Why I Have Come to Dislike RPGs, Part One

This article is a bit difficult for me to write. You see, I used to swear by RPGs. During the PlayStation era, pretty much every game I purchased was some form of RPG: Final Fantasy, Chrono Cross, and the like. I even really liked Xenogears (and admittedly still admire it, at least for what it was trying to do if not for how it actually did it). Though I was by no means an RPG addict who would play everything released under the label of RPG, I did have a distinct gaming preference. This taste extended even to the PC, where the "truer" RPGs such as Fallout and Baldur's Gate held sway. My complaint is not so much about that style of game, as it has sadly gone the way of the dodo (due in no small part to the prevalence of console-style design sensibilities – see Oblivion).

No, I am focusing more on the console style or "JRPG" as it has come to be called. For my purposes, I consider a console-style RPG to be a game that involves a set of characters, possibly user-created but not usually, that progress along a fairly linear path toward an end goal. The focus is most often a grand, epic story, punctuated by dungeon crawling, combat, and treasure accumulation (i.e. "phat lewt"). The characters grow in power, usually by gaining arbitrary experience point awards that result in gaining levels. Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy are the prototype console RPGs, but games such as Knights of the Old Republic and Oblivion also fall squarely within the console-style designation as far as many of their design philosophies are concerned. (They are perhaps "hybrids" more than anything else.)

Though I used to love this style of game, I have since come to believe that the genre is so horribly flawed that it can no longer be considered worthwhile in any sense of the word. I still love some of the older games, but newer entries in the genre seem stale and outdated – stagnant entries in a stagnant genre. Before you label me an old fogey who refuses to "get with the times," I will outline many of the outrageous holdovers of the RPG genre that, for whatever reason, continue to interfere with the its ability to deliver a truly quality experience more than twenty years into the genre's development. Many of these things were forgivable fifteen or even ten years ago; today, they are an embarrassment.

1) Length

Length on its own is not necessarily a bad thing – I enjoy a thoroughly engaging epic quest as much as the next gamer. What I am talking about specifically is an artificial sense of length, most likely intended to make gamers feel that they are getting their full $50-60 worth of gaming goodness. RPGs are perhaps the most nefarious perpetrators of this gaming bloatedness, chock full of repetitive fetch quests, mini-games, and level building that seem to have no other purpose than to provide an “epic” (basically the gaming equivalent of calling something "nice") sense to what would most likely be an otherwise straightforward and unremarkable game.

Game developers take note: a gamer's time is valuable. Despite beliefs to the contrary, many of us do have other things to do, such as spending time with family and friends, doing our jobs, or participating in any number of other hobbies we might have. Artificially lengthening a game merely for the sake of meeting some arbitrary 40-50 hour (or more!) genre mark does not make for a better game. Nine times out of ten, it actually makes the game worse. As Wired.com's Chris Kohler said in one 1UP podcast, every good 50-hour game has an amazing 15-hour game trapped inside. I definitely agree: It is better to have a quality game of 15 hours in length than a 60-hour "epic" that is stretched so painfully thin that it is obvious to even the most casual player.