KaterinaBucket

Kat A. Beckett

@KaterinaBucket

Yes! Behold, the perfect woman!

greetings outlander. why walk when you can ride? we make a special trip just for you

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KaterinaBucket
@KaterinaBucket

RPG Protagonists are Too Good at Too Many Things

A lot of RPG's have multiple faction questlines pertaining to different specialisations within the game (the mage questline, the thief questline, the warrior questline) and usually there is nothing stopping you from doing all of them. And that's fine! I get that on multiple levels, both "not wanting to lock the player out of too much content per playthrough" and also like. Odysseus dabbles in all sorts of shit and cavorts with all sorts of people and develops an extremely wide range of skills in his adventures. The kid from The Belgariad (did anyone else read these?) has all sorts of mentors and picks up useful skills from all of them

But the thing is, Odysseus or the Belgariad kid don't become Grandmasters of everything they dabble in. The heroes of old epics/90s YA series may hang out with thieves, and learn about thieving, and become a very good thief, but they rarely surpass the main thief guy at thieving. Meanwhile in videogames you are always the big dick main dude of every single faction sidequest. You put in a few weeks of work and become the grandmaster of every guild. At once. And everyone's cool with that

And the thing is, it doesn't have to be that way! You can let players do all the faction content in one playthrough, and do a better job evoking those stories, and create more investment, all for the low low price of having characters besides the PC matter. Write a little side protagonist for each questline, let them take the spotlight, you learn from them, you help them, but at the end of the day, this is their jam, and you have to move on. Of COURSE you can't stick around and be grandmaster of the companions and the college and the thieves guild and the dark brotherhood, You're busy being the Dragonborn! But the Dragonborn still needs all sorts of teachers, and allies, and contacts, and maybe they can become the grandmasters of whatever it is they're good at.

I don't have a good ending for this little mini-essay but I feel very strongly about this and I wish more games did this right! If anyone actually reads this to the end I'd love any examples in the replies

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in reply to @KaterinaBucket's post:

balketh
@balketh

Gothic 1 doesn't let you join all the camps/'guilds'. Though there are a technically limited number of XPs in the game, potions and items can get your stats quite high (higher than seems reasonable, but not Morrowind-Alchemy+Enchanting high), but you don't become the Grandmaster of Every Guild.

To devil the advocate, however, I do want to say that I genuinely don't think it's as common as it seems, and a strange example of this is that Morrowind doesn't count!

You can't become the guildmaster of all three major guilds at once, but not because someone else is better than you (yet the characters continue to matter, narratively, even if you surpass them), but a secret third way: the main quests of the Thieves' and Fighters' Guilds intrinsically pit you against the other faction in a way that prevents you from becoming head of both.

There's also the Imperial Cult and the Temple are also ideologically exclusive, and you can only join one of the three Great Houses at any one time, each with quite different stories.

I honestly think it's Skyrim that's caused this phenomenon to be as trope-ish as it seems, because I honestly can't think of an RPG that does this other than Skyrim, (and maybe Oblivion but I don't remember it nearly as well as Morrowind.) I know for sure you can't be tip-top of all the Factions at once in, I think, in any of the Fallout games.

I know the specification was around earned skill and skill/profession-based groups, but I think this all still applies in focusing on a way of addressing the problem. It becomes an odd thorn in the side of the more open-systemed 'You Are The Hero' RPGs like the Elder Scrolls and Fallouts when non-foe NPCs are more powerful than you (especially in games where combat/power are many of the factions'/guilds' main focus), yet they're not helping 'save the world'/etc. Prophecy can only carry so much justification before it, too, becomes tedious.

It feeds many birds with one seed to instead have the groups be opposed in some manner, but not early enough to prevent players from maybe starting off in many factions, but honing in on the one they prefer to the exclusion of the others, especially in the Morrowind style of later-quest intrigue, rather than solely based on whole-faction ideology.

I do wish there were more consequences for joining factions, made up for with more story and quests and rewards and such, so playthroughs could be more unique and intriguing.

