The Future Of Shooters Is RPGs

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 at 11:01 am in General Gaming · Comments

O RLY?

So says Cliffy B (and you can call me Rocky D for the duration of this post), design director at Epic, the studio responsible for… Wait, what’s that game? The one with chunky men equipped with meaty artillery. Uh… Gears of War! Yeah, Gears of War. Looks like Epic could possibly be making a shift in direction in regards to future shooters. What an interesting, albeit questionable, concept.

I think I speak for everyone when I say Epic can always be trusted as far as delivering action packed, brainless, run and gun shooters go. Therefore the mantra “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” springs to mind. However, are gamers becoming complacent with the linear concept of run, cover and shoot the likes of Gears supplies?

As you know, I’m a big RPG fan, and when Cliff Bleszinski stated “the future of shooters is RPGs”, the likes of Fallout 3 and Mass Effect sprung to mind. Both great games that I’ve sunk a lot of hours into, and both games that focus heavily on role playing, but with a fantastic degree of real time combat mixed in. But is that a good move? After all, RPGs are very much an acquired taste, and even including one or two aspects of the genre may deter gamers from buying into this hybrid. RPGs are typically associated with being rather “heavy”, the likes of which you need an abundance of free time to really get the most out of. Shooters, on the other hand, are more so of the “pick up and play” variety, hence why they appeal to a much larger audience. Completely different breeds of games.

Every time I’m done investing countless hours into a RPG, I always follow the same pattern and lust after a fun, no nonsense shooter. I’ve briefly written about my shooter/RPG playing habits before, where I did actually complain of a sense of being unfulfilled throughout the Brothers in Arms campaign. Shooters generally lack the substance seen in RPGs, but really, there’s always a place for quick and dirty shooters as far as I’m concerned, and I’d be saddened to see both genres merge into one.

Of course Epic doesn’t account for all forthcoming shooters, but considering, hypothetically, that Cliffy B’s prediction was adopted by a much wider range of developers, where would that leave the games where we can pick up an assault rifle, and blast through the entire thing in 8 hours? I’m happy with the Mass Effects and Fallout 3s of the game world, but I’m also happy with the Gears and Rainbows.

I think variety is the spice of life, and that definitely extends to video games as well. What’s your thoughts on what Cliffy B said? How do you read into it?

Tags: Cliffy B, Epic, Gears of War, RPG, Shooters

6 Responses to “The Future Of Shooters Is RPGs”

Arnold Sideways

# July 7th, 2009 at 1:53 pm

Well, initially it seems like one of those pointless predictions about the industry where he’s assumed it’s an all or nothing game. I don’t think that’s what he meant though. If it’s how I understand it, he shares the same opinion as me, that there should be more RPG/shooter hybrids. Not at the expense of pure shooters or pure RPGs, but more of a rebalance. There’s been far too many bland linear shooters with no depth to them, for every work of brilliance like Gears 2, there’s about ten boring, generic shooters that you forget about ten minutes after you turn them off. In the hybrid bracket, I can’t think of too many, but the ones that spring to mind - Deus Ex, Bioshock, System Shock 2 - are all sitting right at the top of my personal “best games of all time” list, and I’d love to see more of these kinds of games. I still love my pure RPGs like Neverwinter Nights or Elder Scrolls, and my pure shooters like Gears, Rainbow Six etc, but I just think that middle ground is still frustratingly under-represented at the moment. It sits right in a sweet spot of depth and action, where the RPG may at times drag on or feel a bit clunky, or the shooter sometimes feels a bit too shallow. If I were put in charge of a game team (not likely to happen since I’m merely a programmer), the shooter/RPG hybrid is exactly the genre I’d pounce straight on without hesitation.

Matt Brett

# July 7th, 2009 at 3:24 pm

We’ll definitely have to take this with a grain of salt, and yes, it is just a prediction. One that isn’t in the best interest of Epic, ironically enough. The Gears of War and Unreal Tournament games aren’t exactly known for their engaging plot-lines. And what’s an RPG without good back-story?

