Don't get me wrong. (Gaming)

by cheapLEY , Monday, February 20, 2017, 00:30 (2616 days ago) @ Ragashingo

Horizon? I can think of a couple of games with the name Horizon in them? Which game are you talking about?

Horizon: Zero Dawn on Playstation.

Cool. It looks intriguing, but I haven't looked all that closely because I don't have a PlayStation...

Anyway, I kinda wonder now what you think is and isn't an RPG? From what you've said it kinda feels like an RPG is any game that give you the ability to hang yourself by misassigning upgrade points. :p

I'm honestly not sure exactly how I'd define it. I just think the term has become much more fluid and lose than perhaps it should have. The Witcher 3 is a perfect example. Huge, open world RPG. But the leveling system and abilities are bad and barely worth screwing with.

They aren't? It takes a bit to really get moving in a direction. A good 15 or 20 levels before you really start seeing real results from specializing. But I enjoyed the variety of skills.

Yeah, that's definitely true. Even then, though, most of the abilities just end up being percentage increases for damage or healing or whatever that ability is linked to. There are cool things like Whirl and the alternate modes for signs, which are thankfully early unlocks. To be fair, I still haven't messed much with the alchemy tree. I always intend to, but you have to sink so many points into that path before anything even mildly interesting sounding opens up. Granted, I've always heard alchemy builds end up ridiculously OP in the late game, so it pays off, I guess. It's just not terribly interesting.

Honestly, I think the ability to hang yourself by misassigning upgrade points speaks quite a bit towards what I consider real RPGs. Your character is drastically different at the end of the game from the beginning. I wouldn't necessarily say that's true of Mass Effect 2 or 3.

I think the difference for me comes in what you're actually leveling. In an RPG (Morrowind) you're upgrading your character through skills (Sneak, Long Blade, Mercantile, Speechcraft, Acrobatics, Short Blade, Destruction, Alchemy, etc). Uprgrading each of those skills allows you to use better and better gear (or weapons or spells or potions or whatever) as you go along. In Mass Effect 2 and 3, I don't think you're leveling up a character in quite the same way--instead, you're leveling up particular abilities and making those specific abilities better.

It's an odd, specific distinction to make, I'll admit, and I'm genuinely struggling to articulate the difference. All I can say is that it makes sense in my head.

Mass Effect 2, for sure. They paired the RPGness back so far it practically vanished. ME3 brought a lot of stuff back, though. Just about everything you listed for Morrowind is something that can be improved in ME3. The big difference is Mass Effect doesn't really prevent you from holding a gun if you don't have that skill.

You might be right. I played Mass Effect 2 repeatedly and actually went back to it once after ME3 was out. I only played ME3 twice, and that was pretty close to back-to-back playthroughs. I don't remember it nearly as well as ME2.

Mass Effect 2 and 3 feel far more like action games with a leveling system tacked, rather than like RPGs from the ground up.

But presumably you could have solid gameplay AND have the game be a real RPG? I'm thinking (guessing/puzzling out) that maybe your distinction might also have to deal with the way that Mass Effect is sorta only an action game. Aside from little cutscenes, there's not much use in non-combat skills. Basically Mass Effect only has combat skills and the renegade / paragon based persuasion skill. But that's also true of Mass Effect 1...

Thanks for pointing that out. I do think that has a large part to do with it. It's the same reason I abandoned Fallout 4 after 30 hours, as opposed to the hundreds I put into every other Bethesda game. Combat was literally the only option in 99% of situations. Again, The Witcher 3 suffers from this too, I think. Other than having a few points in Axii and a few other specific dialogue chains, it's all revolved around combat. I don't think it really makes the game worse, it just mixes up my feelings about the game as a RPG.

Anyway, I'm not trying to criticize at all here. I'm just curious about how you see the distinction. :)

No worries, this has been a great discussion and has definitely given me things to think about. I frequently struggle to articulate my thoughts in these situations, and I frequently say things like "real RPG" and then only analyze what I really mean when questioned about it.

Interestingly, I believe Andromeda shifts back to individual power cooldowns. But I think maybe the time pausing to select a power is gone and you might even be limited to three active powers at any given time but with the ability to swap them out as needed and without any real class restrictions.

That all sounds fantastic. Like I said, I'm genuinely excited for Andromeda. Probably the most excited I've been for a video game since Destiny. I love me some Mass Effect.

Just keep in mind, those are all things I think I've heard. Information about how Andromeda actually plays is still somewhat hard to come by... Even though I'm following it pretty closely...

I'm not too concerned either way. I haven't followed the game much at all. It has "Mass Effect" in the title, and that's enough to get me to buy in.