sanitation for that, enjoy the endless plagues and public order debuffs, also Winter Is Coming so you still have a food problem) and you look up a steam guide with templates for making optimal towns that make tens of thousands more than whatever you thought was a good idea...
The comparative simplicity of the Charlemagne expansion is one of the reasons I enjoyed it more than the base game.
@@Esquarious it was a direct preview of the total warhammer system and it really paid off
In defense of the Open World: It can be very reassuring for players to know that they can always go out and kill some enemies to become stronger. The Open World can function as a personal balancing element, possibly preventing players from getting stuck on a difficult fight. Tyranny comes to mind as a game that did the opposite; I always felt like i had to pick dialogue options and otherwise act in ways that levelled skills (like extending combat to cast more spells) because there were limited options to level skills and i didn't want to end up underpowered later on.
Also, i think that being a veteran gamer (since the 80s in my case) can be kind of a curse. I will also complain that modern shmups aren't as good as Raptor (1994). It's tough for someone to come up with something that we haven't seen a dozen times before.
i was SOOOOOOOO relieved bý cýberpunk 2077.... no wizards, no dragons, no heroes, no aliens... i just cant take this anýmore
Omg is this the first time you feature a clip? It was a great timing for the content at hand😂😂 I think ur right about most of these, like the sarcastic npcs
You're not old, Tim. You're just...better!
Thank you for mentioning "Open World" as a boring feature when there is no need for it. However i have a question about Major types of RPG games and by whom and how it is decided. Like, if this game will be an isometric, or 3rd person shooter, turn based or live action, open world or smaller hub areas. I understand that it happens very early in the development, but what is the reasoning behind it and on what level it is decided. (Partly it bothers me because we are getting Avowed instead of Pillars of Eternity 3. And i guess PoE2 was not as financially successful, but it was a really good game!)
It may not be Tim's answer but a lot of that comes down to budget and resources/talent. Camera perspective is often dictated by the budget, first-person games can be more budget-friendly than third-person since third-person requires many more animations where the full body is animated, different/more visual effects (dust/dirt from walking), and different/more sound effects and/or voice lines (idle animations, sounds to match what the character is wearing, etc.) That requires a lot of time, talent, and resources, which costs money. Some first-person games don't even have visible arms/hands so only the swing of a sword or the recoil of a gun is animated. Isometric games have a camera much further from the player character and other assets, which means the assets can be simplified. Less time is spent modeling assets, fewer details in textures, animations can be faster or have less detail.
It can also be dependent on the engine being used. Unreal Engine 4 was notoriously difficult to use for open worlds so many UE4 games had levels separated by loading screens in some way. Making first or third-person games often means the player needs to be able to see farther than they would from an isometric perspective, so there needs to be further draw distances and culling of assets in any direction the player can look. Isometric perspective typically results in fewer visible assets at any given point, so performance can often be easier to manage due to that fixed angle.
These are all decided during pre-production (ideally) before the game properly enters development. These decisions are typically made by game directors and leads but some may come from higher up the chain depending on who is supplying the budget.
Hopefully this provided some perspective. This is something that could be talked about for hours, especially with someone as experienced as Tim.
tl;dr: games require talent, resources, and time, which typically comes down to the budget.
@@bloogalooga Thank you for detailed answer. But that would kinda mean that isometric games would be significantly cheaper to make, and also would allow much prettier graphics from the distance like it was in PoE2 for example. And yet we are seeing a long trend to move to 3rd person. I know that it is considered to be a better sell, but is there any financial data behind it?
I like open world games. Thing is: the open world concept can be done well and not so well. Part of the problem is the 'bigger is better" philosophy, imo. Bigger isn't always necessarily better. (The 'wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle' anlogy comes to mind.) As Tim pointed out, what's the point if the vast majority of it is empty space? The larger the world, the more space to fill and that space is generally being filled with procedurally-generated POIs. If you don't have an unlimited library of handcrafted assets from which those POIs are built, they're going to become very samey-samey very quickly.
I’m a big fan of the sword and sorcery literary genre. Even though IPs from that genre are very influential I would say that it has been outstripped by the, for lack of a better term, Tolkienian BBEG and the apocalypse type of storylines. I think revisiting some of the tropes from sword and sorcery could give narrative designers idea about how to make their storylines smaller and more personal in scope. I like how if sword and sorcery portrays a BBEG, their plans are usually not world domination and usually only affect say one nation or a region and other parts of the world may not be affected or only hear about that big wizard war going on 3 countries over. The reduced stakes make it so there’s less fatigue from saving the world…again and makes the world feel much bigger than the conflict itself.