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KaterinaBucket
@KaterinaBucket

This reply makes me wonder if I worded some of my post poorly and there's a lot here I'd LIKE to elaborate on but I'll limit it to one thing: Morrowind (which i am WAY more familiar with than Skyrim) might avoid the letter of a lot of my criticism, but is maybe worse in terms of the spirit. The big contrast I'm drawing isn't actually about skill (despite the title of the essay) but about major sidequest chains that feel like I'm going around having a dozen full-time jobs vs traveling the world learning many things from many teachers (and inevitably surpassing SOME of them but still not necessarily taking their job)

Also Fallout kinda just, doesn't really apply to the discussion much either way? Like tonns of RPG's avoid doing the thing that I'm criticising, but so so few manage to do the thing I'm actively wanting here

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balketh
@balketh

I mean, I tried to only respond to what you wrote in your post.

RPG Protags are too good at too many things. Multiple faction questlines of different game-play specialisations (totes fine). But not fine: becoming Grandmasters of all those things, AND the game not reacting to it. That's the first half.

Then you suggest a specific, personally preferred way around the issue, which I suspect was your more chost's intended focus now: Let players do all faction content in one playthru AND have more investment by making other characters matter. Mostly based on the notion of the main quest taking precedence and you not having time to do all this other stuff, though you squeeze in learning and stories with these characters on the way.

In tags, you suggested Morrowind does this, and that maybe Gothic does too, and that, quote, "A lot of RPGs have multiple faction questlines pertaining to different specialisations within the game".

Hence, my responses. At least, from my reading, I interpreted three separate issues: the titled 'RPG Protags are Too Good At Too Many Things', 'Other Non-Enemy Characters Don't Matter Compared To The PC', and a secret third thing, that when plots feel like they should have a time limit but don't, it chafes the verisimilitude of the narrative world.

I agree with all of these things, but started out wanting to note that Gothic 1 doesn't do this, then I realised that it's because none of the mentioned games have time limits on their narratives, and freely allow the player to engage in the multi-mastery that seems to be the thorn in both play and design that causes other characters' stories to not matter.

Then I delved into how Morrowind differs against the specific issues you talked about, and I would also disagree that Morrowind doesn't feel like you're running 5 full-time jobs - becoming grandmaster of any of the guilds doesn't... Require anything of you once you're there, and in most all the cases, the quests leading up to it are... Fetch quests and help in the research of others. I never feel like I'm the big-dick-grand-master of mages by being the head of the Mages' guild. Half the time, I feel used by other members in their own plots, for example.

I brought up Fallout because as a series it's both experimented with having a time limit, and having factions that you can grandmaster completely optionally to your personal main quest, but doesn't feel like it invalidates other characters' presence by your doing so, because it prevents you from doing them all in one playthrough.

I also brought it up because of the suggestion you made that a lot of RPGs do this, but I realise now it wasn't nearly as relevant to the part you were focusing on later in the chost.

I don't think you wrote your chost poorly at all. I do this a lot, too; I think you just focused on a stream of thought about a topic, eventually getting to the part you're really passionate about (other characters mattering and you participating in their stories without invalidating them, something none of the games we've discussed do amazingly well, as you originally pointed out, and is extremely prevalent to the extent that Bioware basically made their name on games that do this), and didn't set out to write a chost that gets its advocate deviled by some bear on the internet.

So, apologies if this interaction didn't sit well with you, and for taking so long to get around to the point of it all. I'm always trying to do better - sorry I missed the mark on this one!

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balketh
@balketh

A game that does 'not making characters you're sharing the world with irrelevant by your presence as the main character' well, but doesn't 100% fit the categories intended: FFXIV. A lot of the characters you spend 90% of the Main Quest with - Alphinaud, Alisae, Y'shtola, Thancred, Urianger, Minfillia, and so on - are not only relevant, but they're off having their own stories play out, and when you're all together, they're not FORCED to look to you as the only one with agency - there's so much they know and do without you - but they look to you as a close friend, peer, and stalwart ally (who also happens to be blessed with plot armour, much to their constant worry), and you interweave in and out of each other's stories at times.

I think that's a great example?

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