Don't get me wrong. (Gaming)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Sunday, February 19, 2017, 23:03 (2834 days ago) @ cheapLEY

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.

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.

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...

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

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...