RPGs: The State of Play

[frogbeastegg]

The template. That is, all at once, the greatest problem with the genre, the biggest limitation, the biggest dinosaur wandering planet RPG. Or in my humble opinion it is. Not every game suffers from template syndrome; many do.

You start out humble and then the world goes insane and suddenly you are running for your life/pursuing vengeance. You meet assorted helpful characters and chase after the villain/person you need to rescue. After some hours there is a twist in which the plot grows wider by revealing a larger threat to the world/twist about your character's past. You then charge about some more to tidy that up, until you meet and the main villain and fight him. Either you win and it turns out there's another villain, or you lose and have to do an escape from prison sequence. Then you resume charging about until you reach the finale and final battle. End game, thanks for saving the world.

Western RPG or JRPG, open world or tightly scripted, it's the same thing. Some hide it better than others, some add new material to dilute the old, and some tell it well enough that it's enjoyable again. Many don't; I have this feeling of deja vu a lot when playing RPGs and it's souring the flavour.

EDIT: missed off the final part which explained why it's such a problem! The plot is the framework the game is built around, and if the framework is old then the rest can't feel new or surprising. A new plotline would place different demands on the gameplay and game world, and would provoke something a bit different. It's hard to be inventive when you're rehashing the same old. We've got the same general gameplay and the same general plot, and the two feed and support each other like that picture of two snakes both eating the each other's tails.