Table of Contents
Yo I play a lot of RPGs (when I have time for them), and have done so ever since I was old enough to read. I was an obsessive fantasy reader as a kid, an interest that carried over naturally when I started playing games on the SNES, fascinated by the worlds and characters those cartridges contained. It’s a fascinatingly heterogeneous genre, ranging from Baldur’s Gate 3 on the nerdier, D&D-like side, to Final Fantasy in the ultra-stylish Japanese RPG corner, to Mass Effect in the story-driven realm. (And then there’s Dragon’s Dogma, on its own island, paying no attention to what anyone else is doing.) There’s so much variety that I’ve often wondered how to define RPG.
Is an RPG a game where you create your own character and customize their abilities, personalizing a build to suit you? A game you can play in many different ways, like Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls? Should it have a non-linear story? Should you have choices about how things play out? There are a multitude of exceptions to any of these RPG characteristics: sometimes you play your own character, sometimes you’re given one to inhabit; sometimes you fight with magic and swords, sometimes with guns and telekinesis; sometimes you take turns carefully planning moves like in a strategy game, sometimes you run in and mash buttons like you do in an action game. I’m not a genre pedant — arguments about whether, say, Zelda “counts” as an RPG make me sleepy — but even so, it’s inconsistent.
If anyone knows what makes a successful RPG, it’s undoubtedly Feargus Urquhart, who’s been making them since 1991. He’s the founder of Obsidian, the makers of The Outer Worlds, Fallout: New Vegas (the best one), South Park: The Stick of Truth, and many more. The studio is now working on Avowed (pictured above). Before that, he was one of the key members of Black Isle, which made most of the PC RPGs I played as a teenager, including the first two Fallout games, the original Baldur’s Gates, and Planescape: Torment. I’ll admit I was pretty excited to meet him at the Xbox launch event in Los Angeles last month.
“A good RPG is about pulling all those strings in your brain,” Urquhart says. “I could do this, I could go do this, I should talk to that person, I could do the main quest, but I want to upgrade my sword… that’s what makes me feel like I’m in this world. I’m not even thinking about the real world.”
We had a long conversation about what makes a great RPG. For him, what matters most is not the specific elements of the game, such as item crafting, character skill trees, or whether you can decide which companions to add to your party. “A great RPG is really the sum of its parts: just the right amount of item crafting, just the right amount of enchanting, just the right amount of dialogue, just the right amount of companions, just the right amount of reactivity,” he believes. What matters most is whether and how those elements reflect the player.
“The most important thing in an RPG is autonomy,” he says. “You go into a world and you are whoever you want to be, within limits, and you make choices, and then the game reacts to those choices. An RPG works best when no matter what you do, you get a reward anyway. The world should always react to how you play the game.”
The idea of an RPG as a reflection of the player strikes me as right: whether it’s Dragon Age or Fallout 2, The Witcher 3 or Breath of the Wild (don’t @ me), I’m happiest when I feel part of the world I’m playing in, when I can see the impact I’m having and how the game adapts to me. We’re not talking boring binary morality choices of good or evil, but more subtle reflections. A character might speak to you differently if you did something to help their village; people might mention things you did hours before; you should be given the option to choose how to approach a situation, whether with words or weapons, magic or thievery. A good RPG should give you choices. That’s what makes them absorbing.
“I used to play every single one that came out, and I still play a ton,” Feargus told me. “I love the possibility of worlds.” Maybe that’s what an RPG is: a world with possibilities. It’s a broad definition, but I accept it.
Keza’s flights and accommodations to Summer Game Fest in Los Angeles were paid for by Amazon Games.
What to play
I spent a long time trying to pick my favorite Obsidian game to recommend here. They’re all very different. So instead, I’m going to go with a deeper one: a spy thriller RPG. Alpha Protocolthat recently reappeared on Steam and GOG after spending five years in limbo.
It’s a messy, imperfect, buggy, hostile game, so be prepared, but it’s also the only game that ever tried to simulate all about being an espionage agent, not just the James Bond details. Its protagonist, Mike, is a horrible guy. You can do awful You can try to break into an embassy. You can openly boast about being a spy to impress the ladies. If you try to make an alliance with a character you don’t like, the others will refuse to cooperate with you or simply not appear in the game.
All There are consequences, and they’re often bad enough to make you curse yourself. It’s not Obsidian’s best game by any stretch, but it’s the most interesting. If you play it, turn the difficulty to Easy to minimize the annoyance of the awful combat.
Available in: PC, or PS3 and Xbox 360 if you’re looking for a disc
Estimated playing time: 8-12 hours
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What to read
Pokémon Go It recently turned 8 years old and this weekend is the time for this year’s Pokémon Go Fest. If you haven’t played in a while, there are plenty of Recent updates to review.
Tokyo Game Roomwhich is celebrated every September, is a shadow of its former self, but the The return of PlayStation This year, for the first time since 2019, things look encouraging.
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Block of questions
This week, Martha and Todmorden ask:
My friend and I live together and we are avid gamers. We love all the great modern games: GTA, The Last of Us, Uncharted, Days Gone, Horizon, Spider-Man, and Stardew. A friend of ours, who hasn’t played since the 90s, wants us to help her get back into gaming. So it needs to be something we enjoy and have a good learning arc. What would you recommend?
The mistake we often make when trying to introduce (or re-introduce) our friends to games is to recommend something too simple. I’ve done this before, but complexity and depth is often what people find most interesting about games – a friend of mine was recently very surprised to discover that her girlfriend had taken up gaming massively. Cyberpunk 2077despite having barely picked up a controller before. The host of the Guardian’s pop culture podcast, Chanté Joseph, got into gaming with Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
So if I were you, I’d show your friend everything… his favorites, but let them explore them at their own pace: if you feel drawn to HorizonIt has a really good story mode that makes combat less intimidating, for example. Show him games from genres he likes on TV, film, or books. Don’t worry too much if a game is too difficult or complicated for a beginner. In 2020, Caroline O’Donoghue wrote an article about rediscovering games as a bored adult; she has some unusual suggestions.
And, since you are PlayStation players, I will add a recommendation for Astro’s Playroom (above) It’s a lot of fun. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t like it.
If you have a question for Question Block, or anything else to say about the newsletter, email us at pushingbuttons@theguardian.com.