Matt Barton on the State of Modern RPGs

Matt Barton, one of our favorite RPG mega-fans, has updated his weekly blog with another article, this one a follow-up to last week’s. Suffice it to say, he’s got a bone to pick with modern RPGs and their developers.

I’m starting to think that MMOS and shooters are becoming more like sports than videogames anyway; at this point, the rules and expectations have solidified to the point that talking about them becoming obsolete is like saying basketball or football will be obsolete one day. Of course, there will be changes, but I expect there are plenty of people who’d be happy to continue playing (and more importantly buying) shooters for the rest of their lives. Contrast that, then, with the relatively short-lived phenomenon of fighting arcade games of the 90s, when seemingly every male between the ages of 12 and 24 were obsessed with learning every combo of the thousands of Street Fighter II games on the market. I’d be happily proven wrong on this, but I don’t see shooters experiencing the same fate of being doomed to niche gaming and the occasional nostalgia-fueled retro release.

The stylistic homologies I think we’re stuck in now, at least regarding CRPGs and MMORPGs, is best shown by looking at Skyrim and Dragon Age II on the CRPG side and Tera and GW2 on the MMORPG. What’s happened to CRPGs, at least with major releases, is an increased tendency to make them as much like the reigning genre of shooters as possible, going so far as to use the same engines. To someone like me, playing Skyrim is a lot more like playing Doom than a true CRPG experience such as Ultima VII. This shift towards shooter-ization began very early, of course, with games like Ultima Underworld (1993), Elder Scrolls: Arena (1994), and Might & Magic VI (1998). Now, of course, you can’t find a CRPG that doesn’t look like it’s just a shooter with some grafted on “CRPG elements,” and, what’s worse, the console-ization of the shooter has homogenized the whole industry into one fast food joint after another. I greet the new Halo or Black Ops game with the same enthusiasm I would greet the Brand New San Diego Bacon Burger with Olives at McDonald’s. Sure, it’s a “sandwich revolution,” yadda yadda, whatever. Yawn.

The piece is fairly long and struck a chord with me, although some of his actual reasons given for the state of modern RPGs might be up for debate depending on your perspective. Nevertheless, it’s a good read for those who pine for the games of the 80s and 90s again.