I’m not huge into RPGs, so I hope he’s wrong here.

dkoi

# July 7th, 2009 at 8:39 pm

I actually agree with Cliffy B to an extent. CoD4 was the first multiplayer game that took the mainstream shooter crowd and introduced them to the joys of leveling. It’s not an RPG per say but it’s got it’s roots there. Killzone 2 expanded on this with leveling and a class system. You could choose to expand your medic class or continue leveling in other ways. I think this is what Cliffy B is talking about. Gamers enjoy doing something in a game that means “something” and being rewarded for it. You could play a multiplayer game like Gears 2, and enjoy it. But it you unlocked different chainsaw animations by reaching level 2 you would probably enjoy it more. Because all those kills you got meant something in the realm of Gears. i think the future is games that focus on this a little more. There have been games that have done it, but most haven’t done well. To grab the mainstream they need to be eased into it, and it needs to be accessible. Metal Gear Online was an attempt that failed terribly, because nothing was easy in it. But, take the simplicity of Gears and add a leveling system with perks and I think that might be more along the lines of what Cliffy B is thinking. This concept could be pulled into the single player/co-op sections of the game for a lot of depth that is easily accessible to the masses. .

Arnold Sideways

# July 7th, 2009 at 11:52 pm

CoD4 wasn’t the first multiplayer shooter that had levelling (Rainbow Six Vegas had it), but anyway, I don’t think Cliffy B was talking about multiplayer. I agree that there’s a sense of satisfaction in working towards a goal (it’s why millions of people are addicted to WoW after all), but I think in CoD4 it’s pretty nasty to punish someone for being new to the game. In a single player game, it’s fine because the experience is scaled around you, the enemies you’ll encounter earlier aren’t as tough, but online with CoD4, you come to the game as a new player and you get utterly slaughtered because all the people who’ve been playing it for months have got all the best gear and they rub it in your face. What happened to being accessible? CoD4 gets away with it because it’s a strong brand and success feeds itself in multiplayer, in the same way it works for the Halo games. In a lesser known game I think it’d lose a lot of players because it’s such a horrible introduction to multiplayer to get your ass handed to you repeatedly because more experienced players have been given an unfair advantage.

Rockers Delight

# July 8th, 2009 at 9:31 am

Arnold, I don’t understand what elements of Bioshock are similar to that of a RPG? I know it’s been bandied around as a RPG in disguise, and maybe it’s been so long since I’ve played it I can’t remember… But, yeah, how? As amazing a game as that was (and it really did blow my mind), and despite agreeing with you wholeheartedly about the RPG/shooter hybrid being a sweet spot of depth and action, I wouldn’t want to see ’shallow’ shooters come to an end in the future. Also, interesting thought you’ve posed there regarding what genre of game you’d make if you were in charge of a game team. I’d go for a real cinematic, action packed FPS.

Matt, spot on about Epic’s big shooters not exactly excelling in the plot department (though I have been told Gears 2 had a very teary scene). However, Bioshock has been said to have been a RPG/shooter hybrid, and I know you loved that game and are looking forward to the sequel. More games like that wouldn’t exactly be a bad thing, but I still would like to think Epic won’t strip simple shooters from their future catalogue.

Dkoi, I loved the leveling system in Rainbow, and while I didn’t get into CoD4 like others, I enjoyed the leveling system featured there too. Elements of leveling are always welcome in single player (for me), but I still maintain that variety is the spice of gaming life. Basically, I hope the future of shooters isn’t RPGs, but that we see a few more hybrids make their way onto the market.

Arnold Sideways

# July 8th, 2009 at 10:14 am

Well at their core, RPGs are about creating a character (or taking an existing character as a starting point) and customising them as you want to in order to change the way you play. Your progression through the game opens up new options to customise your character and that’s exactly what you get in Bioshock. You get Adam as a reward for progression, and it’s entirely up to you what you spend it on, plasmids, tonics, etc, or just upgrading the ones you’ve already got. It’s how you decide to upgrade that defines your “role”. Admittedly, Bioshock did lean more heavily towards FPS territory than RPG, but that to me just shows how analogue it can be. Bioshock is at it’s heart a reimagination of System Shock 2, which was more RPG-like in appearance, and when people go around calling Bioshock an RPG in disguise they’re probably thinking more of SS2. Bioshock still has a lot of these elements, but they are disguised by more simplified UI. And in the end it’s the experience that counts, you don’t design your game to fit in a genre, you design it to be engaging and fun, genre gameplay elements are a tool, not a restriction. Personally I think Bioshock simplified things a little bit too much, because it didn’t quite give enough freedom to create an entirely different character if you chose a different upgrade path - only in the middle of the game when your character wasn’t “complete” were you different from another player playing the same game. By the end of the game your character was just good at everything rather than specialising in a particular role, and that took some of the replay value away from it that I normally expect from an RPG. Out of interest, what is it that you feel makes a game an RPG?

Rockers Delight